Dungeons & Dragons 4.0, Part 2 (DMG)

I've been having some computer problems lately. I'm really feeling the limitations of my old laptop (512MB memory) whenever I try to do anything serious with it, so I might have to look into getting a new portable computer relatively soon. On my desktop, VirtualBox suddenly started crashing all the time and I was having problems when connecting through SSH. Fixing those issues has taken some time (turned out fixing one caused the other), but was quite necessary as I have certain plans that rely on both working (may they come to fruition some day!). None the less, here is the second part of D&D 4.0 part 2, covering the DMG. But before that...

Player's Handbook Addendum

... a thing that I forgot to mention in the previous D&D 4.0 post. Or rather, I mentioned it but did not give it the credit I feel it deserves. I'm talking about conditions and durations.

One of the things that annoyed me a fair deal in 3.x was the spells that had durations of one round per level. If you buffed yourself with several such spells, you usually had some five rounds or so before the duration of the first spells ended. Once that begun, you had to recalculate the total effects for all affected targets, usually once per round. Paperwork is hell for a DM, but it felt particularly true with these spells. You could deal with instant effects as they happened, and long-time effects could be considered permanent (for the duration of the battle, anyway) but effects with duration counted in rounds made life as a DM interesting, and the fact that many additionally overlapped (so effect X at +N ends, but Y with the weaker +M is still in effect, so adjust A by -N+M even as you adjust B by -N, and in two rounds you further adjust A by -M...) just made things worse.

4.0 seems to solve this through a few methods. I got the impression that there are less named bonuses and penalties, so you can often just apply effects for the length of their durations without having to worry too much about overlap. Speaking of durations... first, there seems to be a lot of effects that are effective only for one round, meaning that you can write it down and then just cross it off when it ends. Second, some effects last for as long as the initiator sustains them. Third, some effects are ongoing until the target saves against them (rolls 10+ on D20). All of this feels like some really great ideas when it comes to decreasing paperwork for the DM. The first two delegate the task of duration to the initiator, which is usually a player. As for the third, you can also just write down the ongoing effect and then cross it off when the target saves successfully. In short, the countdown durations seem all but gone. (And did you just forget to cross off a round?) All in all, these are all great improvements that will simplify running the game by a lot, and in my opinion you don't lose much, either.

And now for the DMG!

Dungeon Master's Guide

How to Be a DM: Not much to comment here. Feels a bit like the beginning of 3.5's DMG2. A useful chapter.

Running the Game:

This chapter also reads like something from 3.5's DMG2. That is a good thing, because DMG2 contained a lot more useful stuff for new DMs than the ordinary DMG (3.0 or 3.5) did.

Under Narration, there is a subheading called Realism. It brings out some good points... unfortunately, those two paragraphs seem to be essentially the only nod to realism the entire set (PHB, DMG, MM) contains. In general, it seems to me that 4.0 concentrates on being a skirmish game far too much, to the detriment of the roleplaying aspect. PHB had a fair deal of things (which I hope to get back to in the last post of part 2) that feel weird in a RPG but make perfect sense in a skirmish game. I'll point out particular issues in the DMG as I go on; there are a lot of them, and they by far constitute my biggest disappointment with 4.0.

Combat Encounters:

At the beginning of Combat Fundamentals/Running Combat, the DMG teaches us not to hit people when they're down. Good advice. Or? Well, no-one likes to see their helpless character get slaughtered. But realistically, any even reasonably smart opponent would make sure that once a character goes down, it stays down. I'm undecided on this one. If you want to run a realistic game. monsters should kill fallen opponents before someone heals them. If you want to keep your players happy, monsters should ignore fallen characters. The latter option seems to open a can of worms once the players start faking their characters' deaths and attack monsters in the rear... but maybe monsters can automatically tell the PCs' HPs in a skirmish game, so this is not going to be a problem? :-|

Under Additional Rules/Actions the Rules Don't Cover, there's a lot not to like. The problem is not that the table (which has been changed a lot in recent errata, but anyway) tells the DM how difficult a particular DC is for characters of a certain level--if it did that, everything would be fine, but it is clear that this is not the intent. No, it works the other way around: the DM is supposed to decide how difficult it should be, and set the DC accordingly... which is pretty FUBAR, from a realism perspective. Let's consider the example. Shiera the 8th-level rogue swings on a chandelier, who-hoo! We pick an easy DC of 20. Fair enough. Now, imagine that on the floor below, Shiera's little sister, who is a 1st-level rogue, does the exact same thing. For her, the DC is 15. And on the floor above, Shiera's big sister, who is a 30th-level rogue, does the exact same thing. For her, the DC is 30. Clearly, chandeliers come in heroic, paragon and epic versions; why else would the DC to do the same action differ? Except that if all three sisters attempt the same trick with the same chandelier, the DC will still differ for them. So it's a shapechanging chandelier. Or something. Absurd.

Similar issues come up in Precipitous Terrain under Additional Rules/Forced Movement and Terrain. Don't put 1st-level characters in a fight at the edge of an 80-foot cliff. Because a 80-foot fall is lethal to a 1st-level character. Good advice again, right? No! What if the players choose such a location as arena for a battle? Impossible? Are there no 80-foot cliffs while the PCs are low-level characters? They just pop some time later, around level 4 or so? Or do cliffs magically grow and shrink according to the PCs' level?

Building Encounters:

Encounter Components introduces the XP budget, which is a new way to balance your encounters so that they don't overwhelm the PCs. Assuming it also works in practice, this sounds pretty awesome. Even if it doesn't, it still deserves a big thumbs-up for being a new angle to solve a problem, rather than just an attempt at a fix of the old solution.

Non-combat Encounters:

Skill Challenges is the a new thing introduced in this chapter, and it seems like a pretty good thing. On the one hand, it just formalizes how a set of skill checks, taken together, will determine some eventual outcome. On the other hand, it formalizes how a set of skill checks, taken together, will determine some eventual outcome. I think it is really good to have a framework in place for this, but on the other hand it is not something really amazing, outstanding or new.

It is worth noticing that several things have been changed in 4.0.3 errata. One thing in particular that has changed is that the complexity rating now actually works. In 4.0, there was a sweet spot (70% success chance on skill check) after which it actually became more beneficial when the complexity increased, because the number of allowed failures increased as well. This has been changed, though, and the sweet spot no longer exists and more complex challenges are actually also more difficult. (Can't believe they didn't catch this one in play testing.)

However, there are also things that are difficult to like. First, the DMG implies that you should design challenges for the PCs. You know what skills your player characters are good at, so make sure to include some chances for every character to shine. Again, while it is amiable to do this as it gives all players something to do, it is not particularly realistic. If the DM wants to put a climbable cliff in the PCs' way and none of the PCs have Athletics, the DM must either drop the idea (cliffs evidently don't exist in this particular campaign) or come up with some way the PCs can, say, Bluff their way up the cliff, and neither is a particularly appealing alternative. Second, if the DM can't come up with any way a particular skill can be used in a challenge, it defaults to a hard DC, which will be a cause for frustration for players with unimaginative DMs (I really don't see how you can use Athletics to keep the door open, so if you insist it will be a hard DC to do so. Why don't you use Acrobatics to roll through the gap before it closes instead?). This seems to be somewhat improved in 4.0.3, though. Third, it is also presented inconsistently, with some paragraphs saying do this and others say do that and this and that don't really work together.

Adventures: Nothing of particular note in this chapter. Good stuff, if nothing outstanding. The map key gave a nice nostalgic flashback to D&D 1st Edition.

Rewards:

Nothing particularly exciting in this chapter either. Good basic stuff, most of it. There were three things that stood out, however.

Milestones. I don't know for sure yet, but I can't help but wonder what's the point? It seems to me that under most circumstances it will be more beneficial to rest rather than pressing on to reach a milestone.

Under Treasure, there is yet another realism-breaker. Evidently, lower-value coins start disappearing from dungeons once the character reach certain levels, and higher-value coins start appearing. I don't know, what can you say to something like that? I mean, I understand the metagame reasoning, but... duuuuu-uhh!??? The mind boggles...

Parcels. This one, on the other hand, is pure genius. All editions up until 4.0 have done some sort of random treasure generation. Sometimes you got something appropriate for the characters' levels, sometimes you did not. This does away with all that, and good riddance! There are some small fixes that can be done (like spreading out single parcels over several locations, so that not all the coinage in the dungeon is kept on the same monster) and some things that again are realism-breakers (if none of the PCs use a bow, evidently there cannot be a bow in a parcel), but other than that, excellent idea.

Campaigns: No comments here.

The World:

Not much in particular here, either. The new cosmology is a rather interesting break from the old one, and while I was pretty fond of the old one, I can't really find fault with the new one--it is much simplified but that does not have to be a bad thing. The artifacts seem a bit bland, but then they are only examples and not a comprehensive list.

The DM's Toolbox:

Nothing much worth commenting here, either. Useful stuff, for sure. Although... I can't help but think that Creating Monsters is, ultimately, very bland. In particular, I think it is rather lackluster how (almost) everything scales so completely according to (monster) level, which in turn is strongly related to the PCs' level... but I'll get back to this in the Conclusions post.

Fallcrest: I just skimmed this chapter, so I don't have much to comment here. I think that the chapter is intended to do double-duty as both a starting point and a set of various examples.