D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[Kerrin]

I want you to describe a chandelier which only a demigod could possibly swing from. There comes a point where, regardless of the construction and materials modifying it, one would logically expect that they could swing on any chandelier without falling because they're so good at it.

Well, sure. If you pin the difficulty of swinging on a typical chandelier as a Level X Medium difficulty, then any character, regardless of level, would test against that DC.

If a particular chandelier in a particular condition is more or less difficult to swing on than a typical chandelier, then you might use a different Level or Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty DC in that specific situation.

But, yeah, the difficulty of swinging on a typical chandelier doesn't change just because different level characters attempt to do it.

[RedWarlock]

For kicking into the campfire, at 1st level I can kick an orc but not a troll. At 10th level, then I'm that good to be able to kick a troll into the fire. That's how I'm better. The campfire does the same damage assuming it has the same characteristics both times.

Really? Does your weapon always do the same exact damage? (keeping in mind this is in reference to 4e, where you *can* have 2[W] or 5[W] powers.) If a weapon can be used more skillfully, why can't how expertly you kick them into the fire also be used more skillfully?

[Kurald Galain]

A common misreading of the table is that characters only encounter level-appropriate DC's, but that's not the fault of the table.

I disagree. If a table or rule is commonly misread (including by WOTC's official adventure writers), then that is certainly the fault of the designers and editors, who could have worded it better.

This is why it's clearer to have a table that gives explicit climb DCs for trees, stone walls, and ice walls, rather than assume that everybody knows that trees are e.g. a level-2 obstacle, stone walls are level 8, and ice walls are level 12.

[Menteith]

Well, sure. If you pin the difficulty of swinging on a typical chandelier as a Level X Medium difficulty, then any character, regardless of level, would test against that DC.

If a particular chandelier in a particular condition is more or less difficult to swing on than a typical chandelier, then you might use a different Level or Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty DC in that specific situation.

But, yeah, the difficulty of swinging on a typical chandelier doesn't change just because different level characters attempt to do it.

Then we're in agreement. I assumed that the action of swinging on a chandelier to attack someone would be a series of rolls (since I see it as a series of actions), rather than a single roll. If "Swinging on a chandelier" is an attack (rather than an unusual way to move around in order to make an attack/charge), then it would make sense for the difficulty to increase along with the armor class of the target.

I would rather see multiple rolls being needed to resolve complex actions, and projected my assumption onto everyone. Sorry about that.

EDIT

Really? Does your weapon always do the same exact damage? (keeping in mind this is in reference to 4e, where you *can* have 2[W] or 5[W] powers.) If a weapon can be used more skillfully, why can't how expertly you kick them into the fire also be used more skillfully?

I would hope that the maneuver being used scales along with strength/weapon damage, which removes the need for the Fire to spontaneously burn hotter AND allows a more powerful character to naturally deal more damage with such a maneuver.

[obryn]

Sure, that makes more sense. If that's the case, I wouldn't have an issue with the roll being harder - however, I'm under the impression that D&D Next would probably take the path of Skill Check + Attack/Attribute Check to cover that maneuver, rather than a single check.

It probably would! As long as there's a good improv system it's fine with me. I should note I'm also not pushing this sort of improv system as a good substitute for a proper fiat system for non-casters.

Difference of opinion, then. I would much rather just have a general guideline for how a baseline "knockback" maneuver works (attack roll with a penalty/deals less damage and moves the target) and allow the natural scaling of such a maneuver to cover for a character's scaling, with a flat damage boost due to a campfire regardless of level.

Yep. I prefer it this way because it focuses on the results rather than the details, but am well aware my tastes are not universal!

I'm not saying one is wrong to have a scaling campfire if that's what enjoyable in those games, but I am saying I would enjoy a more consistent campfire.

Our disagreement probably won't be resolved, as it comes down preference. I think that a consistent, realistic game where a campfire doesn't spontaneously become hotter/colder depending on a metagame concept like Level is a better game.

(ETA: I would hope that the maneuver being used scales along with strength/weapon damage, which removes the need for the Fire to spontaneously burn hotter AND allows a more powerful character to naturally deal more damage with such a maneuver.)

I'm still wondering where in my example the campfire becomes hotter or colder. There is no sense in which I'm aiming for a simulation or rules-as-physics here, and if you are looking at it as "hot fire: 1d6, really hot fire; 2d6, furnace: 3d10" or something, that's not the way I'm looking at it.

(Edited to add your response above, which is it, exactly. The fire is not scaling.)

That accounts for the foe's higher AC and hit points. The DC for the physical act of swinging on the chandelier should not change based on my level nor even if instead of attacking I'm just moving across the room. The chandelier does not know my level or why I'm wanting to swing on it at all.

For kicking into the campfire, at 1st level I can kick an orc but not a troll. At 10th level, then I'm that good to be able to kick a troll into the fire. That's how I'm better. The campfire does the same damage assuming it has the same characteristics both times.

Okay in order... (1) As I said up above, you're making a single Acrobatics roll for the whole maneuver - swing on chandelier, kick monster into brazier. If all you're doing is swinging from Point A to Point B, the DC doesn't scale because there'd be no reason for it to do so.

(2) The campfire's damage is secondary at best to this whole maneuver - just like a dagger's base damage is secondary when a character's stabbing someone with it. You do more damage with your kicks and in using the environment to your advantage.

(3) It also scales to keep the maneuver relevant. So it continues to have a solid narrative weight as you level up. Otherwise, it becomes useless, and I don't think the game benefits if it become useless.

-=-=-

And overall - pretty much to everyone - I am not arguing this from simulation, as I would hope would be obvious. It would be a very bad simulation - I'm well aware of that, and don't consider it particularly relevant. Either simulation is your goal or it's not, and I'm firmly in the "not" camp; I prefer fun, interactive, fast play at the table with a twist towards the heroic, and I don't mind if the rules twist "reality" to get me there. I have no use for that degree of simulation at the gaming table.

I also don't have a specific view of hit points beyond "that vague quantity that gets reduced by stuff and when it hits really low you're in trouble." So saying, "but the fire is doing more damage at 10th level!" misses the point entirely.

-O

[obryn]

This is why it's clearer to have a table that gives explicit climb DCs for trees, stone walls, and ice walls, rather than assume that everybody knows that trees are e.g. a level-2 obstacle, stone walls are level 8, and ice walls are level 12.

Yes, it could have been worded better.

However, there are already these sorts of tables right there in the first PHB. Look under the Athletics and Acrobatics skills, for example. No sign of scaling anywhere.

-O

[Flickerdart]

I want you to describe a chandelier which only a demigod could possibly swing from.

An illusionary one.

[Menteith]

Stuff

Oh, that makes a whole lot more sense to me. I can absolutely see your point, and I think I didn't understand your position initially.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

4e skill challenges are a better implementation of many forms of this this than White Wolf ever came up with. And for situations where it's not applicable you have other things to use.

That says more about the lack of quality in the WoD systems than about the quality (or lack thereof) of skill challenges.

And this shows a deep ignorance of the traditions of D&D. Gygaxian play was born out of tabletop wargaming but the goal was to avoid combat wherever possible (which is why early combat is so lethal). There is a grand total of one branch of D&D that has had specific disarming rules (3.0/3.5/Pathfinder). So to say "There should be specific rules for disarming folks" is against most of the traditions of the game.

Given that the point is to avoid combat, you should be able to have short, lethal, decisive combats (which 4e falls down on much more so than 3e, you'll note), and defined maneuvers actually help with that. If you can pin a guard to the floor, or disarm him and threaten him with his own weapon, or push people into another room and bar the door, or other scenario-changing tactics like that, you have many more options for short decisive combats than if you can't do those reliably.

As I mentioned a few posts back, improvisation should not be used to resolve common or expected tactics. "Shove a guy" is not something you should have to make up rules for. While 3e is the only edition with overly clunky rules for some combat maneuvers and conditions, it's also the only edition where "I want to go knock that guy down, take his weapon, pin him to the ground, and scare the crap out of him until he tells me where the villain went" has defined rules rather than being subject to the whims of the DM.

For every AD&D/4e DM who says "You want to swing on the chandelier to get to those goblins? Cool, roll a Dex check to do that, and if you make it your attack gets a +2!" there's another one who makes it take 5 rolls for little benefit. Basic, common, or iconic tactics shouldn't rely on improvised rules, so 5e should really make a compromise between the clunky 3e rules and the streamlined 4e lack of rules to provide good baseline maneuver rules without making them too complicated.

Most, not all. And it makes things much slower at the table as people assemble what they want to do rather than see the options available. The first rule of DMing improvisation should be "Don't sweat the small stuff".

And as I already mentioned, I'm not suggesting those be used as rules for improvisation, I'm suggesting those be general combat maneuvers. The players can see the options available, and there's nothing preventing players from assembling a few favorite maneuvers and using those most of the time, but those should be player-side rules with no DM fiddling required.

And overall - pretty much to everyone - I am not arguing this from simulation, as I would hope would be obvious. It would be a very bad simulation - I'm well aware of that, and don't consider it particularly relevant. Either simulation is your goal or it's not, and I'm firmly in the "not" camp; I prefer fun, interactive, fast play at the table with a twist towards the heroic, and I don't mind if the rules twist "reality" to get me there. I have no use for that degree of simulation at the gaming table.

I also don't have a specific view of hit points beyond "that vague quantity that gets reduced by stuff and when it hits really low you're in trouble." So saying, "but the fire is doing more damage at 10th level!" misses the point entirely.

First off, even if you don't care how HP works, you should care about how much damage comes from the fire and how much comes from the impact, given the presence of resistances, vulnerabilities, and other things that key off damage types. Deciding that the 2d8+4 (or whatever) damage from knocking someone into a fire is all, half, or not at all fire damage makes a big difference when fighting a troll or a salamander.

Second, you can have fun, interactive, fast play without abstracting everything away like that. In fact, I'd argue that having defined rules for things is much faster and more interactive than making things up on the fly. As far as faster goes, 3e has rules for how much falling damage you take (1d6/level, minus some d6 if you can Tumble or Jump down), how much damage lava deals (2d6 contact, 20d6 immersion), and how hard it is to push someone 5 feet (beat their Str check on a bull rush), so if an enemy is 4 feet from the edge of a 50-foot tall tower in the Evil Fortress of Evil surrounded by a moat of lava, not only does the DM not have to stop to think about how to resolve everything, but the player can plan it out and roll everything without any of that back-and-forth.

As far as interactive goes, if players know what effect something will have, they can judge whether it's an effective tactics, if the risk/reward ratio is worth it, and so forth, which makes them more likely to come up with and carry out interesting plans. In the above example, the players know that falling onto lava will kill an enemy fairly quickly, and would probably judge that tactic to be worthwhile. If you don't know whether the DM will rule your strategy to be not really worth it (three rolls to push someone, 1d6 fire damage/round from the lava, no falling damage), extremely worthwhile (1 roll to push them, instant death from the lava), or somewhere in between, then you're either likely not to bother if the DM hasn't been improv-friendly before, or you're like to spend time asking how it will work, negotiating about the circumstances, and so forth.


Essentially, all of the arguments people made in favor of giving fighters powers to give them Nice Things (not dependent on DM whim, player empowerment, convenient rules packages, etc.) are also arguments in favor of having defined rules for maneuvers and such rather than leaving them up to improvisation, yet the 4e players here are arguing against those maneuvers while extolling the virtues of 4e's class system.

[RedWarlock]

Actually, 4e damage doesn't typically divide on types, they just add them as keywords to the damage. So it really doesn't matter there.

And I'm away from books, but I believe there are still rules for 'shoving a guy' in one of the generic combat powers, possibly still called Bull Rush, if I recall correctly. (right next to the Grab power) I'll look it up later.

[neonchameleon]

So is the assertion here that WotC and Paizo couldn't make money without the barrier to entry into the D&D fold being $40-$120?

The assertion is that even Paizo couldn't be the size they are without a lot of really expensive books. Although I do note the 3.X and PF SRDs.

YMMV, but aside from the magic system (which by default was all sorts of weird), I found building GURPS characters to be simpler than 4e, mostly because GURPS building is classless, and therefore you build your character by thinking about what you want them to do, and taking the skills that do that.

I disagree on two grounds here. I find 4e has more actual variety in action-heroes (it doesn't do anything else) than GURPS because you don't have to have everything working with everything else. And to build a simple character you have most of the work done for you by your class. The only point where 4e is harder is that you need to first decide what you want to do then see which class that matches.

You would be wrong, because I haven't played 2e enough to have become familiar with it. If you want my credentials, I started with GURPS (of which 3e is a horrible one to start new on because it doesn't make GURPS modularity clear up front), then moved to Vampire, then a home brew system (with 14 stats!), from there I moved on to 4e (of which I'm still in active campaigns), then all the way down to Microlite20, back up to 3.5 (then converted to 4e because the DM wanted to try it out), then finally to OSRIC (1e), then Labyrinth Lord and Dark Dungeons (which is the other ongoing campaign I'm in). So of all the D&D systems, I have the most direct familiarity with 4e, and as I said, it's far too complex for what it needs to be.

All over the D&D family then :) At risk of being annoying, it sounds as most of those games (I don't know DD) are at the wrong end of the spectrum for you. I'd have a look at Spirit of the Century (or even the Fate Core Kickstarter), Dogs in the Vineyard, Dread, and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. Possibly also Dungeon World.

Only if your players are assembling new things every round at the table. Incidentally, your second line, about not sweating the small stuff is exactly why I think that 3.x and 4e both are too complex. Because they do sweat the small stuff.

I find that 4e sweats the small stuff less than 1e/OSRIC and a lot less than 3e.

I disagree. If a table or rule is commonly misread (including by WOTC's official adventure writers), then that is certainly the fault of the designers and editors, who could have worded it better.

Or the fault of the idiots who released 4e a year early - burning Orcus for being crap after a year and then not allowing any extra time despite the fact they redid from start.

That says more about the lack of quality in the WoD systems than about the quality (or lack thereof) of skill challenges.

Possibly. But I'm trying to think of a game that can match 4e's Skill Challenges.

Given that the point is to avoid combat, you should be able to have short, lethal, decisive combats

Uh-uh. The point of early D&D was short, lethal combats. Which is why calling D&D a combat game is ... dubious. 4e goes for large, cinematic, kinaesthetic combats.

If you can pin a guard to the floor, or disarm him and threaten him with his own weapon, or push people into another room and bar the door, or other scenario-changing tactics like that, you have many more options for short decisive combats than if you can't do those reliably.

Sheer, utter nonsense. If you want combats to be quick, stick a sword through the enemy. Options take time and add overheads. Shoving a sword through someone takes almost no time at all. If you want cinematic tricks where pushing people into other rooms and barring the door is more highly rewarded than simply sticking a sword through them then you don't want short decisive combats. You want long combats where there is time to do that sort of stunt and where bringing the combat to an early end shortens it and is so rewarding.

As I mentioned a few posts back, improvisation should not be used to resolve common or expected tactics. "Shove a guy" is not something you should have to make up rules for. While 3e is the only edition with overly clunky rules for some combat maneuvers and conditions, it's also the only edition where "I want to go knock that guy down, take his weapon, pin him to the ground, and scare the crap out of him until he tells me where the villain went" has defined rules rather than being subject to the whims of the DM.

That is 100% because you want something specified that is almost entirely irrelevant. Knocking the guy down and pinning him to the ground works directly towards your end. Scaring the crap out of him works directly towards your end. Taking his weapon is a flourish. There is a functional difference between scaring the crap out of someone when you've pinned them and when you haven't. You're preventing them running away. There isn't between disarmed and pinned and just pinned.

So in 4e you can "Knock that guy down, pin him to the ground, and scare the crap out of him until he tells you where the villain went".

For every AD&D/4e DM who says "You want to swing on the chandelier to get to those goblins? Cool, roll a Dex check to do that, and if you make it your attack gets a +2!" there's another one who makes it take 5 rolls for little benefit. Basic, common, or iconic tactics shouldn't rely on improvised rules, so 5e should really make a compromise between the clunky 3e rules and the streamlined 4e lack of rules to provide good baseline maneuver rules without making them too complicated.

There isn't a lack of rules in 4e except for disarming and sundering.

First off, even if you don't care how HP works, you should care about how much damage comes from the fire

Hit points are not damage. Hit points have never been damage. If hit points were damage people would give up armouring fighters and instead armour themselves in the bodies of high level fighters.

Second, you can have fun, interactive, fast play without abstracting everything away like that. In fact, I'd argue that having defined rules for things is much faster and more interactive than making things up on the fly. As far as faster goes, 3e has rules for how much falling damage you take (1d6/level, minus some d6 if you can Tumble or Jump down), how much damage lava deals (2d6 contact, 20d6 immersion), and how hard it is to push someone 5 feet (beat their Str check on a bull rush), so if an enemy is 4 feet from the edge of a 50-foot tall tower in the Evil Fortress of Evil surrounded by a moat of lava, not only does the DM not have to stop to think about how to resolve everything, but the player can plan it out and roll everything without any of that back-and-forth.

Guess what? In literally every single one of those cases 4e has rules. It simply has 17 skills rather than 32 skills plus four entire skill families (the falling rule is 1d10/level and an acrobatics check to lower).

And if someone is near the edge of the tower in the Evil Fortress of Evil in 4e they are going over. There are forced movement powers all over the place in 4e. It's much easier to push people around. And we have falling rules

As far as interactive goes, if players know what effect something will have, they can judge whether it's an effective tactics, if the risk/reward ratio is worth it, and so forth, which makes them more likely to come up with and carry out interesting plans. In the above example, the players know that falling onto lava will kill an enemy fairly quickly, and would probably judge that tactic to be worthwhile. If you don't know whether the DM will rule your strategy to be not really worth it (three rolls to push someone, 1d6 fire damage/round from the lava, no falling damage), extremely worthwhile (1 roll to push them, instant death from the lava), or somewhere in between, then you're either likely not to bother if the DM hasn't been improv-friendly before, or you're like to spend time asking how it will work, negotiating about the circumstances, and so forth.

Tell me, was that a pro-4e post in disguise?

One of the purposes of Page 42 is to make things predictable and worthwhile - and it does so for things that the rulebook won't have thought of. With 4e's forced movement you know how far you can push the bad guys and their chance of clinging on. Everything you say helps stunting exists in 4e as part of the rules. No need to stunt, it's all SOP.

Essentially, all of the arguments people made in favor of giving fighters powers to give them Nice Things (not dependent on DM whim, player empowerment, convenient rules packages, etc.) are also arguments in favor of having defined rules for maneuvers and such rather than leaving them up to improvisation, yet the 4e players here are arguing against those maneuvers while extolling the virtues of 4e's class system.

We have those maneuvers as part of the structure of 4e and part of the powers system. A 4e fighter with sword and shield can take the Tide of Iron At Will power that allows them to push the target five feet back and follow up as part of a normal attack. Bull rush exists as a default action. We don't need a stunting system on top of the powers system.

What you are arguing for is an expected damage from stunts system (page 42), detailed rules round forced movement and plenty of ways of forcing movement (4e has bucket loads of them), and expected outcomes (4e has that nailed down).

There are precisely two things you are asking for that 4e doesn't do spectacularly well. The first is disarming. Which should be vanishingly rare. And the second is the ability to sit down and create a power in the middle of the game. This, I can tell you from experience, would slow things down dramatically; too many players take long enough to pick from the half dozen options they pre-selected. And if something fits the way you behave normally you probably have a power to do that (like Tide of Iron/Bullying with a Shield).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Actually, 4e damage doesn't typically divide on types, they just add them as keywords to the damage. So it really doesn't matter there.

Whoops, I thought I was quoting him responding to Menteith (who was talking about changing maneuvers for 5e, which does have damage types) rather than navar (who was just talking about 4e as-is). You're right, in 4e damage types don't matter.

And I'm away from books, but I believe there are still rules for 'shoving a guy' in one of the generic combat powers, possibly still called Bull Rush, if I recall correctly. (right next to the Grab power) I'll look it up later.

There are--4e has most of the basic 3e combat maneuvers--and that's exactly the point. Page 42 is used for things like determining the damage of shoving someone into a fire, when players should (in my view at least) be able to use the existing bull rush and fire damage rules to figure out how it will work without recourse to page 42. It makes no sense that jumping into a bonfire does X damage, and knocking someone into a wall does Y damage (where Y = 0 by default in 3e or 4e, unfortunately), but knocking someone into a bonfire does Z damage, where Z could be less than, greater than, or equal to X+Y based on your level, the encounter scenario, and the DM's decision.

EDIT: Neonchameleon posted while I was; responding to him:

Uh-uh. The point of early D&D was short, lethal combats. Which is why calling D&D a combat game is ... dubious. 4e goes for large, cinematic, kinaesthetic combats.

Yes, that's what 4e does, which is not what AD&D and 3e did, which is my point. In AD&D and 3e, you can have anything from one-round "Oh, 20 kobolds. How cute. Fireball." combats to longer set-piece boss battles. In 4e, even basic battles against just minions can take several rounds and involve more tactics than such a battle really deserves.

That is 100% because you want something specified that is almost entirely irrelevant. Knocking the guy down and pinning him to the ground works directly towards your end. Scaring the crap out of him works directly towards your end. Taking his weapon is a flourish. There is a functional difference between scaring the crap out of someone when you've pinned them and when you haven't. You're preventing them running away. There isn't between disarmed and pinned and just pinned.

So in 4e you can "Knock that guy down, pin him to the ground, and scare the crap out of him until he tells you where the villain went".

It's not just a flourish; if the guard has his weapon, he can fight back against you while you're grabbing him, making him harder to pin down, and you can substitute "his weapon" for an implement as well, or even something that can sound an alarm or call for reinforcements.

Hit points are not damage. Hit points have never been damage. If hit points were damage people would give up armouring fighters and instead armour themselves in the bodies of high level fighters.

Hit points have always been skill and damage, from 1e (where Gygax said "Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand
physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas
which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)") to 3e (where hit points are the ability to take physical damage and the ability to turn deadly attacks into less lethal ones).

Guess what? In literally every single one of those cases 4e has rules. It simply has 17 skills rather than 32 skills plus four entire skill families (the falling rule is 1d10/level and an acrobatics check to lower).

Yes, I know that, and once again that's exactly the point. If there are already rules for that, why are you relying on page 42 instead of using those rules?

Tell me, was that a pro-4e post in disguise?

One of the purposes of Page 42 is to make things predictable and worthwhile - and it does so for things that the rulebook won't have thought of. With 4e's forced movement you know how far you can push the bad guys and their chance of clinging on. Everything you say helps stunting exists in 4e as part of the rules. No need to stunt, it's all SOP.

You may have missed the big debate about what part of page 42 you use for a given action. Y'know, where some people use the 1st-level low-damage line for a campfire, some people use the PC's-level moderate-damage line, and other people use completely different things? Guidelines for improvisation are not rules; the former tells a player "If you want to try X, your DM will use one of the numbers on this page," while the latter tells a player "If you want to try X, Y will happen."

We have those maneuvers as part of the structure of 4e and part of the powers system. A 4e fighter with sword and shield can take the Tide of Iron At Will power that allows them to push the target five feet back and follow up as part of a normal attack. Bull rush exists as a default action. We don't need a stunting system on top of the powers system.

What you are arguing for is an expected damage from stunts system (page 42), detailed rules round forced movement and plenty of ways of forcing movement (4e has bucket loads of them), and expected outcomes (4e has that nailed down).

There are precisely two things you are asking for that 4e doesn't do spectacularly well. The first is disarming. Which should be vanishingly rare. And the second is the ability to sit down and create a power in the middle of the game. This, I can tell you from experience, would slow things down dramatically; too many players take long enough to pick from the half dozen options they pre-selected. And if something fits the way you behave normally you probably have a power to do that (like Tide of Iron/Bullying with a Shield).

I admit that my point wasn't the clearest, because I'm arguing two things at the same time, first that hard rules >> DM guidelines and second that 5e maneuvers shouldn't take inspiration from page 42. The first part of the argument is where I'm saying that page 42 isn't rules, it's guidelines, and as long as the expected outcomes of a player's improvised actions are that fuzzy, there's not point in improvising when you already have powers that do stuff; 4e has all the deterministic outcomes you describe, but just for powers, not for improvised tactics.

The second part of the argument is that most 4e fighter powers or 3e fighter feats should not be maneuvers in 5e. Simple, straightforward things like 4e's "deal 2[W], push 1" or 3e's "take -2 attack, deal +2 damage" or 5e's "spend three expertise dice, deal one die of damage to three adjacent enemies" are not nearly interesting or powerful enough to be reserved for certain classes or subclasses. All of those should be able to be done as combat maneuvers (i.e. on the fly with no spending of build resources), which means you cannot relegate that sort of thing to DM fiat. There should be a robust system that lets you translate tactics involving forced movement of people and objects (trips, pushes, grapples, and yes, disarms) into game terms, and class features would give you capabilities that you can't get from that, Nice Things that are more comparable to what casters get.

It makes no sense that you treat being forced into a bonfire and fighting most of the way as the same amount of damage as someone jumping in voluntarily under their own control and able to pick which part they are in. They should do similar amounts of damage (and with any decent DM are going to). But there is no earthly reason why the damage from being forced into something nasty and doing something nasty under your own control should be the same.

Yes, that's why you should take damage both from being pushed into the fire and from the fire itself. The issue isn't that [push into fire] > [fire] + [push], since that's perfectly reasonable, the issue is that it might instead be [push into fire] <= [fire] + [push], since different DMs can rule it differently. Obvious tactics like that shouldn't rely on having "any decent DM," because many of them aren't decent DMs and even amazing DMs have off days, and because there's no reason why some instance of 2d6+push 3 should be under player knowledge and control (fighter powers) and some should not (improvised rules).

[neonchameleon]

Actually, 4e damage doesn't typically divide on types, they just add them as keywords to the damage. So it really doesn't matter there.

And I'm away from books, but I believe there are still rules for 'shoving a guy' in one of the generic combat powers, possibly still called Bull Rush, if I recall correctly. (right next to the Grab power) I'll look it up later.

Damage type matters on conditionals like resistances, vulnerabilities, or certain monsters that get nastier if you hit them with the wrong damage type. And you are, indeed, thinking of Bull Rush.

[neonchameleon]

There are--4e has most of the basic 3e combat maneuvers--and that's exactly the point. Page 42 is used for things like determining the damage of shoving someone into a fire, when players should (in my view at least) be able to use the existing bull rush and fire damage rules to figure out how it will work without recourse to page 42. It makes no sense that jumping into a bonfire does X damage, and knocking someone into a wall does Y damage (where Y = 0 by default in 3e or 4e, unfortunately), but knocking someone into a bonfire does Z damage, where Z could be less than, greater than, or equal to X+Y based on your level, the encounter scenario, and the DM's decision.

It makes no sense that you treat being forced into a bonfire and fighting most of the way as the same amount of damage as someone jumping in voluntarily under their own control and able to pick which part they are in. They should do similar amounts of damage (and with any decent DM are going to). But there is no earthly reason why the damage from being forced into something nasty and doing something nasty under your own control should be the same.

[obryn]

Menteith - yep, just coming at it from different directions.

First off, even if you don't care how HP works, you should care about how much damage comes from the fire and how much comes from the impact, given the presence of resistances, vulnerabilities, and other things that key off damage types. Deciding that the 2d8+4 (or whatever) damage from knocking someone into a fire is all, half, or not at all fire damage makes a big difference when fighting a troll or a salamander.

And in the rare cases where it matters, I make a ruling about it. In this case, right off the bat, I'd be tempted to make 5 or 10 of the damage "ongoing fire" - in which case resistance will likely reduce that portion to 0. I don't need to spend a lot of time worrying about it beyond that.

Second, you can have fun, interactive, fast play without abstracting everything away like that. In fact, I'd argue that having defined rules for things is much faster and more interactive than making things up on the fly. As far as faster goes, 3e has rules for how much falling damage you take (1d6/level, minus some d6 if you can Tumble or Jump down), how much damage lava deals (2d6 contact, 20d6 immersion), and how hard it is to push someone 5 feet (beat their Str check on a bull rush), so if an enemy is 4 feet from the edge of a 50-foot tall tower in the Evil Fortress of Evil surrounded by a moat of lava, not only does the DM not have to stop to think about how to resolve everything, but the player can plan it out and roll everything without any of that back-and-forth.

None of this is actually substantially different, on the results end of things. I'm bypassing the part where you look up how much damage X does and going straight to "workable solution for table play." And far from 'abstracting everything away,' it's taking a serious look at the environment and the PCs' capabilities and looking at them from a narrative perspective. As in, "Wouldn't it be awesome to kick this dude into the lava? Tide of Iron his face!"

And it's not like any of this is a surprise to my players, either. If they ask, "What if I..." then I come up with the specific DCs and effects, and let them decide what they want to do about it.

Essentially, all of the arguments people made in favor of giving fighters powers to give them Nice Things (not dependent on DM whim, player empowerment, convenient rules packages, etc.) are also arguments in favor of having defined rules for maneuvers and such rather than leaving them up to improvisation, yet the 4e players here are arguing against those maneuvers while extolling the virtues of 4e's class system.

I don't think we're coming at this from the same direction. None of this is a replacement for a robust "fiat" system for martial characters. It's an add-on. This is an RPG, after all, so we don't expect everything to be codified - all of this is for a big 'actions the rules don't cover' chapter. And I'd rather have fewer rules to look up during play - so this is (IMO) a slick way to handle it.

-O

[Doug Lampert]

It makes no sense that you treat being forced into a bonfire and fighting most of the way as the same amount of damage as someone jumping in voluntarily under their own control and able to pick which part they are in. They should do similar amounts of damage (and with any decent DM are going to). But there is no earthly reason why the damage from being forced into something nasty and doing something nasty under your own control should be the same.

And, if you WANT them to be the same, just use Bull's Rush, which is IN THE PHB under combat manuevers and available to ALL CHARACTERS without using page 42 of the DMG at all. Then all you need is fire damage, which is an enviromental threat.

Of course this won't do much damage, because you AREN'T getting the effect of your push making him off balance, just the damage from the fire.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Neonchameleon: I edited a response to your latest post into mine, above. The thread's moving kinda fast at the moment.

And in the rare cases where it matters, I make a ruling about it. In this case, right off the bat, I'd be tempted to make 5 or 10 of the damage "ongoing fire" - in which case resistance will likely reduce that portion to 0. I don't need to spend a lot of time worrying about it beyond that.
[...]
And it's not like any of this is a surprise to my players, either. If they ask, "What if I..." then I come up with the specific DCs and effects, and let them decide what they want to do about it.

Why is that any better than a rule that states "being exposed to a fire deals ongoing X"? If you're always going to rule things as ongoing 5 or 10, then a standard rule that you don't need to outline to your players and you don't need to think about every time is better; if you're not going to rule things the same way for the same circumstances, why should the players have to read your mind to come up with their tactics?

I don't think we're coming at this from the same direction. None of this is a replacement for a robust "fiat" system for martial characters. It's an add-on. This is an RPG, after all, so we don't expect everything to be codified - all of this is for a big 'actions the rules don't cover' chapter. And I'd rather have fewer rules to look up during play - so this is (IMO) a slick way to handle it.

And I'm saying that you shouldn't need the Stuff The Rules Doesn't Cover chapter to resolve basic actions like moving enemies into terrain, weather effects, or other fancy scenery. The Stuff The Rules Doesn't Cover chapter should be for things like, I don't know, a player wanting to cook up a custom poison using nonexistent alchemy rules, apply it to the needle of a nonexistent blowgun that he made himself, and fire the blowgun while hanging upside-down from a tree outside a noble's window to kill the noble undetected, not "Oh boy! There are four guards standing in front of a brazier! I wonder if knocking them all into it will drop them, or if I need to pull out a daily power to ensure they don't sound the alarm."

[neonchameleon]

Why is that any better than a rule that states "being exposed to a fire deals ongoing X"?

To put things simply, just over a month ago I walked barefoot across hot coals. The same fire, just lit, was not that hot - and when it was roaring before we spread the coals out to walk across the fire it was painful to get close to.

To say "Fire does x damage" bears no resemblance to the way that that one single fire behaved. And that was just a single fire made out of the same logs and wood at different points in its life. Different woods burn at different temperatures and have different specific heat capacities, and different ways of laying the fire and fuel densities affect the heat given out.

At this point we're into a formula for fire damage by temperature because fires vary hugely in terms of how hot and likely to burn they are. I can't be bothered working out the temperature of a fire. Can you?

If you're always going to rule things as ongoing 5 or 10, then a standard rule that you don't need to outline to your players and you don't need to think about every time is better; if you're not going to rule things the same way for the same circumstances, why should the players have to read your mind to come up with their tactics?

They don't. They know that the fire will do damage. And it will do a significant amount of damage whether I've picked the low or the high damage expressions. It almost certainly won't kill or even bloody in one shot - but will hurt lots. That's generally good enough to indicate that:

pushing someone into a fire < stabbing someone with a sharp piece of metal made for killing < driving someone into a fire while stabbing them with a sharp piece of metal made for killing

And that's enough to base tactics on.

[theNater]

Chandeliers can have levels now?

In the same way that locks can have levels; the sense that this one is an appropriate challenge for a character of this level and that one is an appropriate challenge for a character of that level.

[theNater]

I disagree. If a table or rule is commonly misread (including by WOTC's official adventure writers), then that is certainly the fault of the designers and editors, who could have worded it better.

It is certainly the fault of the designers and editors, who had a whole page of text to explain the table's purpose and proper use yet failed to do so clearly. The problem isn't with the table itself, but rather the context is should have had but didn't.

This is why it's clearer to have a table that gives explicit climb DCs for trees, stone walls, and ice walls, rather than assume that everybody knows that trees are e.g. a level-2 obstacle, stone walls are level 8, and ice walls are level 12.

Trying to do it by exhaustive tables is highly impractical. No matter how many tables are put in, some player is going to try something the designers haven't thought of. And the more detail in the tables, the harder it is to find an individual entry. Add to that the fact that only providing the DCs means the DM either needs to research elsewhere appropriate DCs by level elsewhere or risk accidentally throwing inappropriate challenges at the party, and it becomes clear that a table or rule of thumb for appropriate challenges by level should be readily available.

A handful of examples of common tasks is a really good idea, if for no other reason than to provide DMs with a rough guideline as to what sorts of situations are appropriate challenges for what levels of characters. But those need to be in addition to a general rule, rather than instead of.

[Seerow]

In the same way that locks can have levels; the sense that this one is an appropriate challenge for a character of this level and that one is an appropriate challenge for a character of that level.

So somebody somewhere specifically designed a chandelier to be harder to swing from? Because that's why locks have levels, higher quality locks are harder to pick. Higher quality chandeliers generally just look fancier.

A better comparison would be a level 1 acrobatics challenge being swinging from the chandelier, a higher level acrobatics challenge might be pulling an Indiana Jones (who needs a chandelier? I have my whip!), trying to swing from a swinging blade trap the same way you might swing from a chandelier, or using a snake that is actively trying to eat you as a vine to swing from without getting bit in the process. At no point would swinging from a chandelier require a higher DC though.

(as an aside, when did chandelier swinging become such a big thing? You see it as an example all the time in RPG discussions, but it's something I've seen exceedingly rarely in actual games, shows, books, or movies.)

[Aron Times]

Hey folks, it's time for my regularly scheduled on-topic derailment of this thread.

I am playing Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, and I just got my first magic weapon for my main character (a two-handed sword +1 looted from a half-ogre bandit). I was excited because it meant my character was no longer useless against enemies immune to normal weapons.

This got me thinking. How should damage reduction work in 5e? Should it be like 2e, which gave outright immunity? 3.0, where it gave massive damage reduction? 3.5, with its low damage reduction values but resulted in the golf bag of swords made out of different materials? Or maybe 4e, which did away with most physical damage reduction save for a handful of resist all monsters?

I'm hoping that some monsters will be resistant but not immune to normal weapons (half damage), and do away with material based damage reduction. What do you think?

[Draz74]

At this point we're into a formula for fire damage by temperature because fires vary hugely in terms of how hot and likely to burn they are. I can't be bothered working out the temperature of a fire. Can you?

Personally, I always assumed these kinds of details were a big part of the reason that fires (like most other hazards in the game) have their damage given as a dice range, like 3d6, rather than a flat number like 10. All the details just get looped into the RNG abstraction, problem solved.

I'm hoping that some monsters will be resistant but not immune to normal weapons (half damage), and do away with material based damage reduction. What do you think?

The 2e method was poor game design that led to stalemates and other oddities, but at least it was fast-playing. I'm not a big fan of adding a subtraction step into attack resolution -- the subtraction itself slows things down a bit, but more importantly, communication between the DM and the player ("7 damage." "Is that before, or after my DR?") is the real problem. "Half damage" is slightly quicker, but has its own problems, like how a Fire Giant can still take damage (even if it's just 1 HP) from a mere candle. So ... long story short, I don't like how this was implemented in any previous edition.

But as far as types of damage reduction go ... I'd rather keep the material-based ones than the magic-based or alignment-based types. Just because they have more basis in the folklore.

[neonchameleon]

So somebody somewhere specifically designed a chandelier to be harder to swing from? Because that's why locks have levels, higher quality locks are harder to pick. Higher quality chandeliers generally just look fancier.

Of course they didn't design it to be harder to swing from. They didn't design it to be swung from at all - which doesn't change the fact that some chandeliers are easier and safer to swing from than others - some are higher, some are easier to grip, some react differently to weight at different places. Chandeliers were no more designed to be swung from than mountains were to be climbed - does that mean all mountains are equally difficult to climb?

A better comparison would be a level 1 acrobatics challenge

Mind calling it an acrobatics check - if you're using the full skill challenge rules for swinging from a chandelier you're doing something wrong.

(as an aside, when did chandelier swinging become such a big thing? You see it as an example all the time in RPG discussions, but it's something I've seen exceedingly rarely in actual games, shows, books, or movies.)

Erroll Flynn?

Personally, I always assumed these kinds of details were a big part of the reason that fires (like most other hazards in the game) have their damage given as a dice range, like 3d6, rather than a flat number like 10. All the details just get looped into the RNG abstraction, problem solved.

Which means that all fires have the same variety of burnyness when several people are pushed into them. Give me the variable level fires please.

[Seerow]

Mind calling it an acrobatics check - if you're using the full skill challenge rules for swinging from a chandelier you're doing something wrong.

I specified challenge instead of check, not to reference skill challenge rules, but to emphasize that it is the obstacle you are overcoming. A given obstacle is a challenge of level X, much like a given monster would be a challenge of level X. Just like monsters don't magically become higher level just because you gained a level, neither do the challenges. Instead, the obstacles that are actually challenging and/or achievable to you are what is constantly shifting.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

To put things simply, just over a month ago I walked barefoot across hot coals. The same fire, just lit, was not that hot - and when it was roaring before we spread the coals out to walk across the fire it was painful to get close to.

To say "Fire does x damage" bears no resemblance to the way that that one single fire behaved. And that was just a single fire made out of the same logs and wood at different points in its life. Different woods burn at different temperatures and have different specific heat capacities, and different ways of laying the fire and fuel densities affect the heat given out.

At this point we're into a formula for fire damage by temperature because fires vary hugely in terms of how hot and likely to burn they are. I can't be bothered working out the temperature of a fire. Can you?

Well, first off, walking on hot coals works because of the technique; if, as you emphasized, someone is being pressed into them in combat rather than using a special technique, it would do some damage.

Second, I can certainly come up with a workable fire-damage solution that varies by size and intensity. For a 2e-style overly-detailed solution, let's say fires deal d4 for momentary contact, d6 and ongoing 2 for voluntary contact, and d8 and ongoing 5 for forceful contact, and they do one die of damage per size category starting at Fine (1d6 for Fine, 2d6 for Tiny, 3d6 for Small, etc., with smaller than Fine just doing 0/2/5). Walking on hot coals? Less than Fine, ran right across them, so no damage. Grabbing onto the lit end of a torch? Fine flame (3-6 inches tall), holding it carefully, so 1d6 and ongoing 2. Knocked into a bonfire? Medium flame (4-8 feet tall), unexpected, so 4d8 damage and ongoing 5.

Or we can go with a 3e-style solution. Fire deals 1d6 damage per minute by being too close to them (adjacent to a bonfire or larger, in a burning building, etc.), and coming into contact with a fire makes an attack on you, +5 vs. Reflex to avoid ongoing 5 fire (save ends) for campfire-size fires or smaller, +10 vs. Reflex for ongoing 10 for larger fires. Walking on hot coals? Not a large fire, no contact, so no damage. Grabbing onto the lit end of a torch? Contact, Ref attack for ongoing, take 5 for a few rounds. Knocked into a bonfire? Contact, Ref attack for ongoing, take 10 for a few rounds.

Or we can go with a 4e-style solution. Fires smaller than you deal 1d6 and ongoing 5 (save ends) if you come into contact with them, or 2d6 and ongoing 10 for fires as big or bigger than you. Hot coals don't count as contact, torches are smaller, bonfires are bigger.

As you can see, having concrete rules that don't depend on the level of the challenge or the attacker rather than variable guidelines doesn't mean that the rules can't be simple, or that they'll make knocking people into braziers not worth it at higher levels. They can be as simple or complex as desired (simpler being better for some, complex being better for some) as long as you know what you're getting into. Falling damage and bull rushing managed to condense all the vagaries of wind resistance, terrain at the bottom, angle of impact, etc. in the former case and leverage, contact points, center of mass, etc. in the latter case into one simple, easily-remembered rule each, there's no reason why things like natural fires or throwing object have to be any more complicated.

This got me thinking. How should damage reduction work in 5e? Should it be like 2e, which gave outright immunity? 3.0, where it gave massive damage reduction? 3.5, with its low damage reduction values but resulted in the golf bag of swords made out of different materials? Or maybe 4e, which did away with most physical damage reduction save for a handful of resist all monsters?

I'm hoping that some monsters will be resistant but not immune to normal weapons (half damage), and do away with material based damage reduction. What do you think?

As Draz mentioned, the 2e system was bad for rendering fighters without the appropriate weapons useless. I dislike the 4e system of no physical damage types, because from the monster side it's nice to be able to differentiate blunt and non-blunt damage for oozes (since it's easier to smush Jello than try to poke it to pieces ), piercing vs. non-piercing damage for heavily-armored creatures (find the hole in Smaug's scales!), and so forth; from the player side, it's nice to be able to key feats and other features off weapon damage type for more options there.

So the 3e version is a good compromise. The main problems with DR in 3e, particularly armor-as-DR, are that it penalizes multiple attacks because it's applied per-attack and chargers/snipers attackers usually had much higher static bonuses than TWFers/volleyers. and that it doesn't scale well--DR 10 is amazing at level 1, chump change at level 20.

Given that martial classes in 5e are much more dice-based than modifier based (i.e. 10th level fighters are rolling 1d8+3d10+5, not 2d6+30) and there isn't a big divide between single-attackers and multiattackers, I think there are two approaches that could work. The first and simplest is proportional damage reduction: you might have something like resistance (take 1/2 damage) and improved resistance (take 1/4 damage), or whatever easy multipliers you want to use. This worked fairly well with those 2e and 3.0 monsters that basically had DR/50%, but doesn't give you the main benefit of plus-based 2e damage immunity or high 3e DR, which is preventing mobs of commoners from taking down dragons with lucky hits and basically saying "You must be this powerful to take on X."

The second and slightly more granular is per-die damage reduction: DR 1 means -1 damage per die, DR 10 means -10 damage per die, so you can go from "slightly resistant" to "almost immune" without either rendering DR useless or rendering certain weapons useless. This scales very well and gives you that "must be this tall to ride" effect since DR 6 or 7 would take care of commoners with Str 10 and d6 weapons, but it would require a bit more math on the players' part which isn't necessarily a good thing.

Either way, I don't think 3e's flat DR is a good idea in 5e, since low amounts of DR just stretch out combats without much other impact and high amounts of DR would encourage expertise dice users to go for damage over fancy tricks which is not something we want to encourage. I also think that DR types should be drastically reduced from the 3e smorgasbord; cutting it down to just slashing/piercing/bludgeoning/magic would be good, since alignment is a module (so DR X/good wouldn't be a good idea without those modules). Things like cold iron vulnerability for fey and demons or silver vulnerability for werewolves would be best served by something besides DR, like "werewolves don't heal while touching silver" or "touching cold iron sickens fey" or the like, so it's more interesting and allows non-martial types to get involved instead of cold iron weapons being basically "+X damage to fey" and that's it.

[Zeful]

The 2e method was poor game design that led to stalemates and other oddities, but at least it was fast-playing. I'm not a big fan of adding a subtraction step into attack resolution -- the subtraction itself slows things down a bit, but more importantly, communication between the DM and the player ("7 damage." "Is that before, or after my DR?") is the real problem. "Half damage" is slightly quicker, but has its own problems, like how a Fire Giant can still take damage (even if it's just 1 HP) from a mere candle. So ... long story short, I don't like how this was implemented in any previous edition.

But as far as types of damage reduction go ... I'd rather keep the material-based ones than the magic-based or alignment-based types. Just because they have more basis in the folklore.

So "lower the size of the die x steps where x is the Damage Resistence value"?

That's something that would make monsters tougher and encourage getting weapons that would harm them, but not make them unbeatable, unless something had DR 10 (10 steps smaller would reduce most weapon damage to one, even from some siege weapons).

[1337 b4k4]

Possibly. But I'm trying to think of a game that can match 4e's Skill Challenges.

From the little experience I've had with it, I would look at the Spycraft "chase" mechanic (which really applied to everything other than straight combat).

I admit that my point wasn't the clearest, because I'm arguing two things at the same time, first that hard rules >> DM guidelines and second that 5e maneuvers shouldn't take inspiration from page 42. The first part of the argument is where I'm saying that page 42 isn't rules, it's guidelines, and as long as the expected outcomes of a player's improvised actions are that fuzzy, there's not point in improvising when you already have powers that do stuff; 4e has all the deterministic outcomes you describe, but just for powers, not for improvised tactics.

I would argue that player guidelines >> hard rules >> DM Guidelines, though the player guidelines I'm thinking of would arguably be rules. I'm thinking like that liked "pick your power" fighter, that players would be given a set of options to modify their classes' particular "Hit it with a [magical] stick" power to perform any number of things that they can imagine, with some basic rules for combining those items and for creating new actions that the designers did not consider. That is, there shouldn't be a "Things the Rules Don't Cover" page or chapter, because the rules should be providing the players and the GM the tools and formulas to build everything. Pre-spelled out powers and abilities are just pre-made applications of those rules.

The second and slightly more granular is per-die damage reduction: DR 1 means -1 damage per die, DR 10 means -10 damage per die, so you can go from "slightly resistant" to "almost immune" without either rendering DR useless or rendering certain weapons useless. This scales very well and gives you that "must be this tall to ride" effect since DR 6 or 7 would take care of commoners with Str 10 and d6 weapons, but it would require a bit more math on the players' part which isn't necessarily a good thing.

What if each level of DR subtracted one die from the damage roll starting with the smallest die size? Force the casters to burn spells since they don't have expertise dice to add dice to their weapon damage.

[neonchameleon]

Well, first off, walking on hot coals works because of the technique; if, as you emphasized, someone is being pressed into them in combat rather than using a special technique, it would do some damage.

Exactly. How you approach the fire matters - so that's another distinction.

Second, I can certainly come up with a workable fire-damage solution that varies by size and intensity. For a 2e-style overly-detailed solution, let's say fires deal d4 for momentary contact, d6 and ongoing 2 for voluntary contact, and d8 and ongoing 5 for forceful contact, and they do one die of damage per size category starting at Fine (1d6 for Fine, 2d6 for Tiny, 3d6 for Small, etc., with smaller than Fine just doing 0/2/5). Walking on hot coals? Less than Fine, ran right across them, so no damage. Grabbing onto the lit end of a torch? Fine flame (3-6 inches tall), holding it carefully, so 1d6 and ongoing 2. Knocked into a bonfire? Medium flame (4-8 feet tall), unexpected, so 4d8 damage and ongoing 5.

Or we can go with a 3e-style solution. Fire deals 1d6 damage per minute by being too close to them (adjacent to a bonfire or larger, in a burning building, etc.), and coming into contact with a fire makes an attack on you, +5 vs. Reflex to avoid ongoing 5 fire (save ends) for campfire-size fires or smaller, +10 vs. Reflex for ongoing 10 for larger fires. Walking on hot coals? Not a large fire, no contact, so no damage. Grabbing onto the lit end of a torch? Contact, Ref attack for ongoing, take 5 for a few rounds. Knocked into a bonfire? Contact, Ref attack for ongoing, take 10 for a few rounds.

Or we can go with a 4e-style solution. Fires smaller than you deal 1d6 and ongoing 5 (save ends) if you come into contact with them, or 2d6 and ongoing 10 for fires as big or bigger than you. Hot coals don't count as contact, torches are smaller, bonfires are bigger.

Why on earth would I want to do any of those? It's a roaring fire. I'd be surprised if it's relevant as much as one session in ten. Which means I'm never going to remember that table - and all the players and the game actually want is a number that feels about right. Not bogging the game down while I look up the right table is going to make things flow more smoothly and is therefore a good thing in its own right.

And hot coals are hot. Just ask anyone who is into back woods cookery whether they cook the food on the fire or wait for the fire to burn down to embers.

As you can see, having concrete rules that don't depend on the level of the challenge or the attacker rather than variable guidelines doesn't mean that the rules can't be simple,

Those aren't simple. They are pure clutter. Things to remember that don't meaningfully add to the game and slow it down.

or that they'll make knocking people into braziers not worth it at higher levels.

Knocking people into a burning fire is worth it as is in 4e. Why do I want extra rules that only trigger very occasionally and that I'm going to forget?

One of the joys of 4e is that for the last year I've looked nothing beyond monster stat blocks and setting information up in the course of play.

I dislike the 4e system of no physical damage types,

Fair enough. You can add a keyword to each weapon. And then a few triggers on monsters. Would be an improvement.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

That is, there shouldn't be a "Things the Rules Don't Cover" page or chapter, because the rules should be providing the players and the GM the tools and formulas to build everything. Pre-spelled out powers and abilities are just pre-made applications of those rules.

It's impossible to have no Things The Rules Don't Cover sections, since the set of guidelines you mention for coming up with things the designers didn't think of is one of those. I definitely agree, though, that you should rarely have to resort to any of the make-stuff-up-guidelines sections.

What if each level of DR subtracted one die from the damage roll starting with the smallest die size? Force the casters to burn spells since they don't have expertise dice to add dice to their weapon damage.

That could work as well. I like the per-die subtraction rather than removing dice, because you can have things like resistance 6 "cutting off" d4s while leaving damage for d10s (so you can have dagger-proof scales that are still susceptible to huge maces), as opposed to resistance four just subtracting 4 dice regardless of size (which just makes resistance 4 immunity to weapon damage), but your version is probably faster at the table.

Exactly. How you approach the fire matters - so that's another distinction.

Which is an argument for more granular rules, not less; page 42 doesn't have a "no damage, because you were able to run across the coals fast enough" line, so declaring that you don't take damage from a particular hazard means you're ignoring even the simple guidelines given.

Why on earth would I want to do any of those? It's a roaring fire. I'd be surprised if it's relevant as much as one session in ten. Which means I'm never going to remember that table - and all the players and the game actually want is a number that feels about right. Not bogging the game down while I look up the right table is going to make things flow more smoothly and is therefore a good thing in its own right.

1) All three examples were purely for illustrative purposes to show that you can handle fire-based hazards with as much or as little detail as you want, as I explicitly stated. I don't expect you to use any of them, as you've already made it clear that you feel having more than a single table to handle any and all improvisation is too much of a time sink.

2) You can use the same or similar rules for hazards of different types (big fire = X fire damage + ongoing Y fire damage, spiked plate = X piercing damage + ongoing Y bleeding damage, and so on). The complaint at hand isn't that fire traps don't do enough damage, it's that the DM is making stuff up on the fly and the players don't have a frame of reference to work with, and that the rules subsystems for "hit someone with my shield to move him and do damage" and "hit someone into a fire to move him and do damage" are completely different.

And hot coals are hot. Just ask anyone who is into back woods cookery whether they cook the food on the fire or wait for the fire to burn down to embers.

Yes, they're hot, but the reason that walking on hot coals works is that you don't contact them with enough surface area for long enough to burn yourself. If you just stand on them for a bit instead of walking through them quickly, you're going to get burned, hence the contact/no contact differentiation.

Those aren't simple. They are pure clutter. Things to remember that don't meaningfully add to the game and slow it down.

Knocking people into a burning fire is worth it as is in 4e. Why do I want extra rules that only trigger very occasionally and that I'm going to forget?

If you think "touch bad thing, take 1d6 and ongoing 5" is too complex to remember, I can't imaging how you deal with different weapon damage dice, different spell effects, different conditions, different monster powers....

All I'm asking for is consistency of effect and variation of method. By "consistency of effect" I mean that if pushing a kobold into a raging bonfire almost kills it at level 1, pushing an ogre into a similar raging bonfire shouldn't almost kill it at level 8, and a 40-foot spiky pit shouldn't deal less damage in Room B than in Room A because in Room A there was only 1 pit trap to use and in Room B there's one pit trap per enemy. Ogres are tougher than kobolds and Random Fire #37 shouldn't scale like your encounter power does, and exposing the same creature to the same hazard shouldn't deal varying damage based on how easy it is to accomplish that damage.

By "variation of method" I mean that it gets boring to improvise solutions if bonfire = pool of acid = swinging blades = swinging charge = rushing water = etc. for every hazard you run into. Weapons have different damage dice and proficiency bonuses, and powers have varying effects, so having improvised effects all do the same thing is fairly monotonous. If instead fire deals ongoing damage, spike traps reduce your speed, etc. so that improvised mechanics are as interesting as powers, improvisation is encouraged.

And before you suggest that you don't need to scale hazards by level, I remind you that the only given advice for setting DCs explicitly suggests that you add half the character's level to the DC, so it's based on how easy it is for the character now rather than how easy a lower-level character might find it to be. The only given example of setting damage both explicitly uses the character's level to determine the damage the brazier deals and compares it to an encounter power, and it doesn't mention how you should decide what DC is appropriate for a push 1 vs. a push 5 vs. a push 3 + prone or the like--the example they use happens to be identical to Bull Rush and so gives no guidance on the matter, even though knowing how much push 3 is worth is much more useful than knowing when to use 2d8+5 over 1d8+5. Sure, you can ignore that advice and come up with your own scaling and your own condition rules...but in that case you're getting no benefit from page 42 and would have been better served by more comprehensive rules.

One of the joys of 4e is that for the last year I've looked nothing beyond monster stat blocks and setting information up in the course of play.

That's not a special advantage of 4e, that's an advantage of having players who know the rules and not using anything particularly obscure. I, too, have needed to look up hardly any rules in 3e in the past year because I either know them or can rely on my players to know their class abilities--I could easily have gone without looking up any, but I like more complex NPCs and monters--and I'm guessing you can't quote the hit points and AC of an 8-foot-tall reinforced steel door or the effects of a blizzard off the top of your head (for reference, they're "AC 4 and 180 HP" and "N/A, make up a skill challenge" respectively).

Having more codified rules than a page of "make stuff up" and vague skill challenge suggestions really isn't as complicated as you're making it out to be, and there are definite benefits to fleshing things out. If you want to make things up, it doesn't take you a table to know that an 8th-level rogue should be able to use Acrobatics and Bull Rush against an ogre. If you don't want to make things up, having all the rules right there is very convenient.