I’ve mentioned in older posts that D&D 4e seemed to go back to the roots of the game for simplicity of Game Prep and monster stats.
So far this has been true. At worse, game stats for level 30 creatures take one full column of the Monster Manual.
Such baddies are usually limited to 4-5 different powers, making playing them a lot easier than the previous edition.
(That in itself is not an objective improvement, but it sure is a subjective one. My needs as a DM playing late cycle D&D 3.5 was to get easier to create/improve/play monsters)
However, where 4e and the Original Dungeons and Dragons games (O.D&D and the Basic/Experts rulesets) differ a lot is the PC’s mechanical competence (both in and out of combat).
Old School
Let’s face it, in the old games, it was all about the environment and the monsters. PCs were a mere nuisance, a semi-serious threat to the average dungeon.
The game was a lot about dreading what was behind the next door and getting a thrill by trying to survive a fight against the three killer bees guarding the Magic Crown.
Sometimes, PCs were lucky and they just had to deal with an inventive trap/hazard that caused instant death in randomly-determined fashions.
Making it out alive of an evening of dungeon crawling was a feat that deserved to become legend. Players who actively wanted to increase their chance of successes needed to become creative enough to survive monsters that were far too powerful for them (like Ghouls, I mean is there a worse low level party killer?).
However, said creativity needed to be innovative and interesting because there was nothing more lethal to PCs than a bored DM. (And I feel that Gary Gygax hated being bored by players)
Bottom line, the old-school versions of D&D were about exploration first and foremost. The hardship of combat fostered creativity and made for awesome stories.
And there was great fun in that. That’s why these games still have adepts.
New Old School
As the game progressed, more emphasis on character competence evolved. Weapon proficiencies were introduced in the 2nd cycle of Adv. D&D’s life (Unearthed Arcana) giving fighters an edge in combat (and making fighting exciting and fun for them).
As the 90’s loomed, Non-weapon proficiencies appeared and D&D started its tortuous love/hate relationship with skill mechanics.
Somewhere between 2E’s PC kits and 3E’s release, the game’s mechanics shifted from fantastic exploration to heroic-fueled competence.
Nowhere is it more evident than seeing 1st level 4e characters perform feats of stealth, athletics and acrobatics that would put an AD&D level 6 Thief-Acrobat to shame.
The spotlight is now on the PCs. The stories come from the successes of the PCs and how they shape their characters through these successes.
The dungeons, monsters and traps are nothing more than papier-maché props arranged around the main actors to make them look good. Hell! The DM mechanics of the game actually remind me of playing with wire-frames on which you can put whatever fluff you feel like.
I absolutely love this about the game.
The Tyranny of Fun?
A word of warning though. As I’m starting to see people arguing quite vehemently that this enshrines the Tyranny of Fun. I have to strongly disagree.
Fun is not going through easy challenges and mirror poses to admire one’s awesomeness. If that’s what you are aiming at, or if that’s what you beleive that RPGs have become, I think you are missing the boat by a few miles.
Fun is important… but satisfaction is BETTER.
Satisfaction is working freaking hard, sweating bullets, getting a buildup of frustration, look failure in the eye, think about quitting AND THEN succeed! Bloodied, tired, but victorious.
Satisfied players go home thinking they had the best of time… Even if they were a bit grumpy about bad dice rolls or were complaining that they were all going to die.
As long as they managed to beat the challenges or lose with style while getting a healthy dose of hope to get sweet revenge later, they will be satisfied.
D&D 4e, in the hands of DMs that care about sharing fun moments with others is a game system that runs on satisfaction.
It might not be for everyone, but it fills a niche that needs be filled.
Do you agree or am I full of it?
Sound Off!
Agreed totally on the point about satisfaction. It’s about overcoming challenges and introducing tension into a game, which is a crucial part of a good game. It was definitely one of the stated goals of 4e to make combats more tense (that’s why monsters have more HP, for instance) instead of very swingy between too easy and too hard, since many 3.x DMs were ramping up the challenge levels on encounters anyway to try to hit that encounter sweet spot.
Whether it succeeds or not is another question, but the goal is a good one, and I think you nailed it.
Dave T. Games last blog post..Gaming in Ancient Rome
I think it should succeed. I’ve seen satisfaction crop it’s head it in the Game Day adventure… even in people who had no intention of switching to 4e.
While the adventure was surprisingly well written for an introductory adventure, it had weaknesses. In spite of them, it still managed to be a satisfying experience for most people who played it…If I can trust what I read online and what players told me.
You’re spot on, CDM. Any game system can be fun (sometimes, especially the bad ones!), but satisfaction takes effort on the part of the rules, the players and the DM. Get it right and you’ve got gaming memories that’ll last for years.
Classic D&D could be very satisfying to play, but that was mainly down to sheer darned enthusiasm and a willingness to wing it on the part of the players. AD&D just didn’t do it for me, at all. I felt it to be convoluted, unfun and far too stuck up it’s own ass to be playable, let alone a satisfying game. 3e is better – much, much better – but a large part of the fun is player focused rather than whole-group focused. Satisfying, yes – but DM’ing 3e is harder work than just playing the game.
4e gets it right.
Creating monsters is old-school again, not some PhD thesis project. Tossing together encounters is both fun and easy, and doesn’t feel like you’re juggling meaningless numbers (*cough* CR *cough*) for no good reason. Preparation is a pleasure again.
When it comes to playing 4e, it’s a blast. Out of combat, the players are enthused with the breath of fresh air any new rules system brings, and in combat it’s intense and very, very satisfying indeed.
Me? A convert.
Just a little 🙂
I agree. Satisfaction creates fun, and since fun is the goal, mission accomplished.
I can’t speak for actual satisfaction had in D&D 4e as of yet. My group is still running Keep on the Shadowfell, which I personally hate. It’s a wretched “first glance” of 4e. Ambush, ambush, fairly easy victory with a critter that ALWAYS escapes, massacre under the waterfall. We’ve run it twice since we had a TPK the first session. In 15 years of D&D gaming, I’ve never had a TPK. Part of it was due to getting used to the new paradigm of D&D encounters, but how is this a good introduction?
Kobolds are horrible critters to put in a first module. They only create player frustration. There’s no satisfaction after finishing an encounter. There is only a sense of “Oh thank christ. I hope we don’t run into more of those &*@#ers.” … yet you do. Consistently and repeatedly.
You don’t even have a chance to employ tactics in the first two encounters. They’re both ambushes which none of the pre-gen PCs can spot even with a natural 20. It’s horribly written. Our DM wanted to see what he could do if he truly took the side of the monsters. First round in the second ambush, the wizard died. -13. Then the Warlock dropped (we had the books by the second game – H1 round 2 – so some of us had made PCs). Then the Fighter and Paladin dropped. The cleric (me) managed to kill the last two and get heal checks in on those down. It’s ridiculous. And yes, we used encounter and daily powers. There’s something wrong when monsters with more hit points and have better attack and damage bonuses outnumber the PCs. +7s and +8s in a 1st level encounter?
I love the mechanics and new abilities, but H1 is horrible. I can’t imagine new gamers coming away from that module satisfied or pleased in any way. It can be an exercise in frustration for veterans, never mind novices.
Hey Rafe, Welcome on the blog if I missed one of your earlier appearance.
I shall make good note of this as I DM KoS.
I really am getting mixed signals from Player performance in KoS. Some get freaking creamed and yet I read about a 7 year old breezing through it (though he had help in the Irontooth fight from “good” kobold NPCs)
For sure playing with a Killer DM is bad news when monsters are now more or less on par with PCs (or stronger as is the case in the now infamous Irontooth encounter).
I think I shall play KoS strickly as a 4e test drive. I think I’ll be on the lookout for what WotC puts out as free adventures… I liked the 3.0 ones like Burning Plague a lot.
I agree, something that never really satisfied me about 3rd Edition was the Party vs. One Monster mechanic that seemed all too pervasive to me, the system even encouraged /forced you into this as a DM! There just wasn’t that much satisfaction in it for me…
Now with the emphasis on party vs. dynamic group of monsters, I think satisfaction and fun are greatly enhanced but it also forces players to think more, differently, and in interesting ways.
To me this “tyranny of fun” concept is just a boilding down or venting of frustrations with change. It seriously tries to argue that having ‘hold person’ cast on you was a good thing and just because it’s “not fun” it shouldn’t be changed / removed. They’re not arguing the typical / logical argument of “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” Instead they’re saying, “It’s broken but we like it that way because it’s always been broken.” What confuses me is how the baseline assumption became: if it is fixed, the game becomes worse.
Bartoneuss last blog post..Gaming in Ancient Rome
My reading of the tyranny of fun rants make me think of old school managers that honestly think that all employees are lazy and are afraid of hard work(and too many are still like that).
Similarly, the tyranny of fun arguments sound to me like it hinges on thinking that people are after easy, non interactive entertainment.
I think this is pure and highly cynical bullshit.
Workers and gamers, baring that they are not rotten apples to start with, will walk through fire if given the chance to succeed and be rewarded for the effort. I’ve seen it countless times as both a manager and a DM.
I’m with you 100%, brother. And here’s to one of the only gaming blogs I even read these days (some of the big others live in the 80’s, and I “grew up” in the 90’s, so this place is a breath of sweetly freshened air).
“There’s something wrong when monsters with more hit points and have better attack and damage bonuses outnumber the PCs. +7s and +8s in a 1st level encounter?”
Now, now Rafe. You’ve made a common mistake there, the bonuses to hit for 1st Level characters in 4th Edition are different now because all of the math has changed. Just because it feels high to you for a 1st Encounter is just a hold-over from previous editions, and has no real relation to how balanced the new system is.
It sounds to me like you had an overly brutal DM or under-performing PC’s. I’ve run the first group of encounters from KotS three times now, and the first portion of the Keep once, and never did we have more than two PC’s down at a time. Using the pre-gens a lot of that relies on the player who is the Cleric and how well they do with healing. The first group of Kobolds the module doesn’t specify getting a surprise round, so it’s technically not an “ambush”.
“Kobolds are horrible critters to put in a first module. They only create player frustration. There’s no satisfaction after finishing an encounter. There is only a sense of “Oh thank christ. I hope we don’t run into more of those &*@#ers.” … yet you do. Consistently and repeatedly.”
This is actually really funny, because it sounds exactly like what Chatty wrote above for Old school D&D. Maybe there’s hope afterall for the classic feel coming into 4E?
“You don’t even have a chance to employ tactics in the first two encounters.”
I interpret this as your party didn’t use tactics in the first two encounters, which might be the problem? Or the DM was just rolling amazingly, but seeing as you said you’ve run it twice I don’t know that is the case. Either way, your experience with KotS is vastly different from our several runs through the beginning of it. The reaction that the Kobolds have gotten out of you though, I think that’s perfect and priceless and really hope things like that happen to my players.
Bartoneuss last blog post..Gaming in Ancient Rome
I think you’re full of it.
@John Drake: Would you care to expand a bit on this? Where and how do you disagree? This here site has been, up until your comment, built on respectful arguments and lively discussions.
Hrm.
Different people like different mixes of fun. Some people want the hard challenge, others want the soft challenge, still others just want to blow off steam. As the rules change, some people will always be better served, and others will be less well served.
Has 4th edition hit closer to the majority tastes of it’s audience?
We’ll be able to guess soon enough, based on the success and style of the supplements and other “we have cash” signs.
Has 4th edition hit closer to my personal tastes?
On those nights when I want to whup a lot of ass casually, be a big damn hero, and probably have a beer at the table, you betcha. On other nights, when I want to work the mental muscles to obtain great vistory? Not so much.
Levi Kornelsens last blog post..Broken Places
@Solomon Fist: Welcome! Thanks for the compliment! I hope you enjoy my many ramblings.
@Bart: If only Rafe’s reaction to kobolds was ‘it was so awesome to kick their butts!’ I strongly suspect harsh/tactical-perfect DMing and sub optimal PC strategy.
@ Levi: Welcome on the blog. I discovered your website this morning when someone shared your RPG definition page.
As I tend to write for my own perception of what I find fun, I must say that you are entirely right.
It just so happens that this is probably a good 80% of our current RPG needs.
And we managed to squeeze a few mentally challenging adventures in this… but as everything about D&D or any other RPG, your milleage will vary.
It’s good to hear that people are sharing my stuff around; that’s what it’s there for (and it’s always kind of cool to talk to someone who has advertising on my site).
The beer-and-big-heroes? It’s awesome. I’m always up for that. I mean, unless I want to impress a lady gamer with my maturity, or try out some new stupidity I came up with, or… …well, okay, I’m usually up for it.
Levi Kornelsens last blog post..Broken Places
ah ha! I’m not the only one that thought the PCs didn’t stand a chance to avoid that ambush. Though I thought that there was one trained in perception that could spot the ambush with 20 roll.
I think satisfaction is a big part of where the fun comes in.
Heathers last blog post..D&D Nerdery – My First Adventure Conversion Part 4
If it wasn’t fun, then what is the point? Even from the DMing perspective, if it wasn’t fun to do the prep then we wouldn’t do it. We’d just sit back and play video games instead.
I don’t play 4e, and I doubt that I ever will, however if you sit back and think about how far the game has come, it is still based on stuff written back in the 70’s, and it is still relevant. It’s gotten a bunch of face-lifts but essentially it is still the same game. Two guys who never met before and play under different systems can sit back and talk about experiences for hours.
Most of the time we don’t talk about the time that we walked into a dragon’s den and wasted it. We talk about the time when we walked in and it slaughtered half the party, you were down to your last hp and if you failed to gain the initiative just one more time, then it would had won, but you made it! You made it by the skin of your teeth!
Sure I’ve had characters die, and I wasn’t to pleased about it, but thems the breaks. If winning is guaranteed, then did you really play a game? I think that as long as you remember that the game is sitting around with like minded folks, trying to solve problems with the items that are available to you, then you are going to have fun. Fun might be had screaming in defeat, or high fiving the guy next to you because you efficiently took out your enemy, but it all leads to fun. Fun is the name of the game!
Ripper Xs last blog post..Using Ranged Weapons In Melee Combat
>>> Now, now Rafe. You’ve made a common mistake there, the bonuses to hit for 1st Level characters in 4th Edition are different now because all of the math has changed. Just because it feels high to you for a 1st Encounter is just a hold-over from previous editions, and has no real relation to how balanced the new system is. <<>> It sounds to me like you had an overly brutal DM or under-performing PC’s. I’ve run the first group of encounters from KotS three times now, and the first portion of the Keep once, and never did we have more than two PC’s down at a time. Using the pre-gens a lot of that relies on the player who is the Cleric and how well they do with healing. The first group of Kobolds the module doesn’t specify getting a surprise round, so it’s technically not an “ambush”. <<>> I interpret this as your party didn’t use tactics in the first two encounters, which might be the problem? Or the DM was just rolling amazingly, but seeing as you said you’ve run it twice I don’t know that is the case. Either way, your experience with KotS is vastly different from our several runs through the beginning of it. The reaction that the Kobolds have gotten out of you though, I think that’s perfect and priceless and really hope things like that happen to my players. <<<
Sorry, you’ve misinterpreted me. What I meant was, both are ambushes. I.e., the PCs have no chance for initial, proactive strategy. It all becomes reactive. Which is ridiculous, considering that one of the points raised with 4e is the reliance on strategy, mobility and tactics. Having no chance to set up a pre-initiative roll strategy is NOT a good way to showcase those.
As I said, the DM played the kobolds exceptionally, and [rightfully] didn’t pull any punches. While we had some poor rolls (in one fight, we all blew our dailies with only 1 PC hitting), we were acquainted with the rules and such on the second round. We did much better, but I still stand by my opinion that kobolds are a horrible monster to introduce players to right off the bat. Their Shifty ability is difficult to counter, especially when 4 kobolds go right for your controller in the surprise round and kill him outright. Again, the strategy consists of reacting to the enemy at that point. However, the Wizard who died made another Wizard, and focused on battlefield control spells and that worked much better than an offense/damage build Wizard.
Anyhoo… I don’t mean to have a private conversation on ChattyDM’s blog; I simply wanted to address some of the points you raised. You’re certainly right in many respects but may have misunderstood me in others. Possibly, we just disagree. 🙂
Just read the links you provided. Very well written. Definate food for thought. For me, 4E is another game I’ve added to my collection, one with a different focus than 3.E. I’ll use it when I want a specific style of game (a friend commented that it sounds a lot like a pulp game, based on the gameplay we’ve seen so far).
@RipperX: I too love that the game is rich enough that we can discuss it over multiple editions and still find some common ground, Be it you (and various others) for 2e or Brian with Basic/Expert.
Heck I’m looking to seeing some of pathfinder RPG’s play reports.
The Tyranny of Fun, I think, raises its head in an easy trap to fall into when you’re running “later versions” (2e kinda, but certainly 3e+) of D&D. If the focus is on the PCs and the world revolves around them, it can be extremely disruptive to the game if even one of them dies.
(Or, hells, even if one of the players fails to show up, the game can be thrown into chaos. How much digital ink has been spilled on the idea of having a backup game in case not enough players show up for the scheduled RPG session?)
There’s a tension in the new versions of D&D between the assumed dangers of adventuring, and the assumed specialness of the PC heroes. The more the rules insist the PCs are special people, a cut above the common man, the more disruptive it is when the “Chosen Ones” get their collective hiney handed to them.
There are, of course, techniques for mitigating this conflict, and I imagine experienced DMs thread these shoals without any trouble at all. If you’re used to old-school play, where the emphasis is on the shared world rather than any particular PCs, 4e looks like an invitation to coddle the players. It doesn’t have to be, but I’ll bet there are some DMs, especially new ones, who fall into that trap.
As for getting slaughtered by kobolds, frankly, I think this is a serious potential pitfall for 4e. Before 4e, “teamwork” largely meant the cleric or wizard buffs the fighter before combat. 4e encourages the DM to work out coordinated tactics between the monsters to deal with the PCs. Just flipping through the monster manual will show you that. The PCs need coordinated tactics to punch at their assumed weight level, and that means they need to actively discuss and perform tactics that help them win. The social dynamics of this are perilous. Before, the party could just say, “Warrior Bob is blocking the kobolds from getting to Sorceress Sue.” Now, WB and SS actually have to coordinate their movements to make sure the kobolds are, in fact, being blocked. In this environment, the casual player who is primarily playing to hang out with friends can be deadly to a party.
Eh, sorry, this is running long, and I didn’t mean it to. Suffice it to say, 4e requires the exercise of both social and mental muscles that earlier editions of D&D didn’t tap much. If you’ve got a strong group dynamic and some tactical wargaming skill, you’ll be ok. But for a game that supposedly focuses more on challenging the characters over challenging the players, the tactical combat portion of the game sure seems to put a heavy burden on the folks gathered around the dining room table.
– Brian
Brians last blog post..The Other Brian Murphy Reviews Moldvay’s Basic D&D
@Brian: I think that avoidance of PC death is not so much a given of the Tyranny of Fun but more of a ‘return on time investment’.
If you spend hours making/leveling and playing a PC… having it killed stupidly is really hard to take stoically.
Old School PC didn’t require the same investment IIRC.
Char death is one of the aspects of the game where I go story telling on my players. A character should die if
a) player took too big a risk against common wisdom and dies because of it.
b) I agree with a player in advance that a character can die in a given scene (usually when the player feels it’s time to move on).
Rafe: “Their Shifty ability is difficult to counter, especially when 4 kobolds go right for your controller in the surprise round and kill him outright.”
I think that’s where the problems start, the DM was having the kobolds act far too effecitvely, intelligently, strategically, what have you. The Skirmisher and Wyrmpreist are the only ones that would initially go after the Wizard unless he’s running way out in front like any smart Wizard would (not). But I can definitely see your arguments when even one shift in the type of DM can hinder things so harshly. In a case like that, after a few adventures, that DM most likely will never have a Wizard player in his parties.
Didn’t you know that Chatty’s site is all about the personal conversations? 😀
Bartoneuss last blog post..Gaming in Ancient Rome
He’s right! You can discuss to your heart’s content… the rent here was paid for 2 years and I am nowhere near my bandwidth limit!
🙂
I am also getting the impression that teamwork is key in 4e D&D. I’m running my group through Keep on the Shadowfell, and we just had our first character death. (Wizard got ambushed by kobolds; in retrospect, the kobolds should have gone for the fighter first. Lesson learned.) Thing is, it would have been completely avoidable if he’d discussed his plan with the rest of the group. Previously mentioned fighter had an encounter power that would have prevented all the unpleasantness, but his player assumed that the wizard knew what he was doing and didn’t need help.
Hopefully, they’ll learn to handle the system, but I could definitely see it being a problem. Part of it is that the game’s been way combat-heavy — we’re here to test the system, after all — but I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on my less crunchy players, make sure they’re engaged and happy with the game, and not frustrated.
Oddyseys last blog post..Kobold Fury
@Oddysey: Good lesson there and excellent call on you watching your players for drops in fun levels.
Building on how character-oriented certain editions are, I think 4E corrects a problem I had with 2E & 3E D&D: it felt like PCs were held at arm’s length from epic heroism.
1. No more Save or Lose rolls to take any tale of solitary heroism seriously. (“Oh, so Throd the Barbarian single-handedly defeated the demon and saved the world? Not using this system.”)
2. No more Prep or Die. Well, not as much; I don’t expect to spend 3 hours buying magical items & 5 minutes buffing pre-battle in 4E. Planning has its place, but what hero wants to admit he only won a battle because of his magic items and a friendly wizard?
3. No more emphasizing the PCs really aren’t that good. This was an all-too-common theme, IMO, in older settings: “There was once a golden age where legendary heroes walked the earth, performing great deeds and aiding the Gods themselves. You are NOT them…”
I don’t know whether the default 4E world will follow that tack, but their decision to sweep most of the uber-NPCs from FR out of the spotlight so the PCs could get a shot gives me hope.
4e clearly makes a statement that PCs are at worst, exceptional beings.
No more getting slaughtered by city guards.
However, I wonder just how well it can deal with an Evil campaign, what with all the ways a PC can dodge the law and trounce anything remotely ‘normal’!
Of course in an Evil campaign, the forces of good are going to be exceptionally competent and the prisons are going to be Warlock/Eladrin/Shadar-Kai proof.
Chatty-
No more getting slaughtered by city guards.
Hee, see, I’ve been designing low level tactical response teams for dealing with the unstoppable adventurer menace in 3.5 cities.
My best unit so far is 5 to 10 man special weapon squads selected for dexterity, trained in improved initiative, and armed with spell tiles (a potion/wondrous item cross from Complete Arcane, could easily be made just pure wondrous items) with single uses of Ray of Enfeeblement.
The tiles cost out at 50 gp each retail, provide a non-lethal ranged touch attack that doesn’t allow a saving throw, and can, in sufficient numbers, drop a high level character in one round. (A somewhat more expensive item that provides true strike and ray of enfeeblement gives a 5 man squad decent odds of stopping someone with a str of 22 in one round.)
@Michael: I like how people take the constructs of the game’s rule and come with in game elements to deal with PCs gone bad.
It reminds me of my players raiding a Lawful Good Religious Vault… Possibly my best D&D 3.5 session ever!
Chatty-
It always seemed to me that large cities would develop anti-adventurer swat teams. Especially in settings like Eberron where utility magic is common, but high level characters are very uncommon. I see Sharn having all sorts of rapid response/special weapons and tactics teams on hand for the occasional rampage.
Then you can start subverting the Godzilla trope and have a scenario where a LE lord-Mayor sends all his weapons against the PCs who defend themselves but end up destroying most of the city in the wake of the conflict.
Hmmm…. food for thought…. With 4e, making such weapons/teams is going to be a real snap!
The tiles cost out at 50 gp each retail, provide a non-lethal ranged touch attack that doesn’t allow a saving throw, and can, in sufficient numbers, drop a high level character in one round. (A somewhat more expensive item that provides true strike and ray of enfeeblement gives a 5 man squad decent odds of stopping someone with a str of 22 in one round.)
Actually… they can’t.
RoE does not do ability damage, which would stack. It gives a penalty to your ability score. The penalty is untyped, and would stack with other similar penalties, but a penalty will not stack with a second penalty from the same source (the RoE spell).
So the max you’ll do is 1d6+1 Strength penalty. Hit them with enough, and you’ll max it to 7, but that’s all.
What you want is a few Ray of Enfeeblement tiles (to try to maximise the penalty), followed by at least two Ray of Exhaustion ones.
Even if the PC makes his save against the first Ray of Exhaustion, he’s still fatigued. Once the second one hits, he’s automatically exhausted (-6 penalty to Str/Dex, which stacks with Ray of Enfeeblement)
This way, you can slow the target, and take his Str down by 13 (max).
Still not enough to take down the Str 22 guy, but potentially enough to make him give up.
Ah, the short description lists it as strength damage.
Hum…
Well, damn, that was the least lethal take down for both sides. And one of the cheapest.
Let’s see, modify it to uses a use an activated wondrous item with both maximize and empower, by a hired caster who was trained in arcane thesis, making it a 4th level spell, so the end cost is 7*4*50 or 1400gp for a 7+(1d6+1)*1.5 str penalty, no save, but that’s only going to average out to 13.75 str points with a minimum of 10 points and a maximum of 17… (That is the interpretation that the PHB reading of those two feats suggests, and the arcane thesis is on a per metamagic feat basis according to wizards customer support.) Avg 13.75 str penalty isn’t really good enough. Mutter.
Yeah, a lot of the other ones are more expensive, less reliable, and more likely to yield collateral damage. (True Strike Potions, Crossbows pre loaded with bolts smeared with your cost-benefit analysis’s choice of poison, handed to the CBA’s choice number of people. None of the not too horribly expensive poisons have DCs that are particularly effective against mid to high level characters, and the best of the cheap ones are particularly deadly, being constitution based and requiring a pin-cushion effect to work.
Skip the poisons. Nothing affordable has a save that a 15th level character is likely to be unable to laugh off (and most of them would require a 1 on a d20 to fail) So we are talking hordes of archers, not a special weapons team and costs that would allow you to field some seriously heavy gear, as well as requiring an assassin or similar poison using class on your permanent pay roll.
You need sphere of annihilation launchers and players not prone to think about the related Fridge Logic issues 🙂
Oh and Micheal, your posts have now decreased to a 5% Spamminess index as per determined by Defensio… You should be good within a few comments.
😀
I just wanted to say that this has been a great place for letting me know just what kind of game 4e will deliver, when I get it :P, and how it can be fun.
As for the Tyranny of Fun argument out there. I’m starting to learn not to sweat it. As someone who apparently loves both the new and old school pretty equally, I’ve learned to start tuning in to all of the positive words that are being sent out for both sides.
@James V: Rock on! Welcome on the blog and good philosophy. I’m still waiting for some minions to start churning 4e compatible Random tables (Asmor has started) and I’d be in gaming heaven!
No more getting slaughtered by city guards.
Have we seen stats for city guards yet? If PCs are getting TPKed by kobolds, and those city guards are keeping the kobolds out, it stands to reason that the guards ain’t exactly pushovers.
Or maybe I just spend too much time at my fridge. 😉
– Brian
Brians last blog post..Wrestling with Skill Challenges
Actually, Mike, the minimum for that one is 14, maximum 19. The caster is minimum level 7, so the penalty is 9+(1d6+3)*1.5
That’s plenty for casters, and couple it with a couple rays of exhaustion for most non-casters (total 20-25 str penalty).
For fighter-types, if that isn’t enough, just pelt them with some strength poison until they fall (taking 20 in reverse, essentially they are bound to roll a 1), or hit them with lots of will save spells. Hold Person and Charm Person are cheap enough.
But no, if Ray of Enfeeblement worked that way, no wizard PC would ever, ever prepare anything but RoE, Quickened RoE, Empowered RoE, and Maximised RoE. In every spell slot, up to level 9 (Quickened Empowered Maximised RoE (with Arcane Thesis))
None of the NPCs in Winterhaven have stats unless they are planned to be killed at some point… city guards don’t have them.
In the Monster Manual a Human Guard is a level 3 soldier. So that pair of human guard aren’t such a challenge to a level 1 party… (Altough they can be nasty with a Halbard)
Yup, definitively too long in the fridge. 🙂
Yeah, but they have the power to mark you and knock you prone. A gang of these guys, especially backed up by a pair of berserkers and a mage, could be a challenge for PCs up through 5th or 6th level, I think.
I think the PCs won’t be able to ignore the city guard as long as they’re in the heroic tier. After that, of course, it’s a whole ‘nother story.
– Brian
Brians last blog post..Wrestling with Skill Challenges
So minimum squad: 5 man
5 potions of true strike (250 gp)
2 widgets of maximized empowered ray of enfeeblement. (2800 gp)
3 widgets of ray of exhaustion (2250gp)
Poison would be nice, but I’m afraid the cost of even cheap poisons would get more prohibitive than the above magic items, and you’ll have to field huge teams of crossbow men to apply it.
The cheapest Str injury poison is Medium Spider Venom at 150 gp/shot. Assuming an AC of only 30, even with 50 gp/person for true strike potions, 1st level warriors will miss 45% of their shots. The save is dc14, so pretty much fail on a one for a 15th level fighter. Damage is 1d4 str. With 20 hits, there is only about a 65% chance of 1 success. That is approximately 37 crossbow men. 7,400 gp on special equipment, not to mention almost 7 times as much manpower as the initial assault, most of whom could well die if anything goes wrong. This of course assumes that you only need to do the 1-4 str damage supplied by 34 people and that a 65 percent success rate is sufficient. You are going to need backup squads. (If rogue adventurers are a serious problem, it might be worth investing in permanent magic items that do these things.
I guess the city could raise spiders. They still need a poison specialist on retainer to prep the weapons squads though.
That all brings up a pretty interesting question… should the town guards be a threat to the PCs?
If they’re not a threat, then there’s no “big stick” you can bring down if the PCs decide to start breaking laws in town. On the other hand, is it really fun to have badass town guards everywhere that can shut the PCs down when they honestly slip up? Is there a disconnect between using badass guards in one scenario and mook guards in the other?
Hmmmm…
Dave T. Games last blog post..Inq. of the Week: Funny Gaming Quotes CONTEST
David
As long as you do it in the right order, you can have big stick town guards and mook town guards.
Let the PCs beat up the guards a time or two. If they persist in their anti-social behavior, then you mobilize the elite guards, either a special weapons team from the town (if it is large enough), mercenaries hired to deal with the PCs, the elite guard of the local lord, or what have you, escalating up the chart until you hit the right level of obligation to bring in appropriately elite troops.
Also, unless the Guard is particularly corrupt and disliked, the PCs can have some social controls set. Ritual sellers either jack up their prices or refuse to do business, kids pelt them with rotten fruit, if they get bad enough, they are targeted by other adventuring bands. Their major opposition gets public sympathy if not support. Inn keepers look the other way when the local guild thieves rob them blind, etc.
I look at it from a Batman point of view (Superman at high levels).
The police don’t have the ability to take down Batman 1-on-1, but a gang of them could stand a shot. Even that couldn’t take down Superman.
But they don’t need to. Batman and Superman rarely need to be “taken down”. If something goes wrong, Batman talks to the mayor, says “Yeah, sorry about that. I should have used my Batarang.” and goes on his way.
Because it’s far more beneficial to the city to let Batman and Superman destroy some property occasionally than to spend the resources required to get them off the streets, and no longer fighting bad guys.
In a “Good” campaign I run, the PCs will be given a decent amount of freedom to screw up, since the general population couldn’t do what they do. If they start to actively terrorise the town, they will be dealt with. But if they merely cause the tavern to burn down while fighting off the armies of orcs, they still fought off the armies of orcs.
Re: Town Guards
Concerning town guards being Lvl. 3: remember, it’s easy to increase a monster by up to 5 levels, so the elite troops could be Lvl. 8 guards, with a mage or cleric tossed in. That would be a challenge even for low-Paragon PCs if they attack en masse.
4E handwaves a lot of the rituals used to summon creatures, making it easy for GMs to have NPCs use them without players arguing details. Major cities could have ritual scrolls for summoning crack teams of eladrin. Or calling down angels. Or animating golems.
For major protection, take a tip from the MM and have a Godforged Colossus as the secret guardian of the city. Imagine the Statue of Liberty coming to life and smacking around hooligans.
@ Graham
…More beneficial, if the government’s goal is to keep the city as safe as possible. If the government’s run by a control freak who can’t stand independent operatives, he might not care about wiping out 2 or 3 towns while trying to break the heroes.
Howdy
You said: @John Drake: Would you care to expand a bit on this? Where and how do you disagree? This here site has been, up until your comment, built on respectful arguments and lively discussions.
OK, for one thing I was not being particularly negative, as you ended your blog with the question of whether or not the reader thought you were full of it or not. I thought the former. Sorry if it upset you or if you did not expect to receive a non supportive response. I admit it was brief and (upon reflection) terse, so I apologise. I then had to leave for work. C’est la vie.
So to expand: the spot light has always been on PC’s ever since OD&D. A new edition is not going to fix that or change it for that matter. The DM should not be relegated to being some crazy entertainer, just to buff the egos of players.
Comparing D&D 4e to AD&D … you said:->(Nowhere is it more evident than seeing 1st level 4e characters perform feats of stealth, athletics and acrobatics that would put an AD&D level 6 Thief-Acrobat to shame.)<–
IMHO, I think is ridiculous. Nothing against 4e ( as I do think it is a good game) but it is not the same style of game AD&D was. Nor is AD&D at all like 4e. It is like trying to compare the 2008 Red Wings players with the Canadiens of ’54. A different style of game play in a different time.
So it was really your comparisons of two distinctly different era’s of game design and game play that bugged me.
@John Drake: Fair enough, no harm done and thanks for coming back to explain your position.
Having played Red Box, AD&D (extensively), 3e and read/tried 4e I stand by what I said based on my feelings of the time and what I see now.
I agree that they are vastly different beasts, albeit with common roots… While 4e has been touted as ‘old-school like’ by some (including me) I discover that they remain vastly differ about many things… Competence as granted by rules is one of them.
That being said, I concede that our perception of the role of the DM may differ… But if you don’t think a DM’s job is to make the game fun for your group (fun being defined by common accord within each group, NOT by shining players’ ego to a buff without a hefty effort on thier part) then we sit in opposite sides of the DM slide.
Then again, I seriously doubt we are that different, except in our personal definition of fun.
I’m cool with that and I’d love to read a contrarian view and compare notes.
Hey no prob.
Chatty said: That being said, I concede that our perception of the role of the DM may differ… But if you don’t think a DM’s job is to make the game fun for your group (fun being defined by common accord within each group, NOT by shining players’ ego to a buff without a hefty effort on thier part) then we sit in opposite sides of the DM slide.
Not at all. Of course it the DM’s job to run a game that he and his player’s enjoy. I just do not think it is the be all and end all that the game should sqaurely cater to whatever the player’s want, without fair consideration to the fellow who takes the time and effort to run a game so others have a good time. The “fun” should be reciprocal.
Hell yeah John. One of the things I tend to forget to point out is that the DM is a player too and should be part of the group definition of fun.
Unless ‘fun’ for the DM is mercilessly slaying PCs…
🙂
I’ve played with DM’s who didn’t think the purpose of the game was for everyone to have fun. I haven’t ever played a third game with such a dm. (I’ll give a dm a second game in order to make sure it isn’t just a bad day. Except for the one guy who ever ran In Nomine for me. He annoyed me so greatly that when I finally managed to escape the game I vowed to never come back.
Michael Phillipss last blog post..Totally OMG
I agree about the Tyranny a bit with my favourite word. “BUT”.
See, Fun is in the eye of the beholder. And those things kill you. PC’s in my games know that the house rules include skill tests, and a few throwback to 3 and 3.5 where it needs clarification to a rules heavy system. But 4th just GIVES people things. It’s the theory of people getting rewards for just showing up. So, we change some of the GENERAL rules to specific player/ game world rules. It stops some lawyering and makes players feel like they’ve EARNED stuff. We use a Social Status thing (basically the half level thing plus some points for missions and things you do for them- it’s rep grinding, but if you cover the MECHANICS in the game, it’s all good).
I think the depth they took out DOES make things easier, but that means that in order to keep it a high par game, the DM has a LOT of work to do to make it their own. I batter and beat my players. one of them that has fairly good defences and hit points manages to get hit HARD just by the dice rolling. They barely survive, and are terrified of dying because Ressurections are NOT as prolific as in normal 4e.
BUT they come back. Wether it’s to find out where one of the other thieves they couldn’t catch went, or to kill that jerk who just maimed them, or to just go drinking a lot in the bars, they want what they’ve EARNED, not just what they can be given.
*should the town guards be a threat to the PCs? *
no. yes. if you stat it they will kill it.
Basically, think of how town guards work- they are supposed to reflect the spirit of the city. in a chaotic city, could they all be “bought” into protecting people more? in an evil city, who really runs them? Wouldn’t they want a LOT of Minions and then one or 2 leads per 8 or so to just mob people down?
I break mine down as per skill. Lvl 1=Club, then crossbow. they grow a bit more as PC’s are getting stronger so that 4th lev= swords, and archers, then mages, and then commanders and specialists. once you pass their level, they become Minions of that level- so they CAN still peg you for law and rule breaking. If they NEED to. If the Mages of the city pull them back because they run a mysterious conclave with HUGE power?
@Dan: My definition of fun broaches no argument: It is what we, as a group, have defined as giving us the motivation to show up every two weeks to play the game.
To that effect, I’m happy to see that you created your own amalgam of rules and options that, I hope, leads to the highest level of fun in your group.
It works for me so far.
Everything else goes back to my first sentence. You can’t argue if everyone around the table agrees about what constitutes a fun game. When that’s not there, players magically vanish and DMs run out of ideas and everyone plays Rockband instead 🙂