Why have dissociated mechanics returned?

pemerton · Sep 4, 2012

tomBitonti said:
If you mixed that with blindness (probably need to dip into 3E for true blindness), or with a necromancer's skeleton (mindless), or if a player puts on a blindfold deliberately to (try to) avoid the effect, what happens? (Perhaps 4E has creatures with immunity to fear because of their nature, so the skeleton example may or may not work.)

Probably, blindness won't work, since the "Visage" implication of a visual effect is not correct. Maybe there is a sound effect, too, but that doesn't matter either. The practical details of effect make it most similar to a purely psychic effect such as an Illithid mind blast. But then, why doesn't the power have [Fear, Psychic]? Does the power work entirely through the senses, partly through the senses and partly on the psychic level, or entirely on the psychic level?

Good questions. (Which reinforce my intuitoin that Emerikol would classify this as a "dissociated" power.)

I think it probably should be psychic damage, with the [psychic] keyword, and the failure to stat it up that way is just an error or an oversight.

On the question about [fear] effects and skeletons, that goes to who has what sorts of immunities. These are scarcer in 4e than 3E, but a mindless skeleton could in principle be immune to fear and/or have psychic resistance.

I think the most interesting question is how, if at all, a blindfold, earplugs etc help. The game leaves this up to the GM to adjudicate. It is not a [gaze] attack, so blindness does not automatically provide immunity, but I think it would be reasonable to have it give the Wight a penalty to attack (-2 is the default circumstance penalty in 4e). This requires the GM and the player to be ready to negotiate some fictional details on the run. My personal view is that 4e's otherwise fairly robust maths helps with this, by giving the player confidence that what is at stake is a meaningful adjustment to what is, nevertheless, a basically mechanically fair starting point, rather than the PC's life or death turning on the GM's arbitration of the situation.

Killer GM · Sep 4, 2012

pemerton · Sep 4, 2012

Neonchameleon said:
To pick another illustration, there are two ways of modelling alcoholic characters. I'm going to call them GURPS and FATE just for the sake of argument.

<snip>

One is process mapped to alcohol addiction. The other encourages you to behave as someone with a drinking problem. I'll leave it to the reader to guess which I consider leads to the more immersive character.

At the risk of setting up a bit of an echo chamber, I'll quote this for truth.

Obryn · Sep 4, 2012

pemerton said:
I think it probably should be psychic damage, with the [psychic] keyword, and the failure to stat it up that way is just an error or an oversight.

It does, per the compendium.

-O

Jeff Carlsen · Sep 4, 2012

Sir Robilar said:
I still believe it is dissociated. The problem I see here is that "a character realizing that he can act despite his fear" should not be represented as an action in a six second turn sequence alongside actions like casting a spell, attacking someone with a sword or drinking a potion. It brings up difficult questions such as: Why couldn't the character just realize that he can act despite of his fear when he was first affected by the fear effect? Does it really take him six seconds to come to this realization? Shouldn't it be a free action? Why can't the character take a double move while he has this realization? And so on.

Also I believe that retroactively fixing these mechanics is not the best way to go. To pull a quote from the Alexandrian's blog post:

" The flip side of the “explaining it all away” misconception is the “it’s easy to fix” fallacy. Instead of providing an improvised description that explains what the mechanic did after the fact, we instead rewrite the ability to provide an explanation and, thus, re-associate the dissociated mechanic. "

My point was that the Halfling actually has to stop and talk himself into acting, which would be an action. Of course, that's the story my mind came up with when I saw the mechanic, so perhaps I've made the association. So your point remains at least so far as the action need to be described as to what it is.

Remathilis · Sep 4, 2012

tomBitonti said:
If you mixed that with blindness (probably need to dip into 3E for true blindness), or with a necromancer's skeleton (mindless), or if a player puts on a blindfold deliberately to (try to) avoid the effect, what happens? (Perhaps 4E has creatures with immunity to fear because of their nature, so the skeleton example may or may not work.)

Probably, blindness won't work, since the "Visage" implication of a visual effect is not correct. Maybe there is a sound effect, too, but that doesn't matter either. The practical details of effect make it most similar to a purely psychic effect such as an Illithid mind blast. But then, why doesn't the power have [Fear, Psychic]? Does the power work entirely through the senses, partly through the senses and partly on the psychic level, or entirely on the psychic level?

TomB

More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?

Neonchameleon · Sep 4, 2012

Remathilis said:
More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?

I suspect your first time will be the worst. But see no reason at all you aren't going to be staggered by repitions.

Mustrum_Ridcully · Sep 4, 2012

Remathilis said:
More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?

That depends on what "True Horror" means. But I figure that, say, a man like Giger that has night terrors regularly will find it impossible to get accustomed to his horrors, and my own experiences with dreams where I realize that I forget to take an important exam meaning that I'll lose my diploma (or never gotten it) can repeat as often as it likes, it never ends its horror (for that dream - waking up of course is always a plreasure,m realizing that it was all just a stupid dream..). Where as a soldier that has seen his share of dead may not find as much horror in it as he used to the first time around ...

slobster · Sep 4, 2012

Remathilis said:
More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?

Well, it is psychic trauma. It bypasses your normal ways of coping with pain and discomfort. It could be like having the person you love tell you that they don't love you anymore. Experiencing it once doesn't mean it gets any easier if it happens again. If anything, the knowing of how painful it really is makes the anticipation and terror all the more powerful.

Mustrum_Ridcully · Sep 4, 2012

slobster said:
Well, it is psychic trauma. It bypasses your normal ways of coping with pain and discomfort. It could be like having the person you love tell you that they don't love you anymore. Experiencing it once doesn't mean it gets any easier if it happens again. If anything, the knowing of how painful it really is makes the anticipation and terror all the more powerful.

But in some ways, I realize the answer is definitely yes - you'll probably get some XP from this experience, bringing you closer to a level with a higher defense - at least this particular "true horror" you may get a bit more resilient against...

Why have dissociated mechanics returned?

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