The Gaming Den

Dog Quixote wrote:"Hi, I'm Dog Quixote. I bark at Windmills"

dog quixote nominated for best new poster

Oh, so that's what IMO means. I've always wondered about that, but I've also been too lazy to check.

also I'm lolling at page 42 fallacy A CHART READING "JUST MAKE SHIT UP" IS TOTALLY A SOUND SET OF GAME MECHANICS GUYS NO REALLY

Just as playing under a good DM doesn't make a system good, playing under a bad DM doesn't make a system bad.

But having a rule that covers it does.

Where do the rules for 4e say "DMs let your players play improv theater before every attack". More importantly, where do the rules for 4e show it better than the rules for 3.5. (keep in mind 4e is the updated, newer version. If you show the two are equal, 4e fails by default of costing money)

Page 6 PHB2 .

That you don't understand why this is not so is an excellent illustration of why you mistakenly think 4E is somehow "more cinematic" than 3.5.

Its the difference between Lord of the Rings or some B grade Fantasy Flick on Sci Fi.

I don't know about other people, but the thing I liked about Lord of the Rings was the quality of the action scenes, it was about as good as Hollywood has ever gotten (Unfortunately, now that I think of it, isn't saying much.) They punched, kicked, elbowed, pommel bashed and other things as well as using their blades, keeping it exciting.

A B Grade Fantasy flick go around just clubbing the dudes with their swords, with the occasional knock off a ledge or boulder/tree being knocked onto the enemies being the only variance.

3.5 may not be as extreme as that, but on the scale of cinematic quality, 4e lies around Lord of the rings, 3.5 lies around Merlin's Apprentice.

guys if you have a power that says you kick the opponent's leg and he falls, that's you kicking his leg and he falls

if you have a power that says you trip your opponent, you trip him

can't you fucking see the difference here, one of these is BORING SHIT GROGNARD and one of them is CINEMATIC COMBAT COMPLETE WITH POMMEL BASHES

Except, of course, in 4e, the power can say you kick the opponent's leg and he falls...and it works, even if your opponent is a gelatinous cube, purple worm, or other creature with no legs.

Wrathzog wrote:

Doom wrote:Indeed, especially with a game that's basically dead. I mean, we may as well be arguing the finer points of wicked googlies in cricket.

What finer points? Wicked googlies are fucking op as hell and it's all people ever use. They should never have been brought into the game, destroying all need for tactics as people spam their one move.

Hardly.

They are only effective as a surprise weapon, but mastering them requires not using the more entire set of alternate tactics that fast bowling allows.

Doom wrote:Except, of course, in 4e, the power can say you kick the opponent's leg and he falls...and it works, even if your opponent is a gelatinous cube, purple worm, or other creature with no legs.

Yeah, 4E's game mechanics are almost completely divorced from the narrative. For some that's already enough to make it far less suitable for cinematic combat or even roleplay than other D&D editions.

hogarth wrote:

K wrote: That's not "a good improv rule." That's an "inflexible and boring improv rule."

Basically, that removes any good side to improving. Without flexibility and novelty, improv is just 100% substandard rules.

It's also completely abusable by players. "Oh noes, it's a wall of purple fire with skulls in the flames.... oh wait, this is 4e and I know exactly what it could do based on the improv rules and limited available effects."

Wait -- are you claiming that guidelines as to what is a good challenge for level N characters are a bad thing? 'Cause that's just stupid.

It works out like this:

Option 1: You are using the improv rules that say that characters of X level are always going to suffer from effects of Y size. This means that when players encounter new things, they automatically have a good idea of what they do and you've lost a huge chunk of storytelling ability. Players can game the system because they know the limitations of anything unfamiliar being modeled with the improv rules.

Option 2: You are not using the improv rules, but adding something outside of the scope of the rules and just making something up. This means that the improv rules in 4e are useless.

Option 3: You use a combo of the two other options, basically once again rendering your improv rules pointless. This time you feel better about it because it feels like you used the improv rules.


Those are your options. You either get to render everything the same or be forced to admit that the improv rules are just a lie you tell yourself to feel better about being shackled to a boring game system.

It's a natural function of seeking balance. The more balance you seek, the more things begin to look exactly the same because they get reduced to fewer and fewer core mechanics. 4e is a good demonstration of this fact because you could actually strip the descriptions off things and people would not be able to look at the mechanical effects and tell you which class does which thing because all differences have been rubbed off the various roles and they are stuck with the same mechanical bits.

K wrote: It works out like this:

Option 1: You are using the improv rules that say that characters of X level are always going to suffer from effects of Y size.

Do the rules actually say "always"? I agree, that would be a bit silly. Or do they actually say "Y is the benchmark, it might be higher or lower"? (I don't have the 4E DMG.)

It doesn't matter whether they say always. You still fall into one of those options.

fectin wrote:It doesn't matter whether they say always. You still fall into one of those options.

Are you saying that having even an inkling of what the game suggests is a reasonable amount of damage would ruin your storytelling ability? Are you a brain-damaged moron?

Having average benchmarks is a good thing, in the sense that it helps you "do the math" (people around here are always complaining that game designers don't "do the math").

Verbannon wrote:

Where do the rules for 4e say "DMs let your players play improv theater before every attack". More importantly, where do the rules for 4e show it better than the rules for 3.5. (keep in mind 4e is the updated, newer version. If you show the two are equal, 4e fails by default of costing money)

Page 6 PHB2 .

Are you hoping no one here owns PHB2, and so can't check you? My wife was into 4e a lot longer than I was, and she bought all the books.

Opening PHB2 to page 6 reveals the intro heading to the races chapter. It describes how there are more races than just in the PHB1 and then gives a paragraph summary of each of their new ones.

Krusk wrote:

Verbannon wrote:

Where do the rules for 4e say "DMs let your players play improv theater before every attack". More importantly, where do the rules for 4e show it better than the rules for 3.5. (keep in mind 4e is the updated, newer version. If you show the two are equal, 4e fails by default of costing money)

Page 6 PHB2 .

Are you hoping no one here owns PHB2, and so can't check you? My wife was into 4e a lot longer than I was, and she bought all the books.

Opening PHB2 to page 6 reveals the intro heading to the races chapter. It describes how there are more races than just in the PHB1 and then gives a paragraph summary of each of their new ones.

More likely he meant pg. 4 of the PHB 2:

One of the Dungeon Master’s jobs is to be a narrator— to describe what’s going on in the world of the game as you explore it along with your fellow adventurers. When your party enters a room, the DM tells you what it looks like and what’s in it. However, narration isn’t exclusively the DM’s job: You describe your own character’s actions, and even during an intense combat encounter, you have a chance to take part in telling the story of the game.

The flavor text included in every power description is a starting point you can use when narrating your part in the action. When your barbarian attacks, you can just say, “Krusk uses howling strike. I get a 24.” Or using the flavor text as a cue, you can say, “With a blood-freezing scream, I throw myself into the fray! Does a 24 hit?”

A power’s flavor text is only a starting point. You can modify that flavor however you like, as long as you don’t change the power’s game effects. Maybe you would rather think of the barbarian power macetail’s rage as channel- ing the World Serpent, a primal spirit that appears in some shaman powers. You might say, “The earth shakes beneath my feet as the World Serpent stirs, knocking my foe to the ground!”

Which does indeed look like improve theater for every attack.

Seriously, it took me less than 20 seconds to find it despite the wrong page # and I didn't have a clue it existed before his post.

Verbannon wrote:Let me show you the fallacy of your post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

You can't ever get a uniform step forward, just try to get a majority step forward.

And which ultimate ideal did I appeal to in my post? I think you're misunderstanding me, the fallacy in question, or both.

What I'm saying is 4e is hit and miss, just like 3.5 is, but because it cost a lot of money and a significant investment to make in the first place, and because the developers advertised it as such, it needs to be a uniform step forward to make that investment worthwhile, and it's not. Certainly the errata nonsense proves that even WotC recognized this, and are doing their best to bring it up to speed after the fact, but, like I said, the mechanical ideas that were novel or interesting don't mesh as well in play as would be needed to justify their implementation. You are going through and defending individual points of novel mechanics, but when you put it all together, their synergy is so poor as to make 4e gameplay every bit as tedious as 3.5 is monotonous, and that difference is simply not worth the investment put into making the edition, nor is it worth the investment on the part of players to purchase.

What you are describing in your good examples are simply good role-playing, and that is a DM/group problem more than a mechanical one. In fact, there is no mechanical underpinnings for descriptions, and though 4e gives you some flavor text with your power effect, that is not a mechanical improvement, but a fluff improvement. Which is an improvement, to be sure, but it's not really what the developers promised. The developers were writers first, game designers second, and this is really illustrative of that; the idea that more and/or better flavor text will make the game more worthwhile.

hogarth wrote:

fectin wrote:It doesn't matter whether they say always. You still fall into one of those options.

Are you saying that having even an inkling of what the game suggests is a reasonable amount of damage would ruin your storytelling ability? Are you a brain-damaged moron?

Having average benchmarks is a good thing, in the sense that it helps you "do the math" (people around here are always complaining that game designers don't "do the math").

Option 1:follow the guidelines.
Option 2:ignore the guidelines.
Option 3:somewhere between 1 and 2.

Please explain to this brain-damaged moron what other options there are.

fectin wrote:

hogarth wrote:

fectin wrote:It doesn't matter whether they say always. You still fall into one of those options.

Are you saying that having even an inkling of what the game suggests is a reasonable amount of damage would ruin your storytelling ability? Are you a brain-damaged moron?

Having average benchmarks is a good thing, in the sense that it helps you "do the math" (people around here are always complaining that game designers don't "do the math").

Option 1:follow the guidelines.
Option 2:ignore the guidelines.
Option 3:somewhere between 1 and 2.

Please explain to this brain-damaged moron what other options there are.

Who said anything about other options? I'm just skeptical that Option 1 is really "follow the guidelines slavishly" as K was stating. If Option 1 is really "follow the guidelines sometimes", then 1, 2 and 3 collapse into the same thing.

Does no one have the book that they can actually quote from?

The ability to describe your attack however you want is system agnostic, and I find it hard to believe anyone would seriously promote it as a benefit of a rules system.

We have always spiced up our attack descriptions. We always thought of it as combat-roleplaying.

Verbannon wrote:

And that whole "errata every single monster in Monster Manual 1" math formula thing.

Its not an errata, the people who say that are just fear mongering. its a simplification for essentials, all the original monsters are still valid and not obsolete.

So WOTC is fear mongering? Because I went to the errata web page, saw the July update (not this July, last July), and saw under the errata for the MM1 "A new system to calculate all the monster stats has been established. Here's the formula".

And for the cinematic shit... You still haven't proven that anything cinematic is rules-based. You dismiss a dictionary definition of "cinematic" for a film student definition of "cinematic". This doesn't prove you right, it makes you look like a douche.

From a rules-centric standpoint, "I hit and push 1 square" is no more cinematic than "I swing my longsword" or "spring attack, I move in, attack, move out". Anything more cinematic than that is you playing make-believe and adding fluff and flavor. Which is rules neutral and completely narrative.

And as was mentioned earlier, cinematic is not necessarily a *good* thing anyway.

Verbannon wrote:

You have said that 4e has better character development. You have not exlpained why...At least not to my satisfaction. If this is a matter of opinion, so be it. Otherwise, I would appreciate some extrapolation in this point.

Okay, most everything in 3.5 is linear. Ignoring the third party stuff, nearly all customization comes from either where you place your levels or what feats you get. Feats in 3.5 are fine, a a bit too rare in my opinion, but they can alter a character enough to be fine.

I remember the first thing I felt was when I played a barbarian, looking at its development was disappointment and I noticed I didn't see any reason to level up. Because all I saw ahead was static increases, nothing new. So I looked to prestige classes and multiclassing to actually get more variety in my character. And I noticed that eventually I would have to settle for static growth, or the exponential increase in 3.5 difficulties would leave me useless.

That was my last campaign I played in 3.5, and the first time I tried building
a character based on the game rather then trying to fit the game to my character idea.

3.5 has race, templates, feats, organisation affiliations, alternate class features, substitution levels, prestige classes, flaws, traits and standard level advancement. 4e has class, class specialization, feats and race. When building a character, I can get a lot more mileage out of a multitude of options than a smaller array of options. Having more options also makes it more likely that my concept will be true to type rather than conforming to my available choices.

As for the comment about static growth of 3.5 characters, I really don't know how to respond to that. You seem to be basing your opinion on your observation of how one class fared in a game and your inability to customise it to your liking.

Perfect balance means no loopholes, the strongest most optimized character won't so greatly overshadow the worst made character that the worst made is rendered useless, but the strongest and most optimized will still feel stronger then the average optimized. And it does this while still maintaining sufficient complexity and depth that it doesn't become a glorified rock/paper/scissors or checkers.

Thats perfect balance, balance in short means the sweetpoint between two extremes.

4e isn't perfect, when they say 4e is balanced they mean is is noticeably more balanced then its competition ((its competition being 3.5. exclusively.))

The Wizards response to percieved balance issues is a problem. Continuous errata pisses off consumers like me. Not checking potential issues before the product is released also pisses of consumers like me. Riddle me this...If 4e is so balanced, why the continual need for errata and republication?

That renders chess and go the least strategic games in existence. Strategy is just about victory with the lowest costs, fast resolution is just he usual side effect. Anyway, the antithesis to strategy and tactics while at the same time being the most important factor is chance.

Let me put it in the simplest way.

When you get a +2 advantage on any given roll there is a 10% chance of that +2 mattering. (If the DC is 15, the roll will have to be 13-14 to matter). However with two rolls, the chance of that 2 mattering increases, with 3 rolls, even more chance, with 10 rolls, much higher, in 20 rolls that +2 alone has almost certainly had a great effect.

What this means tactically, is that those little things start to matter a whole lot. Which inherently opens up a lot more tactics. It turns it into a great mental game as both sides struggle to gain even the slightest edge to gain the win.

If thats not tactically better then 3.5 then I need another word for it. Because its something better then 3.5.

First of all. Time is a cost. A fast victory is better than victory by attrition.

Second. You're confusing strategy and tactics.

Finally, accruing piddly situational attack bonuses in order to eke a little more mileage out of your die rolls is not tactical depth. Nor is it particularly interesting. I don't want to play a game where i'm trying to eke out situational bonuses so my at-will spam will eventually wear down the enemy. I want rapid escalation and action denial.

Small circumstancial modifiers may make a lot of difference when in an attrition match with an evenly matched set of opponents. I don't expect my character to fight their match all of the time. Most of the time I want real choices that will have a dramatic effect on the tactical landscape.

I like games to progress quickly. 1 hour is fine for a drawn out fight against a powerul enemy. When the party is cutting down goblins anything longer than 15 minutes is inexcusable.

So you like fodder for everything but the bosses.

No. Grinding down every non-minion opponent is lame. It is tedious and I don't find it very interesting.

Can you explain this. What do you mean by huge tactical impact? Can you provide some examples please?

My first post for instance here showing some of the impact of tide of iron, if thats not enough pick an effect and I'll give you the math and diagrams showing the effect it has on a battle.

okay. Magic Missile. It has history in D&D. Plus, it's a controller power, so it has to be interesting.

Red_Rob wrote:The ability to describe your attack however you want is system agnostic, and I find it hard to believe anyone would seriously promote it as a benefit of a rules system.

We have always spiced up our attack descriptions. We always thought of it as combat-roleplaying.

I tend to think there's actually something a bit odd about needing to describe your attacks when you're using minatures and a battlemap. Isn't the main reason for describing attacks so that you have some kind of narrative and understanding of what happens in combat. Shouldn't actually having tokens for participants accomplish a lot of this?

The relationship between action and description feels inverted. Intuitively, for a roleplaying game, I think it makes more sense to start with the description of the action and then use the rules to accomplish that action. In 4E it's often the opposite, you complete an tactical action and then you come up with a description to explain what just happened so that the whole combat doesn't slide away into complete abstraction. This makes roleplaying a supplement to combat rather than it's driving force.

Dog Quixote wrote:

Red_Rob wrote:The ability to describe your attack however you want is system agnostic, and I find it hard to believe anyone would seriously promote it as a benefit of a rules system.

We have always spiced up our attack descriptions. We always thought of it as combat-roleplaying.

I tend to think there's actually something a bit odd about needing to describe your attacks when you're using minatures and a battlemap. Isn't the main reason for describing attacks so that you have some kind of narrative and understanding of what happens in combat. Shouldn't actually having tokens for participants accomplish a lot of this?

The relationship between action and description feels inverted. Intuitively, for a roleplaying game, I think it makes more sense to start with the description of the action and then use the rules to accomplish that action. In 4E it's often the opposite, you complete an tactical action and then you come up with a description to explain what just happened so that the whole combat doesn't slide away into complete abstraction. This makes roleplaying a supplement to combat rather than it's driving force.

Amen. The problem, then, comes in finding balance between letting players describe amazing, complex actions and giving opponents opportunities to stop/mitigate them.

Why do you need to be able to interrupt someone else's fluff?

THIS IS WHY YOU PEOPLE SHOULD BE ARGUING ABOUT CRICKET INSTEAD:

Verbannon's first post, where he says we don't understand tactics wrote:
Lets look at the most basic, an at-will that pushes an enemy 1 space, aka, tide of iron.



Okay, the first example is the most basic example. You will encounter this situation quite a bit due to the fact movement doesn't vary widely.

Ranger moves back to gain some distance from the enemy.

And fighter is left with two choices.

1. He can do a simple damage attack like surestrike or his basic attack. If he does this the enemy can try attacking the ranger. Here I assume the Fighter makes his Attack of Opportunity, however since the fighter can only make one Attack of Opportunity per that enemy's turn, the enemy is free to charge ranger , hitting him. And placing ranger in a bad position.

2. Fighter can use Tide of Iron, which in addition to pushing the enemy back, lets him shift forward as well. (Important if lets say, the fighter had to move first to reach the monster.) Now should the monster get stopped by fighter's AoO, his charge won't reach the ranger.

Ergo Tide of Iron allowed the fighter to defend much better then he would have been able to otherwise.

WAIT STOP RIGHT THERE.

THIS GUY IS SERIOUSLY ARGUING THAT WE DON'T UNDERSTAND TACTICS BECAUSE IN THE CASE WHERE A RANGER AND A MONSTER LACKING RANGED OR AREA POWERS HAVE THE SAME MOVEMENT AND THE FIGHTER IS THE ONLY OBSTACLE BETWEEN THE RANGER AND THE MONSTER, THEN USING A PUSH ONE EFFECT CHANGES THE MONSTER'S DECISION MATRIX FROM

1. ATTACK FIGHTER OR TRIGGER BOTH COMBAT SUPERIORITY AND OPPORTUNITY ATTACK FROM FIGHTER IN ORDER TO HAVE A 50/50 SHOT AT ATTACKING RANGER?
   to
2. ATTACK FIGHTER

AND YOU'RE TREATING THAT LIKE A SERIOUS ARGUMENT ?!?


Hint: it's not. That's a fucking edge case, and even in that edge case, most MCs aren't going to run the monsters suicidal enough to take the risk for that slim a chance.

And that's the complaint that so many Denizens have about 4e - many of the abilities have edge case uses with minor effects on combat. Saying that is part of the 4e paradigm is valid. Saying you like such being part of the 4e paradigm is an improvement over 3e's paradigm where a single character's 1-round tactical choice usually determines the entire battle (do I Charm Monster the Manticore to change this 4-on-4 to a 5-on-3? do I Solid Fog the entire battlefield or do I Greater Teleport back home ? ) is valid. Of course, Denizen's saying they prefer the 3e style is also valid. But pretending that the systems don't work like that is insanity, and people who do so CANNOT BE REASONED WITH.

mmm delicious rage