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View Full Version : [4e] Anyone else concerned about the ease of pushing, pulling, or sliding?



Tormsskull
2008-06-23, 09:14 AM
Hey all,

One of my first "hrm" moments with 4e was when I saw how easy it was to push, pull, or slide enemies into dangerous terrain. On the one hand, I think battling on a narrow bridge over a pit of boiling lava is very cinematic and exciting. On the other hand, I think that any intelligent enemy who is simply trying to kill the PCs is going to try to knock them off the bridge as often as possible, and that could make a cinematic and exciting scene end badly.

Several classes have powers that move their enemies. And the defense against being pushed, slid, or pulled into a deep hole, or over the slide of a cliff? A saving throw. Basically a 50/50 chance.

Anyone else concerned about this and thinking about designing a way to resist being pushed, pulled, or slid?

hamishspence
2008-06-23, 09:19 AM
Dwarfs get a way: its harder to force movement on one of them.

Terrain should not be more lethal than situation warrants: slider monster at low level + very deep pits is a Bad Idea.

Since DMG does not actually provide rules for lava (checked it), make your own, NOT 1 hit kill lava, especially not at low level. My baseline is Fire Titan lava rules: 4d6+6 + immobilized (save ends)

Saph
2008-06-23, 09:57 AM
Not really concerned, because all the 4e modules I've played so far have no dangerous terrain of note.

Push/pull/slide has proven pretty weak in our games so far, because you can move the enemies a couple squares, but moving them a couple squares doesn't actually do anything.

- Saph

lord_khaine
2008-06-23, 10:15 AM
well i guess the concern is then for those who dont uses prebuild modules, they apprently cant put anything resembling dangerous terrain into a encounter, without risking fast casulties because someone got showed into the bottomless pit.

Frost
2008-06-23, 10:18 AM
I'm not concerned with the ease of moving other characters no. I'm concerned that the designers thought it was actually a useful ability worth anything at all.

It comes down to two things:

1) 90% of the time, you are fighting in a field, dungeon, ect. Push/pull/slide is 90% useless.

2) You are fighting over a deep bit/lava/by a cliff, it's a save or die, but the save is always 45% chance of failure.

So you have something that 90% of the time is crap, and 10% of the time is way overpowered. How is this a good idea?

However, I've basically just accepted that Ray of Frost plus force moves are the way to go. If you are facing a melee solo, you win. If you are facing multiples, you can (once you run out of decent powers and get trapped in the at-will slug fest) have someone (or two people) slide an enemy away and the Wizard hits them, over and over with Ray of Frost. meanwhile the other 2-3 gang up on someone else.

Xuincherguixe
2008-06-23, 10:26 AM
While I do like the idea of pushing people into lava as a strategy, I think it shouldn't be easy.

House Rule in being able to grab ledges, or throw grappling hooks and the like?

Tormsskull
2008-06-23, 10:26 AM
1) 90% of the time, you are fighting in a field, dungeon, ect. Push/pull/slide is 90% useless.


I would think it would be somewhat useful here for putting enemies into positon to grant combat advantage to others, or to put them in a position where they will be provoking Opportunity Attacks if they try to get to a squisher party member.



2) You are fighting over a deep bit/lava/by a cliff, it's a save or die, but the save is always 45% chance of failure.


Especially when there are multiple enemies and each one has a pushing ability. Just seems like there should be some other way of resisting it to me.

MammonAzrael
2008-06-23, 10:31 AM
While it is cause for concern, it should be. If your players want to fight on a 5 foot ledge over a bottomless chasm, or in the middle of a volcano, they should expect the enemy to try to shove them off, and probably do the same themselves. Fighting in those conditions is enormously idiotic and dangerous, and should be treated as such. The only reason we see it so often in movies is precisely because it's so crazy and risky.

Personally, while I haven't been near any deadly cliffs with my players, there have been some traps, and some small pits, that have given the push/pull/slide mechanics some good fun use. (Though annoyingly, both my frontliners are Dwarves, so that takes away a lot of my options for moving them around.)

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-23, 10:32 AM
The other thing to remember is that dangerous terrain *shouldn't* be an insta-kill. Remember that Hit Points are an abstraction, so it's perfectly reasonable for somebody to get Shifted into a big pit of lava, take 2D10 damage, and effectively be left hanging onto the side.

Awesomologist
2008-06-23, 10:37 AM
Push/Pull/Slide has a saving throw if you (or the monster) is pushed over an edge. Check out the Combat section in the PHB (At work, don't have mine at the ready).

Our party has learned to slide targets around. The fighter and rogue love to bunch up guys so that the mage can them in an AoE spell. In fact we had one moment where there were 3 monsters left, the rogue and the fighter went before the wizard so they asked him how much closer he needed the goblins together. It's a great way to spread out crowd control capabilities to all classes and encourages teamwork.
As the DM i like to do the same thing against them :smallwink:

darkzucchini
2008-06-23, 10:41 AM
While I don't have a problem with being able to shift people (and I feel that is rather cool to be able to push people off cliffs and such, I like my games to be deadly and my PCs to play smart), I have a big problem with being able to move large creatures around easily. Powers like Mountain Breaking Blow and Staggering Smite can allow you to push an ancient dragon or the tarrasque around the battlefield, which I just feel is wrong.

Worira
2008-06-23, 11:11 AM
well i guess the concern is then for those who dont uses prebuild modules, they apprently cant put anything resembling dangerous terrain into a encounter, without risking fast casulties because someone got showed into the bottomless pit.

Really? If you fight among bottomless pits, there's a chance you might fall into a bottomless pit? Seriously, I don't think I'd be misinterpreting you to say that your concern is that dangerous terrain is dangerous.

Now, I agree the save mechanic is questionable- why is it just as hard to push the feeble nonagenarian wizard into a hole as it is the battle-hardened young warrior?- But bottomless pits being dangerous? Why do you even have them if you don't expect someone to fall in?

THAC0
2008-06-23, 11:29 AM
These movement things provide awesome tactical choices and decisions for both the party and the NPCs.

We've really enjoyed the mechanic thus far.

Grynning
2008-06-23, 11:32 AM
The Athletics skill gives the DC to catch hold if you fall while climbing. Granted, nothing says you can use this when falling for other reasons, but I think I would allow it in the case of falling off of a cliff.

I would also likely allow an Acrobatics (balance) check in place of the saving throw to avoid falling in the first place.

The Save mechanic is one of the things I truly dislike about 4th edition. I find it far too random. I understand the reasoning - I think they decided that no matter how they scaled it, 10 or higher was going to be what you needed to roll, so why muck about with bonuses and DC's, but that kind of goes against the whole idea of the d20 mechanic. What if they said, "Well, if you're fighting stuff of your level, you should have about a 55% chance to hit, so we're just going to get rid of those pesky attack bonus and defense mechanics and just say you hit on a 10 or higher, ok?"

Oracle_Hunter
2008-06-23, 11:32 AM
PHB 284 has rules for saving throws for being thrown off of cliffs. The DMG also warns you not to have first level characters fight on the edges of 80 foot cliffs. This is just another aspect of DMs paying more attention to encounter design.

But man, I love sliding. Aside from setting up the Rogue with insta-flanks (Boom, headshot!) and breaking up Hobgoblin skirmish lines, you can also use it to add some extra "awesome" to your fights.

You can now (by RAW!) knock people out windows, into lakes, through resetable traps, and under Da Crusher! Imagine the sort of fights you can have with kobolds in their special trap rooms? And being able to turn those traps against them?

Delicious :smallbiggrin:

Jerthanis
2008-06-23, 02:20 PM
Pushing and sliding is a vital tactical strategy that never existed to the same extent before. We all agree that Wizards should stay out of melee, but what happens when a lurker breaks away and gets up to the Wizard's face and starts hacking away? The rogue pushes him back over to the fighter, who can hopefully keep him locked down. Being surrounded hurts, and surrounding other people helps, so it seems like moving enemies around can really... help.

The worry about being pushed into dangerous terrain seems to boil down to, "Now that players and enemies can take advantage of terrain to a greater extent, a DM needs to pay attention to the terrain he includes to a greater extent than before."

I guess I'm just not worried about that.

edit: Wow, apparently I really like the word "Extent" *goes to buy a thesaurus*

Grug
2008-06-23, 02:29 PM
Besides rogue flanks and wizard AoE, fighter's mark relies on shifting. A marked enemy that shifts, even a forced shift, triggers a free basic attack by the fighter. And again with fighter, moves like Tide of Iron are meant to get enemies away from your squishier friends.

Tormsskull
2008-06-23, 02:33 PM
The worry about being pushed into dangerous terrain seems to boil down to, "Now that players and enemies can take advantage of terrain to a greater extent, a DM needs to pay attention to the terrain he includes to a greater extent than before."

I guess I'm just not worried about that.

I totally agree that the ability to move enemies around is huge as far as combat tactics go, and I think that part is cool.

As a DM I have always made use of different terrain to keep combat interesting. Elevation, flamable oil, spiked ground, heavy brush, thin ice, etc, etc. To me those parts of the combat map bring the combat to life.

However, I still think that pushing enemies (or enemies pushing PCs) into dangerous terrain is to easy. As an example:

KotS Spoiler

In the final battle of the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure, there is that portal to the shadowfell where the "thing" exists trying to grab people. Now, if someone knew of this creature, and simply pushed a person into the square, they are going to get grabbed up most likely.

The players would have no real reason to expect that anything out of the ordinary would happen (and regardless what the 4e books say, I think telling a player "By the way, if you move into that square you are going to be attacked by a mysterious enemy is dumb).

Oracle_Hunter
2008-06-23, 02:38 PM
However, I still think that pushing enemies (or enemies pushing PCs) into dangerous terrain is to easy. As an example:

KotS Spoiler

In the final battle of the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure, there is that portal to the shadowfell where the "thing" exists trying to grab people. Now, if someone knew of this creature, and simply pushed a person into the square, they are going to get grabbed up most likely.

The players would have no real reason to expect that anything out of the ordinary would happen (and regardless what the 4e books say, I think telling a player "By the way, if you move into that square you are going to be attacked by a mysterious enemy is dumb).


Isn't there something at that spot, like a mysterious runed archway that crackles with arcane power? It's all about providing details for the PCs to give them a heads up without giving away the game.

RTGoodman
2008-06-23, 02:39 PM
You can now (by RAW!) knock people out windows, into lakes, through resetable traps, and under Da Crusher! Imagine the sort of fights you can have with kobolds in their special trap rooms? And being able to turn those traps against them?

And it is a lot of fun. I just finished writing a kobold-based 1st level adventure, and one of the encounters is a couple pit traps and some Kobold Spikers from the Creature Incarnation online article who push people into traps and grant the traps combat advantage against those people.

wodan46
2008-06-23, 03:08 PM
In a flat featureless plain, pushing/pulling/sliding is still useful if not critical. Controlling the enemy's position sets them up for Combat Advantage(especially for Strikers), Opportunity Attacks(especially for Defenders), and AOE attacks(especially for Controllers), while Leaders provide a supporting role as always. All roles have the ability to shift enemies around, and its really a critical part of the nature of 4e's tactics. Many of those dismissive of 2W+Mod encounter abilities that look the same don't understand the importance of deploying the position changing and status effects.

Trog
2008-06-23, 03:38 PM
Seems better than standing in a line and beating on one another *shrug*

As an aside on bottomless pits and danger... correct me if I'm wrong but... isn't the BOTTOM of the pit the really, you know, dangerous part? :smalltongue:

Thrud
2008-06-23, 03:58 PM
Yeah, it is just another of those loopholes that will have to be covered up by good DMing. Just like all those horrible loopholes in 3rd ed. Or every other roleplaying game ever created. The fact that the way to cover this loophole up is actually stated in the DMG as 'make sure 1st levels nver fight on the edges of cliffs' worrys me a little. I tend to like city adventures, and more often than not there are fights on the tops of buildings and/or city walls. Apparently I wouldn't be able to do that until characters have enough hitpoints to survive a 20 or 30 foot fall (or up to 50 for some places on the city walls/towers) I have to admit, that is something that would irritate me to no end as a DM, but since I have no intention of using the system, it doesn't bother me much.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-06-23, 04:22 PM
Yeah, it is just another of those loopholes that will have to be covered up by good DMing. Just like all those horrible loopholes in 3rd ed. Or every other roleplaying game ever created. The fact that the way to cover this loophole up is actually stated in the DMG as 'make sure 1st levels nver fight on the edges of cliffs' worrys me a little. I tend to like city adventures, and more often than not there are fights on the tops of buildings and/or city walls. Apparently I wouldn't be able to do that until characters have enough hitpoints to survive a 20 or 30 foot fall (or up to 50 for some places on the city walls/towers) I have to admit, that is something that would irritate me to no end as a DM, but since I have no intention of using the system, it doesn't bother me much.

Falls do d10 per 10 feet. At first level, wizards have 10 HP + their Constitution score. First level characters can fight on top of second story buildings without being auto-killed. Furthermore, since everyone gets a Saving Throw to not go over, or take half damage if trained in Acrobatics, feel free to use these sort of battles even at first level.

Third story or higher buildings, perhaps you can wait a few levels, or be at ease that few NPCs have the sort of offensive shifting abilities that PCs do.

Seriously, you should try 4e. It really is a good system.

Thrud
2008-06-23, 04:36 PM
Falls do d10 per 10 feet. At first level, wizards have 10 HP + their Constitution score. First level characters can fight on top of second story buildings without being auto-killed. Furthermore, since everyone gets a Saving Throw to not go over, or take half damage if trained in Acrobatics, feel free to use these sort of battles even at first level.

Third story or higher buildings, perhaps you can wait a few levels, or be at ease that few NPCs have the sort of offensive shifting abilities that PCs do.

Seriously, you should try 4e. It really is a good system.


Oh, don't get me wrong, this isn't a reason not to buy the system. I have lots of other reasons not to want to buy it. All I was trying to point out here is that lots of games have loophole problems, and all it takes is some decent DMing to fix em. Just because 4ed is all about game balance and homogenization of power levels doesn't mean it isn't going to have the same sorts of problems. It will. I guarantee it. Because what everyone seems to forget is that within 3rd ed PHB, DMG, and MM, there weren't all that many real issues that couldn't be dealt with easily by good DMing. It is once you start adding all the splatbooks that massive problems start to arise. The lack of multiclassing is going to help that a lot, but it still won't completely fix the problem. When there are that many powers floating around that provide the sort of battlefield control that they do, there are bound to be massive issues when they are combined in certain ways that the designers didn't allow for. And since 4ed is intending to have multiple sets of PHB's DMG's and MM's the problem will be compounded by all those CORE books, rather than by a few core books and lots of easily ignorable splatbooks.

Now that IS one of the reasons I won't be buying the game. I tend to dislike companies that intentionally leave things I enjoyed out of one set of 'core' books, intending to put them in a later set of 'core' books, forcing me to buy them if I want them. They have every right to make money at their game. They do NOT have every right to continue gouging over and over again on multiple new sets of core books. That is just being greedy.

RTGoodman
2008-06-23, 05:01 PM
Now that IS one of the reasons I won't be buying the game. I tend to dislike companies that intentionally leave things I enjoyed out of one set of 'core' books, intending to put them in a later set of 'core' books, forcing me to buy them if I want them. They have every right to make money at their game. They do NOT have every right to continue gouging over and over again on multiple new sets of core books. That is just being greedy.

Well, they're having multiple PHBs only in the sense that there are going to be new "splatbooks" that have the PHB [#] name on them. You're not going to NEED them to play the game (though they might have particular classes/paragon paths/powers/whatever you might want, like any splatbook), any more than you need the 3.5 PHB II, DMG II, or MM II-V to play the game.


As far as making rooftop adventures, if you really wanted to have 1st level characters fight on 30+ ft buildings you could just add in trash piles and stuff like that that would reduce falling damage.

Yakk
2008-06-23, 05:33 PM
The Bottomless Pit:
Usually, being pushed into dangerous terrain simply gives a character a save to fall prone adjacent to the terrain. This runs into problems when the terrain is so dangerous, it is a bottomless pit (or other instant-kill terrain).

When a creature is pushed into a Bottomless Pit, make a save as usual. If the save succeeds, the creature is prone at the edge. If the save fails, the creature takes damage equal to it's healing surge value (1/4 of max HP, or 1/2 of Bloodied). (Minions just die)

If this reduces the monster to 0 HP or less, it falls tumbling into doom. Otherwise, the monster is prone adjacent to the pit.

If this reduces a PC to 0 HP or less, they are awake, hanging over the edge, in a pit square. They make saves to die as normal, and if they die they let go. Other characters can help them back up via athletics checks or powers, but they themselves are helpless unless they roll a 20 on their save (or they choose to let go and fly).

Variations on this system can be used for burning Lava or Spheres of Annihilation. The essence is that being "thrown over" generations HP damage that abstractly reflects the creature recovering from the push.

Thrud
2008-06-23, 05:39 PM
Well, they're having multiple PHBs only in the sense that there are going to be new "splatbooks" that have the PHB [#] name on them. You're not going to NEED them to play the game (though they might have particular classes/paragon paths/powers/whatever you might want, like any splatbook), any more than you need the 3.5 PHB II, DMG II, or MM II-V to play the game.


As far as making rooftop adventures, if you really wanted to have 1st level characters fight on 30+ ft buildings you could just add in trash piles and stuff like that that would reduce falling damage.

Except fot the fact that in interviews they talked about how they want everyone to understand that the later books will be Core rules, not simply splatbooks, and that they intentionally left some of the favorite monsters out of the MM and some of the favorite classes out of the PHB so that people would 'understand' that these later books were intended to be 'core' books.

I'll dig around for the link. I have it here somewhere, I think. It is one of the first things that really annoyed me about the system.

LoopyZebra
2008-06-23, 05:53 PM
Except fot the fact that in interviews they talked about how they want everyone to understand that the later books will be Core rules, not simply splatbooks, and that they intentionally left some of the favorite monsters out of the MM and some of the favorite classes out of the PHB so that people would 'understand' that these later books were intended to be 'core' books.

I'll dig around for the link. I have it here somewhere, I think. It is one of the first things that really annoyed me about the system.

Perhaps, but greedy or no, the system IS playable with just the PHB, DMG, and MM. That they want other people to accept that their books are considered official is mostly a marketing strategy, and will only really affect your game if you play at RPGA events or conventions (and even then, your character could still be PHB only). A problem with their marketing, or salesmanship, or whatever, is a problem with that, not the system.

Fhaolan
2008-06-23, 05:54 PM
Falls do d10 per 10 feet. At first level, wizards have 10 HP + their Constitution score. First level characters can fight on top of second story buildings without being auto-killed. Furthermore, since everyone gets a Saving Throw to not go over, or take half damage if trained in Acrobatics, feel free to use these sort of battles even at first level.

Third story or higher buildings, perhaps you can wait a few levels, or be at ease that few NPCs have the sort of offensive shifting abilities that PCs do.

Seriously, you should try 4e. It really is a good system.

Sorry, but that actually made me *less* likely to try 4e. I was all good about the pushing and pulling and sliding and what not, and using the terrain intelligently as part of the combat. That made sense to me, and I approve. However, now I find out that first level characters can fall *two stories* on their heads (max damage), just get up, brush themselves off and go their merry way?

There's heroic, and then there's cartoony, and that just pushed the line right into Roadrunner territory.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-06-23, 05:57 PM
Sorry, but that actually made me *less* likely to try 4e. I was all good about the pushing and pulling and sliding and what not, and using the terrain intelligently as part of the combat. That made sense to me, and I approve. However, now I find out that first level characters can fall *two stories* on their heads (max damage), just get up, brush themselves off and go their merry way?

There's heroic, and then there's cartoony, and that just pushed the line right into Roadrunner territory.


:confused:

How is that worse than a 1st level cleric being able to drop 10 feet in 3e and get up? At least in 4e you will be Bloodied (almost certainly) which generally makes you worse off than when not.

Thrud
2008-06-23, 06:16 PM
:confused:

How is that worse than a 1st level cleric being able to drop 10 feet in 3e and get up? At least in 4e you will be Bloodied (almost certainly) which generally makes you worse off than when not.

?

I personally have dropped 10 feet onto concrete (off the roof of a 1 story building. Don't ask, it was dumb. :smallbiggrin:) and walked away uninjured, and I am by no means a physically fit adventuring type. 10 feet isn't that much if you roll with it. 20 feet is a WHOLE different matter. Doubling distance will quadrulple the force.

Of course, that has no bearing on the actual issue because D&D has NEVER done a good job with falling damage. Why should that change now?

:smallbiggrin:

tyckspoon
2008-06-23, 06:17 PM
Sorry, but that actually made me *less* likely to try 4e. I was all good about the pushing and pulling and sliding and what not, and using the terrain intelligently as part of the combat. That made sense to me, and I approve. However, now I find out that first level characters can fall *two stories* on their heads (max damage), just get up, brush themselves off and go their merry way?

There's heroic, and then there's cartoony, and that just pushed the line right into Roadrunner territory.

I'm not sure if you wanted an implied '3E was better' in there, but it's hard to avoid in the context of a 4E discussion. If you didn't mean that, it's fine. If you did.. well, it wasn't. Any 1st level 3E character with a decent Con bonus could survive falling 10 feet at max damage. A Barbarian or a Fighter with high Con or anybody using Tumble or Jump to reduce the effective distance could handle 20. And just about every character gains on average 10 feet of safe falling distance each level. That is not true of what I understand about 4E, since the Con bonus to HP normally only applies once, at 1st level; a long fall remains dangerous to a 4E character throughout his life, instead of the 3E phenomenon of having your character leap off the top of an infinitely tall cliff because it's the quickest and possibly safest way down.

LoopyZebra
2008-06-23, 06:17 PM
Also, falling damage is a relatively easy houserule. Just increase damage to 1d20 or whatever you feel is appropriate. And to be fair, like Oracle Hunter pointed out, 3e's falling damage was also unrealistic.

Tough_Tonka
2008-06-23, 06:33 PM
While I do like the idea of pushing people into lava as a strategy, I think it shouldn't be easy.

House Rule in being able to grab ledges, or throw grappling hooks and the like?

Its clearly stated in the Players Handbook in the forced movement section that anytime you are pushed off a ledge you can make a basic saving throw to grab the ledge and just end the turn prone.

Fhaolan
2008-06-23, 07:04 PM
:confused:

How is that worse than a 1st level cleric being able to drop 10 feet in 3e and get up? At least in 4e you will be Bloodied (almost certainly) which generally makes you worse off than when not.

True, but at what point did I say that previous editions did this better? When did I say '3.x does falls better than 4e!'? No, I said this aspect of 4e feels cartoony, and knowing that this cartoony aspect exists in 4e, it makes me less likely to try the system. In the same way that knowing about the existance of dire flails would have made me less likely to try 3e when it was published.

But now that you have asked, no, I don't think 3e did this very well either. I think it handled falling damage better than 4e, but that's like saying pond scum tastes better than sewage. It might be technically true, but they're still both awful. And, just as a note; other aspects of 4e are very good, and smell and taste of nectar, but there's still this bit of sewage in there.

This is the first time D&D's falling damage has changed since AD&D and the Basic Set was introduced, and it was set then at 1d6 per 10'. The average character HP has increased a great deal since then, by the time 3.5 rolled around 1d6/10' was not as much relative to Basic. I've haven't worked out the math precisely, but I think 1d6 damage in Basic/AD&D is about double damage relative to 3.5 considering the average HP total of characters, if I was to guess off the top of my head. 4e massively increases the HP totals of the average character, and yet the average falling damage only increases by +2/10'. [As a technical note, I can't find anything specific in the original white-book D&D set about falling damage. It is implied that the DM just makes up what dice and how many to roll based on personal preference. I also found implication in the sections on falling from ship's rigging about forgetting damage and just save vs death at 30' or more. Which is pretty par for the course in that set.]

So, yeah, I dislike the trend in D&D that has been occuring slowly over each edition, towards PCs having tops made out of rubber and bottoms made out of springs. It's old fashioned power creep, and it's cartoony.

wodan46
2008-06-23, 07:43 PM
Heh, you don't seem to quite grasp what people are capable of surviving.

The record distance of freefalling without a parachute and surviving is 33,316 feet.

Another skydiving mishap resulted in the person crashing into concrete facefirst at 50 mph. She was ok, as was the baby she was pregnant with.

There have been several other incidents along those lines. One individual crashed into snow, and got away with a sprained knee and a few cuts, and NOTHING ELSE. Wasn't even Bloodied.

My point is that terminal velocity is survivable in the real world, let alone a world where heroes slay dragons and can be restored back to full health with a magical spell. Stop arguing about what's cartoony.

Indon
2008-06-23, 08:08 PM
My point is that terminal velocity is survivable in the real world, let alone a world where heroes slay dragons and can be restored back to full health with a magical spell. Stop arguing about what's cartoony.

If you're extremely lucky - which would be modeled by rolling all 1's for damage dice. 4'th edition's better off in that regard, because your standard 1'st level peasant (though really, there's no reason to even give a peasant levels if the party isn't going to kill him) could survive a terminal velocity fall like that, while the 1'st level commoner in 3'rd edition dies to that faster than he would to a housecat.

But rolling max damage would be equivalent to falling in the most damaging way possible - so envision a wizard falling off a tall ladder in his study, falling two stories, landing on his head, and getting up, a bit dazed (but unless he's in combat, he'll be better in 5 minutes anyway :P).

Really, both are silly - but that doesn't mean one isn't sillier than the other.

wodan46
2008-06-23, 08:21 PM
So skydiving facefirst into concrete = minimum damage?

My main point is that its possible for regular people to survive terminal velocity, and heroic fantasy characters can survive a lot more than a regular person even with a bad roll or 2.

ArmorArmadillo
2008-06-23, 08:24 PM
?

I personally have dropped 10 feet onto concrete (off the roof of a 1 story building. Don't ask, it was dumb. :smallbiggrin:) and walked away uninjured, and I am by no means a physically fit adventuring type. 10 feet isn't that much if you roll with it. 20 feet is a WHOLE different matter. Doubling distance will quadrulple the force.

Of course, that has no bearing on the actual issue because D&D has NEVER done a good job with falling damage. Why should that change now?

:smallbiggrin:

Dying from a 20 foot fall may be realistic, but it's not very heroic or cinematic, which is what 4e is about modeling.

But please, keep going, we need fewer catgirls.

Golthur
2008-06-23, 10:15 PM
Since the topic seems to have changed into "falling lethality" - here's a falling chart, courtesy of some fairly reliable, if grim, stats.

I dug this up when trying to come up with a reasonable falling damage system a while back.

{table=head]|10'|20'|30'|40'|50'|60'|70'|80'|90'|100'|110'
% Limb Fracture|41|63|70|76|80|82|85|88|90|93|94
% Spine Fracture|5|10|13|16|20|23|27|29|31|33|35
% Death|2|7|12|21|35|49|62|74|83|92|95
[/table]

I can't guarantee 100% accuracy, of course, but it seems to correlate pretty well with anecdotal evidence from rock climbers.

Completely unexpected falls (such as off ladders in workplaces) seem to increase the probabilities by about 5 or 6 times (i.e. 50% chance of death for a fall from about 12')

JaxGaret
2008-06-23, 10:41 PM
Since the topic seems to have changed into "falling lethality" - here's a falling chart, courtesy of some fairly reliable, if grim, stats.

I dug this up when trying to come up with a reasonable falling damage system a while back.

{table=head]|10'|20'|30'|40'|50'|60'|70'|80'|90'|100'|110'
% Limb Fracture|41|63|70|76|80|82|85|88|90|93|94
% Spine Fracture|5|10|13|16|20|23|27|29|31|33|35
% Death|2|7|12|21|35|49|62|74|83|92|95
[/table]

I can't guarantee 100% accuracy, of course, but it seems to correlate pretty well with anecdotal evidence from rock climbers.

Completely unexpected falls (such as off ladders in workplaces) seem to increase the probabilities by about 5 or 6 times (i.e. 50% chance of death for a fall from about 12')

Wow.

That is quite grim. A 50+% chance of death if you fall unexpectedly out a 2nd story window?

I am going to be a bit more careful around what I thought were short falls from now on.

ghost_warlock
2008-06-23, 10:45 PM
Heh, you don't seem to quite grasp what people are capable of surviving.

The record distance of freefalling without a parachute and surviving is 33,316 feet.

Another skydiving mishap resulted in the person crashing into concrete facefirst at 50 mph. She was ok, as was the baby she was pregnant with.

There have been several other incidents along those lines. One individual crashed into snow, and got away with a sprained knee and a few cuts, and NOTHING ELSE. Wasn't even Bloodied.

My point is that terminal velocity is survivable in the real world, let alone a world where heroes slay dragons and can be restored back to full health with a magical spell. Stop arguing about what's cartoony.

Okay, the only way to resolve this is to grab 500 people, boot them all out of planes at 30,000 feet, and then see how they fare.

Edit: We'll use criminals from U.S. prisons for this study, the ones that bodybuild.

Conjurer
2008-06-23, 10:54 PM
My group's used push/pull/slide to:

* Get an enemy out of cover, giving the ranger and Warlock an easier time to hit.
* Pull an enemy into a flanking position
* Push an enemy out of a flanking position and later marking it by the fighter. (Granted... the player could have shifted out of flanking too)
* Yes, push an enemy into a pit trap. Push another enemy into a spiked wall.

For us, it's been quite fun.

Chronos
2008-06-23, 10:59 PM
It's true that a few people in the real world have survived falls at terminal velocity. But what makes you think that those folks were first-level commoners? For starters, in the modern developed world, experts are probably more common than commoners, and you'll see a few warriors or even PC classes in the populace, as well. Plus, the sorts of people who tend to get into situations where they could fall that far, also tend to be more adventurous in general, and have therefore likely had more chance to earn a few levels. Maybe, out of all of the people who have ever fallen out of airplanes, the few who survived are the ones who just happened to be level 4 or 5 experts, with decent Con scores, and who happened to roll below average on their falling damage.

tyckspoon
2008-06-23, 11:08 PM
Wow.

That is quite grim. A 50+% chance of death if you fall unexpectedly out a 2nd story window?

I am going to be a bit more careful around what I thought were short falls from now on.

That's actually a surprise to you? Why do you think martial arts trainers spend so much time teaching their students how to fall properly before they teach them any activity that could result in them falling? It's the same reason trampolines are massive health hazards and litigation bait. Somebody who takes an unexpected fall is much more likely to wind up taking the hit on the back, neck, head, or just completely belly-flopping and taking it everywhere. Which is much more likely to cause a deadly or debilitating injury than somebody who has time to tuck up and roll correctly or even just put their hands out front to receive the worst blow.

vicente408
2008-06-23, 11:08 PM
Seems better than standing in a line and beating on one another *shrug*

As an aside on bottomless pits and danger... correct me if I'm wrong but... isn't the BOTTOM of the pit the really, you know, dangerous part? :smalltongue:

"When you fall in a bottomless pit, you die of starvation."

:smalltongue:

JaxGaret
2008-06-23, 11:10 PM
That's actually a surprise to you?

The fact that falling out of a 2nd story window is likely to kill you is indeed surprising to me. I figured it would be closer to a 10% chance of outright death.

Rockphed
2008-06-23, 11:34 PM
The Bottomless Pit:
Usually, being pushed into dangerous terrain simply gives a character a save to fall prone adjacent to the terrain. This runs into problems when the terrain is so dangerous, it is a bottomless pit (or other instant-kill terrain).

When a creature is pushed into a Bottomless Pit, make a save as usual. If the save succeeds, the creature is prone at the edge. If the save fails, the creature takes damage equal to it's healing surge value (1/4 of max HP, or 1/2 of Bloodied). (Minions just die)

If this reduces the monster to 0 HP or less, it falls tumbling into doom. Otherwise, the monster is prone adjacent to the pit.

If this reduces a PC to 0 HP or less, they are awake, hanging over the edge, in a pit square. They make saves to die as normal, and if they die they let go. Other characters can help them back up via athletics checks or powers, but they themselves are helpless unless they roll a 20 on their save (or they choose to let go and fly).

Variations on this system can be used for burning Lava or Spheres of Annihilation. The essence is that being "thrown over" generations HP damage that abstractly reflects the creature recovering from the push.

Spheres of Annihilation are statted out as Hazards in the DMG. Being in the same square as it causes it to attack you(+39 vs fortitude if memory serves). If it hits, it does 4d6+10 damage and 15 ongoing damage(save ends.) If you drop below 0 hitpoints, you turn to dust.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-24, 04:30 AM
?

I personally have dropped 10 feet onto concrete (off the roof of a 1 story building. Don't ask, it was dumb. :smallbiggrin:) and walked away uninjured, and I am by no means a physically fit adventuring type. 10 feet isn't that much if you roll with it. 20 feet is a WHOLE different matter. Doubling distance will quadrulple the force.


Sorry, pet peeve. This isn't true.

Ignoring air resistance, you accelerate under gravity at a constant rate. This means that every second your velocity increases by the same amount. But since you get *faster* that means that the further you fall, the less time it takes to fall the extra distance, so actually the effect of the second 10 feet is less than the effect of the first, not greater.

Of course none of that makes any difference because the actual damage you sustain from a fall isn't related to "force" (which is probably fairly constant, actually) or "energy" (which increases linearly with distance), it's caused by the specific physical effects.

Telok
2008-06-24, 08:52 AM
I haven't borrowed the 4e PHB from our group for a through reading yet so I don't know the answer to this question. How easy is it for players to get movement powers or abilities that allow them to get out of pits?

There is a reason this is important to me. One of the more common tactics of my kobolds is to have a covered pit near by the guard post, opened by a lever. At the start of a fight the lever gets pulled and the cover drops to reveal a smooth sided 30' pit and a kobold adept casts Grease. That's all. No spikes, no scorpions, no boiling oil (yet). Just a smooth pit and 20 kobolds with nets, spears, and long brooms.

This turns out to be a fairly exciting fight for 5th to 7th level groups. The players ability to cope depends heavily on how smart they fight and if they have the right magic or Use Rope (they can lasso the lever to rope out) skills. But in 4e I know that there are fewer jumping, flying, teleporting powers. Without access to potions of jumping, levitate, slippers of spider climbing and such stuff that scenario could quickly (as is intended by the kobolds) turn very deadly.

With the ease of sliding people in 4e a simple pit can suddenly become much more dangerous as it can more easily take PCs completely out of combat rather than just delaying them for a several rounds.

Fhaolan
2008-06-24, 09:11 AM
So skydiving facefirst into concrete = minimum damage?

My main point is that its possible for regular people to survive terminal velocity, and heroic fantasy characters can survive a lot more than a regular person even with a bad roll or 2.

There's heroic, and then there's jumping off a 10 story building and landing on one knee on asphalt with a CGI shockwave radiating out, like in the Underworld movie. Which was done to demonstrate that the character was a vampire, and not human in any way shape or form.

I am fully aware of what a human is capable of surviving in freak occurances. There are possibly 5 confirmed instances of people falling insane distances and surviving. Surviving. Nearly every bone in their bodies were smashed, but they were alive. The pregnant woman you mention broke her pelvis in two places, both legs, and eggshelled her face (as she phrased it). She didn't get up, brush herself off, and jump back on the plane for another go without a parachute.

I'm also aware of Free Runner/Street Runners/Urban Runners, who jump down 10 to 15 feet on a regular basis on concrete as part of their sport of running through cities doing gymnastics. These, of course, are trained (self-trained mostly) atheletes and martial artists who are deliberately jumping those distances and landing in the most undamaging way possible. Not as an uncontrolled push off a ledge during a combat and falling on their face.

So. I'm going to continue to call D&D falling damage cartoony, because that's what it feels like to me.

Chronos
2008-06-24, 11:19 AM
I'm also aware of Free Runner/Street Runners/Urban Runners, who jump down 10 to 15 feet on a regular basis on concrete as part of their sport of running through cities doing gymnastics. These, of course, are trained (self-trained mostly) atheletes and martial artists who are deliberately jumping those distances and landing in the most undamaging way possible.Which is, of course, modeled in game by the Tumble and Jump skills, which traceurs are presumably maxing.

kirbsys
2008-06-24, 11:45 AM
My major problem with the system is that a first level wizard can take a twenty foot spill, roll two tens, and still live. A wizard would have to fall from a thirty foot ledge to even have a chance at dying, and even then on average rolls, he'd still be okay. To kill the average wizard at first level out-right, they would need to fall forty feet (assuming average rolls of 6.5 damage).

Tormsskull
2008-06-24, 11:59 AM
To kill the average wizard at first level out-right, they would need to fall forty feet (assuming average rolls of 6.5 damage).

Which I agree is very silly, but you have to keep in mind that 4e is based around the idea that even at level 1 a wizard is already a (super)hero. There no real way to model a 'beginner' PC in 4e.

Jayabalard
2008-06-24, 12:13 PM
10 feet isn't that much if you roll with it. 20 feet is a WHOLE different matter. Doubling distance will quadrulple the force.Not so; doubling the distance works out to a sqrt(2) factor on the force.

Catgirl killing follows: F = dP/dt
Since we're killing all of the momentum, F = -mv
v1 = sqrt(2gh1)
v2 = sqrt(2gh2) = sqrt(2*2gh1) = sqrt(2) *v1

F1 = - m * v1
F2 = - m * sqrt(2) * v1

therefore:
F2 = sqrt(2) * F1

AKA_Bait
2008-06-24, 12:44 PM
My major problem with the system is that a first level wizard can take a twenty foot spill, roll two tens, and still live.

Which actually makes a reasonable amount of sense. Most two story falls, 20ft, are non-fatal in regular old nonadventuring people.

batsofchaos
2008-06-24, 05:49 PM
I think ther problem here is once again the non-concrete concept of hit-points. Hit points are, and have been for a while, an abstract measurement that does not directly correlate to physical damage. Getting swiped by a sword for 10 hp of damage does necessarily mean a character took any damage at all; they potentially completely ducked the blow and the hit-point "damage" accounts for them being less likely to be able to avoid the next swipe, up until the point where they're tired, their luck runs out, and the enemy strikes true. It's equally valid to say that the blows are all superficial scrapes and grazes, or any other justification for how someone can sustain what seems like an awful large amount of damage without dropping.

So, a wizard falling two stories and taking max damage doesn't directly translate to "landing on face." He landed hard, obviously (and thus became bloodied, which makes sense), but not fatally. And on a fall that does the least damage means he had a lucky break and grabbed a hold of something on the way down or landing in a roll. Had the fall killed him, sure, he landed on his face. That's all narrative imbellishment anyway. The fact to keep in mind is that the max HP damage that can be taken by a character from a fall does not equate to the worst damage the fall can cause. If the fall does enough damage to kill a character, then they took the full brunt of it, 2 HP or 20 HP fall, doesn't matter. If the character died from the fall, then they ended up landing on their face. If it does max, but doesn't kill the character, the character scraped through somehow.

Golthur
2008-06-24, 05:54 PM
Somebody who takes an unexpected fall is much more likely to wind up taking the hit on the back, neck, head, or just completely belly-flopping and taking it everywhere. Which is much more likely to cause a deadly or debilitating injury than somebody who has time to tuck up and roll correctly or even just put their hands out front to receive the worst blow.

Yes, that's exactly the issue - you land "wrong", and - well - it's not pretty; and you're much more likely to land "wrong" if you're not expecting the fall. Landing on your head, back, or neck is just not good.

The original chart, the falls were "expected" and the distances were accurately measured, so I'll leave it up to your intellect to figure out where the stats came from :smalleek:

Then again, yes, there are also miraculous examples where people skydive, their chutes don't open, and they survive - and occasionally even walk away with only a few limb fractures.

Artanis
2008-06-24, 06:39 PM
Back to the original topic...

Keep in mind that a lot of the ways to push/pull/slide people around (probably most of them, but I haven't counted) require the person doing the pushing to be REAL close to their target. Even the ones that aren't melee-range can be pretty short-ranged. So yeah, it's dangerous to hang out near a ledge because somebody might push you off...but if you try to push somebody off a ledge, YOU wind up near the exact same ledge, and thus are vulnerable to being pushed off yourself.

Golthur
2008-06-24, 07:20 PM
On the original topic, it seems "odd" to me that it can't be resisted or prevented in any way.

As a DM, all you need is a bunch of low-level rogues and a cliff to pretty much take out any PC whenever you want - never mind the counterintuitive issues of shifting/pulling/pushing something Colossal.

Whenever I've implemented "force move" abilities in 3.x, I've always given the recipient of the force move some sort of options - i.e. they can accept the results of the move, fall prone in their original square, or they have some sort of resistance check (depending on the exact semantics of the particular ability).

Mewtarthio
2008-06-24, 07:31 PM
On the original topic, it seems "odd" to me that it can't be resisted or prevented in any way.

It's resisted in that they have to beat one of your defenses.

Artanis
2008-06-24, 07:53 PM
*stuff*

...or they have some sort of resistance check (depending on the exact semantics of the particular ability).
You mean like how 4e gives you a save and possibly a skill check to avoid going over the edge?

Golthur
2008-06-24, 09:23 PM
You mean like how 4e gives you a save and possibly a skill check to avoid going over the edge?

50/50 isn't a "save", it's flipping a coin :smallwink:

Edit:

It's resisted in that they have to beat one of your defenses.

I'll concur that this is something, although it doesn't take into account something large and lumbering - something that would be easy to strike, but difficult to move. Likewise, it doesn't address the "lots of rogues" issue - enough kicks at the can, and the PC has no choice but to go over the cliff.

The PC should at least have something like the option of falling prone (and accepting the penalties thereof) rather than going over the cliff unconditionally.

kirbsys
2008-06-24, 09:41 PM
But the fact remains that a fight should not occur where there is a significant danger of death that is posed by the environment. The DM should never make a fight in which there is a fall that will be lethal to a character unless that character is at the very least bloodied. I realize this limits your choices for combat, but the same exists in any-game. In 3.5 you could have had a horde of orcs repeatedly trying to bull-rush a PC off the same cliff, and eventually they would have gone over. It's the same concept, though it is admittedly easier in 4th ed. to do so.

JaxGaret
2008-06-24, 10:27 PM
If you're a creature that takes up more spaces, such as a Large or larger creature, all of the spaces that you occupy must be completely over the edge for you to even have to make a save to see if you fall in. That means that you have to move Large creatures an extra square to make them fall in the pit, and larger creatures need to be moved more squares as they get bigger.


Large, Huge, and Gargantuan Creatures: If only part of a creature’s space is over a pit or a precipice, the creature doesn’t fall.

It's already built into the system.

I can easily see a houseruled feat that provides a bonus to these exact types of saves. Call it "Rock Climber", make it give you +1 to Athletics checks and a +X save bonus to avoid falling over the edge.

Chronos
2008-06-24, 10:38 PM
Quoth Jayabalard:
Not so; doubling the distance works out to a sqrt(2) factor on the force.

Catgirl killing follows:You're assuming that the time required to come to a stop is the same in all falls. If you instead assume that the distance traveled during the collision is constant, then you get that the force scales linearly with the height fallen (since energy is proportional to height, and work (the amount by which the energy is changed to reach zero) is force times distance). Depending on the elasticity of various parts of the human body, the true answer could be either, and is probably somewhere in between.

Thrud
2008-06-24, 11:17 PM
Not so; doubling the distance works out to a sqrt(2) factor on the force.

Yeah, sorry, that's what I meant. Temporary brain hiccup. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

*Wanders off muttering about young punks and their functional brains.*

:smallbiggrin:

Justin_Bacon
2008-06-25, 02:22 AM
Really? If you fight among bottomless pits, there's a chance you might fall into a bottomless pit? Seriously, I don't think I'd be misinterpreting you to say that your concern is that dangerous terrain is dangerous.

The problem is that the mechanics of the game make sufficiently dangerous terrain a win button.

I will make two points here:

(1) Although I can't find the link now, the designers talked about this months ago: They flat out stated that, because moving your opponents around the battlefield is so much easier in 4th Edition, you shouldn't include deep chasms or the like any more.

This is a turn-off for me because it significantly lowers the awesome quotient in my low-level campaigns.

Ultimately here the trade-off here is simple to understand: Is the added thrill of being able to shove your opponents around during combat worth losing cool vistas and awesome set-pieces?

(2) As someone else points out, there are no rules for lava in the core rulebooks. However, lava-filled environments are mentioned several times. (Check the Bull Rush rules for one example.) This probably mean that you're supposed to use the improvised damage tables on pg. 42, which means that lava becomes more dangerous as you gain levels.

This is yet another example of the entire world leveling up with the PCs in 4th Edition (and, thus, utterly distasteful to me), but it does provide a "solution" to the trade-off discussed above: Just always have your lava fields dealing level-appropriate damage and you'll be A-OK.

Conners
2008-06-25, 02:29 AM
Since DMG does not actually provide rules for lava (checked it), make your own, NOT 1 hit kill lava, especially not at low level. My baseline is Fire Titan lava rules: 4d6+6 + immobilized (save ends) That must be pretty cooled down lava... the fresh stuff can make trees explode a good ten yards away. The cool stuff, however, you can step in without losing your foot or boot (you'll still get burnt pretty badly on bare skin).

Indon
2008-06-25, 08:08 AM
In 3.5 you could have had a horde of orcs repeatedly trying to bull-rush a PC off the same cliff, and eventually they would have gone over. It's the same concept, though it is admittedly easier in 4th ed. to do so.

Well, yeah. It's so much easier that in 3.5 it would be entirely possible for a PC to kill that _entire encounter_ worth of orcs singlehandedly before they could succeed - Bull Rushing was generally not a good strategy.

I say roll with it. Balance shouldn't come at the cost of such clear immersion-breaking. And if you knock the villain into the lava under you, great. And if he knocks you, well, you fought him over the lava bridge. Maybe you'll make your next character dislike lava.

Worira
2008-06-25, 10:25 AM
The problem is that the mechanics of the game make sufficiently dangerous terrain a win button.

I will make two points here:

(1) Although I can't find the link now, the designers talked about this months ago: They flat out stated that, because moving your opponents around the battlefield is so much easier in 4th Edition, you shouldn't include deep chasms or the like any more.

This is a turn-off for me because it significantly lowers the awesome quotient in my low-level campaigns.

Ultimately here the trade-off here is simple to understand: Is the added thrill of being able to shove your opponents around during combat worth losing cool vistas and awesome set-pieces?


And why is fighting on a rickety wooden bridge above a roaring waterfall cool other than the fact that it adds an element of danger and suspense to the fight? If there's no risk of falling or being pushed, what makes it different from a fight in a narrow hallway?

As I've already said, I do have concerns about the specific mechanics regarding shifting enemies over edges, although I think a relatively simple houserule like Yakk's would do just fine.

Azuroth
2008-06-25, 02:53 PM
It seems to me that fighting a CR1 kobold on top of a rickety wooden bridge near the top of a fatal fall, isn't a CR1 encounter. Increase the xp for beating the encounter, and all is well. Higher risk = Higher reward.

Chronos
2008-06-25, 03:04 PM
OK, so dangerous terrain is dangerous to both parties. But what if it isn't? Suppose, for instance, that the villain is something immune to fire damage, and therefore logically builds his lair in an active volcano? You might not have a choice but to fight him on a ledge over the lava, now.

Or on a more prosaic level, suppose one side or the other got to the dangerous terrain well in advance to set up an ambush, and took the precaution of tying themselves to tethers anchored on pitons pounded into the rock? Now, the kobolds can still shift the players into the pits, but if a player shifts a kobold into a pit, it can just climb right back out.

Or what if the pits are full of deep water, and some combatants are strong swimmers (lizardfolk, say), but some other combatants are wearing heavy armor?

Tormsskull
2008-06-25, 03:12 PM
Or what if the pits are full of deep water, and some combatants are strong swimmers (lizardfolk, say), but some other combatants are wearing heavy armor?

Is this line of questions in response to Azuroth's suggestion of upping the reward?

I didn't find that idea very good myself, as I immediately thought that the inverse could also be true. Sure, maybe a weak monster will push a PC off a ledge, but a weak PC could also push a strong monster off a ledge.

Upping the xp reward due to the fact that a PC could be defeated easier ignores the fact that the monsters can be defeated easier. Though, it does seem to reflect the PC-centric attitude that 4e fosters.

Chronos
2008-06-25, 03:37 PM
Is this line of questions in response to Azuroth's suggestion of upping the reward?No, it's in response to the general thread of discussion that "it's fair because it applies to both sides equally". The point is, it doesn't always apply to both sides equally, and intelligent creatures will try to set up situations where the dangers apply more to their enemies than to themselves.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-06-25, 04:04 PM
No, it's in response to the general thread of discussion that "it's fair because it applies to both sides equally". The point is, it doesn't always apply to both sides equally, and intelligent creatures will try to set up situations where the dangers apply more to their enemies than to themselves.

Which allows for a greater variety of encounters, which can be rewarded by increasing (or decreasing) the XP award.

Heck, 2e was almost entirely about making tricky dungeons that give the monsters an advantage, to make things riskier, and thus more entertaining. This is a fine tradition that, thanks to making it easier to interact with the environment (via system, rather than DM fiat) should encourage players and DMs to set up these kinds of situations.

Telok
2008-06-26, 10:43 AM
So how easy is it for PCs to get out of a 30 foot deep pit with smoothed sides? Can any BBEG with a dozen pusher minions simply include a deep pit next to his guard shack and capture 90% of the adventurers that come after him?

Oracle_Hunter
2008-06-26, 11:43 AM
So how easy is it for PCs to get out of a 30 foot deep pit with smoothed sides? Can any BBEG with a dozen pusher minions simply include a deep pit next to his guard shack and capture 90% of the adventurers that come after him?

Alright, I'll break it down for you.
1) A fitted, masonry wall has a climb DC of 20 (DMG 64). Grease it to make that a DC 25. That would be a hard check for levels 1-3 (DMG 42), is moderate for 7-9, and easy for 16-18.

2) While you are on the wall, you grant Combat Advantage

3) Every successful check allows you to move half your speed, so for Speed 6, you would climb 15 feet a round - two rounds, and you're out. Opportunity Attacks cannot provide pushes, though a Readied Action might.

Long story short - no, BBEG can't just keep holes next to their entryway and use it like a Roach Motel. First the bad guys need to hit on their attacks, then they have to get the good guys adjacent to the pit, then the PCs need to fail a saving throw, and not be dwarves. It is now much more dangerous than before, but the PCs are more likely to start throwing Pushers into the pit.

ashmanonar
2008-06-26, 03:05 PM
Well, yeah. It's so much easier that in 3.5 it would be entirely possible for a PC to kill that _entire encounter_ worth of orcs singlehandedly before they could succeed - Bull Rushing was generally not a good strategy.

I say roll with it. Balance shouldn't come at the cost of such clear immersion-breaking. And if you knock the villain into the lava under you, great. And if he knocks you, well, you fought him over the lava bridge. Maybe you'll make your next character dislike lava.

Or just make your next character Genre Savvy. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenreSavvy)

"Do you really think that fighting on a narrow bridge over flowing lava is a good idea?"

AKA_Bait
2008-06-26, 03:14 PM
No, it's in response to the general thread of discussion that "it's fair because it applies to both sides equally". The point is, it doesn't always apply to both sides equally, and intelligent creatures will try to set up situations where the dangers apply more to their enemies than to themselves.

Ah... Tucker's Kobolds... the envorinment being actually dangerous sometimes makes setups like that SO much eaiser for the evil minded DM.

TheEmerged
2008-06-26, 03:28 PM
50/50 isn't a "save", it's flipping a coin :smallwink:

Then I guess it's a good thing it's actually 55/45 :smallyuk: You succeed on a 10 or higher. So far the ease of making saves is my main complaint arising from game play (as opposed to theorycrafting).

We haven't been able to try a 'real' session yet, but I built some sample characters and have been running them through the Kobold Hall adventure in the DMG. The very first encounter includes a sludge pit that causes 1d10-2 damage when you fall in. Both times I saw somebody thrown toward it, the kobold made the save.

MartinHarper
2008-06-26, 03:38 PM
Powers like Mountain Breaking Blow and Staggering Smite can allow you to push an ancient dragon or the tarrasque around the battlefield, which I just feel is wrong.

You need to be high enough level to hit with those powers, which means you're epic enough to push ancient dragons around.

Kletian999
2008-06-26, 03:55 PM
Isn't forced movement restricted to within one size of yourself anyway? I know grabbing is.

RTGoodman
2008-06-26, 06:33 PM
Isn't forced movement restricted to within one size of yourself anyway? I know grabbing is.

Nope, not according to the section on forced movement in the PHB.

My solution? If you don't think a Medium PC can push/slide a gigantic dragon or the tarrasque or whatever, just think of it as the PCs hitting the monster and the monster going "Ow! That smarts!" and taking half a step back (since a 5-foot push/slide isn't that much for such a big creature). :smalltongue:

JaxGaret
2008-06-27, 12:46 AM
The problem is that the mechanics of the game make sufficiently dangerous terrain a win button.

Sufficiently dangerous terrain is a win button.

If you don't understand that, you don't understand combat.

Chronos
2008-06-27, 01:59 PM
Sufficiently dangerous terrain is a win button.Depending on your definition of "sufficiently". The question is, how dangerous should terrain to be to be "sufficient"?


Which allows for a greater variety of encounters, which can be rewarded by increasing (or decreasing) the XP award.OK, so effectively, you raise the CR (or whatever the 4e equivalent is) of the encounter, if it's in dangerous terrain that the enemy has prepared for. What's the appropriate CR to raise it to? The level at which the party would not be majorly threatened by the forced movement. At what level in 4e do a bunch of tethered kobolds in an area with a lot of bottomless pits cease to be a death sentence? (that's not a rhetorical question, by the way: I don't know enough about the powers etc. to know the answer).

And what do you do meanwhile? If it's so incredibly easy for such situations to get dangerous, then any intelligent enemy (and even some of the less intelligent ones) will deliberately set up such situations. It amounts to a large home-field advantage, which is a problem, since most adventure hooks set up the PCs as the away team. If you make your kobolds level 1, and throw 1st-level parties at them, then the party's going to get wiped out, since kobolds will use tactics like this. If you don't change the kobolds, but only throw higher-level parties at them, then the kobolds can one-shot the PCs by knocking them into bottomless pits, and the PCs can one-shot the kobolds by doing damage to them, and we're back to the "rocket tag" model of combat everyone said "good riddance" to from 3rd edition.

Justin_Bacon
2008-06-27, 11:36 PM
And why is fighting on a rickety wooden bridge above a roaring waterfall cool other than the fact that it adds an element of danger and suspense to the fight? If there's no risk of falling or being pushed, what makes it different from a fight in a narrow hallway?

In 3rd Edition there was a risk. In 4th Edition there is near certainty.

This difference in probability is, in fact, the entire basis of this discussion. And yet you seem to be entirely ignorant of it.

OneFamiliarFace
2008-06-28, 12:42 AM
@OP: Yeah, I actually really like the idea that came up of using the HP as an abstract system to solve this problem. If you are not a hardcore, live/die DM, then it seems a fair deal to make people who fail take a bit of damage, which can be accounted for from minor scrapes or just being shaken up. Unimportant enemies, however, plummet to their deaths. Important enemies get the same fair deal as PCs.

@Falling Damage: I'm actually for falls being survivable. It never ceases to amaze me how people will balk at heroic falls when their mage has just recently cast a fireball. Our characters also regularly survive a blow from a longsword at full strength, the claws or maws of dragons and other beasties, etc. So I usually just look to what my heroes do. And my heroes include one, Mr. Gimli.

I haven't read the books in awhile, but I didn't find it hard to believe in the movies that Gimli survived what must have been a 50 to 60ft fall AFTER he was on a wall that was completely blown-up. 5ft of water doesn't really provide that much protection in this case. But he stands up and starts killing orcs. If Gimli had died from something so mundane as falling such a short distance, no reader/movie-goer would have been satisfied. So I'm willing to stomach a little bit of "cartoony" to ensure my players have the heroic deaths they deserve: impaled on the end of my main villain's sword.

Am I right?

[edit to add: I might also say that I am willing to put up with a few holes in the system to have good rules which encourage utilizing terrain. I used to make incredibly intricate dungeons rooms, rife with excuses for bull rushing and grappling, but (for one), this was something only very strong fighters could do with any certainty, and (two), most people decided it was a better idea to just bonk the guy on the head instead of risking getting knocked prone on a failed bull rush. This system will encourage use of intricate rooms, and enemies should be just as aware as PCs that fighting on a narrow ledge is both dangerous and stupid. In fact, PCs may be able to use terrain to keep cowardly, but overwhelming enemies from catching up to them.]

Oracle_Hunter
2008-06-28, 12:55 AM
In 3rd Edition there was a risk. In 4th Edition there is near certainty.

This difference in probability is, in fact, the entire basis of this discussion. And yet you seem to be entirely ignorant of it.

An erratic chance in 3e. As far as I recall, you would have to have been Bull Rushed off the side of a bridge, which involved attacks of opportunities and feat selections such that, unless you took Improved Bull Rush, you rarely tried it.

And if you took Improved Bull Rush, that +4 bonus was almost certainly enough to knock whomever you hit off - no save in RAW, or chance of grabbing the edge. Nothing. So heaven help you if you happen to be fighting the one baddie with high strength and Improved Bull Rush - you were going over the edge. Of course, these sorts of situations came up so infrequently that you're time would be better spent checking that your fellow PCs hadn't been taken over by Dopplegangers or something every time you broke camp.

At least in 4e, people always are aware of the risks of shifting and terrain hazards. Dwarves and some other monsters have inborn defenses to it, while everyone gets at least a 50% chance to grab the edge if they are knocked over. It is a full-fledged tactic that people can plan around.

If I have to gamble, I'll go with Poker rather than Roulette, thank you very much :smallamused:

Jerthanis
2008-06-28, 05:33 AM
Depending on your definition of "sufficiently". The question is, how dangerous should terrain to be to be "sufficient"?


You can't win Anakin, I have the High Ground!

Frost
2008-06-28, 08:13 AM
An erratic chance in 3e. As far as I recall, you would have to have been Bull Rushed off the side of a bridge, which involved attacks of opportunities and feat selections such that, unless you took Improved Bull Rush, you rarely tried it.

And if you took Improved Bull Rush, that +4 bonus was almost certainly enough to knock whomever you hit off - no save in RAW, or chance of grabbing the edge. Nothing. So heaven help you if you happen to be fighting the one baddie with high strength and Improved Bull Rush - you were going over the edge. Of course, these sorts of situations came up so infrequently that you're time would be better spent checking that your fellow PCs hadn't been taken over by Dopplegangers or something every time you broke camp.

At least in 4e, people always are aware of the risks of shifting and terrain hazards. Dwarves and some other monsters have inborn defenses to it, while everyone gets at least a 50% chance to grab the edge if they are knocked over. It is a full-fledged tactic that people can plan around.

If I have to gamble, I'll go with Poker rather than Roulette, thank you very much :smallamused:

Except of course that even if they had improved bullrush and high Str, they'd probably only be able to push you at most 15ft, unless you were some kind of Wizard, in which case they'd be better off attacking you, since they'd down you in one hit anyway or you'd be flying.

Not to mention the fact that featherfall is a level 1 spell, and a ring of featherfall is one of the cheapest magic items you can get.

Artanis
2008-06-28, 01:38 PM
So in other words, people are now complaining that dangerous terrain is actually dangerous.

IMO, this makes fighting in dangerous terrain even cooler than it was, because if there's no real danger of being pushed over the cliff or off the bridge or whatever, then it really isn't any more cinematic than fighting on a nice, level, stable, non-cliff-edged plain.

Jerthanis
2008-06-28, 01:56 PM
Except of course that even if they had improved bullrush and high Str, they'd probably only be able to push you at most 15ft, unless you were some kind of Wizard, in which case they'd be better off attacking you, since they'd down you in one hit anyway or you'd be flying.

Not to mention the fact that featherfall is a level 1 spell, and a ring of featherfall is one of the cheapest magic items you can get.

And most powers don't push you more than about 3 or 4 squares at a time, featherfall is a level 2 utility power, and a Safewing Amulet (reduces falling damage by a bit) is a level 3 item.

Yup, COMPLETELY different these days.

Frost
2008-06-28, 03:06 PM
And most powers don't push you more than about 3 or 4 squares at a time, featherfall is a level 2 utility power, and a Safewing Amulet (reduces falling damage by a bit) is a level 3 item.

Yup, COMPLETELY different these days.

Yes, since every single character can push you 3-4 squares that is very different from one character (the fighter) being able to do so, and maybe taking damage to do it.

Yes, the fact that a Wizard can move in, provoke maybe 1-2 basic attacks, and then end the encounter by throwing 3 of the 5 enemies off the cliff by himself without expending any serious resources is different.

And then the rogue goes and throws one of the two remaining enemies off, and then the Ranger and Fighter push the other one off, and then the Cleric heals the Wizard and they move on.

Yeah, that's different then 3.5 battles near a cliff.

Jerthanis
2008-06-28, 05:06 PM
Yes, since every single character can push you 3-4 squares that is very different from one character (the fighter) being able to do so, and maybe taking damage to do it.

Yes, the fact that a Wizard can move in, provoke maybe 1-2 basic attacks, and then end the encounter by throwing 3 of the 5 enemies off the cliff by himself without expending any serious resources is different.

And then the rogue goes and throws one of the two remaining enemies off, and then the Ranger and Fighter push the other one off, and then the Cleric heals the Wizard and they move on.

Yeah, that's different then 3.5 battles near a cliff.

You just described the 4th edition equivalent of a 3.5 party made up of four people who all took the Improved Bullrush feat. In other words, while it is possible, it's a silly idea, and except in extremely limited examples will end up hurting the party due to lost versatility more than helping it. In my 4th edition game, of a group of 6 PCs, my character, the fighter, has the only power that pushes people, and then only one square at a time... Tide of Iron. The capacity to push them further, while possible, would come at the expense of us having less capacity when not trying to shove people around.

And it's a DM's job to balance encounters against the capacities of the party. If the players have ten pushing/sliding powers between five PCs, have the occasional battle be against flying enemies, against stable foes like dwarves or swarms, or NOT over rickety bridges... while still occasionally letting the party take full advantage of the abilities they choose.

Do you honestly run so many battles on rickety bridges over bottomless chasms that the ability to push things off of it would come up more than 5 or 10% of the time? If so, how come your players haven't adjusted in 3.5 to take advantage of this by always getting improved bullrush and being more overpowered than you describe, since you don't get the saving throw in 3.5?

wodan46
2008-06-28, 07:36 PM
Actually, Thunderwave is a pretty popular At-Will for wizards with Wis as their secondary attribute, regardless of the odds of huge Pits. Tide of Iron is a good At-Will for fighters as well. Most melee oriented characters can bull-rush decently even without the feat, and ranged attackers have tricks of their own. So basically any 4e party is pretty good at shoving if they need to, unless they were built overwhelmingly for something else.

However, that is unimportant. 1. Fighting near an instakill pit is unlikely, 2. Fighting near an instakill pit is unbalanced and unfun, and 3. Any monsters present would most likely try to shove you into the pit anyway. They can bull-rush as well you know.

TheEmerged
2008-06-28, 08:48 PM
However, that is unimportant. 1. Fighting near an instakill pit is unlikely, 2. Fighting near an instakill pit is unbalanced and unfun, and 3. Any monsters present would most likely try to shove you into the pit anyway. They can bull-rush as well you know.

And 4> Any effort to push someone off a cliff or similar has only a 45% chance of actually doing so even if you succeed at the first roll.

John Campbell
2008-06-28, 09:23 PM
So, in our last D&D session, we had a fight against some boarders trying to sabotage our ship, and my rogue tossed two of them into the ocean with his bill-guisarme, the dwarf and the dragon shaman went over the rail when one of the boarders gave the wheel a good twist, causing the ship to heel over (though I was able to throw them a rope in time to keep them from being swept away in the storm), and then the knight and the remaining boarder had a fight in the rigging, which ended when the knight grabbed the boarder and threw both of them to the deck, 30' below - which the knight survived, on account of ridiculous HP, and the boarder didn't.

This was 3.5.

Most of this stuff isn't in the rules. We were fighting on unusual terrain, not just a barren combat grid, and using it in intelligent ways, attempting things that no one had written a rule for, and the DM was creative enough to not just cooperate, but to have the enemy attempt similar things. And it was great fun, possibly the most interesting fight I've ever had in 3.5 - certainly a refreshing change from the usual, "I five-foot-step (into flanking, if possible) and full attack." It was almost like playing AD&D again.

So, uh, what's the problem with pushing, tripping, etc., being easy? Do you really want to have every fight boil down to throwing dice at each other until someone's hit points are finally all ground away?

RebelRogue
2008-06-28, 11:16 PM
(2) As someone else points out, there are no rules for lava in the core rulebooks. However, lava-filled environments are mentioned several times. (Check the Bull Rush rules for one example.) This probably mean that you're supposed to use the improvised damage tables on pg. 42, which means that lava becomes more dangerous as you gain levels.

This is yet another example of the entire world leveling up with the PCs in 4th Edition (and, thus, utterly distasteful to me), but it does provide a "solution" to the trade-off discussed above: Just always have your lava fields dealing level-appropriate damage and you'll be A-OK.
IMO that's reading the tables wrong: they are merely guidelines to the DM to make challenges/encounters appopriate! Lava (or any other dangerous material) should be handled the same way every time it is encountered (at least if it has the same temperature, but that'ws not the point here). In 3.5 lava had a preset damage of 20d6, which merely meant that the DM probably wouldn't use it in a situation where there was any real danger of a PC actually plunging into it, unless it would be somewhat survivable. The tables are for that: choosing (or inventing) materials/hazards with appropriate damage ranges. This does not mean that the world levels with characters any more than it always has! It simply means that the DM will generally scale the challenges to fit PC level. Something that has always been happening! In 4th ed a lot of "unwritten rules" that have always been in effect are now written down. Not to straightjacket the game but to provide suggestions for what should and shouldn't happen at a given power level. It's a useful tool, no more - no less!

Chronos
2008-06-28, 11:42 PM
And 4> Any effort to push someone off a cliff or similar has only a 45% chance of actually doing so even if you succeed at the first roll.Which still means that unless the enemy can do enough damage to you to kill you in at most two hits, they're always going to be better off trying to push you into the hazard. Wasn't one of the virtues of 4e supposed to be an end to the save-or-suck model of battle?

If the answer is that environmental hazards are supposed to be rare, then the question is, why? Any intelligent enemy will attempt to make their homes hazardous to folks other than themselves, and the fights in D&D are usually in the enemies' homes.

Artanis
2008-06-28, 11:49 PM
Which still means that unless the enemy can do enough damage to you to kill you in at most two hits, they're always going to be better off trying to push you into the hazard.
...or wait for you to try to push one of their buddies off, then return the favor.

OneFamiliarFace
2008-06-29, 12:16 AM
Which still means that unless the enemy can do enough damage to you to kill you in at most two hits, they're always going to be better off trying to push you into the hazard. Wasn't one of the virtues of 4e supposed to be an end to the save-or-suck model of battle?

If the answer is that environmental hazards are supposed to be rare, then the question is, why? Any intelligent enemy will attempt to make their homes hazardous to folks other than themselves, and the fights in D&D are usually in the enemies' homes.

The idea that keeps coming up of the infinitely deadly pit is a bit irking (as noted by the save-or-suck deal). A bad-guy might have his lair in a dangerous area, but it doesn't have to be next to a pit of death or pools of lava. Maybe the monsters find that to not be homey enough. Maybe they are cowards and do not want to risk being pushed into the lava themselves. Even if they have the hometeam advantage, there are inherent risks to living near a pool of molten lava if you aren't immune to fire. For example, lava tends to come from things that go boom.

Either way, lakes of fire and acid, and infinite pits are just plain hard to come by. All the prime real-estate near these death traps would be taken up by higher level monsters (if we really want to get down to realism). And monsters lurking around giant pits are just asking for some long range blasting from some crazy wizard who is invading their home. In fact, they may have built safety handrails for just such an occasion.

An intelligent monster does not just build a lair and wait for heroes to come. He might want a home. He wants to survive to see the next day. He needs to eat. I doubt too many yummy rats hang out in infinite pits or pools of lava. He may very well build secret traps to push people into, but these are included in the challenge and should be survivable by the PCs. He probably lives in a place where he is safe and protected, not on a narrow ledge where he could slip on a rock and plummet to his doom.

That being said, there will be times when my players will fight upon spiraling towers or impossible cliff sides. Yakk's solution, in my opinion, is absolutely marvelous, as it captures the style of heroic archetype perfectly:


The Bottomless Pit:
Usually, being pushed into dangerous terrain simply gives a character a save to fall prone adjacent to the terrain. This runs into problems when the terrain is so dangerous, it is a bottomless pit (or other instant-kill terrain).

When a creature is pushed into a Bottomless Pit, make a save as usual. If the save succeeds, the creature is prone at the edge. If the save fails, the creature takes damage equal to it's healing surge value (1/4 of max HP, or 1/2 of Bloodied). (Minions just die)

If this reduces the monster to 0 HP or less, it falls tumbling into doom. Otherwise, the monster is prone adjacent to the pit.

If this reduces a PC to 0 HP or less, they are awake, hanging over the edge, in a pit square. They make saves to die as normal, and if they die they let go. Other characters can help them back up via athletics checks or powers, but they themselves are helpless unless they roll a 20 on their save (or they choose to let go and fly).

Variations on this system can be used for burning Lava or Spheres of Annihilation. The essence is that being "thrown over" generations HP damage that abstractly reflects the creature recovering from the push.
It's a really simple houserule that solves the whole argument. If the fall wouldn't be a guaranteed kill on the PC, then they fall normally. (Welcome to the world of heroic fantasy, where a character knocked off a 10ft wall will bite it hard, but into a bottomless pit, and he catches himself at the last second.) Alternatively, one could easily include athletic checks along with the save instead. Pushing people over the edge would take them out of the battle a round or two as they climbed up.

Chronos
2008-06-29, 12:42 AM
Even if they have the hometeam advantage, there are inherent risks to living near a pool of molten lava if you aren't immune to fire.So the things which are immune to fire pick the lair spots in the volcano, and the things which aren't immune to fire choose some other hazard, that they are well-equipped to deal with. Lava and things immune to it are both relatively rare, but water and things immune to drowning are both fairly common. And even if the monsters don't live their entire lives next to the pits/wells/lava/cliffs/whatever, they still have something the PCs want, or there wouldn't be an adventure. Why wouldn't they keep that something (prisoners, treasure, whatever) near the hazards, and have their guards take special precautions against it if necessary (like tethering them so they can't fall into the bottomless pit)?

OneFamiliarFace
2008-06-29, 01:51 AM
Why wouldn't they keep that something (prisoners, treasure, whatever) near the hazards, and have their guards take special precautions against it if necessary (like tethering them so they can't fall into the bottomless pit)?

I'll bite. Any PCs I know of would absolutely love to find a group of hobgoblins tied to spikes in the ground. It's like that poor goat in Jurassic Park. And again, we now have a group of guys just waiting around for someone to come into a deep dark cave from which none have ever returned (not exactly a prime vacation spot).

But really, why? Because, quite honestly, it's a game. It is a game in which the object is to have fun and NOT kill all the PCs outright. Why doesn't the main villain just incinerate the PCs outright when he first sees them? Why were they not among the people killed when the dragon rampaged the village? Why do goblins prefer bottomless pits for homes instead of cozy tents or mud houses? Why?

Because the PCs, and not the villains, are supposed to ultimately win the day. So if you are going to continue passing up comment on that wonderful houserule which makes even these doom-laden encounters possible, then I don't know that there is much else to say.

Good luck falling into pits if you pick up 4e. *shrugs*

Helgraf
2008-06-29, 02:04 AM
Which still means that unless the enemy can do enough damage to you to kill you in at most two hits, they're always going to be better off trying to push you into the hazard. Wasn't one of the virtues of 4e supposed to be an end to the save-or-suck model of battle?

If the answer is that environmental hazards are supposed to be rare, then the question is, why? Any intelligent enemy will attempt to make their homes hazardous to folks other than themselves, and the fights in D&D are usually in the enemies' homes.

Yes, but most enemies _don't have access or the resources_ to make insta-lethal hazards, aka the bottomless pit, the lava trench, et cetera. They have to make do with the deep pit, the boiling geyser trap, and other things which, although dangerous in their own right are not _neccesarily_ a certain death sentence to anyone who falls in.

Hell, a really intelligent enemy is going to want to know all the details of the hazardous terrain, so, -in extremis-, he or she could, say, hop into the 'lethal deathtrap', knowing he has x rounds between when he enters and when the effects of the terrain will liquidate him to get to a pre-arrainged hidey hole. With any luck, his pursuers will think he simply leapt to his death rather than face capture/torture/et cetera.

The New Bruceski
2008-06-29, 03:45 AM
Hell, a really intelligent enemy is going to want to know all the details of the hazardous terrain, so, -in extremis-, he or she could, say, hop into the 'lethal deathtrap', knowing he has x rounds between when he enters and when the effects of the terrain will liquidate him to get to a pre-arrainged hidey hole. With any luck, his pursuers will think he simply leapt to his death rather than face capture/torture/et cetera.

I can see a Xykon-esque BBEG figuring out how far away to put the hidey-hole. "That goblin made it 25 feet before the pain became unbearable, throw in the next! I want a full statistical analysis for maximum optimal distance by morning!"

Yahzi
2008-06-29, 12:02 PM
Why doesn't the main villain just incinerate the PCs outright when he first sees them?

...Because the PCs, and not the villains, are supposed to ultimately win the day.
Look, just because they get away with that kind of crap in big-budget Hollywood movies is no excuse to tolerate it at your gaming table. Demand that your DM come up with vaguely plausible plots, instead of copying garbage spewed onto a typewriter by crack-smoking neurotic morons.

If we all pull together, we can help put a stop to "lazy plot development" syndrome!

:smallsmile:

OneFamiliarFace
2008-06-29, 08:08 PM
Look, just because they get away with that kind of crap in big-budget Hollywood movies is no excuse to tolerate it at your gaming table. Demand that your DM come up with vaguely plausible plots, instead of copying garbage spewed onto a typewriter by crack-smoking neurotic morons.

If we all pull together, we can help put a stop to "lazy plot development" syndrome!

:smallsmile:

Heh, ya got me. Crap! And I'm the biggest proponent I know of good plot. This is why I play DnD instead of watching movies. Well...I watch movies too, but I just make fun of them. Lord help those who make fun of my campaigns though! :-p

On a more serious note, I do feel that it being a game makes certain things necessary. When I play a video game, for example, I do sincerely hope the designers planned for me to make it to the end and beat the thing. If you keep killing off PCs in impossible challenges, I suspect you will very soon be telling a story to yourself. :-p

And (I know you were joking, but) I tend to help my PCs accomplish difficult or impossible physical tasks, not because it happens in movies, but because wizards cast fireballs. If I rigidly hold the rest of my party to the laws of physics, then they will quickly be overshadowed. This may be why so many people found that clerics, druids, and wizards were overpowered. They kept killing their rogues off over something as mundane as a little sixty foot fall!

LostOne
2008-06-29, 08:47 PM
1) Although I can't find the link now, the designers talked about this months ago: They flat out stated that, because moving your opponents around the battlefield is so much easier in 4th Edition, you shouldn't include deep chasms or the like any more.

This is a turn-off for me because it significantly lowers the awesome quotient in my low-level campaigns.

Ultimately here the trade-off here is simple to understand: Is the added thrill of being able to shove your opponents around during combat worth losing cool vistas and awesome set-pieces?

(2) As someone else points out, there are no rules for lava in the core rulebooks. However, lava-filled environments are mentioned several times. (Check the Bull Rush rules for one example.) This probably mean that you're supposed to use the improvised damage tables on pg. 42, which means that lava becomes more dangerous as you gain levels.

This is yet another example of the entire world leveling up with the PCs in 4th Edition (and, thus, utterly distasteful to me), but it does provide a "solution" to the trade-off discussed above: Just always have your lava fields dealing level-appropriate damage and you'll be A-OK.

Reading this post actually suggests a different interpretation to me. Instead of using the improvised damage tables to scale the lava up by level, it seems you could use it to peg an appropriate level to lava as a hazard by comparing the improvised damage table to how much damage you want lava to deal (as well other effects it may have), giving a DM guidelines in adding lava as a hazard to encounters.

This doesn't mean that lava should only be used as a hazard in a narrow level band, just that at at lower levels it will almost certainly be the focus of the battle and at higher levels the combatants may not see the lava as a serious threat. In fact I would find it implausible for hazards like precarious lava cliffs to not be the focus of battles at low levels.

Yes, the PCs could stumble on the a hazard like lava at a low level but they could also stumble on high level monsters too. DMs must already decide how much they are going to control the encounters. If the DM expects PCs to run from beholders at low levels, he should also expect the PCs (and intelligent monsters) to avoid disadvantageous terrain.

As a disclaimer, my knowledge of 4e is limited to my exposure through these boards and this thread so feel free to point out any flaws in my reasoning. :smalltongue:

Kompera
2008-06-29, 11:15 PM
I want to start out by saying that this is probably the best 4e thread yet on these forums.

{Scrubbed}

Bravo! Let's see more of this.



One of my first "hrm" moments with 4e was when I saw how easy it was to push, pull, or slide enemies into dangerous terrain. On the one hand, I think battling on a narrow bridge over a pit of boiling lava is very cinematic and exciting. On the other hand, I think that any intelligent enemy who is simply trying to kill the PCs is going to try to knock them off the bridge as often as possible, and that could make a cinematic and exciting scene end badly.

Several classes have powers that move their enemies. And the defense against being pushed, slid, or pulled into a deep hole, or over the slide of a cliff? A saving throw. Basically a 50/50 chance.

Anyone else concerned about this and thinking about designing a way to resist being pushed, pulled, or slid?
To answer your specific question, I am not concerned about this. In fact, I've had lot of fun with it, and I think that the rules for moving opponents around are some of the best and most fun additions to the D&D game in a very long time. Slide an opponent over to a Defender. Slide an opponent into a persistent spell effect. Slide an opponent away from the Wizard. And yes, slide an opponent off of a staircase or a cliff.

So far the movement hasn't generated many terrain utilizing kills, and in the cases where it has the opponent has already been damaged so it didn't feel as much like an exploit as like an apt 'finisher' to a battle.

Re: The physics and/or statistics of falling damage
Remember that Hit Points are abstractions. There is no reason to play a fall as a "face plant" just because the damage dice come up at maximum. Play it to the effect. The character fell and was wounded. What is cartoony about that?
That should help with the supposed "cartoony" aspect of falling in 4e. Another way to get away from this cartoony feel is to welcome the power of plot. It's not fun to have your character die from a 20' fall. So granting the player characters the advantages of plot armor (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor) shouldn't been seen as cartoony, it should be seen as story enhancing. And as another person above has pointed out, the same Wizard who can fall 20', take max damage, and walk away from it can also take more than a single blow from a longsword before dying. Both are improbable, but were I to have to make a judgment on the two I'd have to say that I can easily see a person surviving a 20' fall, but I have a much harder time seeing a person survive even a solid blow from a longsword. Again, Hit Points are abstractions, but if realism must be brought into things then both combat and falling should be viewed as being equally cartoony, and that spans much more than just 3.x and 4e, but AD&D and many non-D&D RPGs as well.

Helgraf
2008-06-30, 12:23 AM
I can see a Xykon-esque BBEG figuring out how far away to put the hidey-hole. "That goblin made it 25 feet before the pain became unbearable, throw in the next! I want a full statistical analysis for maximum optimal distance by morning!"

Welcome to Overlord Training, young padawan...

Telok
2008-06-30, 11:36 AM
So how many ways beyond simple climbing are there to get out of a 40 foot deep pit?

A pit that deep should keep a random adventurer out of combat for three to five rounds and is easily created and (lightly) covered by (not very heavy) kobolds. Those same kobolds should be at least organized enough for two pushers to gang up on a single adventurer, and taking the cleric or fighter out of the fight for that long makes the fight much more dangerous. The bottom of the pit can even be padded to halve the damage for clumsy kobolds, it's not designed to kill anyways. The kobolds are even smart enough to stay within a single move of the pit so they can try to chuck the adventurer back in when he climbs out.

Are there enough options for players that a simple hole and basic tactics won't reduce a player to athletics checks for four rounds?

Chronos
2008-06-30, 12:02 PM
So how many ways beyond simple climbing are there to get out of a 40 foot deep pit?

A pit that deep should keep a random adventurer out of combat for three to five rounds and is easily created and (lightly) covered by (not very heavy) kobolds.Or make it lizardfolks or locathahs, and fill the pits with water. Both of those are usually found in watery areas anyway, and a 20 or 30 foot deep pool of water is a pretty big deal for someone in heavy armor. You can either keep your armor on and try to swim out at a heavy penalty, which keeps you out of the fight indefinitely unless you're a really good swimmer, and risks drowning, or you can take your armor off quickly (which still takes time) before swimming out, in which case when you do get out, you don't have your armor on any more. And if one of the lizardfolk gets pushed in, hey, no big deal, they're good swimmers.

Yahzi
2008-07-01, 12:49 AM
If you keep killing off PCs in impossible challenges, I suspect you will very soon be telling a story to yourself.
That's covered over in the "How to run a free-form D&D game" thread. I don't set challenges; the players pick their own challenges.


And (I know you were joking, but) I tend to help my PCs accomplish difficult or impossible physical tasks, not because it happens in movies, but because wizards cast fireballs.
In my world HPs are real. So Fighters really can jump out of an airplane without a parachute and walk away from it. That helps a bit, and it explains why high-level Fighters can do stuff ordinary people can't.

ashmanonar
2008-10-31, 05:46 PM
I think ther problem here is once again the non-concrete concept of hit-points. Hit points are, and have been for a while, an abstract measurement that does not directly correlate to physical damage. Getting swiped by a sword for 10 hp of damage does necessarily mean a character took any damage at all; they potentially completely ducked the blow and the hit-point "damage" accounts for them being less likely to be able to avoid the next swipe, up until the point where they're tired, their luck runs out, and the enemy strikes true. It's equally valid to say that the blows are all superficial scrapes and grazes, or any other justification for how someone can sustain what seems like an awful large amount of damage without dropping.

So, a wizard falling two stories and taking max damage doesn't directly translate to "landing on face." He landed hard, obviously (and thus became bloodied, which makes sense), but not fatally. And on a fall that does the least damage means he had a lucky break and grabbed a hold of something on the way down or landing in a roll. Had the fall killed him, sure, he landed on his face. That's all narrative imbellishment anyway. The fact to keep in mind is that the max HP damage that can be taken by a character from a fall does not equate to the worst damage the fall can cause. If the fall does enough damage to kill a character, then they took the full brunt of it, 2 HP or 20 HP fall, doesn't matter. If the character died from the fall, then they ended up landing on their face. If it does max, but doesn't kill the character, the character scraped through somehow.

I have a friend who, during college, fell out of his loft bed, and quite literally fell 6 feet and landed on his face.

He spent months in hospital, getting reconstructive surgery, and has quite a bit of titanium in his face now.

So landing on your "face," to me, is nothing more than narrative embellishment. You can survive a moderate fall onto your face with nothing more than some damage.

(Side note: I once did the EXACT SAME THING, falling 6 feet out of my loft bed. I landed on hands and knees, did not even wake up, climbed back into my loft, and fell back to sleep. He nearly hit me when I told him this.)

Swordguy
2008-10-31, 05:51 PM
I have a friend who, during college, fell out of his loft bed, and quite literally fell 6 feet and landed on his face.


http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n294/wolffe42/necro.jpg

(Been waiting for a chance to use this...)

Oracle_Hunter
2008-10-31, 05:53 PM
Again, with the Thread Necromancy!

http://www.game-warden.com/starfox/Non_SF_related_stuff/JS47/Thread_Necromancy.jpg

Inyssius Tor
2008-10-31, 07:36 PM
Hmm. Kind of disturbing that I read two pages of this before I went wait, this seems vaguely familiar...

Artanis
2008-10-31, 08:10 PM
Oh come on, the thread isn't THAT...

*sees posting date*

...nevermind.

:smalltongue:

Roderick_BR
2008-10-31, 08:13 PM
Especially when there are multiple enemies and each one has a pushing ability. Just seems like there should be some other way of resisting it to me.
Return of the commoner railgun?