D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

**obryn** · 2012-12-07, 10:06 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost

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?

This is a standard rule, though - it's a simple chart, very easy to use on the fly. There's no mind-reading involved.

The same chart can be used during prep rather than on the fly; it works just as well.

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."

There's no guesswork involved - it's very transparent. It's not like I hide DCs or damage/effects behind the screen; it's all public information, there for the asking. (And if the guards are minions, that's public information, too.)

Given a choice between a fairly loose but playable system with minimal fuss, and a more simulationist system where I need to worry about specific damage for fire sizes combined with calculating out unarmed combat and working falling damage into the mix ... I'll go with the simpler, faster one every time. I don't need the rules of the game to match the physics of the world.

-O

**navar100** · 2012-12-07, 10:15 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Zeful

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).

Interesting mechanic. However it would require an overhaul of past experience. For example, damage spells can't all be d6 per level. A 10d10 Fireball needs to be accepted. Perhaps it started as d4s but increased as the caster level increased. Some weapons need to be changed. Greatsword can't be 2d6, and not even 4E's 1d10 would do it justice. You get dice inflation. Idea looks good on paper. I don't think it would work well in practice.

**ThiagoMartell** · 2012-12-07, 10:17 PM (ISO 8601)

Simulationism is not the same as following real world physics. It's having the rules translate what happens in the game consistently.
In fact, most simulationist games kick real world physicis in the mud and never let it get back up (GURPS being basically the only exception).

**Ashdate** · 2012-12-07, 10:34 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell

Simulationism is not the same as following real world physics. It's having the rules translate what happens in the game consistently.

And 4e can do that if it's something that concerns you. Call a fire a "level 3 medium damage expression" hazard, and have it deal 1d10+3 damage for the entirety of your campaign.

Meanwhile, DMs (like me) who aren't concerned with "damage consistent" fire can have it do whatever-the-situation-calls-for. The rules can support both of us, rather than just one of us (i.e. neither of us has to use a houserule!). I find this much preferable to a system where some hazards get explicit values, and others I'm forced to improvise with no guidelines I can look to.

**ThiagoMartell** · 2012-12-07, 10:48 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Ashdate

And 4e can do that if it's something that concerns you. Call a fire a "level 3 medium damage expression" hazard, and have it deal 1d10+3 damage for the entirety of your campaign.

Meanwhile, DMs (like me) who aren't concerned with "damage consistent" fire can have it do whatever-the-situation-calls-for. The rules can support both of us, rather than just one of us (i.e. neither of us has to use a houserule!). I find this much preferable to a system where some hazards get explicit values, and others I'm forced to improvise with no guidelines I can look to.

4e is not simulationist at all for reasons pointed out time and time again. It's great that you like it, I'm happy that the last edition of D&D was something that entertained you. But it is not simulationist at all, no matter how you see it.

**PairO'Dice Lost** · 2012-12-07, 10:50 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by obryn

This is a standard rule, though - it's a simple chart, very easy to use on the fly. There's no mind-reading involved.

The same chart can be used during prep rather than on the fly; it works just as well.

You said you'd be "tempted to make 5 or 10 of the damage 'ongoing fire'." The relative value of immediate vs. ongoing damage is the kind of thing that would be valuable to know, yet I don't see it anywhere on page 42.

There's no guesswork involved - it's very transparent. It's not like I hide DCs or damage/effects behind the screen; it's all public information, there for the asking. (And if the guards are minions, that's public information, too.)

Everything is still dependent on your ruling, though, which takes up more time and effort even if you're completely transparent. If a 3e party decides to do something simple like dunk an enemy into a vat of acid or something complicated like march for a full day up to a mountain pass full of constant blizzards, walk through that, and set up an ambush involving boulders and crevasses, everything's laid out for them and they can compare those to their stats and estimated enemy stats to determine chances of success and such. If they were to go to a Living Greyhawk game with a less transparent DM, nothing changes.

If a 4e party decides to come up with a crazy plan, not only will it take a lot more back-and-forth before they decide whether it would be worth attempting, but it could turn out entirely differently with different DMs, a problem that the much-vaunted power system is supposed to prevent. Again, I'm not asking for rules that comprehensively cover everything, but the very basic things that page 42 covers should have rules for them instead of being left up to DM discretion, and they don't help with the kind of stuff that improvisation guidelines would actually be needed to cover.

Originally Posted by Ashdate

Meanwhile, DMs (like me) who aren't concerned with "damage consistent" fire can have it do whatever-the-situation-calls-for. The rules can support both of us, rather than just one of us (i.e. neither of us has to use a houserule!). I find this much preferable to a system where some hazards get explicit values, and others I'm forced to improvise with no guidelines I can look to.

Of course, page 42 doesn't really help with that, since it doesn't tell you anything about what the appropriate level is for a trap that pushes people 5 squares into a wall or the difficulty a character would have in doing the same, or the relative worth of being able to destroy the trigger plate of a trap (level 2 Spear Gauntlet) or not (level 3 Magic Crossbow Turret), or things like that. I mean, seriously, if I'm an inexperienced DM trying to figure out how dangerous being knocked into an energy-based hazard should be, looking at the Glyph of Warding trap with its varying effects by damage type is much more interesting and useful than a chart of damage by level. The build-your-own-hazard behind the 4e DMG traps is something I would actually want to pay for, whereas the lack of weather rules is very unhelpful.

**Zeful** · 2012-12-07, 11:46 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by navar100

Interesting mechanic. However it would require an overhaul of past experience. For example, damage spells can't all be d6 per level. A 10d10 Fireball needs to be accepted. Perhaps it started as d4s but increased as the caster level increased. Some weapons need to be changed. Greatsword can't be 2d6, and not even 4E's 1d10 would do it justice. You get dice inflation. Idea looks good on paper. I don't think it would work well in practice.

It's all about scale at that point. Yes, crap needs to change massively, but you have more room for differentiation weapons with multiple damage dice would be getting hit much harder against DR than weapons with less, but larger dice. A monster with DR10 under this system would need to get nailed with massive siege weaponry to even begin to meaningfully harm it, making things like the tarrasque be part of large set-pieces, but monsters with DR 1 or 2 wouldn't be so bad if you included things that could bypass DR, like elemental damage or special materials. It would even make things like DR1 an actual capstone in a class based system.

It looks good on paper, and if you managed to do it right, I really think it'd be the best option to actually do DR and maybe even energy resistance.

**Ashdate** · 2012-12-08, 12:24 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell

4e is not simulationist at all for reasons pointed out time and time again. It's great that you like it, I'm happy that the last edition of D&D was something that entertained you. But it is not simulationist at all, no matter how you see it.

I never said it was "simulationist", but the rules allow you to have your cake and eat it too. If you want a "consistent world" go nuts; the rules as written can support that. If you don't, great, the rules can support that too.

It seems petty to demand that the book tell you how much damage fire (or rather, an arbitrary number of potential hazards) does when it is extremely simply to pick a value you feel is right and stick with it.

Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost

Of course, page 42 doesn't really help with that, since it doesn't tell you anything about what the appropriate level is for a trap that pushes people 5 squares into a wall or the difficulty a character would have in doing the same, or the relative worth of being able to destroy the trigger plate of a trap (level 2 Spear Gauntlet) or not (level 3 Magic Crossbow Turret), or things like that. I mean, seriously, if I'm an inexperienced DM trying to figure out how dangerous being knocked into an energy-based hazard should be, looking at the Glyph of Warding trap with its varying effects by damage type is much more interesting and useful than a chart of damage by level. The build-your-own-hazard behind the 4e DMG traps is something I would actually want to pay for, whereas the lack of weather rules is very unhelpful.

If you want to use Page 42 to design traps, it tells you quite clearly what the appropriate level for a trap to challenge your players is. What level are they? Here's a DC, and here is a damage expression to match the trap. Want it to be extra challenging? Increase the relative DCs and damage. Want it to be less? Reduce em!

(That said, it's unfortunate that they didn't "officially" have a part on designing traps until the DMG2, but the table for setting DCs/damage is 100% identical to Page 42's values.)

I don't know how weather rules comes into this, but - again - page 42's values can work just fine. Weather is one of the least interesting parts of the DMG to me. It's often too boring/rare/inconsequential/pain in the butt to deal with. If I want it to be a factor in an adventure, the basic tools are already there in page 42. Fog reducing visibility? Use a hard DC for the perception checks. Powerful winds? Use a moderate Endurance DC to stay on one's feet each round or be knocked prone or immobilized. Need to simulate a forest fire, sandstorm, or trekking through an arctic environment? A skill challenge can work.

Name me any hazard and I can probably use page 42 to come up with something fun and appropriate, in less time than it would take to search a rulebook for the a static DC. And if I care to, I can record it for posterity, making the players feel good when returning across the arctic with five extra levels under their belt is so much easier.

4e is so great to DM with because of how flexible it is. I don't see why you would want to take the game back into the stone age because the game gives you handy advice that is adaptable to any number of situations, rather than a select few.

**ThiagoMartell** · 2012-12-08, 01:08 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Ashdate

I never said it was "simulationist", but the rules allow you to have your cake and eat it too. If you want a "consistent world" go nuts; the rules as written can support that. If you don't, great, the rules can support that too.

It seems petty to demand that the book tell you how much damage fire (or rather, an arbitrary number of potential hazards) does when it is extremely simply to pick a value you feel is right and stick with it.

Dude, I never once mentioned fire damage and that's not even why 4e is not simulationist. I just mentioned you used the word incorrectly. No, the 4e rules don't support a consistent world, because they are not meant to. It has less to do with fire than it has to do with distance, the way it handles flight, the way sandstorms will outright kill NPCs but will merely bother PCs, the way some damage is completely abstract, scaling DCs with level and so on and so forth.

**Ashdate** · 2012-12-08, 01:59 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by ThiagoMartell

Dude, I never once mentioned fire damage and that's not even why 4e is not simulationist. I just mentioned you used the word incorrectly. No, the 4e rules don't support a consistent world, because they are not meant to. It has less to do with fire than it has to do with distance, the way it handles flight, the way sandstorms will outright kill NPCs but will merely bother PCs, the way some damage is completely abstract, scaling DCs with level and so on and so forth.

You said that "simulationist" as "having the rules translate what happens in the game consistently." 4e can translate what happens in the game consistently if you desire. Pick a value (or values) and stick with em! I don't see why that should be so difficult. Print a list, hand it to your players.

And remember that Page 42 are just guidelines, and you're the DM. If you want to make NPCs who can survive a sandstorm, make NPCs that can survive a sandstorm. If you want a sandstorm that bothers PCs, make a sandstorm that does. This is no different than previous editions. Check this out:

Your PCs are level 5. You want them to cross a dangerous desert to an oasis. You want it to be an appropriate challenge for a group of level 8 PCs. What's page 42 say? Easy DC = 8, Moderate DC = 14, Hard DC = 19. You decide that trekking across the desert in a sandstorm requires some combination of Perception (hard), Athletics (moderate), and Nature (moderate), with Endurance checks every 8 hours of travel (hard). A Heal check (moderate) can teach you how to best protect yourself in the storm, giving you a +2 bonus to your Endurance check until you fail one (requiring then a hard Heal check). You throw the Wizard a bone by having the Oasis have some magical protection to shield it from the weather, allowing him to make Arcana checks (moderate) to help locate the Oasis.

To survive, NPCs living near this oasis, you decide they need to have about a +9 to their Endurance check. Training (+5), background (+2) and you make em level 4 (+2).

Don't want scaling DCs? Don't have scaling DCs. There's already non-scalable DCs in the PHB, just add to them, building a list that you're comfortable with. Make damage non-abstract; suggest that every square of forced movement into a solid surface deals 1d6 damage. Write in stone that being on fire deals 1d6 damage a round (save ends). Your choice.

Put it this way: In D&D 3.5, being on fire deals 1d6 damage a round. Why 1d6? Why not 1d8? 1d4? 1d6+3? That the book provides you with a hard value doesn't make it a better value than deciding fire is a level 1 moderate hazard (1d8+3). All it does is make it so you have to search through a rulebook if you don't know it off the top of your head. Quick, off the top of your head: what's 3.5's Fortitude check DC more smoke inhalation? What's the Acrobatics check to cross a floor covered in oil? How many rounds does the damage from magma continue after exposure ceases? Just because you can find a rule for them on page X of a rulebook doesn't mean they're any less arbitrary.

It's "1d3 rounds" by the way for magma to stop burning you after exposure ceases. Does that sound right to you? 6-18 seconds and you're in no further danger?

The distance thing is likely a non-issue in 5e, but after a few sessions of 5ft diagonals I wouldn't go back. 4e combat can be clunky as it is, and a non-issue when traveling. Regardless, it has little to do with improvisation or ease of GM'ing. It's pretty easy to introduce 7.5' diagonals and to bust out those metal doohickeys (burst 5 = 25' radius ball) if it means that much to you.

(I only mentioned fire because that brazier example on Page 42 is the go-to for people who want to damn the system rather than see its potential.)

**ThiagoMartell** · 2012-12-08, 02:08 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Ashdate

You said that "simulationist" as "having the rules translate what happens in the game consistently." 4e can translate what happens in the game consistently if you desire. Pick a value (or values) and stick with em! I don't see why that should be so difficult. Print a list, hand it to your players.

It can't, because that's you doing guesswork, not what the system does. It is also restricted to page 42, not the dozens of other ways in which 4e is not simulationist.
You're just point out that you can Rule Zero things. Yeah, we all know that. You being able to Rule Zero out the inconsistencies of 4e does not make 4e consistent.

I'm not saying this is good, I'm not saying this is bad, I'm certainly not "damning" page 42 or whatever. All I'm saying is that just because you can fix an issue, it does not mean it's not an issue.

**PairO'Dice Lost** · 2012-12-08, 03:44 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoilering a long response:

Spoiler

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Originally Posted by Ashdate

I never said it was "simulationist", but the rules allow you to have your cake and eat it too. If you want a "consistent world" go nuts; the rules as written can support that. If you don't, great, the rules can support that too.

It seems petty to demand that the book tell you how much damage fire (or rather, an arbitrary number of potential hazards) does when it is extremely simply to pick a value you feel is right and stick with it.

As in many 3e vs. 4e (and now vs. 5e) discussions, knocking people into braziers isn't specifically the problem, nor is the Come and Get It power, or whatever specific example is used; braziers were the first example given, so we're running with it, but it's essentially being used as a shorthand for the larger issue, which in this case is the level of detail and generality of the rules.

3e takes the stance that everything should be equally fiddly; There's A Rule For That^TM could easily be its motto. This has the advantage of a good level of detail in the rules and the ability to represent pretty much anything with enough effort, but has the disadvantage of clunky rules in places and many mechanics being placed behind barriers (There's A Feat For That!) for no reason. 4e takes the stance that class combat-related features should be very fiddly and everything else much less so; "pick what you think is right and stick with it" is actually a fairly good summary of that. This has the advantage of more tactical combat and less rules-heavy social mechanics, but has the disadvantage of very same-y noncombat mechanics and very siloed combat mechanics.

Here's the thing: from a design perspective, 4e actually has the better approach in my view, putting more detail for what we care about more and less detail for what we care about less, but it targeted the wrong things. Having a robust improvisation system to cover what the rest of the system doesn't cover is a good idea, but 4e's improvisation system overlaps with what the rest of the system doesn't cover instead of really opening new options. Having good general mechanics for things in the world and relying on the skill system for obscure or niche things is a good idea, but 4e doesn't provide the baseline and relies on "make it a skill challenge" to cover the gaps.

For instance:

If you want to use Page 42 to design traps, it tells you quite clearly what the appropriate level for a trap to challenge your players is. What level are they? Here's a DC, and here is a damage expression to match the trap. Want it to be extra challenging? Increase the relative DCs and damage. Want it to be less? Reduce em!

(That said, it's unfortunate that they didn't "officially" have a part on designing traps until the DMG2, but the table for setting DCs/damage is 100% identical to Page 42's values.)

When it comes to a trap, damage is the least important part of the design in a system as mathematically "tight" as 4e is. You can pick an arbitrary fighter encounter power of the appropriate level and deal that much damage plus or minus a [W] and it'll work out fine, but page 42 is silent on what impact the trap roles should have, what AoEs are appropriate for traps of different levels, how many means of disabling a trap should have, and stuff like that.

And even when it comes to the damage numbers, the game doesn't follow its own advice. Why does a Glyph of Warding deal 4d6+4 while a Daggerthorn Briar deals 2d10+5? Is it their roles (Warder vs. Obstacle)? Considering that neither 4d6+4 nor 2d10+5 appear on the page 42 chart, much less in the appropriate level range (3d10+5 is, the damage against a bloodied enemy, but that's a Limited value when the trap can trigger multiple times....) we may never know.

There are such detailed rules for creating monsters from scratch, sketchy rules at best for traps, and no advice on the non-numerics. There are three million powers that let you do damage + effect, nothing on page 42 about adding effects to the damage, and once again no guidelines on the non-numerics. That huge gulf in the rules between "the combat stuff we care about" and "everything else" is part of what I'm talking about.

Or take this:

I don't know how weather rules comes into this, but - again - page 42's values can work just fine. Weather is one of the least interesting parts of the DMG to me. It's often too boring/rare/inconsequential/pain in the butt to deal with. If I want it to be a factor in an adventure, the basic tools are already there in page 42. Fog reducing visibility? Use a hard DC for the perception checks. Powerful winds? Use a moderate Endurance DC to stay on one's feet each round or be knocked prone or immobilized. Need to simulate a forest fire, sandstorm, or trekking through an arctic environment? A skill challenge can work.

Name me any hazard and I can probably use page 42 to come up with something fun and appropriate, in less time than it would take to search a rulebook for the a static DC. And if I care to, I can record it for posterity, making the players fegets no el good when returning across the arctic with five extra levels under their belt is so much easier.

Where are you getting that prone and immobilized are appropriate conditions for wind effects? Where would you get range/attack penalties for ranged weapons? You're coming up with all of the interesting and fiddly bits yourself--Perception checks instead of concealment, Endurance vs. immobilize from winds, etc.--and page 42 provides the least important and interesting part.

All of the stuff you're suggesting is what a good DM should do, but it's not the spotty 4e improvisation guidelines that are doing that, it's you. An experienced DM doesn't need page 42, a newbie DM doesn't get much use out of them. That's why I've been saying that all the "roll X vs. Y to impose Z condition" stuff, environmental damage, and such should be more codified in the rules (because players need a baseline, bad DMs need something to fall back on, and a good DM can wing it either way) and the vastly-overrated page 42 only serves as a crutch (it gives players no baseline, DMs who follow the guidelines as presented come up with bad/boring results, DMs who don't follow the guidelines never needed help with that in the first place).

4e is so great to DM with because of how flexible it is. I don't see why you would want to take the game back into the stone age because the game gives you handy advice that is adaptable to any number of situations, rather than a select few.

I can and have DMed 3e games largely from memory, and can sketch out high-level NPCs in a few minutes. If I don't use the environment-related rules in the DMG, it's because I've homebrewed my own versions, not because I can't remember them. Another player in my group tried his hand at DMing a few months back, and he doesn't have nearly the same system mastery or confidence in his own rulings. If either of us needed to look at the DMG for help with improvisation, page 42 is not what we need. I'd want something like the pricing formulas behind the published magic items to supplement the custom item creation rules, or working CR estimation rules, or things like that; he'd want something that goes into more detail on how powerful different conditions are, when you should use what types and magnitudes of bonuses, and similar.

Neither of us need rote damage and DC charts. DC 10/15/20 plus half level for easy/medium/hard isn't an insightful guideline, it's the first thing you come up with when you think "Hmm, 4e PCs get +1/2 level to skill checks, I want a 50/50 success rate, what DC do I set?" Page 42 isn't the model 5e should use, because it's a cop-out on the designer's part and doesn't really do anything useful, it just leaves all the heavy lifting to the DM. Either codify the non-numerical stuff or provide the full treatise and behind-the-scenes reasoning for when to use each, don't just throw numbers on a page and call that improvisation advice.

Don't want scaling DCs? Don't have scaling DCs. There's already non-scalable DCs in the PHB, just add to them, building a list that you're comfortable with.
[...]
(I only mentioned fire because that brazier example on Page 42 is the go-to for people who want to damn the system rather than see its potential.)

I once again point out that the advice you're giving here is precisely the opposite of that given on page 42. That's not a bad thing; you're giving good advice, and setting aside that revision #7153 of skill challenges isn't mathematically sound your example for that is also good advice. It's just that that's not the advice in the book. Again: a good DM like you isn't actually relying on the book for improvisation, a bad/new DM either gets nothing out of them or learns bad practices.

I see the potential, all right, there's plenty of potential, it's the lack of follow-through I can't stand.

TL;DR: You don't need guidelines to arbitrarily "pick a value and stick with it," that's a poor excuse for a "system," and it's exactly the hard-to-quantify non-numerics that should be codified in 5e because taking the page 42 approach isn't going to help with that.

**Kurald Galain** · 2012-12-08, 09:36 AM (ISO 8601)

What I dislike about the lack of central rules for (e.g.) lava and rainstorms is that I've seen too many combats that start with the DM having to explain the rules for this particular combat, i.e. how lava works today, irrespective of how it worked yesterday. This is a problem when you play a lot of published adventures, or switch DMs a lot. I've even seen the type of action required to disarm a trap vary between adventures.

Related to this is that combat in unusual situations can be made cool. It's nothing special if a combat underwater works the same as a combat above water, or if combat in darkness is irrelevant because everybody carries five sunrods by default.

**neonchameleon** · 2012-12-08, 11:35 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost

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.

For the record page 42 does have that section. Attack vs reflex.

The trouble is that every addition you make to the granularity is system overhead, DM overhead, and in practice adds almost nothing to the effects in play. 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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

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.

They overlap where they should - the fire is a fire not a weapon. Your point?

If you think "touch bad thing, take 1d6 and ongoing 5" is too complex to remember,

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.

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.

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).

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.

Indeed it shouldn't. What you consider level appropriate should change as you level up. To save time you're probably going to consider bonfire-cooked kobold in a level 1 encounter to do high (non-limited) level 1 damage - and bonfire-cooked ogre to do low level 8 damage (because it's really dangerous to the kobold but considering an ogre should be cooked to death by the same fire is silly). For comparison, damage for high level 1 is 2d6+3 and for low level 8 is d8+5 according to the DMG2. Are you going to say that those are too far apart?

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.

No it doesn't - the exact amount of damage caused by the improvisation is not the fun part. The interesting part is the tactics involved in making the solutions work. What gets boring is having to stop the game while you look up on your six dimensional table the damage for fire. Then work out the strength, the coverage, and the quantity of acid. Then...

Weapons have different damage dice and proficiency bonuses,

13th age made all weapons do the same amount of damage (given the same class of wielder). There is a problem with 13th age combat - but that isn't it. (It's that fighter-types roll the dice to see what they did, giving themselves no control).

and powers have varying effects, so having improvised effects all do the same thing is fairly monotonous.

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?

If instead fire deals ongoing damage, spike traps reduce your speed, etc. so that improvised mechanics are as interesting as powers, improvisation is encouraged.

All you need to encourage that sort of improvisation is make sure the opportunity cost is lower than the expected reward. In 3.X to bull rush someone you give up your chance to skewer them. It's a big hit, so the result needs to be bigger. In 4e with forced movement powers you do damage as well. The opportunity cost is low rather than high - so improvisation is encouraged. And forcing people around doesn't need to be more interesting than powers. Forcing people around and using powers needs to be more interesting than just forcing people around.

But spikes probably do inflict the slowed condition as well as doing damage. Your point? This is neither necessary nor sufficient for interest.

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

I mentioned the monster manual for a good reason. I can't make up e.g. a 4e Black Dragon off the top of my head. But a vast difference between 4e presentation and 3.X presentation is the statblock has the rules in 4e. In 3.X it often contains a list of spells - meaning you have to look up the spells. Very different principle.

--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).

The blizzard was obvious. I can;t remember using a reinforced steel door - and it's a case by case thing.

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.

The problem is that even GURPS doesn't have "all the rules". I've identified six important factors for a fire

Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost

You said you'd be "tempted to make 5 or 10 of the damage 'ongoing fire'." The relative value of immediate vs. ongoing damage is the kind of thing that would be valuable to know, yet I don't see it anywhere on page 42.

It's treated as 1:1 by monster statblocks. In theory it's just under 2:1 if nothing grants a saving throw.

Everything is still dependent on your ruling, though, which takes up more time and effort even if you're completely transparent. If a 3e party decides to do something simple like dunk an enemy into a vat of acid

Because all acid is the same strength.

or something complicated like march for a full day up to a mountain pass full of constant blizzards, walk through that, and set up an ambush involving boulders and crevasses,

Because all blizards are identically difficult to walk through and all mountains are equally hard to climb.

everything's laid out for them and they can compare those to their stats and estimated enemy stats to determine chances of success and such.

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.

If a 4e party decides to come up with a crazy plan, not only will it take a lot more back-and-forth before they decide whether it would be worth attempting, but it could turn out entirely differently with different DMs, a problem that the much-vaunted power system is supposed to prevent.

Because all blizzards in 3.X are the same intensity rather than simply restricting the wind speed to 30mph+. And all blizzards would add precisely the same difficulty to climbing the mountain. And all 3.X DMs would agree on this. Right, gotcha.

For anyone interested in the 3.X rules, blizzards are here.

Again, I'm not asking for rules that comprehensively cover everything, but the very basic things that page 42 covers should have rules for them instead of being left up to DM discretion, and they don't help with the kind of stuff that improvisation guidelines would actually be needed to cover.

Apparently basic stuff includes at least working out four dimensions of how hot a fire is. And a humongous table to handle it. Plus all blizzards. And all mountains. Right.

You know, I'm fairly sure that I can fit most of the core rules for about half the games on my bookshelf into that page on 3.X weather.

I mean, seriously, if I'm an inexperienced DM trying to figure out how dangerous being knocked into an energy-based hazard should be, looking at the Glyph of Warding trap with its varying effects by damage type is much more interesting and useful than a chart of damage by level.

It might be more interesting. But at the table it is (a) slower and (b) less useful.

Now I'm going to give you a real challenge for an inexperienced DM. And some acutal genuine improvising rather than merely using damaging terrain (which is all over the place in 4e and I'm slightly depressed you think it's anything other than SOP).

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.

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.

Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost

but it's essentially being used as a shorthand for the larger issue, which in this case is the level of detail and generality of the rules.

3e takes the stance that everything should be equally fiddly; There's A Rule For That^TM could easily be its motto. This has the advantage of a good level of detail in the rules and the ability to represent pretty much anything with enough effort, but has the disadvantage of clunky rules in places and many mechanics being placed behind barriers (There's A Feat For That!) for no reason.

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.

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.

This is the level of improvisation my players come up with. Throwing someone into the latrine or off the walls isn't improvisation so much as SOP - and the improvised plans are handled really easily by 4e. Giving me piles of irrelevant DCs would do nothing except slow me down.

Here's the thing: from a design perspective, 4e actually has the better approach in my view, putting more detail for what we care about more and less detail for what we care about less, but it targeted the wrong things. Having a robust improvisation system to cover what the rest of the system doesn't cover is a good idea, but 4e's improvisation system overlaps with what the rest of the system doesn't cover instead of really opening new options. Having good general mechanics for things in the world and relying on the skill system for obscure or niche things is a good idea, but 4e doesn't provide the baseline and relies on "make it a skill challenge" to cover the gaps.

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

There are such detailed rules for creating monsters from scratch,

Don't look very detailed to me. Merely effective. 3.X with its build the NPCs as if they were PCs has much more detailed rules. And IMO far, far less effective ones.

nothing on page 42 about adding effects to the damage,

This is the one genuine issue you have. And there's a Dragon article that fixed that.

and once again no guidelines on the non-numerics.

Simply isn't so. It's just the guidelines aren't in one place.

Where are you getting that prone and immobilized are appropriate conditions for wind effects?

Wind knocks you down? You know, the fiction?

Where would you get range/attack penalties for ranged weapons? You're coming up with all of the interesting and fiddly bits yourself--Perception checks instead of concealment, Endurance vs. immobilize from winds, etc.--and page 42 provides the least important and interesting part.

Page 42 provides the part the game designers can write down, and that may lead to absolutely unfun play if broken (no one likes an accidental TPK or pure softballs).

All of the stuff you're suggesting is what a good DM should do, but it's not the spotty 4e improvisation guidelines that are doing that, it's you. An experienced DM doesn't need page 42, a newbie DM doesn't get much use out of them.

As a newbie when I started DMing 4e, I'm going to say that this simply isn't so. That as a newbie I got a lot out of the p42 guidelines, and far more out of the skill challenge rules - which are both broadly effective and are not intimidating (unlike the 3,X fiddly raft of modifiers). The damage is the part that has a permanent effect and is therefore the part you don't want to get wrong.

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 can and have DMed 3e games largely from memory, and can sketch out high-level NPCs in a few minutes.

How much of that references other books?

I'd want something like the pricing formulas behind the published magic items to supplement the custom item creation rules, or working CR estimation rules,

Bwuh? You are the first person I've ever seen that asked for that.

he'd want something that goes into more detail on how powerful different conditions are, when you should use what types and magnitudes of bonuses, and similar.

The power of different conditions possibly needs a page somewhere. As for types and magnitudes of bonusses, take them from the skill challenge guidelines. 4e has them.

Neither of us need rote damage and DC charts. DC 10/15/20 plus half level for easy/medium/hard isn't an insightful guideline,

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.

On the other hand skill challenges for complex plans (N successes before 3 failures, DCs all presented, and XP and advanced rules for hard skills) is insightful.

**PairO'Dice Lost** · 2012-12-08, 03:07 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoilering yet another long response. I need to get out more....

Spoiler

Show

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.

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.

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:

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:

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?

[...]

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.

[...]

Wind knocks you down? You know, the fiction?

Third, non-comprehensiveness:

It's treated as 1:1 by monster statblocks. In theory it's just under 2:1 if nothing grants a saving throw.

[...]

The power of different conditions possibly needs a page somewhere.

[...]

Simply isn't so. It's just the guidelines aren't in one place.

[...]

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:

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?

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Neonchameleon, you might want to spoiler your responses as well, so this thread doesn't just turn into a discussion between the two of us.

**neonchameleon** · 2012-12-08, 05:02 PM (ISO 8601)

Starting with a fundamental misconception, complex skill checks and skill challenges are not even close to being the same thing. A "Complex Diplomacy Check" involves rolling the diplomacy skill half a dozen times to find whether you're diplomatic enough, and a complex balance check involves rolling Handle Animal half a dozen times to find out if you've succeeded at training your animal. It's intentionally rolling the same check multiple times to find out if the orthodox skill is good enough Literally the only thing that has in common with a Skill Challenge is an n successes before 3 failures mechanic.

A skill challenge is a scene framing and resolution structure. It still has the three failures mechanic (as long as you've accepted the errata) - but a skill challenge is intended to take multiple people doing what they are good at in order to further the plan. So the wizard does the research on the castle (history), the bard walks up to distract the guards (diplomacy), the fighter gets himself and the rogue over the wall (athletics), and the rogue sneaks in, defeats the lock (thievery), and gets filches the parchment without being spotted (stealth). And if something goes wrong the bard can try bluffing the guards they haven't heard anything (bluff), the fighter can spook the horses to keep the guards busy (nature), the wizard can provide a distraction or back the bard's distraction (arcana), or the rogue or fighter can try to convince people to keep quiet (bluff or intimidate).

This is an entire plan handled with the one mechanic, including the sort of challenge level that will be fun. A world away from the canonnical animal trianing complex skill check in which you use (handle animal), (handle animal), (handle animal), (handle animal), (handle animal), (handle animal), and for variety ... (handle animal) (and if something goes wrong you use, guess what? (handle animal)). And what do you do with that skill check? You handle an animal.

And how do you know which skills to call for in an improvised skill challenge? You let the players tell you. They tell you what they are doing, you tell them which skill to roll. And if they aren't doing anything too useful they don't roll a skill.

As for your example of making the dragon scene up, it leaves me cold compared to what I actually did. Which was again let the PCs lead. As I remember it involved them using streetwise to find a suitable cart, bluff (which covers disguise in 4e) to disguise the dragon properly, dungeoneering (which I use to cover engineering - a stupid oversight in 4e and almost as much of one in 3e although craft and profession cover some of it) because the thing was rickety (failed streetwise), history to find a quiet and overhung route, intimidate to drive back the curious kids (who were the physical manifestation of one of the rolls failing - the PCs choice to use intimidate as other social skills would have worked). A much more comprehensive scene using the talents of almost all of the PCs and in which they were able to pull things back from the brink of failure.

And what did the skill challenge rules provide me with? Framing and pacing. They let me easily work out how far each step should take the scene. You've told me how to disguise the dragon - but not take it across town. Mr. New DM following your advice has only the simplest answer to the first step of getting the dragon across town. He doesn't have a ready made scene which involves everyone, will last a fun length of time, will be the right level of challenging despite the number of moving parts, and that can inherently handle some level of PC failure.

One other point before I continue on the fire and the spoiler blocks. The 4e DMG 1 is a deeply flawed book and was put out with literally a year too little playtesting. Most of it has been errata'd - and 4e (2008) is a very different creature from 4e (2012). The half level +15 guidelines are clearly bad because of things like stat increases and feats.

I also think half the problem we're having with non-communication is that we're fundamentally looking at the game in opposite directions. You seem to want to look to the rules to tell you what the fiction should be. Me, I want the fiction, for the most part, to tell me what the rules are. Prone has a tight mapping to the fiction, therefore I don't need guidelines to tell me when an effect can knock someone prone. Hit points on the other hand are largely a product of the metagame so I can't look straight at the fiction to tell me what the numbers should be.

And this is where the making up your half-aboleth vampire comes in. I don't start with the rules at all. I start off with the concept of a half-aboleth vampire and ask what makes him special, what makes him distinct, and what he ought to be able to do. I then give him the mechanics to do that, whatever that is. (I'm now picturing a fish thing with sparkly slime just to make the idea even more horrific, and that instead of biting turns its victims skin into a transparent mucous membrane then just reaches its tentacles in).

(I'll spoiler if I go back to segment by segment).

**Kurald Galain** · 2012-12-08, 05:33 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by neonchameleon

As for your example of making the dragon scene up, it leaves me cold compared to what I actually did. Which was again let the PCs lead.

Well, that's a very nice bit of improvisation on your part, but unfortunately none of that is in the rules. Precisely what Pairodice said: it's the DM doing that, not the rules. In fact, the rules specifically spell out that you aren't supposed to do it like this (although I prefer your method over what the rules actually say).

The bottom line is that I'm not going to pay WOTC for the advice of "yeah, just make something up and let your players roll for stuff". If I'm paying them to design a game, I expect them to design a game.

**PairO'Dice Lost** · 2012-12-08, 06:42 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by neonchameleon

Starting with a fundamental misconception, complex skill checks and skill challenges are not even close to being the same thing.

*snip*

The only thing that skill challenges do above and beyond the basic resolution mechanic is codifying X successes before Y failures, which anyone who has read the UA complex skill checks section would have seen before--and it gives you statistics, so if you want to come up with your own "challenge" you know the math behind it.

There is literally nothing else useful in the skill challenge mechanic. You say "And how do you know which skills to call for in an improvised skill challenge? You let the players tell you. They tell you what they are doing, you tell them which skill to roll. And if they aren't doing anything too useful they don't roll a skill." That's not an innovation skill challenge system, that's the basic resolution mechanic of the d20 system and dozens of other RPGs. Skill challenges take that and add on the X successes mechanic, nothing more.

As for your example of making the dragon scene up, it leaves me cold compared to what I actually did.

You were talking about fiddly DCs, so I focused on those skills with fiddly DCs. I didn't think I needed to specify that you roll Search to find a cart, Craft to repair the cart or put blankets together, Gather Information or Survival to find the route, Intimidate or Diplomacy to remove passersby from the equation, and so forth. Oh look, you can roll the same skills for the same outcomes with or without skill challenges, what a surprise.

Mr. New DM following your advice has only the simplest answer to the first step of getting the dragon across town. He doesn't have a ready made scene which involves everyone, will last a fun length of time, will be the right level of challenging despite the number of moving parts, and that can inherently handle some level of PC failure.

And neither do you. How did you know to throw in a bunch of curious kids? Once again, you made that up with no input from the books--and no, "Do something interesting if the PCs fail" isn't a skill challenge guideline, it's GMing 101.

I also think half the problem we're having with non-communication is that we're fundamentally looking at the game in opposite directions. You seem to want to look to the rules to tell you what the fiction should be. Me, I want the fiction, for the most part, to tell me what the rules are. Prone has a tight mapping to the fiction, therefore I don't need guidelines to tell me when an effect can knock someone prone. Hit points on the other hand are largely a product of the metagame so I can't look straight at the fiction to tell me what the numbers should be.

I'm not looking at the rules to tell me what the fiction should be, I'm looking to the rules to resolve the fiction. As far as I can tell (and correct me if I'm wrong) both of us want to be able to take a scene and do something at each decision point. The PCs try to lie? They succeed or fail, but something interesting happens either way. The difference as I see it is that you see yourself as a director ("What would be dramatically appropriate here?") while I see myself as an arbiter ("If the PCs do X, what happens?"). To you, a very basic, vague framework is much better than more codified rules because you want to be free to throw in anything that's cool; to me, a very basic, vague framework is much worse than more codified rules because I want things to be logical and consistent. I feel that an accomplished GM can do cool stuff in any system once they know it well enough, while figuring out benchmarks takes a lot more time and effort--compare, in 3e, deciding whether letting a player get into a PrC early because it fits his concept will ruin the game (protip: 99% of the time, it won't) vs. determining at what level you can assume that the party has easy access to true seeing and death ward given a certain combination of classes.

Which is why I'm not sure why page 42 and skill challenges are hailed as huge leaps forward by 4e fans, really. D&D is all about codified rules, with its dozens of books of pre-statted monsters, very specific spells, and charts for tons of things. In fact, I'd say the codified powers of 4e are quite damaging to wing-it DMs, since there's much less wiggle room in determining what's level-appropriate and avoiding overshadowing PC powers. I personally like plenty of other games that are much more rules-light or GM-work-intensive and have no problem with winging things in those contexts; the thing is, though, that pre-4e D&D and GURPS and such have basically the same level of rules detail for everything (lots) and FATE and other rules-light games have basically the same level of rules detail for everything (much less), while 4e has very very codified rules for some things and the vaguest hints for making stuff up for the rest.

I don't want to see 5e go the route of 4e as far as noncombat stuff and improvisation are concerned, because as I've said several times now there's really no substance to "make up a skill challenge" and I don't want to pay WotC for books that say "We trust you to figure this out, because we certainly can't."

**Kerrin** · 2012-12-08, 07:42 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Menteith

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.

Oh, no disagreement at all. I'd probably treat the swinging as an unusual form of movement requiring a roll. Then at the end of the swing, if the character is going to stab an opponent or try to land on them, I'd use a separate roll to resolve that.

The only reason the DC of the swinging activity might differ fom whatever the standard is would be if there was something unusual about that particular swing attempt that would make it easier/harder than "normal".

**neonchameleon** · 2012-12-08, 08:45 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Kurald Galain

Well, that's a very nice bit of improvisation on your part, but unfortunately none of that is in the rules. Precisely what Pairodice said: it's the DM doing that, not the rules.

Except the skill challenge rules are doing that. They are telling me to frame the scene, what's needed, that I should be flexible in the skills the PCs use, and giving me a nice mathematical framework.

What they aren't giving me is a simulationist GURPS-style ideal.

Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost

The only thing that skill challenges do above and beyond the basic resolution mechanic is codifying X successes before Y failures, which anyone who has read the UA complex skill checks section would have seen before--and it gives you statistics, so if you want to come up with your own "challenge" you know the math behind it.

As I have pointed out, this simply is wrong. Complex skill challenges are explicitely for resolving a single action in order to draw it out over a period of time. Skill challenges are for resolving a scene or complex activity. There is no indication anywhere in complex skill challenges that you use more than one different skill, that more than one person acts, or they are for framing something done by the entire party working together. In fact every example indicates that you only use a simple skill for a relatively straightforward but time consuming action rather than a plan with multiple parts in which everyone is pitching in.

I say again they provide a framing and pacing mechanism. If you don't think scene framing, and pacing is useful, we have a serious disagreement. They are for me.

And neither do you. How did you know to throw in a bunch of curious kids? Once again, you made that up with no input from the books--and no, "Do something interesting if the PCs fail" isn't a skill challenge guideline, it's GMing 101.

Telling me roughly how many decision points there should be in the scene, giving me a guideline for how long it was meant to take, and how many complications, on the other hand, came from the skill challenge.

The difference as I see it is that you see yourself as a director ("What would be dramatically appropriate here?") while I see myself as an arbiter ("If the PCs do X, what happens?").

Pretty much, yes. It's the N/S split Ron Edwards was keen on (even if he messed up S quite badly) or perhaps the G/S split. (When I ran Caverns of Thracia in D&D Next it was very definitely with gamism in mind).

To you, a very basic, vague framework

To me a framework focussing on the tension, the pacing, and the drama is extremely useful. It's only basic and vague in the same way a five paragraph essay is basic and vague. The five paragraph essay doesn't tell you what you want to argue. That's something you need to decide. What it tells you is how to structure the argument in a clear and effective manner. (See also Wally Wood's 22 Pannels that always work).

And what I feel about the fire rules you want is that they are attempting to produce a spurious consistency. It's asking for a consistency between things that simply aren't consistent either from a physics perspective or a narrative one.

Which is why I'm not sure why page 42 and skill challenges are hailed as huge leaps forward by 4e fans, really. D&D is all about codified rules,

No. 3.X is all about codified rules and so, to an extent was AD&D. 4e isn't and neither was B/X. And there's an entire movement in the D&D community advocating for "Rulings, not rules."

**PairO'Dice Lost** · 2012-12-09, 03:20 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by neonchameleon

Except the skill challenge rules are doing that. They are telling me to frame the scene, what's needed, that I should be flexible in the skills the PCs use, and giving me a nice mathematical framework.

What they aren't giving me is a simulationist GURPS-style ideal.

[...]

I say again they provide a framing and pacing mechanism. If you don't think scene framing, and pacing is useful, we have a serious disagreement. They are for me.

If you needed skill challenge rules to tell you to frame the scene and let the PCs decide what actions to take, as opposed to, say, reading the GMing advice section of every RPG ever, I'm not sure what to tell you.

When you said you were a new 4e DM, did you mean new to DMing 4e or new to DMing, period? I'm assuming the former since you seem to be fairly competent and experienced, but if it's the latter I can see why the skill challenge guidance could be helpful.

As I have pointed out, this simply is wrong. Complex skill challenges are explicitely for resolving a single action in order to draw it out over a period of time. Skill challenges are for resolving a scene or complex activity. There is no indication anywhere in complex skill challenges that you use more than one different skill, that more than one person acts, or they are for framing something done by the entire party working together. In fact every example indicates that you only use a simple skill for a relatively straightforward but time consuming action rather than a plan with multiple parts in which everyone is pitching in.

And as I have already pointed out, I'm not saying that skill challenges are a carbon copy of complex skill checks, I'm saying that the only supposedly new and different part of skill challenges as opposed to a normal series of skill checks, the X successes before Y failures part, was already present in complex skill checks. Hell, they're in Shadowrun, they're in WoD, they're in most dice pool-based RPGs, though they go by names like "extended test" there. There's nothing new under the sun.

Telling me roughly how many decision points there should be in the scene, giving me a guideline for how long it was meant to take, and how many complications, on the other hand, came from the skill challenge.

Personally, I just go by PC actions and keep providing scenarios and complications until they reach their goal or screw up beyond redemption, but barring that you get no advice beyond 1 decision point per roll, which is fairly intuitive.

And what I feel about the fire rules you want is that they are attempting to produce a spurious consistency. It's asking for a consistency between things that simply aren't consistent either from a physics perspective or a narrative one.

Again, the knock-into-brazier example is a microcosm of the general debate. I'm not arguing for "The fire rules aren't realistic!!!", I'm using that example to frame my overall argument, and I will readily concede that concrete rules for bonfires are not absolutely necessary for a good game.

No. 3.X is all about codified rules and so, to an extent was AD&D. 4e isn't and neither was B/X. And there's an entire movement in the D&D community advocating for "Rulings, not rules."

I beg to differ. 4e certainly is all about codified rules: everything is a power, there are mechanical benefits (via themes) for RP aspects of your character, they made up a category of powers called martial practices instead of folding them into the skill rules, and so forth. Now, it's certainly less codified than AD&D or 3e, and there are areas where it isn't codified that it pretends to have comprehensive rules for but only has the most meager of suggestions, but rules-light it ain't. OD&D wasn't codified, but (A) the D&D family has been dominated by the Advanced family for a looong time and (B) BECMI and Rules Compendium D&D started codification in earnest, particularly with the realms management to ascension rules that had previously been RP-only.

As I said before, I have no problem with rules-light games, I'm happy with the Make **** Up sections of old-school and rules-light RPGs, and I can sympathize with the OSR. What I don't want to see, however, is for 5e--the edition that purports to be able to satisfy AD&D, 3e, and 4e fans alike--to go with the cop-out that is 4e's improvisation guidelines instead of codifying things at least to the point that they're useful improvisation guidelines.

**Kurald Galain** · 2012-12-09, 04:59 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost

The only thing that skill challenges do above and beyond the basic resolution mechanic is codifying X successes before Y failures, which anyone who has read the UA complex skill checks section would have seen before--and it gives you statistics, so if you want to come up with your own "challenge" you know the math behind it.

There is literally nothing else useful in the skill challenge mechanic.

In fact, the rules for SCs have several other requirements that people who like SCs tend to ignore, and rightly so since these requirements don't work well.
For instance, either the DMG1 or the 4.4 DM book contain rules that every character must participate in initiative order, that characters cannot use a spell or item instead of a skill (or they can pretend they're using it, but roll a skill check anyway at no bonus, even if the spell/item normally doesn't require a check), that the DM pre-selects which skills are available and penalizes a player who tries something different, and that the players can never fail at the overall outcome but can only get a minor complication if they fail too many checks.

I understand that a good DM can make SCs work (generally by running them the way skill scenes work every other RPG), but a good DM can make anything work. What makes a ruleset good is that it still works if run by an average or mediocre DM. And just look at any printed WOTC adventure to see what ridiculous setups and situations the adventure writers come up with based on SC rules.

Rules design is never about what you, personally can work with. It's about what every other fan in the world can work with, including those fans that aren't good DMs. It's not for nothing that the 5E dev team has stated that SCs need to "die in a fire".

**ThiagoMartell** · 2012-12-09, 07:47 AM (ISO 8601)

I remember being psyched about skill challenges. When they came up in my first 4e campaign, we completely messed up, using the wrong skills and all (we were looking for an abandoned temple). I was tense. We had just failed. What would happen? Would we have to track back to down and have to get a powerful spellcaster to locate it for us? Would we have enough money to do so? Would we have to go in a sidequest just to get enough money to do so? I was suddenly very excited, because failing seemed to lead to a much more interesting story. Then, the DM told us. "You find it by night."
That was the second clue I got... I was not going to enjoy much about 4e (the first was Bards using wands instead of instruments).

**neonchameleon** · 2012-12-09, 09:49 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Kurald Galain

In fact, the rules for SCs have several other requirements that people who like SCs tend to ignore, and rightly so since these requirements don't work well.

The rules for skill challenges in the DMG 1 were taken out and shot and rightfully so. They don't even make mathematical sense. But as for the rest...

For instance, either the DMG1 or the 4.4 DM book contain rules that every character must participate in initiative order,

{scrubbed}

From the Rules Compendium p158: "The DM can have the adventurers act in initiative order or in some other order of his or her choice."

Note not the DM must, but the DM can. The rules you are talking about were in the DMG 1 - which are flawed from top to bottom.

that characters cannot use a spell or item instead of a skill

This time you are contradicted by the DMG2 which has half a column under the heading "Allow options besides skills" on page 186. Which even contains the line "A character who performs a relevant ritual or uses a daily power deserves to notch 1 success toward the party's goal"

Once again, your claim is shown to be false - although admittedly the Rules Compendium doesn't go into this in as much detail.

that the DM pre-selects which skills are available and penalizes a player who tries something different,

"The DM might tell the players which skills to use, let them improvise which ones they use, or both." RC p158 ... "The DM usually picks the primary skills before the challenge begins and tells them to the players." RC p160

and that the players can never fail at the overall outcome but can only get a minor complication if they fail too many checks.

Which is not what is actually said. What is said is that "Failing a challenge doesn't bring the adventure to a halt." (RC p161) There must still be somewhere to go. It's very basic Fail Forward advice (and is a bit better presented in the DMG 2 but I can't be bothered to write that all out).
{scrubbed}

But other than Fail Forward (a.k.a. "Roll the dice and say yeeeeeesssssssss" - 13th Age), literally every one of your criticisms above of the skill challenge rules as written directly contradicts the actual rules as written. At that point, could you stop talking about skill challenges as if you know what the actual rules to them are please?

Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost

If you needed skill challenge rules to tell you to frame the scene and let the PCs decide what actions to take, as opposed to, say, reading the GMing advice section of every RPG ever, I'm not sure what to tell you.

About the same thing I'd say for most of what you want I think.

When you said you were a new 4e DM, did you mean new to DMing 4e or new to DMing, period?

In the ten years before I started DMing 4e I'd run about three sessions of Paranoia XP. I'd run a little (and badly) as a teenager. Pretty much new to DMing period.

And as I have already pointed out, I'm not saying that skill challenges are a carbon copy of complex skill checks, I'm saying that the only supposedly new and different part of skill challenges as opposed to a normal series of skill checks, the X successes before Y failures part, was already present in complex skill checks.

I don't think they are new - I think Burning Wheel has its own version. But the X successes before three failures misses the point of them - the important part is the unfolding situations, the team all contributing.

Personally, I just go by PC actions and keep providing scenarios and complications until they reach their goal or screw up beyond redemption, but barring that you get no advice beyond 1 decision point per roll, which is fairly intuitive.

That can often be paced extremely badly by new DMs - and I've had the misfortune to see a "1 failure makes the whole thing fail" approach (most often on stealth). Worst I've heard of is the very keen mountain climber who put in all the decision points he knew about.

Again, the knock-into-brazier example is a microcosm of the general debate. I'm not arguing for "The fire rules aren't realistic!!!", I'm using that example to frame my overall argument, and I will readily concede that concrete rules for bonfires are not absolutely necessary for a good game.

Pick your aspect. I can probably do the same to it. Including doors having a break DC.

4e certainly is all about codified rules:

4e is about codified combat rules and power balance. Which is a subset of the rules. It's also about how people can go above and beyond even the exceptional.

OD&D wasn't codified, but (A) the D&D family has been dominated by the Advanced family for a looong time and (B) BECMI and Rules Compendium D&D started codification in earnest, particularly with the realms management to ascension rules that had previously been RP-only.

BECMI is arguable. But the best selling part of the D&D family, as I understand it, was the Moldvay or the Mentzer Red Box. It was only in the 90s (and certainly post-Lorraine Williams) when AD&D really started to dominate - and that was the time when despite mountains of books being published, TSR was losing money - and White Wolf had all the enthusiasm and appeal.

to go with the cop-out that is 4e's improvisation guidelines instead of codifying things at least to the point that they're useful improvisation guidelines.

And I see the 4e improvisation guidelies as useful - and the 3.X ones as downright harmful as there are far too many of them.

**Kurald Galain** · 2012-12-09, 10:10 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by neonchameleon

The rules for skill challenges in the DMG 1 were taken out and shot and rightfully so. They don't even make mathematical sense. But as for the rest...

Right. So let's agree that the SC rules as printed in the DMG1 are crap.

{scrubbed}

Please be civil here. I said that either the DMG or the 4.4 book had that rule. In this case, DMG1 does.

Why is this important? Well, many players and DMs don't own and haven't read every single rulebook, nor every single errata page. People start with the main books (PHB1+DMG1+MM1) and, since this is quite a large monetary investment, many people simply stop there. Numerous groups don't use errata since they prefer playing with the book they own to requiring an extra sheet of paper to cross-reference every time. It's also common for people to not read the RulCom from start to finish, and to assume that its rules are identical to what they read in earlier books plus errata.

So they continue playing with the bad rules from the DMG1, since they don't know any better. The point is that, even if they errata it later, it is simply inexcusable for WOTC to print bad rules in the PHB1 or DMG1 of any edition. Or, for that matter, to print bad examples in the first set of adventure modules, since people take their examples from there.

Getting back to the point... WOTC printed some really bad rules in the DMG1 which they later retracted. If you remove all of those, then all there's left of skill challenges is to let players decide what to do, and then ask them to roll for it. That is a great system, but it's also the system that practically every other RPG in the market uses; nothing innovative there, and there's no added value to calling it a "skill challenge" except that the term is catchy.

So depending on which books you use, SCs are either badly-written crap (the DMG1 system) or they're identical to how non-combat encounters work in every earlier edition.

So 5E should do better than that.

**neonchameleon** · 2012-12-09, 11:33 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Kurald Galain

Please be civil here. I said that either the DMG or the 4.4 book had that rule. In this case, DMG1 does.

Context matters. You also said "In fact, the rules for SCs have several other requirements that people who like SCs tend to ignore, and rightly so since these requirements don't work well." To now say that it isn't the rules for skill challenges, it's that the DMG 1 was badly done is simply moving the goalposts. The problem isn't the actual requirements for the skill challenges, as you initially claimed. It's that the DMG 1 needed about an extra year of development before it was produced. And it's not that there are requirements that people who like SCs ignore - it's that people who like SCs actually use one of the versions of them that works.

Your actual opening statement should have read something like "In fact the rules for skill challenges as initially presented had several other requirements that were such a bad idea that WotC erratad them out of the game, as well as fixing the mathematics of what was initially a broken system." A very different statement to the one you decided to open with.

**lesser_minion** · 2012-12-09, 01:16 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by neonchameleon

Context matters. You also said "In fact, the rules for SCs have several other requirements that people who like SCs tend to ignore, and rightly so since these requirements don't work well." To now say that it isn't the rules for skill challenges, it's that the DMG 1 was badly done is simply moving the goalposts.

He made a valid point, and he provided additional reasoning to that effect. There's a big difference between that and what you're trying to accuse him of.

The problem isn't the actual requirements for the skill challenges, as you initially claimed. It's that the DMG 1 needed about an extra year of development before it was produced.

And had 3rd edition been released two years later, I'm sure they'd have invented magic pixie dust that makes every game perfect with no effort whatsoever.

For future reference, providing an excuse for the flaws in something doesn't change the fact that those flaws are there.

And it's not that there are requirements that people who like SCs ignore - it's that people who like SCs actually use one of the versions of them that works.

I would hope so. And this justifies producing versions that don't work how, exactly?

**neonchameleon** · 2012-12-09, 01:42 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by lesser_minion

He made a valid point, and he provided additional reasoning to that effect. There's a big difference between that and what you're trying to accuse him of.

No. He literally claimed that people who like skill challenges were ignoring the rules to those skill challenges. That was his point that started and framed the whole post.

He is now walking it back to say that the skill challenges in the DMG1 were bad. Which is quite true but wasn't the point he initially made. His point also claimed that "either the DMG or the 4.4 book had that rule". In every single case it was the DMG 1 and not in the Essentials rules. Which means that although technically correct it was a serious distortion of the actual facts. Yet he was trying to say very clearly that "the rules for SCs have several other requirements that people who like SCs tend to ignore".

The fact is that the requirements he listed are no longer requirements. They aren't ignored. They are about as irrelevant to most people who like skill challenges as the 3.0 ranger and bard rules are to most people who like playing rangers and bards.

And had 3rd edition been released two years later, I'm sure they'd have invented magic pixie dust that makes every game perfect with no effort whatsoever.

If 3rd edition had been allocated two years for development, and they'd thrown the whole structure of the game out after ten months for being terrible - and they'd still released the game to time, then it would have been even more problematic.

I would hope so. And this justifies producing versions that don't work how, exactly?

It doesn't. 4e was released a year early because people decided to stick to the timetable rather than make sure the game was ready. This was stupid and a very bad decision on almost all counts.

But this changes an accusation of ignoring the rules in both the oldest and the newest versions when the rules are only in the oldest, and even they were changed pretty promptly how exactly?

If he'd said "Most people who like skill challenges use the erratad versions and don't like them as they were originally written in the DMG 1" that statement would have been honest and accurate.

**lesser_minion** · 2012-12-09, 02:42 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by neonchameleon

He is now walking it back to say that the skill challenges in the DMG1 were bad. Which is quite true but wasn't the point he initially made.

It is, however, the point he is making now.

If 3rd edition had been allocated two years for development, and they'd thrown the whole structure of the game out after ten months for being terrible - and they'd still released the game to time, then it would have been even more problematic.

No, they wouldn't, because 3e wasn't actually "terrible". You just don't like it.

3rd edition has a lot of known flaws. Many of those flaws are known because hindsight is 20/20.

Compared with 3e, 4e was developed with the advantage of eight more years of RPG development. In spite of this, it does very little to improve on 3e.

But this changes an accusation of ignoring the rules in both the oldest and the newest versions when the rules are only in the oldest, and even they were changed pretty promptly how exactly?

We have moved on from that point. Why are you still bringing it up?

**neonchameleon** · 2012-12-09, 04:38 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by lesser_minion

No, they wouldn't, because 3e wasn't actually "terrible".

I never said it was. What I said was thrown out for being terrible was Orcus. Version 1 of 4e - in which every class had a different recharge mechanic, there were no long term recharge mechanics, and there were at least half a dozen separate condition tracks to the point even the designers weren't sure which to use.

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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

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