D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base

[Neonchameleon]

So, I am sure there are countless examples of areas in 4E that were likely fluff first due to D&D legacy (fireball is a fire spell). But the unified leveling schema of AEDU presented in 4E is clearly a mechanics-first consideration. What fluff is there to unify the same AEDU gains for all classes? What fluff was there that lead to the development of AEDU? Its pure mechanics.

So is the idea of levelling up at all. Congratulations. You've just proved that every single class and level based game has a mechanical structure. Which is necessary.

On the other hand AEDU isn't something that directly affects the world. It indirectly affects it, sure. But directly?

Give me some examples where the rubber meets the road please. Not "Levelling up gives you abilities and save bonusses".

Take a moment and ask yourself what is each of those in terms of pure fluff? Then ask does the mechanics presented in the playtest support that? I don't care how good the mechanics are, if they don't allow you to play the fluff you envision, the mechanics will appear flawed.

I emphatically and assuredly do not think of a wizard as someone who can cast spells at a rate that would make Gandalf turn green with envy - but forgets them every time he casts them. I can get most wizard concepts I have out of the 4e wizard - but the Gygaxo-Vancian recharge method and spell selection method just swamps everything. In classic D&D I need to play a Gygaxo-Vancian wizard whether I want to or not - whereas because the structure is shared in 4e it doesn't cripple my character selection. It's unobtrusive for the character because everyone has the same way of recharging - whereas Magic Recharges Daily even with sorcerors involved has a massive impact on how characters behave and perversely can't be changed as easily as moving the extended rest period.

 

[Balesir]

I've rambled, but this is all I mean. Fluff comes first, and mechanics are created to express that fluff in the game. You can create mechaincs first, then try and find a narrative that explains them. But looking at the boundry conditions (all or nothing), starting with fluff then designing mechanics (I want a fantasy game with x,y,z elements, let me make mechanics to express x,y,z) makes a hell of a lot more sense than (I have mechanics x,y,z...what sort of game does this give me? Can I make it work for a fantasy?)

I understand, I think, what you mean, but I'm going to make one major point of disagreement.

The place to start has to be with the game. What I mean by that is you need to answer, in a clear and detailed way, the question "What are the players supposed to be doing?"

This so often gets ignored or assumed, but increasingly it seems to me to be absolutely central and vital to get clearly delineated and understood.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Here would be my "rulings" on such cases.
1.) The ooze isn't knocked prone, the penalty is negated. Sorry, hope that wasn't an encounter power; next time don't trip to knock an amorphous blob prone.
2.) Steam-heat is heat. I'd rule Fire resistance works.
3.) I'd say that CaGI fails. The gnolls (assuming they're not stupid, I don't know the average gnoll Int off the cuff) have a superior tactical position and the halfling is at horrendous disadvantage. The power isn't wasted, but the halfling hurls threats and insults, the gnolls respond with some arrows that miss, and the halfling reconsiders his tactics.

"But Remy!" I hear the crowd shout out, "That's not fair to arbitrarily decide a power doesn't work! You're robbing the player of his ability to affect the fiction, making his choice of power, sub-optimal, yadda yadda"

Here's my RBDM response: So what?

That isn't a RBDM. That's just a Viking Hat DM who is saying "My way or the high way." A RBDM is one who will say "Yesssssssss".

And I don't care if the blob is amorphous. You can certainly push it around so it needs to reorient wheich part of itself is moving forward.

Fireball's don't work underwater. Neither do slings.

Slings don't. I don't know what a fireball is going to do underwater - as far as I'm aware they don't need oxygen to work. So I'll let them work underwater - with consequences.

You can't burn a fire-elemental.

And you can't punch a flesh elemental or hit an iron elemental with a sword. Right. Me, I prefer the genuine RBDM approach. You hit a fire elemental with fire and it's going to hurt it - by making it hotter. Which gets through its fuel faster so does do it damage - but that has side effects the PCs might not want.

You can't convince the paladin-lord you're his bastard love-child.

Not even with Modify Memory spells? You certainly need to convince the paladin that his memory has been tampered with to do this.

And I don't care if you have skill focus in Athletics, you're not convincing the king to give you a boat during the skill challenge by doing an absurd number of push-ups!

This one we can agree on.

An Ability like CaGI takes the DM's right to play monster's intelligently away from him and reduces them from rationale beings in the world to pawn on the chessboard.

Find me a second ability in 4e like CaGI that isn't called Warrior's Urging.

 

[Remathilis]

With CaGI it's the same thing. All these theoretical "corner cases" with the wizard and the archers, and the halfling with a toothpick are simply that "corner cases" that I'm coming up with in my mind. I think gnoll archers would be highly susceptible to CaGI from a halfling with a toothpick. They are cruel pack animal creatures. They see weakness and they pounce. But that's just me.

That's actually the point. Perhaps the gnolls, chaotic and evil, pounce on the halfling looking for hobbitburgers. But perhaps they're guarding something. Perhaps they enjoy they're position of cover, or perhaps they're waiting for some other prey to come buy. That is for me, the DM, to decide. I might rule the gnolls are hungry and it might work automatically, or that it could be done with a bluff check, or that the gnolls simply won't be fooled again' and it fails. A power like CaGI ruins that narrative for me. It takes that choice out of my hand and plops it into the player, who is always going to give his PC the advantage in this case.

If playing in a world where the dictator GM decides everything, down to whether or not each character can breathe yet, is something you enjoy, you're welcome to it. Just don't bring it near me, thank you.

Um, yeah. The DM has three jobs: Referee (rules-adjuster), Narrator (scene setter), and Loyal Opposition (monster runner). His job is to make sure all three of these things are in balance. He has the right to smack down those who use one area to break down another. If using the rules breaks either the setting of world (verisimilitude, if you will) or his ability to run encounters in a reasonable, challenging way, the DM has imperative to put on his referee hat and smack that rule down.

And I don't care if the blob is amorphous. You can certainly push it around so it needs to reorient wheich part of itself is moving forward.

Which defeats the purpose of calling it "prone". If the description and even the name "prone" has no meaning, why call it that?

Slings don't. I don't know what a fireball is going to do underwater - as far as I'm aware they don't need oxygen to work. So I'll let them work underwater - with consequences.

Grenades don't light underwater. Yeah, I know, magic. I might allow a bonus to saves, (I already said fire resistance should hold out against steam) and defintely nothing is catching on fire.

And you can't punch a flesh elemental or hit an iron elemental with a sword. Right. Me, I prefer the genuine RBDM approach. You hit a fire elemental with fire and it's going to hurt it - by making it hotter. Which gets through its fuel faster so does do it damage - but that has side effects the PCs might not want.

Without debating the idea of a being of living energy and its physics, you can't "burn" heat. If anything, making it hotter is going to make it stronger. Despite the adage, you can't "fight fire with fire" except by consuming its fuel (as is done with forest fires), and if a fire elemental has no "fuel" it needs to live, burning it hotter shouldn't do anything to it.

Not even with Modify Memory spells? You certainly need to convince the paladin that his memory has been tampered with to do this.

Magic breaks the rules. Its why its magic. Try doing it WITHOUT magic spells or items.

This one we can agree on.

Good. The idea that PCs can try ANY skill in a skill challenge and assume it has even the slightest chance of working is silly. There is easy, medium and hard, and there is flat out no.

Find me a second ability in 4e like CaGI that isn't called Warrior's Urging.

I don't know 4e well enough to cite chapter and verse additional powers, but the fact you just mentioned a second (which is apparently out of bounds) makes me feel there was some belief in this system. Its like saying; "Bob is a great guy, if you forget the two people he murdered."

 

[D'karr]

That's actually the point. Perhaps the gnolls, chaotic and evil, pounce on the halfling looking for hobbitburgers. But perhaps they're guarding something. Perhaps they enjoy they're position of cover, or perhaps they're waiting for some other prey to come buy. That is for me, the DM, to decide. I might rule the gnolls are hungry and it might work automatically, or that it could be done with a bluff check, or that the gnolls simply won't be fooled again' and it fails. A power like CaGI ruins that narrative for me. It takes that choice out of my hand and plops it into the player, who is always going to give his PC the advantage in this case.

Since I never had a problem with this I'll just agree to disagree with you. I can rule it both ways, but I have no problem with the gnolls disregarding their orders to "guard" something when they see the tasty morsel.

Which defeats the purpose of calling it "prone". If the description and even the name "prone" has no meaning, why call it that?

So it's a matter of terminology? Call it off-balance and get on with it, not even a need to change the base mechanics. Taking "rules" terminology and assigning it the same weight/definition as "language" terminology might not be the best way to read the "jargon", which the rules clearly are.

Grenades don't light underwater.

Because their fuses are not waterproofed/sealed and the chemical reaction still requires "air". Depth charges on the other hand do "light" underwater.

Good. The idea that PCs can try ANY skill in a skill challenge and assume it has even the slightest chance of working is silly. There is easy, medium and hard, and there is flat out no.

Which the rules specifically call out. When the players are describing their action the DM can easily tell them that what they are doing is not going to work. There was great furor around here when people read that attempting an intimidate check on the sample "Duke Negotiation" skill challenge would be an auto-fail. Nerdrage is such a wonderfully entertaining phenomenon.

IMO, applying rules to the ridiculous extreme, specially in an RPG, is not a way to gauge the validity of a rules element. YMMV.

 

[jrowland]

I understand, I think, what you mean, but I'm going to make one major point of disagreement.

The place to start has to be with the game. What I mean by that is you need to answer, in a clear and detailed way, the question "What are the players supposed to be doing?"

This so often gets ignored or assumed, but increasingly it seems to me to be absolutely central and vital to get clearly delineated and understood.

What the characters are doing (climbing a wall, swinging a sword) is FLUFF...HOW you determine what they do is mechanics, and mechanics is what the players are doing (rolling dice, adding numbers, etc). (I think you meant characters not players, if so, we agree, if you truly mean players, then we do not)

We don't say "roll a d20 and add 5 to the number" and based on that result (say a 15) say "aha! you are climbing a wall!". We say "you are climbing a wall" then we "roll a d20 and add 5 to the number". The fluff comes first. The narrative comes first.

This is a roleplaying game. Players are assuming a role, a persona, and the dice (mechanics) are there to help determine what the persona can do,succeed or fail at, etc. in ways the player cannot. I cannot swing a sword effectively. But my persona can. Next, here are the mechanics that describe that fiction.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Um, yeah. The DM has three jobs: Referee (rules-adjuster), Narrator (scene setter), and Loyal Opposition (monster runner). His job is to make sure all three of these things are in balance. He has the right to smack down those who use one area to break down another. If using the rules breaks either the setting of world (verisimilitude, if you will) or his ability to run encounters in a reasonable, challenging way, the DM has imperative to put on his referee hat and smack that rule down.

Honestly, I find 4e one of the easiest games to balance those things in.

Which defeats the purpose of calling it "prone". If the description and even the name "prone" has no meaning, why call it that?

When someone is tripped they don't spend six seconds face down. At least not if they don't want to die. A second at most. It's called prone because that's an evocative term that covers a lot of what happens (trips for one thing can knock people onto their back as well as their front). 'Sprawling' might be a more accurate term - but prone covers most of it and does the job pretty well.

Every single successful trip knocks someone face down? Tell me another one.

Grenades don't light underwater. Yeah, I know, magic. I might allow a bonus to saves, (I already said fire resistance should hold out against steam) and defintely nothing is catching on fire.

Definitely nothing about catching on fire. But as for lighting. And? The fireball should be self-igniting. The major issue is expansion and displacement. Oh, and the fireball counting hitting the water as hitting something and exploding prematurely.

Without debating the idea of a being of living energy and its physics, you can't "burn" heat. If anything, making it hotter is going to make it stronger. Despite the adage, you can't "fight fire with fire" except by consuming its fuel (as is done with forest fires), and if a fire elemental has no "fuel" it needs to live, burning it hotter shouldn't do anything to it.

This all depends on the metaphysics of fire elementals. To me a fireball that damages a fire elemental but makes it run hotter is much cooler than one where nothing at all happens.

Magic breaks the rules. Its why its magic. Try doing it WITHOUT magic spells or items.

Dead easy. You convince him someone else has used magic on him. Works well when combined with Gaslighting.

Good. The idea that PCs can try ANY skill in a skill challenge and assume it has even the slightest chance of working is silly. There is easy, medium and hard, and there is flat out no.

And if you look at any example skill challenge in 4e there is a list of allowed skills. This is not an issue.

I don't know 4e well enough to cite chapter and verse additional powers, but the fact you just mentioned a second (which is apparently out of bounds) makes me feel there was some belief in this system. Its like saying; "Bob is a great guy, if you forget the two people he murdered."

Warrior's Urging is a level 23 Encounter Power that can accurately be described as Improved Come And Get It - it is exactly like CAGI other than being one square wider in effect and doing [1W] more damage. And you pick up at level 23 - the level most people trade in their level 7 encounter power. So other than Come And Get It/Improved Come And Get It, name me a power.

I mentioned a second power that is modelled on and intended to be the upgraded version of the first. I can not think of a third such martial ability in the entire game.

 

[jrowland]

So is the idea of levelling up at all. Congratulations. You've just proved that every single class and level based game has a mechanical structure. Which is necessary.

On the other hand AEDU isn't something that directly affects the world. It indirectly affects it, sure. But directly?

Give me some examples where the rubber meets the road please. Not "Levelling up gives you abilities and save bonusses".

I think your missing the point of my post. Why do you level? Whats the point of leveling? Once you have that, why are there different leveling methods (AEDU in 4E vs each class has different rates in 1E, eg)? Is there a narrative difference? In 1E the narrative was wizardry was hard, difficult, and scholarly which took time and so you had a steeper curve versus say thievery. Was it fair? was it balanced? Was it a satisfying narrative? All arguable.

But whats the narrative in 4E for this AEDU levelling schema? Why are all classes under the same level schema? It was for balance reasons, pure and simple. Any narrative came after.

I emphatically and assuredly do not think of a wizard as someone who can cast spells at a rate that would make Gandalf turn green with envy - but forgets them every time he casts them. I can get most wizard concepts I have out of the 4e wizard - but the Gygaxo-Vancian recharge method and spell selection method just swamps everything. In classic D&D I need to play a Gygaxo-Vancian wizard whether I want to or not - whereas because the structure is shared in 4e it doesn't cripple my character selection. It's unobtrusive for the character because everyone has the same way of recharging - whereas Magic Recharges Daily even with sorcerors involved has a massive impact on how characters behave and perversely can't be changed as easily as moving the extended rest period.

So you proved my point. The mechanics of vancian or spontaneous casting don't fit the fluff (your concept of a wizard). The AEDU wizard does fit the fluff (your concept of a wizard). So (bear with me here), if you didn't have a concept at all (I know, hard to do) for a wizard, would AEDU mechanics jump out at you and say WIZARD? If you had no concept of fantasy, or of wizards the phrase (2 at-will actions, 1 encounter action, and 1 daily action) means nothing. You might think about a game...they sound like game terms, but they don't inform you of the fluff (those are the spells a wizard can cast) of that game. With Vancian casting its clear fluff came first (Jack Vance's novels) and what we have is Gygax's clunky attempt to model that with AD&D mechanics. It may be bad mechanics, it may not even fit the fluff well (if you read Jack vance's novels, you'll know what I mean), but the fluff certainly influenced that mechanical expression.

 

[Balesir]

Um, yeah. The DM has three jobs: Referee (rules-adjuster), Narrator (scene setter), and Loyal Opposition (monster runner). His job is to make sure all three of these things are in balance. He has the right to smack down those who use one area to break down another. If using the rules breaks either the setting of world (verisimilitude, if you will) or his ability to run encounters in a reasonable, challenging way, the DM has imperative to put on his referee hat and smack that rule down.

OK, well, of those three jobs, I simply disagree with the first in just about all instances of 'a roleplaying game'. The only thing any GM will achieve by unilaterally changing (or "adjusting") a rule is to break the game for the players who want any active role in the affair. The other two roles are fine - and there are other, lesser roles besides - but rather than do them by changing the rules to make them easy, I prefer to do them by (a) picking a decent rule set to start with and (b) knowing those rules and how they work.

What the characters are doing (climbing a wall, swinging a sword) is FLUFF...HOW you determine what they do is mechanics, and mechanics is what the players are doing (rolling dice, adding numbers, etc). (I think you meant characters not players, if so, we agree, if you truly mean players, then we do not)

We don't say "roll a d20 and add 5 to the number" and based on that result (say a 15) say "aha! you are climbing a wall!". We say "you are climbing a wall" then we "roll a d20 and add 5 to the number". The fluff comes first. The narrative comes first.

This is a roleplaying game. Players are assuming a role, a persona, and the dice (mechanics) are there to help determine what the persona can do,succeed or fail at, etc. in ways the player cannot. I cannot swing a sword effectively. But my persona can. Next, here are the mechanics that describe that fiction.

Ah, no - this isn't what I meant. I'll try to be clearer.

Yes, I do mean the players, not the characters; the characters don't actually 'do' anything, since they don't exist.

But I don't mean "what do they do" in the sense of rolling dice and so on; the 'activities' of "using the mechanics" and "engaging with the fiction" are just givens - they are the way that the players do what they do, not the essence of what they do.

By "what do the players do?" I mean what is their role in the overall activity; what decisions do they make that are theirs alone to make, and that comprise their contribution to the outcome. What bits of the whole, if you like, would make the whole outcome of "the roleplaying" impossible to achieve with the GM alone.

Some examples, for the purposes of illustration:

- The players are exploring the world that the GM has created through the medium of their character. Their goal is understanding and appreciation of the world that has been constructed.

- The players are trying to overcome the challenge set before them by the GM, be it a combat to win, a mystery to solve, an intrigue to navigate or a tower or tomb to rob.

- The players are the audience for the GM's epic tale, experiencing the tale through the medium of the experiences of the characters they have generated.

- The players are deciding on the theme and direction of the story in the game by means of defining their characters' "dramatic needs" and, in the role of their character, pursuing those needs.

- The players are selecting via in-character decisions their character's course through a matrix- or logic-diagram type situation created by the GM for them to (attempt to) navigate.

Many others are doubtless possible, and more than one may be mixed into any one game, but the ones desired will inform a great deal about the rules that would best be used. In a game where the players must overcome combat challenges as a core feature of "what the players do", for example, it is very desirable to have the combat abilities of the characters well balanced. In a game where the players are expected to explore specific aspects of an imaginary world without emphasis on overcoming challenges, not only is such balance far less necessary, but such features as character generation that results in characters related to the aspect of the world to be explored become important. Hence why, in Ars Magica, you don't generate characters that are serf peasants, or noble lords - you generate characters who are, or have dealings with, magi.

This is what I mean by "first you must consider what the players are intended to do". I mean, quite literally, what is occupying their thoughts as they play - what must they make decisions about that are entirely within their own purview (i.e. those where neither the GM nor the system tell them what decision to make)?

 

[Victim]

So you proved my point. The mechanics of vancian or spontaneous casting don't fit the fluff (your concept of a wizard). The AEDU wizard does fit the fluff (your concept of a wizard). So (bear with me here), if you didn't have a concept at all (I know, hard to do) for a wizard, would AEDU mechanics jump out at you and say WIZARD? If you had no concept of fantasy, or of wizards the phrase (2 at-will actions, 1 encounter action, and 1 daily action) means nothing. You might think about a game...they sound like game terms, but they don't inform you of the fluff (those are the spells a wizard can cast) of that game. With Vancian casting its clear fluff came first (Jack Vance's novels) and what we have is Gygax's clunky attempt to model that with AD&D mechanics. It may be bad mechanics, it may not even fit the fluff well (if you read Jack vance's novels, you'll know what I mean), but the fluff certainly influenced that mechanical expression.

Well yes. OTOH, there are numerous ways to map fluff to mechanical expression. The Dying Earth RPG has little to do with DnD. There's the traditional 1-3e Vancian magic system. A wizard packing 1-4 dailies in 4e maps pretty well with Turjan level wizards who prep at best a fistful of serious spells and then rely on other skills or magic items the rest of the time.