General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Style: It's all about style. If you pulled out the best at each and every attack, why, then it becomes just another common attack! You've got to do things with panche!
Panic button. You freak out, close your eyes, and swing wildly. This cool move comes out but you have no idea how to reproduce it when you're not panicking.
__________________ Red Hot Swing
"In Inspired Sarlona, nightmares have you!" -Klaus
I think some of the (narratively nifty) rationales miss the mark in that they don't reflect knowledge that choosing to do the trick more than once per day is actually not an option. That's like saying (even in previous editions) that a magician could cast more spells, but simply chooses not to.
I think some of the (narratively nifty) rationales miss the mark in that they don't reflect knowledge that choosing to do the trick more than once per day is actually not an option. That's like saying (even in previous editions) that a magician could cast more spells, but simply chooses not to.
They don't ALL have to work for you. Just find the one that does and run with it.
__________________ Red Hot Swing
"In Inspired Sarlona, nightmares have you!" -Klaus
It's more that none of those are to the point at all. "Just find the snorkel and flippers that work for you and run with them." Swim with them, certainly -- but if the person seeking equipment in this case could swim in 4E, then he would not need a way to run around the pool's edge (a slippery business).
Last edited by Ariosto; 8th June 2009 at 03:35 AM..
Here's another idea, that may or may not work for you.
The idea is to accept that the encounter/daily use restrictions are a "real" physical phenomenon in the game world, albeit one that has no explanation that is known to the characters (or the players.)
Quote by OP:
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When the game becomes about the rules without fluff to back them up, it sucks me right out of immersion. Does the fluff have to be perfect? No. But it can't be totally nonsensical or nonexistent either.
A game that is about "I get to move my piece next to the enemy" is different from "Zobar The Furious charges the dastardly Necromancer Dalruk." If I can't DESCRIBE what is happening when I invoke a rule, then I'm playing a game, but I'm not roleplaying. So, I need to figure out how to describe what happens, and have a story idea of why, whatever it is, or the answer really is "because abilities are tiered by power level, so the most powerful can only be used less often".
Tell that to Zobar.
I would argue that the implied claim, that if you don't have those "descriptions" as to what is "really" going on, then you are unable to effectively "roleplay," is not necessarily true. In real life, we deal with situations in which we don't have those "descriptions" all the time.
For example, consider when I use Microsoft Word and I click the "bold" icon, in order to make the text I am about to type bold. Now essentially we have a "rule" of the form "when the bold button is clicked, all typed text will show up bold until the bold button is clicked again" (okay, it could end up being a little more complicated but you get the idea.) Now what's the "fluff" that justifies this "rule" - i.e. what's the "description" of "really happening" when I click that icon? This question certainly has an answer (the state of some electrical circuit representing a bit in RAM changes, and Word checks that bit when I type in a character in order to decide how to display it) but I don't need to know anything about electrical circuits or RAM in order to use Word. When I use Word, I'm operating from a purely functional description (when you do this, this happens) rather than from any description about what's "really happening".
There are of course many other examples in real life. You don't have to know how a car's engine works in order to drive a car, nor do you have to know how radio communication works in order to use a cell phone. The point here is that we use purely functional descriptions in real life all the time, and our sense of "immersion" in real life doesn't seem to suffer, so there's no inherent reason why "immersion" in an RPG would have to suffer just because the character is operating from a purely functional description (this power only works the first time I try to use it in a day) rather than from a description about what's "really happening."
Of course, immersion is a subjective thing, so I'm not trying to say that anyone who has immersion problems is "not playing the game right" or anything like that. I'm just pointing out a new way of looking at the problem, that some players might find useful.
The limited times per day, or similar elements, in 3E are there purely because the designer thought that was the best way to model the feature. You can agree or disagree that it was a good choice, but the designer looked at options and elected to make the mechanic work that way.
You can take this all the way to Vancian magic, Gygax wanted magic to work like the Vance books so he choose to do it that way. Future designers wanted to retain that legacy of D&D magic and made wizards work that way purely because they wanted to. Don't like it? Then use something else. This is in particular true in 3E, with tons of alternative magic systems available. Within 3E (and many other games) the designer has free reign to build it as they see fit and the DM has free reign to pick and choose what they find best for their game.
When the 4E monk comes around, it will have dailies and encounter powers just like every single other class out there (as well as other mandated elements). The "math works" and it is easy, but thou shalt comply with the structures.
I think that the designers also had game balance in mind when they created these abilities. That is the reason why the ability is restricted. So, yeah, they probably thought: "It is cool that the Eye of Gruumsh can spit at their foes and blind them with it." But they also said: "Lets not make it too powerful and restrict the usage to once a day."
The same is true for the martial dailies in 4e.
If you cannot agree with the fact that 4e separates powers into at-will, encounter and dailies and the way the system is set up, then why are we arguing about it here? I agree with you that this is a big change from 3e. And if that makes you unable to play 4e, that is fine. I understand your point of view. I do not share it, though. To give you a personal example: I do not like Rolemaster very much and I can give you my reasons, if you ask me (at this point, they do not matter here or there or anywhere anyways). I do not play Rolemaster. End of story.
And I do not think that the supposed lack of believability in martial dailies is valid, because this thread already contains a lot of ways to explain them roleplayingwise. T
After all, this is what this thread is about. And I think a lot of these explanations are just great and I will use them. A big "Thank You!" to all those who posted them.
Here they are (I hope this makes copying them easier for those who want to use them, too):
1. The fighter has a great warrior as an ancestor. The ancestor can only provide brief glimpses of clarity when they are most needed, so the fighter calls upon him for battle advice, and so activates a daily.
2. The fighter must actually dislocate several joints to pull off a particular dextrous daily. It is painful and causes swelling that prevents those joints from dislocating again until they have been rested adequately.
3. The fighter's fortitude and strength is sufficient to do the maneuver only once a day. Think of a strongman contest. Maybe they can lift a car once, but after that, they've given their all. They are NOT lifting that maximum weight again until a nap and some breakfast.
4. The fighter's adrenaline reaches a crescendo. Like a 100 pound mom lifting an I beam off of her child's leg to escape a burning building, the fighter is only able to do this when the poop really hits the fan, and they are so driven by biochemical moxie that they step into another mindset entirely.
5. The secret is in the wrist. Most people don't use all the muscles in their arm, because the wrist and finger muscles are generally pretty weak. You've trained your wrist and finger muscles to, at the point of impact, push forward with that little extra bit of oomph, giving your attack FAR more follow through and power than you normally could achieve. However, this puts a lot of strain on your wrist, and if you tried it again without resting you risk breaking it.
6. The technique of your style was created by an Arkhosian warrior of old, taller and stronger than any man. The strikes have speed and power that are nearly godlike. Unfortunately, you're an elf. Though strong, your power can't match his, and your build is just too different. The most potent techniques of the style put enormous strain on your light body, tearing apart your muscles as you use it.
7. Useful for a speed move like Cascade of Blows: It's a well known fact that you should time your strikes with your breath. Exhaling as you strike gives you greater power and speed, inhaling as you retract and parry gives you greater muscle tension for defense. A perfect internal timer for the flow of battle. However, there's another internal timer: Your heart. Timing your strikes to your heartbeat allows you to strike mulitiple times in the space of a few seconds. Do I really need to go into why keeping this up is a bad idea?
8. As I offered in the other thread: gifts of the gods. As in Greek mythology, heroes and monsters are pieces in games of the gods. The powers have arbitrary effects because they are miraculous, and arbitrary limitations because that's part of the game the gods play. Does every goodwife and ploughman get such abilities? No -- only those chosen to play roles requiring them, in the heroes' sagas.
9. Heroes bind spirits to their service, the terms of which are as in the 4E rules. See RuneQuest, especially Cults of Prax, for general "flavor" that may be inspirational. Drawing again on RQ, different classes (or builds within a class) might involve different Runes.
10. Situational Awareness: Once the enemies see an encounter power used, they're on their guard against it.
11. Combat Awareness: Dailies are such complex moves that the user has to rest and practice it again before he can put it to effective use again.
12. Honour. You've learned an incredibly powerful move, but you will lose honour if you use it on anything but the most powerful of foes.
13. Too damn strong. You damage your weapon whenever you use that move, so you have to take several hours to fix it when your party camps. (Works best if you are bound to a specific weapon.)
14. Future Sight: You glimpse what your enemy will do ahead of time and unleash a devistating attack on him before he can make his move.
15. Hidden Discipline: Unlike the moves every upstart knowns, if you unleash your best abilities too often it gives enemies the opportunity to copy and counter them. Them must be husbanded for only the times deemed necessary.
16. grog too dumb to realize grog can do thing more than once.
17. Style: It's all about style. If you pulled out the best at each and every attack, why, then it becomes just another common attack! You've got to do things with panche!
18. Panic button. You freak out, close your eyes, and swing wildly. This cool move comes out but you have no idea how to reproduce it when you're not panicking.
Now, if there is nothing to your liking, it would seem you have a general problem with the system. That is ok, too. But then this thread has nothing to offer to you at this point, in my very personal opinion.
Last edited by TheFindus; 8th June 2009 at 01:15 AM..
I enjoy many games ranging from Rolemaster and Warhammer FRPG to Elric and Conan. D&D does it's own thing and always has. Sometimes that thing is not what people who played previous editions wanted.
Are you playing 4e now?
No, I am not playing 4e now. There are elements that I really like, but those one's I don't are enough to keep me from, currently, playing it. However, I do keep an eye out at third party products and people's house rules. I even keep an eye out at a few WOTC products.
The above is pretty much how I got into 3e. I like a lot of 3e core, but the things I did not like kept me from playing it. Then, UA came out and between that and a few third party products, I had what I needed to really get into 3e- just 3e house ruled to do what I wanted.
If the same happens with 4e, I'll give it another look. In the meantime, I'll play/run a modified 3e, and play both Rolemaster and Ars Magica. I might also be willing to run Warriors and Warlocks for fantasy as I like M&M (I haven't seen W&W). Then again, I am also very picky about the mechanics that I like.
__________________ "The designers of the newest edition built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?' " -Monte Cook
" If the DM has to make a lot of judgment calls, the game is more difficult to learn. However, it's my belief that it's also more satisfying." -Monte Cook
"Don't let rules replace good DMing skills"- Monte Cook
It's more that none of those are to the point at all. "Just find the snorkel and flippers that work for you and run with them." Swim with them, certainly -- but if the person seeking equipment in this case could swim in 4E, then he would not need a way to run around the pool's edge (a slippery business).
But the OP is aware of that no?
Quote:
So, to reiterate, I'm not asking or trying to prove how it can't be done (describe/explain the use of dailies)..I'm asking for attempts to do it. Some will be better, some worse, and probably none perfect...because ultimately there will always be a way to find a counterexample. It's a simulation of a fanstastical version of real life. Of course no rationale will be PERFECT.
So ... I think a part of the problem is that 4E makes a very (very!) thin attempt to explain why dailies (and encounters) are limited (besides game balance). This is one of my strong criticisms of the edition: The reasoning behind the mechanics is hidden. There is a similar problem with Rituals, in that the listed rituals expose hardly any generating structure at all. There was a lot of richness in the magic system in 3.5E, and it's just gone in 4E. That is unfortunate, since rituals could have been a very rich subset of the game.
Going back to encounter and daily powers, I think a good approach would be to categorize why a power might have limited uses.
I can think of two general explanations.
1) Strain. The power is just too hard to use without a lot of effort. Rage falls in this category. Some spell-like effects could be like this.
2) Tricks. The power works as long as your opponent isn't on guard for it.
After a bit of thought, I keep wondering if the whole debate is unfortunate, in that it could have been avoided with the addition of the two keywords Strain and Trick (or perhaps, Strain: Mental and Strain: Physical), where any use of a Strain ability after the first imposes a cumulative -2 modifier to mental or physical checks of all sorts, and any use of a Trick was at a -4 penalty if used twice in someones view.
The addition of just that little bit of explanation allows all sorts of details to be added. For example, what happens if you use a trick on someone who knows the same trick?
So far everything posted in here doesn't work when you look at it logically.
"Pieces fall in place": When the fighter used his daily power he can't even use it on a paralyzed, sleeping or otherwise helpless enemy. And in such situation he has enough time to line up the strike however he wants. It makes no sense that he can't do his perfect move again.
1: Apart from giving every fighter an inherent spiritual element, why can't young fighter not learn the tricks of ancestor fighter so that he can use his tricks without guidance?
2+3: Then why can the fighter do other highly stressful daily moves? Why can he otherwise continue to fight normally?
4: Using dailies has nothing to do with the current situation and the HP of the fighter. One would assume that with 2 teammates down and the fighter bloodied he would have enough adrenalin in his system for this to happen. Too bad that he already used his daily in a much less dangerous situation before.
In the end there are imo just 2 options of how to deal with them. 1. Explain all fighter abilities with magic and 2. Don't think about it (not usable when you want to think while playing D&D though)
Why can first level wizards only cast one sleep spell per day?
__________________ "Well, no, I wasn't actually one of the original members of Pink Floyd." - Giles
I guess some of us just don't really seem to understand why Martial Dailies are unique in requiring an explanation, and why daily powers never seemed to bother people until 4E. I think it stirs controversy among 4E supporters because of how frequently *some* of the 4E critics bring in emotionally charged arguments that often mischaracterize Martial Powers into being "spells for melee classes" and Second Wind as being "a heal spell for every class".
The arguments are generally misleading and seem to coming from an established bias against 4E that discounts reasonable fluff explanations as being unacceptable. In general, most of the criticisms are disingenuous, and seem to be more of justifications for not liking a new systems, since other equally arbitrary mechanics have always existed without such a furor.
I NEVER heard people complain that "once per day" powers in 3E effectively made other classes into casters!
For some reason, some people can accept the limits of spell casting due to mental fatigue, mental stress, focus, and the level of mental discipline and arcane knowledge. Apparently going from Arcane to Divine doesn't seem to be much of a stretch. When it turns into a limit in how many days a bard can do his bard perform power, nobody questions the per day basis. I never heard anyone ask "why can't my barbarian rage more often", or "why can my Rogue only do his Defensive Roll once a day?"
So, how do you explain Martial Daily Powers? It's a doomed debate because it's really an arbitrary dislike. People can accept Vancian and even 4E style powers when they are magical, but not martial. It's an arbitrary distinction, that is just as arbitrary as tons of other rules that are in 4E, and in every previous edition of D&D ever made.
Personally, I don't see why it can't merely be just the physical counterpart of the fatigue, stress, discipline, experience, focus, and knowledge required for other disciplines with other power sources to perform their abilities.
Maybe you need better fluff than that, but personally I prefer to explain an interesting combat maneuver to explaining why a seasoned and experienced war veteran just stands still and does round after round of full attacks (or even repeatedly performs some combat shtick over and over again that he built his character for).
__________________ Law's Game Style: Storyteller 83%, Tactician 75%, Specialist 67%, Method Actor 58%, Power Gamer 33%, Casual Gamer 25%, Butt-Kicker 17%
Why can first level wizards only cast one sleep spell per day?
It has to do with the flow of the Antipodal Inspirations through the 288 Sublime Interstices, along with the Octantal Occultations of the Six Numinous Nodes of Ineffable Tractility.
It has to do with the flow of the Antipodal Inspirations through the 288 Sublime Interstices, along with the Octantal Occultations of the Six Numinous Nodes of Ineffable Tractility.
Now why is it so hard to come up with an explanation for fighter dailies when you can do what you just did so easily?
So ... I think a part of the problem is that 4E makes a very (very!) thin attempt to explain why dailies (and encounters) are limited (besides game balance).
Creating balanced, playable mechanics for a game system is the overriding reason for the power framework. It's like you're asking 'why do objects fall, besides gravity?'. I could make something up, but it would be BS.
Quote:
The reasoning behind the mechanics is hidden.
The reasoning is crystal clear (you said it yourself, it's game balance). What's hidden, or rather, unstated, are the ways the mechanics get narrated during play. That's left up to the individuals playing. Gamers are supposed to be an imaginative lot. I'm sure they'll think of something (as you do, farther on in your post. See, it's not so hard).
Perhaps the 4e editors should have spend time and page count explaining that 4e sometimes resembles an effects-based rule system like Champions/HERO. That the rules focus on the mechanical effects, and it's up to the DM/players to describe how they actually look in the game world.
__________________ "We're pimps and killers, but in a philanthropic way." -- Boyd, Dollhouse.
It has to do with the flow of the Antipodal Inspirations through the 288 Sublime Interstices, along with the Octantal Occultations of the Six Numinous Nodes of Ineffable Tractility.
Right. Game balance.
P.S. I love that narration. You had me at 'ineffable'.
__________________ "We're pimps and killers, but in a philanthropic way." -- Boyd, Dollhouse.
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__________________ The Pbartender
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