What makes an RPG 'Video Gamey'?

[Kish]

I find it real unlikely that 4ed D&D, with its daily powers, had "everything about it" built for a medium that universally doesn't track days that way.

(When they finally made a 4ed D&D based MMORPG, Neverwinter, the daily powers were so obviously inappropriate for the medium that they changed them to limit break powers, just with a name that didn't make any sense.)

[Aquillion]

Your talk of it being "difficult" and "painful" to play without a VTT is hyperbole not even supported by your article.

I've heard a lot of complaints about 4E, but this is the first time I've ever heard someone say its mechanics were hard to play at the table.
That's what the DDI pitch was that the 4th Edition would be designed so that it would work best when played with DDI. means. 4e was designed to work best with a VTT; hence why people had trouble with it otherwise. It's corporate-speak for "the design will prod people towards behaving like this", ie. doing it the other way will be awkward and painful.

And the complaint that it had a ton of stuff to track (and otherwise had a lot of mechanics that were a better fit for an DDI or a computer game) is a pretty common complaint (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmUxfS4LF8). You just don't see it as often on forums like this one because extremely experienced players (which tend to be more of the audience here) have more tolerance for tracking a bunch of stuff at once.

(It's a long video, but worth watching to summarize the complaints someone who started with 4e had about it. And I feel like it's especially informative to read it in light of the post I linked above with an eye towards "which of these problems were caused by the focus on getting players to use the VTT" - to me, it feels like the answer is "nearly all of them.")


I find it real unlikely that 4ed D&D, with its daily powers, had "everything about it" built for a medium that universally doesn't track days that way.

(When they finally made a 4ed D&D based MMORPG, Neverwinter, the daily powers were so obviously inappropriate for the medium that they changed them to limit break powers, just with a name that didn't make any sense.)
The author of that post was VP of Wizards of the Coast and Brand Manager for Dungeons & Dragons, so I'd assume he knows what he's talking about and is / was in communication with many people working there. These are as close to the core facts about why 4e was the way it was that we have available; and one of those facts was that, yes, it was designed to be a game that players would want to use a VTT for, which led to its strictly-defined feel (what people colloquially call its "MMORPG feel".)

The separation between daily and encounter powers, and their overall unified structure across all classes, seems extremely video-gamey to me, and feels like something designed for a VTT (remember, the MMO was a step removed from all this.) Daily powers are something that can be ported easily to a MMORPG as well, since you just have to replace the method used to reset them - it's essentially just "short cooldown" and "long cooldown" powers adapted to tabletop. Limit breaks are a common way to do long-cooldown powers, after all?

"Hey, this feels like it was designed to be a videogame" was an extremely common observation the moment 4e released, and someone who was deeply in the know about D&D's inner workings later said that, yes, it was specifically designed with that in mind.

[kyoryu]

I never found D&D4e hard to play without a VTT. I don't know where that assertion comes from.

As an actual MMO designer, the 4e mechanics are horrible to try to implement into an MMO. It is entirely the wrong design. (3e-style "every n minutes" works much better in an MMO than "encounter/daily" does)

The actual design is far more reminiscent of M:tG than any reasonable MMO design. I mean, the original release they even released power cards! I don't know why "they wanted Organized Play, and so took a lot of inspiration from the lessons they learned about OP from M:tG" is such a controversial opinion.

That doesn't mean that they didn't pay attention to video games on some level. Of course they did. Anybody aiming anywhere near the space they're aiming at should, as there's a lot of info, and the crossover in audiences is so huge that understanding expectations and borrowing ideas should be the standard.

[Telok]

I've heard a lot of complaints about 4E, but this is the first time I've ever heard someone say its mechanics were hard to play at the table.

Tracking statuses and saves was a right bitch for our GM. Two different marks and three area effect 'save ends' powers on 6-8 enemies (half hit by any one power) plus prone and a couple other status effects. He loved that he could wing a fight by adding up xp to a limit and it worked. We all hated the 3-4 hour fights that resulted. Plus mounted & vehicle combat was totally screwball that the GM kept trying to house rule into something fun without just chucking it and going 100% homebrew.

I heard they fixed stuff by rewriting the monsters hp & damage later, but by then we'd already bailed on 4e. Part was apparently that PC damage output had spikes & plateaus while monster bits scaled more smoothly, but we seem to have gotten fed up with it about level 11.

[Talakeal]

I think the dissociation comes from treating athletic feats as discrete and separate things a character can do. A professional weight-lifter will be exhausted by partecipating in a competition, and I know they can't lift up as much weight as they theoretically can an infinite number of times per day, as they have to recuperate... But that also means they're exhausted, and aren't going to run a 200m sprint after lifting 150Kg.

But if I can do that in a game, it feels weird - I'm too tired to deadlift again until I rest, but I'm also still capable of doing other physically exerting things... why? How? Those mechanics cease to map onto reality if we abstract them too much instead of, I don't know, tying them to a stamina system of sorts.

I can stomach that level of abstraction, the things I don't like are the ones the require me to "memorize" certain martial powers and then forget how to perform all of my other martial tricks.

[False God]

That's what the DDI pitch was that the 4th Edition would be designed so that it would work best when played with DDI. means. 4e was designed to work best with a VTT; hence why people had trouble with it otherwise. It's corporate-speak for "the design will prod people towards behaving like this", ie. doing it the other way will be awkward and painful.
No. Your words are still hyperbole, you speak like someone who's never actually used the system.
"My car works best on the road" does not mean it will be "awkward and painful" offroad. It just means I'll see the best performance on the road. Performance offroad, even if capable, will be lessened. It will not necessarily be "awkward and painful". Thats you exaggerating for effect, aka: hyperbole.


And the complaint that it had a ton of stuff to track (and otherwise had a lot of mechanics that were a better fit for an DDI or a computer game) is a pretty common complaint (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmUxfS4LF8). You just don't see it as often on forums like this one because extremely experienced players (which tend to be more of the audience here) have more tolerance for tracking a bunch of stuff at once.
This forum bitches about 4E like it were still in production. I see it plenty.

As someone who cut their teeth on 4E and video games before playing other editions, it regularly pisses me off.


(It's a long video, but worth watching to summarize the complaints someone who started with 4e had about it. And I feel like it's especially informative to read it in light of the post I linked above with an eye towards "which of these problems were caused by the focus on getting players to use the VTT" - to me, it feels like the answer is "nearly all of them.")
I have no interest in hearing the same tired points repeated about a system that hasn't been on the market for over a decade.


"Hey, this feels like it was designed to be a videogame" was an extremely common observation the moment 4e released, and someone who was deeply in the know about D&D's inner workings later said that, yes, it was specifically designed with that in mind.
I'm not arguing it's not video gamey. I'm arguing that it's easy to run.


Tracking statuses and saves was a right bitch for our GM. Two different marks and three area effect 'save ends' powers on 6-8 enemies (half hit by any one power) plus prone and a couple other status effects. He loved that he could wing a fight by adding up xp to a limit and it worked. We all hated the 3-4 hour fights that resulted. Plus mounted & vehicle combat was totally screwball that the GM kept trying to house rule into something fun without just chucking it and going 100% homebrew.

I heard they fixed stuff by rewriting the monsters hp & damage later, but by then we'd already bailed on 4e. Part was apparently that PC damage output had spikes & plateaus while monster bits scaled more smoothly, but we seem to have gotten fed up with it about level 11.

A rule I took from my first DM to being a DM: "If you caused it, YOU track it." Makes it super easy to track because now every player has a vested interest in ensuring their effect remains accounted for and the DM doesn't have to do more work because the player wants to be a summoner or effects guy.

Yes, 4E combats were slow as hell, no argument. They weren't hard IME. I'm not going to say you didn't find them hard, I certainly believe you if you say you did. But this is quite honestly the first time I've ever heard the complaint.

[Telok]

A rule I took from my first DM to being a DM: "If you caused it, YOU track it." Makes it super easy to track because now every player has a vested interest in ensuring their effect remains accounted for and the DM doesn't have to do more work because the player wants to be a summoner or effects guy.

Yes, 4E combats were slow as hell, no argument. They weren't hard IME. I'm not going to say you didn't find them hard, I certainly believe you if you say you did. But this is quite honestly the first time I've ever heard the complaint.

Ug, that wouldn't have worked with our group. Not because of interest, but simply ability and constant interrupting. Some just wouldn't have been able to keep up or keep track. We all chipped in, trying to keep stuff straight, but we could never keep track of all of the effects and stuff.

I wouldn't say 4e combat was hard either, at least not in a math or decision making process. But it (for us) got tedious pretty fast and was a chore tracking all the bits.

I do know one guy for whom 4e combat was hard, but he never got to good range estimation and had to keep counting moves & squares to find out if different powers would reach stuff. Also chronically can't take notes or remember durations/effects outside his own character. Most forms of D&D are hard for that guy, the 5e vtts & online character sheets tracking stuff for him has been a godsend to him.

[False God]

Ug, that wouldn't have worked with our group. Not because of interest, but simply ability and constant interrupting. Some just wouldn't have been able to keep up or keep track. We all chipped in, trying to keep stuff straight, but we could never keep track of all of the effects and stuff.

I wouldn't say 4e combat was hard either, at least not in a math or decision making process. But it (for us) got tedious pretty fast and was a chore tracking all the bits.

Mostly the DM would ask "Okay, Goblin #3 is attacking, any effects? *players respond* Okay here he goes!" If someone forgot or interrupted later the DM would just say "Sorry, make a note of it for next time." and keep going. It's the same response I give to 3.5 summoner builds. If you forget one of your creatures, I'm not holding up the game; play a simpler build or remember them all next time.

I think "it was a chore to run" is a fine description of 4E out of the box. I made excessive use of minions and average damage when DMing to speed things up. Of course I find most combats to be tedious exercises in banality and run relatively low-combat, high-social/RP systems these days, and no edition of D&D is an exception to the "I find combat tedious and boring." feeling.

[gbaji]

Thinking about it, my system's biggest disassociated mechanic comes at the start of combat. The GM marks down the starting zones for the PCs and their opposition, and then each player adds a zone to the map that the GM can veto. I wrote this mechanic in, because I wanted GMs to be free to have fights start anywhere, and I noticed that players often seemed kinda bored while waiting for the GM to think up, than draw out the zones to make proper battle map. It was a way to keep players involved, rather than leave them sitting bored for too long. In practice, I also found it made map design easier on the GM, as it required less in the moment creativity to make more interesting maps.

I actually never really thought about this. I tend to do the following process:

1. Who gets there first?
2. Draw a map of the area, including all access/entrance points. Let the people who are there first position themselves (which could be me setting up my bad guys).
3. Have whomever gets there next arrive. Actually move them in via the access/entrance points, and allow those already positioned to react/respond/attack/whatever.

If two groups arrive at the same time, I still draw out a map, and then just by melee rounds have people move into the area, and encounter the other "side".

That method works in every game I've ever played and it contains no dissassociation at all. It's literally how you encounter people. And yeah, you make adjustments based on who knows that the other side is there/approaching, thus how much time they have to prep and/or whether they can stealthily sneak up and surprise the other side.

I just use the actual movement rules of the game to determine where and when folks encounter each other. Is there something special about this particular game that makes this more complicated?



I think the dissociation comes from treating athletic feats as discrete and separate things a character can do. A professional weight-lifter will be exhausted by partecipating in a competition, and I know they can't lift up as much weight as they theoretically can an infinite number of times per day, as they have to recuperate... But that also means they're exhausted, and aren't going to run a 200m sprint after lifting 150Kg.

But if I can do that in a game, it feels weird - I'm too tired to deadlift again until I rest, but I'm also still capable of doing other physically exerting things... why? How? Those mechanics cease to map onto reality if we abstract them too much instead of, I don't know, tying them to a stamina system of sorts.

Yeah. That's the problem with wedging Vancian methodologies into physical actions. I'm not a fan of Vancian spell rules, and less of a fan when they're expanded into physical feats/actions. For the physical stuff, at least, while still an abstraction, using some kind of pool of "exertion points" (or whatever you want to call them), would seem to work well (or, "better" at least). The idea being that you can exert yourself beyond the normal only so much each day. Additional fun ways to manage this is to have specific amounts of recovery for these points (which may be quite a bit less per day than the total pool of points). So it's entirely possible to over exert yourself one day, and take several days to fully recover. Something that the X/day mechanic just doesn't allow for.

I also tend to prefer using similar concepts of "magic pools" for spells as well. I think I mentiond earlier (probably in this thread), that I knew a guy who basically converted 1e D&D magic to use spell points instead of spell slots. So you had X spells in your book, Y spells memorized, and Z total spell points (basically add up the numberxlevel for all spell slots IIRC). You just spend them based on the level of the spell you are casting. Obviously, this becomes problematic with later editions where there were methods (and costs) for substituting higher level spells for lower level ones (which you could basically do "on the fly" using this guys system). But for 1e? it actually worked really really well. He may have had some deduction in the total points (to simulate the idea that no one perfectly selects and casts all their spell slots every day), but I honestly can't remember (it has been like 40+ years after all)


I'll also comment that I agree with the general concept that status effects, in general, are a pain in the butt to manage. Always the most likely things to be forgotten in the midst of any decent sized combat.

[Kish]

"Hey, this feels like it was designed to be a videogame" was an extremely common observation the moment 4e released, and someone who was deeply in the know about D&D's inner workings later said that, yes, it was specifically designed with that in mind.
Yes, but you didn't say videogame. You said everything about it was built with an MMO in mind specifically, and limit breaks are not about time, no: not in the JRPG that actually uses that name for them, not in Neverwinter. Are you backing off that claim to "CRPG" now, or do you just have such contempt for all computer games that the distinction between a CRPG and an MMORPG seems meaningless to you?

("This was designed for computer games"=true. "This was designed for MMORPGs"=false. "4ed is like a computer game"=true. "4ed is World of Warcraft"=a common declaration when 4ed was the current edition of D&D which expressed disdain, not factual correctness.)

[Telok]

I think "it was a chore to run" is a fine description of 4E out of the box.

I would put it as "a chore to play for some, hard to play for others", but not so much to run. Our GM loved running it; picking stuff for the fights was easy, running the hp blobs in combat was easy, magic treasure was meaningless and therefore easy, rituals were barely anything and easy to ignore. Easy, easy, easy. It was the guy who had to count all the squares and consult all his powers each round that found it hard. For me, who had a super simple flow chart and didn't even need to look at the board between turns, it was tedium.

[lesser_minion]

There is no edition of D&D that can be adapted that pedantically into an MMO and end up looking something like World of Warcraft.

That said, plenty of MMOs do implement encounter powers ("if you use this, it won't be back up for the rest of this fight") and daily powers ("if you use this, it won't be back up for the rest of this fight or for the next one") one way or another. The easiest way is just encounter = 60-90s cooldown; daily = 150-420s cooldown.

Also, plenty of MMOs also don't look much like World of Warcraft. Most don't, in fact, especially if you lump in similar games from before the "MMORPG" term was coined.

[Jakinbandw]

I actually never really thought about this. I tend to do the following process:

1. Who gets there first?
2. Draw a map of the area, including all access/entrance points. Let the people who are there first position themselves (which could be me setting up my bad guys).
3. Have whomever gets there next arrive. Actually move them in via the access/entrance points, and allow those already positioned to react/respond/attack/whatever.

If two groups arrive at the same time, I still draw out a map, and then just by melee rounds have people move into the area, and encounter the other "side".

That method works in every game I've ever played and it contains no dissassociation at all. It's literally how you encounter people. And yeah, you make adjustments based on who knows that the other side is there/approaching, thus how much time they have to prep and/or whether they can stealthily sneak up and surprise the other side.

I just use the actual movement rules of the game to determine where and when folks encounter each other. Is there something special about this particular game that makes this more complicated?


It's the 'Draw a Map of the area' step. Positioning characters isn't an issue, that's all normal. My system is zone based, and does better with more interesting zones. Drawing a map takes 5-10 minutes. As I said, just to keep the players involved, I have them each able to add a zone to the map. It's not necessary to give players the power to help when drawing the map, but it makes for better maps, puts less strain on the GM, and keeps players engaged. Is it worth throwing away all those benefits to keep the system simpler for players, and cut out a disassociated mechanic?

I'm still deciding.

[Talakeal]

"4ed is World of Warcraft"=a common declaration when 4ed was the current edition of D&D which expressed disdain, not factual correctness.)

IIRC there are quotes from the 4E developers stating that making the game more like WoW was a goal.

I am someone who has played a ton of WoW, probably more than D&D, so I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.

Giving each class a clearly defined party role, having short term tactical decisions matter more than long term strategic decisions, having game rules trump narrative fiction, and having a unified cool-down based system of powers are all very much more like WoW than they are like previous editions of D&D (even if other MMOs do the same) and are not necessarily bad things.

IMO 4E had way bigger problems than its similarity to WoW.

[Kurald Galain]

For 4e in particular, it's important to point out that the fact that it felt like a videogame was by design. WotC intentionally designed it with videogame-like mechanics that were difficult to play via tabletop (https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-ddi-4e-and-hasbro-some-history.661470/) because they wanted to push D&D Insider (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%26D_Insider), especially the VTT it was intended to get, which they hoped would eventually become a D&D MMORPG.
I understand that the 4E devteam basically promised Hasbro the moon and all the stars beyond, but let's be real, their small team would never have been able to write anything resembling a MMORPG. The amount of manpower required is nowhere near in the same ballpark.

[Tanarii]

I wouldn't say 4e combat was hard either, at least not in a math or decision making process. But it (for us) got tedious pretty fast and was a chore tracking all the bits.
As someone who loved 4e at the time, this was definitely true. Combat involved a lot of chore stuff, and by the end of the 4th hour-long combat encounter of the night everyone, DM and players, were burned out. (I'll note this happens after a session of Gloomhaven/Frosthaven as well, for pretty much the same reasons.)

As maligned as skill challenges were online (and still is), and as much as everyone loved the upsides of 4e combat (and there are tons!), everyone I played with was ecstatic when one was mixed into the middle of the session in place of a combat encounter.

[KorvinStarmast]

The first time I ran into cool downs in a game was in Warcraft III. But I think there was a kind of cool down thing in Warcraft II where it took a while to restore enough mana to do "certain things" and then I remember that in Starcraft, certain things restored slowly over a long time ... but the cool down (where you saw the ability more or less count down the clock) I first remember from Warcraft III.

[Aquillion]

I understand that the 4E devteam basically promised Hasbro the moon and all the stars beyond, but let's be real, their small team would never have been able to write anything resembling a MMORPG. The amount of manpower required is nowhere near in the same ballpark.
They didn't even have the rights to make an MMO at the time, so that was a distant goal. The idea was that they would release a VTT alongside 4e, push more and more users to pay for it, grow rapidly based on the popularity of 4e and the income of its VTT, and eventually use this as the base to launch an MMO. Obviously, that plan did not work for a bunch of reasons, but based on every source with any actual knowledge of their internal discussions and plans, that's more-or-less why 4e is the way it is.

This is what we would now consider akin to a F2P model (even if the people who buy the books are paying money for it, they're not paying the monthly fee WotC needed to hit Hasbro's income goals.) You have a cheap version of your game with no monthly fee; then you have a premium version with a monthly fee. And you deliberately introduce pain points to try and get people to switch from one to the other - that was how 4e as designed.

And of course WoW was the big reference point. This was ~2008. WoW was on an absolutely massive growth streak and if you were making a fantasy *anything* and you wanted to convince a company like Hasbro that you could make $100 million/year, you would mention WoW as many times per sentence as you can manage. The people they had to convince barely knew anything about tabletop roleplaying games, but they had heard of WoW, as "something that is currently making all the money." Actually making an MMO was a massive long-term project, but they needed to convince Hasbro they could reach that point *eventually*.

People are also forgetting how much of what we currently consider an MMO, in 2008, was still comparatively new and comes directly from WoW.

I mean, obviously not everyone finds the same things painful, and not everyone has the same experiences with games or feels the same things about them are important; so it's reasonable that some people will be like "well, I didn't find 4e painful" or "well, I didn't notice the similarities with WoW" or whatever (after all, the goal was never to make people *notice* those similarities - they existed more in order to make the argument to Hasbro that D&D eventually had a path to pulling down WoW levels of money. And if the similarities are things you consider unimportant then it wouldn't leap out to you.) Not every free user can be converted; if you enjoy the sort of tracking that 4e required then you probably weren't one of the users they envisioned prodding into their VTT. They didn't intend to force *everyone* there; the model generally assumes this pool of free users who will be converted into paying users or even whales.

But it does seem like that was the overarching plan.

[Pauly]

It's the 'Draw a Map of the area' step. Positioning characters isn't an issue, that's all normal. My system is zone based, and does better with more interesting zones. Drawing a map takes 5-10 minutes. As I said, just to keep the players involved, I have them each able to add a zone to the map. It's not necessary to give players the power to help when drawing the map, but it makes for better maps, puts less strain on the GM, and keeps players engaged. Is it worth throwing away all those benefits to keep the system simpler for players, and cut out a disassociated mechanic?

I'm still deciding.

I wouldn’t say it’s a disassociated mechanic. Many wargames use something similar, on the basis that given a choice units will travel as close as possible to zones that are advantageous to them. In an RPG it’s abstracting how the characters choose their path through the environment. The arthritic sniper will lean more to open areas with long lines of sight and the acrobatic knife fighter will choose areas more suitable for themselves.
It’s faster, simpler and easier than having the entire environment mapped out in great detail and making the players choose a specific path.

[Anymage]

This is what we would now consider akin to a F2P model (even if the people who buy the books are paying money for it, they're not paying the monthly fee WotC needed to hit Hasbro's income goals.) You have a cheap version of your game with no monthly fee; then you have a premium version with a monthly fee. And you deliberately introduce pain points to try and get people to switch from one to the other - that was how 4e as designed.

Out of curiosity, what pain points? I'm not going to deny the WoW inspired design or the fact that it was clearly a minis game that had aspirations to be a VTT game, but I'm hard pressed to think of pain points that were intentional as opposed to clearly bad math. (e.g: monster HP turning battles into extended slogs, or the many revisions of skill challenges.) The main things a computer would help with are tracking conditions and resources, where I don't see tracking those in 4e being meaningfully different than tracking them in 3.5 or 5e.

[KorvinStarmast]

(monster HP turning battles into extended slogs, or the many revisions of skill challenges.) The main things a computer would help with are tracking conditions and resources, where I don't see tracking those in 4e being meaningfully different than tracking them in 3.5 or 5e. That HP slog is cropping up in Diablo IV, for what it's worth ...

[Anymage]

That HP slog is cropping up in Diablo IV, for what it's worth ...

Having enemies become bullet sponges is pretty common across the video game space. Unless there's some way to pay to deal more damage, I consider that plain bad design instead of a deliberately included pain point.

[False God]

Out of curiosity, what pain points? I'm not going to deny the WoW inspired design or the fact that it was clearly a minis game that had aspirations to be a VTT game, but I'm hard pressed to think of pain points that were intentional as opposed to clearly bad math. (e.g: monster HP turning battles into extended slogs, or the many revisions of skill challenges.) The main things a computer would help with are tracking conditions and resources, where I don't see tracking those in 4e being meaningfully different than tracking them in 3.5 or 5e.

I personally bought the DDI sub for years until they shut it down because it was easy, but frankly, I'd buy such a service for 99% of TTRPGs these days. A simple searchable database with all current content was a godsend. I'd sub to D&DBeyond if I didn't have to re-buy the books (and WotC deserved my money these days). While stuff like the Pathfinder SRD are free, their use of integrated Google searches provides, frankly, more results than are necessary.

I wouldn't exactly call "a lot of content" a pain point though, since its pretty common to D&D at least regardless of edition.

And a digital version wouldn't have improved the high HP issues anyway (if that would be their argument). Those were clearly a feature, not a bug, in response to the "glass cannon" design of 3.5 with high AC that made players less likely to hit, but low HP which meant everything went down like wet tissue paper. You can see this moderated design in 5E. HP is higher than 3.5, but lower than 4E, but AC is also much lower. Players like to hit things and "rocket tag" isn't much fun.

[gbaji]

It's the 'Draw a Map of the area' step. Positioning characters isn't an issue, that's all normal. My system is zone based, and does better with more interesting zones. Drawing a map takes 5-10 minutes. As I said, just to keep the players involved, I have them each able to add a zone to the map. It's not necessary to give players the power to help when drawing the map, but it makes for better maps, puts less strain on the GM, and keeps players engaged. Is it worth throwing away all those benefits to keep the system simpler for players, and cut out a disassociated mechanic?

I'm still deciding.

I guess I'm confused what you mean by "zones" then. Someone else (in this thread? Can't remember) used the terms to basically mean "melee squares". But you seem to be using the term to mean something larger? Like a whole terrain section of the map?

I guess that's fair, if you want to have dynamic creation of the battlefield itself (which sometimes will be the case, but IME often will not). I mean, if two groups just stumble upon eachother, I guess that makes sense. But that's something that very very rarely happens in the games I run. If a combat occurs between the PCs and the NPCs, it's because either the PCs are intentionally seeking out and find the NPCs, or the NPCs are seeking out and found the PCs. Very rarely do the PCs just randomly stumble into a group of enemy NPCs and a fight breaks out.

And again, regardless of how the map is drawn up, the relative starting positions are going to be based on who's coming from which direction, or already set up somewhere. I don't just allow people to place themselves where they wish on the fly. If one side is "defending", then they position themselves on the map. Then whomever is "attacking" comes in from whichever direction(s) they're coming from, are visible based on whatever stealth versus perception skills/magic/whatever is being used. And we just proceed from there.

It's just not something that comes up often in the games I run. Usually the terrain where the fight is happening is known ahead of time (by me at least). If they're exploring a dungeon, and come to a room where there be monsters, I draw the entrance tunnel/whatever to the room, have them place their minis as they want, present them with a doorway/entrance/whatever, and then have them proceed. If the party is ambushed while traveling down a road, I draw out a road, have the players place their minis where they'd be while traveling, and then have my NPCs attack from wherever they are. Dunno. It's just not a thing I've found to be particularly difficult to require some sort of special rules to manage.

[Tanarii]

Out of curiosity, what pain points? I'm not going to deny the WoW inspired design or the fact that it was clearly a minis game that had aspirations to be a VTT game, but I'm hard pressed to think of pain points that were intentional as opposed to clearly bad math. (e.g: monster HP turning battles into extended slogs, or the many revisions of skill challenges.) The main things a computer would help with are tracking conditions and resources, where I don't see tracking those in 4e being meaningfully different than tracking them in 3.5 or 5e.
Tracking ongoing bonuses, tracking conditions / effects ending on a save, tracking bloodied status, tracking impact of positioning on bonuses, tracking feats providing/modifying bonuses under certain circumstances. That's before you get into the normal resource management common to most versions of D&D, tracking powers and magic items.

From where I sit now, it feels like 2e C&T and 3e had less than 4e. It's a bit hazy obviously. But 5e definitely has far less. Combat in 5e is by far the fastest to execute since BECMI.

And of course when it came to building, feats. So many damn feats to have to wade through and pick amongst. 3e shared that of course. On the flip side, 4e was far simpler to build a caster in than 3e or 5e. It's just that Martials were so much fun in combat, why would you want to play a caster?

As opposed to 3e/5e, where building a (non-warlock) caster is such a slog, why would you want to play a caster? At least in 4e building every class was equally a slog. :smallamused:

[Aquillion]

2e / AD&D was actually incredibly straightforward. Character builds had relatively few bits to tweak, especially if you weren't using non-weapon proficencies (which were an optional rule.)

The issue with 2e was more that the rules, especially for things like THAC0, were presented in a very unintuitive way due to legacy decisions that hadn't been done away with yet.

But once you got through that and understood what the rules were actually saying, there was much less to track, most of the time. The rules were a pile of cludges in some respects so depending on what optional stuff you used it could get more complex, of course; but the base system was simple.

[Tanarii]

2e Combat & Tactics. Which was the way 2e combat was run for about half of the 2e life-cycle IMX.

AD&D and 2e vanilla were both more complicated than BECMI, but 2e vanilla was pretty dang close.

[Zombimode]

2e Combat & Tactics. Which was the way 2e combat was run for about half of the 2e life-cycle IMX.

Hm, that is an interesting point. One thing to note is that outside the actual Players Options books the players options content is practically non-existent in the published adventure modules. I think there is 1? module that uses Combat & Tactics. I'm not sure how easy it is to "slot" those rules into existing material.
If it is easy than ok, I could see C&T having some tracktion. If not I would be skeptical about the widespread adoption of C&T.

[False God]

Tracking ongoing bonuses, tracking conditions / effects ending on a save, tracking bloodied status, tracking impact of positioning on bonuses, tracking feats providing/modifying bonuses under certain circumstances. That's before you get into the normal resource management common to most versions of D&D, tracking powers and magic items.

From where I sit now, it feels like 2e C&T and 3e had less than 4e. It's a bit hazy obviously. But 5e definitely has far less. Combat in 5e is by far the fastest to execute since BECMI.

And of course when it came to building, feats. So many damn feats to have to wade through and pick amongst. 3e shared that of course. On the flip side, 4e was far simpler to build a caster in than 3e or 5e. It's just that Martials were so much fun in combat, why would you want to play a caster?

As opposed to 3e/5e, where building a (non-warlock) caster is such a slog, why would you want to play a caster? At least in 4e building every class was equally a slog. :smallamused:

I think a notable difference between 3.5E and 4E, was that 3.5 gave you the ability to build a character that could inflict a variety of statuses and conditions to track, or not. 4E gave almost everything riders and side-effects, and some classes don't function without using them.

I'd probably argue that control and conditions was generally higher OP in 3.5 and to a large extent the intended form of play for certain classes. Part of 4E's standardization of classes was the removal of low and high OP, not that it eliminated it entirely, but that the gap was much smaller, modeling everyone after what made high OP most effective.

But I'm not sure "you have the option to play poorly" is necessarily a good feature to have.

[kieza]

I'd argue that the bigger problem is that in previous editions it did a very different thing. It WAS a save-or-die. It absolutely was "if this lands, you die". It wasn't "damage".

So 4e decided that save-or-die was bad. Okay, fine. But they felt that it was iconic enough to keep, but they fundamentally changed it to fit in the new paradigm. And then people looked at "Finger of Death" and thought "oh, I know how that works" and it didn't. That causes a jarring disconnect.

If 4e had been the first D&D edition, I don't think that it would have had that level of jarring disconnect.

Much like "saving throws". When they went to attack rolls for spells, fine. But to keep something as iconic as "saving throws" but make them do something completely different just is asking for trouble.

I'm a little late to the discussion here, but this piqued my curiosity. I'm writing a system that takes a lot of cues from 4e, including the "no save-or-die" principle, and I've written a bunch of powers that could be named "Finger of Death" with greater or lesser accuracy. Which of these mechanics seem most and least fitting for the name?

Causes a large amount of damage.
Causes only a small amount of damage (on par with a non-striker encounter power, in 4e-speak), but significantly more (enough to possibly kill a normal, on-level enemy from full HP) on a critical hit, and has expanded threat range.
Causes only a small amount of damage, but more (enough to likely kill a normal, on-level enemy from bloodied) if the target is bloodied, weakened, has failed a death saving throw, or some other condition.
Instantly reduces an enemy to 0 HP if it does damage in excess of their bloodied value, which is possible but unlikely (~25% for an on-level normal enemy, just barely possible for an elite).
Instantly reduces a bloodied enemy to 0 HP if it does damage in excess of their surge value, which is likely but not guaranteed (~50% for an on-level normal enemy that is just bloodied, ~25% for an elite).
Instantly reduces a normal enemy to 0 HP, or deals significant added damage to other enemies, on a critical hit, and has expanded threat range.
As any of the above, but only to living creatures.
As any of the above, but dealing entropic (necrotic) damage.

[Aquillion]

I'm a little late to the discussion here, but this piqued my curiosity. I'm writing a system that takes a lot of cues from 4e, including the "no save-or-die" principle, and I've written a bunch of powers that could be named "Finger of Death" with greater or lesser accuracy. Which of these mechanics seem most and least fitting for the name?

Causes a large amount of damage.
Causes only a small amount of damage (on par with a non-striker encounter power, in 4e-speak), but significantly more (enough to possibly kill a normal, on-level enemy from full HP) on a critical hit, and has expanded threat range.
Causes only a small amount of damage, but more (enough to likely kill a normal, on-level enemy from bloodied) if the target is bloodied, weakened, has failed a death saving throw, or some other condition.
Instantly reduces an enemy to 0 HP if it does damage in excess of their bloodied value, which is possible but unlikely (~25% for an on-level normal enemy, just barely possible for an elite).
Instantly reduces a bloodied enemy to 0 HP if it does damage in excess of their surge value, which is likely but not guaranteed (~50% for an on-level normal enemy that is just bloodied, ~25% for an elite).
Instantly reduces a normal enemy to 0 HP, or deals significant added damage to other enemies, on a critical hit, and has expanded threat range.
As any of the above, but only to living creatures.
As any of the above, but dealing entropic (necrotic) damage.

Honestly, none of those are great, although some are better than others. The basics of Finger of Death are that when it works, whoever you point it at dies automatically (specifically not just reducing them to 0 HP - it should send them straight to dead, bypassing anything that might interfere with that unless it's something spelled out in the spell description.)

And it should work on almost anything, excluding stuff that isn't alive or otherwise has a thematic (not a "balance") reason to be beyond the spell's effect. "You can kill anything with a gesture! Except of course the people who you'd actually want to do this to, who are arbitrarily immune" is fairly lame and immersion-breaking.

It's entirely fair to say "wait, that doesn't fit into my game's design or balance!" Remember that different games are balanced differently, and some of them prioritize different things - in eg. Nobilis, building a character who can snap their fingers and make literally anyone or anything capable of dying drop dead is trivial (although most of your serious opponents are such that "being dead" is only a minor inconvenience to them.)

If you're writing a game where you don't want instant kill effects, then... don't include a spell called Finger of Death or another name that would imply that it's an instant-kill effect? That seems obvious enough.

Earlier editions of D&D prioritized (sometimes) this thematic of pulp sword and sorcery where high-level spellcasters were terrifying. The books for the earliest editions even said outright that they were intended to be stronger than everyone else. That's a thematic / aesthetic / design choice, and it's fair to discard it for your game... but you can't have it both ways.

In fact, to get back to the original point, I would argue that trying to have it both ways is one of the most "video-gamey" ways to build something, because videogames do that all the time - effects that have this big dramatic name and then when you use them it's "ten seconds of this relatively weak debuff, also bosses and anyone else you would actually want to use it on are immune" or stuff like that. It's a symptom of the larger way that they lack a DM to resolve ambiguous cases, forcing everything to be clear and unambiguous and self-balancing. And then they apply this as a one-sized-fits-all solution to every setting.

Don't do that. You're designing your game from the ground up, you can set it up however you want.

If you do want to capture that eldritch swords-and-sorcery aesthetic where people never know what a spell the BBEG casts is going to do... recognize that 4e is an absolutely awful way to approach it. Obviously games need some degree of balance somewhere, but if everything seems glaringly, obviously balanced, and you still try to present your setting as a mysterious dungeon crawl into the unknown (where "the unknown" is "every magical effect does 1d6 + ability damage and a brief minor status effect"), a lot of players are going to find it ridiculous.

Mechanics aren't setting-agnostic, you need to choose a setting that fits your mechanics or vice-versa.

[kieza]

Honestly, none of those are great, although some are better than others. The basics of Finger of Death are that when it works, whoever you point it at dies automatically (specifically not just reducing them to 0 HP - it should send them straight to dead, bypassing anything that might interfere with that unless it's something spelled out in the spell description.)

And it should work on almost anything, excluding stuff that isn't alive or otherwise has a thematic (not a "balance") reason to be beyond the spell's effect. "You can kill anything with a gesture! Except of course the people who you'd actually want to do this to, who are arbitrarily immune" is fairly lame and immersion-breaking.

It's entirely fair to say "wait, that doesn't fit into my game's design or balance!" Remember that different games are balanced differently, and some of them prioritize different things - in eg. Nobilis, building a character who can snap their fingers and make literally anyone or anything capable of dying drop dead is trivial (although most of your serious opponents are such that "being dead" is only a minor inconvenience to them.)

If you're writing a game where you don't want instant kill effects, then... don't include a spell called Finger of Death or another name that would imply that it's an instant-kill effect? That seems obvious enough.

Earlier editions of D&D prioritized (sometimes) this thematic of pulp sword and sorcery where high-level spellcasters were terrifying. The books for the earliest editions even said outright that they were intended to be stronger than everyone else. That's a thematic / aesthetic / design choice, and it's fair to discard it for your game... but you can't have it both ways.

In fact, to get back to the original point, I would argue that trying to have it both ways is one of the most "video-gamey" ways to build something, because videogames do that all the time - effects that have this big dramatic name and then when you use them it's "ten seconds of this relatively weak debuff, also bosses and anyone else you would actually want to use it on are immune" or stuff like that. It's a symptom of the larger way that they lack a DM to resolve ambiguous cases, forcing everything to be clear and unambiguous and self-balancing. And then they apply this as a one-sized-fits-all solution to every setting.

Don't do that. You're designing your game from the ground up, you can set it up however you want.

If you do want to capture that eldritch swords-and-sorcery aesthetic where people never know what a spell the BBEG casts is going to do... recognize that 4e is an absolutely awful way to approach it. Obviously games need some degree of balance somewhere, but if everything seems glaringly, obviously balanced, and you still try to present your setting as a mysterious dungeon crawl into the unknown (where "the unknown" is "every magical effect does 1d6 + ability damage and a brief minor status effect"), a lot of players are going to find it ridiculous.

Mechanics aren't setting-agnostic, you need to choose a setting that fits your mechanics or vice-versa.

Oh, I get that none of these capture the 3.5 or 5e spell that was called "Finger of Death." But I was asking about what mechanics the name would be most apt for, not what mechanics best mimic the 3.5 spell. "Finger of Death," to me, doesn't have quite as much baggage (and for the record, I started out in 3.5). To me, the name evokes a powerful single-target spell that is "deathly" or "deadly," but it doesn't have that specific association with "instantly kills." So I was trying to figure out what other sorts of mechanics seem to fit the name, but from the sound of it you strongly associate it with that one specific facet of the 3.5 spell.

[Tanarii]

In the original dungeon crawl into the unknown, the unknown meant 1d6 plus nothing damage plus no rider effect.

[kyoryu]

I mean, first of all, it's a name and not a contract.

Any version of Finger of Death should mean that you point your finger at things and they have a high chance of dying. I don't think that having some powerful-enough things not instantly die significantly changes that - the magic just ain't powerful enough to take them out, though they'll be having a bad day. Most normal things die? I think that works.

That still feels like "finger of death" to me.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I mean, first of all, it's a name and not a contract.

Any version of Finger of Death should mean that you point your finger at things and they have a high chance of dying. I don't think that having some powerful-enough things not instantly die significantly changes that - the magic just ain't powerful enough to take them out, though they'll be having a bad day. Most normal things die? I think that works.

That still feels like "finger of death" to me.

Yeah. Personally, names are the thing that is most "fluffy" and least binding. Because lots of techniques have wildly overblown names. CF the Murder Stroke in several martial combat traditions. And just about every JRPG/anime ever. And pro wrestling.

As long as the name and the effect are in the same direction (so Finger of Death doesn't heal normal people and Healing Word both has a verbal component and does actually heal normal people), I'm ok with Finger of Death just doing damage, as long as it does enough to kill normal folks. Adventurers are weird, as are a lot of the things they face. So not killing them outright is fine with me.

[Just to Browse]

Which of these mechanics seem most and least fitting for the name?]

I'm of 2 minds here:

The first thought - To some degree, I agree with Phoenix and kyoryu that names can bend. If your game is like 4e where even the forgettable level 1 abilities get gratuitous names like master's edge or oath of the final duel, then don't worry about it. Put finger of death on an ability that has some rules about killing stuff, because no matter what you pick, it's not going to stand out in a field of abilities named circle of death, spirit rend, blazing death storm, supreme dread presence, etc etc. Any execute ability is going to feel about as appropriate as any other.

The second thought - If this is going to be a really critical, flagship ability for powerful mages, then I expect finger of death to hit that fantasy: it should be easy for a powerful mage to invoke, and it should be massively harmful to whoever is affected. Unfortunately, none of your listed options seem to fit that; I think that's a conflict between what the name "wants", and what you want to get from your game. If your power level target is "level-appropriate striker damage", you'll never meet the mark, because finger of death's whole sales pitch involves being horrifyingly lethal with minimal effort.

So my suggestion is not to spin your wheels on this. Just throw the name on some high-level necromancy ability like they did in Heroes of Shadow and call it a day.