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Originally Posted by
neonchameleon
Right now just to handle a simple fire we are up to what? I count:
- The size of the fire
- The material that is burning
- How you enter the fire
- The speed you pass through the fire
That's four separate dimensions, all of which you know in order to work out the effectiveness of a fire.
I'm now going to add a fifth. How enclosed the fire is. A fire in the open radiates heat using the inverse square law. A fire that's enclosed
does not allow heat to radiate. Which means it's all trapped and so the fire in the area gets a whole lot hotter.
And for a sixth - Oxygenation. Take a bunsen burner and light it. You should see a yellow flame you can pass your hand through without trouble. Now open the air hole. What happens?
Just by changing the way the air gets to the fire, the temperature increases from about 300C to about 750C. Don't try passing your hand through that. Oxygenation is also the difference between an oil fire and a
Fuel/Air bomb.
Some expert on fires is probably going to come along and tell me I've missed quite a few important factors out now - and they will be right to do so.
I
certainly think that having a six dimensional table, as we need, is a pointless time sink. And as all six factors can be extremely important (your table as it was would have treated blue and yellow bunsen flames the same way). And if you miss any important factors out from your process-sim method your results go way off wherever they miss.
In case it wasn't clear the first time for whatever reason, the "2e-style" rules were overly-complex. As in not the kind of complex you'd actually want to use and explicitly a contrast for the nice and simple (but still more detailed) rules in example 3. As in, I expected you to make up some overly-complex rules as a strawman to show that simpler rules are better and tried to beat you to the punch. I didn't expect you to actually
expand on those rules.
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I think that "touch bad thing, take 1d6 and ongoing 5" bears almost no resemblance to what you are talking about. I think "Touch blue bunsen flame, take same damage as for yellow bunsen flame" is ridiculous to the point of not being worth remembering. And I think that a six dimensional table including factors for the material of the fire (magnesium burns hotter than paper), the oxygenation, the size of the fire, and more is too hard to remember.
The third example I used was
literally "1d6 and ongoing 5 for small fires, 2d6 and ongoing 10 for large fires" so it is in fact
exactly what I'm talking about.
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Or particularly like the 4e results. Some resemblance to them, I'll grant. But hard DCs range from 19 at level 1 to 42 at level 30. I'm sure if you think you'll realise why the formula you had fails.
Hard DCs on page 42 of the DMG1 in fact range from 20 at level 1 to 33 at level 30, and in fact the 10/15/20+level/2 formula is explicitly stated to be the guideline in the last sentence in the left column on that page. Page 65 of the DMG2 drops the 1st level numbers but ends up in the same place. I'm not sure what numbers you're talking about, considering that the discussion has been about page 42 and the trap equivalent the whole time, but I'm sure if you think you'll realize why the formula you had fails.
And now, since we're getting bogged down in minutiae and apparently my basic point isn't getting across, I'm going to group some of your quotes together by category so I can respond to them all at once.
First,
scaling:
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As has been pointed out repeatedly, the complaint is simply factually wrong. The players would only not have a frame of reference to work from if they did not have any sort of even intuitive understanding of either the fiction or of page 42. Page 42 provides a frame of reference for expected damage every bit as well as your simulationist model does.
[...]
In which case you need a DM that is vaguely on the ball. That is all. The same bonfire doesn't mysteriously change in level overnight. (Actually the level of a fire does change overnight. It changes a lot overnight. But I digress).
Second,
non-damaging effects:
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But they don't all do the same thing. Fire burns. Swinging blades swing from somewhere and need a trigger. The damage is the absolute least important part of them. And who says that damage is all they do?
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But spikes probably do inflict the slowed condition as well as doing damage. Your point? This is neither necessary nor sufficient for interest.
[...]
The blizzard was obvious. I can;t remember using a reinforced steel door - and it's a case by case thing.
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Wind knocks you down? You know, the fiction?
Third,
non-comprehensiveness:
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It's treated as 1:1 by monster statblocks. In theory it's just under 2:1 if nothing grants a saving throw.
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The power of different conditions possibly needs a page somewhere.
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Simply isn't so. It's just the guidelines aren't in one place.
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This is the one genuine issue you have. And there's a Dragon article that fixed that.
Every single case where you extol the virtues of 4e's improvisational framework, whether page 42 or skill challenges or making up monsters, is not a strength of the system. It's a strength of the
DM.
The comments under
scaling above talk about how things don't change levels and how you need a DM who is "on the ball" to judge things. That is in direct opposition to the only advice given in the DMG on how to use page 42.
The comments under
non-numerical effects above talk about how you can "probably" and "obviously" work out what special effects to use in addition to damage. There is absolutely zero guidance on that in the DMG.
The comments under
non-comprehensiveness above talk about how you can figure things out by reverse-engineering statblocks or using Dragon. That means that the only
useful part of any improvisational guidelines aren't actually there.
You mentioned the monster guidelines:
http://blogofholding.com/wp-content/...inessfront.gif
Numbers, numbers, numbers. Again, numbers are the least important part of any improvisational framework. If absolutely necessary, I can always look up a monster of the same level and role and use those numbers, that's not the problem. The problem is that, in a system where status effects are parceled out by tier and the difference between "Reliable, Close Burst 1" and "Melee" can make a power a different level, there are no guidelines for making up powers, so if I need to make up a half-aboleth vampire on the fly I have zero guidance on the stuff that actually makes him a half-aboleth vampire instead of just Bag Of HP #495.
So the thrust of my argument, to make it explicit, is the following:
1)
You can run an excellent game of 4e without needing to reference books and
I can run an excellent game of 4e without needing to reference books but
none of the stuff you or I are doing is reliant on the given guidelines in any way except for the damage values which could be reverse-engineered from encounter powers anyway.
2) Providing rules for combat and "Eh, page 42, skill challenges, make stuff up" for noncombat is a developer cop-out of the highest order, even for a game as rules-light as 5e currently is. Good and experienced DMs can make the simple stuff up in any system, bad and new DMs need a structure to work with, and 4e and 5e's lack of rules isn't useful for either of them.
Now, would you like to stop nitpicking the "six degrees of fire" that I never actually proposed and address those two points?
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If everything is laid out for them and they know all that in advance then they have information they should not have in character, including precognition about the weather and ridiculous details about how tough the enemy is. If they merely have a good idea rather than having everything laid out for them ... they are in the same situation as the 4e party.
Gather Information, Knowledge, divinations, scouting...if you're going to be facing an enemy powerful enough that you need to resort to underhanded tactics like that, it helps to do research.
And now for your examples:
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The party has convinced a dragonrider and a wyrmling who were bombing the city they were in to turn (it involved two natural 20s at the right times). So now they have a dragon at one end of a city, a safehouse a couple of miles away, and don't want the dragon to be seen from the air by his former friends, or from the ground by the inhabitants of the city who are being bombed by dragons.
The players come up with the idea of disguising the dragon as a plague cart to keep everyone away and throwing a couple of horse blankets over it to prevent it being seen easily from the air.
You are a DM. This is your third session DMing D&D, you've run three sessions of Paranoia in the past decade, and a dozen sessions of anything, total.
Using only the 3.X rules as written, and extremely limited experience, how would you DM that? Bonus prize for pointing out how 3.X's plethora of DCs are actually useful here.
Fairly simple.
- The PCs roll a Disguise check for their disguised dragon (and presumably the rider as the cart driver), using Aid Another if they want to improve the check. The skill rules tell you:
- What others' Spot checks are (suspicious people like guards take 10, others might not notice)
- How much time making the disguise takes (1d3*10 minutes)
- Whether the dragonrider's allies get a bonus to recognize him (yes, based on familiarity)
- What penalties the dragons flying above have on their Spot checks based on distance (-1 per 10 feet, so they'd have to fly fairly low to see through it)
- If one of the PCs has illusion spells, silent image or the like would help with the disguise. The illusion rules tell you:
- How people can see through the illusion (make a Will save if they touch it or otherwise have evidence that it's fake)
- Whether illusions improve the Disguise check (yes, +10)
- Whether anti-illusion magic will see through the mundane part of the disguise (no)
So Mr. New DM has answers to all the questions he might be asked at his disposal, under Spot and Disguise for the first section above and under the Disguise and Illusion rules for the second section. If he has another dragonrider buzz the town, or has the party run into a suspicious guard, or has one of the dragonrider's allies land and start looking around for the traitor, or something else like that, he doesn't need to make anything up, it's right there.
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This example is so specific because I was that DM. And because 4e has actual improvisation guidelines in the form of the skill challenge rules, I was able to handle it in a fun and effortless seeming manner having worked out the mechanics I needed in the length of time it took me to have a drink.
1) No need to work out the mechanics for the 3e version, they're all there on one page (two if using illusions).
2) Players can look up the Disguise rules to judge difficulty ("Hmm, these commoners will be taking 10, so a low result there...the dragons can't see through it if they stay high up, that's good....") and help with their planning.
3) Skill challenge rules, by the way, are
not new.
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See above. Show me how the 3.X level of detail would help me in the example of my PCs shenanigans above. Then show me how they would help the PCs disguise themselves as emmissaries of Blibblopool, God of Troglodytes, in order to distract the troglodytes while the Ranger sneaks in the back door to rescue the hostage.
...exactly the same rules? I mean, the "different race" and "different gender" rules
are right there on the table, and stuff like "+2 if you have a particularly accurate disguise, Knowledge (Religion) to see if you know what that looks like" is the same in either edition.
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For bonus marks, show me how the 3.X level of detail would help me resolve the PCs waging a week long campaign of terror against a bandit fort, convincing them that the ghosts in the nearby graveyard have come to life and are eating the parties of bandits that try to return to the camp.
Bluff for the difficulty of fooling them with a given trick; levels of believability are in the book. Intimidate for lowering their morale and persuading them to do what the ghosts want; demoralizing and changing attitudes are in the book. Craft to see what kinds of Scooby Doo-style contraptions they could make in that timescale to help with the charade; construction time and costs with different materials are in the book. Illusions to provide sounds and images where devices can't reach; all the illiusion rules are in the book.
If all you want to do is "Roll Bluff, you succeed; roll Intimidate, you succeed; roll Craft, you fail; two out of three, you scare the bandits" you can do that equally well in either system. If you want anything more detailed than that, the 3e rules are there and the 4e rules are not.
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The thing is 3.X doesn't generally give me the DCs for anything that's that hard to resolve either. The 4e skill challenge system handles actual plans - and plans that have a margin for error at that. A simple skill system just handles individual moments on a pass/fail (or pass/fail forward) basis
Aside from the fact that rolling a bunch of skill checks to achieve something is once again
nothing new (and in fact is pretty intuitive: "You want to pretend to be an agent of House Stark and thus justified in being here? Okay, roll Knowledge (Nobility) to see if you know enough to lie about them and Bluff to lie about it. You want to see if he believed you? Okay, roll Sense Motive." and so forth), skill challenges are
also pass/fail, it just takes you more checks to get there. If you come up with degrees of success, then once again it's you the DM, not the rules, that comes up with that.
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The damage is the part that has a permanent effect and is therefore the part you don't want to get wrong.
If you're comfortable with arbitrarily deciding that "push 4 and prone" is fine in some instance and coming up with skill challenges from scratch, I really don't see why you'd be so concerned with the difference between 3d8+2 and 3d6+2.
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Were you ever a newbie DMing 4e? I was. It helped massively. Your theory that it doesn't help is countered by my experience that it does.
I do know a new 4e DM, actually, one who had never DMed before at all; one of the players in my college group was working Friday nights one semester and couldn't join our game, so he decided to join another gaming group that happened to be 4e and was tapped to run a game. He did in fact complain that there's very little guidance and that reverse-engineering power effects to figure out what's appropriate is a pain--particularly since his players were in the "Ooh, new DM, let's see what we can get away with!" mode--and he usually came to me for planning advice for following sessions, which is where I'm getting my picture of what problems new 4e DMs have.
Though even if we wanted to trade stories, the plural of anecdote is not "data." Perhaps you're just more confident in your rulings because you'd DMed before, perhaps he just freezes up when improvising, but whatever the reason it is certainly the case that some DMs benefit more from solid rules than 4e's lack of them.