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[tomBitonti]

Originally Posted by Mallus

How? 4e attacks do damage and usually, impose a temporary condition (either 1 round or save ends). The bag of flour wouldn't do damage, so in that way it's different from a standard attack power, but other than that it's fine.

Bag of Flour Stunt: dex vs. Ref, target takes -2 to all attacks until the end of your next turn.

Only, that's not nearly "blind", which is a defined condition with a strong effect.

Nearly all the examples that I am seeing are doing pretty much what I suggested earlier: Translating the effect into a game effect proportional to the resource cost of the effect. In 3E parlance, that is about the same as a +/-2 situational modifier for special conditions.

The resulting effect much more along the lines of getting a little dust in the face, rather than a true temporary blindness.

I suspect that players will be disappointed with the results if the result is this small. After all, they want to blind the opponent, not simply cause them to squint.

A second problem is that this style of result tends to be very specific to player-GM combinations. A new player who doesn't know the local rules, or doesn't have the same understanding of the GM, or who is simply cautious about looking for extra benefits, will be put off when the next player throws out a couple of situational benefits.

What would work, though, on a more positive note, would be a set of guidelines, along with lots of examples, and a clear looseness in the play environment that encouraged thinking outside of the strict rules. I get back to my "running 7 squares with a 6 square movement" example. I don't think the rules set encourages players to try to push results like this. Going back to the 3E example, by definition, you cannot use power attack unless you have the feat. But it seems that you should be able to try, and receive a similar if lesser effect than if you had the feat.

You would have to make a deep pass across all sorts of rules to get that to work, which would be cool, but I don't think 3E or 4E really supports the idea. I think you would need to see, in bold somewhere, a statement, that "Everyone can try everything. Really, we mean it. Everything. Unhuh. Give it a shot."

(Would you allow a player to make an attack vs Will to cause a "Come and Get it" type effect on a single opponent? Maybe they would require a few tries before the opponent responded, and maybe there could be a backlash where the other opponents thought you were a shrill pansy, but maybe you would get under the skin on that one opponent with an accidental barb and get them to attack you. Spoiler: I'm thinking something like Spocks vulnerability to comments about his mother.)

Going that route, the daily/encounter/at will power structure has an interesting interpretation: The frequence limitations are then a limit on the amount of narrative spotlight that each player gets. It does paint as newbs players that rely on the literal power text, and who rely on the imposed "you can do something cool once per day" in opposition to the players "with style" who invent clever powers on the fly, and who have to think up opportunities to use a daily type power.