[Very Long] Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles...

[Garthanos]

Well, my answer, maybe different from 7 years ago, is that the acquisition and desire to use the special silver sword LEAD to the existence of the shapechangers being framed into the action .

To me the desire is for heroes to be badass and do things others cannot do... sometimes that means needing a tool to enable the job and the story includes acquiring the tool (but even with the tool the normal person should not be expected nor really able to do it as that is both anticlimactic and undermines the awesome of the hero ... ie then the tool is then the one which is badass. )

Personally unless the hero is a fated wielder archetype ... that is a failure.

A character is measured by the caliber of their enemies hence taking them down to a level where they are a challenge instead of unreachable is acceptable.

 

[S'mon]

What about 4E did you find pushing back against a sandbox game? Two of the most highly-praised published adventures for the edition, Madness at Gardmore Abbey and Reavers of Harkenwold, lend themselves to such a style, or at least as much as any published adventure can (which, I concede, is limited success).

I haven't read those adventures, but in a sandbox campaign I'd expect published adventures to be more 'module' adventure sites like X1 Isle of Dread.

4e really needs scripted encounters and IME lends itself very poorly to procedural content generation. It is great at cinematics, but the combat system really dislikes too-easy or too-hard fights. And 4e does not lend itself to the "hmm, 20-50 bandits... roll reaction... what are they up to? What will happen next?" type play I associate with sandboxing. 5e does though.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I haven't read those adventures, but in a sandbox campaign I'd expect published adventures to be more 'module' adventure sites like X1 Isle of Dread.

4e really needs scripted encounters and IME lends itself very poorly to procedural content generation. It is great at cinematics, but the combat system really dislikes too-easy or too-hard fights. And 4e does not lend itself to the "hmm, 20-50 bandits... roll reaction... what are they up to? What will happen next?" type play I associate with sandboxing. 5e does though.

See, the funny thing is, I didn't think 0e, 1e, 2e, 3e, 5e, B/X/ECMI/RC... did either. Sure, people DID it, but when the 20-50 bandits showed up and the reaction was a 'hostile, attacks' (the exact details of reactions varied from edition to edition) then the GM had to either step in and cook something up or else work with the players to see that whatever idea they could throw against the wall stuck. I mean, he could also just slag the party, generate a TPK and start over, but in no way were ANY of those options actually a good result!!!

So, in all editions of D&D this kind of thing only works out well if the dice are nice and the results turn out to be interesting in some way. This is just as plausible in 4e as any other edition.

However, I am fully in agreement that no tools exist in 4e to implement this, and it isn't really worth doing since 4e can do other styles of play a lot better. So, not really any strong disagreement, just I find the idea that 4e is 'worse at it' amusing.

 

[S'mon]

See, the funny thing is, I didn't think 0e, 1e, 2e, 3e, 5e, B/X/ECMI/RC... did either. Sure, people DID it, but when the 20-50 bandits showed up and the reaction was a 'hostile, attacks' (the exact details of reactions varied from edition to edition) then the GM had to either step in and cook something up or else work with the players to see that whatever idea they could throw against the wall stuck. I mean, he could also just slag the party, generate a TPK and start over, but in no way were ANY of those options actually a good result!!!

So, in all editions of D&D this kind of thing only works out well if the dice are nice and the results turn out to be interesting in some way. This is just as plausible in 4e as any other edition.

However, I am fully in agreement that no tools exist in 4e to implement this, and it isn't really worth doing since 4e can do other styles of play a lot better. So, not really any strong disagreement, just I find the idea that 4e is 'worse at it' amusing.

I don't really agree; I can run sandbox fine in pre-3e and in 5e. Was doing it last night 5e for a solo Barbarian level 19 PC, rolling up stuff like 3 fire giants on the level 17-20 table (he ran away after 1 round of getting clobbered).
3e is not perfect for sandboxing due to extreme power disparity, but works well in a limited level range, eg the Pathfinder Beginner Box level 1-5 is a great sandbox game due to its encounter tables being for that range.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't really agree; I can run sandbox fine in pre-3e and in 5e. Was doing it last night 5e for a solo Barbarian level 19 PC, rolling up stuff like 3 fire giants on the level 17-20 table (he ran away after 1 round of getting clobbered).
3e is not perfect for sandboxing due to extreme power disparity, but works well in a limited level range, eg the Pathfinder Beginner Box level 1-5 is a great sandbox game due to its encounter tables being for that range.

I haven't really RUN 5e and certainly never ran a 5e sandbox, but my experience there is that if the overall CR difference is too much, then clearly the party is going down. That can also happen when there are certain types of non-viable tactical situations (like for instance in the 5e campaign we ran our party was set on by a wandering dragon in the wilderness. Since none of the PCs could fly there was no real hope of winning that fight). The upshot being, 5e may be a little more tolerant than 4e in terms of power disparities being gameable, but the same problems still exist.

4e has less sensitivity to power differences (and less likely reliance on specifically required techniques for defeating certain monster types) than 3e. So any argument by which 3e is suitable for sandbox makes 4e even MORE SO. If that is not true, please explain!

AD&D, and Basic and its derivatives, are all QUITE sensitive to power discrepancies. At low levels a single level difference is likely to be insurmountable if combat happens. This is often mitigated somewhat by casters being able to 'nova' but doing so in the wilderness is certainly problematic (IE you will now be without magic for several encounter checks potentially). There are also a lot of cases where lack of a certain type of magic or other nostrum is a fatal deficiency (the oft observed 'never go without a cleric rule' for example). In higher level play, or if the DM gives out lots of magic then things get a little less acute.

Now, again, there are differences in culture and process of play which make sandbox more routine and more integrated with 'classic' D&D play than it is with 4e (and I would say also 3.x and 5e, though maybe not as much). 4e simply has no rules for reactions, wandering monster checks, wilderness or dungeon exploration rule frameworks, etc. Of course you can use resources from other editions or emulate them, but this is a fair observation. 4e isn't MADE FOR sandbox play. I still maintain that nothing in its fundamental rules architecture and the resulting play at the table makes it particularly less suitable however. Again, sandbox doesn't work in the way many of its proponents envisage (IE as some sort of pure setup where the DM is an entirely neutral agenda-less arbiter adjudicating an entirely pre/random generated environment) in ANY edition, so saying it doesn't really work that way in 4e is not especially a good argument about 4e per se.

 

[S'mon]

4e has less sensitivity to power differences (and less likely reliance on specifically required techniques for defeating certain monster types) than 3e. So any argument by which 3e is suitable for sandbox makes 4e even MORE SO. If that is not true, please explain!

It's not true because 4e is MORE sensitive to power differences than 3e, and in a very bad way - with defences going up +1 per level, PCs can't even hit creatures of significantly higher level. Furthermore, threat level increases faster than XP award in 4e so even if the PCs eventually win they get meagre XP.

5e is very forgiving of power differences once the PCs reach 5th level. Some DMs complain about this, that 5e PCs can defeat monsters of much higher CR. But in any case I don't expect or want all fights to be winnable. I do expect PCs to recognise a losing fight (easy in 3e & 5e, but hard in 4e due to the resource economy and the natural cadence of 4e combat typically having a 'looks like you might lose' bit in the middle) and to keep in mind ways to escape & evade. In the worst case scenario of a superior flying enemy, such as an angry dragon hunting ground-locked PCs, you are likely to lose some people, but I have seen parties avoid TPK by scattering, hiding, using a variety of techniques. Especially if you have some (tasty, tasty) NPCs or even just mounts along, PC fatalities can often be minimised.

My son sometimes gets called cowardly how he plays his PCs, because he's good at quickly recognising a losing fight and bugging out, as when his flying dragonborn bbn-19 fled the 3 fire giants within 1 round yesterday. It meant he still had enough resources he could suck up the damage from their final attacks as he fled.

 

[S'mon]

Again, sandbox doesn't work in the way many of its proponents envisage (IE as some sort of pure setup where the DM is an entirely neutral agenda-less arbiter adjudicating an entirely pre/random generated environment) in ANY edition, so saying it doesn't really work that way in 4e is not especially a good argument about 4e per se.

It has worked fine for me in several editions, and I was running a 'pure sandbox' 5e game 2 days ago that worked fine - a cross-Wilderlands trek involving keyed encounters from the 3e Wilderlands map/box, plus the Xanathar's random encounter tables. So my mileage certainly varies.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's not true because 4e is MORE sensitive to power differences than 3e, and in a very bad way - with defences going up +1 per level, PCs can't even hit creatures of significantly higher level. Furthermore, threat level increases faster than XP award in 4e so even if the PCs eventually win they get meagre XP.

5e is very forgiving of power differences once the PCs reach 5th level. Some DMs complain about this, that 5e PCs can defeat monsters of much higher CR. But in any case I don't expect or want all fights to be winnable. I do expect PCs to recognise a losing fight (easy in 3e & 5e, but hard in 4e due to the resource economy and the natural cadence of 4e combat typically having a 'looks like you might lose' bit in the middle) and to keep in mind ways to escape & evade. In the worst case scenario of a superior flying enemy, such as an angry dragon hunting ground-locked PCs, you are likely to lose some people, but I have seen parties avoid TPK by scattering, hiding, using a variety of techniques. Especially if you have some (tasty, tasty) NPCs or even just mounts along, PC fatalities can often be minimised.

My son sometimes gets called cowardly how he plays his PCs, because he's good at quickly recognising a losing fight and bugging out, as when his flying dragonborn bbn-19 fled the 3 fire giants within 1 round yesterday. It meant he still had enough resources he could suck up the damage from their final attacks as he fled.

Yeah, I was always more of a 'play it smart' type as well, and thus in all pre-4e editions pretty much liked playing casters (though the challenge of playing an AD&D rogue or warrior can be interesting, for a while). Anyway, my experience with 3.x seems to differ from yours somewhat. I found that there were a lot of expectations about the tools PCs would have, plus general progression of difficulty in the 'math areas' which makes it HARD to mismatch by levels much. Again, 3e shares with classic D&D the trait that casters can 'nova' quite a bit, so that can help, but its still pretty tight.

I think we may have different definitions of 'works' when it comes to 4e. First I think you're applying a double standard. In AD&D if the monsters are hopelessly outclassed, that's FINE, but you expect 4e encounters to be finely balanced. So I would say that 4e handles weaker monsters vs party as well as any edition, the monsters just get curb stomped in all of them... OTOH 4e handles "party is outclassed" BETTER IMHO. There's a good solid system for how the PCs get out of dodge! (yes AD&D has a pursuit and evasion system, but its a pretty tough row to hoe when the monsters are a few levels higher than you, and it is a pretty clunky system in practice). I mean, you could claim that the optimum spread of levels is less in 4e, but it is actually more forgiving than you may be crediting, and at least the encounter budget system will help you.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It has worked fine for me in several editions, and I was running a 'pure sandbox' 5e game 2 days ago that worked fine - a cross-Wilderlands trek involving keyed encounters from the 3e Wilderlands map/box, plus the Xanathar's random encounter tables. So my mileage certainly varies.

But what happens when the dice generate bad bad news for the PCs? Or they take a left turn into the "high level area" before they're ready? This is the issue with sandboxes, there's a lot more ways for the party to hose itself or get unlucky than not. Things end being either highly contrived or 'edited' to deal with that. Is it really a sandbox at that point? I really am not any kind of expert on 5e's tools for sandbox play, but the closest I can imagine to a system without these problems is one that basically doesn't level scale and where encounter design systems assure SOME way forward (granted the players may still mess up). Now, 5e does level scale a bit less steeply than previous editions, so there is that, but it isn't like it doesn't scale at all! Nor does that account for numbers or scenarios like the flying dragon vs non-flying PCs. You can, again, always avoid those situations ever coming up, but then how much of a sandbox is it?

I think, TBH, the issues with sandboxes aren't founded in rules, they are founded in the very nature of sandboxes.

 

[S'mon]

But what happens when the dice generate bad bad news for the PCs? Or they take a left turn into the "high level area" before they're ready?

PCs run away, negotiate, come up with creative solutions, or die. This is not a problem - this is a big part of the fun of sandboxing.

As for system comparison - 3e works fine with weak encounters. Too-hard 3e encounters at higher level tend to kill a lot of melee Fighters, so min-maxers gravitate to casters or ranged attackers.

The issues with 4e are not around lethality at all. All 4e encounters take a long time; 5 too-weak standard monsters still take a long time to grind through while offering no threat. Too-strong monsters still likely will not kill the PCs quickly and the PCs will spend ages trying to grind them down.

Anyway I'm speaking from personal experience of having run sandbox campaigns in all three editions 3e 4e 5e, plus a lot of pre-3e and OSR, and had these experiences. If you have done the same and found differently that's fine. If you have not run sandbox campaigns in these editions then it's just white-rooming.