The Gaming Den

I've seen this term bandied about quite a bit with regard to 4e, and I don't really know what it means. I would guess that it means that there are rules and that certain aspects of the game are based upon "breaking" those rules. I would also guess that I'm wrong, as "exception-based design" seems to be a buzzword, and buzzwords are confusing.

So, my questions are as follows:

1. What exactly is EBD?
2. What is the opposite of EBD?
3. What are the positive and negative aspects of EBD?

Exception based design is when the rules of the game aren't particularly linked to any core mechanics, and thus, every ability is unique. Basically EBD games have very light core mechanics and everything else is individualized. Magic the gathering is a great example of an Exception based game.

If you want to see the opposite of Exception based design, check out GURPS. Every monster, every character, has its abilities chosen from the core rules master list of advantages and disadvantages.

The positives of EBD is that you don't have to look much up, because it's usually right in front of you. The bad thing about EBD (for an RPG anyway) is that you don't get as much customization rules. Basically EBD when it boils down to it is about just making shit up. Now, this actually makes it much faster to create monsters and such since you're going more by general guidelines and balance to other abilities than some master formula, but it really leaves something to be desired sometimes.

For instance, there's realyl no way in 4E to do Two weapon fighting without ranger powers. This is because there are no core mechanics for TWF. Everything TWF related comes from exception based powers.

Really though when it's all said and done, I'm a fan of EBD, simpyl because it amkes things easier and I'm not convinced that a centralized system is anymore balanced. A centralized system does require way too much ability look up. I remember some of the times I tried to figure out what a GURPS monster could do... man it was crazy, since you've got to look up each and every individual ability.

Now when you master such a system, it's great, but it's incredibly difficult to learn beacuse you have to constantly crossreference everything.

RC wrote:For instance, there's realyl no way in 4E to do Two weapon fighting with ranger powers.

I assume you mean "without ranger powers."

And there's another thing that's either good or bad about EBD, depending on your perspective. If you like the idea of pigeonholing classes, it's easier to do with EBD than with the opposite approach.

One drawback of EBD for RPGs that RC didn't mention: it either makes the book longer or limits what you can put into the book. One reason there are only eight classes in the 4e PHB is that they didn't have room for a complete power listing for more classes.

Absentminded_Wizard wrote: I assume you mean "without ranger powers."

Yeah, I did. I fixed it.

One drawback of EBD for RPGs that RC didn't mention: it either makes the book longer or limits what you can put into the book. One reason there are only eight classes in the 4e PHB is that they didn't have room for a complete power listing for more classes.

Yeah, EBD is definitely much more wordy, given that you're often times going to be writing the same ability twice, especialyl for monsters. So instead of just defining "Petrifying gaze" somewhere, you have to describe what it does for each and every monster. Which is great for people learning the game, but still cuts down on overall content.

I'm not terribly convinced it makes things easier. I'd much rather learn what 'paralyzing gaze' does, not what paralyzing gaze, greater paralyzing gaze, paralyzing stare, and the 5 other minor variations of turning someone to stone with a gaze effect. (In fact, I'd rather just see paralyze, and the delivery shouldn't matter).

Looking up an ability on a master list isn't anymore difficult than looking it up in the class/creature/item entry. In fact, I find it easier because I can remember where the master list is, and not have to remember where each individual entry is.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Absentminded_Wizard wrote: I assume you mean "without ranger powers."

Yeah, I did. I fixed it.

One drawback of EBD for RPGs that RC didn't mention: it either makes the book longer or limits what you can put into the book. One reason there are only eight classes in the 4e PHB is that they didn't have room for a complete power listing for more classes.

Yeah, EBD is definitely much more wordy, given that you're often times going to be writing the same ability twice, especialyl for monsters. So instead of just defining "Petrifying gaze" somewhere, you have to describe what it does for each and every monster. Which is great for people learning the game, but still cuts down on overall content.

I've found that teaching someone a new card game is really hard since they keep reading their cards when they should be making their move.

Double Post

Voss wrote:I'm not terribly convinced it makes things easier. I'd much rather learn what 'paralyzing gaze' does, not what paralyzing gaze, greater paralyzing gaze, paralyzing stare, and the 5 other minor variations of turning someone to stone with a gaze effect. (In fact, I'd rather just see paralyze, and the delivery shouldn't matter).

Looking up an ability on a master list isn't anymore difficult than looking it up in the class/creature/item entry. In fact, I find it easier because I can remember where the master list is, and not have to remember where each individual entry is.

Actually yeah it is. It's kind of nice to have all the monster info right in front of you when your'e running the monster. Since everything is on the same page in the monster entry.

Where as if a monster has :Paralyzing gaze (6) , frightful presence (10, radius), Sunlight vulnerability, and Dependency (mana, minor). You've got to turn to 4 different pages to find all those abilities and learn what they do. It makes a lot more sense to me to put the rules you need on the page with the other numbers you need (like monster AC), rather than to scatter them across several pages.

I mean, I've looked through GURPS creatures and characters, and if you don't have a lot of those core abilities memorized, you're going to be looking up stuff for awhile. Inheritance can save lots of time and space, especially in a complex rule system, but for someone unfamiliar with the system, it's a huge slow down.

I mean, pretty much inexperienced players are going to want to reference the rules quite a bit. That's going to go a lot faster if the relevant rules are in the same place, instead of scattered across the book.

RC wrote:I mean, pretty much inexperienced players are going to want to reference the rules quite a bit. That's going to go a lot faster if the relevant rules are in the same place, instead of scattered across the book.

That's exactly what a character sheet is for.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Yeah, EBD is definitely much more wordy, given that you're often times going to be writing the same ability twice, especialyl for monsters. So instead of just defining "Petrifying gaze" somewhere, you have to describe what it does for each and every monster. Which is great for people learning the game, but still cuts down on overall content.

Of course, it's worth noting that in the 4e MM, the Petrifying Gaze of a Basilisk is different from the Petrifying Gaze of a Medusa. Quite apart from having different save modifiers and areas of effect, being blind makes you immune to one of them and not the other.

That's the big problem with EBD; things that should work the same may or may not actually work the same. Having fought a creature with a petrifying gaze that you could close your eyes to avoid, it's not unreasonable to expect that closing your eyes would work against another creature with a mostly-similar power.

Of course, both powers have the Gaze type, which you have to look up anyway, so what was even the point?

Individual monster entries can have reminder text just like individual MTG cards do.

Not really, at least in 3E.

Here's a partial list of things a first level character might think about doing:

Using Stealth;
Tumbling:
Flanking;
Using a bow weapon;
Using a thrown weapon;
Using two weapons;
Using one weapon two handed;
Climbing a wall;
Jumping on a table;
Grappling;
Use magic device;
Mounted Combat;
Swimming;
Disabling a device;

Most character sheets have (barely) enough room to give the complete rules for the basic uses of weapons, and a quick summary of one or two basic combat feats. Any of those skills? You'll have the adjusted modifier, and that's it. I've seen character sheets that try to give more information, but frankly they're little better than simply hunting through the books.

With exception-based rules, you have basic things you can do, and then your exceptions. The basic rules can be as complex as you want. In 4E, they're moderately complex, but they can be summarized pretty well on two pages.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Of course, it's worth noting that in the 4e MM, the Petrifying Gaze of a Basilisk is different from the Petrifying Gaze of a Medusa. Quite apart from having different save modifiers and areas of effect, being blind makes you immune to one of them and not the other.

That's just silly. Whatever gain 4E gets from uniqueness is overshadowed by complexity.

RC- nothing stops you from putting the numbers all on same page as well. Or just copying the master list and having it available.

It also isn't even relevant for new players, since they aren't going to be looking up the monsters. They're going to be looking up their character's abilities, which, going by the 4e design (for example) aren't in the same place. They're going to have to flip through the book to find racial abilities, magic item abilities and class abilities (and later paragon path abilities and destiny abilities), plus feats and skills. Not to mention the actual rules, which are complete separate from the piles of abilities they get. Thats not a good way to learn.

If you want convenience for new players, the system you're advocating utterly fails.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Yeah, EBD is definitely much more wordy, given that you're often times going to be writing the same ability twice, especialyl for monsters. So instead of just defining "Petrifying gaze" somewhere, you have to describe what it does for each and every monster. Which is great for people learning the game, but still cuts down on overall content.

Of course, it's worth noting that in the 4e MM, the Petrifying Gaze of a Basilisk is different from the Petrifying Gaze of a Medusa. Quite apart from having different save modifiers and areas of effect, being blind makes you immune to one of them and not the other.

That's the big problem with EBD; things that should work the same may or may not actually work the same. Having fought a creature with a petrifying gaze that you could close your eyes to avoid, it's not unreasonable to expect that closing your eyes would work against another creature with a mostly-similar power.

Of course, both powers have the Gaze type, which you have to look up anyway, so what was even the point?

Individual monster entries can have reminder text just like individual MTG cards do.

My theory is that they moved to EBD in 4e specifically so they could do these kinds of things. Things like the Persistent Spell fiasco in 3e demonstrate that WotC designers and developers are really bad at cross-referencing. Given that, it's no surprise that they would find it easier to write slightly different versions of paralyzing gaze for every monster that has it. That way, the designer can balance each individual ability against everything else the monster has, and the developer can just edit the power under the monster entry rather than looking up the base definition and struggling with whether the basic ability is appropriate for the monster.

EDIT: And the ranger thing is even worse than RC said. Not only can you not TWF well if you're not a ranger; you can't even TWF if you're not a ranger, barring cross-training.

EDIT 2: Re-reading RC's post, he might have been saying that very thing. Just to clarify, by 4e RAW, you can hold two weapons at once, but you can't attack with both of them at once unless you have a class power that allows it. Presumably, all such powers are ranger powers.

Tydanosaurus wrote:Most character sheets have (barely) enough room to give the complete rules for the basic uses of weapons, and a quick summary of one or two basic combat feats. Any of those skills? You'll have the adjusted modifier, and that's it. I've seen character sheets that try to give more information, but frankly they're little better than simply hunting through the books.

Sorry... I used to hate looking stuff up for my characters, so I always had a character sheet ready with stuff like feat descriptions and spell information. I never occured to me that someone would actually play the game without their character information in front of them.

Absentminded_Wizard wrote:Things like the Persistent Spell fiasco in 3e demonstrate that WotC designers and developers are really bad at cross-referencing. Given that, it's no surprise that they would find it easier to write slightly different versions of paralyzing gaze for every monster that has it.

In other words, the game designers don't know what they are doing, so they decided to take the lazy game design choice. This also prevents system mastery.

Most problematic of all are the ways slightly different rules can interact with one another. Marking is a good example. Recently it was pointed out that the Paladin can use his mark to clear off marks from party members. Not all marks allow this. But because the rules are not unified, they are all slightly different, and can combine to create rules problems. In other words, there are more points of failure. A fundamental principle of engineering is that if something is more complicated (more points of failure) than it needs to be, it is a bad design.

Given that this is a fact in 4e, it seems likely to be even more of a rules nightmare than 3.x ever was. Imagine dozens of expansion books, all with exception based rules, slightly different from each other, yet covering the same topic. Now imagine all those rules interacting with each other.

I wonder how difficult it will be to have mastery over 4e in 3-8 years time. How many times will you have to look up a rule, just to double-check that it isn't slightly different from a similar rule you are familiar with?

Pretty much. It looks like the one thing they set out to do and succeeded at was, in fact, lazy game design.

Both rules mastery and initial understanding seem to be really difficult, because there isn't any consistency or connection.

I have a headache just imagining lightning bolt next to various powers of lightning based monsters vs. primal spellcasters' and elemental spellcasters' lightning spells. There isn't much of a reason for a wide divergence in those abilities, but because they *have* to be EBD, there will be.

I don't think you'll have to wait 3-8 years, however. By this time next year, you'll have PH II, FRCS, Martial Power and probably 6-7 more articles like the 'illusions for wizards' thing that is already up. Just a fuck-ton of random material thats loosely connected and all over the place.

I guess EBD doesn't bother me that much, because all I can imagine as the counter to EBD is doing things GURPS style, and that just makes me shudder.

While I agree that by efficiency standpoints and even maybe game balance standpoints, centralized design is better, human beings just aren't databases and keep track of huge amounts of mechanics, nor do we really want to always be looking them up. To get a centralized system that's actually robust, you need to have a huge amount of options like GURPS, but that also means that to describe any given creature you're got descriptors pointing you to about 10 different abilities (if you're lucky).

Now what's nice about centralized design is that if you do it intelligently, you can always rebalance things by changing around the core, and your supplements can actually stay relatively similar. So for instance, if someone finds out polymorph is broken, you can write a new polymorph and then all the creatures that referenced polymorph are now fixed. That's the advantage of centralized design.

In practice though, centralized design usually ends up either being too cumbersome (like GURPS), or too cookie cutter (like 3.5).

I think you're confusing some concepts. A 'centralized' system doesn't require a huge amount of mechanics. That would be cumbersome. It just requires that all paralysis effects, for example, work the same way.

It doesn't produce cookie-cutter effects either. In 3.5, that largely comes from poorly balanced abilities, not a consistent definition of effects. You don't lose options or anything because shaken is always 'a -2 penalty on attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks'. You do lose something when every ability thats sort of like shaken inflicts a slightly different penalty to slightly different things.

4e is already straining a bit under EBD in some area. Take push effects. There are already several dozen abilities that push the target in some way (and why they bother to make a distinction between push, pull and slide is another question). But in some cases its a set (but different) number, in some cases it depends on a stat, and in some cases its combined with another effect altogether. This is clumsy, and none of it helps you learn anything about the game- just that singular ability. It doesn't save any space and it doesn't add anything to the game either (because push effects that don't move the target more than their speed barely mean anything at all, because they're back in your face on their turn anyway).

I'm also not sure that the complexity of GURPS necessarily says anything about centralized design. GURPS has an unusual number of features to define for two reasons:

1. It seems like just about everything is handled as an advantage or disadvantage, rather than through regular, scaling systems like attributes and skills.

2. GURPS tries to cover all possible settings with one set of rules.

The second is particularly important when you talk about system mastery. It would be a real pain in the butt to try to retain all the information about a system like GURPS at once, but you usually don't have to. You only have to master the material relevant to your current campaign at any one time. And unless you're in some kind of dimensional portal campaign where the PCs visit worlds with all kinds of different mana and tech levels, what you have to master is only going to be a small subset of the actual features.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Now what's nice about centralized design is that if you do it intelligently, you can always rebalance things by changing around the core, and your supplements can actually stay relatively similar. So for instance, if someone finds out polymorph is broken, you can write a new polymorph and then all the creatures that referenced polymorph are now fixed. That's the advantage of centralized design.

Actually this is the weakness of central design. Changing the centre changes lots of things. If polymorph was balanced for monster X but not for Y changing it is likely to make X unbalanced and may or may not balance Y.

Now what you're complaining about is stupid. In a central system its entirely possible to repeat the relevant central rules every time they are referenced, rather than referencing them. Having only references is not a requirement of centralised design.

Draco_Argentum wrote: Now what you're complaining about is stupid. In a central system its entirely possible to repeat the relevant central rules every time they are referenced, rather than referencing them. Having only references is not a requirement of centralised design.

Well generally it's not possible to copy all the rules (at least not wtihout making monster stat blocks enormous), because centralized design systems are complicated. When you write fro instance, a gaze attack, you're writing a mechanic that can be used for many types of gaze attacks. So there's going to be a lot in there.

I mean if you copied the rulees for every GURPS list of disadvantages, advantages and skills for one monster, the character sheet would be pages and pages. in fact, you'd probably only be able to fit like 30 such monsters in a single book.

The nice thing about centralized design is that it can be more complex and inclusive. So you can have specific counterspelling for certain effects, and various other effect interaction. The downside is also that it's more complex.

OK, it seriously sounds like you are now arguing that a disadvantage of centralized systems is that they have the option of being complicated.

Sure, I can see how writing general rules that work for all gaze attacks may be more complicated than writing a specialized rule that's only robust enough to handle one. But to whatever extent that's true, you can copy into a specific monster's description only the parts of the general gaze rule that are actually necessary for its particular attack.

Generalized rules may have a tendency to be outright more complicated, but that's only because they are actually more robust than the EBD rules. They don't have to be. Yes, they usually will be, because it's a good idea, but that's not a weakness.

EBD rules just end up simpler because you never bother to define how abilities X and Y interact, and you don't notice that omission on a casual reading. Centralized design can choose to ignore those sorts of interactions and be just as simple, it's just that the flaw is now easier to discover.

I think there are cases in which it makes a sense to have a bunch of exception-based abilities written on little cards, but even when you're using that sort of system, I think there should be a common core library of technical descriptors with well-defined meanings that are reused in lots of cards, because (1) it makes the individual cards' text shorter and more precise; (2) it facilitates interesting interactions between cards without them referencing each other specifically; (3) it encourages consistency that makes the game easier to master and balance, and reduces the odds of a catastrophic blunder on any particular card.

EBD is sort of ok right up to the moment where you want to change something. Then you have to go and change everything vaguely related and quite often it is not particularly obvious what that actually is. On the other hand when you just reference more basic rules you can just change that basic rule and be fine.

It also makes meta-abilities (abilities that change or create other abilities) much much easier. Say you want to hand out an ability that stops shapechanging in 50 feet around the character. Now, what is shapechanging? You have to hand out a list of what constitutes shapechanging that is almost certain to be incomplete and that is also almost certain to be different from other lists that are supposed to list methods of shapechanging.

Just imagine trying to design an ability like Close-Quarters-Fighting without being able to reference the AoO rules.

Manxome wrote:
EBD rules just end up simpler because you never bother to define how abilities X and Y interact, and you don't notice that omission on a casual reading. Centralized design can choose to ignore those sorts of interactions and be just as simple, it's just that the flaw is now easier to discover.

EBD interaction is done through tags, like M:tG works. And it still allows interaction, so long as your tagging system is good enough.

You can have stuff like "an attack with the weapon keyword automatically misses"

The 4E tags are pretty bad though, given that there's not even a tag on monsters to differentiate a spell from a racial ability. so you can have something like "Fire COunter" which blocks fireballs and dragonbreath, but you can't actually have a true counterspell to block magic.