The problem of treating any written rule as a hard and fast rule isn't a system problem.
I suspect it comes from video games where people get used to having rules that truly are immutable.
4e playing like WoW on paper doesn't help, nor does the removal of any creativity reliant options such as minor/major creation, silent image, etc.
Any game can rely on the GM and I don't believe a game should be applauded for doing so. I even ran a game in basic training without any written rules, relying on the GM is a cop-out for a written system and is why I prefer 4e as a tactics game instead of an rpg.
nor does the removal of any creativity reliant options such as minor/major creation, silent image, etc.
I want to know, DarkLightHitomi: Are you really under the impression that 4e contains no analogues to Silent Image?
First, I admit my info is old and I'm not an expert, but I couldn't find any spells that I actually wanted except direct combat spells. Rituals don't count because they can't be used in combat, or any time they might actually be worth the cost.
Second, every ability I've seen is so well defined that it is practically immpossible to use them in any fashion other then the predefined and expected use.
Third, creatively relient means the effect is not absolutely defined, instead relying on the players and gms imagination and creativity to determine the effect and usefulness.
In PF I have a character that uses silent image to run shows (like puppet shows, without puppets and much better looking) as well as useing the same spell for misdirection, intimidation, and manipulation in combat.
Haven't even seen such options in any form in 4e. The entire design structure follows the same assumtions as WoW clones, aka, fight enemies till death using effects that hurt, stun, or disable enemies in fights to the death.
Its an excellent system for city adventuring. Very much if I where to run 4E for those who where in doubt about the system I'd almost certainly put them in a city adventure since I think that this is where it is going to most starkly show why it is a strong version of D&D. I'd especially do this if they where experienced enough that I could show off some somewhat higher level city adventuring. Throw them into a political intrigue at 12th level for example. Its here that the system really shines, especially if one can compare and contrast it with other editions of D&D past and, I suspect, future.That is the one reason I really wanted to like 4E. It's combat is thoroughly average (like every D&D combat system, it has it's strengths, it has it's weaknesses), but the potential it had for non-combat scenarios was promising; for me at least, though, it never lived up to it's potential. The reason it's that this is also 4E's biggest weakness in that everything outside of the powers is entirely dependent on the DM. If the DM can craft a good political intrigue and set appropriate DCs on the fly, the story is going to be awesome; if they can't, it's going to be worse than anything you'll ever see in 3.x/PF, where there are default options to fall back on before things get really sour. The problem here is that most D&D DMs have not really studied how to craft a good political intrigue or improv using both roleplay and available mechanics really well, they've tried to figure out how to craft the most awesome boss fight ever seen, and this was true even before 3.x made it even more prevalent. It didn't help that every chance that WotC had to showcase skill challenges turned them into something akin to very dry combat.
A clone that built in a few more basic protections and guidelines while avoiding hard and fast rules would probably do really well, as it would provide a functional guide to the rp aspect to match the solid combat rules, provided that the DMs and players didn't turn...
You don't really need to do DCs on the fly. If you know your players level then they have 3 DCs that apply. Easy, Medium, Hard. Those three numbers should get you through just about any adventure. This is one of the main strengths of the skill system. The DCs always apply as a DM you need to simply decide if the check in question is an easy one, a moderate one or hard.
Not so sure why you'd need to do it on the fly either. That is not how I make my city adventures. I rarely really need a lot of adjudicating on the fly in large part because 4E characters, at least until very high levels, are pretty limited in what they can do. I know what is going to happen at least broadly in my city adventure. My PCs are going to get some kind of a task and they are going to look into that task and much of the time that means they are going to go places and do stuff that I can broadly anticipate or talk with NPCs about subjects that I can broadly anticipate.
Fairly improbable that they are going to pull something really outlandish out of their hat...I'm not trying to anticipate some kind of weird spell combo I never saw coming, they don't have that ability. They are going to talk with NPCs and I'm going to design the NPCs they are going to talk to. Or maybe they are going to try and sneak into some place but I know what the place they are going to try and sneak into is like. There are other things they might well be trying to do in the adventure but it'll follow from some kind of logical pattern that I can anticipate so they should not be blindsiding me with anything to extreme.
At worst it might be something like, they decide to find out who 'really' owns this property and do so by investigating how the land taxes are being paid or that sort of thing. Maybe I missed that and am doing some 'on the fly' GMing in this regard but even here I just need to keep choosing DCs based on 'is this easy, medium or hard?'.
First, I admit my info is old and I'm not an expert, but I couldn't find any spells that I actually wanted except direct combat spells. Rituals don't count because they can't be used in combat, or any time they might actually be worth the cost.
Second, every ability I've seen is so well defined that it is practically immpossible to use them in any fashion other then the predefined and expected use.
Third, creatively relient means the effect is not absolutely defined, instead relying on the players and gms imagination and creativity to determine the effect and usefulness.
In PF I have a character that uses silent image to run shows (like puppet shows, without puppets and much better looking) as well as useing the same spell for misdirection, intimidation, and manipulation in combat.
Haven't even seen such options in any form in 4e. The entire design structure follows the same assumtions as WoW clones, aka, fight enemies till death using effects that hurt, stun, or disable enemies in fights to the death.
Pretty much Prestidigitation for 4E
• Change the color of items in 1 cubic foot.• Create a harmless sensory effect, such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint music, or a strong odor.
• Clean or soil items in 1 cubic foot.
• Instantly light (or snuff out) a candle, a torch, or a small campfire.
• Chill, warm, or flavor up to 1 pound of nonliving material for up to 1 hour.
• Make a small mark or symbol appear on a surface for up to 1 hour.
• Produce out of nothingness a small item or image that exists until the end of your next turn.
• Make a small, handheld item invisible until the end of your next turn.
And you can have 3 such effects occurring at once. And it's a cantrip. And it's usable at-will. I'm not seeing the problem here...
Seriously? You are gooiing to compare that to bigger more capable spells?
Silent image allows me to "seal" a doorway, create concealment for the entire party, summon decoys, etc. Prestidigittation can't come close to the sizes required. Then hit the shadow spells and higher illusion spells for even greater effects.
Then, in one game, we houseruled a feat that allowed major/minor creation to be castable in combat. Becaame my primary spells, used to blind, trip, find invisibility, crush, seal passages, make safe encampments, ettc
Had a cleric use a bennie/boon/special effect to expend remaining spells to hurt a lich 10 lvls higher then me in one touch attack. Dropped it to 3hp.
This is creativity. 4e is so rigid that it is hard to do or justify anything like these even when houseruling.
Doing special things shouldn't require a major departure from the rules, should instead be versatile enough for anything to be done with minimum alterations.
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Seriously? You are gooiing to compare that to bigger more capable spells?
Silent image allows me to "seal" a doorway, create concealment for the entire party, summon decoys, etc. Prestidigittation can't come close to the sizes required. Then hit the shadow spells and higher illusion spells for even greater effects.
Silent Image (v3.5 / PF)
"This spell creates the visual illusion of an object, creature, or force, as visualized by you. The illusion does not create sound, smell, texture, or temperature. You can move the image within the limits of the size of the effect."Virtually everything this spell does can be done by 4E's Prestidigitation under this tag:
• Create a harmless sensory effect, such as a shower of sparks, a puff of wind, faint music, or a strong odor.
Why can't you create a "seal" of a door? Is that not a sensory effect? Why can't you create an concealment effect by a wall of illusion (such as a wall of brick)? Or create a shadow like being (visual sensory) AND make it sound like faint whispers AND make it move? You can do 3 at one time.
With prestidigitation you can make a shadow move down a hallway, making ghostly whispers AND snuff out torches as it passes them at the same time! Yea, again I'm not seeing the problem.
Then, in one game, we houseruled a feat that allowed major/minor creation to be castable in combat. Becaame my primary spells, used to blind, trip, find invisibility, crush, seal passages, make safe encampments, etc.
Thanks for illustrating how deviation from RAW can easily break the game!
Had a cleric use a bennie/boon/special effect to expend remaining spells to hurt a lich 10 lvls higher then me in one touch attack. Dropped it to 3hp.
Ok, so another example of broken mechanics. Why are you using these as examples?
This is creativity.
If by "creativity" you mean "shattering the campaign because of magic" Then I can happily agree that 4E doesn't do that, much to my delight. See, if a Lich 10 levels higher is facing a group, it's a good indication that the group should run. When a group finds a loophole in the mechanics that easily drops said lich down to 3 HP, there's a significant problem with the system. But hey, if you enjoy that sort of thing, more power to you. I can only hope that D&D:Next doesn't allow munchkin brokeness to ruin the game like it did v3.5.
4e is so rigid that it is hard to do or justify anything like these even when houseruling.
So, your complaint is that 4E spells don't let you think outside the box and completely obliterate challenges 10x your level? How, exactly, is that a bad thing? Further, there are quite a few Rituals, Utility, and regular Spells that let you do really fun stuff if you actually bring that mindset to the table. Instead of looking at Scorching Burst (at-will area burst fire spell) and say "Oh man, it's a combat spell. Boring" you could say "Oh, look a fire-based spell! I can use it to melt frozen ponds, light bonfires, shatter ice, catch things on fire, use it to help create smoke signals, or as signal flare or to light up a large area." But do people who hate on 4E say or think these things? No they look at the spell, see it's combat use and succumb to their preconceived notion of "I can't do anything but attack."
OR how about 4E's Ray of Frost? Ever think to use it to freeze a small body of water to walk across? OR to freeze shut a door to jam it? Or to make the ground slippery? Or put out a small fire?
OR how about 4E's Freezing Cloud? If I cast that spell, I (as a DM) would allow Lightning based attacks to be more prominent when cast in the area because super-cold air helps conduct electricity better. So a Wizard casts Freezing Cloud on a group of targets, the Storm-cleric Then shoots a bolt of lighting into the cloud, maybe the spell deals some additional damage or maybe they're slowed (as their muscles jerk and spasm from an extremely high voltage from the electricity).
I mean, the spells effects don't change just because the description doesn't fully go into details about every single possible usage or outcome that can occur. Fire spells set things on fire. COld spells freeze things and make things cold. Common sense would tell you that with these things, other effects are possible outside the idea of using them for attack.
Doing special things shouldn't require a major departure from the rules, should instead be versatile enough for anything to be done with minimum alterations.
They are, but you've blindly turned your eyes away from it for some reason. I've shown you above, with 4 simple spells in the PHB, how they can be used to greater effect and not just for combat. I truly feel that 4E's power-design somehow turned off some sort of imaginary impulse in some people's head. They look at the power-block, the color usage, and description of the spell or they see Attack: Int + Reflex and instantly all common sense leaves them. It's as if there is some misled notion that these powers can and should only be used for combat and nothing else.
It's truly baffling.
They might have put most of that stuff in the Ritual category at launch, but that definitely didn't remain the case for long. I know I played an illusionist who had the spells to do pretty much all of those tricks without a problem, completely within the system.
They may well have adjusted that over the course of the edition, but early on, that was definitely not the case. I remember being completely turned off by the wizard initially precisely because there was no real option for anything but combat attacks. Rituals were way to expensive and took way too long to cast to be of much use for anything.
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The OGL was only granted to mechanics that were printed in the Systems Reference Document (SRD). Unless WOTC changed it's mind and put up a 4th Edition SRD that I don't know about, you'd have to license the mechanics from them.
Apart from that have a lawyer handy as well. Make it look at least superficially similar to BECMI/AD&D/3rd ed which are covered by the OGL.Your mistaken here. There is absolutely no wording in the OGL that says anything one way or another about 1st edition, 2nd edition, BECMI etc. There might be wording about 3rd. The OGL was never meant to facilitate cloning BECMI, it just so happens that it allows pretty much anything - want to make a super hero game well go ahead and people did and in the same way as you can use the OGL to make a superhero game you can use it to make a BECMI clone or a 4E clone.
Just make sure you don't include intellectual property like Mind Flayers or Waterdeep. All that said best to have a lawyer look things over.
A good example of how to take pretty much any 4E concept and convert it into the OGL can be found in the 13th Age SRD - check it out.
It is irrelevant what WotC put out in their 4E license because your retro clone is coming out under the OGL. Mechanics can't be copyrighted the thing you have to stay away from is intellectual property and that is stuff like Waterdeep and Mind Flayers. Yeah before you start charging for a clone maybe you want to pass it by a lawyer to be on the safe side but on the face of it so long as you stay away from intellectual property there is no reason you can't clone 4E.
They may well have adjusted that over the course of the edition, but early on, that was definitely not the case. I remember being completely turned off by the wizard initially precisely because there was no real option for anything but combat attacks. Rituals were way to expensive and took way too long to cast to be of much use for anything.They might have put most of that stuff in the Ritual category at launch, but that definitely didn't remain the case for long. I know I played an illusionist who had the spells to do pretty much all of those tricks without a problem, completely within the system.
*sigh* Did you read any of the ways in which simple at-will spells can do more than just attack stuff? Also:
Invisibility
Disguise Self
Levitate
Wall of Fire
Arcane Gate
Blur
Mirror Image
+ 49 Rituals
Mostly because of precedence. When everything is clearly defined, most people, not everyone but most people, are more resistant the more explicity defined and less flexible the defined abilities are.
In 3.x, this is a problem, but there are enough precedents to keep this effect moderatly small, but 4e is so much more defined in combat that this effect is greater.
Also, do not forget I did admit that my experience and knowledge is based on when it came out.
And rituals are painfully expensive, and never usuable in combat. That is mostly a bad thing. In 3.x you can make camp with spells every night unless you expended all spells in encounters, but in 4e, not possible, its too expensive to even consider.
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It is irrelevant what WotC put out in their 4E license because your retro clone is coming out under the OGL. Mechanics can't be copyrighted the thing you have to stay away from is intellectual property and that is stuff like Waterdeep and Mind Flayers. Yeah before you start charging for a clone maybe you want to pass it by a lawyer to be on the safe side but on the face of it so long as you stay away from intellectual property there is no reason you can't clone 4E.Mechanics can most certainly be copyrighted. That was the basis of the lawsuit and cease and desist orders filed against Wizards of the Coast by both TSR and Palladium when WOTC published conversion rules for AD+D and Palladium in "The Primal Order". way back in the day. If you feel like dancing in a minefield, go ahead and do your 4e clone. Chances are that if you flop in sales, you probably won't appear in WOTC's radar. But if you make any form of waves, it's going to be noticed.
Legally speaking, the real issue there is mentioning trademarked terms - such as the name of the system the conversion rules can be used with. Under US copyright law, the game concepts, such as the rules themselves, cannot be copyrighted (although they can potentially be patented). The actual text explaining the rules, in the form of a literary work, is the only thing that copyright applies to. As long as you reword it and avoid the use of trademarked terms, you're covered.
I can write a set of conversion rules for any system to/from D&D, but I can't actually legally mention D&D or any other trademarks, which makes it kinda difficult to do :)
Of course, that still doesn't prevent someone with more money than you from filing a cease and desist order anyway, threatening to take you to court over it, and winning simply because you can't afford to fight them over it. Or from filing the order hoping it'll scare you off enough to back down.
They may well have adjusted that over the course of the edition, but early on, that was definitely not the case. I remember being completely turned off by the wizard initially precisely because there was no real option for anything but combat attacks. Rituals were way to expensive and took way too long to cast to be of much use for anything.They might have put most of that stuff in the Ritual category at launch, but that definitely didn't remain the case for long. I know I played an illusionist who had the spells to do pretty much all of those tricks without a problem, completely within the system.
*sigh* Did you read any of the ways in which simple at-will spells can do more than just attack stuff? Also:
Invisibility
Disguise Self
Levitate
Wall of Fire
Arcane Gate
Blur
Mirror Image+ 49 Rituals
Tell that to the DMs I had that didn't allow for any flexibility, aided and abetted by WotC's painting the powers as defined combat skills with defined uses and quite literally everything else entirely up to the DM. It's not WotC's fault that many DMs took the wording literally and ignored the powers outside of combat, but they didn't do anything to help the situation much either. And don't get me started on rituals; they were an absolute joke to actually try to use; way too expensive, had the same narrowness of the powers in definition, and took too long to cast to be of any use in the vast majority of situations. That may have changed since the intial release, but that's how it was initially; a great idea with horrid execution.
Rituals were awesome. They were not combat items though, casting a ritual in combat is a way to get your fellow players to hate you.
But if you had time, they rocked. Thing to realize though, is that they really start getting that big time playing after you hit level 10. Then many of the lower level Rituals really are cost effective and turn out very useful.
I'm astonished by the number of people claiming that rituals were "too expensive". Not only are they very affordable at the level you can learn them, but the utility rituals don't scale in cost with level, so in a few levels their cost becomes completely trivial compared to the massive amounts of gold you are receiving from adventuring.
Tell that to the DMs I had that didn't allow for any flexibility, aided and abetted by WotC's painting the powers as defined combat skills with defined uses and quite literally everything else entirely up to the DM. It's not WotC's fault that many DMs took the wording literally and ignored the powers outside of combat, but they didn't do anything to help the situation much either.They may well have adjusted that over the course of the edition, but early on, that was definitely not the case. I remember being completely turned off by the wizard initially precisely because there was no real option for anything but combat attacks. Rituals were way to expensive and took way too long to cast to be of much use for anything.They might have put most of that stuff in the Ritual category at launch, but that definitely didn't remain the case for long. I know I played an illusionist who had the spells to do pretty much all of those tricks without a problem, completely within the system.
*sigh* Did you read any of the ways in which simple at-will spells can do more than just attack stuff? Also:
Invisibility
Disguise Self
Levitate
Wall of Fire
Arcane Gate
Blur
Mirror Image+ 49 Rituals
Oh, I'd tell them they didn't read the DMG because it says so right in there on PG. 33, How to Play D&D. Under Character Sheet, it says Powers: Attacks and other special effects you can do in and out of combat. Sure, it's entirely up the DM to decide if a power works in any given situations, but isn't that what empowered-DMs do? If the DM wasn't creating a fun game or being open with your ideas on things like spell-effects in out of combat scenarios, why did that person remain DM?
Further, how is it WotC job to make your DMs more flexible? An at-will Scorching Burst spell functions whether or not there are creatures in the area. There's no rule that says it doesn't. So by that reasoning, you can use Scorching Burst in a manner to suit your needs. I had a Goliath Fighter use his Cleave power to chop through wooden beams of a balcony holding enemy archers. It took an Action Point to succeed with, but the pesky archers fell into our midst and we were able to finish them off. The game really is organic OR as rigid as one decides to play it.
And don't get me started on rituals; they were an absolute joke to actually try to use; way too expensive, had the same narrowness of the powers in definition, and took too long to cast to be of any use in the vast majority of situations. That may have changed since the intial release, but that's how it was initially; a great idea with horrid execution.
Well for starters they weren't designed to be used in combat. That was the point. That a Teleportation Circle shouldn't be used willy-nilly or crafting a bridge of shadow should take longer than 6 seconds. As for the cost....really? Animal Messenger = 10 gp. Comprehend Languages = 10 gp. Detect Secret Doors = 25 gp. I mean, I don't know how stingy your DMs were with GP but from my experience with 4E these past 5 years, GP has never really been a huge problem with these amounts at these levels. I mean, just looking at the silly treasure parcels at 1st level, PCs were supposed to received 720 gp. in coinage plus a 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd level item. Even if all the players received equal shares of the GP, thats 144 gp each. That's enough to cast any 1st level Ritual 14 times! And for someone who gets the Ritual Caster feat for free, you get a few to start off with so you don't even need to purchase them separately.
I'm starting to get the feeling your 4E DMs did you and your group a horrible disservice with the system.
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I'm astonished by the number of people claiming that rituals were "too expensive". Not only are they very affordable at the level you can learn them, but the utility rituals don't scale in cost with level, so in a few levels their cost becomes completely trivial compared to the massive amounts of gold you are receiving from adventuring.
I could see them being very good at level 10; at levels 1,2, and 3, most of them were not worth the effort, time, or cost. And I suspect the very short list of rituals in the initial players handbook also contributed to the limited usefulness, so just like with the overall power list becoming less restraining with later additions, rituals probably became a much better system over time.
Initially, though, both the rituals and the limited power selection was pretty bad, and throwing in DMs not prepared to deal with them effectively just made the whole experience not good, and since 4E had no default to fall back on, that not good experience had no silver lining to it, leaving a very bad impression overall. 3rd edition, for all its faults, could usually be made workable even with the worst adventure and worst DM possible; maybe not enough for a new person to keep playing, but at least enough for that person to not feel like they wasted their time in trying it once. For a 4E clone to really take off, and Next for that matter, it needs to put back at least some of that safety net, because otherwise all it takes is one really bad experience to turn someone off the system forever to the point they will actively tell others to avoid it.
First, I agree with sunshadow21 about 4e.
Besides, any decent GM can make a good experience out of any system, but a good system shouldn't rely on having a good GM as they are not exactly common.
Second, rituals are expensive. Perhaps your characters never had to spend three weeks trekking from one place to the next, but some of those rituals are ones you want to cast every night to make camp in the wild or otherwise use commonly in "everyday" life of the character. So if its three weeks between one pot of gold and the next, even just 10gp each night is expensive and don't forget everything else one wants to buy.
Also, consistancy and immersion is important to some people like me. That means that the world has to feel like the npcs actually live there and that the world isn't just there for me to kick over. How many of those npcs can use those rituals to make their lives easier and how many can afford them. Additionally, how and why are these rituals easy to find and learn if people who can afford them and use them are extremely rare superheroic legends who would probably be just given them in gratitude for their heroic deeds or out of fear of their might?
That is as important as any other aspect of the rules.
Besides, any decent GM can make a good experience out of any system, but a good system shouldn't rely on having a good GM as they are not exactly common.
You literally just got done telling us in another thread that system balance isn't critical because it should be left up to the GM to ensure parity between PCs.
Come on.
Second, rituals are expensive.
No, they aren't. In fact, the treasure allotment by level is adjusted upwards under the assumption that the party will spend a certain amount on ritual components.
Perhaps your characters never had to spend three weeks trekking from one place to the next, but some of those rituals are ones you want to cast every night to make camp in the wild or otherwise use commonly in "everyday" life of the character. So if its three weeks between one pot of gold and the next, even just 10gp each night is expensive and don't forget everything else one wants to buy.
Are you suggesting that a party of 1st level adventurers should be in a position to use safety-boosting rituals every single night?
Also, consistancy and immersion is important to some people like me. That means that the world has to feel like the npcs actually live there and that the world isn't just there for me to kick over. How many of those npcs can use those rituals to make their lives easier and how many can afford them. Additionally, how and why are these rituals easy to find and learn if people who can afford them and use them are extremely rare superheroic legends who would probably be just given them in gratitude for their heroic deeds or out of fear of their might?
Do you believe that these are difficult questions to answer? Have you tried answering them yourself? Do you want them to be answered? Or are you much happier continuing to operate under the mistaken belief that they don't have answers?
1, there is a lot more to a system then just balance. Balance will be mostly in the hands of the GM not matter what, but that doesn't apply to everything about a system. Balance-wise GM is very important regardless of what you do, everything-wise you need to have all that back-up stuff a GM or group can fall back on, balance is just one of the things that you can't rely on the system for.
Two different scopes, therefore different answers, put some thought into what I'm saying instead of just face value please.
2, yeah but who decided how much was appropriate to spend on rituals and why that amount and were they actually putting thought into the deeper consequences of that choice or did they look purely at the mechanics and no further? Oh and were the lovers of the episodic adventures that take the characters a couple days to complete then everything between that and the next adventure costs nothing? Did they give any thought to the roleplay that would consume resources?
3, absolutely. Maybe not really good stuff, but certainly the basics. 90% of folks in the world are level 1s, therefore 90% of what is available in the world is, or at least should be, for level 1s.
4,these are questions I feel should be answered when designing the system, and that I feel were ignored in the design of 4e. Fudging things might get an acceptable answer, but that is different from the system having those answers already.
1, there is a lot more to a system then just balance. Balance will be mostly in the hands of the GM not matter what, but that doesn't apply to everything about a system. Balance-wise GM is very important regardless of what you do, everything-wise you need to have all that back-up stuff a GM or group can fall back on, balance is just one of the things that you can't rely on the system for.
Two different scopes, therefore different answers, put some thought into what I'm saying instead of just face value please.
I don't think you have a coherent viewpoint; you're telling us the system is in dire need of management by the GM for balance's sake in one thread, and in the other thread asserting that a good system doesn't need the GM to manage it to achieve balance. I think that this cognitive dissonance is arising from your hesitance to acknowledge balance as an important design concern.
2, yeah but who decided how much was appropriate to spend on rituals and why that amount and were they actually putting thought into the deeper consequences of that choice or did they look purely at the mechanics and no further?
Game designers did. In much the same way that they decided all the other facets of the game's mechanics.
Oh and were the lovers of the episodic adventures that take the characters a couple days to complete then everything between that and the next adventure costs nothing? Did they give any thought to the roleplay that would consume resources?
They probably found a nice middle ground. But you appear to be saying that the system ought to provide a one-size-fits-all approach to treasure allocation. Are you not of the opinion that the GM has the responsibility to adjust treasure levels appropriately if there is an expectation that the players will be spending significant amounts of money between adventures?
Once again, you're crowing that the GM should have control over the system to improve the game in one sentence, and in the next you're criticizing the system for not being absolutely deterministic about how your game should work.
3, absolutely. Maybe not really good stuff, but certainly the basics. 90% of folks in the world are level 1s, therefore 90% of what is available in the world is, or at least should be, for level 1s.
Endure Elements is a really low-level ritual that trivializes the vast majority of weather events. Is it your opinion that D&D parties should always have the resources to use Endure Elements, and thus always have weather events trivialized for them?
4,these are questions I feel should be answered when designing the system, and that I feel were ignored in the design of 4e.
Then your feelings are mistaken. They were not ignored during 4e's design. Search for an alternative explanation. I'm confident you can find one.
Fudging things might get an acceptable answer, but that is different from the system having those answers already.
It does; or, rather, it provides a clear framework for coming up with tailored answers to those questions that fit your campaign.
Game mechanics can be supportive or disruptive to a GM managing things. A GM should manage the balance of the game, but the system should have the framework to make it easy to manage and provide references for GMs who don't have expertise in certain areas.
For example, how long can someone hold their breath, how about with training? The system should have the researchh done and implemented as a reference so a GM that doesn't know those answers has that reference to start from and either use directly or use as a base for making modifications or spells and abilities related to it.
As for expenses and such. I believe in creating the world first, then making the game reflect that world. Thus who made the items, how easy are the made, who usually buys them? Develop an economy of items of interest based on those and other questions. If only heros buy something, and heros only exist one in a million folks, then just finding an item will be an entire adventure, but if the item is something commonly used by npcs, perhaps y hunters when ranging far out, then those items are going to be cheaper and easy to find. And when I say cheaper, I mean cheap enough for those npcs to actually buy in the quantities they use.
DnD propogates the idea that a common laborer only makes a few silver a day, and even merchantss and craftsman only make a gold or so per day, so spending 10 gp a day i not feasable for them, thus no customers for such a product which then leads to no crafters of such a product which in turn makes such a product hard to find which raises its price.
Quite simply, such an item that would be desired for common use will either be cheap enough for the common people to purchase and use, or prohibitively expensive. Expensive enough to not bother with the item at all. No point in using a "easy camp" item when you can only use it once a month. If you are spending that much time without it, you might as well spend the money on something else, which makes the item rarer and more expensive.
Game mechanics can be supportive or disruptive to a GM managing things. A GM should manage the balance of the game, but the system should have the framework to make it easy to manage and provide references for GMs who don't have expertise in certain areas.
For example, how long can someone hold their breath, how about with training? The system should have the researchh done and implemented as a reference so a GM that doesn't know those answers has that reference to start from and either use directly or use as a base for making modifications or spells and abilities related to it.
As for expenses and such. I believe in creating the world first, then making the game reflect that world. Thus who made the items, how easy are the made, who usually buys them? Develop an economy of items of interest based on those and other questions. If only heros buy something, and heros only exist one in a million folks, then just finding an item will be an entire adventure, but if the item is something commonly used by npcs, perhaps y hunters when ranging far out, then those items are going to be cheaper and easy to find. And when I say cheaper, I mean cheap enough for those npcs to actually buy in the quantities they use.
DnD propogates the idea that a common laborer only makes a few silver a day, and even merchantss and craftsman only make a gold or so per day, so spending 10 gp a day i not feasable for them, thus no customers for such a product which then leads to no crafters of such a product which in turn makes such a product hard to find which raises its price.
Quite simply, such an item that would be desired for common use will either be cheap enough for the common people to purchase and use, or prohibitively expensive. Expensive enough to not bother with the item at all. No point in using a "easy camp" item when you can only use it once a month. If you are spending that much time without it, you might as well spend the money on something else, which makes the item rarer and more expensive.
And this is why I avoid these sorts of "simulationist" notions at all costs. They're an exercise in GM's mental masturbation and little more. "Look how much armchair economist thought I put into my campaign world!"
You have given yourself a requirement (develop a realistic world) that you cannot actually satisfy. You try to, and you pretend at it, but you haven't.
For instance: "heroes" (read: adventurers) aren't 1-in-a-million, they aren't the only audience for magical rituals, ritualists don't work for the common folk, and prices aren't raised because there isn't any need to. Literally none of the criticisms you have of the ritual "economy" are actually true, unless you deliberately design your world to make them true, which is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I'm starting to get the feeling your 4E DMs did you and your group a horrible disservice with the system.
The DMs didn't help, but the system itself was no help initially either. A mediocre to average DM with a mediocre at best ruleset doesn't get very far, and 4E at launch was mediocre at best in a lot of spots. It improved, but not until just before Essentials, when WotC finally settled on a focus and a path to follow, by which time, most people had simply tuned out. It could very well be that 4E has developed enough that a mediocre DM could still run a decent game; the one chance I had at playing a 4E game post Essentials, the game died fairly quickly, so I genuinely don't know. If it has, than creating a clone would be much less of a headache; if it hasn't, creating a clone would be a lot more work.
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First, I agree with sunshadow21 about 4e.
Besides, any decent GM can make a good experience out of any system, but a good system shouldn't rely on having a good GM as they are not exactly common.
Funny enough on of 4E's qualities from a LOT of people was how easy it was to DM compared to other editions. Tell me how many DMs get the CR-ratings correct with v3.5 just staring out. When I first started DM'ing v3.5 I though 8 Goblins would've been a pretty easy encounter for 1st level PCs. And boy was that horribly wrong. Your first TPK always seems to stand out.
Second, there's absolutely zero reason why a DM wouldn't look at any specific spell or ability and rationally think "ya know, it would make sense if this could be done OUTSIDE combat." The system will never turn bad DMs into good ones.
Second, rituals are expensive. Perhaps your characters never had to spend three weeks trekking from one place to the next, but some of those rituals are ones you want to cast every night to make camp in the wild or otherwise use commonly in "everyday" life of the character. So if its three weeks between one pot of gold and the next, even just 10gp each night is expensive and don't forget everything else one wants to buy.
Why on Earth would you think it's OK to spend every night under the protection of Create Campsite? Here's a hint, Adventuring is dangerous and there are some people who actually think magic shouldn't be a instant answer to every problematic scenario. I think a ritual like Create Campsite should be used in more strenuous situations, like when the party desperately needs uninterrupted sleep because they're completely out of Daily powers and surges. Not every day is going to be filled with 3-6 encounters that drain you of all of your resources.
But i'll admit that your right, we never did three whole weeks of travel in game time. The idea of that is, to me anyways, utterly ridiculous. The DM often said "You make it X amount of days without any significant problems." And when a problem or 3 would show up, we'd deal with it either through combat, the usage of a Ritual, through a Skill Challenge, or something in-between. It was never: Rest for 6 hours, 5 combats. Rest for 6 hours, 3 combats. Rest for 6 hours, 5 combats. Ok 3 days are over. 2 1/2 more weeks to go... It was more like "You travel for 4 days. Ranger / Druid / Wooded Hunter guy, make a Nature check to see how well you feed yourselves and find shelter in those days. Ok you rolled a 1. So the trip thus far has been pretty harsh. You've only found meager amounts of food and your trail rations are starting to look pretty low and none of you have slept well. Your all going to lose 2 Healing Surges. Another few nights of this, and you'll need to find safe place to rest OR you can use the Create Campfire ritual."
Also, consistancy and immersion is important to some people like me. That means that the world has to feel like the npcs actually live there and that the world isn't just there for me to kick over. How many of those npcs can use those rituals to make their lives easier and how many can afford them. Additionally, how and why are these rituals easy to find and learn if people who can afford them and use them are extremely rare superheroic legends who would probably be just given them in gratitude for their heroic deeds or out of fear of their might? That is as important as any other aspect of the rules.
Consistancy and Immersion have really nothing to do with the rules. That's pretty much all on the Player and DM. ANY ruleset and have a immersion-breaking mechanic or otherwise inconsistent nature depending on how you roleplay it and how the DM acts. I don't see how Ritual costs changes this at all? As for how many NPCs use them, it would depend on which NPCs have which skills. I would think that most NPCs are commoners, artisans, or public figures. Commoners, which is probably the majority of people in any given specific world wouldn't have the necessary skills to have Rituals for the most part. Perhaps a more experienced Artisan (like a well-known Blacksmith) might have a ritual or two known to increase their work and trade. Political figure might have a ritual or two to help them in their personal pursuits but I'd imagine that it would be small in number, depending on the locale.
Also, to discuss the rationale of the frequency and cost of Rituals: It's not just PCs that find and use rituals. Your experienced Farmer might know about the ritual "Bloom" which creates all outdoor crops and fruit-bearing plants within a 20 squares (100 ft.) to yield food. It produces enough food to feed 5 people for a week. It's a really good ritual to have in a pinch, but what about the after-effects of said ritual? Do you think the sudden change of nature is going to be good for these in the long haul? Wouldn't it make sense to a degree that if this ritual was done at a time which these wouldn't produce fruit have some sort of side-effect later? I could see a field becoming fallow much quicker after the use of this ritual. Or even dormant for a season or two. The instantaneous effects of "bloom" are great, but the long-term effects can be costly.
But why all of this needs to be codified rules is beyond me. The rules only help facilitate the world your creating, that's it. It's not the completely defined whole of the thing. Rules are designed to help tell stories and to mitigate problems, not be the complete physics of the universe. Common sense is often expected of the players and DMs to create a fun game. If your not having fun I'd first turn to how we're handling any edition and see where we, as players and DMs, can change vs. arguing that it's the system's fault.
I'm starting to get the feeling your 4E DMs did you and your group a horrible disservice with the system.The DMs didn't help, but the system itself was no help initially either.
I really don't know what more the system can do besides spell out every single thing someone can do within the rules. That, frankly, doesn't seem like the best way to go about it. I mean, did the rules need to clearly say "Hey, you can do this outside of combat?" for any basic DM to think that's possible? Perhaps it's because most of my experience with 4E as a player came with DMs coming from older editions and they assumed that any given spell or effect can be used whenever or at whoever the player felt needed it. I dunno, just seems like the most rational, common sense thing to do.
A mediocre to average DM with a mediocre at best ruleset doesn't get very far, and 4E at launch was mediocre at best in a lot of spots.
I disagree completely. But I think at this point is a "agree to disagree" thing.
It improved, but not until just before Essentials, when WotC finally settled on a focus and a path to follow, by which time, most people had simply tuned out. It could very well be that 4E has developed enough that a mediocre DM could still run a decent game; the one chance I had at playing a 4E game post Essentials, the game died fairly quickly, so I genuinely don't know. If it has, than creating a clone would be much less of a headache; if it hasn't, creating a clone would be a lot more work.
I think creating a clone has all to do with being legal about it and not necessarily "Fixing" the system. I agree that Skill Challenges could have been improved upon AND implemented better. Clearly it had issues when first debuted. A mediocre or average DM would probably follow the instructions to the letter, which initially was bad. A good DM would probably change some stuff around to the point where "better" Skill Challenge rules wasn't really needed. However, I still disagree with the Rituals. My group has had a LOT of fun with them, especially since anyone can grab them with the Ritual Caster feat. Something one of our Fighter (Slayer) did with a bonus feat {campaign reasons) was take that and become a sort of nerdy-warrior, always searching for tomes while fighting off enemies with his quarterstaff. He was our "Ritual" guy and did a decent job of acquiring ritual scrolls. We even created a home-brew version of special ingredients he could find / buy that would make rituals better (such as using white rose-pedals from a rare plant to increase is Nature check when casting the Speak with Nature ritual). Stuff like that really helped make Rituals more fun and gave a player more investment into using them.
I didn't really care for 4e but I do agree with you that it was easy to DM in. Creating encounters was also very simple and I hope this carries over to 5e.
I didn't really care for 4e but I do agree with you that it was easy to DM in. Creating encounters was also very simple and I hope this carries over to 5e.
Currently the last packet has Monster budgets through XP, so that's sort of a carry over from 4E. They're also putting in a lot more basic history of these monsters that tie into each other. For example a Night Hag has a specific backstory and that might tie into her using say...Trolls for her pets or allies or Goblins being used as fodder for bigger Goblinoinds like Bugbears.
And of course all of this is mutable so that the DM is free to include whatever mix/mash up of monsters they like.
That's cool that way you know how to pair the encounters up.
First, simulationism, I am perhaps unusual (very likely) but I don't have to think about it to notice when things don't jive between mechanics and the game world. For me saying that something costs x much because thats just the way the world is, is not good enough. It breaks immersion for me because I can innately see that it doesn't match with other aspects of the world.
It isn't a case of "well if you think about it..." for me it is as obvious as the color of the sky. Things need to be plausable and consistant even when following an alternate set of natural laws. DnD has some things that are not consistant, and such issues arise from focusing too tightly on mechanics and balance.
Second, ease of GMing. Most of those who said 4e was easy to GM claimed that it was the lack of any rules that made it so. Frankly this is just stupid, as any system is (or at least should be) a toolbox and nothing more. If ta GM wants to ignore certain tools, then that is precisely what they should do, but for some reason, some GM feel compelled to use the tools simply because they are there. I feel sorry for those GMs.
Truly, lacking a bunch of tools doesn't actually make 4e easier, it just makes certain GMs feel better and more free.
Third, magic problem solving. I don't think the system should be telling me whether magic should be solving problems or not. Personally I prefer magic to be an analogy to technology, only used with different methods.
Besides, if the system keeps everything plausible and consistant, then it is easier to manipulate to fit what you have in mind. For example, if it is common for travellers to use a ritual, then bandits, or at least mercs and assassins, probably have a way to nullify that ritual. Ta-da, sensical world and the GM still gets the surprise night raid.
Oh and just because we spent three weeks travelling doesn't mean it was encounters the whole way, but we did consider our resources, we made survival checks for food and water, depleted our trail rations, bunkered down for major storms, etc. We didn't magically appear at our next objective having spent nothing as though the intervening weeks didn't happen.
Fourth, consitancy and immersion are affected by both the rules and the players, somewhere near evenly. The rules make assumtions about what is common or uncommon, what can or can't be done and these assumtions can be te same or different from the assumtions of the players, additionally certain assumtions can have secondary effects that conflict with other assumtions.
It isn't that all such things need to be explicit, but minimizing these conflicts of effects, usually derived from balance issues, should be minimized.
People of the game world can be sorted into five groups, commoners, merchants/craftsmen, soldiers/nobles, underclass, and heros.
Cross that with commonality of use and you can easily develop a cost ssystem that isn't even dependant on the items themselves and lets the GM basically pick a cost based on their idea of how common or rare an item is. But instead they designers insist on telling us the cost of items based on their idea of mechanical balance instead of sensical universe.
Don't mean this in any disrespectful way but why clone 4e?
Seems to be the general feeling that it wasn't very popular. I don't think we would all be in the pathfinder forums if it had been (I might be wrong on this thinking).
The Paizo forums are a pretty insular community, and if you're in a PF-heavy area, I'm not surprised if it seems like nobody plays 4e. But 4e is basically all I've played since 2008, and I haven't had much trouble finding other 4e players. Mostly the problem is finding reliable gamers, which has been a perennial problem for me. *sigh*
One of the reasons I favor more diverse forums over the Paizo forums these days is because of this pervasive idea that "Nobody here likes 4e so nobody will call me out for edition-sniping." Or sometimes outright lying about 4e. It seems every time I do visit these forums, I end up correcting a PF fan's "mistaken" assertions about 4e. Just look at much of this thread, for example!
Anywho, if you want a more realistic idea of 4e's popularity, try visiting RPGnet. RPGnet has the additional advantage of having a large non-D&D and 'system-nomad' population, which lends a certain perspective to the relative similarity of D&D's various editions and clones.
Heck, there's at least one dedicated 4e community, where we occasionally chime in just to say how thankful we are that we have 4e!
First, simulationism, I am perhaps unusual (very likely) but I don't have to think about it to notice when things don't jive between mechanics and the game world. For me saying that something costs x much because thats just the way the world is, is not good enough. It breaks immersion for me because I can innately see that it doesn't match with other aspects of the world.
Such as? The way I reason it is to look at how much other things cost and then make a comparison. In 4E, gold is pretty darn hard to come by for most of the common and mundane people. They deal mostly in copper and silver for every day things. Look at most of the 'monster' stats for humans. They're often equipped with leather armor, daggers, clubs, and other simple weapons. Occasionally you find one with Scale armor or a Sword but they're not level 1 mooks. Even someone within a group such as your Iron Circle Brigand, he's equipped with Scale, Mace, and crossbow. No one at 1st level is toting plate armor for example. This, to me, indicated that Gold is more of a rare commodity. But the PCs aren't just commoners or everyday people. They've decided to go out and adventure. That comes with a significant price = death. So in certain circumstances, coming across gold (a rare commodity) is rewarding.
So when you factor in the idea that gold (so far as the world or setting is concerned) is rare, it makes adventuring for it that much more interesting. Take in expensive things like Plate Armor (50 gp), Rituals (market price = 50 gp), Greatswords (30 gp) you start to realize that these things are used by most people in the world.
It isn't a case of "well if you think about it..." for me it is as obvious as the color of the sky. Things need to be plausable and consistant even when following an alternate set of natural laws. DnD has some things that are not consistant, and such issues arise from focusing too tightly on mechanics and balance.
I'm not really understanding what your talking about? I've yet to see something really inconsistent within the framework of only 4E. Would you like to show some examples?
Second, ease of GMing. Most of those who said 4e was easy to GM claimed that it was the lack of any rules that made it so. Frankly this is just stupid, as any system is (or at least should be) a toolbox and nothing more. If ta GM wants to ignore certain tools, then that is precisely what they should do, but for some reason, some GM feel compelled to use the tools simply because they are there. I feel sorry for those GMs.
So you don't like it when people focus too much on the rule because they show how inconsistent D&D can be, but then complain that when 4E don't facilitate a lot of rules, it is stupid...? I said DM'ing 4E was easy because the way in which encounter were based around. I knew, for the most part, how difficult a particular combat was going to be and mostly what resources they would drain to complete it. Further, there are some things that were more easy to adjudicate, such as the removal of ridiculous and complex rules like Grappling. I'm not really sure which rules your honestly referring to that 4E abandoned. But I feel sorry for those DMs that can't make the system do what they want. It's not a forced system, and the DM can throw out or change whatever they like. I've played 4E with DMs who halved everyone's Healing Surges per day. I've played in games where it was PHB only, no elves or dwarves, no magic, etc. and the game worked just fine.
I'm not really understanding how your complaints relate to 4E.
Truly, lacking a bunch of tools doesn't actually make 4e easier, it just makes certain GMs feel better and more free.
Which tools are you talking about?
Third, magic problem solving. I don't think the system should be telling me whether magic should be solving problems or not. Personally I prefer magic to be an analogy to technology, only used with different methods.Besides, if the system keeps everything plausible and consistant, then it is easier to manipulate to fit what you have in mind. For example, if it is common for travellers to use a ritual, then bandits, or at least mercs and assassins, probably have a way to nullify that ritual. Ta-da, sensical world and the GM still gets the surprise night raid.
I think the system needs a baseline for how and what magic can achieve. It makes it pointless to set up a watch and for people to put investment into things like Perception if traveling is going to be easy-peasy with rituals like Create Campsite every single time. If you want magic to fix all your problems, then why not take the simple initiative of dropping the cost of casting Rituals to say 5 silver or 1 gold? Remember that whole think you just said about DMs ignoring the rules and not being married to them. Why not try that?
Also, wouldn't also make sense that if it's common for travelers to NOT use things like Rituals, then bandits or Mercs and Assassins who penetrate their defenses and find them must be above your average blokes. Which to me sounds about the same.
Oh and just because we spent three weeks travelling doesn't mean it was encounters the whole way, but we did consider our resources, we made survival checks for food and water, depleted our trail rations, bunkered down for major storms, etc. We didn't magically appear at our next objective having spent nothing as though the intervening weeks didn't happen.
Cool, sounds like a fun game.
Fourth, consistency and immersion are affected by both the rules and the players, somewhere near evenly. The rules make assumptions about what is common or uncommon, what can or can't be done and these assumptions can be the same or different from the assumptions of the players, additionally certain assumptions can have secondary effects that conflict with other assumptions.It isn't that all such things need to be explicit, but minimizing these conflicts of effects, usually derived from balance issues, should be minimized.
Ok, so how does 4E differ in this regard compared to other editions? In my 4E games, things are pretty consistent with the world.
People of the game world can be sorted into five groups, commoners, merchants/craftsmen, soldiers/nobles, underclass, and heroes.Cross that with commonality of use and you can easily develop a cost system that isn't even dependent on the items themselves and lets the GM basically pick a cost based on their idea of how common or rare an item is. But instead the designers insist on telling us the cost of items based on their idea of mechanical balance instead of sensical universe.
Commoners = dabble mostly in copper, a silver every once in a while. A gold is LOTS of money to these people. (no level - level 1)
Merchants/craftsman = mostly deal in copper and silver, gold occurs but mostly put back into keeping their establishments going. (no level - level 2)
Solders/nobles = Nobles dabble mostly in silver and gold, spending gold on lavish splendors and what is left over is spend keeping their soldiers in the most basic of armor and weapons (scale, maces, chain mail, light shields, etc.) (no level - level 4)
Underclass = deal mostly in silver and gold and illegal merchandise (drugs, poisons, potions of ill repute). Most of their dealings is on par with Nobles and merchants and occasionally commoners. (no level - level 6)
Heroes = Deal mostly in gold after their first few adventures. Buy and trade with the uppity ups or underclass when selling or buying magical gear.
Again, nothing special here that 4E did different.
Don't mean this in any disrespectful way but why clone 4e?
Seems to be the general feeling that it wasn't very popular. I don't think we would all be in the pathfinder forums if it had been (I might be wrong on this thinking).
The Paizo forums are a pretty insular community, and if you're in a PF-heavy area, I'm not surprised if it seems like nobody plays 4e. But 4e is basically all I've played since 2008, and I haven't had much trouble finding other 4e players. Mostly the problem is finding reliable gamers, which has been a perennial problem for me. *sigh*
One of the reasons I favor more diverse forums over the Paizo forums these days is because of this pervasive idea that "Nobody here likes 4e so nobody will call me out for edition-sniping." Or sometimes outright lying about 4e. It seems every time I do visit these forums, I end up correcting a PF fan's "mistaken" assertions about 4e. Just look at much of this thread, for example!
Anywho, if you want a more realistic idea of 4e's popularity, try visiting RPGnet. RPGnet has the additional advantage of having a large non-D&D and 'system-nomad' population, which lends a certain perspective to the relative similarity of D&D's various editions and clones.
Heck, there's at least one dedicated 4e community, where we occasionally chime in just to say how thankful we are that we have 4e!
yea, I get the same thing occasionally. RPGnet is a nice place, especially since they're pretty strict with moderation (and that usually entails ALL editions, not just angst against a particular one). But things really aren't that bad here.
I wasn't really referring exclusively to forums, just my experience with people I gamed with. My view is skewed by this so it's not fair to say 4e wasn't popular or liked, just seemed to be the general consensus from various sources.
I wasn't really referring exclusively to forums, just my experience with people I gamed with. My view is skewed by this so it's not fair to say 4e wasn't popular or liked, just seemed to be the general consensus from various sources.The biggest argument for 4E's lack of popularity is two fold.
1. The amazing emergence of Pathfinder as not only the gaming contender, but the defacto leader in the gaming industry even while other stalwarts like Storyteller were passing into bankruptcy.
2. That and that the only thing comparable to the acceptance level of 4th Edition is that of Windows 8. And this is despite the efforts WOTC made to tweak and repackage it.
What I find even more hilarious is that it's still something like #3 in the business, even after being on hiatus for 2 years. Further, one really can't ignore it's mark on the N.Y. Times best seller list either. Of course there's a LOT of speculation that once the Essentials "idea" was released and the fact that they said they wouldn't be releasing few aspects of pre-essential material, drive for demand dropped sharply.
I'd also point out that DDI, for as many reasons why I love it, ultimately killed the book purchasing aspect of 4E as well as being able to access the DDI compendium from multiple accounts as well. I didn't need ANY books to create my 21st level version of Link from Zelda, because I had everything ever published from that edition at my finger tips with the Character Builder. I didn't need to look though one single book to prepare the adventure for my 4E Forgotten Realms game. I didn't need to have anyone in my group borrow or use books to create there characters for our Ravnica 4E game because I either let them use my account OR one other person in our 5 person group (6 if you count my wife) could use it.
So when you take out the need for any books. Take out the need to run adventures through their system (Dungeon has loads of adventures plus the Scale of War adventure path). Take out any reason to crack books to create characters or write you own adventures, you're probably going to see a drop in book sales at places like Comic Shops and other places that register with ICv2. Plus there's all the pirated software out there (something WotC was silly enough to think they could reasonably stop) so I wouldn't need to buy the H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth module when I can run it from the lap-top (not that I would do illegal things, just throwing it out there that it wouldn't be hard).
You bring up an interesting point. I have noticed on these forums as well as others the complaint of wotc's lack of adventure material (physical copies). Do you think as you just eluded to DDI killed this? If so then the casual gamer like myself are the ones left hurting I never saw a need for a subscription. I wanted one but it wasn't a necessity for me and my group. If DnDN replays this strategy and there are a lack of physical materials being produce then I may reconsider investing in 5e.
Disclaimer: I live in a small town. We have no game shops or large groups of rpgers. The only place to purchase material (not counting amazon) is Books a Million. BaM initially stocked up on material at the launch of 4e and the launch of Essentials, but any other time there were few books and adventures to choose from. As of today there maybe 1 phb and a few essentials box sets, the bulk of the books have shifted to pathfinder material and even then it's just the hardbacks ( no aps or modules). Saying all that to say I maybe looking at my areas lack of material and blaming DDI for this and that may not be true. Looking at amazon back then and I still didint see a lot of adventures.
First, simulationism, I am perhaps unusual (very likely) but I don't have to think about it to notice when things don't jive between mechanics and the game world. For me saying that something costs x much because thats just the way the world is, is not good enough. It breaks immersion for me because I can innately see that it doesn't match with other aspects of the world.
Except that every single "mismatch" you pointed out in your last post didn't actually exist. None of them.
It isn't a case of "well if you think about it..." for me it is as obvious as the color of the sky.
Really? The complexities of a fictional, magic-suffused global economy are "as obvious as the color of the sky"?
You should probably be running a financial trading firm, then.
Things need to be plausable and consistant even when following an alternate set of natural laws. DnD has some things that are not consistant,
If it does, they are not any of the things you listed.
I had a campaign setting I created for a home brew game where money is magic and magic is money...but the classes didn't balance
Diffan
1, In case you forgot, DnD treats anything under a few thousand gold as commonplace and easy to find, and yet as you point out, most of the people in the world deal with copper and silver. So just how exactly can these multi-thousand gold piece items be rather easy to find? How can there be a sufficient market for these items to be floating around as commonplace items? That is contradictory, the idea that these items are too expensive for common folks, yet they are common enough that players can readily buy them from ye old magic shop.
Though, I should point out that the majority of soldiers are the nobles. archers when they became common in warfare were the common class folks who became yeomen when they got shares in the spoils of war, becoming wealthy compared to other commoners but still without the titles or blood or land, thus becoming the first middle class peoples. Soldiers were to pay for their own gear from the tithes of their holdings and the different armors were not generally all available to pick based on cost/ac/penalty, but were rather the result of constantly searching for better armor.
2,this was me responding to Scott Betts saying that simulationist notions were just mental exercise, which implies that I had to think about this as though I am supposed to just glaze over and not think about it. But I can't do that because it is just obvious. Besides, the difference between a good work of art and great art is the small details that don't get consciously noticed.
Really though, the problem isn't unique to 4e, nor was trying to imply that. I just tend to ramble and this was one of the things that came up when discussing ritual costs. Rituals cost too much to be common enough to be as cheap and common items. Having common serfs and nobles/merchants will results in single use items being either cheap and common or rare and expensive. Rituals seemed to fall in the middle, too expensive to be common, to common to be expensive.
3,The stupid thing, is claiming that no rules is somehow easier then having rules that could be ignored. I said most GMs that claim 4e to be easier, obviously you are not most. Additionally, encounter building based purely on mechanical numbers is kinda crazy. I can see how it might work with the right group and am glad you have a good group for that but I haven't found group for which that would work and I doubt that the majority of players have good groups, which means I don't see any point in designing a game around having a good group, instead I believe in designing the game around a mediocre group that would benefit from those uncommon good groups.
Yeah a GM can change what they want, but two things here, first, it is less work to adjust existing rules then to create a batch of rules to fill a vacancy (which not only must work but must fit with the existing rule structure) second, apparently many GMs liked 4e because the feel free to make houserules when filling vacancies rather then when changing existing rules. This makes no sense to me but whatever, I will promote having easy to adjust rules over having no rules.
4,Environmental rules, grappling rules (though these were bad I agree), several skill rules, these rule blocks are each "tools" (as in, tools to support running a game). Many of the secondary and non-combat rule blocks were thrown out in 4e, or replaced with overly simplified rules-lite things that had no flavor. Getting rid of these tools doesn't make the game easier to play, it simply makes some GMs feel more free to fiat things because for some reason they felt that they had to stick somewhat close to the original rules due to "player expectations." This is not actually an ease of use issue, but rather a GM mindset issue.
5, Does technology make our modern lives easy and nullify our need for perceptive ability? Actually we need more perceptive ability in real life then ever before, particularly while driving. Yes magic needs a good baseline but the idea that allowing magic to be common or used daily will make adventuring easy is laughable. If we need a few logs and a fire, whether it happens from a spell or good old hard work doesn't change the fact that it generally doesn't drive encounters, it is usually background rp.
I am not married to rules and fiat or houserule lots of things (even making my own complete system), but the entire concept of making rules better is to minimize needing to houserule things, and to make it easier when one does houserule something.
7, 4e doesn't really differ from other editions except by the specifics and severity. Additionally, the knowledge experience and insight of the players will affect how much consistency issues get noticed. Some like myself, notice lots of things while others can just glaze over the small things and never consciously notice. However, the small details that don't get noticed consciously can generally still have an effect on someone's thoughts or enjoyment of something and usually the difference between something that is good and something that is great.
8, commoners earn a silver a day. Craftsmen don't earn much more though they usually earn larger amounts but less often. Merchants have more wealth but generally in form of product rather then money. Then there is a huge pay gap between them and Nobles, who have large amounts of wealth, again generally in the form of goods. Nobles are the soldiers. This setup shifts a bit once archers become common and start collecting spoils of war, and law changes make companies and corporations available where multiple merchants collect together and essentially become nobles-without-title by making money off the work of others. The underclass group is just based on what rather then anything else is generally as poor as the group they are otherwise nominally a part of.
No matter the case, the only folks dealing with large amounts of gold are the highest of nobles, as in kings or those that generally know their king personally, and theoretically adventurers. So how can weapons that only kings and adventurers can afford be available readily in most towns? I general the categories should mark the type of items available and the max cost of those items depending on how often they are used. I.E. a consumable item used at least weekly by commoners will cost less then 1-3 silver. A consumable item used once a month by commoners may cost up to a gold. An item more expensive than 5 gold will be obtainable only from the nobility or the one who made it (which will be equally if not more rare). An item worth more then 1000gp will be obtainable only from legendary craftsmen and kings (or equivalent). To change this requires a rehaul of the entire system. You can't just pluck down an item and expect it to fit the world (though apparently plenty of people can ignore the fact that it doesn't fit).
Items like create campsite that are nice for general use rather then specific use are either cheap enough for common use or are never used, after all, if you have to do it the hard way 99% of the time then why spend the money for 1% of the time when that money can make some other aspect of life easier all the time?
First, simulationism, I am perhaps unusual (very likely) but I don't have to think about it to notice when things don't jive between mechanics and the game world. For me saying that something costs x much because thats just the way the world is, is not good enough. It breaks immersion for me because I can innately see that it doesn't match with other aspects of the world.Except that every single "mismatch" you pointed out in your last post didn't actually exist. None of them.
Hmm, 90% of people make a silver a day. 9% of folks are nobles who are by definition lords of land and the soldiers of said land and have servents and estates. The adventurers can find consumable items that cost lots of gold and are well beyond the ability of the common folk to purchase and are not needed by the nobles who could afford them, yet are found everywhere.
How are those three statements not contradictory? What, do rich nobles have shops in every little town catering to adventures, a consumer group of 10-20 people per continent?
Diffan
1, In case you forgot, DnD treats anything under a few thousand gold as commonplace and easy to find, and yet as you point out, most of the people in the world deal with copper and silver. So just how exactly can these multi-thousand gold piece items be rather easy to find? How can there be a sufficient market for these items to be floating around as commonplace items? That is contradictory, the idea that these items are too expensive for common folks, yet they are common enough that players can readily buy them from ye old magic shop.
Though, I should point out that the majority of soldiers are the nobles. archers when they became common in warfare were the common class folks who became yeomen when they got shares in the spoils of war, becoming wealthy compared to other commoners but still without the titles or blood or land, thus becoming the first middle class peoples. Soldiers were to pay for their own gear from the tithes of their holdings and the different armors were not generally all available to pick based on cost/ac/penalty, but were rather the result of constantly searching for better armor.
I'm not really sure where you got the idea that D&D has some hard rule that treats things under X-GP commonplace or easy to find. As for sufficient magical item markets, the game makes no decision on whether or not PCs find such markets. That's pretty much up to the DM to decide. Since there are mechanics in place that allow you to play with zero magical items as well as placing an indication as to which items are "common", "Uncommon", and "rare"...I'm not really sure what your driving at? Further, ye olde magic shops aren't common place in what I'd deem anything less than a city or metropolis, and they certainly don't hawk their wares openly in the public or on display. That's just silly. In most of my 4E games, you can [u]maybe[/u] find common magical items in the city or metropolis and, depending on who you know, who you can bribe, get uncommon items. Rare items are reserved to extremely high ranking nobles, dragon's lairs, monster hordes, expensive tombs, etc and there's usually only 1 such item in the world. So no multiple Holy Avengers and such.
Also, lets look at what commoners make...1 silver a day is roughly 30 sp a month, which translates to 3 gp a month, which is roughly 36 gp. a year. To me, the market values for mundane armor, weapons, and items is about on par with the 'notion' of what commoners, merchants, nobles, etc. make. Nobles and wealthy merchants are going to be the ones driving the force for common magical items, rituals, and the like. How much of each "population" is entirely dependent upon the DM and nothing more.
2,this was me responding to Scott Betts saying that simulationist notions were just mental exercise, which implies that I had to think about this as though I am supposed to just glaze over and not think about it. But I can't do that because it is just obvious. Besides, the difference between a good work of art and great art is the small details that don't get consciously noticed.Really though, the problem isn't unique to 4e, nor was trying to imply that. I just tend to ramble and this was one of the things that came up when discussing ritual costs. Rituals cost too much to be common enough to be as cheap and common items. Having common serfs and nobles/merchants will results in single use items being either cheap and common or rare and expensive. Rituals seemed to fall in the middle, too expensive to be common, to common to be expensive.
But your basing this idea on the notion that 90% of the world are commoners. I don't know where you get this notion from? Further, prices can (and probably should) be altered to adjust for campaign specific things. If you've put enough thought into the economy of your world and considered how valuable / common magic is, then you should adjust the price for such things accordingly (no book can tell you properly, it's an individual setting thing). For me, 10 Gp per ritual use isn't that hard to come by for wealthy merchants, Nobles, scoundrels, and Heroes. So in this paradigm, Rituals are too expensive for commoners, used somewhat by merchants / nobles, and often by Adventurers and Scoundrels.
3,The stupid thing, is claiming that no rules is somehow easier then having rules that could be ignored. I said most GMs that claim 4e to be easier, obviously you are not most. Additionally, encounter building based purely on mechanical numbers is kinda crazy. I can see how it might work with the right group and am glad you have a good group for that but I haven't found group for which that would work and I doubt that the majority of players have good groups, which means I don't see any point in designing a game around having a good group, instead I believe in designing the game around a mediocre group that would benefit from those uncommon good groups.Yeah a GM can change what they want, but two things here, first, it is less work to adjust existing rules then to create a batch of rules to fill a vacancy (which not only must work but must fit with the existing rule structure) second, apparently many GMs liked 4e because the feel free to make houserules when filling vacancies rather then when changing existing rules. This makes no sense to me but whatever, I will promote having easy to adjust rules over having no rules.
4,Environmental rules, grappling rules (though these were bad I agree), several skill rules, these rule blocks are each "tools" (as in, tools to support running a game). Many of the secondary and non-combat rule blocks were thrown out in 4e, or replaced with overly simplified rules-lite things that had no flavor. Getting rid of these tools doesn't make the game easier to play, it simply makes some GMs feel more free to fiat things because for some reason they felt that they had to stick somewhat close to the original rules due to "player expectations." This is not actually an ease of use issue, but rather a GM mindset issue.
Ok, so encounter building has always been based purely on mechanical numbers in both v3.5, Pathfinder, and 4E (I have no experience DM'ing pre-3E). The CR system in 3E, to my sensibilities, didn't work very well. The XP system for both Pathfinder and 4E (and now 5E) work well to a degree. So I'm not really sure what your problems with them were.
Ah, so you mean having specific rules for roleplaying. Can I ask you honestly, when has "Profession" come up in your games? And if it's often, do you follow the rules of profession to the letter? Do the PCs who have professions spend lots of time honing them? And if so, then why are they in an adventure or really, why are you spending time playing said characters if most of the time is "I do X, I get Y silver / gold pieces"? If that's the case, then why do they even have or need class levels and stats? I ask because in my 14 years of playing 3E, v3.5, and later Pathfinder skills like Profession, Perform (except the bard), Use Rope, and quite a few other skills (of the 30+ that are listed) honestly never got used or where used so infrequently that hard-coded rules for them weren't necessarily needed. Personally, I don't have use of these hard-coded rules because these often just become roleplaying things players act out. They don't need to perform lots of "Skill Rolls" just to get a few coppers for singing at the local watering hole. They don't need to spend 4 weeks at the smithy just to earn a few gps doing manual labor stuff. These sorts of elements, I feel, were far better adjudicated by the DM and not coming from some book. Though that's just my opinion on the matter.
5, Does technology make our modern lives easy and nullify our need for perceptive ability? Actually we need more perceptive ability in real life then ever before, particularly while driving. Yes magic needs a good baseline but the idea that allowing magic to be common or used daily will make adventuring easy is laughable. If we need a few logs and a fire, whether it happens from a spell or good old hard work doesn't change the fact that it generally doesn't drive encounters, it is usually background rp.I am not married to rules and fiat or houserule lots of things (even making my own complete system), but the entire concept of making rules better is to minimize needing to houserule things, and to make it easier when one does houserule something.
So then why did the cost of Create Campire upset you if it's just usually done via background RP? It's not the idea that magic can't be helpful in many situations, just the idea of magic being so readily available each night that I have a problem with. Which is why I liked that rituals initial cost was high, but continual castings weren't.
The fact that a group uses a ritual in a tight spot is much more cinematic and fun for me than using it every night and then find ways around that magic for "special combats" involving stronger opponents. To me, these stronger opponents aren't out for a jolly walk in the park, they're probably after the PCs for some reasons and have gain wind of their magical tricks and thus, find ways to compensate for them where as any old brigand on the road isn't going to find them with the Ritual in use. It means that random encounters are more viable in many circumstances because the PCs can't keep spamming the ritual over and over again and actually have to have some sense of reason to their surroundings.
7, 4e doesn't really differ from other editions except by the specifics and severity. Additionally, the knowledge experience and insight of the players will affect how much consistency issues get noticed. Some like myself, notice lots of things while others can just glaze over the small things and never consciously notice. However, the small details that don't get noticed consciously can generally still have an effect on someone's thoughts or enjoyment of something and usually the difference between something that is good and something that is great.
I think this has far more to do with one's own personal beliefs about how it should be rather than how it is shown. For example, the idea about how economy of the game world is shown by either the system or DM differs than how you perceive it, it's going to be inconsistent to you but maybe not to the DM or other players because they perceive it as it's presented. That doesn't make it a universal truth, it just means you don't care for the way it's handled (which is fine, just not an objective belief).
8, commoners earn a silver a day. Craftsmen don't earn much more though they usually earn larger amounts but less often. Merchants have more wealth but generally in form of product rather then money. Then there is a huge pay gap between them and Nobles, who have large amounts of wealth, again generally in the form of goods. Nobles are the soldiers. This setup shifts a bit once archers become common and start collecting spoils of war, and law changes make companies and corporations available where multiple merchants collect together and essentially become nobles-without-title by making money off the work of others. The underclass group is just based on what rather then anything else is generally as poor as the group they are otherwise nominally a part of.
I'm not really sure where your getting these figures from, but there's nothing in the 4E DMG that states what people of stations get in terms of wealth on any basis. This is probably why you feel the coinage and economy is out of whack. This is entirely up to the DM to decide, for the most part, on how accessible coinage is as well as art, objects of trade, gems, and magical items are in the world. But, for the most part, I think you want a stronger world-building system that micro-manages this stuff into a sort of "Sim" game. I can't express strongly how much I detest "Sims" games, so perhaps we'll just agree to disagree on this matter.
No matter the case, the only folks dealing with large amounts of gold are the highest of nobles, as in kings or those that generally know their king personally, and theoretically adventurers. So how can weapons that only kings and adventurers can afford be available readily in most towns? I general the categories should mark the type of items available and the max cost of those items depending on how often they are used. I.E. a consumable item used at least weekly by commoners will cost less then 1-3 silver. A consumable item used once a month by commoners may cost up to a gold. An item more expensive than 5 gold will be obtainable only from the nobility or the one who made it (which will be equally if not more rare). An item worth more then 1000gp will be obtainable only from legendary craftsmen and kings (or equivalent). To change this requires a rehaul of the entire system. You can't just pluck down an item and expect it to fit the world (though apparently plenty of people can ignore the fact that it doesn't fit).Items like create campsite that are nice for general use rather then specific use are either cheap enough for common use or are never used, after all, if you have to do it the hard way 99% of the time then why spend the money for 1% of the time when that money can make some other aspect of life easier all the time?
Again, how readily available magical items are in any specific game world is totally up to the DM. Nothing is forcing them to GIVE the players magical items or put places in every town or village a "magic shop", so the economy of the world rests solely on the shoulders of the DM in this regard (and for good reason). But basically you have decided to maintain your assumptions of the game-world and those assumptions don't match up with how the economy actually works. Perhaps the DMG could've been more clear on the matter, in some ways expressing in the minute details how much Gold, Silver, Copper, Electurm any given village, small town, large town, city, or metropolis has but I don't think the game is better served by it honestly.
Page 42 isn't needed for the DM to realize that Scorching Burst can melt a frozen door or Ray of Frost freezes a bucket of water solid, or that a Fighter can use Cleave to chop through a support pillar and into the second. I mean, these "at-will" features are AT-WILL, meaning whenever the heck I want within a standard environment (cleave might not work underwater or ray of frost wont freeze a bucket of alcohol). Its as if common sense left people because the rules didn't specifically state "hey, when in doubt use common sense"
Common people and commoners are two different things. Common people are everyone who is not a noble.
Diffen,
1, the price itself gives indication of commonality. Additionally, fluff text as well. Besides my statement was about how these things don't fit, and perhaps my explanation was colored by preference and the historical roots, but the entire point was that several things contradicted each other, sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit. The latter are usually ignored but seekers of high quality always consider the details.
Also consider, what would a noble need with some of those rituals?
2, Actually I said common people which is different from commoners the class.
Besides, the price should reflect two things, how easy it is to produce and how common it is desired (well that is the simplified version.) So yeah a noble could afford it but would a noble need it? If yes then perhaps you could find them, but more likely you would find the craftsmen providing the nobles needs rather then selling them individually.
3, I have yet to see mechanical encounter building work, mostly because the tactics the GM decides to use, mixed with the tactics the players use determine the difficulty of the encounter far more then the mechanics themselves. I've seen groups of 3-5 level 4 characters take on and defeat encounters made for characters of level 10. Once a group I was in were level 3s and the four of us wiped a level 8 encounter with no major damage ourselves (though we did spend most of our spells.).
A group of goblins running in and charging to attack are easy to defeat, however, the same group of goblins using cover and hit-n-run tactics will be quite difficult to defeat.
4, I usually put a few points into some of them. Usually used in non-standard ways, but occasionally used for money making. Perform has been used to please someone with a performance for example even when not a bard, and of course I have had a couple bards by trade but not by class that have used perform because I don't want it to be "you are awesome at everything you do cause we aren't in combat right now." Sure somethings should be auto success when out of combat but not everything, and some people have fun trying to avoid being the comic relief or un-intentionally being good at things.
Besides, as a toolbox, it isn't about having what is usually needed, it is about having the tools available should someone decide they want them. Better to have rules that don't get used very often then to not have rules when someone decides they actually need to have them.
5, so if you play a d20 modern game, do you exclude cell phones and cars because they make the world too easy? Honestly, things are rarely completely solved. Usually solving one problem just leads to another. Magic would logically have similar effects on a world as technology. It isn't a downfall to do so either. Don't forget, what the PCs have access to is generally available to their enemies including countermeasures.
Quite simply if a ritual is common, then the people that find that ritual problematic will know how to deal with it, just like police know how to deal with rioters.
7, just because people ignore or are ignorant of some inconsistency doesn't mean it isn't there. Bad example perhaps, but imagine a GM telling a player how he successfully sliced an opponent's Achilles tendon but remains standing. Most players who lack anatomical knowledge might never notice the problem, but that doesn't change the fact that an inconsistency exists. A player who is a doctor in reality however, would likely have a few words with the GM about it.
8, honestly, I couldn't look up 4e specifically since I now lack the books, however, these wealth assumptions were stated in 3.x and nothing I know of has since contradicted them, thus they are by default the same, since they are already part of the DnD settings.
9, so by your argument, why tell us how much these things cost to begin with?
Lokiare
Common folk are non-nobles, so unless your world has semi-nobles or some form of caste system, most of your people are common folk (not the class) artisans are often "commoners" while merchants are often nobles (since only nobles can afford to get into the merchant business.)
And while yes your world might be different economically, making even small changes will have far reaching effects on the economy. If you change the economy but don't make those other changes then you end up with an inconsistent and nonsensical world.
In this case the rituals are priced as though there is a large and broad spectrum of middle class folks, but that doesn't fit with the common idea of the DnD settings as being medieval Europe style feudalism plus magic.
First, simulationism, I am perhaps unusual (very likely) but I don't have to think about it to notice when things don't jive between mechanics and the game world. For me saying that something costs x much because thats just the way the world is, is not good enough. It breaks immersion for me because I can innately see that it doesn't match with other aspects of the world.Except that every single "mismatch" you pointed out in your last post didn't actually exist. None of them.
Hmm, 90% of people make a silver a day. 9% of folks are nobles who are by definition lords of land and the soldiers of said land and have servents and estates. The adventurers can find consumable items that cost lots of gold and are well beyond the ability of the common folk to purchase and are not needed by the nobles who could afford them, yet are found everywhere.
How are those three statements not contradictory? What, do rich nobles have shops in every little town catering to adventures, a consumer group of 10-20 people per continent?
I wonder if you can think of some reasons, first. I'll be happy to tell you, but perhaps try and consider some possible explanations before I do.
It might help for you to think of the real world during a time where economic factors were similar, and to replace the idea of a "spellcaster" with a real world analogue that fills the same economic role. I certainly have a few in mind, but you can probably come up with ones that I haven't!
Give it a try.
(Also, the idea that there are "10-20 adventurers per continent" is utter hogwash. There have been something like five different adventure paths located in the Varisian coast alone (which is itself only a small part of a much larger continent), each of which has had its own party of adventurers (and, likely, replacements for dead or dropped out adventurers along the way). And those are only the ones involved in truly epic adventures. We know of many other adventuring groups (Ameiko's former group, rival groups that PCs have to contend with, and ones we never see at all). In all likelihood there are hundreds - if not thousands - of active adventurers in any given continent at any given point in time. Hell, much of the Pathfinder Society itself is comprised of professional adventurers, and that organization is massive. Mind you, this is all based on Pathfinder, but other campaign settings are certainly similar in this regard, not the least of which is the freaking Forgotten Realms.)