Fun Stuff > CLIKC
D&D Pathfinder
de_la_Nae:
okay, i didn't read this whole thread but just looking at the poll i see someone has to come in here and help you dorks
ahem
*cracks knuckles*
4TH EDITION WAS PRETTY MUCH THE BEST BECAUSE FOR MOST PARTIES COMBAT IS THE MAIN MECHANICAL INTERACTION AND COMBAT IN PRIOR EDITIONS WAS MISERABLE AND THE SPELL SYSTEMS WERE A NIGHTMARE AND HONESTLY MAKING EVERYONE WIZARDS WAS THE RIGHT MOVE
3rd edition was my first, i've played 3, 3.5, 4, 5, and pathfinder 1, and it's not that you can't enjoy all of those, but 4 was the least miserable of the set in a lot of very important ways
de_la_Nae:
i will allow that if you had an unimaginative GM i can see how 4th might *maybe* make non-combat a little more irritating, but you're already screwed if you have an unimaginative GM anyway
oddtail:
--- Quote from: de_la_Nae on 14 Oct 2020, 17:37 ---i will allow that if you had an unimaginative GM i can see how 4th might *maybe* make non-combat a little more irritating, but you're already screwed if you have an unimaginative GM anyway
--- End quote ---
I strongly disagree with that logic. That's like saying absolute monarchy is good, because if you have a cruel king, you're screwed anyway.
Don't pick apart this analogy too hard. It's imperfect. The point is - RPG are a game. Games have rules, and certain rules incentivise a certain kind of play. Saying that an imaginative GM fixes that is admitting that the rules by themselves do not do the job.
Or to put it another way - why have any rules, including combat rules? An imaginative GM can run a combat scenario without a single rule, surely.
What's that? Players take enjoyment from combat encounters *because* they're a meaningful interaction with the game's rules that the players and their characters' statistics have a measurable impact on, not just a made-up scenario that's meant to be entertaining?
Yes, I agree. Some players look at every game interaction in this way. D&D may be extraordinarily focused on combat, but it's been a game about exploration and discovery literally since its inception. Why apply a different logic to combat rules and non-combat rules? Why not say "eh, if the combat rules are bad, you just have an unimaginative GM"?
I don't even think 4E is *that* bad. But the argument that it's only combat that matters in D&D mechanics is a fallacious one in my book.
I'll admit to being biased. When tabletop RPG became popular in Poland around mid-1980s, a trend slowly emerged over the years of taking GM's impact on the game as all-powerful. Younger generations of players (including myself) snarkily call this "the Polish school of playing RPG", which includes GMs throwing the intended play (as set by the rules, but also by how the game is written) out of the window in the name of their "vision" whenever they deem it better for the "story". This style of play gives players very little impact on anything that happens at the table. I consider rules to be a tool for a player, not the GM, and the approach "why have rules, when the GM is good" to ultimately lead to, at best, an illusion of agency for players. So I fundamentally disagree that saying "rules are poor, but who cares, the GM will patch things up" is *ever* a good defense.
I like 5E *much* better than, say, 3E in part because the game doesn't feel to me as if it was written to have excuse plots from one dungeon to another, or from one combat encounter to another. It's not just the rules, it's also how the game is written, how proposed adventures are structured, and so on. And I feel I'm plenty imaginative as a GM, and I've ran tabletop RPG for more than 20 years. Again - I don't think it's about GM skill whether a game incentivises a certain kind of play or not. If a certain interaction *is* part of the game and there *are* rules for that part, it should work well. The level of skill of a GM is irrelevant, especially since most new people getting into RPG *will* be starting with D&D, so the game should be ESPECIALLY well-equipped to handle novice GMs.
As to combat... as I said, I don't hate 4E, but the D&D players I've known who do not enjoy the edition are often of the opinion that the interaction with rules during combat in 4E is not as interesting as it might be, especially with regard to player character progression. One person put it this way:
--- Quote ---In D&D 4E, every roll in the game, no matter where you are in the campaign, the level of your character and what is happening, is a "you have 55% chance to succeed" roll. It doesn't matter what you do, because the progression of player characters and opposition is linked so tightly together, levelling up your characters becomes meaningless
--- End quote ---
I think the person was exaggerating for effect, but I do think it's what criticism of 4E often boils down to. I haven't ran any games in this edition, so I don't know how accurate it is. But it seems to be a common complaint. Whether it's accurate I don't know, but saying the game is just about combat anyway is not a convincing defense of the rules anyway, in my opinion.
de_la_Nae:
that is maybe the first time i've ever heard that criticism of 4e in your quote, so that's cool
i'm not very smart, and it's been a while since i've actually toyed with 4e so i probably shouldn't have started talking shit anyway (but where's the fun in that?), so i don't remember how the rules truly handle non-combat. what i *do* remember is a truly unfortunate stream of GMs who should have been flying on their own wings by that point and using their heads but instead slavishly holding to what seemed like the most banal interpretation of explicit rules as possible, not only sabotaging 4e games with their lack of gumption but also cutting the legs out of their non-combat encounters in 3.5e/pathfinder1, on top of using clunky and irritating-to-track systems that seemed designed as much to encourage aforementioned banality as much as anything.
i might have had a bad stretch of luck that soured me on them.
but when 4e sang, it sang clear and lovely. you knew more or less what you could do at a glance, more or less what was in front of you, and sometimes, *sometimes* it even if everything still tended to boil down to "attack the thing", at least it was quick and interesting since most of the attacks had easy-to-implement frills, like teleports and marks and all that jazz. and the simple joy of the minion system / templating, stepping up the game from 3e to something much cleaner and smoother. combat wasn't taking an hour+ anymore, while also not taking 15 minutes but only one person's turn cuz they had a bunch of weird bullshit in their build that had to be endlessly divined from a chicken's entrails while the rest of the party tunes out on their phones or tv or something.
oddtail:
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind 4E. It's not for me, but its reputation is *much* worse than it deserves.
I was specifically addressing the "argument from GM", which I think is fallacious.
I personally think 4E is a good enough game, it's just a poor D&D game. If it was published under a different name, people would not mind it as much. I think the backlash to it was a case of the game being too different and not meeting pre-existing expectations.
And I mean, 5E steered HARD back into the franchise's tropes, for good and for ill.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version