The Gaming Den

Psychic Robot wrote:So what is 4e's excuse for not having them?

'If it isn't used in combat, it doesn't exist.'

Good point, Frank. It's also part of the gambling addiction strategy, where you have frequent but random rewards of random size.

Psychic Robot wrote:So what is 4e's excuse for not having them?

4e does have "grey" weapons/armour/equipment. In the default economy you can't sell them to shops, but there's a standard option where you can. You can also just use them yourself. 4e also has "grey" treasure, in the forms of low level gems and such.

ubernoob wrote:Idea for simplifying 4E:
Don't roll a d20. Like, ever. Flip a coin. Heads is the result good for you.

Thoughts? It seemed to be the goal.

Rolling 1-10 as tails and 11-20 as heads is identical.
The whole basis of a d20 system is that the expected average and median is 10 or near there, making the whole game a giant cointoss match anyway.

That, and I hate coin tosses. In D&D, MTG or Pokemon it always slows down a game; I use a d6 instead, 1-3 tails and 4-6 heads.

MartinHarper wrote:Good point, Frank. It's also part of the gambling addiction strategy, where you have frequent but random rewards of random size.

Psychic Robot wrote:So what is 4e's excuse for not having them?

4e does have "grey" weapons/armour/equipment. In the default economy you can't sell them to shops, but there's a standard option where you can. You can also just use them yourself. 4e also has "grey" treasure, in the forms of low level gems and such.

That would be gold pieces, just in a slightly different form. That isn't the same thing at all. It doesn't matter if the currency comes in astral diamonds, gold pieces, copper pieces or crap gems... all that matters is the final gp value for making things you do care about.

'Grey' treasure would be actual stuff that makes sense in the game world, but the characters don't have any use for beyond converting to currency. Not merely other forms of currency.

Voss wrote:
That would be gold pieces, just in a slightly different form. That isn't the same thing at all. It doesn't matter if the currency comes in astral diamonds, gold pieces, copper pieces or crap gems... all that matters is the final gp value for making things you do care about.

'Grey' treasure would be actual stuff that makes sense in the game world, but the characters don't have any use for beyond converting to currency. Not merely other forms of currency.

There's really no difference between a gem worth 100 gp and an ornate chair worth 100 gp. It's just one is harder to carry than the other.

sigma999 wrote:

ubernoob wrote:Idea for simplifying 4E:
Don't roll a d20. Like, ever. Flip a coin. Heads is the result good for you.

Thoughts? It seemed to be the goal.

Rolling 1-10 as tails and 11-20 as heads is identical.
The whole basis of a d20 system is that the expected average and median is 10 or near there, making the whole game a giant cointoss match anyway.

That, and I hate coin tosses. In D&D, MTG or Pokemon it always slows down a game; I use a d6 instead, 1-3 tails and 4-6 heads.

What ubernoob was referring to was that the 4E goal was to make it such that accumulating or falling behind on bonuses should never reach a point where you succeed or fail automatically on activities.

This is very noticable in the save and skill challenge systems; they tried to do the same thing WRT combat, but they fucked up the numbers and the game will drift towards padded sumo--and there's almost nothing you can do about it.

One of the players at my table (the current DM, oddly enough) didn't believe that 4E was based on success 50% of the time, forever. Then we hit L10.

Voss wrote:'Grey' treasure would be actual stuff that makes sense in the game world, but the characters don't have any use for beyond converting to currency. Not merely other forms of currency.

Kill the king and you his crown. It makes sense that a king should have a crown, because kings wear crowns. Then sell the crown for gold pieces, hence converting it into currency. Plus, because a crown is some kind of "art object", you can sell it for roughly its value, in the default economy.

Kill a farmer, and take his hoe. It makes sense that a farmer should have a hoe, because farmers use hoes. 4e doesn't tell the DM what the resale value of a hoe is, or indeed what the purchase price of a hoe is, so the DM can decide what's appropriate for his game world.

Find a DM who runs a game with the economy option where second-hand mundane armour can be sold at 20% marked price. Kill a hundred kobolds. Loot their hide armour. It makes sense that kobolds have hide armour, because kobolds wear hide armour. Sell the armour for 6g each. Net 600g profit.

D&D supports killing things and taking their stuff.

Tydanosaurus wrote:One of the players at my table (the current DM, oddly enough) didn't believe that 4E was based on success 50% of the time, forever. Then we hit L10.

I congratulate you for sticking with it for so long.
I haven't even made a character for 4e. Don't know if I want to or not.

MartinHarper wrote:

Voss wrote:'Grey' treasure would be actual stuff that makes sense in the game world, but the characters don't have any use for beyond converting to currency. Not merely other forms of currency.

Kill the king and you his crown. It makes sense that a king should have a crown, because kings wear crowns. Then sell the crown for gold pieces, hence converting it into currency. Plus, because a crown is some kind of "art object", you can sell it for roughly its value, in the default economy.

Kill a farmer, and take his hoe. It makes sense that a farmer should have a hoe, because farmers use hoes. 4e doesn't tell the DM what the resale value of a hoe is, or indeed what the purchase price of a hoe is, so the DM can decide what's appropriate for his game world.

Find a DM who runs a game with the economy option where second-hand mundane armour can be sold at 20% marked price. Kill a hundred kobolds. Loot their hide armour. It makes sense that kobolds have hide armour, because kobolds wear hide armour. Sell the armour for 6g each. Net 600g profit.

D&D supports killing things and taking their stuff.

Wow, really? Are you and RC going to tell me that legs are designed for supporting the body and walking next? Because other than stating the obvious, I don't know what your point is.

Mine was, to use your pointless example, the value of the crown is something the PCs actually care about, because the numbers actually matter. The hoe doesn't matter, but despite what 4e tells you, the hoe should still be there.

The value of the hide is trivial, but you can turn a lot of hides into numbers you actually care about. And, once again you can do meaningful things with piles of weapons and armor, even if they''re just normal shit. You can, for example, equip your own little army if you've got a giant pile of armor and weapons. Or equip the town or your choice. Even if you don't have anything meaningful to do with it, you can still sell it, assuming you can find people who actually want that many suits of hide armor. But then again, people in D&D land are fighting at least small skirmishes all the time, so the market for weapons and armor should be pretty big, and pretty constant. There are historical precedents for this. Looting the dead for armor and weapons was pretty common during periods of major wars. Partly because you could equip your own troops, but also because you don't want the enemy coming along and equipping their people with stuff you left lying around, or even worse, starting their own side. Or peasants resisting your foraging parties.

What you don't want to do is take the 4e method: none of this matters, so none of it exists. Out of the three items, the only thing that will even get mentioned is the crown. And odds are it will have some sort of bullshit magical property that doesn't even matter so the players will actually bother to pick it up.

Voss wrote:
What you don't want to do is take the 4e method: none of this matters, so none of it exists. Out of the three items, the only thing that will even get mentioned is the crown. And odds are it will have some sort of bullshit magical property that doesn't even matter so the players will actually bother to pick it up.

It exists. I mean look near any creature that uses weaponry and you'll see stuff like "hide armor, large shield, battle axe" or something like that. You won't see magic gear, but whatever.

Honestly, I don't think it should be encouraged for PCs to loot the small stuff. You don't see Aragorn loading up orc weapons. hell, Elric even leaves enchanted weapons behind. Most people don't consider Greyhawking to be all that great for the game or the fun of people involved.

4E tends to take that stance by focusing more on treasures that would catch your eye, instead of the trivial stuff.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Voss wrote:
What you don't want to do is take the 4e method: none of this matters, so none of it exists. Out of the three items, the only thing that will even get mentioned is the crown. And odds are it will have some sort of bullshit magical property that doesn't even matter so the players will actually bother to pick it up.

It exists. I mean look near any creature that uses weaponry and you'll see stuff like "hide armor, large shield, battle axe" or something like that. You won't see magic gear, but whatever.

Honestly, I don't think it should be encouraged for PCs to loot the small stuff. You don't see Aragorn loading up orc weapons. hell, Elric even leaves enchanted weapons behind. Most people don't consider Greyhawking to be all that great for the game or the fun of people involved.

4E tends to take that stance by focusing more on treasures that would catch your eye, instead of the trivial stuff.

I'm sorry, that's still only one type of game.

While Elric didn't take the enchanted swords, Moonglum from the same books looked around for any opportunity to take expensive shiite.

There are many stories where people loot any sort of things lying on anyone.
~~

A_Cynic wrote:
While Elric didn't take the enchanted swords, Moonglum from the same books looked around for any opportunity to take expensive shiite.

There are many stories where people loot any sort of things lying on anyone.

Expensive shit sure. Nobody is disputing that. that's what 4E calls gems, works of art, etc. That stuff is specifically listed in the treasure your'e supposed to hand out.

What you never see people take is loading a wagon with 200 hide armors after a battle.

Wasn't it because they don't have the time to load up on all of the comparatively inexpensive material and U-haul it to town, and thus had to prioritize?

For Elric, he left behind crap because he couldn't buy upgrades. Such was the case for quite a few characters in various stories, they didn't scrounge for money as much because money couldn't actually upgrade them.

In fact, that's likely the main reason for Greyhawking things, because the rules encourage it. When a character's power is visibly upgraded simply by remembering to pull out the gold teeth, sifting through pockets, and hawking every short sword, then many will. Forcing players to ignore such when it's an obvious and viable tactic, is more of that railroading twit behavior I mentioned earlier.

MartinHarper wrote:

Voss wrote:'Grey' treasure would be actual stuff that makes sense in the game world, but the characters don't have any use for beyond converting to currency. Not merely other forms of currency.

Kill the king and you his crown. It makes sense that a king should have a crown, because kings wear crowns. Then sell the crown for gold pieces, hence converting it into currency. Plus, because a crown is some kind of "art object", you can sell it for roughly its value, in the default economy.

Kill a farmer, and take his hoe. It makes sense that a farmer should have a hoe, because farmers use hoes. 4e doesn't tell the DM what the resale value of a hoe is, or indeed what the purchase price of a hoe is, so the DM can decide what's appropriate for his game world.

Find a DM who runs a game with the economy option where second-hand mundane armour can be sold at 20% marked price. Kill a hundred kobolds. Loot their hide armour. It makes sense that kobolds have hide armour, because kobolds wear hide armour. Sell the armour for 6g each. Net 600g profit.

D&D supports killing things and taking their stuff.

In the sense that if you want to houserule an economy into 4E, it's possible, I guess you're right. I guess you're right when you say the rules don't "prohibit" the DM from throwing gold into the pockets of dead NPCs, either. Of course you can jury rig an economy into 4E. If you want to, you can spend the time to make up values for everything, and assign junk to NPC's.

But the RAW do not provide for it. The RAW quite literally don't work once you start letting the PC's loot stuff from NPC's because then you're in the 3.5 land where, eventually, the PC's have a bucket of trinkets. Useless trinkets, but there you go.

sigma999 wrote:

Tydanosaurus wrote:One of the players at my table (the current DM, oddly enough) didn't believe that 4E was based on success 50% of the time, forever. Then we hit L10.

I congratulate you for sticking with it for so long.
I haven't even made a character for 4e. Don't know if I want to or not.

For all the complaints, 4E isn't a "bad" system. It's really fun if you just want to pull out a six pick, light up a joint, and roll some dice.

What I love are the people who think "maximizing" their characters matters, or strategy matters, or anything at all like that. Does it really make sense to spend time min/maxing a character when your masterplay is going to work 50% of the time?

I say no.

I don't want to do the math if I'm going to be impaired.

-Crissa

Tydanosaurus wrote:

sigma999 wrote:

Tydanosaurus wrote:One of the players at my table (the current DM, oddly enough) didn't believe that 4E was based on success 50% of the time, forever. Then we hit L10.

I congratulate you for sticking with it for so long.
I haven't even made a character for 4e. Don't know if I want to or not.

For all the complaints, 4E isn't a "bad" system. It's really fun if you just want to pull out a six pick, light up a joint, and roll some dice.

Yes it is. You could have even more fun if you 'roll some dice' for a completely different game. Thats pretty much the definition of a bad game to me.

What I love are the people who think "maximizing" their characters matters, or strategy matters, or anything at all like that. Does it really make sense to spend time min/maxing a character when your masterplay is going to work 50% of the time?

I say no.

This is another of the reasons why it isn't worthwhile. Game mastery isn't really worthwhile. But on the other hand, not maximizing means you aren't going to succeed even 50% of the time. When your success rate starts dipping own into the 40s and 30s, its even more not worth playing.

Tydanosaurus wrote:

sigma999 wrote:

Tydanosaurus wrote:One of the players at my table (the current DM, oddly enough) didn't believe that 4E was based on success 50% of the time, forever. Then we hit L10.

I congratulate you for sticking with it for so long.
I haven't even made a character for 4e. Don't know if I want to or not.

For all the complaints, 4E isn't a "bad" system. It's really fun if you just want to pull out a six pick, light up a joint, and roll some dice.

Yes it is. You could have even more fun if you 'roll some dice' for a completely different game. Thats pretty much the definition of a bad game to me.

What I love are the people who think "maximizing" their characters matters, or strategy matters, or anything at all like that. Does it really make sense to spend time min/maxing a character when your masterplay is going to work 50% of the time?

I say no.

This is another of the reasons why it isn't worthwhile. Game mastery isn't really worthwhile. But on the other hand, not maximizing means you aren't going to succeed even 50% of the time. When your success rate starts dipping own into the 40s and 30s, its even more not worth playing.

Voss wrote:Other than stating the obvious, I don't know what your point is.

My point is that you can do those things in 4e, despite your claims otherwise.

Voss wrote:despite what 4e tells you, the hoe should still be there.

Where does 4e say the hoe shouldn't be there? What page?

Voss wrote:You can, for example, equip your own little army if you've got a giant pile of armor and weapons. Or equip the town or your choice.

You can do that in 4e too.

Voss wrote:Even if you don't have anything meaningful to do with it, you can still sell it, assuming you can find people who actually want that many suits of hide armor.

You can sell it in 4e too, if the DM runs by the alternate economy rules given in the PHB that I mentioned in my post. If the DM runs by the standard economy rules, you can't sell them, but you can still do whatever else you want with them.

Voss wrote:What you don't want to do is take the 4e method: none of this matters, so none of it exists.

How is that the 4e method?

Voss wrote: This is another of the reasons why it isn't worthwhile. Game mastery isn't really worthwhile.

Honestly I've never really been a fan of game mastery. It means that some concepts are better than others because the game is imbalanced.

I just don't see how it improves the game at all to have choices that suck ass. And that's what game mastery is all about. Include shit choices that only inexperienced players will choose.

The rules encourage the DM to put gold into the pockets of creatures, including NPCs, that the PCs kill, where it is realistic to do so. If a player says "does the dead kobold have any grey crap", the DMG encourages the DM to say yes, and say what the grey crap is.
The 3e RAW don't tell me the price of the crown of the King of Nowhere, nor of a farmer's hoe. They do tell me the average second-hand price of kobold armour, just as the 4e rules do.

Tydanosaurus wrote:The RAW quite literally don't work once you start letting the PC's loot stuff from NPC's because then you're in the 3.5 land where, eventually, the PC's have a bucket of trinkets.

Is there a problem with the PCs having a bucket of trinkets in 4e? Worst case I can see: padded sumo isn't so bad, and they cast a couple more rituals. It'll be fine.

MartinHarper wrote: Is there a problem with the PCs having a bucket of trinkets in 4e? Worst case I can see: padded sumo isn't so bad, and they cast a couple more rituals. It'll be fine.

Honestly all trinkets do is make it harder on the DM. Basicalyl you just stick to the wealth guidelines but instead of worrying about coins and gems and stuff, you instead just factor in the gp value of the trinkets you're handing out. So instead of a single 100 gp gem, it's going to be a couple dozen suits of hobgoblin chainmail that the PCs can sell.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Voss wrote: This is another of the reasons why it isn't worthwhile. Game mastery isn't really worthwhile.

Honestly I've never really been a fan of game mastery. It means that some concepts are better than others because the game is imbalanced.

I just don't see how it improves the game at all to have choices that suck ass. And that's what game mastery is all about. Include shit choices that only inexperienced players will choose.

Way to miss the point. You're talking about building mastery, which I could be made to agree is a bad thing to encourage. He's saying there's no reason to actually bother with playing well, because it's only how you built it that matters (to define whether you win 50%, or not even that, barring the few weird stuff like orb mastery and pre-errata blade cascade). Someone (pardon me for the inability to provide a link) said they substituted a table and dice for the decisions of a missing player in a game and it didn't matter; so it's craps with supposedly better fluff (give me craps, please).

Bigode wrote:Way to miss the point. You're talking about building mastery, which I could be made to agree is a bad thing to encourage. He's saying there's no reason to actually bother with playing well, because it's only how you built it that matters

Well 3.5 was really king of build mastery.

Most of your tactics were pretty simple there, because you were just doing what your character was made for.