Me and the DMG

[EOTB]

I agree AD&D is dissociative. AD&D doesn't help players/DMs trying to keep things in character. Primarily because the characters aren't greatly differentiated from each other within class beyond surface-level. The mechanics of differentiation are built around what possible temporary advantage in the present circumstance is recognized and eked out by the players of the mostly-samey characters. This requires thinking about what's now and what's next in the context of rules tied to those circumstances instead of acting based on the unique perspective/personality/motivation your character has compared to some another fighter (that is turned into mechanical differentiation facilitating the pursuit of that P/P/M). AD&D doesn't do much to reward the latter, while tilting odds for the former.

Regarding "made consciously if possible" - I agree with that also. I know that my approach to RPGs differs from enthusiasts: I don't really care about my characters. I care very much about what I experience through my characters; about what challenges and unknowns I can now attempt because of the unique culmination this character's prior play. But the characters as a psuedo-someone else? No. That's probably why I prefer to DM - putting on many characters for a few minutes each as a "hat" is tolerable, but a different personality as a "skin" is not. If I'm playing, you're getting "EOTB the <insert class here>", although each iteration differs from the other slightly. Not as much as Dr Who incarnations vary from each other, but in that sort of direction.

As you said, not better or worse. The "worse" would be if I were stuck playing 4E or nothing, where the system pushes me to really invest in who my character was, or if you were stuck playing 1E or nothing and had to deal with dissociative rules. That would be worse all around.

 

[squeen]

In play style, I am much like EOTB --- the character is solely my proxy, a thin disguise-of-self used to affect action in the world. Never, in over a decade of play, did it ever occur to me to invent a backstory for any of the dozens I went through. (I can only remember one's name...and that's because he authored a couple of useful spells.)

This mention of immersion and 2e --- well it's clearly something I missed. It starts to make more sense to me now when folks like Malrex say they prefer 2e. I'm begining to suspect that there's more to the edition change than just a bunch of rule-tweaks and setting books. I need to do some homework.

That said....I took Beoric's noble Quest of Mechanics Understanding in a different light. I thought he was trying identify the list of possible in-game actions that felt jarringly out-of-context. Meta-gaming as something that mentally removes a player from the immersion in the world-simulation (1st-person experience with situational clues for best-action), and exposes D&D as a pure numbers-crunch (War game, with a priori known-best-actions given certain repeatable situations).

I like strategic war games (too), but that's not the feeling I associate with my fondest memories of playing D&D. The "good" D&D I recall is much more visceral. But then again, I played modified OD&D, and not strict AD&D. Is there a significantly difference mood? An inescapable left/right brain switch-over?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

I am identifying a mechanic as being dissociative, and stating that it has a certain impact on the game, which is that metagame player strategy ends up outweighing in-world character strategy. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a decision I think should be make consciously if possible. It is anti-simulationist, which is also not necessarily a bad thing.

D&D has always been tied to chance/fate/luck (we let dice determine all the results, after all). Player buy-in comes in the form of being able to hedge some rolls in their favor by making them under ideal circumstances. In this way, almost all mechanics of the game boil down to "manipulated luck". If you're looking for cracks in the frame, I'd turn my attention to that which breaks/flaunts/ignores the manipulated luck dynamic, because that is where players truly have no say in their own game (though I believe you may have already come to that conclusion).

Initiative is a tricky beast - on the surface it is just a straight dice roll, but there are still ways the players get to manipulate that die roll, it's just a bit more intangible. Playing with DEX scores, for one... or janking with the initiative order during combat after the dice have been rolled. Since I presently DM 5e, I personally like to turn the Advantage mechanic on to Initiative when my players deem it especially important to manipulate the score (they've got to come up with the creative way to earn that Advantage, mind you, but mechanically it works as an initiative tweak that players can manipulate if they so choose).

 

[squeen]

Interesting notion, DP, allowing players to influence initiative via tactical in-game actions. Hmm...my players would eat that up. They HATE when the monsters get to attack first---so much consternation...each...and...every...round.

And yet, for me as DM, it's like a mental breath-mint. We've finally navigated our way to a place where the die fall-as-they-may. A point of no return.

Honestly, when I look at it in the cold light of day, my players are combat-adverse in so many ways (unless it's an obvious cake-walk).

Hmmm, again.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Honestly, when I look at it in the cold light of day, my players are combat-adverse in so many ways (unless it's an obvious cake-walk).

All those points during the GP/XP debates have come to fruition; if XP=XP causes players to pick needless fights, then GP=XP apparently turns them all into cowards. The door swings both ways, it seems.

 

[squeen]

All those points during the GP/XP debates have come to fruition; if XP=XP causes players to pick needless fights, then GP=XP apparently turns them all into cowards. The door swings both ways, it seems.

Could be! I (incorrectly) assumed it was a gender-thing. They are optimizing risk vs. reward.

 

[The Heretic]

1E does presume, even demand metagaming. Concerns about metagaming were a 2nd generation reaction and/or desire for a certain type of immersion that the 1E rules don't even conceive of, or attempt to implement. If a DM is against metagaming, the 1E rules will fight against them, instead of helping them, every step of the way.

Perhaps, as stated in the other thread, this is why demi-humans don't work as PC races. You need immersion for that, and an attempt to get in character. If you're more focused on metagaming and min/maxing, then all that matters is that sweet dex bonus for the humans with fake pointy ears on them.

 

[Beoric]

Initiative is a tricky beast - on the surface it is just a straight dice roll, but there are still ways the players get to manipulate that die roll, it's just a bit more intangible. Playing with DEX scores, for one... or janking with the initiative order during combat after the dice have been rolled. Since I presently DM 5e, I personally like to turn the Advantage mechanic on to Initiative when my players deem it especially important to manipulate the score (they've got to come up with the creative way to earn that Advantage, mind you, but mechanically it works as an initiative tweak that players can manipulate if they so choose).

Or, in 4e, readied actions in investing in various out-of-turn actions, which simulate practiced maneuvers that react to other characters attacks.

 

[squeen]

Or, in 4e, readied actions in investing in various out-of-turn actions, which simulate practiced maneuvers that react to other characters attacks.

This is Greek to me.

 

[Beoric]

This is Greek to me.

In 4e the basic initiative structure is that you only roll initiative once at the start of combat, and cycle through it until combat ends. Initiative is rolled individually for all combatants (unless you have a large grouping of similar combatants, where is it acceptable to roll for them as a group to simplify the process.

So the simple thing to do is take your actions on your turn, but there are various ways you can take an action on other people's turns. This is what most people do, just attack as soon as they are ready. And then they wonder why the fighter, for example, who ended up very early in the initiative order and immediately charged, ends up surrounded by enemies and pounded into the dirt until anyone else has a chance to do anything.

However, you can wait and delay your turn instead. In that case, you can jump back in to the initiative order at any time (well, not in the middle of someone else's turn, but as soon as it is finished). If you do so, you stay at that initiative position for the rest of the fight, unless you do something else to change it. You can use this if no opportunities have arisen and you ust don't know what to do, or to coordinate actions with your allies.

On your turn you also have the option of giving up your attack to "ready an action", such as setting your pike to receive a charge or hitting the first creature that comes around the corner. Mechanically, you are delaying a portion of your turn until a certain trigger occurs (which trigger you define). If the trigger never happens (you aren't charged, or no one comes around the corner), then nothing happens until your turn comes up in the initiative order again. If the trigger does occur, you take the action which you predetermined (which if you play your cards right can actually interrupt and negate the enemy's action), and your position in the initiative order changes so that for the rest of the fight your turn comes up right before the guy you just swung at. Readied actions don't have to be attacks, but they usually are.

Certain things trigger opportunity actions, usually opportunity attacks. For example, if you are fighting with someone and on your opponent's turn he turns his back on you to move away (as opposed to backing away slowly), you get a free swing on him. IIRC there is a similar mechanic to this in 1e. You also get an opportunity attack if someone tries to run by you to get at someone in the back row. Fighters tend to be opportunity attack specialists, and it is possible to build strategies around tempting enemies to incur opportunity attacks.

In addition, there are practiced maneuvers. Most of the maneuvers that you learn are things that you do on your turn, but you can instead learn maneuvers that can be triggered by things that happen outside of your turn. An example is fighters who "mark" an opponent, by which they are basically saying "keep you attention on me or I will punish you for it". If the marked opponent takes his attention off the fighter in order to attack the fighter's ally, the fighter gets a free swing at him. The advantage of learning a triggered maneuver is that if the trigger occurs you get an extra action on your round. The disadvantage is that if the trigger does not occur then you can't use the maneuver; whereas if you learned an ordinary maneuver instead you are pretty much guaranteed to get a chance to use it.

Finally, other allies can grant you attacks outside of your turn. Leader types can point out an opening, and some other types can create an opening by distracting an opponent or pushing them out of position. Basically, they have learned techniques that allow them to give up part of their turn so the heavy hitters can take a swing instead.

So instead of a fixed 3/2 or 2 attacks per round, 4e characters by default get one attack per round, but they can increase that if they can encourage opportunity attacks, or learn maneuvers that let them take attacks outside of their turn, or have allies who grant them attacks outside of their turn.

So while the core initiative mechanic is much simpler than 1e, there are a variety of ways to take actions points in the initiative order outside of your turn, and these generally result from tactical decisions and/or training decisions made by the characters.

 

[The Heretic]

In 4e the basic initiative structure is that you only roll initiative once at the start of combat, and cycle through it until combat ends. Initiative is rolled individually for all combatants (unless you have a large grouping of similar combatants, where is it acceptable to roll for them as a group to simplify the process.

The combat system in 4e was actually pretty good, even if it didn't feel like D&D. Each person had three actions...a combat action (I think), a move action, and a free action. They were tiered. You only got one of each, but you could convert a given one to one of the lesser actions if you wanted. So if you couldn't attack, you could convert that combat action to a move action and move twice. The free action was for minor stuff, like 'concentrating' on a spell.

I only played 4e, never DM'ed it. I had a Dragonborn Warlord, and I had a lot of fun playing him. In fact, eventually I took a feat that allowed me to do a breath weapon once a day as a free action, and I further modified it with feats to do some nifty stuff (allies in there would be unhurt, and could do an action or something like that). The combat would eventually get kind of same-y after a while, and the rest of the game was just too weird (other spells are rituals, and they take 10 minutes to cast? we have to defend this guy 10 minutes while he casts passwall? UGH) and too far removed the original (I heard they had to do a doozy on Forgotten Realms, not a bad thing actually).

As a tangent to a topic in DP's 5e thread, I did try to play my Dragonborn as more than a human in a rubber lizard suit. I tried to envision him as being slightly more primitive, as a lizardfolk almost, so he'd often try to take trophies from our kills. One of the other characters didn't like that.... ("I take some of his teeth." "NO you are NOT going to do that!" "Sure I am, it's part of my culture.")

 

[squeen]

@Beoric : Does sound kind of fun...the only thing that raised my hackles was the part about learned maneuvers (i.e. having special, learn-able abilities to customize your hot rod). I just got a thing against that. But the nuances that allows more combinatory group tactics sounds (potentially) fun and fairly easy to merge with traditional D&D melee.

Does combat slow down much compared with 1e, after you add all that jiggering?

 

[Beoric]

@Beoric : ...the only thing that raised my hackles was the part about learned maneuvers (i.e. having special, learn-able abilities to customize your hot rod). I just got a thing against that.

To each his own, but I would point out that real martial arts and combat techniques have these sorts of stances and maneuvers.

Does combat slow down much compared with 1e, after you add all that jiggering?

I find it about the same as the way I played 1e (ignoring weapon v. AC and most of the initiative rules) if you know your character and are prepared. My turns don't usually take any longer - unless I start losing, then I think very hard about strategy, but I did the same thing in AD&D.

A lot of people complain about it being slow, but it generally stems from players and/or DMs not knowing the abilities of the characters they are running, and not bothering to think about what you are going to do until their turn comes up. You don't want players in a 4e group that aren't interested in thinking ahead, or get bored when its someone else's turn.

Some sorts of characters require less thinking than others, so I would steer new or slow players towards them. I usually use those classes for recruitable NPCs so they are easy for the players to run.

Also, since in my campaigns if you want to learn a new technique you usually have to find someone to teach you, I can restrict the availability of the more complicated techniques. This approach makes me a heretic on the 4e boards, BTW.

 

[squeen]

Thank you both. Is there a (free) SRD for 4e I could browse someday?

 

[gandalf_scion]

With respect to 4e combat, a quick glance at a 4e stat block is very revealing. They are very long and cumbersome. As a long time wargamer, I can clearly see how 4e tried to mimic the "objectivity" of table top wargames. That's a design choice that took the game away from the adventure focus of earlier editions.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

I found 4e combats to be significantly faster and more dynamic than 3e. Where 4e really fell down for me was in the skill challenge system, which was terrible. I both used it straight as a referee and significantly modded it. At a certain point, the mods and variations had gotten so massive and drastically different that I just basically asked myself whether I was still even using 4e outside of the combat system, and the answer was basically "No" so I stopped and played different systems instead.

As far as 4e heartbreaker go, I think Heroes Against Darkness hits a lot of what I liked about 4e but is simpler and more straightforward. The skill system is underdeveloped, but at least it doesn't have the elaborate framework of skill challenges to have to knock down in the first place.

 

[The Heretic]

Thank you both. Is there a (free) SRD for 4e I could browse someday?

I don't know, but I have a feeling that the answer is no. After the freewheeling 3rd edition OGL days they clamped down on the license. Shot themselves in the foot really. That's why Paizo decided to make their own game, Pathfinder.

 

[The Heretic]

I found 4e combats to be significantly faster and more dynamic than 3e. Where 4e really fell down for me was in the skill challenge system, which was terrible.

I don't think my group ever used this. What is this 'skill challenge system' of which you speak?

 

[Beoric]

Thank you both. Is there a (free) SRD for 4e I could browse someday?

The quickstart rules are free on DrivethruRPG. I know they are missing errata, but the basic concepts are the same.

With respect to 4e combat, a quick glance at a 4e stat block is very revealing. They are very long and cumbersome. As a long time wargamer, I can clearly see how 4e tried to mimic the "objectivity" of table top wargames. That's a design choice that took the game away from the adventure focus of earlier editions.

Yes, the official stat block took about a quarter page. Given changes in font size it would be about the same as an average 1e monster entry, although it is fair to say that the early ones are very slanted toward combat. Later in the edition they changed that and produced some very good monster entries that were a lot more evocative.

Although it was never done in official products, it is possible to shorten the stat blocks just like you would in early edition D&D modules. I can usually get it down to about 4 lines.

I'm linking two free modules so we have a frame of reference to talk about this. Keep on the Shadowfell was actually written before the rules were completely ready, so some of the mechanics are different in the core books. Khyber's Harvest was also very early, but is indicative of the actual ruleset before they realized how badly they had borked the math and had to make a bunch of changes. To be clear, I am presenting these to illustrate mechanics with a free product, mot because they are great products - although Khyber's Harvest is pretty evocative, IIRC.

Take the Cultist Eyeblade on p. 8 of the pdf of Khyber's Harvest. That stat block could be written as follows:

Cultist Eyeblade (Human Skirmisher) - Init. +6; HP 45, AC 17, F 41, R 16, W 15; SPD 6; XP 150. Short Sword - +8 v AC; 1d6+6 damage. Dagger (R5/10) - +10 v AC; 1d4+5 damage. CA - +1d6 damage if CA. Trait - CA v enemy marked by ally. Normal vision; Percep +8; Acro +9; Ath +7; Stealth +9. Speaks common, deep speech. (KH p. 6)

Also, even the worst 4e stat block isn't as long and miserable to read at 3e stat blocks. At least 4e stat blocks have whitespace.

I found 4e combats to be significantly faster and more dynamic than 3e. Where 4e really fell down for me was in the skill challenge system, which was terrible.

Fair. Most people who still play 4e don't use skill challenges, even the hard core combat porn types.

I don't think my group ever used this. What is this 'skill challenge system' of which you speak?

It was billed as a way of encouraging freeform noncombat play, but ended up creating an incentive for players to scan their character sheets for their best skills and try to find a way to shoehorn them into the challenge. Player: "I, erm, try to impress the king with my Athletic skill so he will send us on this mission." Response in the module: if the Athletics check succeeds, gain one success in the skill challenge; otherwise gain one failure. Me: "What are you going to do, do pushups in the throne room?"

You know how I'm always saying that most 4e mechanics support old school play, despite the designers' intentions? And that the real problem was with presentation of the mechanics in the modules? Well the skill mechanic is the almost opposite. The designers set out to create a way to support DMs and players who wanted a freeform style of play unfettered by rigid rules, and ended up placing freeform play into a skill challenge straitjacket.

It didn't help that I'm pretty sure there was a directive that all 4e adventures, including those in dungeon, had to include a skill challenge. Which meant you had module writers shoehorning them into situations where they really didn't fit. Also, because they were mandatory for designers, they ended up being gates the players had to get past in order to play, which meant module writers made them essentially impossible to fail. You can find examples in both of the modules I linked; the "Finding Doria" challenge in Khyber's Harvest is one of the least offensive examples of the mechanic.

Its not worth explaining the mechanics because (a) they aren't worth knowing, and I have no intention of defending them; and (b) they are entirely optional, so you can run campaigns without missing them at all.

 

[Pseudoephedrine]

I don't think my group ever used this. What is this 'skill challenge system' of which you speak?

It's the core procedure meant to be used for out-of-combat challenges that depend on character skill and that affect the entire group. You roll initiative and act in order, characters each explain how a relevant skill applies and roll it, no two characters can use the same skill in IIRC the same round. You're trying to build up successes before you reach a critical # of failures. The 4e team ended up heavily errata-ing page 42 of the DMG repeatedly trying to get the system to work properly, so the # of successes and failures you're aiming for varies depending on which errata version you're using.

It's meant to solve the problem in 3e of challenges where effectively only one character would do the bulk of the work resolving the problem because they had the right skill maxed out, and everyone else would sit around waiting for them to roll high enough.

Fair. Most people who still play 4e don't use skill challenges, even the hard core combat porn types.

That doesn't surprise me at all, TBH.