Saving the Saves

With D&D 4th Edition, Wizards of the Coast made a lot of changes to the old model in the name of speeding up combat and making the game simpler and more fun for all types of characters. A lot of these changes were good ideas, simplifying rules and streamlining combat. Others traded one form of complexity for another, to questionable effect. One that always kind of bothered me, though, was the the elimination of saving throws in favor of Non-AC Defenses, or "NADs" -- i.e. your Fortitude, Reflex, and Will.

What Was Changed?

To those not familiar with older editions, it used to be that when a character was struck by some sort of non-weapon attack (like a fireball being flung at them or being exposed to poison gas) then they were told to make a "saving throw" versus the type of attack. Depending on the edition, this took different forms -- older D&D used a basic roll, and characters had specific bonuses given the circumstances -- for example, being more resistant to poison would mean you got a bonus for "saves vs poison". In 3rd edition the throws were unified into three general categories -- Fortitude (physical resistance), Reflex (reaction and quickness), and Will (mental or spiritual toughness). Instead of a "Save vs Poison" a player would roll a "Fortitude Save" -- rolling 1d20 + their Fortitude Save Bonus. This was great because it simplified the number of potential modifiers the characters needed to keep track of, allowed the classes to advance at different rates (so fighters were more resistant to physical effects, but your rogue had a much better chance of dodging that fireball). Often the Save DC was a slightly complicated calculation based on the attackers Caster Level and relevant ability score.

With 4th Edition, WotC changed the system again. First, they moved the die roll from the defender to the attacker's side -- now instead of being hit by an effect and rolling the appropriate save, the attacker just rolls to hit your non-AC defense directly. If an attack had secondary effects, the defender would roll a "4e Save" -- roll 1d20, with you saving on a 10-20 and failing on a 1-9. Secondly, they essentially eliminated the varying scales at which different classes gained NADs in favor of mirroring the progressive gain over levels that you get with 4e Armor Class (10 + 1/2 Level + Ability +Misc  Bonuses). They even go a little further and group the attributes, so instead of CON/DEX/WIS determining your Fortitude/Reflex/Will, it's the largest of [STR/CON], [DEX/INT]. and [WIS/CHA]. This tends to flatten out characters a bit more (since now your wizard might be just as dodgy as your rogue and your wisecracking Bard might be able to resist vile suggestion as well as your stalwart Cleric -- better perhaps than your Paladin!); however, I don't know that that flattening is too much of a problem, because to some extent this happened indirectly in 3e because the class-based bonuses tended to be such a big factor. Besides, a lot of the more "Charismatic" people I know tend to be pretty pig-headed, so maybe it makes sense for them to have a high willpower.

What Was Gained?

First and foremost, you can definitely appreciate the aesthetic impact of having all of a character's attacks use the same model of "Roll to hit, roll for damage" regardless of whether they are basic AC attacks or more sophisticated attacks versus other defenses. I would be pretty darn hesitant for a player new to D&D to sit down and play a 3e Wizard, but with 4e it certainly seems a lot more accessible. This is doubly true when you consider the complexity of determining the save DCs for various effects. It could be simplified and automated even under the 3e model, but you have to appreciate at least somewhat the convenience of having them up front and easily derived.

This change also eliminates what I would consider one of the most well-intentioned but poorly-executed aspects of 3rd edition -- Touch AC. In 3e, some attacks (like a wizard flinging a lightening bolt) still required an attack roll to connect, but wouldn't be blocked by armor. Basically, the character could "dodge" the attack but not block it. Unfortunately, this had to be different from Reflex saves because to-hit, AC, and Save bonuses scaled differently. This involved players basically recalculating their AC, but only counting some sources. It was a pain and, while neat from a simulationist perspective, always tended to grind play to a halt while players recalculated everything because they never bothered filling out that part of the character sheet. Refreshingly, this just becomes an Attack vs Reflex in 4e -- short, simple, and narratively equivalent.

What was Lost?

First, I think that the simplification of attacks vs NADs has lead to a much larger number of such attacks in 4e. In some cases this is personally reasonable -- touch attacks become attacks versus reflex, forced movement often becomes attacks versus fortitude, etc. I do think, however, that there's been a bit of "uniqueness creep" in attack powers that target NADs simply because it's easy or for balance purposes (since such defenses are lower) without a really good justification. It makes it much less special when such attacks happen, and also can tend to devalue investments that players put into their mundane defenses like Armor. Attacks versus Will should be a "Gotcha!" for the usually impervious armor-clad fighter, not an "Oh no not again" moment.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, rolling dice is fun. Moreover, it becomes more fun the more weighty the effects are, and in general the types of attacks that target non-AC defenses can be some of the most interesting (at least narratively). So while players no longer experience the frustration of having the monster save against their big spell and neutralize their greatness, they also lose the sense of suspense and agency that comes with rolling themselves to see if they resist the Vampire Lord's charm or just barely dodge that fireball's blast in the nick of time. I think to some extent 4th Edition tends to err on the side of focusing on players deriving investment from rolling big attacks and doing awesome things, but I think there is a lot to be said for players reacting to the world around them and taking ownership for what it does to them as well.

Moreover, while moving the attack resolution from defender to attacker streamlines things somewhat when the player is attacking, it can also slow things down if the DM is using something like an area-of-effect attack that now needs to roll individually against all the players. Given that the DM often has enough on his plate to keep him busy, I'm not certain whether this is a net gain for play speed or not. Plus, having players roll their saves during the DM's action gives them something to do and keeps them engaged with what is happening which can mitigate some of the problems with longer combats. I personally think it's a better balance.

Finally, a lot of sustaining effects in 4e rely on players making a succession of "4e Saves" and, as a result, many player abilities that would act to support other players take the form of granting additional save rolls (with bonuses). The save mechanism (especially combined with the condition system) is simple and unified, but I'm not positive that it doesn't lose some expressiveness. If we look back to pre-3e D&D, the idea of having a generic "save" with situational bonuses allows for a lot of more flavorful and specific bonuses than 3e's more generic saves. It's true that 4th edition does allow for bonuses to saves versus attacks with specific damage keywords, but that can be kind of inflexible once you start talking about effects that don't just do damage. Actually, it seems a lot closer to how skills worked in the latest D&D Next Playtest -- a general ability roll with bonuses only if you have a specific skill or trait. Something like that might be a good compromise.

Conclusion

Save mechanics are hard to build both simply and expressively because they are almost by definition a kind of "catch-all" for things that fall outside the domain of basic combat. Since they are more generic, I think that they need to be as derived from basic attributes as possible. I also think that we should pay more attention to what kind of attacks actually require saves -- they should be exceptional and dramatic, not just the same thing with different numbers. Finally, we should consider the real psycho-social effects of whether a player or a DM is rolling the dice, and what the optimal balance around the table really is.

Why We Roll

At their simplest, most RPG systems can be described as a set of rules that help translate player intentions ("I want to hit the orc" or "I want to climb the wall") into narrative events ("You slay the orc" or "you mis-step and fall into the abyss"). The systems that comprise the RPG run the gamut from vague descriptions of character traits to aid DM interpretation to complex pseudo-physical simulations that give specific grounding to the space and passage of time in the game world. A well-built RPG is a complex system of interlocking parts, where each mechanic hooks into surrounding systems and not only creates something that is resonant and plausible to the players, but which also ends up having the particular "feel" that the designer set out to create.

In light of the tremendous effort that goes into tuning these intricate balances, then, it can seem a little odd that so much of modern role-playing games rely on random chance: the die roll. And yet, if you consider the artifacts and cultural icons of the RPG experience, nothing is more prominent or more obvious than the humble, quirky polyhedral die. However, just because dice add a random element that does not mean that they do not add crucial elements to the tabletop gaming experience. In fact, it seems that the more sophisticated and intricate the game mechanics are, the more important and prominent the dice are.

Keeping the Icosahedron Rolling

Strange quantum effects aside, everything that happens in the real world is the result of a deterministic (if exceptionally complicated) chain of events that start's with one action and ends in an appropriate reaction. If I swing a sword, my ability to determine where to strike based on my target's gait, my physical ability to direct the blow correctly and with enough power, and the target's own reaction all determine clearly whether the blow connects and if so what the impact is. The factors one needs to account for are tremendous and have spawned many centuries-old traditions of training and expertise that require olympic-level skill to truly master. In you average RPG, however, the sum of these proud traditions is often reduced to a 5-10% bonus on a d20 to-hit roll.

While you certainly could create combat systems that account for a variety of stances, blows, counter-blows, parries, etc. (and many have!) a lot of times the details of such events are simply beyond what the game was designed to accomodate. When creating a game system, a designer has to carefully balance including details which may provide players with interesting choices or dramatic moments, while at the same time eliminating as much complexity from the actual gameplay as possible. This is not only to make the system easier to learn and play, but to keep the experience focused on what the game is designed for -- more rules means more decisions, and thus more play-time required to resolve each encounter and to move through the narrative. Combat rules can be rudimentary if the focus of an RPG is on stealth and subversion, while social interaction rules can probably be greatly simplified if you just want a straight forward hack-and-slash. 

Much like concrete and metallurgy, ascending AC was a secret known to the ancients but lost to civilization until only recently.

In this context, then, the dice rolls serve as a simplification tool. The designer can shrug and say "this probably has a 30-70% chance of succeeding based on your character" without having to go into detail about all of the factors which might affect or determine the specific result. More importantly, the DM can use the same tool to fill in the rules where a player tries something that isn't clearly laid out. Instead of trying to root through a manual, or walk though a series of generally minor events and decisions, the DM can just set a difficulty target, ask for a die roll, and move on based on the result. Using dice like this allows the players to spend a majority of their decision-making time on important, high-level decisions, while simply glossing over the details that don't need to be played out in detail.

Roll Playing is Role Playing

I may get some disagreement here, but I think that -- far from being at odds -- die rolls serve an important purpose in establishing and developing a sense of character. It's true that "story-based" players and systems often try to minimize complexity and die mechanics in favor of more simple "narrative" approaches. The view is that those elements make RPGs feel more like a "game" that can be manipulated and beaten rather than a framework for players to use to tell the stories of their characters and the world they are in.

In contrast, though, I would argue that mechanics like skill and ability checks, feat bonuses, and the like serve to deepen the roleplaying experience by separating the players' decisions and capabilities from the characters ability to execute them. Yes, I may be an eloquent and persuasive speaker who should have no problem putting together a coherent argument as to why the king's guard should let us go and chase down the real villains; however, my character Ragnar the Blooded is not the type to talk out these sorts of things and so my decisions when playing as him must necessarily differ from how I would approach similar problems myself. The die rolls give us a little bit of a buffer between player, character, and world, and this space is filled with the unique traits of those characters and how they themselves interact with the environment.

There's also the often un-discussed aspect of the DM experience. By making important events die rolls with specific modifiers (instead of simple check-lists of activities) you reduce the DM's bias in what outcomes occur, forcing (but also allowing) him to fill the roll of impartial arbiter of events rather than tyrant lord of everyone's imagination. Yes the DM rules by fiat with absolute power, but so long as he is willing to relax that control a little, he grants the players greater agency by letting them manipulate the world themselves to change it without the DM's direct intervention, giving them a much greater sense of ownership.

Expecting the Unexpected

You could run standard D&D 4th Edition combat without a single die roll. You could use the expected values for to-hit, modify the expected damage by those, and just use a flat average for every interaction. It would certainly be a lot faster! However, a die roll is more than just a way of determining results from a complex set of statistics like to-hit, AC, base damage, strength modifiers, etc -- the randomness itself has an intrinsic value that is crucial to the play experience.

If I am rolling a 1d12 damage die, then the outcome has a very wide spread of possible degrees. yes it averages out to a flat 6.5 per hit, but if combat only lasts a half-dozen rounds then it is unlikely for my performance to approach that average within the time frame; thus, to some extent the outcome of the single battle really does have a lot to do with luck (or at least how I as a player react to my luck, be it good or bad). This is doubly true when it comes to a player hitting or missing with a crucial Daily attacks, or an NPC Brute scoring a critical hit and suddenly turning a comfortable victory into a desperate struggle.

Dice add drama and excitement to roleplaying because, while we as players know what should happen most of the time, it's not at all certain that that is what will happen. Everyone pays attention to the game when dice are rolled because the outcome can put them in exactly the right position to execute their clever schemes, or force them to completely reconsider. Again, this is important for the DM experience as well. Anyone who's DM'd a multi-adventure campaign will know that some nights you sit down and just have a check-list of events and encounters you need to run the players through to advance the plot. If you're the strong storyteller type you might not have much of a problem with this; however, if you release some control and allow for random elements to creep in, then what was a static experience of playing "host" to your friends now becomes a dynamic and interactive experience for the entire table, including yourself. It can definitely be worrying and lead to some brief moments of panic when your PCs somehow slay a key character you had plans for down the road; however, if you can resist the urge to overturn their victory one way or another and just roll with their decisions, you'll end up with a much more nuanced story that the players will feel much more involved in because (whether they know it or not) they are helping to shape it.

For the Fun of It

Rolling dice is just fun. There is the sense of drama and suspense when an encounter boils down to a few crucial rolls sure, but the actual act of picking up a hand full of polyhedra and throwing them on the table to determine your fate provides a surprisingly important physicality to what is otherwise a very abstract experience that sucks players in. Think about it, which would you prefer as a player -- rolling all your attack and damage die yourself, or letting the DM do everything behind the screen? By letting the players roll dice, they inherently feel more responsible for the outcomes (even if they are no less random) than if it were determined statically by their decisions, or rolled by the DM in secret. The barbarian grows accustomed to his large, swing-y d12 to represent his powerful but inaccurate great weapons, while the wizard palms a fist-full of d4s and d6s that almost mimic the explosive nature of a fireball or cone of frost. The dice provide an important physical grounding for the whole experience.

Why Don't We Roll?

Of course, not everything is determined by a die roll -- and with good reason. Die rolls take time, force players to look up modifiers, and cause the DM to have to ensure he knows how to react to any of the possible outcomes. As a rule of thumb, die rolls should be avoided when they don't accomplish the goals above -- when they slow down or complicate play rather than speeding it up, when they remove a player's sense of character rather than reinforce it, when there is no real suspense or sense of stakes or drama, or when players just aren't interested in this aspect of the adventure and are eager to move on to something else. A DM has the power to just say "This is impossible" or "That would trivially succeed" and should feel free to do so whenever he sees fit to keep the game interesting and moving. If a die roll would result in pretty much the same thing (or if the players have an unlimited amount of time and there is no consequence for failure) then just skip it; likewise, be careful not to ask for a die check if you don't actually know what would happen if the players fail. In either case, just don't be so overzealous about it that you make the players really feel like they are being railroaded down a specific path of decisions. Try and be as flexible and creative as you can while still staying a step or two ahead of the players.

I Come to Bury 4e, Not to Praise It

So it's been months  since the announcement of what Wizards of the Coast is calling "D&D Next". I meant to write a few posts listing my hopes and fears, but sadly real life has intervened thoroughly since then. Hopefully in the near future I'll get a chance to put together some thoughts and reactions to what Wizards, Monte Cook, et. al have been up to (most of it quite positive).

However, before I get around to diving into wild speculation on the future, I think it's worthwhile to take stock of where things currently stand. The announcement of a new "edition" of D&D has been met with a lot of excitement across the internet. Most people see it as a great opportunity to see some of the excellent trends from the latter half of 4e development rolled into the core of an even tighter, more compelling system. However, there are also a lot of people who see it simply as vindication from Wizards that D&D 4e was largely a disaster, or at the least that it's so broken that it's better to abandon now and start from scratch rather than patch and nurse onward like we saw with 3.5e. Wizards' constant talk about "uniting the editions" and their series of blog posts exploring more "old school" game mechanics seem to lend some support to that perspective. However, I'm not positive how much truth there is to that (I think the decision to break from 4e and create a new product has as much to do with a new approach to content creation and monetization as it does anything else) but I think that the "Edition Warriors" are very wrong if they think that 4e was a complete evolutionary dead end.

Yes, Fourth Edition has a lot of flaws -- some I would even call fundamental. Even the most charitable critic would have to admit that by default it has a very different focus than previous editions, and (without some adaptation on the part of the DM) tends to feel very different. But if there's one thing I've noticed from the plethora of great retrospective posts that have popped up since D&D Next's announcement, it's that none of the editions were perfect, and that all of them so far have made some great contributions that are worth noting and carrying forward. Fourth edition, in my mind, is very much among them.

Powers

Like many of the things I will mention, I have some problems with the shape powers take in 4e, but I don't want to spend time going into them here. My point is that fundamentally, powers are a great idea. Gone are the dozens of splatbooks full of class features and class variations that are just like the base classes except with different benefits at levels 3, 6, 9, etc. Want to play a rogue who focuses on acrobatics instead of stealth? What about one who is a thug that uses some dirty fighting to get the edge on his foes? Great, just pick your stats accordingly and grab select the powers you think suit your vision best. Want access to some feature from another class? OK, there are rules for how to do that by taking multiclass feats, balanced based on the strength of those powers. Powers provide a unified way for creating characters with interesting abilities of any class.

This isn't really anything new to 4e in particular -- Rogues always had sneak attack and Evasion, Clerics had turning and domain abilities (in addition to spells), and in 3e fighters had a whole host of feats specifically designed for them that served as kind of a proto-power system. But fourth edition did a very good job of consolidating those types of abilities under an umbrella for each class, and in simplifying the "1x/2x/3x-per-day" use system to an equally meaningful (but much easier to manage) "at-will/encounter/daily" system. The result is a character that's easier to run at a glance and requires far less book-keeping. Personally, I'd like to see this idea evolve quite a bit if it is carried into D&D Next (which I am certain it will be) but it's a solid step in the right direction.

Systemizing the Combat Space

Fourth Edition has gotten a ton of flack for being far too focused on initiative-ordered, on-the-grid combat at the expense of traditional dungeon crawling. Some people complain that it tries too hard to be a tactical miniatures game rather than an RPG. However, whatever your thoughts on it 4e deserves a lot of credit for making combat much smoother and easier to run.

Gone are the "five foot step" and tumble rolls. Every type of movement is either a "move" or a "shift"; forced movement is a "pull", a "push", or a "slide"; actions are simply "standard", "move", and "minor" or "free" (not including the variety interrupts). Status effects take one of a very few well-defined forms, all of which have abilities which may be keyed to their imposition. And damage types of all sorts are grouped into keywords that can be amplified, changed, attached, or removed to modify a power to whatever the designer wants to think is possible. All of this results in a system where different items and abilities can work together in a manner that is unambiguous with respect to the rules, and yet minimizes the amount of per-ability text. Some of this might make Fourth Edition seem more "game-y", but I think that it's really the result of simply clarifying the gamey elements already at the core of D&D and making the more rigorous so they work better.

Healing Surges

... And the resting system in general. This kind of goes along with the previous topic, but the idea of separating short term resources (hit points) from long term stamina (healing surges) is a great one because it allows for two layers of drama to play out. A fully rested party can be put in great danger because they've drained all their hitpoints and run out of surge powers for the encounter; likewise, a party might go on to win the battle, but then be so drained of surges that they may decide they've lost the war. Furthermore, making healing (via surges) cost a target resource instead of a healer resource means that healers don't have to make the hard choice between playing something interesting or maximizing their ability as a "hitpoint battery".

Likewise, subdividing rests into a "short" and "extended" form simply works great as a way to provide another hook for abilities to kick. Systems such as Lair Assault play around with the role short rests actually play, which works great for playing with the drama of combat by still allowing the DM to create back-to-back resource-taxing combats while at the same time still preserving the larger scale resource management of surges and powers. It's just plain smart, and there's nothing wrong with it that can't be fixed with some tweaking.

The DM Experience

No matter what someone says about 4e, if they complain that it makes the DM's job harder than they're just spouting nonsense. Player and Monster power was sliced, diced, and analyzed within an inch of its life, and Fourth Edition introduced a bunch of rules and guidelines for building encounters and creating entire monsters and challenges from scratch so that they fit seemlessly with the carefully authored content of the published modules. Admittedly, these guidelines needed some tweaking for "fun" and pace, but a bad guideline can at least be fixed. By contrast, creating monsters in 3e could  be a tremendous chore (and it could be almost impossible to judge if a given encounter was going to be a cakewalk or a bloodbath sometimes).

Wizards went out of their way to provide DMs with the tools they needed to create and run fun combats, and in my mind it's really paid off. Expanding the base of players is meaningless if you can't expand the number of DMs to service them. DMs are the lifeblood of the market, plain and simple. Anything that can make the average DM with 2 hours to prep before his friends show up produce content that's more fun and more compelling is a huge win, and the combination of power-based stat blocks and straightforward content generation systems helps push this in the right direction.

Conclusion

So yes, Fourth Edition has its warts. And to be honest, I'm quite glad to hear they're starting from a fresh base for D&D Next, because I'd rather see these good ideas put into a new system than see all the things I dislike carried forward or weeded out one-by-one. But there ARE things that I quite like about the current edition and I think that we should be keen to not throw the baby out with the bathwater just for nostalgia's sake.