The Gaming Den

Alright, and I just know I'm going to regret bringing this up, but just how do the mechanics of 4e work. As some of you may have already heard I’m in a game where the editions have been smashed together into some sort of gaming abomination. And people have said some interesting things about that, but I’ve got a problem. I can’t make heads or tails of how 4e works, how does damage work, how do spells function, what’s the expected damage output? stuff like that.

I ask because I want to know how far I can optimize without being overpowering with a 3e spell caster.

Okay, here's the parts of 4e that are important to you if you want to do this:

There are no save-or-sucks. Things are in the fight until you can kill them with hitpoint damage. There are no 'spells,' everybody has powers that they use. Fighters, rogues, wizards, etc, etc. Some are at-will's, some are usable once per encounter, some are usable once per day. Everybody only gets one attack a round, though, and damages usually aren't very high for those attacks (maybe 50 damage at the top end? Don't quote me on this, my experiences with high-level 4e were closer to its release and very incomplete). Equivalently, hitpoints are lower but not much. Combats take a long time, and they are basically just a matter of whittling the enemy down.

So, you are going to be more effective than a 4e caster in pretty much every way without even trying. You have save or sucks that instantly remove enemies from combat. You can probably do more damage with your evocations. You have utility spells that 4e almost completely lacks.

If you really want to optimize and completely outclass every 4e character you see, just use save-or-sucks, because save-or-sucks do not exist in 4e and 4e characters take forever to kill monsters through hitpoing damage.

4e's mechanics are simple.

You have a bunch of crappy powers. These are nothing compared to 3rd edition spells. Some are at-wills, some once per encounter, and some daily. Most powers do an inconsequential amount of damage and inflict some sort of useless effect such as sliding the target two squares. I'm not sure what level you're at, but if I remember correctly, daily powers do 3 dice from levels 1-10, 6 dice from levels 11-30, and about 9 dice from 21-30.

To give you an idea of how shitty these powers are, the big thing (before one of the many, many updates killed it) used to be a wizard who could use sleep on enemies and keep them asleep. Essentially 3.5 sleep without the HD cap. So don't expect to optimize that 3e caster at all - you'll be doing better damage than they are with any of the 1d6 per level spells.

Well, I'm playing a warmage, but not the shitty kind but I get the idea. So, how much of a disparity should be expected?

That depends on the level. At level 1, you suck. This is the norm for 3.5 evoker-based dudes, though, so I doubt you're surprised.

But using Capn's daily dice (I'm too lazy to verify them, and he is a pirate: pirates would never lie), at level 10 you're looking at an easy 10d6 with a cheap spell slot. 35 average damage. Your companions are looking at 3-6 dice, but they could be as high as d8's or d10's or something, so 33 at the highest.

The difference is in your favor for all but the earliest levels, pretty much.

I'd avoid evocations if I was playing a 3.5 caster in a 4e world. 4e kobolds have 25 hit points, and it just gets uglier from there. Go with all save-or-sucks.

My class give me extra damage per dice of damage, +1 for every 5 levles so a fire ball at level 10 does 10d6+30 damage. But I'll keep that in mind... how ugly can it get?

Doom wrote:I'd avoid evocations if I was playing a 3.5 caster in a 4e world. 4e kobolds have 25 hit points, and it just gets uglier from there. Go with all save-or-sucks.

Honestly, the efficacy of this tactic is going to depend entirely on how your Twilight Zone MC is calculating saves. Are they using 3.x rolled saves, or 4e non-armor defenses where you are rolling to-hit versus a static number? It probably doesn't matter because on a success you will utterly screw anyone you hit whereas 4e powers inflict much smaller penalties than 3.x save-or-suck spells.

It also probably doesn't matter because from the sound of things this game is a clusterfuck with no real rules.

darkmaster wrote:My class give me extra damage per dice of damage, +1 for every 5 levles so a fire ball at level 10 does 10d6+30 damage. But I'll keep that in mind... how ugly can it get?

Hard to say, since they keep changing the rules around. But level 3 goblins can have 50+ hit points, and there's a level 4 elite goblin with 110 hp. 'solo' monsters can blow past 500 hp before you get into the teen levels....you'll need 8 of those fireballs to have much chance of killing it (more depending how the DM's gonna rule saving throws).

Wow. Just- just wow. I can see where that video game analogy I've been hearing is coming from.

Stuff 4e got right at least in concept (and then fell down with the execution)

1. Powers come in three types:

At-Wills. Use as much as you like.
Encounters. Use once each encounter (technically once after each 5 minute "short rest")
Dailies. Use once a day (techniccally once after each 8 hour "long rest")

This is a bit too abstract for a lot of folks, but really it's really just as abstract as that Vancian "You forget the spell when you cast it" nonsense that's been a staple of D&D since before they put the "A" in front of it, so people complaining about disassociated mechanics can fuck off.

This is flippin' genius improvement over prior editions because it puts all classes on the same power schedule. No longer does the wizard want to call it a day after he's out of top-level spell slots while the fighter hasn't even got to use his feat combo yet. No longer are charge-caster classes setup to reward system mastery with crazy piles of extra power. It's also genius in that it's not 100% set in stone, some classes give the player options whether they want to take a couple of their power choices (utility) as a powerful daily, a medium encounter or a weaker at-will.

And yet 4e fails to live up to the potential with this change because:

• All the problems of the "5-minute workday" for 3rd ed wizards now occur across all classes. Once you're out of dailies, you should camp.
• Characters never ever get new-at will attacks. Whatever you chose at 1st level, I hope you like it. (minor exception: a few classes get at-will utilities, but to my limited knowledge, not of those are usable as attacks)
• There are really only two viable builds. Either setup to use one of your at-wills all the time and never ever use anything else, or setup to nova-chain-combo your dailies in ways that stack.
• There are a bazillion powers which deal [2w]+Stat and push 1, or similar effects that are kinda-sorta useful, but short of awesome, and each of these bazillion powers has a different name and is on a different class list and swaps "push 1" for "pull 1" or "mark the target" or some other effect you really don't care about. So nobody even knows what these powers do or all called because they are all so similar, but not-quite identical.

2. The Turn Sequence

In 4e, each character gets a Standard Action (attack), A Move Action (move), and a Minor Action (drink a healing potion). You can use any type of action as a lesser action, so you can use your Standard as a Move to take 2 moves in one round, or you can use you move as a minor in order to drink two potions. You can do these in any order.

This is awesome, it's quick to explain to players, it's flexible, it massively simplifies the weird move/standard/full round (aka half move, full move) actions of 3e, and fundamentally avoids the stupid of 3/2 attack routines and dart specialization from older editions. And it does that while keeping the basic functionality of the older systems.

And yet 4e fails to live up to the potential with this change because:

• There are a bunch of rules that break those rules. Some of the magic item mounts let you upgrade a minor into a move, you can get minion summons that do similar things.
• A number of classes get oddball interrupt and reaction powers that trigger on other characters' turns, thereby completely bypassing this system.
• Fucking zone timing. This is too fucked up to even explain in my time constraints. But you have powers that create zones, which trigger at different times on different characters turns, and then those characters can sometimes react (as an interrupt) to the triggers with powers of their own. tl:dr: Whose turn were we on again? Did you skip me again?

3. Saves and Non-Armor Defenses

In 4e, the saves from 3e, Fortitude, Reflex and Will. become defense numbers like Armor Class. This is a meaningful simplification because now the attacker always rolls to hit, we ditch the legacy crap of some attacks (sword, bow, Scorching Ray requiring the attacker to roll to hit and other attacks (dragon breath, medusa gaze, Burning Hands requiring the defender to roll to not-be-hit. Now everyone is on the same page. Yay!

But it wouldn't be D&D without Saves, so now a Saving Throw is what you roll to break out of an effect. You roll a save for each negative status effect on you at the end of each of your turns. Generally this is a roll of 10+, so you have a slightly better than even chance of breaking each effect each round. This is great, no longer is the Fighter out of the entire fight at the drop of a single Hold Person, instead they are out a minimum of one round (if they save at the end of their first turn), but potentially many (if they keep failing their save.)

And yet 4e fails to live up to the potential with this change because:

• The developers straight-up can't do math. As characters go up in level, their AC stays more-or-less on the expected ranges for monsters to have a reasonable chance to hit or to miss. But as characters go up in level, their Fort, Ref and Will diverge wildly, depending what their classes key stat is and which one(s) their class gives a bonus to. So in a 15th level party, it is actually likely that you will have characters who differ in the same N.A.D. by 9+ points. In a system with only a d20 for random numbers, this means that you now have a monster that either can't hit the guy with the high defense (it's got a +10 he's got 30), or can't miss the guy with the low defense (it's got a +19, he's got a 21) short of the auto-hit, auto-miss rules.
• Fucking effects timing. Saves triggering at the end of the target's turn made sense. But then other powers last until the start of the attacker's next turn (no save allowed, they just last one round), still other powers trigger at the *start* of target's turn (fucking zones), while others trigger on specific conditions (when target attacks you, when target enters poison cloud). And it is entirely too common for a single character to be under multiple such effects, each of which ends at a different point in the round. In a 4-on-4 fight, tracking multiple cleanup phases for each character each round is tremendously tedious, if not practicably impossible for humans (who are probably drinking beer) to do.

This is a bit too abstract for a lot of folks, but really it's really just as abstract as that Vancian "You forget the spell when you cast it" nonsense that's been a staple of D&D since before they put the "A" in front of it, so people complaining about dissassociate mechanics can fuck off.

I'm not going to derail the thread elaborating on why this is a dumb thing to say, but I just felt that you should know that this is, in fact, a dumb thing to say.

Well we could make a thread for that, but I think the exact same thing actually jsut got locked so...

Anywho, I think I'm starthing to see the picture, pretty interesting.

Psychic Robot wrote:I'm not going to derail the thread elaborating on why this is a dumb thing to say, but I just felt that you should know that this is, in fact, a dumb thing to say.

You're right. I have now corrected my typo in an effort to appear less dumb.

One 4e question though since I only really played campaigns up to early Paragon levels. Does the amount of situational and short term roll modifiers continue to stack up? It tended to get annoying sometimes on our drunken game nights to keep constant track of all the situational +/- X die modifiers from marks and one turn buffs, especially when someone's affected by several of those at once or in succession. In other editions most of the worthwhile buffs like that could be cast out of combat and extended to have durations, so it felt like a lot less changed during combat numbers wise aside from knowing whether or not someone's flanked/flat-footed or behind cover/concealment/etc.

Characters in 4e have a bunch of extraneous information. They have a "power source" that determines whether their attacks come from martial training or arcane knowledge or divine power or whatever. This doesn't do anything at all, except that all of a class' attacks are marked the same way. So when a Paladin swings a glowing sword, that's divine power, but if he just regularly stabs people, that's divine power too. Like I said, it doesn't really seem to make any difference, so the only effect is that every character feels like they have a really limited range of options because the game tells you that all your abilities are the same. You also have a "role" which is some confusing term like "Controller" or "Striker". These role terms have no effect on the game at all, they just flat out tell you that there is a "right" and by extension "wrong" way to play your character.

So to people for whom the 3e D&D back text of "Unlimited Adventure Awaits!" had resonance, 4e was something of a face slap. A lot of people get offended on a deep personal level just by 4e's attitude. And that's reflected in the behavior of "4rries" - the unwashed ranting supporters of 4th edition are - as you can plainly see - confrontational and offensive. People say "I don't like X about 4th edition" and the 4rries immediately insult the person in question. It's exhausting. But it's behavior that was basically condoned by the 4th edition design team at the very beginning (check out the Gnome video).

But let's talk about the actual mechanics that matter, rather than the presentational aspects that rub people the wrong way. The game is split up into "encounters" that can be combat or non-combat. Every two encounters is a "milestone", which serves mostly to refresh your action point (I don't know why it is an action point when you don't have a point pool, but whatever), but also does other things like work off resurrection sickness.

During a combat encounter, you get an attack every round. You have two at-will choices for that attack, and a limited number of times per encounter and a limited number of times per day you can use a nominally "super" attack instead. Your attack does a pile of damage and inflicts a short duration minor status effect on target or performs a bit of forced movement with the damage. That description holds for every class, so an Illusionist does a pile of damage with a minor effect rider and a Barbarian does a pile of damage with a minor effect rider. Chances are pretty decent that they are delivering the same minor effects riders, because the list of choices is not particularly long. As you go up in level, the damage you inflict rises, but monster hit points generally rise proportionately faster, and the available rider effects are pretty much the same at level 1 and level 30. Your at-will attacks are exactly the same at level 1 and level 30.

Meanwhile, the non-combat encounters are supposed to fit into "skill challenges". Describing these is more complicated and requires a whole thread on the subject. The short answer is that they Don't Work At All.

And... that's it. That's the whole game, pretty much.

-Username17

2. The Turn Sequence

In 4e, each character gets a Standard Action (attack), A Move Action (move), and a Minor Action (drink a healing potion). You can use any type of action as a lesser action, so you can use your Standard as a Move to take 2 moves in one round, or you can use you move as a minor in order to drink two potions. You can do these in any order.

This is awesome, it's quick to explain to players, it's flexible, it massively simplifies the weird move/standard/full round (aka half move, full move) actions of 3e,

I have to disagree here. This is not awesome; while it is quick to explain to players, its extreme flexibility makes for long, complicated turns as players try to plot out their best move, and I had new players struggling with juggling their actions even after months of play. Three different actions a turn leads to 6 different orderings, above and beyond the possible things you can do within each action length, above and beyond all the "special case" stuff that happened every combat, if not every round.

I'm not saying 3e's method is better, but having played considerable AD&D lately, where you do just one thing a round, the one action system really makes for better combats....while the 'one thing a round' was never formalized and mapped out completely in AD&D, putting the player in the position of answering "what one thing do you want to do right now?" every round makes for much smoothly flowing and less boggling combats, and my often having to make up rules for unusual combat actions for a 3 book, 30 year old, system is an acceptible price to pay for very playable combats.

Going back to one action would have simplified combats. Going to 3 actions made for more preciseily defined rounds, but combat in 4e is no less complicated than 3e.

Doom wrote: I have to disagree here. This is not awesome; while it is quick to explain to players, its extreme flexibility makes for long, complicated turns as players try to plot out their best move, and I had new players struggling with juggling their actions even after months of play. Three different actions a turn leads to 6 different orderings, above and beyond the possible things you can do within each action length, above and beyond all the "special case" stuff that happened every combat, if not every round.

I'm not saying 3e's method is better, but having played considerable AD&D lately, where you do just one thing a round, the one action system really makes for better combats....while the 'one thing a round' was never formalized and mapped out completely in AD&D, putting the player in the position of answering "what one thing do you want to do right now?" every round makes for much smoothly flowing and less boggling combats, and my often having to make up rules for unusual combat actions for a 3 book, 30 year old, system is an acceptible price to pay for very playable combats.

4E and 3Es round structure are pretty much the same. It's just 3E calls the minor action the swift action, and you can't convert a move action to a swift action or vice versa and the swift action doesn't really do anything unless you have a special ability like a ToB stance or a quickened spell. 4E just standardized and streamlined 3E's combat system.

Swordslinger wrote:

Doom wrote: I have to disagree here. This is not awesome; while it is quick to explain to players, its extreme flexibility makes for long, complicated turns as players try to plot out their best move, and I had new players struggling with juggling their actions even after months of play. Three different actions a turn leads to 6 different orderings, above and beyond the possible things you can do within each action length, above and beyond all the "special case" stuff that happened every combat, if not every round.

I'm not saying 3e's method is better, but having played considerable AD&D lately, where you do just one thing a round, the one action system really makes for better combats....while the 'one thing a round' was never formalized and mapped out completely in AD&D, putting the player in the position of answering "what one thing do you want to do right now?" every round makes for much smoothly flowing and less boggling combats, and my often having to make up rules for unusual combat actions for a 3 book, 30 year old, system is an acceptible price to pay for very playable combats.

4E and 3Es round structure are pretty much the same. It's just 3E calls the minor action the swift action, and you can't convert a move action to a swift action or vice versa and the swift action doesn't really do anything unless you have a special ability like a ToB stance or a quickened spell. 4E just standardized and streamlined 3E's combat system.

Yeah, pretty much. Although I think that there is a real benefit to delaying introduction of Swift Action effects until higher levels so that players could be more familiar with the game before having to use them. The problem Doom alludes to with juggling 3 actions and action paralysis is very real.

Frankly, I'd like to go to a one-action per turn system too. Some actions would move you, some would not. Having players order their actions is bad enough when you can move and shoot or shoot and move. Once you add a 3rd thing you have 6 possible turn orders. Mix in the reactions and you have 24 or more possible turn orders. And for what? I honestly don't think the minor actions and triggers really benefit the game for all the accounting they add.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote: Yeah, pretty much. Although I think that there is a real benefit to delaying introduction of Swift Action effects until higher levels so that players could be more familiar with the game before having to use them. The problem Doom alludes to with juggling 3 actions and action paralysis is very real.

Dealing with multiple actions isn't that tough. The harder thing I always felt was the 3E of having combined actions. Like allowing you to move and draw a weapon if you had +1 BAB, or taking a 5 ft step if you hadn't done any other movement in the round. And sometimes you'd combine your move and standard to make a full. And then you'd get crap like full charges and partial charges.

That stuff is pretty tricky, where as the 4E system is simply a 1:1 tradeoff on actions. You do off your minor/move/standard action, and some effect happens. And that's actually a lot simpler for most people to grasp instead of a series of odd exceptions and special cases.

Frankly, I'd like to go to a one-action per turn system too. Some actions would move you, some would not.

GURPS does that, it works, sort of, though it can end up slowing down resolution, as you're asking people more times what they want to do, and also leads to a lot of extended actions that take more than one turn. Usually you generally do want it to be faster to draw a dagger or open a door as opposed to making an attack or casting a spell. It's difficult to handle that in a one action system since your resolution speed has to happen at the speed of your fastest action, where slower actions take multiple actions. So you have situations like in GURPS where loading/firing a bow takes several turns of doing nothing.

Whether you consider that a good thing or not I suppose depends on what you're trying to achieve with the system.

Generally if you want a more tactical game, you want to allow multiple actions, since it allows more combinations of things that in turn give people more options.

Josh_Kablack wrote:This is a bit too abstract for a lot of folks, but really it's really just as abstract as that Vancian "You forget the spell when you cast it" nonsense that's been a staple of D&D since before they put the "A" in front of it, so people complaining about disassociated mechanics can fuck off.

I know this was a page ago and I don't really want to get into a discussion about it because it's off topic, but I have to point out to you that 'disassociated' does not mean what you think it does. Abstraction has nothing at all to do with disassociation.

Disassociation refers to the lack of an in-game analogue for a metagame concept. Vancian magic is not disassociative, because 3.5 casters can get together around a campfire and talk about how their magic works and its limitations. There is an association between what the players see on their character sheet and what the character knows.

Edit: Pruned down in size because it's so off-topic I feel bad, which is saying something. And because mentioning 4e is just inviting Plebian's next account to come back and rant some more.