Miss 4e D&D

[Garfunion]

I miss this version of D&D. I’m really hoping that with what is going on with the franchise that they would come back to this version of the game, make some tweaks to it and rebrand it as Dungeons and Dragons Tactics. Because what I’m seeing on these forms are people actually do want 4e they just don’t want it to look like 4e.

[Waddacku]

I feel that last sentence. Keep seeing people describe what they want and what they want to get away from and it sure sounds a hell of a lot like 4e a lot of the time.

EDIT: Not to say I don't miss this game, too. It's just my situation is more no games than other games, but if I did play it's likely to be 4e.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I miss this version of D&D. I’m really hoping that with what is going on with the franchise that they would come back to this version of the game, make some tweaks to it and rebrand it as Dungeons and Dragons Tactics. Because what I’m seeing on these forms are people actually do want 4e they just don’t want it to look like 4e.


I feel that last sentence. Keep seeing people describe what they want and what they want to get away from and it sure sounds a hell of a lot like 4e a lot of the time.

EDIT: Not to say I don't miss this game, too. It's just my situation is more no games than other games, but if I did play it's likely to be 4e.

Funny thing (to me) is that PF2e, which gets widely touted by people leaving 5e at least, is IMO 4.75e. Ok, some changes, but the basic philosophies and a lot of the balancing mechanics are basically 4e's design in different clothes. Shows how much presentation and hype (or anti-hype) matters for popular acceptance.

Personally, I think that 4e had a lot of really good ideas. And then, as with most WotC things, they implemented them haphazardly and half-baked. A 4e, but this time polished, might actually be quite interesting. I'm not as much a fan of super-crunchy and tactical play these days, but I'd gladly play it as a side-game.

[paladinn]

From what I've read, 4e was developed with the intent of making D&D work much more like a video game. At a given level, all characters had much the same capabilities, just in different wrapping.

If I want a video game, I'll play a video game.

[Waddacku]

Funny thing (to me) is that PF2e, which gets widely touted by people leaving 5e at least, is IMO 4.75e. Ok, some changes, but the basic philosophies and a lot of the balancing mechanics are basically 4e's design in different clothes. Shows how much presentation and hype (or anti-hype) matters for popular acceptance.

And the funny thing about that is that as far as I can tell, every common criticism of why 4e is bad is more true for PF2, but it's still preferred by people who say they can't stand 4e... I haven't looked at it in depth, though, but that's also in part because when I look at it that's what it comes across as. I don't have the experience to claim this to be more than an impression, though.


From what I've read, 4e was developed with the intent of making D&D work much more like a video game. At a given level, all characters had much the same capabilities, just in different wrapping.

I don't have any interest in starting a fight and dragging the thread down the edition war path, so I'm just going to say that I don't think either of those things are true. It is designed to work well with a virtual tabletop, it took encounter design lessons from games like World of Warcraft, and (most) characters have similar numbers of active abilities at a given level.

[lesser_minion]

4e had its problems, but I don't think it deserved to die the way that it did.


From what I've read, 4e was developed with the intent of making D&D work much more like a video game.

I'm not sure exactly what you've read, but while 4e was more 'gamey' in approach than 3e, and probably harder to play without a VTT or miniatures, it was always unmistakably a tabletop game.

[Ignimortis]

Funny thing (to me) is that PF2e, which gets widely touted by people leaving 5e at least, is IMO 4.75e. Ok, some changes, but the basic philosophies and a lot of the balancing mechanics are basically 4e's design in different clothes. Shows how much presentation and hype (or anti-hype) matters for popular acceptance.

And the funny thing about that is that as far as I can tell, every common criticism of why 4e is bad is more true for PF2, but it's still preferred by people who say they can't stand 4e... I haven't looked at it in depth, though, but that's also in part because when I look at it that's what it comes across as. I don't have the experience to claim this to be more than an impression, though..
It's because PF2e presents itself in a non-4e way and keeps a few trappings from 3.5/PF1. Spell slots are still a thing, narratively opposed classes don't have any similar abilities, "roles" are enforced quietly instead of openly (the rules don't tell you there are actual roles, but there most definitely are), etc. In case of comparisons to 4e, it is very much a matter of presentation...

It's a case of every single major D&D-like post 4e release trying to redo 3e corebook and somehow getting rich off it. PF1 did that and forgot half the parts that actually made 3.5 good. 5e did that and forgot even more about 3.5 that was worth keeping and implementing into the game as a baseline. PF2 did that and forgot that 3.5 was more than it's lowest common denominator gameplay type.

The desire to make "3e CRB, but done right this time" seems evident to me, as is the success of that scheme. And I will never understand why, because the 3e/3.5e CRB is by far the worst book of that edition, and emulating its' worst parts somehow gets one a successful TTRPG.

[Wildstag]

I don't have any interest in starting a fight and dragging the thread down the edition war path, so I'm just going to say that I don't think either of those things are true. It is designed to work well with a virtual tabletop, it took encounter design lessons from games like World of Warcraft, and (most) characters have similar numbers of active abilities at a given level.

I'll echo and second this, but the only similarity is that some things have cooldowns... except a lot of things in 3.5 already worked like that. You had SLAs attached to so many martial-friendly PrCs that only worked 1/day (a daily ability) or that had multiple uses per day but durations greater than 1 minute (encounter powers). And there were already abilities usable all day, every day. Consider the Primeval: it worked similarly to Barbarian (an ability that you'd only use once per encounter but lasted most of the encounter), but also had multiple uses per day.

The biggest sin of 4e imo is that they simplified and streamlined all rules text such that it didn't read like a fantasy ability (unless you read the flavor text). If all you did was read an ability mechanics-block, all you'd see is mechanical information (keywords and effect descriptions).

Obviously WoW was a big deal, even early on (released Nov 2004). But consider the fact that the bones of 4e (and really the earliest builds) were being written in late 2005 to mid 2006. A lot of it was scrapped for work on Tome of Battle, which released in August 2006. The South Park WoW episode came out in October 2006. Obviously, it was a big thing, even when Tome of Battle was being written. But also, 4e was being developed when WoW was still rising in popularity.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It's because PF2e presents itself in a non-4e way and keeps a few trappings from 3.5/PF1. Spell slots are still a thing, narratively opposed classes don't have any similar abilities, "roles" are enforced quietly instead of openly (the rules don't tell you there are actual roles, but there most definitely are), etc. In case of comparisons to 4e, it is very much a matter of presentation...


Agreed. Many people don't look far below the surface, so if the trappings are familiar, they don't get peeved even though the underlying reality is different. 4e didn't preserve the trappings, hence the pained shrieks. Cheese got moved.

Which isn't totally invalid of a complaint, but the complaints about 4e got way out of proportion to the actual underlying issues. Which there were--4e was half-baked in a lot of ways to be sure.

[Garfunion]

Hmm I haven’t looked at PF2 yet, guess it is something to look into.

I think 4e was just trying to be a fun game where all the players had something cool to do each turn.

It also simplified combat on the DMs side. The DM could select a player level and look for monsters of the same level instead of calculating challenge ratings.
4 minions(Xlvl) can fight 1 player(Xlvl)
1 normal monster(Xlvl) can fight 1 player(Xlvl)
1 elite monster(Xlvl) can fight 2 players(Xlvl)
1 boss monster(Xlvl) can fight 4 players(Xlvl)

With the introduction to the Monster Manual on a business card, it made encounters even easier.

The changes I would make would be to simplify/reduce the d20 number and implant the bounded accessory system. This would make many powers obsolete or require changes. But this could mean that they could just squish 30 levels down to 10-15 levels.

Another thing to bring up in my ramblings is that skill proficiencies didn’t become obsolete with higher levels. For example, in 5e, the Knock spell completely opens the lock while in 4e, the Knock power allows the wizard to use their intelligence modifier for the open locks roll. This is but one example out of dozens or so skill challenges.

[Just to Browse]

Funny thing (to me) is that PF2e, which gets widely touted by people leaving 5e at least, is IMO 4.75e. Ok, some changes, but the basic philosophies and a lot of the balancing mechanics are basically 4e's design in different clothes. Shows how much presentation and hype (or anti-hype) matters for popular acceptance.

I think it also shows how important it is for your marketing to line up with your gameplay. Both PF2 and 4e were advertised as mathematically tight with a strong focus on encounter balance, but PF2 delivered on that a hell of a lot better. No 2-month emergency errata, no forgetting to account for weapon expertise, no "we got the monster math right this time for real please buy MM3". :smallamused:

[Kurald Galain]

I miss this version of D&D. I’m really hoping that with what is going on with the franchise that they would come back to this version of the game, make some tweaks to it and rebrand it as Dungeons and Dragons Tactics.
I do miss the tactical combats of 3E, 4E, and PF, but I don't seem to have players in my area that also want that. 5E is by design not tactical at all, and I find PF2 full of fiddly little things that sound like they make a difference but that in practice don't. $.02

I'm still amazed by how quickly 4E vanished overnight. At least in my area, there was no gradual decline with hangers-on; in about a month's time, almost simultaneously, all home campaigns and convention games switched to other systems.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

It's the edition I cut my D&D teeth on, and it's the only edition where I feel comfortable when I open the books back up, even after years. It all comes back.

I've been getting some of the same feel from Icon, which feels like it took a lot from 4th. It's been nice!

[LibraryOgre]

I'm still amazed by how quickly 4E vanished overnight. At least in my area, there was no gradual decline with hangers-on; in about a month's time, almost simultaneously, all home campaigns and convention games switched to other systems.

I mean, heck, look at the Playground. Right now, 4e has 3 posts, counting the stickied ones. The 3.5 board has four pages of posts. Now, some of that is Pathfinder, but even if it's 80-90% Pathfinder, 3.5 still has way more adherents than 4e.

As I've said before, I am not a huge 4e fan... towards the end of my group's time with it, I would just say "Hey, make me a character and I'll play them." I didn't want to deal with it. But there's a good amount of stuff in there, and some good design ideas, even if I was not enthused overall with the system.

[Garfunion]

I'm still amazed by how quickly 4E vanished overnight.
If they kept their online support tools for 4e, than I’m sure there would still be a lot more players for the edition.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I miss this version of D&D. I’m really hoping that with what is going on with the franchise that they would come back to this version of the game, make some tweaks to it and rebrand it as Dungeons and Dragons Tactics. Because what I’m seeing on these forms are people actually do want 4e they just don’t want it to look like 4e.


Agreed. Many people don't look far below the surface, so if the trappings are familiar, they don't get peeved even though the underlying reality is different. 4e didn't preserve the trappings, hence the pained shrieks. Cheese got moved.
I've recently been getting into Lancer, which borrows a surprising amount from 4e--particularly when it comes to presentation. And I have to say, even with ~15 years of gaming obsession experience, there was something kind of jarring about running into "range: 5 spaces" and "size 2 obstacle" and suchlike again. I wouldn't go so far as to call it video-game-y, but it was kind of board-game-y. My friend Sam tried to run a game, and despite being one of the best and most-experienced GMs I know, the way she ran combat encounters turned into exactly the sort of rule-bound tactical wargaming that you generally don't want out of an ttRPG.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I think presentation alone was a significant reason the game got so much backlash. How much better received would it have been if powers were written out like traditional spells?


Healing Word
Conjuration
Level: Cleric 1
Tags: Divine, Healing
Casting Time: 1 minor action
Range: 25ft
Target: You or one ally
Duration: Instant
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: None

You whisper a brief prayer as divine light washes over your target, helping to mend its wounds. The subject can spend a healing surge "point of Stamina" to regain hit points; when doing so, they regain an additional 1d6 hit points. This ability can only be used once per round. Once you've used it a second time, you cannot use it again for one encounter five minutes.

At Cleric level 6, 11, 16, 21, and 26, increase this bonus healing by 1d6, to a maximum of 6d6 at level 26. In addition, beginning at Cleric level 16, you can use this ability three times per encounter before needing to rest.

-------------

All of which is an excessively long-winded way of saying: I completely agree. If the brain squirrels ever compel me to write a true fantasy heartbreaker, 4e is a much better starting point than 3e or 5e. Heck, my d20 Exalted hack wound up looking more like 4e than either of its component systems (Exalted 3e and Mutants and Masterminds).

[tcrudisi]

I, too, miss 4e D&D. So dang much. I tried 5e when it came out and only lasted a few sessions. My group just stopped playing TTRPG's altogether and just made the switch over to board games. I didn't play any RPG's at all until I got back into WoD (Werewolf 5e specifically) when that came out. That was refreshing, and it is a fantastic system that quickly jumped up to my #2 of all-time... but I still have that 4e itch.

*sigh*

[Just to Browse]

I've recently been getting into Lancer, which borrows a surprising amount from 4e--particularly when it comes to presentation. And I have to say, even with ~15 years of gaming obsession experience, there was something kind of jarring about running into "range: 5 spaces" and "size 2 obstacle" and suchlike again. I wouldn't go so far as to call it video-game-y, but it was kind of board-game-y. My friend Sam tried to run a game, and despite being one of the best and most-experienced GMs I know, the way she ran combat encounters turned into exactly the sort of rule-bound tactical wargaming that you generally don't want out of an ttRPG.

I think that's part of the sell for Lancer. As someone I know put it:


Lancer is ultimately a mecha wargame that understands its core audience wants to tell stories about why these fights matter rather than just play BattleTech

In my experience, this mentality shows up in 4e communities as well. Lancer, PF2, 4e, the Gloomhaven RPG, the MCDM RPG, they all have this same grounding design philosophy: They are tactical wargames with rules-heavy combat, paired with a simple system that bridges between those combats.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think that's part of the sell for Lancer. As someone I know put it:



In my experience, this mentality shows up in 4e communities as well. Lancer, PF2, 4e, the Gloomhaven RPG, the MCDM RPG, they all have this same grounding design philosophy: They are tactical wargames with rules-heavy combat, paired with a simple system that bridges between those combats.

I agree with this. One data point--I actually own a 4e-era board game that's basically just a dungeon generator with pregen characters with enough tooling to make it runnable without a DM (even solo). The actual rules are pretty much 4e, just slightly stripped down to avoid the mass of extra content. Actually works quite well.

[Just to Browse]

lol I think I have one of those too, mine is Driz'zt themed.

A lot of games with these philosophies lend well to board games or video games. 4e had its board games and arguably the Neverwinter MMO, the Gloomhaven RPG started as a board game, PF2 is small but has Quest for the Golden Candelabra (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2381160/Quest_for_the_Golden_Candelabra/), Lancer has the in-development Lancer Tactics (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wickworks/lancer-tactics/posts). The recent playtest of MCDM's RPG shows strong influences from Colville's video game background as well.

[PhoenixPhyre]

lol I think I have one of those too, mine is Driz'zt themed.

A lot of games with these philosophies lend well to board games or video games. 4e had its board games and arguably the Neverwinter MMO, the Gloomhaven RPG started as a board game, PF2 is small but has Quest for the Golden Candelabra (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2381160/Quest_for_the_Golden_Candelabra/), Lancer has the in-development Lancer Tactics (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wickworks/lancer-tactics/posts). The recent playtest of MCDM's RPG shows strong influences from Colville's video game background as well.

Mine's the Ashardalon one. Mainly bought it for the minis--turns out they're kinda...well...not the best quality for painting and reuse. So most of them aren't painted or are half-painted. And I'm not sure I still have all the original pieces to the game. Kept the interlocking tiles, because that makes a fairly cromulent battle map that's easy to piece together as needed.

[Grod_The_Giant]

They also couldn't do things that the fluff might suggest but that the power description would not allow, which felt constricting, and gave the impression that inventive play wasn't allowed. And WotC's rulings were based strictly on text, and AFAIK they never told a DM how he could adjudicate actions that attempted the fluff rather than following the crunch. Some guidance on adapting (or really, express permission to adapt) DMG p. 42 to already existing powers would have been helpful.
That's a good point. It's one reason I really like when systems have a metagame resource of some sort-- it gives the GM wiggle room when deciding if an off-book action should work. "That's not quite what the power does by RAW, but if you give me a hero point I'll let it work this time."

[LibraryOgre]

On "Powers don't do that", I think some of it can also come down to DMs. I recall one encounter against torturers with heated brands, where my wizard used Ray of Frost to turn them into metal clubs. BTB, probably wouldn't work, but a good DM will be able to say "Yeah, that's cool!"

But, again, "Can be fixed by a good DM" isn't the same as "not a problem."

[PhoenixPhyre]

On "Powers don't do that", I think some of it can also come down to DMs. I recall one encounter against torturers with heated brands, where my wizard used Ray of Frost to turn them into metal clubs. BTB, probably wouldn't work, but a good DM will be able to say "Yeah, that's cool!"

But, again, "Can be fixed by a good DM" isn't the same as "not a problem."

But on the other hand, "not everything that was 'fixed' was a problem in the first place." What I mean is that just because one DM/table decided that they needed to 'fix' something (ie change something, make a ruling in a particular way, etc), that does not mean that the system has a problem. I "fix" things about every system I play on a regular basis, because I want to make the system more suited to me and my tables. I don't pretend that those things constitute actual problems with the system, only mismatches between what I want and what the system provides.

If I want to use a pitchfork as a shovel, I'm going to have to make alterations. That doesn't make the pitchfork flawed.

In this case, I'd say that a DM saying "yeah, that makes senes in this context" OR "nah, that doesn't make sense in this context" are both totally valid options. What isn't, IMO, a valid option is "the book doesn't say the DM can do this, so the DM can't." The text is not a binding contract, nor is any particular interpretation of the text (aka so-called "RAW"). TTRPGs are always "some assembly required"/"batteries not included." Maybe 4e should have included a piece of text somewhere (if they didn't, which they probably did, the 4e DMG was pretty good about this) that said "hey DMs, if a player asks to do something the power doesn't explicitly say it can do, decide if it makes sense in context of the fiction. If you're not sure, have them roll <some kind of appropriate check> to see if it works."

[Kurald Galain]

On "Powers don't do that", I think some of it can also come down to DMs. I recall one encounter against torturers with heated brands, where my wizard used Ray of Frost to turn them into metal clubs. BTB, probably wouldn't work, but a good DM will be able to say "Yeah, that's cool!"

But, again, "Can be fixed by a good DM" isn't the same as "not a problem."

Sure. I've had DMs run the full gamut from "yes, you can do anything you want with a Religion check just by praying for it", to "no, you cannot use combat powers because you're not currently in combat". Needless to say, neither of the extremes is all that much fun, and actual good DM'ing is somewhere in the middle.

[Just to Browse]

On "Powers don't do that", I think some of it can also come down to DMs. I recall one encounter against torturers with heated brands, where my wizard used Ray of Frost to turn them into metal clubs. BTB, probably wouldn't work, but a good DM will be able to say "Yeah, that's cool!"

But, again, "Can be fixed by a good DM" isn't the same as "not a problem."

I would also question whether the folks who like 4e actually want stuff like this. To quote someone from a 4e community I'm in, "I play 4e specifically because it is a cool cooperative skirmish wargame with extra bells and whistles and more character option combinations than there are atoms in the universe."

You might get support from new players by doing this, but what will happen to the core folks who are currently engaged? What happens if EndlesNights / Scrivener doesn't pick the game up because of the new emphasis on "inventive play"?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I would also question whether the folks who like 4e actually want stuff like this. To quote someone from a 4e community I'm in, "I play 4e specifically because it is a cool cooperative skirmish wargame with extra bells and whistles and more character option combinations than there are atoms in the universe."

You might get support from new players by doing this, but what will happen to the core folks who are currently engaged? What happens if EndlesNights / Scrivener doesn't pick the game up because of the new emphasis on "inventive play"?
It seems to me that there are two different paths you could take if you wanted to develop 4e. You could--and let's be honest, probably should--lean into its identity as a small-scale wargame, and focus on streamlining and balance and such. But there's also a temptation to say "I like the AEDU power structure and healing surges and tight math, but the existing powers are too narrowly focused" and try to create something more like "classic" D&D. Which would be an interesting exercise in game design, but wouldn't have much appeal to existing 4e fans.

[Kurald Galain]

It seems to me that there are two different paths you could take if you wanted to develop 4e. You could--and let's be honest, probably should--lean into its identity as a small-scale wargame, and focus on streamlining and balance and such.
That's basically PF2 (which is also largely by the same designers), except that PF2 is much less tactical, and where 4E has a whole role dedicated to crowd control, PF2 doesn't have CC abilities. I'd say that PF2 is more balanced but less streamlined than 4E.


But there's also a temptation to say "I like the AEDU power structure and healing surges and tight math, but the existing powers are too narrowly focused" and try to create something more like "classic" D&D. Which would be an interesting exercise in game design, but wouldn't have much appeal to existing 4e fans.
And to be fair, that wouldn't have much appeal either to non-4E fans.

[Jaeda]

I concur that leaning into the identity as a skirmish would be the way to go for a 4+1e. I've only read, not played, both Lancer and PF2e, but I can definitely see where each brought stuff from 4e.

4e did have a problem with disociation between the fluff and the mechanics. Lancer fixes it by changing to a setting where the mechanics work better with the fluff (having limited ammunition or reload times fits into AEDU better). I think there are ways to reassociate 4+1e like making sure the fluff and effects of powers match better or having different power sources get AEDU-like effects in different ways (like having Martial heroes spend stamina like a 5e Battlemaster instead of literally having encounter powers).

Spending bennies might be a good way to allow for things that probably should be allowed by the fluff but strictly speaking aren't by the rules (like the earlier example of extinguishing a firebrand with a frost spell).

On the Orcus development thread, someone had linked a build-a-power wizard (I think) variant as an idea that didn't get used. This might also help with the dissociation (since players could build the power to work like they envision the power working) and would also cut down on the number of powers you have to print (since you'd only need a couple examples and then things that would be outside of what could be built).

I am currently running 4e and my players are having fun. It probably helps that it's the edition that I'm most comfortable improving in and that only one of my players (my wife) has much experience with either 4e or 5e (and one of them hadn't played at all).

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd say that PF2 is more balanced but less streamlined than 4E.


Less streamlined than 4E...now there's a damning statement. That was a low bar to clear and they failed it (or maybe didn't even try?). 4E pretends to be streamlined, but it's actually got tons of nitty-gritty moving pieces that have to be carefully managed or the whole thing goes sideways. At character creation, adventure design, and at playtime. Plus just the absurd number of options and detailed jargon, which means learning what you're doing imposes a huge amount of mental overhead.

[LibraryOgre]

4e did have a problem with disociation between the fluff and the mechanics. Lancer fixes it by changing to a setting where the mechanics work better with the fluff (having limited ammunition or reload times fits into AEDU better). I think there are ways to reassociate 4+1e like making sure the fluff and effects of powers match better or having different power sources get AEDU-like effects in different ways (like having Martial heroes spend stamina like a 5e Battlemaster instead of literally having encounter powers).


You know, having stamina costs might be interesting, and encourage people to keep lower-level powers.

For example, let's say that you start with 3 stamina. 1st level Encounter powers cost 1 stamina, and 1st level Dailys cost 2. You get back a stamina with each short rest... but this might mean that you throw 3 encounter powers in a single fight, instead of saving for your daily. And as you level and get more Stamina, you might decide to KEEP your low-level encounter powers, rather than improve them... because, with 20 stamina, you can toss out 20 Encounter powers, rather than just a few.

[Grod_The_Giant]

And to be fair, that wouldn't have much appeal either to non-4E fans.
Yep. There's a reason they call them "fantasy heartbreakers."

[Buufreak]

Yep. There's a reason they call them "fantasy heartbreakers."

I truly have never understood this term. Nor do I still.

[Waddacku]

You know, having stamina costs might be interesting, and encourage people to keep lower-level powers.

For example, let's say that you start with 3 stamina. 1st level Encounter powers cost 1 stamina, and 1st level Dailys cost 2. You get back a stamina with each short rest... but this might mean that you throw 3 encounter powers in a single fight, instead of saving for your daily. And as you level and get more Stamina, you might decide to KEEP your low-level encounter powers, rather than improve them... because, with 20 stamina, you can toss out 20 Encounter powers, rather than just a few.

It's hard to see an implementation that doesn't end up being "find the strongest thing in your class list and spam it", which to me kills a huge part of the appeal of both character building and the combat system.


About "inventive play", it is in fact explicitly allowed and encouraged. The game never says powers only do their described mechanics and have no further effects, and IIRC the specific example of fire powers setting fire to things is mentioned as up to what the DM thinks makes sense and wants for their game. It provides both mechanical guidelines and advice on what to consider when adjudicating actions beyond the character sheet specifics. I firmly believe the game is better when played this way, and I don't think that's an unusual opinion (or would be, if the matter was discussed more).
Its flexibility and robustness are big parts of what's great about 4e. It allows for a wide range of interpretations, can handle inventiveness both before and during game time, and when you can't or don't want to improvise and invent for a while it just keeps trucking along being perfectly playable and enjoyable to just do what the book says until you feel like getting more mentally involved again. I think that's really cool. Of course, if you don't enjoy this kind of board game combat your mileage will vary.
tl;dr: 4e is as open to imagination as any RPG, and when imagination dries up you still have a fun board game to fall back on.

[Just to Browse]

I truly have never understood this term. Nor do I still.

It comes from an essay by Ron Edwards (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/) in 2002:


In the late 70s, this wasn't unreasonable. By the early 90s, though, things were considerably different. This essay is about some 1990s games I'm calling "fantasy heartbreakers," which are truly impressive in terms of the drive, commitment, and personal joy that's evident in both their existence and in their details - yet they are also teeth-grindingly frustrating, in that, like their counterparts from the late 70s, they represent but a single creative step from their source: old-style D&D. And unlike those other games, as such, they were doomed from the start. This essay is basically in their favor, in a kind of grief-stricken way.


You know, having stamina costs might be interesting, and encourage people to keep lower-level powers.

I'm with waddacku in being a little hesitant here. We see some precedent for this in PHB3 psionics, where the psion, battlemind, and ardent all get power points in place of encounter powers, and it leads to a term I've frequently referred to as "the psionic problem" where characters flog their best powers over and over until they're out of points.

I would also add that getting strong powers is a big part of the fun of 4e. New encounter powers are basically all you get at levels 3, 7, etc. We should let the players play with their cool new toys!


About "inventive play", it is in fact explicitly allowed and encouraged. The game never says powers only do their described mechanics and have no further effects, and IIRC the specific example of fire powers setting fire to things is mentioned as up to what the DM thinks makes sense and wants for their game. It provides both mechanical guidelines and advice on what to consider when adjudicating actions beyond the character sheet specifics. I firmly believe the game is better when played this way, and I don't think that's an unusual opinion (or would be, if the matter was discussed more).
Its flexibility and robustness are big parts of what's great about 4e. It allows for a wide range of interpretations, can handle inventiveness both before and during game time, and when you can't or don't want to improvise and invent for a while it just keeps trucking along being perfectly playable and enjoyable to just do what the book says until you feel like getting more mentally involved again. I think that's really cool. Of course, if you don't enjoy this kind of board game combat your mileage will vary.

I've seen very little of this in most 4e games & community discussion, which I think is because the game handles these scenarios pretty poorly. Of the fire-related DM adjudication scenarios, I remember two:

One is in the improvised attack rules, which are exclusively interested in determining damage by using a lookup table. You pick the level of the character doing the attack, determine if it's easy / medium / hard, and lookup the damage associated with that attack (this means, e.g. stumbling into a vat of acid hurts more when a 30th-level character pushes you in compared to when a 1st-level character does). It's worth noting that the numbers in this table aren't good, because they start too strong and scale horribly (like the low-end suggested damage starts at 20% SMHP, ends at 7% SMHP)
In the example, an 8th-level character pushes an enemy into a flaming brazier, dealing 2d8 + 5 fire damage.
The other is from a section that tells you that you will need to make snap decisions sometimes.
In the example, a character of indeterminate level turns a flaming brazier (yes, another flaming brazier) on an enemy, dealing 1d6 fire damage and imposing a -2 penalty on attack rolls for 1 round. It's worth noting that 1d6 damage isn't an option anywhere in the improvised damage table, and the 1-round attack penalty is similarly absent from the improvised attack guideliens.

The 4e guidelines for nonstandard activities are a couple paragraphs of "idk make something up!" plus a table of poorly-benchmarked numeric treadmills. It's very anemic, which is why even highly-enfranchised 4e players will outright ignore the game's improvised attack rules.

To LibraryOgre's example, there aren't any rules governing what the power budget is for editing an enemy statblock, and e.g. with fire, lot of 4e statblocks would play pretty badly with that. The Immolith, the Forgecaller, the Balor, they all have weapons that just deal fire damage. There's no underlying weapon damage to reference that can serve as a clear reward. That's probably why none of the smoldering/flaming/burning/etc monsters in 4e have ever implemented something like this, even in obscure Dragon & Dungeon articles. This inventive play isn't really something the game supports, at least not without a strong sense of system mastery and a lot of hacking.

[Kurald Galain]

For example, let's say that you start with 3 stamina. 1st level Encounter powers cost 1 stamina, and 1st level Dailys cost 2. You get back a stamina with each short rest... but this might mean that you throw 3 encounter powers in a single fight, instead of saving for your daily. And as you level and get more Stamina, you might decide to KEEP your low-level encounter powers, rather than improve them... because, with 20 stamina, you can toss out 20 Encounter powers, rather than just a few.
That's interesting, but it risks having the same issue as psionic powers (i.e. that the best option is to spam a single low-level power all the time).



About "inventive play", it is in fact explicitly allowed and encouraged. The game never says powers only do their described mechanics and have no further effects,
It is interesting that you bring that up, because the prevalent opinion on this forum (and the WOTC forum, back when it existed) is that powers do exactly what their mechanics specify, no more, no less. This is also the opinion of pretty much every DM I've played with. For example, a Fireball spell works just fine in a heavy rainstorm, deals normal damage to fire elementals, will not set a forest on fire, and does not provide a bonus to Intimidate checks.


One is in the improvised attack rules, which are exclusively interested in determining damage by using a lookup table. You pick the level of the character doing the attack, determine if it's easy / medium / hard, and lookup the damage associated with that attack
Note that 4E's rules on improvised attacks ensure that in almost every case, an improvised attack is less effective than an at-will power. Obviously, this is an incentive against using improvised attacks.
Likewise, the DMG states that in a skill challenge, an original approach by a PC gets a higher DC than following the DM's suggestion. Although this was eventually errata'ed, it's also a clear incentive against improvising.

[Jaeda]

Is it inherently a problem? Sorcerer's in 3e and all casters in 5e as well as Battlemaster Fighters can do the same thing. IIRC, most of the Battlemaster's maneuvers are basically [W] + [SD] plus a rider effect, so their different maneuvers (essentially encounter powers) generally inflict the same damage, the difference being the extra effect that they cause. Do people complain about these also, or is it mostly a 4e thing? I could see this being a specific advantage for a power source (psionic in the original, martial here) to help with making each power source feel different.

Arguably, Fireball working equally effectively in the rain against fire elementals is a problem with the latter two rather than the former. A rainstorm should weaken fire abilities and fire elementals should have fire resistance (rather than these discount elementals that Imix apparently bought). I do agree that some of the keywords need extra effects tied to it (like fire igniting flammable objects in the area), but overall they should be general rather than tied to specific powers.

Improvised attacks are in kind of a weird spot. If you make them too powerful, then you run the risk of players doing nothing but that and ignoring their normal powers. If you make them too weak, then they'll never do anything like that, no matter how cool it would be. Something that you can only do once in this specific environment (like maybe drop a chandelier on someone) should be at least as strong as an encounter power, maybe about the strength of a daily (2d physical damage plus restrained and ongoing fire damage). Something that you can do all the time in many environments (like kick sand in their eyes) should be no stronger than an at-will or have additional downsides (blinds for one round in melee range [weaker than Eyebite], but no damage and they get a defense boost if you try it again). Having to expend a resource like an action point or encounter power might also be a reasonable tradeoff; it's more reasonable to have kicking someone into a brazier deal 2d damage and ongoing fire (which I think there is an encounter power that does that) if it is essentially replacing one of their encounter powers to do it.

[Kurald Galain]

Is it inherently a problem? Sorcerer's in 3e and all casters in 5e as well as Battlemaster Fighters can do the same thing. IIRC, most of the Battlemaster's maneuvers are basically [W] + [SD] plus a rider effect, so their different maneuvers (essentially encounter powers) generally inflict the same damage, the difference being the extra effect that they cause.
I think the underlying issue is that 4E mostly shies away from situational powers, and this makes it easy for a class to have one singular power that is the best pick 99% of the time. For instance, Dishearten for psions, or Flame Spiral for sorcerers.
You are quite right that numerous players don't mind "spam" builds (such as martials in any other edition), but usually these are classes that have only few abilities; not classes that have many abilities but only use one of them.


A rainstorm should weaken fire abilities and fire elementals should have fire resistance
I agree, and these are examples of 4E shying away from situational powers.


Improvised attacks are in kind of a weird spot. If you make them too powerful, then you run the risk of players doing nothing but that and ignoring their normal powers. If you make them too weak, then they'll never do anything like that, no matter how cool it would be.
That's precisely it. I like the idea of improvised attacks only working in a specific environment (because if they worked almost everywhere, they wouldn't be improvised).
The brazier push doesn't require improvisation since the game has numerous push abilities already; the issue here is that the effect of a brazier (or lava, or whatnot) varies wildly between maps, and is too often just ignorable. What works much better is a controller's Zone powers plus pushing, but again that's not improvised.

[tiornys]

That's basically PF2 (which is also largely by the same designers), except that PF2 is much less tactical, and where 4E has a whole role dedicated to crowd control, PF2 doesn't have CC abilities. I'd say that PF2 is more balanced but less streamlined than 4E.
I'm not sure I agree that PF2 is less tactical, although it certainly is differently tactical than 4E. But I definitely don't agree that PF2 lacks CC abilities. To just give one example from each of the first 5 spell ranks, Shockwave is a 15' cone of knocking people prone (stronger than 4E prone as you grant advantage to ranged as well as melee, and standing in PF2 provokes OAs), Entangling Flora is a 20' burst of difficult terrain + chance of -10' speed or even immobilize every turn, Upcast Fear hits 5 enemies with a -1 to -3 debuff to all attacks, saves, defenses, and skills (and each -1 in PF2 is closer to a -2 in 4E), Wall of Fire does the wall things of cutting a battlefield in half, and Synaptic Pulse is a 30' ally-friendly emanation (close burst) that applies rough equivalents of 4E Daze or Stun to all enemies in the area. Even martials can get crowd control--e.g. the 14th level Hammer Quake knocks everyone prone in (more or less) what 4E would call a close blast 3--though these abilities tend to be high level whereas martials have single target control from level 1.

My read on PF2 is that it's a successful melding and evolution of 3E aesthetics and 4E design principles. It manages to balance martials using entirely at-will abilities with casters using traditional D&D style spellcasting (plus various other at-will/encounter/daily resource mixes), which frankly I used to think was an impossible goal. 4E remains my preferred D&D edition but PF2 is currently my favorite D&D-style RPG.

[Kurald Galain]

I'm not sure I agree that PF2 is less tactical,
Your post provides some great examples of how PF2 is much less tactical, because putting out effects like "chance of -10' speed" or "-1 to attacks" are not crowd control.

Rather, that's throwing around little fiddly modifiers that in practice don't make a difference. Your choices (both in build and in gameplay) in 4E have a much greater impact than in PF2; and that's why the latter is much less tactical.

[lesser_minion]

That's interesting, but it risks having the same issue as psionic powers (i.e. that the best option is to spam a single low-level power all the time).

While I understand the balance concern, I suspect that making it too difficult to reuse powers had the side effect of limiting how impactful they are. If you're facing down a bunch of really heavily-armoured enemies, it should be a really big deal that your fighter knows adamantine strike. But in practice, they'll get one opportunity to use it, at best it'll take a few hit points from one target and debuff them for a short time, and unless they took the right paragon path or epic destiny, that's it.

That said, it's possible that it could have worked if the general balancing of effects had been different. If adamantine strike had been a reliable power that just deletes the target's ability to have better AC than reflex for the rest of the encounter, I doubt I'd be making a comment like this.

[Laserlight]

If they kept their online support tools for 4e, than I’m sure there would still be a lot more players for the edition.

Agreed. We played it up until online charbuild support went away. That was what killed it for us.

Well, that and we didn't realize that 5e would be worse.

[tiornys]

Your post provides some great examples of how PF2 is much less tactical, because putting out effects like "chance of -10' speed" or "-1 to attacks" are not crowd control.

Rather, that's throwing around little fiddly modifiers that in practice don't make a difference. Your choices (both in build and in gameplay) in 4E have a much greater impact than in PF2; and that's why the latter is much less tactical.
They're crowd control at a power level that is appropriate to the system. But my main disagreement is with your second comment. I don't agree with the implied assumption that game options with higher impact inherently promote tactical play. The extremely high impact level of many 3.5 and 5e spells is a primary factor in making those editions less tactical--because in those cases the power level has been pushed to the point where a single spell can be an "I win this combat" button for most combats.

Individual decision points (whether in build or in play) in PF2E tend to have less impact per decision than 4E's decision points, but PF2E also tends to have more opportunities for those decisions to meaningfully influence a combat. That's inherent to the core features of PF2E: the three action system evens out cost of various actions (which for example increases the inherent value of a decision of whether or not to move on any given turn because the opportunity cost of moving is higher vs. a system where movement is an assumed part of a standard turn) while limiting how much impact any given action can have (because other single actions need to have a value similar to that of moving in at least some situations, whereas standard actions in 4E can be much stronger than the value of 4E movement), the four degrees of success system increases the impact of small bonuses and penalties which keeps smaller decisions relevant, and the four degrees of proficiency system provides more granularity to character build decisions--e.g. 4E skills have 2 degrees of proficiency beyond untrained: trained (largely one set of decisions at character creation), and focused (a relatively low power option in the feat pool), and the gap between untrained and trained is quite large at +5. PF2E skills get a bunch of trained selections (+1 for level +2 for trained) at creation but then have up to three more proficiency increments that each add +2 more, with most characters getting to increment a skill at every odd level--and then the level of proficiency in a skill has further ramifications for which skill feats you might grab, which are a separate resource to class feats, and each feat pool has you picking new feats as often as 4E has you picking feats. Add in ancestry and general feats and you're picking roughly 3x as many feats per level in PF2E as in 4E while still gaining other class features. For martials those other features are fewer and of less impact than 4E powers so PF2E class feat selection and 4E power selection kind of overlap leaving PF2E martials making roughly 2x the number of build decisions as 4E characters. PF2E casters meanwhile are making well over 3x the build decisions since they're advancing spellcasting and new spell selection alongside their feats.

If we made a 2 axis plot where one is the number of decisions/unit of game time and the other is the impact of each individual decision, I think we can agree that the "few decisions with low impact" quadrant is much less tactical than the "many decisions with high impact" quadrant. But the "fewer decisions with higher impact" and "more decisions with lower impact" quadrants are much harder to quantify--the extremes of each quadrant (very few decisions with extremely high impact, or very many decisions of very low impact) are not very tactical, but things definitely get more tactical as you start from one extreme and increase one parameter while lowering the other--until you pass a tipping point and start becoming less tactical as you head towards the other extreme. My play experience with both systems (referenced to my extensive gaming background) suggests to me that they are on roughly similar tier levels in terms of how tactical they are, but it's hard to draw that comparison since they reside in opposite quadrants of the decisions vs impact level plot.

[Kurald Galain]

They're crowd control at a power level that is appropriate to the system.
No, they are debuffs at a power level that is appropriate to the PF2 system (which is to say, very low). They're not crowd control; there is a difference there.


The extremely high impact level of many 3.5 and 5e spells is a primary factor in making those editions less tactical
Considering this is the 4E forum, I fail to see the relevance of this remark.

[Ignimortis]

If we made a 2 axis plot where one is the number of decisions/unit of game time and the other is the impact of each individual decision, I think we can agree that the "few decisions with low impact" quadrant is much less tactical than the "many decisions with high impact" quadrant. But the "fewer decisions with higher impact" and "more decisions with lower impact" quadrants are much harder to quantify--the extremes of each quadrant (very few decisions with extremely high impact, or very many decisions of very low impact) are not very tactical, but things definitely get more tactical as you start from one extreme and increase one parameter while lowering the other--until you pass a tipping point and start becoming less tactical as you head towards the other extreme. My play experience with both systems (referenced to my extensive gaming background) suggests to me that they are on roughly similar tier levels in terms of how tactical they are, but it's hard to draw that comparison since they reside in opposite quadrants of the decisions vs impact level plot.
The thing about PF2 is that it's few actual decisions with low impact. Because you have a few things you don't really think about doing. If you are built to do Power Attack, then every turn you're NOT doing Power Attack means you're contributing severely less than you should. If you're built to Demoralize, then you'd better do it at least once per turn until you can't. Spellcasters have several good options, but very few of them are gonna be simultaneously good inside a single combat.

To my experience of two+ years playing PF2, it isn't really more tactical than any D&D edition but 5e - and even then only because 5e is so eager to let you win that you don't need tactics until the fight is well into Deadly x ? range.

[kyoryu]

The thing about PF2 is that it's few actual decisions with low impact. Because you have a few things you don't really think about doing. If you are built to do Power Attack, then every turn you're NOT doing Power Attack means you're contributing severely less than you should. If you're built to Demoralize, then you'd better do it at least once per turn until you can't. Spellcasters have several good options, but very few of them are gonna be simultaneously good inside a single combat.

In the "what makes a game tactical" thread, this was basically the point I was making.

If you're optimized around a particular move, using it is almost always the right thing unless there's a hard reason why it's not (complete immunity, etc.). As a thought experiment, if you have ability A and B, and each is 100% effective in some scenarios, and 50% in others, there's a reason why you'd use one vs. the other. If you can make one of them three times as effective, then that one is 300% effective sometimes and 150% the rest of the time.... so there's no reason to ever use the other.

And, at that point of optimization, that effectiveness often outweighs other tactical considerations.

Which is, I mean, fine. It's a style of game, and one that focuses on an area (optimization) that a lot of people like. It's just one that bores me.

[Arcanist]

My friends and I recently decided to pick up 4e on a longer term basis than just an annual one-shot of just screwing around with a system we barely understood. Having actually gotten down to playing through a module? We actually enjoyed it immensely :smallconfused:

Combat is smooth, turns are quick, nobody is sitting around sorting through the utility belt of ways they want to try and kill something. Overall having a blast. Not a fan of needing to spend a feat to get some implements to work, but the retraining rules being in the core rulebook, as opposed to some other splatbook, doesn't make this as big a deal as I could be making it out to be.

I do see what people mean when they say this game was entirely designed around playing on a table top with minis (or even better, a VTT). The idea of playing this game without Foundry makes me want to probably play almost anything else? But still, not a big deal.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I have to idly wonder if better VTT tools are helping people revisit 4E more recently (I've been seeing a fair few indie designs inspired by 4E).

[Wildstag]

I have to idly wonder if better VTT tools are helping people revisit 4E more recently (I've been seeing a fair few indie designs inspired by 4E).

The thing that got my game off the ground, for the most part, was PF1E players lamenting that PF2E took all the traffic so the former is hard to find games for. They were starved of RPGs and the forever-DM didn't want to DM again. So along comes me, I say "I'll be GM'ing, but for 4e", and he says "better than nothing, better than 5e, and I kinda want to try it out". Another guy says "sure, that was a fun edition to play". Another person says "I've never played D&D, so this ought to be fun"... and the others came along through either curiosity or because they really love it. The Roll20 medium helps, but it's been around for years.

It's the lack of 3.5/PF1E games that's helping 4e the most, I think.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Huh. I guess if I think about it, that's a niche that makes a lot of sense. Out of the three D&D's that saw play in that era, two have gotten "updates" (3.5 has 5E as a successor, PF1 to PF2) and have more recent versions, but 4E hasn't.

[Ignimortis]

Huh. I guess if I think about it, that's a niche that makes a lot of sense. Out of the three D&D's that saw play in that era, two have gotten "updates" (3.5 has 5E as a successor, PF1 to PF2) and have more recent versions, but 4E hasn't.

That is not entirely true. There is no true successor to either 3.5 or PF1, unless you consider PF1 to be one to 3.5. 5e is not a 3.5 successor, it has a radically different design philosophy that takes only specific elements from 3e CRB, and also draws heavily on 2e "rose-tinted nostalgia glasses play experience" (but not actual design) and some 4e systems. PF2, in turn, is far more a 4e successor than a PF1 successor, because it is far closer to 4e than PF1 in design.

Which is why I don't know how this should make sense. I still play 3.PF today simply because there is no other game like that and no game came even close to replicating the high points of the design.

[Kurald Galain]

Huh. I guess if I think about it, that's a niche that makes a lot of sense. Out of the three D&D's that saw play in that era, two have gotten "updates" (3.5 has 5E as a successor, PF1 to PF2) and have more recent versions, but 4E hasn't.

Successorship basically goes:
2E => 5E (at least, it's marketed as such)
3E => PF (it's explicitly backwards-compatible)
4E => PF2 (they have the same designers)

[tiornys]

PF2E was designed as an evolution of the 3E -> PF1 line. It landed on several similar design principles of 4E for the same reasons 4E went to them. That's a direct paraphrase from the PF2E designers. I presume most of those reasons are related to improving balance, and the solutions to various balance issues are probably similar to 4E's solutions because of the designer overlap.


The thing about PF2 is that it's few actual decisions with low impact. Because you have a few things you don't really think about doing. If you are built to do Power Attack, then every turn you're NOT doing Power Attack means you're contributing severely less than you should. If you're built to Demoralize, then you'd better do it at least once per turn until you can't. Spellcasters have several good options, but very few of them are gonna be simultaneously good inside a single combat.

This will be my last post on this discussion in this thread; if you want to continue and have me respond further, fork the discussion into the Other Systems forum.

I agree with you (and kyoryu) that the situation you describe is inherently less tactical. I disagree that this is something that is common in PF2E. Power Attack is a great example because it's not a very good core to build around. If you invest a lot of effort and several feats, you can get Power Attack to be about as effective on average as someone who just attacks twice with maybe a feat or two of investment. That's because Power Attack is designed as a situational tool: it's there primarily to help you overcome damage resistance, secondarily to be a good option when you're getting major benefits on only the next attack. In most scenarios where these don't apply, Power Attack is significantly weaker than just attacking twice.

Similarly, it takes a small fraction of a (naturally high CHA) character's overall build resources for them to be "built to Demoralize". It's fine for such a character to choose to do other things, and there are a lot of reasons why other things might be tactically more important than throwing a Demoralize on every round. There's only a handful of builds in PF2E where sticking to a pre-planned action rotation for most fights can actually work as sound tactics. Basically, the system is designed to limit vertical progression (how strong can you make this one tool), while providing a lot of horizontal progression (how many tools are you competent with). You can't make your hammer strong enough that it's always going to be better than the screwdriver, wedge, or drill that you're also carrying around.


To my experience of two+ years playing PF2, it isn't really more tactical than any D&D edition but 5e - and even then only because 5e is so eager to let you win that you don't need tactics until the fight is well into Deadly x ? range.
Lol, that's a great description of 5e's difficulty level.

[Kurald Galain]

In most scenarios where these don't apply, Power Attack is significantly weaker than just attacking twice.
But that's a problem. You spend resources (like a feat) on gaining a new ability (like Power Attack) and then it turns out that this ability is actually weaker than what you could do without the feat.
And it's not just this particular feat, either. Effectively, that means that the players spend a lot of effort (and the books, a lot of page count) on options that don't actually matter.


Basically, the system is designed to limit vertical progression (how strong can you make this one tool), while providing a lot of horizontal progression (how many tools are you competent with).
But PF2 clearly gives you much less horizontal progression than in 3E or PF1 or 4E. Compared to 5E it's debatable; I suppose PF2 is on-par with 5E's non-casters, while 5E's casters are well ahead.
A simple example here is skills: unless you're a rogue, in PF2 you can only be good at two skills (three skills at high level, that's it); whereas every other D&D'esque system allows you a lot of broadness and versatility here. Growing from two skillls (at most levels) to a whopping three skills (at high level) is really not a lot of horizontal progression; and getting options that in practice aren't worth using (like the aforementioned Power Attack) is also not horizontal progression.

[LibraryOgre]

Something 4e did that I really appreciated was "Here's the DC to know different things about this monster."

[Spartanmoon]

Something 4e did that I really appreciated was "Here's the DC to know different things about this monster."

Yeah, i definitely wish more editions and tabletops flatout added a "knowledge check and results per dc" section to the stat blocks. It's annoying always having to hunt that information down and search for the applicable dc's.

[LibraryOgre]

Yeah, i definitely wish more editions and tabletops flatout added a "knowledge check and results per dc" section to the stat blocks. It's annoying always having to hunt that information down and search for the applicable dc's.

Or just make them up! "Ok, you want to know what the orcs main god is? Yeah, that's easy. You want to know enough to sing one of his warsongs? Yeah... that's DC.... flumph."

[RedMage125]

Yep. There's a reason they call them "fantasy heartbreakers."


I truly have never understood this term. Nor do I still.

There was this thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?577120-Fantasy-Heart-Breakers-mechanics-that-break-the-heart&highlight=Heart) a few years ago.

Funny, I actually was the one to mention 4e.

[glass]

From what I've read, 4e was developed with the intent of making D&D work much more like a video game. At a given level, all characters had much the same capabilities, just in different wrapping.Then what you read is edition warring, and bore no resemblance to the actual edition as published and played.


If they kept their online support tools for 4e, than I’m sure there would still be a lot more players for the edition.That was us - we stopped playing 4e when they turned off the tools which we had come to rely on. Although I would like to give Orcus (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?628077-Introducing-Orcus-a-Fourth-Edition-retro-clone) a go one day.


Less streamlined than 4E...now there's a damning statement.It really isn't. 4e is absolutely more streamlined than the editions on either side of it. It had a lot of content, but the rules framework that all that content fitted into was highly consistent and straight forward.


I mean, heck, look at the Playground. Right now, 4e has 3 posts, counting the stickied ones. The 3.5 board has four pages of posts. Now, some of that is Pathfinder, but even if it's 80-90% Pathfinder, 3.5 still has way more adherents than 4e.This forum is attached to a 3e-based webcomic; the relative popularity of 3e and 4e here can hardly be assumed to be representative.

[Kurald Galain]

4e is absolutely more streamlined than the editions on either side of it. It had a lot of content, but the rules framework that all that content fitted into was highly consistent and straight forward.
Oh, it's pretty easy to find a lot of places where 4E is not streamlined at all.

For instance, summons and figurines and animal companions all work subtly differently without rhyme or reason.
Or, the fact that 90% or more of all items printed are vendor trash.
Or, how exactly 3D combat is supposed to work (this is not consistent between books or between individual powers).
Or, the oft-derided rules for rituals, and for that matter martial practices.
Or, that there are at least ten different powers that are pretty much "Fireball" but with different damage values and different defenses.
Or, how often skill challenges had to be errata'ed, and how often the "math fix" feats had to be (re)printed.

Sure, 4E is more streamlined than 3E, but that's not exactly a high bar to clear. It's surprising, then, that PF2 (by the same designers who should have 10 extra years of experience now) manages to out-clunk the already-rather-clunky 4E.

[glass]

Oh, it's pretty easy to find a lot of places where 4E is not streamlined at all.And yet....


For instance, summons and figurines and animal companions all work subtly differently without rhyme or reason.
Or, the fact that 90% or more of all items printed are vendor trash.Both of these are content not core rules. Both of these are equally or more true of the editions on ether side.


Or, how exactly 3D combat is supposed to work (this is not consistent between books or between individual powers).I do not remember how 3d combat worked in 4e, but it's not like 3e and 5e 3d combat set the world alight either. And either way, it is a pretty niche criticism compared with "is it an attack roll, is it a saving throw, neither, both?" in every single combat in 3e or 5e (to pick an obvious example).


Or, the oft-derided rules for rituals, and for that matter martial practices."Oft-derided"? Rituals are often acknowledged as one of the best innovations in 4e even by people otherwise dislike the edition. Martial Practices are admittedly kinda wonky, but again content not core rules.


Or, that there are at least ten different powers that are pretty much "Fireball" but with different damage values and different defenses.I would say "citation needed", but even if it were true it would be content not rules, and not a real problem anyway given that powers are self-contained and right there on your character sheet.


Or, how often skill challenges had to be errata'ed, and how often the "math fix" feats had to be (re)printed.Yes, they fixed a few things. I never claimed 4e was perfect, I claimed it was more consistent than 3e and 5e. Which it was. You seemed to be the only one in this thread pushing back against the edition warriors; disappointing to see you join them. :smallfrown:

[Just to Browse]

Agreed on 4e not being particularly streamlined. I'd give 5e and B/X the #1 place. Whether 4e places above 3e is gonna depend a lot more on judgments calls imo.

[Kurald Galain]

Both of these are content not core rules.
And yet, the game is played with the content, so if the content is inconsistent then actual gameplay is going to be inconsistent as well.

In fact, this distinction between "core and content" is precisely why 4E is so clunky. A number of rules (e.g. companion characters) are common enough that they should have been in the "core". But they're not, meaning they work differently every time you encounter them, and that's precisely why they're not streamlined.

For instance: at some point WOTC decided that "zone" effects were unbalanced, and needed the restriction to only trigger once per turn (for each enemy). If this rule had been streamlined in "the core", then all it would take is a single sentence, and it would be future-proof for new zones as well. But because this wasn't streamlined, WOTC had to write individual errata for every single zone power printed. Yeah, that's clunky. And of course they accidentally missed a couple, and it wasn't future-proof, and the result was a big mess.


"Oft-derided"?
Then I suggest you search this forum for the many threads we had on this the topic. :smallamused:


Agreed on 4e not being particularly streamlined. I'd give 5e and B/X the #1 place.
I agree, it's like they hired a professional streamliner just for those.

[Jaeda]

Definitely had that "Attack roll vs Saving throw" thing come up many times in 5e, especially with a couple of new players. Having a cleric with Sacred Flame (which is a saving throw) and a wizard with Fire Bolt (which is an attack roll) when they are both basic single-target cantrips. I also never got some of the distinctions 3e made with Scorching Ray being an evocation and Fire Orb being a conjuration despite them both being single target fire spells that require attack rolls. Saving throws in general I think are a giant inconsistency to the "the one doing the action rolls the dice" paradigm and 4e's "the attacker rolls the dice" rectifies that.

I do agree that 4e could have used some more standardized companion characters, especially since the shaman spirit companion works unlike pretty much everything else. I think this is probably partly from the fact that companions weren't a PHB1 option; Arcane Power does introduce a Summoning keyword that gets consistently used for all of the wizard summon spells. I don't think 3e or 5e were really any better in this regard (although PF2e is).

On the Orcus thread, someone had at one point linked to someone who had designed build-a-power variants for (iirc) the wizard and fighter. A thought I had a while ago might be to do something like that for each of the power sources, so the arcane power source would define how to build arcane powers with options available to all arcane characters with then each arcane class then adding a few extra options. This might help with consistency since you would expect your "essentially a fireball" powers to be built in the same way while giving identity to power sources (since arcane powers and martial powers might be built differently), classes (since hypothetical abjurer, battlemage, and beguiler classes would have different additions for what they are good at), and characters (since they could essentially craft and personalize their own powers). It would also help with page count since you could have 2-4 pages per power source +2 pages per class for nearly infinite options instead of roughly ~10 pages per class for a small number of options, many of which are just bigger versions of previous ones (e.g. Fireball to Meteor Swarm or Twin Strike to Two-Fanged Strike or Jaws of the Wolf) which would leave room for either more classes, utility powers, or unusual powers that would be awkward to fit into the build-a-power paradigm.

[LibraryOgre]

I also never got some of the distinctions 3e made with Scorching Ray being an evocation and Fire Orb being a conjuration despite them both being single target fire spells that require attack rolls.

3e Conjuration went off the rails, much in the way 2e Alteration did... tons of spells were shoved in there, from healing to "Yeah, it's totally conjuration and not evocation to make fire."

[NeptunianOM]

3e Conjuration went off the rails, much in the way 2e Alteration did... tons of spells were shoved in there, from healing to "Yeah, it's totally conjuration and not evocation to make fire."

Conjuration conjuring elemental damage spells always annoyed me. Conjuration basically ate Evocation while also still doing all the rad conjuration stuff.

[RedMage125]

Oh, it's pretty easy to find a lot of places where 4E is not streamlined at all.

For instance, summons and figurines and animal companions all work subtly differently without rhyme or reason.
I assume you mean the distinction of whether or not they actually take up a space?


Or, the fact that 90% or more of all items printed are vendor trash.
That is certainly an opinion.


Or, how exactly 3D combat is supposed to work (this is not consistent between books or between individual powers).
Example, please? I never encountered even one in the 6 years I ran 4e.


Or, the oft-derided rules for rituals, and for that matter martial practices.
Rituals were one of the things that most 4e "h4ters" agree that the system did right. Wtf are you talking about?
Martial practices were half-baked and wonky. Agreed.


Or, that there are at least ten different powers that are pretty much "Fireball" but with different damage values and different defenses.
If any "burst x within y squares" counts as this for you, then I guess...but I find that incredibly reductive.


Or, how often skill challenges had to be errata'ed, and how often the "math fix" feats had to be (re)printed.
I've heard this before, and I debunked it. Skills received errata during the first few months of 4e, mostly relating to DCs. There was never any errata that explicitly affected Skill Challenges, let alone "multiple times". I still have the compiled pdf of all 4e errata from 2014 and confirmed this.
The only change I could find was that the DMG1 referred to "secondary skills" as use of an alternate skill not listed in the SC. A player could attempt to use such a skill one time at a higher DC to try and get a success. Most published SCs in adventures, as well as in the DMG2 have "secondary skills" be skills built into the SC that contribute in some way, but do not count towards success or failure for the SC. But that wasn't ever "errata".

The "math fix feats" were basically feat taxes, true. But the rest of the "math fixes" went away after the 3rd year (of a 6 year run), because the math was fixed going forward.

[LibraryOgre]

Conjuration conjuring elemental damage spells always annoyed me. Conjuration basically ate Evocation while also still doing all the rad conjuration stuff.

And it ate half of Necromancy.

[Kurald Galain]

Rituals were one of the things that most 4e "h4ters" agree that the system did right. Wtf are you talking about?
Seriously? We had regular "why rituals suck" threads on this very forum, it's the equivalent of 3E's perennial debates about monks, and 5E's about its skill system. It's heavily controversial, is the point.

While a lot of players like the general idea of having codified non-combat encounters, I've never seen anyone who wasn't a hardcore 4E fan actually like 4E's implementation (and a lot of hardcore 4E fans dislike that part of the game, and it was widely mocked in the LFR public campaign). Of course, this is exactly why both of 4E's successors (5E and PF2) haven't reused anything resembling 4E's ritual system, except reusing its name for something that works completely differently.

Anyway, the forum search button is right there, so feel free to look for some old threads here at GITP :smallamused:

[RedMage125]

Seriously? We had regular "why rituals suck" threads on this very forum, it's the equivalent of 3E's perennial debates about monks, and 5E's about its skill system. It's heavily controversial, is the point.

While a lot of players like the general idea of having codified non-combat encounters, I've never seen anyone who wasn't a hardcore 4E fan actually like 4E's implementation (and a lot of hardcore 4E fans dislike that part of the game, and it was widely mocked in the LFR public campaign). Of course, this is exactly why both of 4E's successors (5E and PF2) haven't reused anything resembling 4E's ritual system, except reusing its name for something that works completely differently.

Anyway, the forum search button is right there, so feel free to look for some old threads here at GITP :smallamused:

I primarily was on the WotC (Gleemax) forums during the 4e era. I saw a lot of the edition warring there. But rituals usually weren't a major complaint about 4e on those boards. The math being wrong, encounters being too long, the PHB1 classes being too homogeneous...these were things I saw complaints about.

And on these forums, some of the complaints I've seen about 4e (usually not this subforum) don't sound like informed complaints. That is, they're the generic "it was an MMO on paper" tripe that even gets repeated by people who never played it. But I guess I just haven't seen these controversies about 4e rituals.

I've only ever heard one (former) poster on these forums have a lot to say negatively about Skill Challenges (which you didn't mention by name, but did say something about non combat encounters). And most of what that person said was unmitigated trash. He kept insisting that the "only way to do" a Skill Challenge was for everyone to sit around and do nothing while 1 person with a good modifier in one of the Primary Skills made all the checks for success.

[Buufreak]

I actually am not a fan of skill challenges, especially a fair few that made it into published adventures. Their implementation as well as execution left a great deal to be desired.

[Just to Browse]

If we're at the point of trading anecdotes, the majority of people I talked to in the early 4e era thought skill challenges were unenjoyable even after the math hotfix, and considered rituals a waste of page space.

[SaurOps]

Seriously? We had regular "why rituals suck" threads on this very forum, it's the equivalent of 3E's perennial debates about monks, and 5E's about its skill system. It's heavily controversial, is the point.

While a lot of players like the general idea of having codified non-combat encounters, I've never seen anyone who wasn't a hardcore 4E fan actually like 4E's implementation (and a lot of hardcore 4E fans dislike that part of the game, and it was widely mocked in the LFR public campaign). Of course, this is exactly why both of 4E's successors (5E and PF2) haven't reused anything resembling 4E's ritual system, except reusing its name for something that works completely differently.

Anyway, the forum search button is right there, so feel free to look for some old threads here at GITP :smallamused:

I wouldn't exactly call myself a big fan of any edition of D&D, but part of the reason I feel that 4e is the least bad edition is because of the Rituals system. Oh, it could use some tweaks here and there, sure; most everything has room for improvement (like the available skills for the fighter and how many they can select as trained!). However, one of the reasons I bounced off of 5e was because it absolutely gutted the number of spells that could be cast as rituals. It's like a Rogue hit the concept with Bloodbath. And it was an Adroit Explorer, so after the concept of rituals finally saved that off, it got hit with it again.

[Moak]

If we're at the point of trading anecdotes, the majority of people I talked to in the early 4e era thought skill challenges were unenjoyable even after the math hotfix, and considered rituals a waste of page space.

To me, the concept of the skill challanges opened up a new way to see non-combat encounter. It was obviously a "me" problem, but it was like this:

the single campaign that better draw out from me the same "anything can happen" feel that I had as a child with BEC(never arrived to level up to the M I part), was played in 4e.

When playing in 3/3.5/3.P/3.Homebrew, every spellcaster rushed to search for the right spell for that non-combat encounter. No-one, unless we had a rogue in the party, ever prompted me for skill use. I had always to ask people for the rolls.

Playing 4e with new players, and making some skill challenges here and there, changed that. I don't know if it was the mental starting idea by the players that the "powers" were "combat powers", but they tried to engage more in the skills, and to try to synergize together. And then they started to propose creative "out of combat" use for the powers to complement the skills.

I also liked a lot the condensed skill list (even if I missed the skill points), and I'm always torn about using it in 3.5 (but I'm not confident enough to be able to port the skill points number and the proficiencies to adjust for it, and when I've looked, I never found an homebrew for something like this that didn't was part of a bigger, larger, skill system full rebuild).

4E got problems, and when we started playing it, I missed the hyper customizability of 3E full splat book madness, and I'm still waiting to find a group to play a monstrous gestalt campaign to go crazy with races/classes combination but...

I still miss the offline Character Builder, and the Adventure tools. They prompted me to work on some code for a treasure generator for 3.5.

I LOVED the combination and interaction during combat. It could go long? Maybe... but I STILL miss a warlord like class in 3.5.

I hadn't played or GMmed 5E except for some one shots, and I don't have any kind of mastery of that system. It seemed... good? I loved the advantage/disadvantage things, and the inspiration points (we did used something like that... I think destiny point? Something that a friend of mine suggested from a saint seiya gdr as a way to encourage role playing. They were reroll/auto success or smth like that)

But now? If someone ask me for a dungeon crawling, combat heavy campaign, I usually go to 4e.
If (like my current campaign) they ask me for a more political/full interpretation oriented/we don't want to fight many encounters I go for 3.5E but I use "skill challenges lite" as a system to plan for non combat encounters. It helps me to analyse and plan for alternative approaches to situations and they serve me well.

[Kurald Galain]

To me, the concept of the skill challanges opened up a new way to see non-combat encounter. It was obviously a "me" problem, but it was like this:
That's good to hear.

And my question is, do you like the idea of SCs, or do you like 4E's specific rules for SCs.

I'm asking because you talk about "creative out of combat use for the powers"; whereas 4E's specific rules are very clear that (a) PCs cannot use combat powers in an SC, and (b) creative ideas should be penalized with a higher DC, or disallowed entirely.

If your reaction now is "wow, that's a pretty stupid way to rule it", then yes, I agree. That's our point here, that 4E's specific implentation of SCs is problematic and widely disliked. And of course, that's precisely why this implementation is notably absent from both 5E and PF2.

[kyoryu]

I've played in SCs that were amazing, and SCs that were terrible.

I think the rules were, generally, solid. I think the advice given on how to run them was incredibly lacking. If run in a "mechanics-first" way, they were pretty awful. The good ones? Words like "skill challenge" were never used, it was just "here's the situation, what do you do?"

[NeptunianOM]

I've played in SCs that were amazing, and SCs that were terrible.

I think the rules were, generally, solid. I think the advice given on how to run them was incredibly lacking. If run in a "mechanics-first" way, they were pretty awful. The good ones? Words like "skill challenge" were never used, it was just "here's the situation, what do you do?"

That is my experience as well. The rules & mechanics of skill challenges just being scaffolding for the DM is a much better system than laying the bare metal in front of the players.

[Beoric]

I've played in SCs that were amazing, and SCs that were terrible.

I think the rules were, generally, solid. I think the advice given on how to run them was incredibly lacking. If run in a "mechanics-first" way, they were pretty awful. The good ones? Words like "skill challenge" were never used, it was just "here's the situation, what do you do?"

I think "here's the situation, what do you do?" works if you are flexible about the number and type of skill checks that are necessary to accomplish the goal, because you never know what clever ideas the players will come up with that really shouldn't take as much die-rolling to resolve as you might have had planned. At which point, is it really a skill challenge as contemplated by the rules, or is it just an ordinary situation that you are resolving by a combination of fiat (when the approach will obviously succeed or fail), or checks (if it isn't obvious)?

In other words, what you are describing seems identical to how a situation might be resolved before the invention of SCs, and I don't see what SCs bring to the table.

My experience with published SCs is that they broadly fall into one of three categories (this is part of an unfinished post from a couple of days ago, so it covers some of the same ground):

1. The task being modelled is inherently as boring as watching paint dry, and modelling it is merely an unnecessary gate. There weren't a lot of these, but they exist, and they should have been handwaived.

2. The task being modelled is either only sort of interesting, and/or really only one or two skills apply. Often with these you see silly attempts to shoehorn in other skills (to let other players have a go), like performing an athletic feat during an interview with the king in order to be taken seriously. Narrating spammed skill checks or ridiculous skill checks add nothing to the game. These should be resolved in one or two checks.

3. The task being modelled is complex, involving a number of tasks requiring different skills, which skills often have well defined suggestions as to what actions they represent. At this point you may as well just break up the SC into its individual tasks, present each one as a challenge, and let the players figure out how to tackle it.

With this last one, I am suggesting that the DM establish the obstacles to be overcome, rather than have the player come up with both the challenge, and how the skill addresses the challenge. So instead of an abstract "crossing the wilderness" SC, where a player says, "I use my athletics skill to climb a cliff, and assist the other PCs in doing so", for example, the DM says, "You come to a cliff, what do you do?" and the players can try whatever creative solutions they feel like, which (to me) is more interesting anyway. So a travel SC becomes a point crawl, for example.

I guess another way of saying it is, a complex SC encourages creative narration on the part of the players, but not creative problem solving. Whereas giving the players concrete obstacles or objectives does the opposite. And I prefer the latter. But I think, as written in published SCs and as described in the DMG, WotC suggested that the former was the process, particularly since it uses a specified number of checks, often with limits as to what skills can be used, or how many times a skill can be used.

[Kurald Galain]

I think "here's the situation, what do you do?" works if you are flexible about the number and type of skill checks that are necessary to accomplish the goal, because you never know what clever ideas the players will come up with that really shouldn't take as much die-rolling to resolve as you might have had planned. At which point, is it really a skill challenge as contemplated by the rules, or is it just an ordinary situation that you are resolving by a combination of fiat (when the approach will obviously succeed or fail), or checks (if it isn't obvious)?

In other words, what you are describing seems identical to how a situation might be resolved before the invention of SCs, and I don't see what SCs bring to the table.

Precisely.

And that's usually how these SC debates end up, i.e. with the conclusion that SCs are really great, as long as you ignore the restrictions in the DMG, and run them like you'd run a non-combat encounter in pretty much any other RPG :smallamused:

[kyoryu]

I think "here's the situation, what do you do?" works if you are flexible about the number and type of skill checks that are necessary to accomplish the goal, because you never know what clever ideas the players will come up with that really shouldn't take as much die-rolling to resolve as you might have had planned. At which point, is it really a skill challenge as contemplated by the rules, or is it just an ordinary situation that you are resolving by a combination of fiat (when the approach will obviously succeed or fail), or checks (if it isn't obvious)?

In other words, what you are describing seems identical to how a situation might be resolved before the invention of SCs, and I don't see what SCs bring to the table.

Well done, skill challenges are pretty close to things like Blades in the Dark having clocks.

I think the real benefit of them is that they can provide a loose scaffolding to ensure reasonable pacing, and that the GM doesn't inadvertently put their finger on the scale too much.

Like, at the base level, it's "you have n checks. Succeed in at least n/2+1 to succeed the thing". Now the GM knows things - we're going to call for n checks, unless someone comes up with something super clever. So, you need to make sure that any action taken can provide at least 1/n of the progress, and either make it so or gloss over it and ask for another action. It also means that as a GM, you're pretty much (again, outside of outliers) asked to make sure that a single failure doesn't screw everything up, avoiding the "roll until you fail" problem. And, it pretty much forces you to consider some levels of success - did you succeed all of the checks? Some of them? By how much?

Like a lot of things, I suspect good GMs do a lot of this stuff implicitly. But having it spelled out isn't a bad thing at all, especially for new GMs.

[Just to Browse]

I think the real benefit of them is that they can provide a loose scaffolding to ensure reasonable pacing, and that the GM doesn't inadvertently put their finger on the scale too much.

This is roughly how I see them. 4e's skill challenges have some nice guardrails aspects, because when a DM makes a non-combat challenge, the SC rules push them to think about allowing a variety of approaches and pacing the thing so it takes a little time but not too much. But I think a couple pages of DM advice would do that just as well, and SCs add a ton of weird baggage.

Particularly in a group where everyone DMs, once you look "behind the curtain" and understand the rules, it becomes clear how little player choice plays into this. The DM has a rough list of skills for you to roll on, so you guess them and roll, and hope for enough high rolls. There's no game structure to a skill challenge, not the way there would be for a heist (getting maps, learning watch routines), courtroom intrigue (learning flaws, gathering prestige), a mystery (finding clues), or hex-/point-crawl travel (choosing locations, IDing landmarks, picking up rumors).

SCs also box the game is this really frustrating way. For example, in Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress there's a skill challenge where a pair of ghost brothers need help breaking a ritual. The PCs must complete a two-part skill challenge. In part 1 they can lie (Bluff), tell the truth (Diplomacy), or empathize with the brothers (Insight) and nothing else, and need 6 successes. In part 2 they must use Arcana to dismantle the wards 6 times, and Thievery to dismantle the wards 6 times (yes you must do both exactly 6 times). Why can't a player speak truthfully using Arcana? Why is Religion not applicable at all? Why can't an effect like dispel magic do anything? Why can't we just burn down the library that the brothers are in? I can think of so many creative ways that a player would want to solve this problem, but all of them chafe against the rigidity of the skill challenge rules. A DM could hack & houserule around skill challenges like this, but it would be a lot easier (and less frustrating!) to just write down a few solutions to the problem and give the players creative freedom.

In contrast to kyoryu, I don't find that skill challenges provide any grounds for partial successes. The rules have a success/failure track, but translate that pretty plainly into a binary success or failure, only paying lip service to the idea of complicated successes. Published adventures don't bother with the idea at all, and some just assume this is a die-rolling exercise that guarantees success. For example, in Slaying Stone there's a skill challenge where you have to convince a dragon to give you a magic item called a slaying stone which is critical to the entire adventure. If you fail, the the adventure just... softlocks? There's no guidance for what happens if you fail to get the slaying stone despite its paramount importance. There's no exchange of information, no deal to prove your worth, no alternative path of stealing the stone, no way to call in bigger guns, no convincing the dragon to leave. There isn't even a set of rules for fighting the dragon (in 4e of all games!), which I think shows how bad the designers' tunnel vision was. They just assumed you would do the skill challenge and win. And this ain't Keep on the Shadowfell when the designers were using their playtest material, this is 2010 after WotC chose to "revamp their approach" to 4e adventures.

[Beoric]

Well done, skill challenges are pretty close to things like Blades in the Dark having clocks.

I think the real benefit of them is that they can provide a loose scaffolding to ensure reasonable pacing, and that the GM doesn't inadvertently put their finger on the scale too much.

Like, at the base level, it's "you have n checks. Succeed in at least n/2+1 to succeed the thing". Now the GM knows things - we're going to call for n checks, unless someone comes up with something super clever. So, you need to make sure that any action taken can provide at least 1/n of the progress, and either make it so or gloss over it and ask for another action. It also means that as a GM, you're pretty much (again, outside of outliers) asked to make sure that a single failure doesn't screw everything up, avoiding the "roll until you fail" problem. And, it pretty much forces you to consider some levels of success - did you succeed all of the checks? Some of them? By how much?

Like a lot of things, I suspect good GMs do a lot of this stuff implicitly. But having it spelled out isn't a bad thing at all, especially for new GMs.

I think what this boils down to is you need the structure for non-combat encounter in organized play, where you need all the DMs adjudicating in more or less the same way. Assuming the encounter is worth playing at all, which I often question.

But for home use, it is an unnecessary restriction on both players or DMs. I reject your starting premise, that "the GM knows things - we're going to call for n checks, unless someone comes up with something super clever." Already you are predetermining, not only how many checks are going to be necessary, and what those checks are, but that there are going to be any checks needed at all. Like, maybe you want them to climb a cliff, but somebody has utility powers that allow them to levitate, fly or spider climb, and tie a rope ladder. And that's just one example.

What I will allow is that the skill challenge structure has utility for determine the amount of experience to grant for success. But once you have determined that, I think you should just throw out the whole structure and focus on narrating the situation, and adjudicating whatever hare-brained scheme the players come up with.

(BTW, skill challenges also negate the time-honoured practice of players coming up with hare-brained schemes and/or creative use of their resources, to the detriment of the game.)

Take the "audience with the King" type of challenge. When I am a player, if I know I need to persuade the king of something, the first thing I do is ask around and figure out where the guards and the servants go after work, and then I chat them up to figure out the king's likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, etc., as well as those of their spouse and/or lover and advisors. Then maybe I work on them to work on the king so my arguments have a better chance of success. I take a similar approach to heists - check out city archives, talk to architects and builders to try to get a layout (somebody builds the secret doors), suck up to servants and delivery people, maybe pose as a delivery person. But I guarantee no published SC ever anticipated that a player would do any of that.

[RedMage125]

This has given me some insight as to perhaps why I never had any problem with Skill Challenges. I was always the DM during 4e. And I always made it my mission to ensure that the game never felt to "gamist" to my players. They always had the feel like they were playing D&D, irrespective of edition. While I was always acutely aware of things like "monster roles", "XP Budgets", and "Skill Challenge complexity" (to include tracking of successes and failures). And I always made room for creative solutions from my players.

[Just to Browse]

This has given me some insight as to perhaps why I never had any problem with Skill Challenges. I was always the DM during 4e. And I always made it my mission to ensure that the game never felt to "gamist" to my players. They always had the feel like they were playing D&D, irrespective of edition. While I was always acutely aware of things like "monster roles", "XP Budgets", and "Skill Challenge complexity" (to include tracking of successes and failures). And I always made room for creative solutions from my players.

An interesting juxtaposition with this: there's definitely a group of 4e fans who think that look behind the curtain is good, so they want players to know about SC success mechanics, XP budgets, and monster roles, because they think it enhances the experience. Here's a relevant post from AbdulAlhazred (https://www.enworld.org/threads/reconciling-4es-rough-edges-with-story-now-play.697155/page-6#post-8996452) from last year that mentions transparency being part of the draw for them, with a bunch of +1s from the forum's various 4e fans.

I'm definitely more on your side, where I find the game plays better if I make the mechanics intentionally opaque, or offer avenues to ignore them entirely (e.g. creative solutions circumventing a SC). That's apparently not a popular opinion in most 4e fan circles. Different strokes I suppose.

[MonochromeTiger]

An interesting juxtaposition with this: there's definitely a group of 4e fans who think that look behind the curtain is good, so they want players to know about SC success mechanics, XP budgets, and monster roles, because they think it enhances the experience. Here's a relevant post from AbdulAlhazred (https://www.enworld.org/threads/reconciling-4es-rough-edges-with-story-now-play.697155/page-6#post-8996452) from last year that mentions transparency being part of the draw for them, with a bunch of +1s from the forum's various 4e fans.

I'm definitely more on your side, where I find the game plays better if I make the mechanics intentionally opaque, or offer avenues to ignore them entirely (e.g. creative solutions circumventing a SC). That's apparently not a popular opinion in most 4e fan circles. Different strokes I suppose.

It makes some sense to me.

If you like the game for the mechanics then you're probably going to make those a focus and try to show off how they work to your group so they engage with them more or so they're more likely to run them like you do if they DM. Similarly if you want to run it by the book being as transparent as possible makes it more likely your group will actually know what they're trying to do and invest in making it work.

If you run things differently you're probably not going to show off the set mechanics that you're ignoring or glossing over for your version and you're probably going to make sure your players aren't discouraged from creativity by a big glaring reminder of "this is the right way to do it, so yours is wrong but I'm accepting it because I'm nice." If what you value out of Skill Challenges is the structure but you find the narrow scope and limited options not worth keeping then it makes complete sense you'd keep those points as obscure and out of players' minds as possible while of course the fans who are heavily invested in the system itself are going to focus on them similarly to how every other thread on these forums will have someone go "well according to RAW."

Personally I just find it amusing that this has become an example of a 4e mechanic where even some of those who defend the system here are gradually admitting they intentionally glossed over to keep the game interesting for their group. Redmage125's comments for instance implying that the reason they had so little trouble with their group playing 4e may have been that they were going out of their way to make it feel like just D&D by personally handling some of the bits that many people find annoying so they don't take up the players' time and thoughts.

[Garfunion]

It’s amazing how long this discussion has gone. And of course, how much thought, theory crafting, and experiences people have expressed within this thread. Many of the discussions that have been going on in this thread, have been hard for me to follow or I can’t even follow them whatsoever. I’m not sure what I could add anymore, so I’ll just continue to read. Gaining insight on my own attempts at redesigning 4e D&D.

[RedMage125]

Personally I just find it amusing that this has become an example of a 4e mechanic where even some of those who defend the system here are gradually admitting they intentionally glossed over to keep the game interesting for their group. Redmage125's comments for instance implying that the reason they had so little trouble with their group playing 4e may have been that they were going out of their way to make it feel like just D&D by personally handling some of the bits that many people find annoying so they don't take up the players' time and thoughts.

See, that's the thing...I didn't really "gloss over" or "personally handle (so my players didn't have to)" anything.

4e, for me, required less House Rules than any other edition I run (to include 5e). I do run more or less by RAW (that doesn't mean all material is allowed, but that's neither here nor there). It's the WAY I run my games that I am realizing may have been different from others. Skill Challenges, for example, were always a part of something the players already wanted to do; navigate the Sylvanwood to find the Goblin camp, operate the ship to sail across the sea instead of going overland, disarm the blasting statue trap in the middle of combat with other golems, or convince the tyrant that he's overstepped his authority while fighting him.

It seems a lot of people treated Skill Challenges like they were some sort of "mini game" that interrupted the course of the regular game (like Final Fantasy does), after which the players return to business as usual. I never treated them like that, and so my players never felt like that.

[kyoryu]

It's the WAY I run my games that I am realizing may have been different from others. Skill Challenges, for example, were always a part of something the players already wanted to do; navigate the Sylvanwood to find the Goblin camp, operate the ship to sail across the sea instead of going overland, disarm the blasting statue trap in the middle of combat with other golems, or convince the tyrant that he's overstepped his authority while fighting him.

It seems a lot of people treated Skill Challenges like they were some sort of "mini game" that interrupted the course of the regular game (like Final Fantasy does), after which the players return to business as usual. I never treated them like that, and so my players never felt like that.

Exactly.

And when I talked about having a set number of rolls... the point isn't that I "need" them. I've been running these silly games for forty years. But it can be nice, especially for newer GMs, to have some guidelines to prevent falling into one of the common probability traps that people do fall into - the most common being "roll until you succeed" and "roll until you fail".

It's also about pacing - how long do we want to focus on this problem? Combat provides hit points as a guideline, but non-combat doens't have the equivalent. So if I say "yeah, this should be about 5 rolls" then that's just the amount of focus I want to give it. It means that any action either should progress the situation about 1/5th of the way, or shouldn't be rolled. But of course if somebody does something that shortcuts it (either way!) then that takes precedence. It's a guideline, not a straitjacket. It's really something I use to make sure that I'm playing fair and giving players a reasonable chance, and keeping things moving in a reasonable way.

Note that it's perfectly valid to dislike aspects of the 4e implementation, but this concept is used in tons of games and can be helpful when approached properly. I think a lot has to do with how you approach it, as RedMage points out. I treat them (and similar) less as discrete "now we're doing this thing!" and more as a rough scaffolding over the players just doing.... stuff... to ensure pacing is reasonable.

[LibraryOgre]

It’s amazing how long this discussion has gone. And of course, how much thought, theory crafting, and experiences people have expressed within this thread. Many of the discussions that have been going on in this thread, have been hard for me to follow or I can’t even follow them whatsoever. I’m not sure what I could add anymore, so I’ll just continue to read. Gaining insight on my own attempts at redesigning 4e D&D.

Fortunately, if you miss 4e Daily, you still get half the effect. :smallbiggrin:

[Garfunion]

Fortunately, if you miss 4e Daily, you still get half the effect. :smallbiggrin:

“BA DUM TSS”

Lol

[Waddacku]

But of course if somebody does something that shortcuts it (either way!) then that takes precedence.
That's the actual explicit rule, too, incidentally.

EDIT: It is not a straight-up rule, but is endorsed in the text.

[Just to Browse]

That's the actual explicit rule, too, incidentally.

Where is that specified? Neither my copy of the 4e PHB or the 4e Rules Compendium have any guidance about that.

EDIT: Since I'm questioning this, I should bring receipts. Here's where I'm looking:

Dungeon Master's Guide
In the 4e DMG, under Skill Challenges, there's a section called "Reward Clever Ideas". However, it's only about rolling unexpected skill choices:


In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no. Instead, let them make a roll using the skill but at a hard DC, or make the skill good for only one success.

Even within these fairly narrow rules, it's generally a bad idea for a PC to use a skill outside what the DM expects, because it's likely to have a difficult DC, which is at minimum a +7 bonus to the DC over picking some moderate DC that the DM expected. Beyond that, the game doesn't mention shortcutting a success, or even shortcutting a skill challenge.

I believe the only place where the players circumvent any part of the SC in the DMG is in the first skill challenge example, a negotiation which gives an automatic failure if you try the Intimidation skill. No automatic successes of any kind seem to be noted.

Rules Compendium
In the expanded 4e Rules Compendium there's also a sidebar that's nearly a page long (digression: if it's this long, can you really call it a sidebar?) detailing "ways for the adventurers to gain an advantage of some kind." This also only applies to skill checks, by translating some rolls into different results. The entire list is just four ideas:



A success against a hard DC counts as two successes: a success against both a hard DC and a moderate DC.
A success against a hard DC removes a failure that has already been accumulated in the challenge, instead of counting as a success.
A success against an easy DC counts as a success against a moderate DC.
A success against a moderate DC counts as a success even though the adventurer making the check has already used the same skill to gain a success against a moderate DC.


Later on, it also mentions that players can suggest skills, but they should be treated as "secondary" (i.e. can only grant one success, or provide some secondary benefit to future rolls). Neither of these sections suggest granting automatic successes or failures, or circumventing the skill challenge.

In General
I'd suggest that this actually makes sense in the framework of 4e. A skill challenge is meant to replace a couple monsters when used in a combat, or replace a combat entirely at a high complexity. An automatic success in a 4e skill challenge is like one-shotting a level-appropriate (non-minion) monster in 4e combat: it's so much stronger than any other option, a player would be foolish not to go gunning for that option over and over. Circumventing an entire skill challenge is that magnified a dozenfold. The 4e designers wanted creativity, but only within the bounds of picking a skill and narrating how it gets used.

There's nothing wrong with circumventing this. If I'm running Cairn of the Winter King and one of the players want to skip that sail-rigging skill challenge by spending telekinetic lift, I'm gonna let 'em. But I don't believe the 4e designers actually want that to be part of their game. They paid some lip service to creativity, but at the end of the day they wanted everything funneled into skill checks.

[Just to Browse]

Double-posting, apologies. Trying to keep these separate since they're both pretty long & about different topics.


It seems a lot of people treated Skill Challenges like they were some sort of "mini game" that interrupted the course of the regular game (like Final Fantasy does), after which the players return to business as usual. I never treated them like that, and so my players never felt like that.

So by the original 4e DMG, skill challenges are meant to be mini-games that interrupt the regular game. Unless they're explicitly integrated into combat, the normal freeform flow of the game halts while players take turns rolling skills in initiative order. The original rules require you to "Begin by describing the situation and defining the challenge", and even require the DM to frame the encounter alongside what skills will be used for it:


You can’t start a skill challenge until the PCs know their role in it, and that means giving them a couple of skills to start with. It might be as simple as saying, "You’ll use athletics checks to scale the cliffs, but be aware that a failed check might dislodge some rocks on those climbing below you." If the PCs are trying to sneak into the wizard’s college, tell the players, "Your magical disguises, the Bluff skill, and knowledge of the academic aspects of magic—arcana, in other words— will be key in this challenge."

So you're definitely not playing as the writers of the original 4e DMG intended. Your method sounds more akin to what the Rules Compendium says, but the Rules Compendium is very vague:


The DM either informs the players when the challenge begins or lets it begin quietly, when an adventurer makes a skill check that the DM counts as the first check of the challenge. As the challenge proceeds, the DM might prompt the players to make checks, let them choose when to make checks, or both. The DM might tell the players which skills to use, let them improvise which ones they use or both.

Of course the Rules Compendium also has a list of mandatory skill challenge features. To use kyoryu's example, a skill challenge of "about five rolls" isn't actually allowed! The minimum number of rolls a party can make in an RC Skill Challenge is six, because a Complexity 1 SC requires 4 successes while allowing up to 3 failures. The RC also mandates a number of "Advantages", strongly pushes for a split between prescribed Moderate and Hard DCs, and has a pre-specified list of primary & secondary skills. If you've ever used a skill challenge that requires 8 successes without using 2 Advantages, you're not really following the RC skill challenge rules. If you run a low-complexity skill challenge but allow 10-ish skills to apply to it, or you don't allow players to repeat primary skills, or you require players to roll, or you don't grant XP, you also aren't really playing an RC skill challenge.

This is where I think kyoryu's comment is most relevant:


It's a guideline, not a straitjacket. It's really something I use to make sure that I'm playing fair and giving players a reasonable chance, and keeping things moving in a reasonable way.

I think 4e skill challenges are the opposite, they're actually a really frustrating straightjacket, whether we're talking about the original DMG rules with players forced into initiative, or the later RC rules with its list of advantages & DC distributions.

Skill challenges work best when we throw out all the straitjacket parts, while keeping the underlying game system. That leaves us with a solid, flexible resolution method, but it isn't a skill challenge. It's a couple of progress clocks (https://bladesinthedark.com/progress-clocks), with "fail forward" consequences (https://www.runagame.net/2015/12/fail-forward.html) for clock failure.

[Kurald Galain]

It's also about pacing - how long do we want to focus on this problem? Combat provides hit points as a guideline, but non-combat doens't have the equivalent. So if I say "yeah, this should be about 5 rolls" then that's just the amount of focus I want to give it. It means that any action either should progress the situation about 1/5th of the way, or shouldn't be rolled. But of course if somebody does something that shortcuts it (either way!) then that takes precedence. It's a guideline, not a straitjacket. It's really something I use to make sure that I'm playing fair and giving players a reasonable chance, and keeping things moving in a reasonable way.
Well, of course it is a guideline and not a straitjacket. The issue is that it guides DMs in the direction that they probably shouldn't allow player creativity, but if they allow it in the first place, they should limit or minimize its impact. The DMG offerst the guidance that creative ideas should get a (much) higher difficulty than standard solutions, and that they should only work for a single roll, and that they probably shouldn't count as a full success.

Yes, all of that is guidance. It also guides DMs into a direction I dislike. In my opinion, good DMs will ignore therse parts of the guidance. Essentially, the DMG guides towards points A, B, and C; and your posts indicate that you take the guidance towards A and ignore the guidance towards B and C. There's nothing wrong with that. It should not surprise you that other DMs may decide to take the guidance towards B and C, and ignore the guidance towards A.

Conversely, it would help if the DMG provides guidance on when players try to use a power or item in a skill challenge. But it does not; it is completely silent about them. So most DMs I've met are guided into either disallowing powers or items (essentially, you're now in a minigame where you can't do that), or they rule that you can spend your power or item, but you have to make a skill check anyway (and, as noted above, at a higher difficulty). So now the PCs spend limited resources to make things harder for themselves.


in Slaying Stone there's a skill challenge where you have to convince a dragon to give you a magic item called a slaying stone which is critical to the entire adventure. If you fail, the the adventure just... softlocks? There's no guidance for what happens if you fail to get the slaying stone despite its paramount importance.
I note also that the latest official rule (RulCom/DMK) is that the plot proceeds the same way regardless of the outcome of the SC; the only consequence for failing is that the PCs lose healing surges or take a penalty the next combat. That was how WotC chose to "revamp" their adventures.

Again, this is guidance that I don't like; it guides in a direction that whatever the PCs do is not actually relevant to the outcome.


I think what this boils down to is you need the structure for non-combat encounter in organized play, where you need all the DMs adjudicating in more or less the same way.
Interestingly, the 4E Organized Play team (who often appear more clueful about the rules than the devs) disagrees. Org Play gave the GM a lot of leeway in changing the adventure to make it more fitting to the PCs and/or more fun - and that includes changing the SC structure. Because also in Org Play, many GMs and players found SCs an unnecessary restriction.

[MonochromeTiger]

Well, of course it is a guideline and not a straitjacket. The issue is that it guides DMs in the direction that they probably shouldn't allow player creativity, but if they allow it in the first place, they should limit or minimize its impact. The DMG offerst the guidance that creative ideas should get a (much) higher difficulty than standard solutions, and that they should only work for a single roll, and that they probably shouldn't count as a full success.

Yes, all of that is guidance. It also guides DMs into a direction I dislike. In my opinion, good DMs will ignore therse parts of the guidance. Essentially, the DMG guides towards points A, B, and C; and your posts indicate that you take the guidance towards A and ignore the guidance towards B and C. There's nothing wrong with that. It should not surprise you that other DMs may decide to take the guidance towards B and C, and ignore the guidance towards A.

Conversely, it would help if the DMG provides guidance on when players try to use a power or item in a skill challenge. But it does not; it is completely silent about them. So most DMs I've met are guided into either disallowing powers or items (essentially, you're now in a minigame where you can't do that), or they rule that you can spend your power or item, but you have to make a skill check anyway (and, as noted above, at a higher difficulty). So now the PCs spend limited resources to make things harder for themselves.

Like Just to Browse said it's paying lip service to creativity when what they really want is for you to do the skill checks they set in front of you. The rules actively disincentivize creative solutions to such an extent that any DM running SCs as written and being clear about the rules is pretty quickly going to teach their group that doing anything except the stated answer is just trying harder for less results.

Discouraging creativity in one part of the game, where it's an easy possible solution to the problem and is instead being portrayed by the rules as objectively worse than what may very well be a slower and more difficult method, just leads to feeling like trying that creativity elsewhere is probably going to be similarly punished. Avoiding that is possible but it requires going against what the rules actually want, at which point the only reason to even hold onto the rest is if you really want to make players roll for it.


I note also that the latest official rule (RulCom/DMK) is that the plot proceeds the same way regardless of the outcome of the SC; the only consequence for failing is that the PCs lose healing surges or take a penalty the next combat. That was how WotC chose to "revamp" their adventures.

Again, this is guidance that I don't like; it guides in a direction that whatever the PCs do is not actually relevant to the outcome.

It's the kind of writing I honestly expect out of 4e in general, to a lesser extent 5e and Pathfinder 2e as well. They have a goal in mind that is central to the campaign's story and since it's so important they can't just give it to you. Problem is it really is central to the campaign's story so they can't let you actually fail to get it either, if that happens the entire thing falls apart, so they keep a challenge so you still have to "work for it" but since failure is absolutely not an option the challenge is just to determine if you continue the story as planned or continue the story as planned but with a temporary penalty.

The obvious answers are to either not write themselves into a corner where a single point of failure can end the whole campaign and give alternate ways of getting the item if the SC fails or admit that they really need you to have it and that the arbitrary SC to see if you do or not was pointless and just have the Dragon realize it's important and give you the thing like they were always going to do for the plot to progress. Issue is the system already has "but our way is the right way" built into how SCs work by RAW, as much as it disincentivizes player creativity it also pushes for the writers to not really spare the introspection on whether an SC is actually needed in the first place because "SCs are there to make the players put in effort for big things so they should be present for any big things that aren't handled with a fight" beats "but this is such a big thing that failure torpedoes the plot and that's so obvious it even makes sense to notice in universe."

[kyoryu]

It's the kind of writing I honestly expect out of 4e in general, to a lesser extent 5e and Pathfinder 2e as well. They have a goal in mind that is central to the campaign's story and since it's so important they can't just give it to you. Problem is it really is central to the campaign's story so they can't let you actually fail to get it either, if that happens the entire thing falls apart, so they keep a challenge so you still have to "work for it" but since failure is absolutely not an option the challenge is just to determine if you continue the story as planned or continue the story as planned but with a temporary penalty.

I am 95% sure that one of the big drives for 4e was a push towards M:tG style Organized Play. And i think that's where a lot of the codification of things really drove from, and the hyper-mechanistic description of abilities. It's really trying to apply M:tG lessons to D&D (which, surprise, i think is a terrible idea).

So for OP, you need to control the experience. That means that you can't let GMs really improvise too much, since different GMs will improvise in different ways.

[Beoric]

And when I talked about having a set number of rolls... the point isn't that I "need" them. I've been running these silly games for forty years. But it can be nice, especially for newer GMs, to have some guidelines to prevent falling into one of the common probability traps that people do fall into - the most common being "roll until you succeed" and "roll until you fail".


Ok, but a mechanic that only works property by either relying on DM skill and experience and experience to force it to work, or relying on DM skill and experience to houserule it, fails both as a mechanic and as a teaching tool.

I mean, it sure seems like the people who don't use skill challenges, and the people who say they are using them successfully by tweaking or ignoring bits, are essentially doing the same thing. I'm seeing no daylight between "I'm not using skill challenges, I just prep situations" and "I'm sorta kinda using skill challenges except when they stop making sense in the situation."

[LibraryOgre]

Ok, but a mechanic that only works property by either relying on DM skill and experience and experience to force it to work, or relying on DM skill and experience to houserule it, fails both as a mechanic and as a teaching tool.

I mean, it sure seems like the people who don't use skill challenges, and the people who say they are using them successfully by tweaking or ignoring bits, are essentially doing the same thing. I'm seeing no daylight between "I'm not using skill challenges, I just prep situations" and "I'm sorta kinda using skill challenges except when they stop making sense in the situation."

To an extent, though, this is how folks do combat... you use the combat rules, but you also recognize when something needs to pre-empt the mechanics as written. If the wizard Disintegrates the dragon, then it's 5d10+Intelligence damage, ongoing 10. What if they Disintegrate the keystone of the ceiling? The building collapsing is going to take things out of combat and into another kind of challenge entirely.

A skill challenge works well with stages and contributions building towards a whole, and I would bet that where many DMs run into trouble is breaking up a challenge into describable steps, where your History check and his Thievery check both contribute in intelligible ways... but so does Athletics or Perception.

[kyoryu]

Ok, but a mechanic that only works property by either relying on DM skill and experience and experience to force it to work, or relying on DM skill and experience to houserule it, fails both as a mechanic and as a teaching tool.

I mean, it sure seems like the people who don't use skill challenges, and the people who say they are using them successfully by tweaking or ignoring bits, are essentially doing the same thing. I'm seeing no daylight between "I'm not using skill challenges, I just prep situations" and "I'm sorta kinda using skill challenges except when they stop making sense in the situation."

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is:

1) as a GM that's played these silly games for decades, the general idea of SCs is pretty close to what I've built to as best practices.
2) scaffolding like this is a useful tool to help people figure out how to run non-combat challenges without having to go through decades of experience.

I'm not saying that "they work because I have decades of experience".

[Just to Browse]

To an extent, though, this is how folks do combat... you use the combat rules, but you also recognize when something needs to pre-empt the mechanics as written. If the wizard Disintegrates the dragon, then it's 5d10+Intelligence damage, ongoing 10. What if they Disintegrate the keystone of the ceiling? The building collapsing is going to take things out of combat and into another kind of challenge entirely.

I'm not sure I agree with this. In a game like 3e and 5e, disintgrate will tell you exactly how much material is disintegrated by the spell, and 3e will even tell you how much damage broken pieces of ceiling deal if/when they begin to crumble. In both editions, the expectation is that you can still run everything with the same resolution system. 4e is the only edition here where the game gets segmented out into its various buckets of Combat, Skill Challenge, & Everything Else.


2) scaffolding like this is a useful tool to help people figure out how to run non-combat challenges without having to go through decades of experience.

If the scaffolding is what's valuable (and it sounds like it is, since the useful stuff here seems to ignore the SC's straightjacket rules, like Advantages, mandatory initiative, etc), then I'm not sure it's useful to call these Skill Challenges anymore. Personally, I'd rather have new DMs learn the scaffolding from a game that doesn't include all that extra baggage, like Blades in the Dark or Fate.

[Beoric]

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is:

1) as a GM that's played these silly games for decades, the general idea of SCs is pretty close to what I've built to as best practices.
2) scaffolding like this is a useful tool to help people figure out how to run non-combat challenges without having to go through decades of experience.

I'm not saying that "they work because I have decades of experience".

Ah, but I was not commenting on what you do. I was commenting on your assertion that the mechanic can be good for other people to learn from.

As near as I can tell, nobody here who says they use skill challenges is describing their use of skill challenges as by the book. Everyone who uses them has made a tweak. Most of those tweaks look very similar, and are much more flexible than the guidelines in the rulebooks suggest.

As far as I am concerned, if the mechanic and guidelines are almost universally houseruled, then the mechanics and guideline are a failure. And pretty much everyone involved in this conversation has a better idea of how to adjudicate these situations than what was created as the skill challenge mechanic.


Interestingly, the 4E Organized Play team (who often appear more clueful about the rules than the devs) disagrees. Org Play gave the GM a lot of leeway in changing the adventure to make it more fitting to the PCs and/or more fun - and that includes changing the SC structure. Because also in Org Play, many GMs and players found SCs an unnecessary restriction.

I would have said, "Tellingly, 4E Organized Play team (who often appear more clueful about the rules than the devs) disagrees."

[Waddacku]

Where is that specified? Neither my copy of the 4e PHB or the 4e Rules Compendium have any guidance about that.
It took me a while to find it again, but I think the bit I was thinking about is in DMG2, p. 82: "Is there a chance that a really good idea could completely trump your skill challenge? Don't fret! That's a good thing."
There's more relevant context around, and to be fair it doesn't specifically call out ending it early, but...

In general I'd recommend anyone interested in the ongoing discussion here to read the DMG2 on skill challenges. The initiative thing is gone already by then, of course, because it's stupid and no one likes it, but besides the touch-ups to the rules it also has a ton more discussion and advice than DMG1 offers, and I would argue it makes it clear that the straitjacket interpretation of the rules is not intended, but that it's a structure for the DM to embellish as they see fit.
Power and ritual use is also furthered strengthened on p. 86. DMG1 mentions utility power and rituals enabling alternative skill uses and granting bonuses, but also rituals in particular granting an automatic successes or removing failures (DMG1 p. 74). DMG2 goes so far as saying relevant ritual or daily power usage deserves at least 1 automatic success. It also introduces the rule of thumb to treat non-skill use (powers, resource expenditures, for instance) as secondary skills in terms of benefits gained from them.

[MonochromeTiger]

It took me a while to find it again, but I think the bit I was thinking about is in DMG2, p. 82: "Is there a chance that a really good idea could completely trump your skill challenge? Don't fret! That's a good thing."
There's more relevant context around, and to be fair it doesn't specifically call out ending it early, but...

In general I'd recommend anyone interested in the ongoing discussion here to read the DMG2 on skill challenges. The initiative thing is gone already by then, of course, because it's stupid and no one likes it, but besides the touch-ups to the rules it also has a ton more discussion and advice than DMG1 offers, and I would argue it makes it clear that the straitjacket interpretation of the rules is not intended, but that it's a structure for the DM to embellish as they see fit.
Power and ritual use is also furthered strengthened on p. 86. DMG1 mentions utility power and rituals enabling alternative skill uses and granting bonuses, but also rituals in particular granting an automatic successes or removing failures (DMG1 p. 74). DMG2 goes so far as saying relevant ritual or daily power usage deserves at least 1 automatic success. It also introduces the rule of thumb to treat non-skill use (powers, resource expenditures, for instance) as secondary skills in terms of benefits gained from them.

To argue a slightly different point, DMG1 came out June 6th 2008. DMG2 came out September 19th 2009 one year and three months later. Wizards of the Coast was already no stranger to the idea of errata, one year was plenty of time to clarify things if the straightjacket approach wasn't intended, but on the contrary if it was and if there was enough pushback against it (like you acknowledge for the initiative part already) a new DMG trying to make the new products sell better is a great opportunity to say "haha no that was just people reading it wrong promise" especially when all it really costs is a few lines of text on something people will buy. It doesn't admit any fault, it doesn't look like backing down, and it's getting released in a full product so people have to pay to even get it.

If it was their intent and just miscommunicated that badly in the original then that's pretty much half the point of errata. It's there to fix things that are broken or to clarify things that were unclear, a complete 180 in how to approach creative player solutions is absolutely the kind of thing you'd want to immediately get some errata on then follow up with reinforcing the correction later instead of letting it sit for a year. Trying to drop something that isn't well received on the other hand is the kind of admission of fault that most people would be hesitant to draw attention to, much less release an outright "we were wrong or we said this wrong" via errata when it's much easier to just change later and rely on the fact that people tend to just buy the newest version of something anyway so DMs and players coming in might end up never even seeing the original take on it.

[Waddacku]

I'm not going to dig through every round of errata to see when when exactly it was changed, but it does remove the initiative order, requirement to take action, and limit to how often a PC can use a secondary skill from the DMG skill challenge rules.
I don't understand what point you're making, though. I think the DMG shows the same fundamental intention as the DMG2, but if anything actual use showed they needed the emphasize creative freedom more and encourage DMs to be less restrictive in their rulings. The DMG tells the DM to be careful about is that actions should make sense in the in-game situation, and lean toward allowing things. It doesn't actually matter to me if they really changed directions or miscommunicated a vision.

[Just to Browse]

To get a little more context, here is the relevant quote bit from the DMG 1:

It’s also a good idea to think about other options the characters might exercise and how these might influence the course of the challenge. Characters might have access to utility powers or rituals that can help them. These might allow special uses of skills, perhaps with a bonus. rituals in particular might grant an automatic success or remove failures from the running total.

That's it, three offhand sentences, and no attempts to integrate this despite the several pages dedicated to examples later on. That's why I call it lip service.


In general I'd recommend anyone interested in the ongoing discussion here to read the DMG2 on skill challenges. The initiative thing is gone already by then, of course, because it's stupid and no one likes it, but besides the touch-ups to the rules it also has a ton more discussion and advice than DMG1 offers, and I would argue it makes it clear that the straitjacket interpretation of the rules is not intended, but that it's a structure for the DM to embellish as they see fit.

Before I launch into another essay, I just wanted to say I agree with your second comment here -- I don't particularly care if 4e took a year (or two or three) to get SCs right. If they eventually did make a flexible, useful game structure, the designers deserve credit. That said, I disagree with the idea that the DMG2 rules are good representative of 4e SCs.

First, the DMG2 is not the first word on skill challenges (that's the DMG1, with fixed initiative, forced action, lip service to rituals), nor is it the final word on skill challenges (that's the Dungeon Master's Book and the RC, with mandatory Advantages and nothing on utilities, rituals, circumvention). It's hard to say that the DMG2 rules are the true intended experience, because the designers chose to take this flexibility out of the system when given the chance to revise SCs again. As far any of us can tell, they may have considered automatic ritual successes just as much of a mistake as SC initiative.

Beyond that, the DMG2 applied a few of its own straightjacket requirements, arguably some of the most difficult straightjackets of all. In the DMG2, the designers realized SCs were pretty boring, so in the DMG2 guidance they ended up adding a ton of extra work for the DM:

Restriction 1

Each skill check in a challenge should accomplish one of the following goals:
Introduce a new option that the PCs can pursue, a path to success they didn't know existed.
Change the situation, such as by sending the PCs a new location, introducing a new NPC, or adding a complication.
Grant the players a tangible consequence for the check's success or failure (as appropriate), one that influences their subsequent decisions.

This actually inserts a dramatically larger amount of effort into designing SCs. No longer should a DM assume that the game will take "about 5 skill checks" like kyoryu does, where we roll and the DM does a quick narration, then we roll again. Instead, every skill check must change the context of the scenario in some significant way, even if one of the PCs is choosing to just use Nature three times in a row.

Restriction 2

The characters should always be the active party in a skill challenge. [...] It's best illustrated with an example.

The characters need to escape from a group of pursuers. It's easy to default to have the PCs making Endurance or Athletics checks to see if they can stay ahead of the chase, but that situation pushes them into a passive role. The guards are the active party: They chase the PCs, and the PCs make checks to avoid capture.

In this example, you might allow PCs to make checks to outrun the guards, but that should be one option among many. Even then, it's best to flavor that option with a sense that the PCs are the ones creating obstacles that the guards can 't overcome. An Athletics check doesn't mean the PC is simply running really fast. Instead, it represents a character dodging through a crowded street with ease while the guards struggle to push through.

Placing characters in the active role has an important effect on your design, your presentation, and the players' engagement. It forces the players to step up and make plans rather than sit back and react to your NPCs. It also compels you to create multiple paths and options. When the PCs are the passive group in a challenge, it's too easy to allow logic to dictate that one repeated skill check is the best way to plow through the challenge.

DMG2 SC rules require actually tossing out large swaths of what I consider common skill uses, because it leads to "logic [which] dictate[s] that one repeated skill check is the best", i.e. the DM should obfuscate the mechanics of the skill challenge to prevents players from flogging a single skill over and over when it would be mathematically optimal. Note that the result from the players side is mechanically the same (they roll Athletics), but the DM has to do extra work (they must define what Athletics is in an active way, or they shouldn't include the skill in the SC).

Restriction 3
The DMG2 also adds a bunch of structures on top of existing SCs to specifically handle certain scenarios. For example, if characters can "succeed in one of two ways", you are supposed to use a Branching Skill Challenge, which requires tracking two separate exclusive goals. For example, say you're in a diplomatic negotiation. If you praise a politician, bribe someone, write a moving speech, etc, you must pick one of the branching success conditions and apply your success to that (or the DM must do it for you). When one of the goals is met, the other goal is ignored, no matter how many successes were earned on it. If that seems totally ridiculous, consider that "diplomatic negotiation" is the first idea they bring up for a Branching Skill Challenge.

But the Examples Tho...
Now weirdly, the DMG2 examples ignore a lot of the straightjackets (and sometimes ignore the rules entirely). Here are a few examples:
The Rushing River example has a bunch of passive checks like "see the boat ahead" and "stay alert".
Chasing the Bandits has skills where the PCs "[concentrate] on running as fast as possible" or "move more slowly" but explicitly prevents the PCs from separating from each other, removing any tangible consequences (aside from "guess incorrectly that this is a Branching Skill Challenge and waste your skill checks")
Moving Through Suderham throws away the core pacing mechanic of tracking successes (in fact it does basically nothing with successes). It just requires PCs to make checks based on whatever their goals are, with escalating penalties for failures. You might wonder why this is considered a Skill Challenge when it eschews the most fundamental element of Skill Challenges, and... the book doesn't really answer that question.

I think if we ignore the actual skill challenge advice in the DMG1, DMG2, DMB, and RC, and base our understanding of 4e SCs purely off the DMG2's example section, it sort of implies a combination of two flexible design tools: progress clocks and level-to-DC tables. And I'll agree that this is a good combination of things. The 4e DMG2 skill challenges, despite many of them being pretty boring, can be used to infer some useful gameplay systems.

But what I don't get is why this "makes it clear" what the designers were thinking. It requries (1) assuming the 4e SC rules were canonically correct in 2009, despite being overwritten within the year, and (2) ignoring the rules themselves, which at times contradicted the contents of the examples. I'll gladly praise Moving Through Suderham for being cool, but I don't think it represents Real(tm) SCs. I'd argue it showcases the weakness of SCs, because the designers had to perform a massive surgery on their core non-combat tool (getting rid of complexity, success-tracking, and XP rewards!) to create a compelling gameplay structure.

Bringing it Full Circle
I've harped on this point a couple times, but I think it bears repeating: there are already gameplay structures that deserve more credit for these innovations. Fate 2e had an actual, flexible gameplay structures in its Static and Dynamic Challenges back in 2003, when WotC was still working on D&D 3e books. BitD distilled the success and failure tracking systems into the far more flexible Progress Clock system 6-7 years ago. Whether you want to credit the progenitor of this idea or the game that did it best, 4e isn't on the list either way, and its legacy is sullied by the 3-4 functional variations on the system which ranged from literally unusable to frustratingly narrow by-the-book.

[Waddacku]

First, the DMG2 is not the first word on skill challenges (that's the DMG1, with fixed initiative, forced action, lip service to rituals), nor is it the final word on skill challenges (that's the Dungeon Master's Book and the RC, with mandatory Advantages and nothing on utilities, rituals, circumvention). It's hard to say that the DMG2 rules are the true intended experience, because the designers chose to take this flexibility out of the system when given the chance to revise SCs again. As far any of us can tell, they may have considered automatic ritual successes just as much of a mistake as SC initiative.
DMG1 skill challenges no longer feature those things, as per errata. It also bears some consideration that DMG2 isn't a replacement for DMG1, but an expansion with further advice. DMB and RC on the other hand are new basic rulebooks for the Essentials line, and the SC sections are quite procedural. The advantages look like a good way of making a player's options more mechanically distinct and interesting, I don't really like that the norm for failure seems to have changed to "success at a cost" rather than a switch in directions (obviously the sensible thing is that either is possible depending on context), but with the way the Essentials line basically always strove to make everything as boring as possible I'm not surprised that they cook it down to choo-choo tracks. Also there aren't rituals in Essentials.
But to respond to the main point: there's nothing that makes DMG2 advice inapplicable to later SC rules.



Beyond that, the DMG2 applied a few of its own straightjacket requirements, arguably some of the most difficult straightjackets of all. In the DMG2, the designers realized SCs were pretty boring, so in the DMG2 guidance they ended up adding a ton of extra work for the DM:

Restriction 1


This actually inserts a dramatically larger amount of effort into designing SCs. No longer should a DM assume that the game will take "about 5 skill checks" like kyoryu does, where we roll and the DM does a quick narration, then we roll again. Instead, every skill check must change the context of the scenario in some significant way, even if one of the PCs is choosing to just use Nature three times in a row.
This is just saying every roll should be for actually doing something, though. Some of that might be preplanned, but equally it also just points back to the need for actions to be described in meaningful terms in-game. Especially the third one ("Grant the players a tangible consequence for the check’s success or failure (as appropriate), one that influences their subsequent decisions.") is basically a catchall saying actions should have consequences. To "just use Nature three times" doesn't make sense because you have not specified how or why you're using Nature.



Restriction 2


DMG2 SC rules require actually tossing out large swaths of what I consider common skill uses, because it leads to "logic [which] dictate[s] that one repeated skill check is the best", i.e. the DM should obfuscate the mechanics of the skill challenge to prevents players from flogging a single skill over and over when it would be mathematically optimal. Note that the result from the players side is mechanically the same (they roll Athletics), but the DM has to do extra work (they must define what Athletics is in an active way, or they shouldn't include the skill in the SC).
Your interpretation here is just strange, casting the entire text into some kind of adversarial vibe where the DM is trying to trick players into playing badly. It's just saying that framing the situation in a way where the PCs are proactive is more engaging and less likely to be repetitive than one where they're passive.
And yes, of course you should have an idea what the skills you're including at the design stage could actually be used for, that's just how it works. Likewise, it's not on the DM to say what the Athletics check means, the player should not be rolling if it's not clear what they're trying to do with that roll.



Restriction 3
The DMG2 also adds a bunch of structures on top of existing SCs to specifically handle certain scenarios. For example, if characters can "succeed in one of two ways", you are supposed to use a Branching Skill Challenge, which requires tracking two separate exclusive goals. For example, say you're in a diplomatic negotiation. If you praise a politician, bribe someone, write a moving speech, etc, you must pick one of the branching success conditions and apply your success to that (or the DM must do it for you). When one of the goals is met, the other goal is ignored, no matter how many successes were earned on it. If that seems totally ridiculous, consider that "diplomatic negotiation" is the first idea they bring up for a Branching Skill Challenge.
Okay, so first things first: it doesn't say anywhere you're supposed to do anything. It says you can use a branching challenge for a scenario with a multiple possible successful outcomes, and in such a one you simply track successes per outcome and whichever one happens first happens.
You would be choosing which side your success will be applied to when you choose what you're doing. None of your example actions make sense without a goal for your PC to succeed or fail at. Which politician are you hyping up? Who are you bribing to do what? What is your speech arguing for?
As for ignoring the other goal, I'll point to the Stages of Success section, as well as that the rolls for losing outcomes are still rolls that happened, and whatever was accomplished by those are still things that were accomplished. In this case the example specifically mentions either party's success is mutually exclusive with the other. That could be e.g. a dispute over which side a piece of land belongs to.



But the Examples Tho...
I can't read over these now, I'll try to take a look at them later in case there are any specific details worth discussing.


I think if we ignore the actual skill challenge advice in the DMG1, DMG2, DMB, and RC, and base our understanding of 4e SCs purely off the DMG2's example section, it sort of implies a combination of two flexible design tools: progress clocks and level-to-DC tables. And I'll agree that this is a good combination of things. The 4e DMG2 skill challenges, despite many of them being pretty boring, can be used to infer some useful gameplay systems.

But what I don't get is why this "makes it clear" what the designers were thinking. It requries (1) assuming the 4e SC rules were canonically correct in 2009, despite being overwritten within the year, and (2) ignoring the rules themselves, which at times contradicted the contents of the examples. I'll gladly praise Moving Through Suderham for being cool, but I don't think it represents Real(tm) SCs. I'd argue it showcases the weakness of SCs, because the designers had to perform a massive surgery on their core non-combat tool (getting rid of complexity, success-tracking, and XP rewards!) to create a compelling gameplay structure.
I think it makes it clear because they keep telling the DM to be flexible, consider various ways of structuring their SC, cautions to ensure that rolls are meaningful and sensical, that consequences are meaningful and sensical, and then provide a bunch of examples that play with those structures in various ways. You claim they're breaking the rules, I claim they show SCs are meant to be extremely customizable, which aligns with my reading of the preceding sections.



Bringing it Full Circle
I've harped on this point a couple times, but I think it bears repeating: there are already gameplay structures that deserve more credit for these innovations. Fate 2e had an actual, flexible gameplay structures in its Static and Dynamic Challenges back in 2003, when WotC was still working on D&D 3e books. BitD distilled the success and failure tracking systems into the far more flexible Progress Clock system 6-7 years ago. Whether you want to credit the progenitor of this idea or the game that did it best, 4e isn't on the list either way, and its legacy is sullied by the 3-4 functional variations on the system which ranged from literally unusable to frustratingly narrow by-the-book.
I assume anyone who thought 4e's were the first or particularly exceptional simply wasn't very familiar with games outside of D&D. I just think it's a flexible tool that has gotten an undeserved bad rap, and I want to spread my understanding of the game and the spirit of the rules.

[Kurald Galain]

DMG1 skill challenges no longer feature those things, as per errata.

I just think it's a flexible tool that has gotten an undeserved bad rap,
I'm just noting these two things you say here. SCs got a bad rap after DMG1, and there was errata. This means that regardless of what you personally think about that rap, WOTC thought that it was deserved, and tried to fix it with errata.

And they tried to fix it again with the DMG2 (noting that PHB2/DMG2 attempt to fix several other things that 4E was criticized for) and they tried to fix it a fourth time with the RulCom/DMK. That suggests that the errata didn't make the bad rap go away, so they tried again. And again. The downside of this approach is that (1) people who only read the first books (which is usually a big majority) are stuck with the version that WOTC knows is flawed; and (2) to people who do read all the books, having multiple sets of errata looks very sloppy.

So this boils down to insufficient playtesting (of this part of the game) before the first publication.

It's clear from the PHB1/DMG1 that they put a lot of effort in creating engaging, tactical, and balanced combat; and they've largely succeeded at that. Unfortunately, everything in these books that's not about combat reads as if it's hastily thrown together as an afterthought. That includes SCs, rituals, and a few other sections. WOTC would have gotten much less criticism and controversy if they'd have put a little more effort in those parts rather than try and fix it several times later.

[Beoric]

Restriction 2

Originally Posted by 4e DMG2
The characters should always be the active party in a skill challenge. [...] It's best illustrated with an example.

The characters need to escape from a group of pursuers. It's easy to default to have the PCs making Endurance or Athletics checks to see if they can stay ahead of the chase, but that situation pushes them into a passive role. The guards are the active party: They chase the PCs, and the PCs make checks to avoid capture.

In this example, you might allow PCs to make checks to outrun the guards, but that should be one option among many. Even then, it's best to flavor that option with a sense that the PCs are the ones creating obstacles that the guards can 't overcome. An Athletics check doesn't mean the PC is simply running really fast. Instead, it represents a character dodging through a crowded street with ease while the guards struggle to push through.

Placing characters in the active role has an important effect on your design, your presentation, and the players' engagement. It forces the players to step up and make plans rather than sit back and react to your NPCs. It also compels you to create multiple paths and options. When the PCs are the passive group in a challenge, it's too easy to allow logic to dictate that one repeated skill check is the best way to plow through the challenge.



This language reminds me of another issue I have with the way SCs are portrayed. The implication isn't that the players are choosing an approach to the situation ("I run as fast as I can to keep ahead"), and letting the DM decide what skill matches the player's approach (depending on the situation, keeping ahead could require Athletics or Endurance). "[Y]ou might allow PCs to make checks to outrun the guards" implies that the players are choosing the skill, and framing it that way IMO makes players think about skills, not approaches, let alone unorthodox or creative approaches.

[Just to Browse]

RE: Miscellany

DMG1 skill challenges no longer feature those things, as per errata. It also bears some consideration that DMG2 isn't a replacement for DMG1, but an expansion with further advice. DMB and RC on the other hand are new basic rulebooks for the Essentials line, and the SC sections are quite procedural. The advantages look like a good way of making a player's options more mechanically distinct and interesting, I don't really like that the norm for failure seems to have changed to "success at a cost" rather than a switch in directions (obviously the sensible thing is that either is possible depending on context), but with the way the Essentials line basically always strove to make everything as boring as possible I'm not surprised that they cook it down to choo-choo tracks. Also there aren't rituals in Essentials.

Just wanted to add my own opinions here:
Yeah, they put out a massive functional errata (iirc) Aug 2008 and put the basics in the DMG2 alongside the DMG2's straightjacket stuff. But if a person opens up a copy of their DMG1, they're going to see initiative & mandatory participation on top of the usual lip service to rituals & general inflexibility. IMO if we need to caveat our praise of DMG1 SCs with "just read the rules alongside the functional errata that significantly changes those rules (but not version 1, errata version 3)"... we should just throw the thing out instead and go back to praising Progress Clocks.
Gonna disagree that the Rules Compendium tried to make the game boring. I think they just dropped the DMG2 rules because players complained (IMO, rightly so, the replacement also just kinda sucked).
Worth noting my experience with RC Advantages is that they make for a boring guessing game. But you are right, neither here nor there.

RE: Hacking DMG2 into RC

But to respond to the main point: there's nothing that makes DMG2 advice inapplicable to later SC rules.

This doesn't particularly matter. You can hack DMG2 rules into Advantages or the DMG1 rules if you want, but the RC is intended as a replacement for the DMG2 rules just the same as the DMG2 is intended as a replacement for the DMG1.

RE: What Does Rule 4a Mean?

This is just saying every roll should be for actually doing something, though. Some of that might be preplanned, but equally it also just points back to the need for actions to be described in meaningful terms in-game. Especially the third one ("Grant the players a tangible consequence for the check’s success or failure (as appropriate), one that influences their subsequent decisions.") is basically a catchall saying actions should have consequences. To "just use Nature three times" doesn't make sense because you have not specified how or why you're using Nature.

Yes, every skill check should have consequences that change the context of the scenario in some significant way. The section later makes comparisons to combat, telling you that the consequences should be on par with positioning, targeting, and enemy death, three massively consequential elements of 4e combat. The DMG2 expects that each roll in each SC creates changes of similar scope.

And sure, let's errata my comment from "just use Nature three times" with "just use Nature three times with slight variations in description each time". The point doesn't fundamentally change.

RE: What Does Rule 4b Mean?

Your interpretation here is just strange, casting the entire text into some kind of adversarial vibe where the DM is trying to trick players into playing badly. It's just saying that framing the situation in a way where the PCs are proactive is more engaging and less likely to be repetitive than one where they're passive.

And yes, of course you should have an idea what the skills you're including at the design stage could actually be used for, that's just how it works. Likewise, it's not on the DM to say what the Athletics check means, the player should not be rolling if it's not clear what they're trying to do with that roll.

You're misreading my comment. This isn't adversarial or about tricking players, it's about the DM writing SCs that the designers don't think are boring. Unfortunately this rule doesn't just require DMs to "have an idea"; in fact the section is explicitly pushing back on that. Just "an idea" is no longer good enough! The idea must always make the characters the active party in the SC, and the DM is ultimately responsible for ensuring those ideas & skill checks line up. The section references the DM "implementing" the flavor for skill checks here, then tells the DM to "set up the [example] skill challenge" this way, then tells the DM it's their job to "flavor [the] option", then tells them to "[place] characters in the active role". This is DM advice in the DMG! It ain't telling the players squat!

RE: The Rules for Branching Skill Challenges

Okay, so first things first: it doesn't say anywhere you're supposed to do anything. It says you can use a branching challenge for a scenario with a multiple possible successful outcomes, and in such a one you simply track successes per outcome and whichever one happens first happens.

You would be choosing which side your success will be applied to when you choose what you're doing. None of your example actions make sense without a goal for your PC to succeed or fail at. Which politician are you hyping up? Who are you bribing to do what? What is your speech arguing for?

As for ignoring the other goal, I'll point to the Stages of Success section, as well as that the rolls for losing outcomes are still rolls that happened, and whatever was accomplished by those are still things that were accomplished. In this case the example specifically mentions either party's success is mutually exclusive with the other. That could be e.g. a dispute over which side a piece of land belongs to.

This section uses "you can" instead of "it's best" (the way they do a couple paragraphs later) or "an effective way" and "give some thought" (from earlier). These snippets are all roughly the same thing: a variation on "this idea is a good idea and you should do it because it is a good idea", which has to be shaken up so the text reads naturally.

I guess if we want to analyze this like it's the Talmud, this is very technically not required, but at that point nothing in this entire section seems to be required because the designers drop "might" and "guideline" and "general rule" everywhere they go. The only hard rule is apparently the number of mandatory successes and XP, which I suppose makes it funnier that the designers threw those out in Moving Through Suderham.
The thing about branching paths is that you should not always choose where you success goes. All of those actions are intentionally open because they can be applied to the goal of (1) moving diplomatic negotiation towards a specific side, or the goal of (2) moving diplomatic negotiation to a middle-ground where neither side wins. The bribe can be used for both! The speech can be used for both! And yet once we're in a Branching Challenge, neither bribe nor speech should be used this way!

It's very frustrating to be instructed to use a game structure that supports potentially-divergent outcomes, only for that divergence to be mandatory by the rules. You can try to patch that with other SC structures like partial successes, but "The target that is reached first determines the outcome of the challenge" is pretty darn unambiguous about the designers' intended ends for Branching Challenge. (also, the designers also definitely don't talk about a land dispute; if we're gonna analyze the text closely with all its "cans" and whatnot, let's avoid assuming examples that are not present in the text.)

RE: Obligatory repetition of our central theses I suppose

I think it makes it clear because they keep telling the DM to be flexible, consider various ways of structuring their SC, cautions to ensure that rolls are meaningful and sensical, that consequences are meaningful and sensical, and then provide a bunch of examples that play with those structures in various ways. You claim they're breaking the rules, I claim they show SCs are meant to be extremely customizable, which aligns with my reading of the preceding sections.

I'm not sure how you can see that. The DMG2 SC rules have these weirdly strict instructions about consequences that defy sense, awkward game structures on top of the basics that push back on reasonable consequences, and "customization" that requires throwing out one of the core mechanics of SCs just to function. Any system can be considered customizable if customization involves throwing out the core of a system and replacing it with new rules: I hack game structures into 5e's anemic rules all the time, but I'm not giving the game credit for its weak rules, I'm giving me credit for googling "progress clocks blades in the dark" and implementing the darn thing myself.


I assume anyone who thought 4e's were the first or particularly exceptional simply wasn't very familiar with games outside of D&D. I just think it's a flexible tool that has gotten an undeserved bad rap, and I want to spread my understanding of the game and the spirit of the rules.

I'm glad they work for you, but hopefully you can see why I and so many other folks think the opposite. 4e's various iterations of SCs (including the final word in the RC!) have frustrating straitjackets that make it difficult for me and other GMs to run the flexible games we want to run. The SC structure was errata'd and reinvented and reinvented again because it was a weak, inflexible system that both players and GMs disliked. The pieces it was built on top of (Progress Clocks and Level Benchmarking) are both fantastic flexible tools without all that baggage, and they deserve way more credit than they get.

[Pugwampy]

I miss this version of D&D. I’m really hoping that with what is going on with the franchise that they would come back to this version of the game, make some tweaks to it and rebrand it as Dungeons and Dragons Tactics. Because what I’m seeing on these forms are people actually do want 4e they just don’t want it to look like 4e.


The best possible thing you can do to keep 4e alive is to offer to DM it.

Also remind people that all editions have equal value but the company needed to sell new rules books . 3rd Edition is not worse nor is 5th Edition an improvement .

A guy who laminated my paper maps said the local university had a 4th edition club .