Feign Death Practice -- level 8 ... ummmm Why???

Garthanos said:

There is a level 2 potion that lets you grow the ear points and height and build of an elf its impressively close to boom you are an elf in all appearance including someone pulling on your ears and so on.

Boom you look convincingly dead at level 2 is entirely reasonable if all you want is to look dead

Arguably I described that without a practice version of feigning death right here.



A level 2 item which all it did was a self only good bluff based on a different skill than bluff could still be ok. (I suppose you could still induce this in others either with a heal check or a diplomacy)

Though once you see it as actually reducing the need to breath and slowing and stopping heart beat I see it as very much moving in to the suppress needs and afflictions arena and level 4.

Then if we wanted Stasis Trance or Death Trance as a level 4 thing which you would also put all conditions on hold could be separated out and have Feign Death as a prerequisite is that kind of what you are thinking? Or make the level 4 effect a note on the level 2 version?


l estimate a level 10 from 4e higher in 4e - paragon and named level 8 or 9 serving the same marker points seem a definite correlation to me.


Looks like we agree more than you realize ie yes divide by two with an offset gets very close (that is linear)

level 30 from 4e becomes level 17 or 18 (approx maxed out)
level 21 from 4e becomes level 14 (gonzo epic begins)
level 11 from 4e becomes level 9 (named level)
level 1 from 4e becomes level 4 (level of feels competent)

AND level 1 from 1e becomes a minions downed in one hit which are not really recommend for players in 4e.

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Sure, I think you can approximate it linearly well enough. There's no exact correlations, 4e characters are inherently a bit tougher and have slightly less open-ended abilities (but ones that in some ways are more powerful since you can use them so reliably).

Is something like what Li Mu Bai does in the end sequence of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon really just a level 4 practice? I think being able to arrest the course of any affliction feels pretty 'epic' to me. Maybe in the fantastical world of 4e its only 'paragon', but it sure seems to me like Mu Bai is at least a paragon character, and I'd call delaying your last breath of life for several hours pretty gnarly stuff. Of course people can differ on things like that.

Here's how I scale things:

Heroic: characters are highly resistant, they have the hit points, HS, and skill bonuses needed to survive anything that would usually be considered survivable. So a heroic character will always survive a rattlesnake bite, all other things being equal, since most normal people would survive that with (or often without) some care. Often they can survive the bite of the black mamba, which is normally fatal to average people, but not universally lethal. They will still die from the bite of the green creeper of the Isle of Blight, nobody survives that, ever (but of course there's always a plot hook for this, maybe combined with a good check result in 4e).

Paragon: rattlesnakes break a tooth on you. The black mamba bite is still painful and partly debilitating without treatment, but survivable. The green creeper could still kill assuming lack of proper care and/or poor check results. Paragon characters survival ability is supernatural, but within the realm of folklore and the capabilities of 'the best in the world'.

Epic: rattlesnakes die when they bite you, black mambas break a tooth, the green creeper bite is painful but mostly just inconvenient. There are of course 'epic snakes' of some sort, the demon lord of snakes or something, that can still be lethal or at least debilitating, but nothing short of that is really going to touch you. Epic characters are simply beyond normal laws. Nobody has ever seen their like, except maybe in some myth of things that happened 2000 years ago.

I'd at least call Li Mu Bai 'paragon', nobody could survive the poison he's poisoned with unless they get some kind of cure-all. However he's a paragon 'monk' and he's got access to the practice 'arrest all negative effects, pay an HS every N hours to maintain this'. He's just running low on HS when Shu Lien finds him and can't hold out any longer.

That's my take on it. Note how this fundamentally differs from how things work in 1e, where a large centipede's poison CAN kill even a level 20 PC, albeit they will normally pass their save.

Of course, I would rather change the whole practice of 4e...

A technique like 'delay onset' would grant some sort of narrative change (delaying the application of effects of an affliction) which in turn provides a more advantageous check scenario for the PC or another character in the 'save him from the poison' challenge. In the Crouching Tiger scenario it gives the Jen character advantage in her attempt to find the antidote in time (and in this case perhaps it wouldn't even be possible without the delay at all, forcing some other sub-par course of action like an unassisted Heal check that has little chance of success). Even so the challenge fails and Li Mu Bai passes away, but such is his destiny.

In fact you might even consider this simply an element of larger challenge 'Defeat the Jade Fox' in which the Li Mu Bai character ups the stakes; after failing to block the poison needles he utilizes an Inspiration point to accept the poison himself, thus risking death, to save Shu Lien (or maybe it was Jen, I forget exactly). At this point his survival hinges on level of success. He uses Delay Onset to give Jen an advantage on the final check of the challenge to establish his survival and she fails, so he dies (partial success). The original terms of the challenge dictated that JEN die on partial success, Li Mu Bai simply changed the terms, upping the PC stakes (Jen being an NPC presumably since they are in conflict with her).

This sort of process fits better with the aims of 4e than its actual sort of halfway dramatic techniques where you still have the weird simulationist kind of outcomes that are entirely arbitrated by checks and don't account for character's motivations and goals, yet the game is SUPPOSED to be story-centered in intent. I'm sure [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has a better way of articulating this, he's got fine lecturing techniques!

AbdulAlhazred said:

Sure, I think you can approximate it linearly well enough. There's no exact correlations, 4e characters are inherently a bit tougher and have slightly less open-ended abilities (but ones that in some ways are more powerful since you can use them so reliably).

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Yeh abiities are different enough approximate is the closest we are going to get.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Is something like what Li Mu Bai does in the end sequence of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon really just a level 4 practice?

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haven't got to see the first one of that.. but based on rituals of D&D, yes delay affliction is 4 and 8 is remove it entirely ...even if I think 8 is too early for raise the dead level 12 would be better - I do not think I would change those affliction manipulating ones which includes the remove disease at level 6.

(We would have to do some serious rescaling to make it different.)

What might a martial hero of level 8 do to reject the curse of the were beast... go into a vigil in a scary cave and wrestle with a dream version of his beast self while descending into a fever dream and throwing off the taint by shear discipline, will and self awareness.

Or perhaps he would do that an tame the beast making it serve him and instead of being a curse it is now an ability.

AbdulAlhazred said:

Of course, I would rather change the whole practice of 4e...

A technique like 'delay onset' would grant some sort of narrative change (delaying the application of effects of an affliction)

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4e rather lacks methods of inducing afflictions outside of the DM's little red car... its one of those doesnt feel done elements of the game.

Removing the cool assed afflictions that might bother paragon/epic characters at a degree as to be story components might be always in the context of a skill challenge and one might have the remove affliction only give a simplistic removal of issues that are 5 levels beneath the heros awesomeness or something.

Garthanos said:

Removing the cool assed afflictions that might bother paragon/epic characters at a degree as to be story components might be always in the context of a skill challenge and one might have the remove affliction only give a simplistic removal of issues that are 5 levels beneath the heros awesomeness or something.

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Or an affliction might have multi-layer effects....

If we think removal is too easy this could allow a complexity worthy of story.

Garthanos said:

4e rather lacks methods of inducing afflictions outside of the DM's little red car... its one of those doesnt feel done elements of the game.

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You won't hear me arguing with this. I have GREATLY increased the utilization of 'afflictions', BUT I am now thinking that in some sense they should be subsumed within the whole challenge paradigm. That is to say, what REALLY is an 'affliction'? Its either a challenge, or an element of a challenge. If there's no conflict involved, if you're just limping along and minding your business and nothing rides on your recovery or at least lack of getting worse, then the affliction is no more than color, right? I can imagine some of this type, I call them 'limitations' in HoML, and they're basically just 'reverse boons'. You might have a limitation that says you move slower '-1 speed' due to a limp, etc. They could just be traits (ugly scar) with no specific mechanical effect but the player could leverage them.

When an affliction is a REAL issue, then it becomes a challenge to overcome. You want to not die of the snake bite? Well, that's a goal, and it can be sort of "Man vs the World" type of conflict. This is the closest case to 4e's 'disease track' implementation, which is (if you think about it) pretty close conceptually to a challenge. However, I think this kind of treatment is weak. 'Man vs the World' is the weakest form of conflict, as there is no specific antagonist, and it is pretty much identical to 'Man vs Self', though a little more outward-directed.

So, I would suggest that afflictions always have a context in which they are a factor, and thus become an element in a larger conflict. You want to defeat the orc king, but you have to catch him, and that snake bite you got 3 days back ain't helping....

AbdulAlhazred said:

You won't hear me arguing with this. I have GREATLY increased the utilization of 'afflictions', BUT I am now thinking that in some sense they should be subsumed within the whole challenge paradigm. That is to say, what REALLY is an 'affliction'? Its either a challenge, or an element of a challenge. .

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if they are an element of a challenge the rituals and practices for interacting with them in 4e can work... you might have the delay affliction duration based on the intensity of the affliction of course by drawing out the affliction you add to the successes of the challenge ie time for other elements of it to get done.

Garthanos said:

if they are an element of a challenge the rituals and practices for interacting with them in 4e can work... you might have the delay affliction duration based on the intensity of the affliction of course by drawing out the affliction you add to the successes of the challenge ie time for other elements of it to get done.

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Right, so you might avoid a disadvantage that would otherwise be incurred, or even avoid a failure, by 'delaying the poison'. As with my Crouching Tiger example a really well-factored challenge would allow for this to translate into some sort of 'trade one consequence for another' sort of thing.

Sleep of Kings Perhaps at level 12 one can deepen the state too an eternal slumber where the subject cannot awaken till a trigger condition or external intervention (such as rituals or another practice to remove an affliction) occurs this state has no ongoing cost, further no aging and you awaken full charged.