Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.

Hypersmurf said:

Right.

The character attempts to chop off the opponent's head.

In game A, where decapitation is an action that can be declared at any time, the player rolls the die and consults the mechanics to determine success.

In a game B, where decapitation is an action that requires expenditure of a meta-resource, the player decides whether or not to do so, and - if he chooses to spend the Daily power, for example - rolls the die and consults the mechanics to determine success.

If you're running game A, you need one narrative that accounts for failure to chop off the head (because the die rolled badly), and one that accounts for success (because the die rolled well).

If you're running game B, you need one narrative that accounts for failure to chop off the head (because the die rolled badly, or because the resource was not expended), and one that accounts for success (because the resource was expended, and the die rolled well).

Either way, the stories are the same.

The difference is that in game B, the player might realise in advance that failure to chop off the head is guaranteed (since he cannot or elects not to spend the resource)... so the narrative detail explaining the failure can be introduced prior to the die roll. Or, alternatively, the narrative detail explaining why it's pointless to attempt to chop off the head can be introduced, and he can attempt something else with his action.

If another player on the next turn decides to do some head-chopping of his own, his narrative should incorporate the already-introduced details, and might also explain why it's not automatically futile for him to try what the first player failed at.

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The difference being that, as I have made clear, I disagree with an approach that expresses an action that can be attempted like tripping as an effect that can only happen once daily regardless of the actual circumstances that might exist and then adjusting the narrative to account for limiting the circumstances based on the mechanic that has created a foregone conclusion. This is beginning to look like a microcosm of the debate between sandbox play and GM plot-driven adventures.

Mark CMG said:

The difference being that, as I have made clear, I disagree with an approach that expresses an action that can be attempted like tripping as an effect that can only happen once daily...

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Bringing us back to:

Hypersmurf said:

The answer to "Martial Dailies don't make sense!" is "Sure they do - they represent a meta-resource".

That answer might not be to everyone's taste, but it's better for people to acknowledge "I find meta-resources distasteful in D&D" than to claim "My Fighter forgets how to Trip people, but remembers again if he goes to sleep!"

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Expenditure of meta-resources to narratively allow certain actions isn't to your taste.

That doesn't mean it's nonsensical, just not your preferred approach (and that preference is, naturally, your prerogative!). It can be made nonsensical by a player who is unwilling to undertake the associated adjustments to narrative that those meta-resources affect, but any game mechanic can be made narratively nonsensical if that's an agenda.

("Check it out! I've just undertaken a methodical trial, firing ten thousand individual arrows at that target from varying distances. At any distance from 10 feet to 100 feet, I hit it 75% of the time. As soon as I move to 105 feet, though, the rate drops to 65%, and remains there all the way out to 200 feet!"

"What happens at 102 feet?"

"You don't think I've tried?")

-Hyp.

Rogue Agent said:

You can try to dismiss that as just saying "it's magic", but it is the key distinction being discussed.

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...so then the problem isn't with the mechanics itself. There's nothing dissociated about them, in and of themselves. It's entirely story and imagination. Why aren't we talking about "dissociated stories" or "dissociated settings?"

I will pose this hypothetical, since we always seem to be talking about 4e: If you recharacterized every single Martial ability as being "ki energy," "martial magic," "physical adepthood" or something of the sort - would the mechanics still be "dissociated"?

-O

Hypersmurf said:

Expenditure of meta-resources to narratively allow certain actions isn't to your taste.

That doesn't mean it's nonsensical, just not your preferred approach. It can be made nonsensical by a player who is unwilling to undertake the associated adjustments to narrative that those meta-resources affect, but any game mechanic can be made narratively nonsensical if that's an agenda.

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Well, nonsensical is your word but your explanation is the justification for the explanation. It's circular logic. And, again, you are opening up the field of the discussion of a broader spectrum of game mechanics despite my repeatedly limiting the discussion to actions like "tripping" as being unsatisfactory when expressed as a daily effect. You've stated above that 'That answer might not be to everyone's taste, but it's better for people to acknowledge "I find meta-resources distasteful in D&D" than to claim "My Fighter forgets how to Trip people, but remembers again if he goes to sleep!"' as a way to force the argument to be broadened to all meta-resources when in fact people can disagree that in some cases a meta-resouce might be fine but that in other instances it may not. I repeat, since you keep wishing me to adjust my stance based on your broadening of the argument, that my discussion and disagreement with the mechanics of daily effects finds that in situations like with tripping the mechanic is simply not to my tastes for the reasons I have previously stated above.

Hypersmurf said:

("Check it out! I've just undertaken a methodical trial, firing ten thousand individual arrows at that target from varying distances. At any distance from 10 feet to 100 feet, I hit it 75% of the time. As soon as I move to 105 feet, though, the rate drops to 65%, and remains there all the way out to 200 feet!"

"What happens at 102 feet?"

"You don't think I've tried?")

-Hyp.

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What is the cost of an arrow? Seriously, though, are you arguing in favor of a more math-intensive solution whereby the percentages curve more gradually and the range increments are more granulated? I think you are going further afield, pun intended, than I was into discussing but you might wish to start a new thread with your findings and proposal if that is the tangent you wish to pursue. I might join in or I might not. I'll have to check my Post dailies.

Obryn said:

...so then the problem isn't with the mechanics itself. There's nothing dissociated about them, in and of themselves. It's entirely story and imagination. Why aren't we talking about "dissociated stories" or "dissociated settings?"

I will pose this hypothetical, since we always seem to be talking about 4e: If you recharacterized every single Martial ability as being "ki energy," "martial magic," "physical adepthood" or something of the sort - would the mechanics still be "dissociated"?

-O

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The closest example I can think of is barbarian rage. A barbarian doesn't decide to go Hulk-style and get angry, the player decides. However, even then the PC does have some in-game notion of the power's use (His adrenaline kicks in, granting him heightened strength, stamina, will, even shrugging-off pain, but then is winded after until he recovers) and can probably even define "in-game" how much he can rage ("Got another one of those in you?" "I don't think I can again today...")

The key difference is that the rage affects the character's status, not action. Rage (in 3e) doesn't define an action, nor does it grant him a tactic he can only use while raging*. Unlike King's Castle or Come and Get It, it doesn't define the narrative, it just enhances the barbarian's normal actions.

Interestingly, I thought the Essentials Martial PCs (Thief, Slayer, Knight) were a good compromise. They augmented the fighter's normal attacks, could be tried again-and-again regardless of prior success or failure that day, and still opened up some tactical range for the fighter. Even their encounter-level bonus die I was fine with; an attack that required some effort (and thus wasn't spammable) but the fighter could try as needed.

Long story short; a good martial power should affect the PC by granting him upgraded status or attacks, but not necessarily open/close off options.

Rogue Agent said:

If you're interested in playing a roleplaying game, then you want the mechanical decisions you're making as a player to be associated with the decisions your character is making.

When you use dissociated mechanics, on the other hand, you aren't roleplaying. You're making decisions which are dissociated from your character's decisions. Which is fine. They can satisfy other creative desires or gamist preferences.

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I wonder where the line between dissociated mechanics and abstract mechanics lies.

Why can't I make a trip attack (3E) with a longsword?

If I hit an off-balance* foe wielding a sword & shield with the butt of my halberd to trip him over, why do I still have to drop the weapon or risk a chance to be tripped in response?

In both cases my character's perfectly reasonable choices are negated by the mechanics, which seems to suggest that my and my character's choices are dissociated. If there is a difference between not being able to trip using a longsword and not being able to trip because you've already used Spinning Sweep, I'm not sure what it is.

(* - I don't mean off-balance from a precarious surface, e.g. Grease. I mean from something like my buddy hitting him with a club to knock him off-balance. If that's not possible, isn't that a dissociated mechanic?)

Mark CMG said:

I repeat, since you keep wishing me to adjust my stance based on your broadening of the argument, that my discussion and disagreement with the mechanics of daily effects finds that in situations like with tripping the mechanic is simply not to my tastes for the reasons I have previously stated above.

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I don't want you to adjust your stance. I have no problem with you finding Trip-as-Daily distasteful.

My position is just that Trip-as-Daily is a mechanic that can be made to work narratively. It doesn't need to lead to characters poking at the physics of the game universe with bemused expressions.

Seriously, though, are you arguing in favor of a more math-intensive solution whereby the percentages curve more gradually and the range increments are more granulated?

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Not at all. I'm saying that if we permit the characters in the game world to think too hard about the implications of the game mechanics, they're going to find weird results. Solution? Don't let them.

So with Daily powers, we can choose either to have the PCs think too hard about it ("Hey, you ever notice that I never trip more than one guy on any given day? Don't you think that's weird?")... or we can have them assume that the occasions they choose to attempt to trip someone are those which are occurring through the natural statistical processes of the universe.

The character's thought process should be "I'm a pretty good shot, but it gets harder if I'm further away", not "I have a 15 in 20 chance to hit the target between 10 and 100 feet, and a 13 in 20 chance to hit the target between 105 and 200 feet".

Likewise, the character's thought process should be "Every now and then a dude leaves an opening for me to Trip him, and when he does, dude's going down!", not "Well, I just Tripped a guy, so I know I can't Trip anyone else until I've had a nap". As players, we know it's once a day; as a character, he knows it's "when the opportunity presents itself". It's just that the player has the narrative control to declare exactly when that opportunity happens to present, by expending his meta-resource.

-Hyp.

Remathilis said:

Long story short; a good martial power should affect the PC by granting him upgraded status or attacks, but not necessarily open/close off options.

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I understand, but in this hypothetical we're saying that the fictional world of a specific 4e game has "martial magic" or the like. Maybe divine-, arcane- or psionically-enhanced physical abilities or something of that nature, which fighters can call upon at varying intervals - 5 minutes, daily, etc.

Is this mechanic still "dissociated" and if so, what does that say about where the dissociation lies?

-O

Hypersmurf said:

Of course. I'm not arguing for or against narrative-influence, meta-resource mechanics. I'm arguing that in a game where those mechanics exist, it doesn't have to result in a nonsensical scenario of a character temporarily forgetting a learned skill.

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Here's my own perspective on this, hopefully it's useful to see where other people might be coming from.

My own preference to avoid these sort of mechanics comes from the fact there's a sort of dissonance between my idea of my character's decision-making process or mental narrative, and my understanding of how this will actually play out in the game. It's not that the character might try, even though there's no chance it will work - that sort of thing is fine. It's that even though the character might want to try, I know it can't work because I've already used that "trip" resource today, and I don't have a map in the character's internal state for that.

I can rationalise why it didn't happen, it just grates in that instance.

So, I find that my tolerance for these mechanics is pretty much dependent on how far away they are from in-character thinking: a daily resource to allow a re-roll, for example, is fine as a "roll" in and of itself has no meaning to a character. An encounter resource which allows an extra action in a fight isn't so bad, because the combat structure is chopped up into rounds pretty arbitrarily, and and extra action is something I can "lose in the paper-work", so to speak. Being unable trip the guy on a narrow bridge because I spent that resource earlier in the game day? Irritating enough to want avoid.

And this is absolutely a perspective as a player. When I'm GM-ing, it's almost never an issue. I've usually got enough going on during a combat (say) that investing energy in the internal monologue of most NPCs just isn't a winning proposition.

Anyway, just hoping to add my perspective. I don't think it's by any means universal, but I suspect it's a common enough that it might be useful to others. I'm also not arguing that these sort of mechanics are inherently wrong, just as I get that you're not arguing the opposite, but this seemed like as good a point as any to respond to.

Hroc

Hypersmurf said:

I don't want you to adjust your stance. I have no problem with you finding Trip-as-Daily distasteful.

My position is just that Trip-as-Daily is a mechanic that can be made to work narratively. It doesn't need to lead to characters poking at the physics of the game universe with bemused expressions.

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I believe that it does and that is why I find it distasteful.

Hypersmurf said:

I'm saying that if we permit the characters in the game world to think too hard about the implications of the game mechanics, they're going to find weird results. Solution? Don't let them.

So with Daily powers, we can choose either to have the PCs think too hard about it ("Hey, you ever notice that I never trip more than one guy on any given day? Don't you think that's weird?")... or we can have them assume that the occasions they choose to attempt to trip someone are those which are occurring through the natural statistical processes of the universe.

The character's thought process should be "I'm a pretty good shot, but it gets harder if I'm further away", not "I have a 15 in 20 chance to hit the target between 10 and 100 feet, and a 13 in 20 chance to hit the target between 105 and 200 feet".

Likewise, the character's thought process should be "Every now and then a dude leaves an opening for me to Trip him, and when he does, dude's going down!", not "Well, I just Tripped a guy, so I know I can't Trip anyone else until I've had a nap". As players, we know it's once a day; as a character, he knows it's "when the opportunity presents itself". It's just that the player has the narrative control to declare exactly when that opportunity happens to present, by expending his meta-resource.

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In the case of tripping, you seem to wish to adjust the expectations of the player based on a mechanic rather than have the mechanics help adjudicate the natural expectations of the player, that one should be able to attempt to trip someone any number of times a day and that the circumstances influence the result rather than the mechanics restricting the potential circumstances leading to a foregone conclusion.

I get your point and I disagree with the approach and the design.