4e / GSL 101 roleplaying descriptions justifying martial dailies

[Ariosto]

What's your point? Other than Traveller and D&D 4e take different approaches to representing characters and there abilities?

4E takes a different approach to how the game is played. I'm not sure why you place such value on denying the difference, which ought to be the major selling point for those to whose tastes 4E is by design better suited. Even if you don't believe that games are products of intelligent design, surely such huge differences -- e.g., just 24 pages (as 48 half-sized) in all of Traveller Book 1: Characters and Combat, versus 12 pages devoted to the Rogue alone in the 4E PHB -- cannot escape even the most myopic vision.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

I'm not sure why you place such value on denying the difference, which ought to be the major selling point for those to whose tastes 4E is by design better suited.

I'm not denying differences. I'm pointing out what are to me obvious similarities. I mean, at some very real level 4e and Traveller are played the same way; players create fictional characters and guide them through conflict-laden adventure scenarios.

My 4e group is going on hiatus until fall. In the mean time we'll be playing some LLB Traveller. You can rest assured that mechanical differences notwithstanding, I'll play it much the same way I did 4e (I'll make a bold, larger-than-life, and partly absurd character with which I'll do imaginative and frequently funny stuff).

BTW, my original point today was was about the effect of 1e's long combat rounds on immersion --ie, the dissociating effect of it's lack of detail-- but that got lost somewhere along the line.

-- cannot escape even the most myopic vision.

While I do wear rather stylish glasses, I am not, in this context, myopic .

[BryonD]

Originally Posted by Mallus

I'd make something up on the spot (it wouldn't be the first time I had to do that while DM'ing). Frankly, I'm good at it .

Too bad your skill is tied to being lead around by the nose by daily and encounter frequencies.....

I'm sure you are quite good at it. I am as well. And let me assure you, making up justifications for what the rules say is fun, but making up whatever you want on the spot and expecting the rules to be the part that does the following, now THAT rocks.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by BryonD

Too bad your skill is tied to being lead around by the nose by daily and encounter frequencies....

It's not too bad. I like the 4e combat engine. I like the structure.

I'll freeform the rest of the game!

[LostSoul]

Originally Posted by Mallus

Then how do you describe what happens during a minute-long AD&D combat round? More importantly, how does it relate, or not relate, to the players stated actions? How much of the DM's descriptions amount to after-the-fact narration?

In my experience, we never described what happened in the combat round. It usually went like this:

"I hit AC 3."
"That hits."
"8 damage."

This is, to me, the same problem that 4E has, though it's a little different. Both versions allow you to consider only the mechanics without engaging the fluff at all.

(4E has great rules (in my opinion) on how to adjudicate "unexpected" actions, but the powers create "power blindness" and those unexpected actions aren't often attempted. Earlier versions, in my personal experience, weren't as easy to adjudicate on the fly, but stunts were attempted more often (though again, in my personal experience, never really amounted to much).)

Palladium Fantasy springs to mind here, where you make rolls for each attack and parry, using slightly different mechanics for different actions (sword blow, punch, kick, rolling with the blow, parrying, dodging, etc.). It's a rule-first thing but the rules are grainy enough to capture a lot of the fiction. Playing that game I can see each sword blow, the sparks flying as two swords meet, armour absorbing the blow and links of chain cut off, etc.


There were times when the rules relating to that one-minute combat round bothered me.

I specifically recall one (awesome) fight where our level 4 or 5 guys were assaulting a ruined fort full of bandits. We crept into a tower and used Hold Portal on the door to keep the bad guys out, then launched an attack from the tower onto the bad guys below.

One of the leaders (a human fighter) had Boots of Striding and Springing, so he was able to jump up on top of the tower. I was playing a Cleric, so I was able to nail him with a Hold Person.

When our fighter attacked him, we expected a one-shot kill (our experiences playing AD&D were heavily flavoured by Pool of Radiance). The DM ruled against this, which seemed to make no sense. A guy held immobilized for a whole minute, and you couldn't just slit his throat? Nope, not according to the rules.

We accepted it and moved on, though we thought it was dumb.

[Pbartender]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

What was done in the dagger-throwing case is commonly done for all sorts of situations arising in old D&D.

Right. And you can still do it for all sorts of situations arising in new D&D.

Read the rules. They let you do it... really, they do.

Originally Posted by Ariosto

Powers and other elements are now effectively prescriptive;

But they don't have to be... Powers and abilities and feats tell you what your character can do, not what they must do. There are rules for acting outside those boundaries -- even in 4th Edition -- if you care to use them.

And they really don't work all that much differently than what you're suggesting happened in older editions.

[blargney the second]

Originally Posted by Dausuul

What would you do if the targets were spell-hurling wizards who have no reason ever to get into melee? (And that's not a hypothetical corner case; I had exactly this situation come up in my game a couple sessions ago.)

My second fluff explanation above can cover that one: he's mastered the art of boomeranging his magic weapon such that it herds his enemies towards him before returning to his hands.

Alternatively, his minotaur battle challenge is so potent that it triggers the fight part of fight or flight at an instinctive level. Have you ever just snapped, or seen it happen to someone else?

Heck, it could even be a teamwork-based fluff. In a coordinated maneuver, my allies all use ranged attacks to herd the targets towards me. Then it's clobbering time.

One more: he whirls around and uses his immense strength to create a whirlwind that sucks them in towards him.
-blarg

[BryonD]

Originally Posted by Mallus

It's not too bad. I like the 4e combat engine. I like the structure.

I'll freeform the rest of the game!

It is all cost and benefit. And if the benefit outweighs the cost for you then big thumbs up!!

[Alex319]

Originally Posted by Alex319
1c. The kind of "fluff description to justify mechanics" that is being demanded here is often not available even in real life. For example, when I push down on a car's gas pedal, the car accelerates. That's a "mechanic" - when I do this, that happens. What's the "fluff" that justifies this "mechanic"? In order to know that you would have to know how a car's engine works. But of course you don't have to know how a car's engine works in order to drive the car. Most of us do just fine only knowing the "mechanics."
Hi,

That is not quite correct ... the fluff is available (and is of great interest to lots of folks). Whether or not one cares to look in detail of the fluff is one's decision to make, but the fluff is there.

Okay, consider another example. Let's say you're playing a science fiction game and you come across an alien artifact. You can try out the artifact to see what it does, but you don't know the principles underlying it - it's just a "black box" from your (and your characters') perspective. Are you "not roleplaying" then? Does it matter if the DM came up with an explanation and you just don't know it, or if the DM didn't come up with an explanation?

Or consider another real life example. Gunpowder was invented long before people understood the chemistry behind it, so at that time, the "fluff" or the "mechanism" behind how gunpowder works was not "there", at least not in the sense that anyone was able to get that information. (It may have been "there", but people certainly didn't know about it.)

Let's put it this way. You're saying that if the fluff is not there, then it is "not roleplaying", but if it is, then it is "roleplaying", even if the players and characters don't know what the fluff is. Is that correct? By this definition, it would be impossible for a player or character to tell if he is roleplaying or not, because how are they supposed to be able to tell the difference between fluff not being there and them just not knowing about it?

[Alex319]

Alex 319, a rules-heavy game like Hero or 3E is not the only alternative to a rules-heavy game like 4E. All it takes to do "situation first" is an attitude open to it -- which means not designing a complex structure to get in the way of it.

I never claimed it was. In fact, section 2b of my post makes almost exactly the point you make.

[Ariosto]

A guy held immobilized for a whole minute, and you couldn't just slit his throat? Nope, not according to the rules.

Actually:

Originally Posted by DMG, p. 70

Magically Sleeping or Held Opponents: If a general melee is in progress, and the attacker is subject to enemy actions, then these opponents are automatically struck by any attack to which they would normally be subject, and the maximum damage possible according to the weapon type is inflicted each time such an opponent is so attacked. The number of attacks or attack routines possible against such an opponent is twice the number normally allowed in a round. Otherwise, such opponents may be automatically slain, or bound as appropriate to materials at hand and size, at a rate of one per round.

Note the part in bold. Note also that if this procedure were inadequate to the imagined situation, then another could be substituted.

Time factors in AD&D can indeed be irksome if one gives them much thought, but the same holds for those in 3E and 4E.

[Ariosto]

Powers and abilities and feats tell you what your character can do, not what they must do. There are rules for acting outside those boundaries -- even in 4th Edition -- if you care to use them.

Which is (quite sensibly, I think) not what anyone I've seen has cared to do. Why should one want to go to all the trouble to avoid using the rules as they were designed to work? There are some bits outside the powers that are actually useful, but the much-lauded page 42 is of a kind with the powers (as is much else throughout the design). I think it would make more sense (perhaps not much, but more) to use AD&D even though none of the spells or magic items were to enter play.

Seriously, are you going to advise anyone to pay all that money for 4E just to end up designing something on one's own that doesn't much resemble 4E? I can think of much better candidates for such kit-bashing.

[Ariosto]

Alex: "I fire the powder." Whoosh ... [reaches keg] ... BOOM!
There's an action one can visualize, and it is the cause of the effect.
Might that bother a player who doesn't know that's what happens when you light gunpowder? Maybe, but if there's no rule for it in a pirate game then a lot more players are going to notice the lack.

You're using "fluff" (a term of contempt for such matters in the first place) to conflate common sense and deep scientific knowledge, suggesting that just because some people are unschooled in chemistry we should all act as if plumb ignorant about everything. So far from being masters of the martial arts, our game personae are apparently not to have the foggiest what they are about!

[LostSoul]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

Note the part in bold. Note also that if this procedure were inadequate to the imagined situation, then another could be substituted.

Was that 1E or 2E? We were playing 2E at the time. We could easily have gotten the rule wrong, though.

But anyways, total agreement with your second sentence.

[Ariosto]

That's the 1E DMG, LostSoul -- but we played "0E" just fine without it!

(I think the 2E books serve best as compliments to 1E, as they sometimes offer clear and convenient methods but also sometimes make a half-baked mess of things. More tools in the toolkit is for the good, so long as that toolkit is not too cumbersome to carry!)

The thing is, as much as there was a reason for the shortage of explicit rules in the old game, there's a reason for their proliferation in the new ones.

There are people who like a lot of rules, and people who like a simpler structure.There are people who like situation first, and there are people who want to make up everything after the fact -- and there are those perfectly satisfied with "hit for 8 damage". Heck, there are some who would prefer to treat everything (from puzzles to parleying) as "hit for 8 damage".

One could buy Rolemaster and then just toss all but a few pages of it, and one could do likewise with 4E. Short of that, one could start coming up with house rules for power after power. It would not make much sense to me, though.

If one wants just a loose framework in which (as put in Supplement IV, Gods, Demigods & Heroes) "the 'rules' were never meant to be more than guidelines; not even true 'rules'," then old D&D is that. If you want a super-sized side of number crunching with your simulation, then maybe 3E or GURPS (or an old Fantasy Games Unlimited recipe) will fill the order.

4E cooks up something else, for other tastes.

[Pbartender]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

Which is (quite sensibly, I think) not what anyone I've seen has cared to do. Why should one want to go to all the trouble to avoid using the rules as they were designed to work? There are some bits outside the powers that are actually useful, but the much-lauded page 42 is of a kind with the powers (as is much else throughout the design).

That much, I think we can generally agree on.

4E wasn't entirely designed to work outside of feats and powers, they wouldn't be there if it was. However, when you need them, if you need them, there are rules and guidelines for stepping outside those boundaries.

Previously in the thread, you were suggesting that 4E could not do that at all. What I'm saying is that, while 4E doesn't do it nearly as well as other system that are based around it, it does have those sorts of rules available for the occassions when they're needed.

Originally Posted by Ariosto

Seriously, are you going to advise anyone to pay all that money for 4E just to end up designing something on one's own that doesn't much resemble 4E? I can think of much better candidates for such kit-bashing.

Absolutely not. That was never my suggestion. My suggestion was, essentially, "If a player wants his character to trip an enemy in 4E, and his character doesn't have a power that lets him do it, he doesn't have to say,'I can't do it at all'. Instead, he can use the available 'Actions the Rules Don't Cover' rules to attempt the action outside of powers."

In 4E, those rules aren't primary rules, they're a backup because you can't have a specific rule for every situation that could ever possibly arise.

I'm not telling anyone to redesign 4E. I'm telling people to use the rules that are already there for the situations that require them.

[Pbartender]

Originally Posted by Ariosto

If one wants just a loose framework in which (as put in Supplement IV, Gods, Demigods & Heroes) "the 'rules' were never meant to be more than guidelines; not even true 'rules'," then old D&D is that. If you want a super-sized side of number crunching with your simulation, then maybe 3E or GURPS (or an old Fantasy Games Unlimited recipe) will fill the order.

4E cooks up something else, for other tastes.

Ah... this gets at what I'm suggesting.

In this context, I (me, myself, personally) see 4E as a fusion of those two styles... It has a decent portion of detailed rules for the more common situations that happen in a typical D&D game -- fantasy combat and adventure exploration -- and then has a handful of more generalized rules -- like stunts and skill challenges -- to handle the occasional situation that falls outside those bounds.

Of course, the desingers decided to focus on the detailed combat and adventuring rules (what has always been the focus of D&D adventures and rules), while the leaving the generalized rules short and vague, leaving it up to the players to use their imaginations and the DM to use his own good sense when applying them.

[ExploderWizard]

I really don't see a need for justification. What has happened is a large blurring of the divide between the magic and non-magic abilities of characters. If every power is simply considered a superpower then there isn't a need to worry about what is magical and what isn't.

Player characters being special individuals with "gifts" makes more sense in the 4E power structure than the traditional highly trained adventurer. This also makes sense of the fact that the rules for PC's and NPC's are vastly different. This major assumption also helps with the retraining rules. Powers grow and fade outside of the control of the character.

Lighthearted adventures can feature characters more like The Greatest American Hero rather than Superman.

Viewed in this light, the whole package makes perfect sense to me. If I want non-supers fantasy I can play another game.

[Pbartender]

Originally Posted by ExploderWizard

I really don't see a need for justification. What has happened is a large blurring of the divide between the magic and non-magic abilities of characters. If every power is simply considered a superpower then there isn't a need to worry about what is magical and what isn't.

Player characters being special individuals with "gifts" makes more sense in the 4E power structure than the traditional highly trained adventurer. This also makes sense of the fact that the rules for PC's and NPC's are vastly different. This major assumption also helps with the retraining rules. Powers grow and fade outside of the control of the character.

Lighthearted adventures can feature characters more like The Greatest American Hero rather than Superman.

Viewed in this light, the whole package makes perfect sense to me. If I want non-supers fantasy I can play another game.

I like to look at it through the lens of mythological heroes... Who were essentially the fantasy superheroes of their times.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by LostSoul

In my experience, we never described what happened in the combat round. It usually went like this:

"I hit AC 3."
"That hits."
"8 damage."

That was my usual experience of 1e combat too.

This is, to me, the same problem that 4E has, though it's a little different. Both versions allow you to consider only the mechanics without engaging the fluff at all.

That's for getting what I was trying say, Lost. I was starting to worry I was speaking moon-man language.

(4E has great rules (in my opinion) on how to adjudicate "unexpected" actions, but the powers create "power blindness" and those unexpected actions aren't often attempted.

In my 4e group it isn't 'power blindness' so much as the regular class powers are simply fun to use, so we use them. I imagine once we start getting bored of the canned powers, we'll start stunting more.

The party rogue uses Acrobatics stunts from time to time, and my paladin, who, to make a long, oft-told story short, has a small deity crammed down his pants, sometimes stunts Diplomacy in order to beg for a boon from the god (like a 1-time use of the Clerical daily).