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ascendance posted:I notice I'm not going into the 4e thread and making GBS threads all over it. Well, you shouldn't. Continue making GBS threads in this thread with the rest of us, that's what it's here for.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:52
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Grimpond posted:your argument still seems to consist of "Rituals don't let me break the game mechanics, therefore bad" I'm arguing that D&D 4e works really well for a specific style of encounter driven game, with a lot of set piece battles against a variety of cool and interesting monsters. It is specifically designed not to veer too far away from that, and to essentially limit the ability of players to make major, long lasting changes to the game world. It's essentially presupposes a sitcom, or Marvel comics style of world, where things stay pretty much the same, except for the cosmic threat of the week. But more seriously, making long lasting changes to the game world is what makes RPGs more fun than a CRPG. People work together and shape a larger narrative, that's more than the sum of its parts.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:54
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What kind of rear end in a top hat runs a game as a static and unchanging world where the players don't get any story input?
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Sep 20, 2014 04:00
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Manufacture permanent items: Get a blacksmith to build a fancy item you want, then use the transfer enchantment ritual to give it all of the magic item attributes you wanted from old, unwanted loot. Raise undead army: Undead Servitor feat is close, with DM aid or homebrew you can probably scale up to a stronger, more toothy version. However, the de-emphasis on using monsters to fight monsters due to how player and enemy math scales means this isn't too likely of an option. I'll cede that one to you with the caveat that a good DM could easily come up with something. By taking gamebreaking nonsense out of the rulebooks, it can be much more easily used for creative plot points, rewards, and climactic story moments. Nobody gives a drat about making a zombie army in 3.5 because any necromancer worth his salt can do it between 8 hour rests. Doing it in 4E, meanwhile, could serve as the capstone to a long,hard quest in a very unique and cool way. THAT is the kind of "ask your DM" we need more of: cool story possibilities, not basic rule determination. I won't argue 4E's rules are best for encounter-by-encounter fights and tactical wargame style skirmishes, but there's absolutely nothing in 3.5 providing any alternative as far as story goes. Its just that they've taken a system full of nothing and codified the part that makes up 90% of the game while, leaving the rest of nothing all the more bare by comparison. The DM always had to fill in parts like plots, locations, and conversations with NPCs. I really don't see the difference whatsoever. Also, your players can easily make lasting changes on the world. If your quests don't have lasting consequences but your day by day spell uses do, you've got things majorly twisted. The Bee fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 04:01
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ascendance posted:I'm arguing that D&D 4e works really well for a specific style of encounter driven game, with a lot of set piece battles against a variety of cool and interesting monsters. It is specifically designed not to veer too far away from that, and to essentially limit the ability of players to make major, long lasting changes to the game world. It's essentially presupposes a sitcom, or Marvel comics style of world, where things stay pretty much the same, except for the cosmic threat of the week. man, what kind of 4e did you play where you didn't get to be part of a larger narrative? that's pretty lame if it happened like that
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Sep 20, 2014 04:07
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ascendance posted:I'm arguing that D&D 4e works really well for a specific style of encounter driven game, with a lot of set piece battles against a variety of cool and interesting monsters. It is specifically designed not to veer too far away from that, and to essentially limit the ability of players to make major, long lasting changes to the game world. It's essentially presupposes a sitcom, or Marvel comics style of world, where things stay pretty much the same, except for the cosmic threat of the week. Whether or not the game mechanics focus on those kinds of fights has nothing to do with whether or not you can make lasting changes to the world. You don't have to cause zombie apocalypses or try to wipe cities off the map with magical storms to have narrative impact. The game rules don't actually tell you how to apply the outcome of your encounters to the world at large, that's up to the people at the table. If you have a bunch of people with no imagination, I could see why you'd need ridiculously powerful and explicitly laid out 'this thing changes the world' spells to help you out.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:08
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Grimpond posted:man, what kind of 4e did you play where you didn't get to be part of a larger narrative? that's pretty lame if it happened like that
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Sep 20, 2014 04:12
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Really Pants posted:What kind of rear end in a top hat runs a game as a static and unchanging world where the players don't get any story input? Sounds like someone plays a lot of 40k! Or, you know, has a really lovely DM.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:13
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PeterWeller posted:Because having a castle and an army to put in it is pretty sweet. Because gaining that stuff gave high level warriors and rogues their own sort of narrative power alongside the crazy high level magic. Because D&D hasn't just been about dungeon crawling since Dragons of Despair came out. If you say one more bad thing about Power of Faerun I WILL FIGHT YOU.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:14
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ascendance posted:4e kind of ignores one of the best features of BECMI - that maybe, after a certain point, your character might want to do something other than go into dungeons and look for bigger and bigger numbers. Nobody ever used those rules, though. Prior to the release of ACKS, the only people I knew who ever did the whole lords-and-followers thing only did it as a backdrop in the downtime between actual adventures. If anything ACKS was kind of a revelation in that it at least tried to make that part of the game interesting and directly integrate it into the part of the game you actually played, instead of abiding by the unrealistic OD&D/1e assumption that you'd effectively retire your character once you hit double-digit levels. When 4e excised the vestigial high-level non-adventuring domain systems, it was at least being honest about the fact that those rules were largely an unused legacy mechanic that took up space that could instead be used on content that was relevant to more that ~5% of players.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:15
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S.J. posted:Whether or not the game mechanics focus on those kinds of fights has nothing to do with whether or not you can make lasting changes to the world. You don't have to cause zombie apocalypses or try to wipe cities off the map with magical storms to have narrative impact. Edit: Miracleman poo poo, or Fantastic Four as written by Jonathan Hickman poo poo. ascendance fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 04:15
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ascendance posted:I played LFR, lol. I think that says it all. Also, played in a long running campaign by a pretty experienced DM who may have written at least one supplement for 4e, a book of game mastering advice, and several other products of note. However, in the latter game, I felt it was a lot of reacting to constantly unfolding crises, rather than, y'know, doing a lot of player driven stuff. But that's his style. Aww, that sucks. My 4e was a nice campaign where the group I was in eventually became a leading mercenary company, with a keep for doing stuff in between adventures, which were either "personal" for character stuff, or "paid work" to move to the next part of the campaign
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Sep 20, 2014 04:16
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Grimpond posted:man, what kind of 4e did you play where you didn't get to be part of a larger narrative? that's pretty lame if it happened like that Evidently he skipped reading Reavers of Harkenwold. Ever.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:18
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ascendance posted:I played LFR, lol. I think that says it all. Also, played in a long running campaign by a pretty experienced DM who may have written at least one supplement for 4e, a book of game mastering advice, and several other products of note. However, in the latter game, I felt it was a lot of reacting to constantly unfolding crises, rather than, y'know, doing a lot of player driven stuff. But that's his style. So you are blaming the system for not allowing large scale narratives, when you played in a series of modules designed to be played casually with drop in and out groups with minimal continuity, and with a DM who's style was to not do large scale narratives. gtrmp posted:Nobody ever used those rules, though. Prior to the release of ACKS, the only people I knew who ever did the whole lords-and-followers thing only did it as a backdrop in the downtime between actual adventures. If anything ACKS was kind of a revelation in that it at least tried to make that part of the game interesting and directly integrate it into the part of the game you actually played, instead of abiding by the unrealistic OD&D/1e assumption that you'd effectively retire your character once you hit double-digit levels. When 4e excised the vestigial high-level non-adventuring domain systems, it was at least being honest about the fact that those rules were largely an unused legacy mechanic that took up space that could instead be used on content that was relevant to more that ~5% of players. Agreed. I've played everything from AD&D onwards and no one I've ever known used the high level castle/theives guild/druid circle/mage tower/temple bullshit. Apart from the fact that it basically splits the party up, it just loving boring. Oh great, I now have a castle with 100D6 serfs, D4x30 spearmen, D3+34 crossbowmen and a bunch of rolls to generate some level 4 fighters that are my "captains". Cool, now I have to pay for this poo poo. And this is meant to "balance" the wizards spellbook how exactly - considering he has just erected his wizard tower in the village and has D45 halved level 1-3 apprentices. Mr Beens fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 04:18
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Arivia posted:Evidently he skipped reading Reavers of Harkenwold. Ever. Actually, I have no idea what that is. I'll look it up though!
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Sep 20, 2014 04:20
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Grimpond posted:Aww, that sucks. My 4e was a nice campaign where the group I was in eventually became a leading mercenary company, with a keep for doing stuff in between adventures, which were either "personal" for character stuff, or "paid work" to move to the next part of the campaign
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Sep 20, 2014 04:20
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Did I alone get the version of the rulebook with Epic Destinies?
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Sep 20, 2014 04:23
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moths posted:Did I alone get the version of the rulebook with Epic Destinies? You mean the ones that have awesome sounding fluff, but basically give you some powers that make you more effEctive in a combat encounter? Compare that to Runequest, where at high levels, you can fundamentally rewrite the myths of your culture in order to create lasting friendship between two peoples.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:28
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moths posted:Did I alone get the version of the rulebook with Epic Destinies? Those don't count because they don't have tables with the costs of erecting curtain walls in different materials. edit: called it.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:30
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Arivia posted:Those don't count because they don't have tables with the costs of erecting curtain walls in different materials. Epic Destinies? oh man, forget those, let's jump straight to what the powers it gives me do and ignore everything else, that stuff doesn't matter
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Sep 20, 2014 04:36
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Epic Destinies only give combat stuff! *takes Thief of Legend, has almost no combat based powers but instead can literally steal your lovely opinions*
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Sep 20, 2014 04:38
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MonsterEnvy posted:Well the Bandits and Cultists are just normal humans. They are templates that can be added to a race to make them cooler. The rest of your post makes good points. I don't entirely agree with them, but I get it. Can you explain what you mean here? They look like fully statted out monsters intended to be used as-is - the HotDQ module even references their statblocks specifically. Am I missing something? Bhaal posted:I agree with you but wanted to say that the shift/slide mechanic and flanking definitions are what accounted for about 75% of combat slowdown in our 4e games and while that style of play has its place I don't think I'll miss it. What it should have done was create the feeling of a mad and frenetic melee, but instead always turned into slow and orchestrated waltz because if I shift here and then slide him there then that will get the cleric OUT of flanking for at least one turn and their caster is now set up for our rogue but next turn he could get piled on so maybe if instead YOU shift here on your turn then I'll shift here instead and slide that person over there and that way.... Yeah I completely agree. My point wasn't that 5E should've kept all of 4E's fiddly poo poo. My point was that the Pack Tactics feature specifically is very much a 4E-style movement and positioning based mechanic in a game system that essentially stripped out all the other stuff that could've interacted with it. The feature could read "Sometimes, at the DM's option, when there's more than one kobold, they attack with advantage" and it would have exactly the same practical effect in play - there's almost nothing your players can do to prevent it from occurring. ascendance posted:You mean the ones that have awesome sounding fluff, but basically give you some powers that make you more effEctive in a combat encounter? Compare that to Runequest, where at high levels, you can fundamentally rewrite the myths of your culture in order to create lasting friendship between two peoples. I'm missing something here, clearly. What about 5E's rules enables this kind of behavior, especially for rogues and fighters and the like? Okay, wizards have Wish and clerics have Divine Intervention, but most 5E archetypes have no more narrative-changing power than they did in 4E. Perhaps even less - at least Epic-tier 4E fighters could literally die and just show up again a bit later on because they were an immortal warrior or whatever. If you're a 5E Champion or Battlemaster, your capstone feature is either to regenerate (but only above half health) at the start of each of your turns, or to gain one additional superiority die at the start of a combat encounter (but only if you're out). Truly, a worldshaking level of narrative power. branar fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 04:39
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ascendance posted:You mean the ones that have awesome sounding fluff, but basically give you some powers that make you more effEctive in a combat encounter? Compare that to Runequest, where at high levels, you can fundamentally rewrite the myths of your culture in order to create lasting friendship between two peoples. ProfessorCirno posted:Epic Destinies only give combat stuff! I see our friend has yet to be acquainted with The Best Destiny.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozYg8vDTmkc LightWarden fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Sep 20, 2014 |
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Sep 20, 2014 04:43
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ProfessorCirno posted:Epic Destinies only give combat stuff! 
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Sep 20, 2014 04:45
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What are you guys doing with your games where anything about the game mechanics have such heavy bearing on the storytelling?
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Sep 20, 2014 04:46
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branar posted:I'm missing something here, clearly. What about 5E's rules enables this kind of behavior, especially for rogues and fighters and the like? Okay, wizards have Wish and clerics have Divine Intervention, but most 5E archetypes have no more narrative-changing power than they did in 4E. Perhaps even less - at least Epic-tier 4E fighters could literally die and just show up again a bit later on because they were an immortal warrior or whatever. If you're a 5E Champion or Battlemaster, your capstone feature is either to regenerate (but only above half health) at the start of each of your turns, or to gain one additional superiority die at the start of a combat encounter (but only if you're out).
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Sep 20, 2014 04:47
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mango sentinel posted:What are you guys doing with your games where anything about the game mechanics have such heavy bearing on the storytelling? Playing 3e. Ever. 3e is the kind of game where they specifically called out elements as being like "no really THIS ONE is okay to make up whatever you want with as a DM, even though that's normally anathema. it's okay, you can ignore the rules for this one. shhh, don't cry. it'll be okay. you can do it. shhh."
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Sep 20, 2014 04:53
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LightWarden posted:I see our friend has yet to be acquainted with The Best Destiny. I always liked Hordemaster just 'cause the death mechanic was so bizarre. Basically Your Biggest Fan takes your place if you die and has all of your skills/memories/experiences because he stalked you so hard.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:53
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ascendance posted:it comes down to feeling 5e is a more open ended game, where the focus as a DM isnt on creating varied encounters, and creating reasons to string awesome action setpieces together. What the gently caress is wrong with that? OH NO I NEED TO PUT MORE COOL poo poo IN MY GAME THAT'S FUN FOR ME AND MY PLAYERS OH WOE
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Sep 20, 2014 04:54
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mango sentinel posted:What are you guys doing with your games where anything about the game mechanics have such heavy bearing on the storytelling? That's kind of what I'm complaining about. Game mechanics in 4e feel so disconnected from the storytelling.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:55
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ascendance posted:That's kind of what I'm complaining about. Game mechanics in 4e feel so disconnected from the storytelling. How is that different in other editions? For real, I'm asking because I haven't played any except for a couple sessions of 5e and that Dark Dungeons BECMI thing.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:57
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Arivia posted:What the gently caress is wrong with that? OH NO I NEED TO PUT MORE COOL poo poo IN MY GAME THAT'S FUN FOR ME AND MY PLAYERS OH WOE But that ends up being focus of the game. And right now, I want to play a game where the central focus is on the political economy of a Gilded Age Ottoman empire, undergoing severe disruption due to the accumulation of capital.
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Sep 20, 2014 04:59
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Generic Octopus posted:How is that different in other editions? For real, I'm asking because I haven't played any except for a couple sessions of 5e and that Dark Dungeons BECMI thing. It seems like unhappiness that there was a lack of things like spell levels ala pathfinder or 3.5 where you can literally reshape the world with codified effects, with the only thing stopping you being DM fiat.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:02
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Generic Octopus posted:How is that different in other editions? For real, I'm asking because I haven't played any except for a couple sessions of 5e and that Dark Dungeons BECMI thing. Well, other editions of the game have struck different compromises between how much the game rules are meant to create a fun game with a variety of options for players, and how much the game rules are meant to simulate the physics of the game world, with 3e and it successors (3.5 and Pathfinder) taking the latter approach to idiotic levels. But actually, most of my formative gaming experiences were through various White Wolf games, including Vampire and Exalted. I totally think game rules should have a strong impact on storytelling. Mechanics incentivize certain modes of play.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:03
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ascendance posted:But that ends up being focus of the game. And right now, I want to play a game where the central focus is on the political economy of a Gilded Age Ottoman empire, undergoing severe disruption due to the accumulation of capital. For the life of me, I have no idea how 3.5 or 5E does this better than 4E other than any combat sections in between not being much less interesting. Yes, powers make fighting the focus of the game to a degree. So does the fact that one of the flagship four classes is literally FIGHTER, MAN WHO FIGHTS THINGS.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:05
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Mr Beens posted:Agreed. I've played everything from AD&D onwards and no one I've ever known used the high level castle/theives guild/druid circle/mage tower/temple bullshit. My group in middle school was all about followers and strongholds. When the wizard's mentor was kidnapped by Red Plumes, it was the fighters' armies that sieged Hillsfar and got him back. They muscled themselves quite a nice little country centered around Phlan with all those troops and the thieve's spy ring.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:06
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Grimpond posted:It seems like unhappiness that there was a lack of things like spell levels ala pathfinder or 3.5 where you can literally reshape the world with codified effects, with the only thing stopping you being DM fiat.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:06
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ascendance posted:And right now, I want to play a game where the central focus is on the political economy of a Gilded Age Ottoman empire, undergoing severe disruption due to the accumulation of capital. There is literally no version of D&D that will help you out here, mechanically. But you could put this backdrop into any version of D&D.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:06
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The Bee posted:For the life of me, I have no idea how 3.5 or 5E does this better than 4E other than any combat sections in between not being much less interesting.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:09
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S.J. posted:There is literally no version of D&D that will help you out here, mechanically. But you could put this backdrop into any version of D&D.
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Sep 20, 2014 05:10
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