A mecânica central

Atualização dupla no site da WotC: Uma coluna meio boba da Dragon onde Rob Heinsoo, Andy Collins, and James Wyatt falam de sua história com o D&D; e uma pequena coluna Design & Development em que Matthew Sernett fala sobre o núcleo do sistema d20:

Grab a d20. Roll high.

That’s the basic rule of 4th Edition just as it was in 3rd Edition, but the new edition puts that mechanic more solidly in the core of the game than ever.

Ever faced one of those life-or-death saving throws? Hours, weeks, or even years of play can hang in the balance. It all comes down to that one roll. There’s drama in that moment, but it’s drama you didn’t create, and you don’t want.

That’s gone in the new edition.

Have you played a spellcaster and been a little envious of the excitement of other players when they roll critical hits? Have you wished that you could do that for your spells?

You can in 4th.

Have you ever had some confusion or miscalculation about your normal AC versus your touch and flat-footed AC?

You won’t have to worry about it.

If you want to know whether or not you succeed in doing some action in 4th Edition, you grab a d20 and try to roll high. Just as in 3rd Edition, you add a modifier to that roll from your character sheet, and you check for any extra bonuses or penalties from the situation or from your allies. The key difference in the new edition is what you roll for and what you add.

The standard defenses remain (AC, Fortitude, Reflex, and Will) but now they all work more like AC. When a dragon breathes fire on you, it attacks your Reflex and deals half damage if it misses. The DM rolls a d20, adds the dragon’s modifiers, and asks you what your Reflex score is. The dragon might roll a 1 and automatically miss no matter how much tougher it is than you, but there’s also the frightening possibility that it will roll a 20 and deal double damage.

Folks familiar with the new Star Wars Saga system will recognize this concept, but it’s evolved a bit to better suit D&D. In 4th Edition, when a creature only needs to touch you to deliver an attack, it targets your Reflex. When you’re surprised, you grant combat advantage, but you don’t need to look at a special AC on your sheet — the normal number works fine. When a pit suddenly opens up beneath your feet, you make a check to jump out of danger, but if a crossbow trap fires an arrow at you, it the bolt attacks your AC.

What we mean when we talk about streamlining the system is this: making design decisions that make learning and using the game less difficult, while keeping the system just as robust. And making it more fun as the result.

Artigo bem breve mesmo, mas que é bacana por ser direto e trazer mais informações sobre a Classe de Armadura e os testes de Resistência – que agora se parecem mais com a defesa proporcionada pela CA. Ataques de toque também já eram, pena eu gostava deles, mas agora será tudo um grande teste de Reflexos. Interessante!

Fiquei com a impressão que a Classe de Armadura vai começar a subir à medida que o personagem ganha níveis, assim como os testes de Resistência, do jeito que funciona no Star Wars Saga.

Encontros não-combativos

Como tem se tornado rotina Dave Noonan postou em seu blog uma ótima discussão sobre os desafios não-combativos, que acho que será útil não apenas a quem se interessa por D&D ou pela nova edição, mas a todo mestre que se interesse um pouco pelo assunto das recompensas e opções narrativas:

Noncombat Challenges: Today’s work is mostly spent on the end state: How do you know you’re at the end of the encounter, and what are the consequences (both game and narrative) for success and failure?

Those end-state elements are so obvious in most combat encounters that we take them for granted. Most of the time, you know when the fight is over, and you know what the consequences were for both the winners and losers.

It’s a little muddier for noncombat challenges. The successful end state of a wilderness trek is pretty obvious–you reach your destination. But the failure end state? It should probably be something more satisfying than “you all get lost and die of exposure.” The failure should hurt, absolutely–but it shouldn’t be a narrative dead-end (on a one-way street, no less).

And just like real life, things get muddier still when you’re talking social interactions. At what point does the Duke make up his mind and no amount of further talk will sway him? (And if you think the players naturally stop talking at that point, well, you have very different players than I do.) If you tick off the Duke, what’s the consequence of that, both in a game-mechanics sense and in terms of the narrative?

Those are tricky questions. Fundamentally, they’re questions whose answers get generated at your table, not in the DMG. But we’re going to lay down some principles that guide challenge design–whether you’re designing ahead of time or making it up as you go along. Right now, the manuscript suggests five principles for noncombat challenges.

Right now, the principle I’m working under is “Success and failure have both game consequences and narrative consequences.” One of the implications is that success isn’t just its own reward in a narrative sense. Success also gets you the same cool stuff that a combat encounter would get you. If you engage in a big debate with the Duke and convince him to help you secure the borderlands, you earn experience and treasure just as if you’d faced a combat challenge of equivalent difficulty.

Whoa. Treasure? Yes–sort of. In a lot of noncombat challenges, there’s no way to directly provide treasure at the challenge’s conclusion. To use the wilderness trek example, it would be a little weird to say, “You’ve reached your destination…and there’s a big pile of gold there, too.” But any DM worth his salt will defer that treasure and sneak it back into the adventure in a spot that makes sense.

What about social stuff? Does that mean you earn experience and cold, hard cash just for talking to NPCs as a matter of course? No. The point is that a noncombat challenge has to be a challenge. The situation must be meaningful, the outcome must be in doubt, and there must be some element of risk. If those elements aren’t all present, you’re just talking. You might be learning useful stuff, and you might be having fun. But no XP for that.

And just for fun, here’s another one of the five principles: “Noncombat challenges test multiple PCs in multiple ways.” Not exactly shocking or radical, but it’s something we’re taking seriously. To use the social encounter example, it’s useful if the party has a “face man,” but a face man alone isn’t a “We win” button.

Mood: Q: If they can teleport like that, what do their jails look like? A: Graveyards.
Music: Maria Rita, Maria Rita

Alguns questionamentos muito bons no post. É claro que uma falha feia em um teste de Sobrevivência deveria deixar o grupo perdido e em péssimos lençóis, mas isso é divertido? Uma das preocupações que eu tenho tido nos últimos anos é com essa idéia de nem sempre ter que fazer algo certo mas sempre tentar fazer algo divertido. Claro nem sempre funciona, mas acho que é um parâmetro bacana para se seguir em um jogo de RPG.

A própria reflexão que os testes e encontros tem conseqüências além das mecânicas é ótima, e para ser sincero eu não vejo isso nos livros de Dungeons & Dragons com freqüência – embora seja um tema até batido nos bons fóruns. Enfim todo o sistema novo de desafios não-combativos, em especial os sociais está parecendo ótimo, e espero que eles não pisem na bola e me decepcionem, já que as expectativas estão muito altas aqui.

E por falar em decepção o nossa amigo Noonan estava ouvindo Maria Rita….

Desafios de Perícias

David Noonan postou em seu blog alguns conceitos que estão sendo desenvolvidos com as pericias no D&D quarta edição. Vou roubar descaradamente a tradução relâmpago feita no Covil.

Trabalho Diário: Algo para o DMG que chamamos de “skill challenges” (”desafios de perícias”), “extended challenges” (”desafios extendidos”) e “complex challenges” (”desafios complexos”). E se estamos chamando assim estas três coisas, você provavelmente pode adivinhar para onde estamos indo com o sistema. A parte que me empolga é que estas regras representam um aumento na amplitude daquilo que constitui um encontro divertido e desafiador. Se conseguirmos instituir isso, nós daremos maior variedade para os jogadores e um pouco mais de liberdade narrativa para o mestre enquanto ele estiver usando seu chapéu de “escritor de aventuras”.

E estou tentando feito louco manter o sistema simples o bastante para ser algo improvisável para um mestre com um pouco de experiência. Esta será a parte complicada, com certeza.

Design de Encontros

A última edição da série de artigos Design & Development apresenta um artigo do Mike Mearls sobre as mudanças no sistema de construção de encontros – que agora parte do pressuposto que a maioria dos encontros terão o número de monstros igual ao número de personagens, e as implicações desta mudança:

The encounter serves as the basic building block of a D&D adventure. In the old days, DMs used their experience, judgment, and sense of drama to build encounters. The 3rd Edition of D&D gave us challenge ratings and encounter levels. They were great tools, but they assumed that the party fought only one monster. In 4th Edition, we’re doing things a bit different. We’re shifting to a system that assumes a number of monsters equal to the number of characters. This change has a few major implications for encounter design:

1. Superior Accuracy: Before we can talk about encounter design, it’s important to note that while 3rd Edition’s CR system is a useful measuring tool, it isn’t always an accurate one. A monster’s AC, hit points, special attacks, and damage all combine to determine its level. In the old days, we relied on a designer’s best guess to match a creature to a CR. While designating a creature’s level is still an art, designating a creature’s level now has more science behind it. By creating robust progressions of attack bonus, damage, and AC, level has become a much more accurate and robust measure of a monster’s power. This step is critically important, as it now allows us a lot more accuracy in determining the threat an encounter presents.
2. More Monsters: Rather than pick one monster, you now select a group of critters. The interplay between monsters is a little more important in design. In 3rd Edition, you had to turn to significantly weaker monsters to put a pair or more creatures into a fight. Unless these monsters had significant advantages when working together, an individual character easily outclassed an individual monster in such a group. In 4th Edition, an individual creature (of a level comparable to the PC) has the AC, attack bonus, and hit points to remain a threat during a fight.
3. Monster Roles: Monsters have roles that define the basics of how they fight. The role functions in only the broadest terms. It dictates a few basic measures of a monster but describes, rather than proscribes, how its abilities work. The real strength of a role is that it gives designers a few basic targets to shoot at it in design, ensuring that every monster we make fits in with the rest of the creatures in the whole game. For instance, monsters that are good at ranged attacks love to have a beefy wall of brutes in front of them to hold back the adventurers. Roles allow you to focus in on the right monster for the encounter and spot obvious combinations.
4. Hazards: Traps, hazards, dangerous terrain, and other complications have a clearer place in the battlefield. The 3rd Edition of D&D gave us one “monster unit” to play with. In other words, the game assumed that the encounter consisted of four PCs against one monster. If you had five PCs, you had to figure out how to get 1.25 “monsters” into the encounter. Even worse, that system had to express traps, hazards, and other dangers as full monster units. It was difficult at best to mechanically represent something that was never meant to stand alone. In 4th Edition, each monster represents only a portion of the encounter. That makes it much easier to design green slime, pit traps, whirling blades, fountains that spray acid, and crumbling stone walls. One such hazard can simply take the place of one monster, leaving you with three or four monsters in the encounter. Since monster level is a more rigorous measure of power, we can turn those measures and scales around and use them to create environmental hazards, traps, set pieces, and other interesting tactical twists.

Putting it All Together

What does all this mean for encounter design in 4th Edition? When you build an encounter, you can begin from several different premises. You can start with a cool monster, find creatures that make good “teammates” for it, and run with that. For instance, you’ve always wanted to throw a medusa at the party. Looking at her stats, abilities, and role, you can then pick out other creatures that make her a tougher nut to crack. Of course, you could always throw a couple medusas at the characters and have a little sculpture party.

Alternatively, you can start with a basic idea of how you want the encounter to proceed, pick out monsters based on level and role, and throw that at the party. Let’s say that the party wizard hasn’t had sufficient trouble thrown his way recently. Ranged attackers always make life difficult for spellslingers, so you can pick out a few of them based on role. To keep the fight busy, a monster with a lot of abilities to hinder and slow down PCs fits the bill. As a cherry on top of this anti-wizard sundae, you can finish the encounter with a lurker who hides from the party, sneaks past the fighter, and springs from the shadows to chop down the caster. The key here is that, without knowing exactly which monsters to use, you have an idea of which types of critters you want.

How you fit hazards into an encounter is perhaps the most important aspect of encounter design in 4th Edition, and it brings us to the third way you can build encounters. You can now more easily add dynamic elements to an encounter and account for cool special effects, hazards, and traps. Those elements are, in mechanics terms, equal to a monster. They fit seamlessly into the encounter design and XP rules by taking up one creature’s slot. If you want to throw in more hazards, simply reduce the monster count and increase the number of hazards present in the encounter.

If you’re like me, and you read too many comics and watch too many movies for your own good, you like to pull out set pieces and crazy terrain to throw at the party. A swaying rope bridge battered by howling air elementals fits under the encounter building system. A burning building that collapses around the PCs as they fight the evil hobgoblin wizard fills a similar role, as does a bizarre altar to Vecna that randomly teleports characters around the room. Hazards, traps, and other dangers simply fill in for one or more creatures in a fight.

By expanding the tools and making them work well together, 4th Edition presents a more robust, flexible, extensible, and exciting set of encounter tools. If the 3rd Edition’s presentation of CR was the first step to taking some of the mystery out of encounter design, the 4th Edition builds on that core to produce a more accurate tool, along with additional uses for that tool.

Parece muito bom! Queria que ele explicasse um pouco mais como o sistema de Challenge Rating se tornou mais exato, porque atualmente é uma área um tanto nebulosa e arbitrária da criação de encontros. Encontros com mais monstros e com alguma sinergia entre eles são uma idéia excelente, e mesmo que alguns mestres e até aventuras prontas já façam isso, é muito bom ver isso integrado as regras oficiais e abre novas portas no design, assim como os papéis dos monstros, uma idéia bacana e que parece que vai facilitar muito na construção dos encontros. Acho que esse será o principal tema do próximo podcast : )

As armadilhas e ameaças de terreno e ambiente também contam no CR dos encontros, possibilitando uma mistura interessante sem zoar demais com o nível de desafio, como atualmente um poço ou algo do tipo pode mudar totalmente o rumo do combate, mas não é considerado seriamente no calculo do CR. Acho que o sistema de CR e construção de encontros com base nos papéis dos monstros será um dos pontos altos da nova edição, expandindo com conceito interessante da edição atual de forma a se tornar mais flexível e divertido.

Críticos de Magia? (E Forgotten também)

O Rich Baker fez um post falando de Forgotten Realms e tal, que eu nem vou comentar muito porque não estou muito por dentro das mudanças do cenário (só sei que eles vão avançar uns bons anos na timeline e passar o rodo em um monte de deuses), que até então estava bem sem graça. Só que no finalzinho da parada ele comenta que na última sessão do jogo do Dave Noonan ele teve dois acertos críticos usando a boa e velha Bola de Fogo!

Speaking of sunshine, here’s a nice little ray of it I can share with everybody today: We’ve managed to book Ed Greenwood for 50,000 words of the new 4th Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. You might wonder why that would be something that even be remotely in question, but the fact is that Ed’s a very busy guy with a number of other writing commitments (most notably for our own Forgotten Realms novels!) so it took some scheduling gymnastics on our part to make sure we could have him for a couple of months of writing time.

In light of that, our story team had a good meeting specifically about FR yesterday afternoon. We reviewed our original revision plans (they’re almost two years old) and talked about where we are with the porject, and we kicked around the question of how much “course correction” we want to make now that you fans have responded to some of the big reveals at the end of the Grand History. We’re not pitching the plan and starting over (if that’s what you were hoping for, sorry, ain’t gonna happen), but we are definitely tweaking the plan to speak to some of the how-can-this-still-be-the-Realms! concerns that are out there. I like where we got to, and I think most of you will too.

A brief playtest note from last night’s game, DM’d by Dave Noonan: I rolled not one, but *two* critical hits with fireball attack rolls last night. The second actually one-shotted a tough troglodyte skirmisher; just smoked him outright, full hp to dead in one go. Oh, and I had a great initiative roll, so it was the very first thing that happened in the fight. Hee hee hee! Scoring criticals with attack spells is *fun.* My warlord/wizard sure feels like he kicks some butt!

Críticos com magias de ataque! Isso vai ser lindo, ainda mais agora que não precisa mais confirmar o crítico… Isso vai ser muito divertido, porém por outro lado significa que você tem que rolar para acertar as magias de ataque, o que ainda que interessante, pode ser bem frustrante – imagina errar Mísseis Mágicos? Além do mais essa é mais uma das mudanças que não exatamente torna o jogo mais simples e rápido né? Mas eu curti : )

Certamente uma mudança que será incorporada no D&D Miniatures e que vai tornar os magos e seus danos automáticos mais dependentes da sorte!