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[pukunui]

Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully

Seen Storminators post?

Yes. I even quoted it in my last post.

Martial abilities have one advantage - they aren't as flashy as spells. You can easily count how often the mage casts Fireball. But do you really know how often the Fighter deals damage? How much? Whether he trips his foes or whether the foe can catch himself quick enough to avoid any harm? (and when was it because the fighter was missing and when was it because the fighter didn't actually use the power in question?)

Storminators trick is to "pretend" his character is always attempting to pull of his maneuver. But it doesn't work out every time (because he misses or he doesn't have the power available anymore), and sometimes it works (becuse he hits with the power or the action his fighter took can hardly be distinguished from the action created by the encounter power). Brute Strike or a regular basic melee attack - who could really see the difference. Any attack that kills someone might look like a Brute Strike. Or like a Knockdown Maneuver.

I've already brought this up. Having to pretend that my character is constantly trying to pull off various maneuvers "in the background" and the only time he actually pulls it off is when I, the player, consciously choose to use a power just doesn't do it for me.

I might just remind you of one thing: Even before the invention of combat maneuvers, tactical feats, Improved Trip Feats, before the invention of exploits, Covering Attacks and Tortorous Strikes, even then people had the idea that a simple, plain melee attack could stand for a large variety of combat maneuvers. It wasn' just sword slash after sword slash. it were uppercuts, parries, dodges, quick strikes... Yet the mechanic was always the same.

Yes, that's fine. And you could use that one mechanic to do the same thing over and over again if that's what you wanted to do ... but you can't do that with encounter powers. And the issue that I have is some of the specific things you can do only as encounter powers. Some of those things should be things you can do over and over again but for some reason the designers have decided that you can't.

Or you can just throw all notions of "martial power is not magic" out of the window. Maybe that works for you? To engage a fantasy monster like a dragon, you can't rely on mundane skills. Every martial exploit is just a type of magic channeled into combat. That's why you can't make a second Come and Get Some per round, you used up your magic.

That would be fine if all of the martial powers seemed supernatural in some way, but there are plenty of them that seem very mundane and should not be given arbitrary usage limits.

Sorry I'm being so vague. I know concrete examples would be good but I haven't got my books with me as I'm at work.

If not, well, see above. Don't expect anyone here having a silver bullet removing all your doubts and problems with a system.

I'm not looking for someone to solve my problems. I'm simply sharing my thoughts.

There are always way to explain why they happen or why they don't happen, but there isn't a way to make them go away until we create a different system.

I think what I'm getting at is that I shouldn't have to explain things away. I shouldn't have to say, "Well, my character has been attempting this all through the fight but here's the one time where she actually pulls it off". I shouldn't have to justify why things are the way they are. However, with 4e, it seems like I either have to do that in order to keep my suspension of disbelief and desired immersion level or else I just have to stop thinking of it as an RPG and just play it as a glorified minis/board game or something.