Our first RPG bloggers adventure is in the books, and despite a TPK it was a really fun time. The party was thrown into a CR: 6 encounter followed up by a rolling skirmish into CR: 9 encounter. Considering our healer had mostly blown his surge wad, that the party was riddled with wounds, that I forgot one of my better magic items, and the lingering status ailments, the fact that we had the big bad Dragon down to his last 20 hit points wasn’t bad. However, this brings up a 4E mechanic that I have decidedly mixed feelings about: saving throws and ongoing conditions (which I’ll just refer to as status ailments.)
First, however, a preface: from my 3.0/3.5 experience, despite the Cleric’s supremacy as the best overall class, there was nothing as potent as a Wizard with “prep time.” The Batman of Dungeons and Dragons, by the time a good player scoured all of the sourcebooks for spells, combos, and cheese most mid to high level Wizards could mow through challenges far above their pay grade. This was largely due to the sort of “Save or You’re Fucked” mechanic and Wizards ability to make this “save” highly unlikely with the right prestige classes (Fatespinner, you bastard!) or specializations. 4E alleviated much of this problem, as most crippling effects require the Wizard to hit his enemy AND have a 50% chance of ending each round. My question is, having been immobilized or stunned for more than half a 4E combat, is this toning down enough?
On the face things, there’s nothing unbalanced about status ailments. The flat save number, with assorted feats, races, and classes providing a bonus is a clean way of dealing with it. In the case of ongoing damage, while annoying, it certainly doesn’t prevent your character from acting. However, some affects just don’t seem very… fun. Is it fun for a DM to have his big bad stunned? Is it fun for a Player to have their character immobilized? I think the answer is a decided ‘no’, but does that mean the rules are bad?
I don’t think so. Having suffered through a bad case of saving throw woes, it’s pretty obvious these kinds of things are inexorably tied to the system and would be a pain in the ass to excise. Ignoring that fact, I think that these kinds of powers offer interesting choices to combatants that posses them. Oftentimes you are forgoing more damage for the chance to debilitate another opponent’s ability to effectively fight. I think that perhaps the solution lies in DM judgment.
First, I think these kind of ‘status ailments’ accurately reflect action movie culture and fantasy literature. Heroes are often debilitated by enemy magic and chicanery, and do a great deal of it to their foes. However, one mainstay, is the ability of the Hero to ‘shake things off’ at the point of dramatic climax. I think it would be appropriate for DMs to give Heroes the ability to burn an action point at the start of a turn to remove a ‘status ailment’ at a point of high tension, but give the converse ability to the monsters as well.
I think we’re going to see a lot of extra uses for Action Points over the coming supplements, and that’s a good thing. As we’re used to the Extra Effort and Hero Points system from Mutants & Masterminds (which is similar, but far more flexible), we’ve adopted many of those concepts into our D&D game. If you’ve got a copy of the M&M rules handy, check out pages 120-121 for inspiration. Phil, that goes for you too as I know you’ve got a copy of the rules gathering dust 😀
In short : Action Points = limited use Get Out of Jail Free cards. Use wisely.
greywulf´s last post: Building the Urban Cowboy
I think you’re letting the system off the hook a bit when you say it would be a pain in the ass to excise them…they certainly excised enough of the game arbitrarily already that they didn’t have to half-ass something they explicitly set out to fix. 🙂
As usual, high-level D&D breaks down even worse, and you’re going to have more and more PC’s and monsters being immobilized for much of combat, as happened to my 18th-level PC I played at Gencon.
I like your idea of allowing PC’s to burn an action point to shrug off a status ailment.
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Well, the new saving throw system DOES seem to help with the DMing. There’s not a half-dozen different types of rolls to remember. Of course, I can’t speak to what you’ve experienced, as my group is still pretty low level, and they haven’t encountered a great number of ongoing effects. We’ll have to see how it goes in the future.
My biggest problem is having my players remember that their attacks aren’t just against AC anymore, but potentially against Fort, Reflex, and Will as well (which, of course, used to be saving throw categories).
Dead Orcs´s last post: Dead Orcs…Assemble!!
Prop: Man, that’s pretty harsh to call the changes arbitrary… I thought they’ve done an excellent job of explaining why they’ve changed everything, in the preview books, articles, and blog posts. Whether they were good changes or not is a matter of opinion, but I never thought of it as arbitrary.
@Greywulf: I fully approve any calling out of Phil, 100%.
@Prop: I have to agree with what Dave said, but I’m really eager to hear what changes you think were arbitrary and why.
Now on topic – I just can’t help but be happy with the new odds in 4th Edition though. Previously you’d have a 5-10% chance of saving against something, this certainly set up some truly epic moments but the other 19/20 times it was REALLY bad. If previous editions of D&D, and all of the people who hate 4E, have taught us anything it’s that PnP RPG players will put up with a whole lot of suck just to get to that 1/20 chance of supreme ecstasy through triumph.
Now with 4th Edition the numbers have changed to 50/50 for a lot of things, and I have to say I’ve been enjoying it. As with what happened to Dave’s Wizard in my 2nd-3rd Adventure, he ended up blinded for a decent part of the combat and that was frustrating, there are going to be down times and bad luck that add up to less than fun experiences.
The way I see it, your opinions in this post are a good sign that even though the odds of success have been improved quite a bit there is still quite a bit of frustration and disappointment when you don’t succeed. Without these feelings, winning and overcoming challenges would be less fun!
@Bartoneus Just a thought – one easy fix would be to allow the Aid Another action to grant a +2 to the save roll on a successful DC10 Heal check. That way another player (or more, if you allow it to stack) could help bring the player back into the game.
Yeh, I’d allow that.
greywulf´s last post: If you like Doctor Who and superheroes this is for you
@greywulf:
There’s already a mechanic for that, under the “First Aid” section of the Heal skill description. It’s the “Grant a Saving Throw” action:
Grant a Saving Throw: Make a DC 15 Heal check. If you succeed, an adjacent ally can immediately make a saving throw, or the ally gets a +2 bonus to a saving throw at the end of his or her next turn.
The immediate savings throw doesn’t get the benefit of the bonus, but since the bonus is untyped more than one character could help out before the affected character’s turn and stack up a huge cumulative bonus to the save. By late heroic tier, making a DC 15 check should be automatic for Clerics. Heal is a pretty good skill — it’s useful for more than just stabilizing a dying comrade.
Also, there are all kinds of Cleric and Warlord powers that grant savings throws or bonuses. I even think there’s a Paladin power or two that does that. I know there’s a Paragon Path in Martial Power that grants an immediate autosave for 10HP.
@Gary That’s what I get for suggesting things without checking the rulebooks first 😀 There you go. Sorted. I love how 4e has teamwork at it’s core. If you don’t work as a team, you suffer.
greywulf´s last post: If you like Doctor Who and superheroes this is for you
@greywulf:
There’s a lot in those books that tends to get glossed over on the first read. It’s taken me a while to get a real feel for the game and how the rules interact, but I’m a happy player and DM now. The game has flaws, for sure, but they’re not bad enough to affect my fun.
I like the current saving throw system in 4e. Sure, it sucks if you are the one who is incapacitated for two or three rounds, but that doesn’t happen too often. And for the GMs, it doesn’t seem to happen to their baddies too often. It happens just enough to where you really don’t want to be hit by the effect.
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I’m going to be instituting that action point success into my next session, and thereafter. Truly a great house rule.
I really like the saving throw system in 4e. It is way better than the ‘save or die’ crap that littered previous editions of the game. And while it does suck to be immobilized for 3-5 turns, at least you have a 55% chance of becoming un-immobilized each turn. Just remember low-level spells like Hold Person from D&D 2nd or 3.0 – you were immobilized for several turns with a 0% chance of becoming un-immobilized each turn. The new system is better.
Also, we have to remember that most of the status ailments aren’t so bad – they hinder you, but usually you can still do something during your turn. I think only stunned prevents you from doing anything at all on your turn. It is loads more fun to be able to do something, even if its not as effective as usual, than to do nothing.
Thanks for all the feeback everyone. I’ll just clarify a few points regarding my final opinion on saving throws and status ailments. First, I think the system is balances, but that the action point system can help alleviate the most potentially ‘unfun’ consequences of status ailments. Thinking about it another way, allowing someone to use an action point on ‘shaking off’ an unwanted effect (and then only when the DM deems that is dramatically appropriate, IE that the hero has probably been reeling for quite some time or the battle is going to turn) is still quite a success for an opponent.
My concern lies in whether or not they’re fun. Of that, I’m less convinced, but the status ailment is a mainstay of RPGs, the kind of sacred cow that cannot easily be slaughtered. In that regard, I also think they’re acceptable in this edition and ‘make sense’ in the context that the powers that cause them logically cause status ailments.
We actually had this problem with the rogue of our party being immobilized by those darn blue pots the Kobolds throw for most of the battle. She took 11 failed saving throws! It was totally frustrating, but you should have seen her when she finally rolled a 14! Halfling on steroids.
My group has seen “status ailments” as nothing more than another obstacle in their success. They have started developing tactics for countering most of these effects.
All things considered it has added to our fun. When Kobolds appear the rogue immediately shoots: “Shoot the freaking slinger!”, followed by a barrage of shurikens and magic missiles…
Which leaves my minions free to attack en masse… 😉
@ Gary
Thank you for what you said! We had a game where I changed a monster’s power to stun, and our Swordmage simply could not roll a save to get un-stunned. “Stun Lock” is meant to be a more powerful, crippling condition, and I made a mistake as a new 4e DM in using it that way.
However, once our cleric player (at the end of the game) dug out “Grant Saving Throw” (which is really, really nice, since it happens immediately if they want it, and every other party member can force ya to roll a save if you keep missing).
Also, as Mearls says, the DM has to keep a hand it in. If you see a stun or other really awful condition debilitating a PC, get out the Rule of Fun and let it auto-expire at the end of their next round, as if it was a short ongoing effect. Ignoring RAW for the sake of a player taken out or useless in the fight, now back in play, will earn you huge points and your players will appreciate you for it.
4e works amazingly for us, more than I ever expected, simply because so much of the system stays sound and whole, even if once in a while we ignore or bend RAW, and then come back to it.
Also, as Gary said, there is a lot of good, good stuff in the PHB alone, which my 3.x tired ole brain keeps missing. I didn’t realize how much I was tired of, and wanted a break from 3.5 until now, but I keep doing bad-habit things from 3.5 in my 4e games.
By the way, we also love that now, getting up from prone does not provoke OA.
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Not that I play any more (thanks, Maryland!), but when I read this… the first thing that came to mind was:
Maybe Warlords aren’t that bad afterall and… humans rock! 🙂
I think having a DM remind newer players to some of the more obscure options in combat (i.e. Aid Other, Grab/Hold, etc) goes a long way in alleviating these issues.
Also, not all ailments are lock-downs completely. A particular ailment can be particularly nasty to particular classes. i.e. Root won’t hamper a wizard or lock that much, but it could all but completely remove a warrior from the fight.