And when complex areas arise, we use a white board with generalizations, just like we did back in 2nd Edition.
That's cool, and I've done that myself also many times in 1e and 2e, but generalizations != rules. For small areas, yes, you're 100% right that it works fine because there's no doubt where everyone is located. But 20 x 30 is practically fighting in a closet. But maybe try larger areas and see how the core rules work.
I've tried bigger areas RAW... and if you want to follow the rules to the letter, it becomes somewhat problematic and then the fudging starts. For example, a Sleep spell. To settle discrete positioning we had to improvise and use the RAW with the addition of squares, because there was doubt as to how many monsters were in the 20 foot sphere. We decided all AoEs affect whichever squares they overlap and everyone "owns" one or more squares and fills them completely for purposes of targetting. Sure, that worked okay and settles most disputes on targetting, etc. but once again, it's not RAW in this playtest and that's what I want the devs to understand if they read this.
IMO grid based movement is not just something that would be nice as a module, it could be a necessity depending on how you write the movement, positioning and AoE rules. And it does not in anyway preclude imaginative, descriptive combats.
Not ripping on Malachy19 here in any way, so Malachy, please don't take offense, but it seems to me there are a lot of folks doing this playtest who seem to be playing the game and reporting on whether it was fun or not, but they don't seem to be concerned with actually TESTING the rules as thoroughly.
Hopefully over time enough people will actually dig into rules in a serious way and see what they can break ... that's how we can help remove or improve bad elements and make a better game. This is no dig on anyone, I just guess I just go into playtesting with a more methodical, rules-based approach than others do. And yeah, there is plenty of room for folks who want to test more abstract or subjective stuff like "was it fun?" "how did it make me feel?" "do I want to play more?"
OD&D, 1E and 2E challenged the player. 3E challenged the character, not the player. Now 4E takes it a step further by challenging a GROUP OF PLAYERS to work together as a TEAM. That's why I love 4E.
"Your ability to summon a horde of celestial superbeings at will is making my ... BMX skills look a bit redundant."
Faster. Yes. So let's look at what that can give us in terms of a ROLE PLAYING GAME.
First and foremost, more story. More time to develop a story arc. More time to let your choices (and not just in combat) matter. I have a hard time understanding those that complain about non-meaningful choices. Choices are only meaningful if they can impact the gaming world you're playing in, via killing a bad guy to befriending a merchant. Less combat time equals more time to role play, and thus create meaningful choices for your character. Some may disagree, but I'll go under the assumption you get to play for 10 hours a session and play once or twice a week. If so, good for you. But for the majority of players I know, once a week for 2-4 hours is all we get. Hence, faster combat for us means more storyline accomplished.
Secondly, faster combat enables more opportunities for your player to shine. We had seven encounters and exploration and role play in three hours. And this was with a group that's never played together. Each combat lasted anywhere from 2 to 7 rounds. That's a lot of opportunities to "shine." When a turn is only 3 minutes, I don't need to shine each time.
Lastly, with fast combat comes the chance to experiment. And an experiment is just that. It may work. It may not. But, it's generally fun to try. In a system where a player only gets one chance per 20-30 minutes, they are more reluctant to experiment with equipment, environment, tactics, or crazy ideas.
I do not see how any of the above could equal boring. In my opinion (and many others I spoke to at con this weekend), it proved just the opposite.
There is nothing wrong with fast ... in fact I can give a list of things that 4E stumbled on that caused the slowdown that if stripped out would have shifted combats from 1 hour back down to 15 minutes.
Fast is good!
But not at the expense of fun combat mechanics that engage players with dynamic meaningful choices.
For example I can say "resolve all combats with a coin flip" ... thats REALLY fast. but is it fun?
End of the day when you look at the core porducts of D&D the vast majority of them are written around combat, and all the rules, mechnics, and mini games that are in place to make it fun.
PHB ~ race, class, weapons, spells ... these are easily 90%+ mechanics that present and resolve in combat DMG ~ guidelines for what to do in wacky combats like underwater or arial, how to resolve death fro combats, in older editions how to reward combats (magic/loot) MM ~ A book of things to fight in combat
Yes ... thre are smatterings of RP on the MM, and PHB, and the DMG traditionally spends the some time on how to craft a story for players. Lets just not forget that all three pillars of D&D are not equal in terms of rules.
No one is buying a PHB, DMG, and MM to learn how to RP. Nor are the buying it for details on worlds to explore. Those are aspects that the DM and your individual group bring. So when we purchase a product set of combat rules and the combat rules are boring ... thats an issue.
And just because we focus on combat in this thread says nothing about the other pillars of D&D. You can RP the same in 1E as you can in 2E, 3E, 4E or soon 5E. Rules never have and never will constrain RP, and exploration is always simply limited by your DMs imagination.
Fun combats are always too short and boring combats are always too long. Know what I mean?
OD&D, 1E and 2E challenged the player. 3E challenged the character, not the player. Now 4E takes it a step further by challenging a GROUP OF PLAYERS to work together as a TEAM. That's why I love 4E.
"Your ability to summon a horde of celestial superbeings at will is making my ... BMX skills look a bit redundant."
Fun combats are always too short and boring combats are always too long. Know what I mean?
lol
Okay fine ... add "subjective time" in to complicate things!
Now I wonder if 5E fights took 15 minutes or actually 5 minutes but felt three times longer ...
(Mind blown)
OD&D, 1E and 2E challenged the player. 3E challenged the character, not the player. Now 4E takes it a step further by challenging a GROUP OF PLAYERS to work together as a TEAM. That's why I love 4E.
"Your ability to summon a horde of celestial superbeings at will is making my ... BMX skills look a bit redundant."
I know a lot of people are saying combat is boring because they are too fast and people just go "swing swing dead." I think that players are jaded. We are used to rules in place to make things interested. However, when I ran my adventure, with the simpler rules and the lack of rules and quicker combats, I was able to make the combat a lot of fun for the players. And it is entirely up to the DM to do so. I had a list of every PCs armor class so I did not need to ask if I hit. that made things run a lot quicker and more thematic. Instead of just saying "you take 12 damage" add some flair to it!
Malachy19 this just means you earned your keep as a DM.
You added spice and players would have had fun even if you were just flipping coins to determine hits. However imagine a world where you were abducted by aliens and a robot version of you was left that just adjucated damage / attacks per RAW.
5E at that point is pretty much swing one (maybe twice) and then next combat.
Now look at all the tactics games (quite a few on cell phones these days) where player moves a character and attacks monsters on a chessboard of random terrain. With absolutely NO DM around to add spice, a lot of people will still play those games as they hold a certain level of interest for the "wargamer lite" crowd and that really was 4E at its heart (even though it stumbled in places).
Most of the "fun" concept could simply be that in the absence of a DM that knows what they are doing and how to engage and tell a story well (i.e. a LOT of DMs starting off) is the game iteself still fun enough to play that people will stick around and grow into the skills needed to do the crazy DM spice stuff like you do?
People should not expect there to be a magic surplus of awesome DMs lying about waiting to guide along every group. Eventually we have to acknowledge that NEW GAMERS exist and a group of kids picking up 5E for the first time just like folkds did with D&D decades ago need to be excited about playing it. Today kids are much more sophisticated then they were back then abd have way more exposure to compex game mechanics so D&D cant do somethign half baked and hope to get by on "the only RPG product on the market" concept.
Faster. Yes. So let's look at what that can give us in terms of a ROLE PLAYING GAME.
First and foremost, more story. More time to develop a story arc. More time to let your choices (and not just in combat) matter. I have a hard time understanding those that complain about non-meaningful choices. Choices are only meaningful if they can impact the gaming world you're playing in, via killing a bad guy to befriending a merchant. Less combat time equals more time to role play, and thus create meaningful choices for your character. Some may disagree, but I'll go under the assumption you get to play for 10 hours a session and play once or twice a week. If so, good for you. But for the majority of players I know, once a week for 2-4 hours is all we get. Hence, faster combat for us means more storyline accomplished.
Secondly, faster combat enables more opportunities for your player to shine. We had seven encounters and exploration and role play in three hours. And this was with a group that's never played together. Each combat lasted anywhere from 2 to 7 rounds. That's a lot of opportunities to "shine." When a turn is only 3 minutes, I don't need to shine each time.
Lastly, with fast combat comes the chance to experiment. And an experiment is just that. It may work. It may not. But, it's generally fun to try. In a system where a player only gets one chance per 20-30 minutes, they are more reluctant to experiment with equipment, environment, tactics, or crazy ideas.
I do not see how any of the above could equal boring. In my opinion (and many others I spoke to at con this weekend), it proved just the opposite.
There is nothing wrong with fast ... in fact I can give a list of things that 4E stumbled on that caused the slowdown that if stripped out would have shifted combats from 1 hour back down to 15 minutes.
Fast is good!
But not at the expense of fun combat mechanics that engage players with dynamic meaningful choices.
For example I can say "resolve all combats with a coin flip" ... thats REALLY fast. but is it fun?
End of the day when you look at the core porducts of D&D the vast majority of them are written around combat, and all the rules, mechnics, and mini games that are in place to make it fun.
PHB ~ race, class, weapons, spells ... these are easily 90%+ mechanics that present and resolve in combat DMG ~ guidelines for what to do in wacky combats like underwater or arial, how to resolve death fro combats, in older editions how to reward combats (magic/loot) MM ~ A book of things to fight in combat
Yes ... thre are smatterings of RP on the MM, and PHB, and the DMG traditionally spends the some time on how to craft a story for players. Lets just not forget that all three pillars of D&D are not equal in terms of rules.
No one is buying a PHB, DMG, and MM to learn how to RP. Nor are the buying it for details on worlds to explore. Those are aspects that the DM and your individual group bring. So when we purchase a product set of combat rules and the combat rules are boring ... thats an issue.
And just because we focus on combat in this thread says nothing about the other pillars of D&D. You can RP the same in 1E as you can in 2E, 3E, 4E or soon 5E. Rules never have and never will constrain RP, and exploration is always simply limited by your DMs imagination.
You are correct. There is nothing wrong with fast. There is nothing wrong with slow either. It's what you like.
I will disagree with you about 4e. There is nothing you can do to strip it down to 15 minutes. I have played Encounters now every season. I have had roughly 10 different DM's (myself included). We have between 30-40 people playing, many of whom are extremely experienced. Everyone knows their characters except newbies. Never, ever, ever have I seen a 15 or 30 minute combat. Maybe 1 or 2 45 minute ones. After that it's 1-2 hours, no matter what. That's 1st level combat. Crazy, I know, but true.
In our home game it's the same thing. Two different home games, two different groups. One of them prefers fast combat. We actually use a timer. It's still over an hour for 5th level combat.
In the end, all it boils down to is whether people want options or not. You add options, you slow things down. That's why chess takes longer than checkers. It'll just be a matter of preference.
Flanking is a good example ... its a simple keyword, opens up options to players, and creates a mini game in combat for those with that mechanic of "how do I get flanking this turn" as monsters and players dance around the battle. In gridless, you loose all complicated concepts of positioning to to there basic catagories (out of ranged combat, ranged combat, in melee combat) with a move action between them pretty much.
In its place you shift from player control of I take action X to enable my character to do Y back to DM control of "mother may I get ..."
While its not obvious to players who have not DMed and see these two situations as the same (isn't the DM adjucating whether or not combat advantage exists to allow sneak attack?) there is a big difference.
1) TABLE COST in DM time. I can't stress this enough. Having clear rules that allow players to understand and mover forward in combat without a DM holding there hand is like distributed processing in computers. Things go faster. Each time a player asks "mother may I ..." to a DM that DM has to stop whetever else they are workign on. For the non DM in the crowd, if you think your DM is actually THINKING about you during your combat turn you are likely wrong. Far more often a DM is mentally scrambling to update plot points, or adjust the NPCs to some crazy scheme a players has tried to pull off. Interupting the DM multitasking with questions that SHOULD have been crystal clear and simple in the rules on how they occur is a bad thing ...
2) PLAYER PARTICIPATION ... players who feel more in control of their characters actions and destiny becoem more attached to them and allows a DM to coax out the RP in even the most stubborn combat happy player. The "mother may I ... " is a level of abstraction that further distances the players. Instead of you playing as a rogue in your example knowing OFF your turn how to get flanking to enable your sneak attack you now twiddle your thumbs and wait until ON your turn to ask "mother may I ...". This puts you even as a simple rogue character in a postion of not thinking about what your character will do during your downtime in a round. That is bad overall for attention spans especially if on your turn the actions are massively repetitive. Players will disengage and stop paying attention the "mostly benevolent overlord DM" and to the "one true overlord cell phones" and such.
3) RETURN TO NEGATIVE INTERACTIONS ... eventually even in a world of "DM's are supposed to say yes" a DM will say no. When that happens if you have a shared set of rules a DM can act as an arbitrator and say somethig like "you can't get flanking because it requires X, Y, and Z per rules and you did not meet those requirements". In the 1E / 2E tradition the "no" is because the DM didn't like your "mother may I ...", now while some players can take rejection well, now one does all the time. I have run a weekly game from 2E up to 4E and been a player even longer in other games. Eventually even with the best of friends this "mother may I ... " leads to arguments and hurt feelings. From something as basic as your DM things race X is silly and bans then despite player Y liking them to player A has real world knowledge on something the DM doesnt and knows that somethign would work even though the DM denies it. Regardless of where the "no" comes from it comes with more hurt feelings and "you say yes to those other players so you must like them more than me" issues than are needed.
CLEAR RULES = LESS DRAMA = HAPPIER / FASTER / BETTER GAMING ...
Shadewyn, I completely agree with you. However, I'm sorry if I mislead you, we were using a grid. My issue was with the lack of a rule for flanking and not where I was positioned regarding the monster. The failure was mine in taking it for granted that flanking was in the rules for the playtest packet. I had not had time to review the rules for this packet. When I asked my DM if I could have an advantage, he was informing me that there were no rules for flanking, and therefore we would not be using them at this time. I think that an important way to reduce table cost in DM time is for the players to know, at least the core rules. I feel like many players think it's ok to just show up and let their DM spoonfeed them. I typically try to avoid this.
As for your second point, I feel that the gird helps me personally, but I can see the appeal of theater of the mind. I'm sure that it encourages RP in that you have to describe what you're doing and where you're moving. I think it is easier for me to see it on the grid so that I can decide what I will do on my turn and then modify my actions if need be based on the actions of the other characters. I think it is important for the player to stay focused while they wait on their turn. Using cell phones etc. is, I feel, disrespectful (unless in an emergency). Not only would this not be tolerated by the DM in our group, but also the other players.
As for your third point, typically our rules are clearly defined. If they are houserules, our DM usually consults the players during creation/initial application. I have experienced the "well that hurts my feelings" issue as well. Thus, I think it is important that 1) the rules be equally enforced across the board (the DM's girl/boyfriend SHOULDN'T get special treatment), 2) issues with rules etc. should be handled at an appropriate point in time (and during an encounter is not the time), and 3) issues outside the game should stay outside the game, issues inside the game should stay within the game. I feel obligated to say that I learned these rules the hard way, and it was as much my own fault as my DM's.
So, what I'm trying to say is, I feel that the problem is not always an issue with clarity of rules, and many times are likely a manifestation of the personalities of the DM/players and their relationships. Also, I do not feel that they have to do with a specific edition or system. These issues have been around since I started playing and probably since the creation of the game.
I will disagree with you about 4e. There is nothing you can do to strip it down to 15 minutes. I have played Encounters now every season. I have had roughly 10 different DM's (myself included). We have between 30-40 people playing, many of whom are extremely experienced. Everyone knows their characters except newbies. Never, ever, ever have I seen a 15 or 30 minute combat. Maybe 1 or 2 45 minute ones. After that it's 1-2 hours, no matter what. That's 1st level combat. Crazy, I know, but true.
Well here are some 4E tricks you may find helpful to shave off time.
Any gamer worth there salt knows that the way to gain power in 4E is to break the rule of standard action = attack. Minor, free, immediates, AoOs, granted actions, APs, etc ... Beyond the interuption of gameplay and stepping all over another players actions it slows the table down with extra rolls and the DM ressting and rewinding items for things that never happend due to immediates.
1) Ask players not to chose those builds (not always reasonable but sometimes it works) 2) Set up any non standard attack action to no longer have die rolls and just does average damage to it can be resolved in a few seconds instead of pondering a D20 and calculating a passel of bonuses and then checking hit status then damage rolls etc ...
Area effects are another sorce of table slowness ...
3) Rather than one check per monster ... roll one check per effect and it applies to all. Sure you may have a fireball of all crits or misses and things become more "swingy" but the resolution check is VERY quick. The DM doenst even have to track which number fromt eh player impacted which monster in a mixed group with differnt defenses. Just apply a number to all targets in the area.
Remind folks that in chess where you are rewarded for flawless moves, in D&D for storytelling reasosns its fun now and then to make a bad choice in the heat of battle. Accidentally catching an ally in a blast or missing the obvious flank target is fun when the rest of the table groans as you annouce the action.
4) For EXPERIENCED players remind them their turn is 6 seconds. Give them no more than 6 seconds to describe their action at the start of their turn or SKIP them for inaction that round as there character is paralyzed with indecision. The resolution after that is normally pretty quick with the other rules, a die hits the table and soem math later and all is good to go in less than a minute. This also has a side effect of making players pay a LOT of attention during off turns so they can choose well during tier turn, in case you have some folks they dont look at the map until its their action. 5) You can also encourage players to "preroll" their action for later tiers of play when the math numbers get a bit more complicated.
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none of those are massive house rule changes ... but you add them in (especially number 4 if you have an expereinced group of gamers like you say) and the 4E combats will move at turbo speed by comparison. it also adds a lot of hectic pace drama to fights if you like that.
I don't really see what the deffierence between attacking every round ... and using the same 4E at will power every round , is?
The fights were far from boring for me. Maybe the DMs you play with just arn't creative enough to make a fun fight. I use dirty tricks like swarming, traps, I over-exagerate the size and feel of my chieftain and warlords, I make orcish sounds, i SPEAK orcish, I'll get up and pretend to swing a sword etc.
That's what table-top role-playing is, its all about getting into character.
Most of all.... the DM needs to ENCOURAGE players to use the Advantage rule, he needs to demonstrate ideas on you can gain advantage... tumble through the ogre's legs, do a flip and land behind the kobold, indimidate your foes with a show of prowess, make your dwarf go into a viscious rage, throw your sword at the enemy if you lack a range weapon etc.. etc..
