D&D 5E Warlord as a Fighter option; Assassin as a Rogue option

[I'm A Banana]

First, from the fact that the mechanics don't model "why" it doesn't follow that it doesn't matter why. The mechanics don't model how a cleric, as opposed to a wizard, casts spells - there are no mechanics around prayers, for example (contrast Burning Wheel in that respect) - but it doesn't follow that it doesn't matter that a cleric is praying.

That's one of the subjective parts here.

To me, and to scads of D&D players, this stuff does matter.

Some mechanics DO model how a cleric casts spells differently (arcane spell failure chance in heavy armor, domain spells, spontaneous healing, the existence of spellbooks versus accessing the entire spell list). I love those mechanics! These help reinforce the cleric as a more passive recipient of magic, than an active crafter of it -- it's easier for them. Those aren't trivial things, they're important to pretending to be that character.

Second, we're playing a game. So the whole thing is mere assertion. The question for me is, which assertions do we want to take as starting points, and which do we want to work out in play. I want a game that starts from the premise that the fighter is at the centre of the action, and unfolds from there. I'm not interested in mucking around with granular action resolution mechanics in order to get there.

Yes, it's a game, but it's a game about pretending to be an imaginary person. Just like how telling-not-showing can rip you out of the world of a novel or a film, tautological abstract mechanics can rip you out of the imaginary world of the game (and, similarly, people have much different thresholds for these things). Actors and performers and writers reinforce the truth of their make-believe world by paying attention to the details that build their stories. Characters have a "life of their own" because they react to the imaginary world, not to what you want them to do in the real world. My games need to do that, too. If a game I'm playing wants a fighter to be at the centre of the action, it has to employ mechanics that make this their outcome, not simply dictate that it is true.

It's a bit like a magic-user: the game doesn't make the player of a high level MU engage in action resoution to establish that his/her PC is a master of magic - that's taken for granted. It's a starting point.

Likewise for the 4e fighter. The question posed is not "Is the fighter at the centre of the action" but rather "Given that the fighter is at the centre of the action, what happens?" I personally find the second question the more interesting one for my heroic fantasy game.

It's not a starting point, though. It's proven through actions: the OD&D MU has a spellbook with a lot of spells in it and with powerful high-level spells that can change the world and that's exactly what you'd expect out of a master of magic. They teleport, they dominate, they shape weather -- heady stuff that demonstrates their mastery of the unseen world.

The Fighter needs to have a REASON they are at the center of the action. If there's no supporting evidence, it's not believable. It's not fun if I can't pretend that I'm playing people in this make-believe world, and that requires the actual details of WHY the fighter is at the center of the action. "Because that's the end we want to achieve," is far too artificial for me to be comfortable with on a regular basis. If that's the end you want to achieve, show your work. Do it. Don't just declare it done.

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm not particularly understanding how "the fighter is at the center of the action" is not supported by the evidence inherent to the mechanics? We have a guy who:

- Is sturdier than everyone else as supported by his HPs and Defenses.
- Is proficient in all melee weapons and all armor.
- Has multiple class features that presupposes a battle acumen borne of being not just a combat veteran, but an infantry veteran. He is a ferocious brawler who protects the man to the left and right of him. He is in your face and if you don't focus your attention on him, you pay with your life. If you try to escape the reach of his weapons, you pay with your life. When he is upon you, one of you is leaving the field while the other is leaving this world.
- Has attack and utility exploits that reinforce that role of Spartan Myrmidon - Damage, grit, fearlessness, sneering defiance in the face of death.

I could list a dozen Fighter Builds that all scream every bit of the above. Which part of those build resources, and their resultant in-combat, in-fiction accompaniment don't backup "the fighter is the center of the action"? The infantry is "the center" of all combat skirmishes. There is no Resource Scheme and no default PC Builds that say infantry/center of the action more than the 4e Fighter. Its not a tautology. He isn't the center of the action because he's the center of the action. He's the center of the action because we expect him to be the center of the action...and here is this Sherman Tank and Howitzer, and mound of felled foes, to prove it.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

First of all, +1 to everything Kamikaze Midget said. You made this post a heck of a lot shorter.

I'm going to spoiler my replies since this post is a bit long-winded. Warning: massive wall of text, work was slow this afternoon. Please don't think I'm trying to hammer away at your arguments or I have something against your argument personally or anything like that, I just tend to get a bit verbose and example-heavy when talking about this sort of thing.

pemerton[sblock]

I don't really accept this premise, although you're far from the first person to put it forward.

Come and Get It, in 4e, begins from flavour (or, as I called it upthread, fiction): the fighter is a master of his/her weapon, and is at the centre of the action. And this will be conveyed, in the game, by the fighter being able to pull his/her enemies in adjacent and then whack them down.

No, Come and Get It as you describe it doesn't begin from flavor or fiction, fighter powers in general do. No one disagrees that a fighter's set of powers work together to define the fighter's flavor, just as a wizard's spells in aggregate determine his flavor, but in your description of CaGI you have said nothing about the power's flavor at all. The fighter is a weapon master, the fighter is in the middle of the action, the fighter can pull enemies and then hit them...that's great, but as Kamikaze Midget said, you're missing the how for CaGI that describes how you accomplish the flavor of "always in the center of battle."

Come and Get It is effects-based to this extent: the mechanical resolution doesn't tell you whether or not the enemies closed because they wanted to pile on the fighter, or because the fighter dragged them all in with his/her polearm. But an ordinary D&D attack roll is effects based to the same extent: the mechanical resolution doesn't tell us whether the fighter missed because s/he sucks, or because s/he is awesome but the enemy parried with equal awesomeness (contrast Runquest, which does answer this question via the mechanical process of resolution).

An attack roll is certainly somewhat effects-based, as any abstracted mechanic will be to some extent, but I disagree that it's the same extent at all. An attack roll, unlike CaGI, can be given an explanation based on the mechanics: AC is composed of Dex, armor, and other factors, so if you miss by X where normal AC > X > AC minus armor you can point to that and say that the blow bounced off the armor. Being flavor-based doesn't mean each mechanic has to have one and only one explanation (again, abstraction renders that infeasible) but it does mean you should have something to point to that says "this mechanic maps to something in the game world."

Also, an attack roll, unlike CaGI, is composed of fairly flavor-based components and is opposed by a fairly flavor-based defense. Your attack roll is composed of factors that observably change in-world (Str, proficiency, etc.) and AC is composed of the same (armor, Dex, etc.). Take Str damage, your attack bonus drops; use a nonproficient weapon, your attack bonus drops; take your armor off, lose your armor bonus to AC; be unconscious, lose your Dex bonus to AC; and so forth. AC is also composed of nebulous factors like "the enemy is actively parrying" that don't always work, but there's always something to fall back on.

For an attack roll to be equivalent to CaGI, the attack roll and AC would have to be singular values, i.e. you get BAB to attacks and BDB to AC with no differentiation or attached flavor, so when you roll 1d20+abstract value vs. 10+abstract value you have no idea why you missed or even why you hit.

Fighter marking is primarily a metagame mechanic - a metagame debuff that gives the GM an incentive to attack the fighter, and which allows the fighter to punish the NPC/monster if it does otherwise.

Again, unexplained ≠ metagame. Action points are a metagame mechanic: the player spends an action point, the player improves his character's attack roll, the character and his target notice nothing different and it doesn't affect their knowledge or behavior in any way. Targets of a mark explicitly know that they're marked, so there's got to be something observable that gives them that information--and it's not even "Hey, DM, run your NPCs as if they notice something threatening about Joe the Fighter," it's "the NPCs know they're marked."

It has always been a distinctive feature of D&D that it blurs the distinction between PC and player resources. Is level a metagame device or an ingame one? It's tempting to answer "metagame", until you think about the relationship between name level and stronghold-building, and also the dietary habits of wights. Hit points have combined PC and player elements at least since Gygax's essays in the AD&D rulebooks. And class is a category with both metagame and ingame dimensions.

4e takes this feature of D&D and extends its application. I'm personally rather surprised that it is so contentious, given how ubiquitous it has always been in the game.

As you noted, things like level, HD, and such have measurable in-game effects and are less metagame than you'd expect. If you want to research how many HD the BBEG has so you can use soul bind on him, you can explicitly find that out. In AD&D levels have names that can be used, and level-based effects like followers, caster level, and such can be measured in-game. 3e provides several means of directly identifying HD/CR (Sense Motive for threat assessment, the Urban Savant's abilities). HP have some aspect of luck and skill, but it's still partly physical, and PCs can estimate if jumping off a cliff has a guaranteed chance to kill them, a so-so chance, or none at all.

The transition to 4e both changed the amount of metagame mechanics in the system and made some of them more obviously metagame by their interaction with other mechanics. A lot of people have a certain threshold of metagaming in their mechanics below which they're fine with it (even if they might prefer not to have it) and above which they have a problem. There are people who accepted the crusader's Devoted Spirit "nonmagical" healing very grudgingly, but accepted it nonetheless because the crusader has a pseudo-magical paladin-ish veneer. They accepted per-encounter ToB maneuvers because the existence of a refresh mechanism could let them sorta kinda justify them as needing the right placement and such, but Martial Study maneuvers that didn't refresh left them cold.

ToB maneuvers were right at many players threshold of "how metagame-y do I want my mechanics to be?" and when 4e both removed the tenuous "divine inspiration" justification for martial heaing and the tenuous "combat rhythm" justification for per-encounter mechanics with the removal of the refresh, that put them over the edge. It's hard to tell where peoples' lines lie exactly and they're all over the map, which is why some people loved ToB but hated 4e, love 4e but hated ToB, sort of liked both, and so on.

But that's not the same as Come and Get It - for a start, it makes you likely to be hit - whereas Come and Get It doesn't let the enemy make an attack, let alone at advantage, before they get punished by the fighter.

Well, that's mostly because they have different flavor motivations--Come and Get It is about convincing people you left an opening, Karmic Strike is about actually leaving yourself open. Robilar's Gambit is a similar feat that resolves the attack at the same time rather than afterwards, letting you trade blows rather than react. Karmic Strike could just as easily give you the attack first, interrupting the original attack like an AoO does, if the flavor were that you were faking the opening and waiting to pounce on their mistake. Again, it all comes down to what flavor you want to represent.

An ability that requires the player to forfeit an action, in return for a hope that the GM will respond to an incentive (such as reduced AC) in order to trigger out-of-turn actions by the player, seems to me a bad deal and dubious design. It puts the effectivness of the PC into the GM's hands.

If you're talking about Karmic Strike, you don't forfeit any actions, you decide as a free action on your turn whether to be in Karmic Strike stance or not.

You could use a Bluff check instead of GM fiat, of course, but this has its own problems:

This gets back to [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]'s point, about multiple checks. If the player has to succeed at a Bluff check, and then at a to hit roll, the likelihood of success is reduced.

I'm going to bold this to make sure it gets through this time: I'm not advocating for making the fighter succeed at more rolls than the casters to do his thing. Look at the way Feint works: you don't roll against Sense Motive and then against an attack roll, you add BAB to Sense Motive. Combat maneuvers work the same way: grapple adds BAB and Str, bull rush is just Str, trip is opposed by the higher of Dex or Str, etc., because each has a certain feel they're going for (training with hand-to-hand combat vs. pure physical force vs. dodging or out-leveraging).

Come and Get It, played in this way, has an obvious metagame dimension - the player of the fighter gets to dictate the movement of NPCs without that necessarily being determined by the actions of his/her PC, though in many instances of the use of the power a causal narrative of that sort can be introduced easily enough ("I lured them in", "I wrong-footed them in", etc).

As I said earlier, I don't accept this characterisation. I prefer mechanics that deliver the fiction that I want. The fiction I want, when playing a heroic fantasy RPG, puts the fighter at the centre of the action; involves valiant paladins; and involves battle captains who can rouse and inspire their allies, and lead them into battle in a way that leaves their enemies no choice but to play out the tactical hand that the battle captain has dealt them.

The only mainstream fantasy RPG I'm familiar with that reliably delivers this fiction is 4e D&D. Strip out the mechanical features, and my prediction is that you'll lose the fiction.

See, I also want mechanics that deliver the fiction that I want, but I want there to be a justification behind the mechanics. Metagame mechanics that make the fighter the center of the action "just because" are merely informed ability as far as I'm concerned.

All the Men and Elves pile on Sauron because he's practically invulnerable and can kill a dozen soldiers with one sweep of his weapon. Stormtroopers focus-fire Jedi because they can deflect a single stormtrooper's blaster fire without difficulty and they can run circles around single troops. The free humans send a whole team after Agent Smith because he's an dodges bullets like a pro and can take on any human one-on-one. All of those examples have two things in common: They're very deadly in single combat, to the point that you need to outnumber them because single opponents have zero chance against them, and they have a very good defense against common attack forms, to the point that only sheer quantity can really do anything about it.

Joe the Fighter isn't the most lethal guy on his team; Bob the Ranger is much more dangerous offensively. Joe the Fighter isn't very much more resilient than his teammates; his defenses are probably 5-6 higher than Dave the Wizard including the mark and he has around double the hit points, but that doesn't make him harder to kill the way damage mitigation or non-AC defense does, it just makes it take longer. So Joe isn't the most immediate threat on the battlefield, and even when he is (the party has no ranged attacks except fire spells when fighting fire-resistant enemies, say, and only the fighter is nearby) there's no reason to dogpile the fighter with all the enemy forces when you only need 2 or 3 enemies to get through the fighter's HP as fast as 1 enemy gets through the wizard's.

So, given that, I would argue that the fiction shouldn't put the fighter in the center of the action! There is no logical reason for the enemies to swarm him when they can just avoid him and go after his teammates. The fighter has ways to stop people from running past him, but no reason to draw in enemies from farther away than that. If you don't make him intimidating enough to make him seem like the most dangerous enemy, or tactical enough to entrap enemies, or some other justification for the mechanic, then that mechanic harms the fiction, I'd argue, rather than helping it.

Fiction and gaming have different expectations. In a Batman movie or comic, the bad guys get locked in Arkham Asylum and everyone acts surprised when they break out a month later; in a dungeon crawl, the second time a bad guy escapes the party is going to decapitate him, burn his body, and trap his soul to make sure he never comes back. In a James Bond movie, the bad guy leaves 007 in a slow, escapable death trap; a party of evil PCs would never take that chance and would just kill their captives on the spot. If you want your mechanics to "deliver the fiction you want," give one villain an item of 1/day dimension door for use in escaping the party and give another villain a mechanic that lets him escape the party regardless of dimensional lock, manacles, or any other restraints and see which one your party likes better.

So...yeah. The point of that rant is that if you can't tell me why and how your fighter is the center of attention in the battle, he shouldn't be the center of the battle, simple as that, and any mechanic that makes him the center of battle and lets you fill in any ol' justification after the fact is highly unsatisfying.

Moving on to your other posts:

It's a bit like a magic-user: the game doesn't make the player of a high level MU engage in action resoution to establish that his/her PC is a master of magic - that's taken for granted. It's a starting point.

Likewise for the 4e fighter. The question posed is not "Is the fighter at the centre of the action" but rather "Given that the fighter is at the centre of the action, what happens?" I personally find the second question the more interesting one for my heroic fantasy game.

[...]

I'm not particularly understanding how "the fighter is at the center of the action" is not supported by the evidence inherent to the mechanics? We have a guy who:

As mentioned above, there's a big difference between "the fighter class supports the concept of a soldier who can survive in the thick of combat" (which it does and which no one is disputing) and "this fighter power provides an unexplained way to put the fighter in the thick of combat" (which it does and which is unsatisfying to plenty of players).

To use a magical example for a moment, the wizard is a master of magic. No one disputes that. The wizard can cast magic somehow in a manner that is internally consistent. People are fine with that. The wizard can conjure magical fire. That's fine. Now, let's introduce a spell (or a feat, like, say, Searing Spell) that lets the wizard burn magical creatures made of magical fire, which doesn't make much sense even with the "but it's magic!" excuse.

If I object to Searing Spell on the grounds that "the wizard can burn fire with fire because plot, he doesn't need any other reason, because the fiction is better if a pyromancer keeps using fire spells when fighting fire elementals!" is a stupid conceit, that doesn't mean I'm objecting to any other aspect of the wizard class or even to other fire spells that don't share that same problem. Further, if I suggest making a small change that makes it slightly more palatable, like "Searing Spell can overcome the immunity of really really really fire-resistant creatures like red dragons, but not creatures that are made of fire like fire elementals," that doesn't mean I hate fire-blaster wizards and am favoring noncasters, it means that I object to that particular mechanic and think that a small concession to flavor and immersion would make me happy using a mechanic that I don't currently like.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on the fighter, whether 4e or 5e. I love that the fighter gets lots of cool things to do in 4e, and I'd like to see the 5e fighter take some lessons from it. There are plenty of things I dislike about the caster classes in 4e and 5e, particularly the sorcerer and warlock, though hopefully those won't be a problem in the next playtest iteration. It just so happens that talking about the 4e fighter and warlock brought up the particular issue under consideration and I'm addressing that. When my group plays 4e, we change the stats for some forced movement powers, change martial healing to temp HP, add an encounter power refresh, and a handful of other houserules and the group's objections are basically solved--in fact, given those changes, the most die-hard 1e fan in the group is happy to play a warlord.

That's why I'm not particularly understanding the objection to making these small tweaks, I guess, just like the other side isn't particularly understanding our objection on immersion grounds. You don't see why vague/metagame-y mechanics hurt our enjoyment, and I don't see why a page or so of mechanic alterations to better fit the flavor in our view hurts your enjoyment.[/sblock]

Manbearcat/mlund[sblock]

On the whole, I see the combat mechanics as abstract in the extreme. Therefore, when I see random (seemingly mismatched) attempts at granularity, I balk.

[...]

*** In the composite fiction of our combats, there is constantly forced movement outside of mechanical resolution. As such, having the mechanical resolution tools available to activate so they are more than just narrative dressing is actually "immersive" to my players and creates for a more enjoyable martial experience. Circling right versus an opponent who has a mean right hand is "forced movement" by the opponent with the mean right hand. Circling left when opponents have you corned such that circling right would expose your unprotected flank is forced movement by your opponents. There are dozens and dozens of examples of subconscious, cost-benefit anlaysis-driven "forced movement" that ocurrs in martial conflict, from American Football (and a DE or OLB having contain on a running play and rerouting the RB inside by their outside leverage) to cage-fighting (A strikers legendary overhand right forcing an opponent to circle right for the entirety of the fight in order to not expose himself to it). Forced movement in martial enterprise is putting all of the variables into your opponents head, and forcing him to compute an unconscious permutation that can spit out only one result...and then his body instinctively (predictably) acting upon it...to the opponent's (who "forced" the movement) advantage. The actor who is being forced is not making an autonomous (conscious, aware, ego-driven) decision to move. He is being manipulated (not exclusively "bluffed"...manipulated) by something external to his own conscious will. This can be reliably reproduced with any number of "reflex" tests.

All of this is very accurate, and I agree that trying to simulate more granular parts of a battle in an abstract D&D framework can create some jarring contradictions. However, you'll note that the outcry about forced movement isn't about a power that slides you 1 square to the side or something else that could be explained through unconscious positioning. The power in question is one that convinces someone to run 15 feet towards you. There are many powers that could be explained by reflex and instinct, but that's not one of them.

It's like the Hurricane Strike monk maneuver in the latest playtest. You can shove people a few feet nonmagically and people accept that just fine, but if you want to shove people 30 feet through the air, "I hit the guy really hard" just isn't a good enough justification anymore and the maneuver becomes supernatural to justify that. Similarly, if Come and Get It involved moving 1 square back and having enemies adjacent to you follow you, that makes sense as luring someone in with a false retreat, while convincing people 1 square away to move toward you while you stay still makes less sense as a lure while still feeling somewhat off, and the RAW 3-square CaGI just seems absurd without some additional justification as to why it's doing that.

One of the problems here in the melee combat and forced movement conversation is that no abstract combat engine could possibly properly model the interaction. For it to properly model combat interaction, you would need considerably more than a <insert physical attribute> test versus <insert most relevant in the abstraction> defense. The function should take into account Intelligence, Widsom and Charisma as much, if not more, than the physical attributes. In most martial endeavors, information processing acumen and intestinal fortitude/drive/determination separate the wheat from the chaffe as much, if not more, than the physical attributes.

[...]

So, given that we don't properly model (or even attempt to) information processing acumen, drive/determination, spatial awareness in a classic D&D contest, how are we to model thiings such as "forced movement" without taking liberties within an abstraction meant to (as close as possible with deference to the interests of i - iii) represent the resolution of the task?

The real problem with getting down the granular combat like that is the appeal of such a combat system is niche, and that niche is already filled with games with hit-location tables and wounds rules and all manner of other nitty-gritty that's always been at the periphery of D&D at best. Slap it onto a module if you want to.

But the Core game of D&D can't require Martial characters to suck on un-abstracted physics and action-reaction-metareaction-metametareactioncheck operational sequences in the name of "realism" while Casters get to play Calvin-ball with meta-physics as long as they meet some basic meta-game restrictions. When you get down to it all such a system really does is use "realism" as an excuse to punish the Grogs (and their players) for not being Magicians.

- Marty Lund

Why are the Fort, Ref, and Will defenses separate from Dex, Con, and Wis? Why is initiative in 3e not a Ref save, or a Spot check, or a Tumble check? After all, your fortitude and your constitution are basically the same thing as far as poisons are concerned, and your mental reaction speed is much more important than your physical reaction speed to determine what you do in combat.

The reason these and other stats are separated out are that, while they are all abstractions, they are abstractions of different things with different implementation purposes. Sense Motive adds Wis + ranks + BAB against Feint but Wis + ranks against noncombat Bluff because BAB covers the abstraction of "is good at combat" and someone with equal training at reading body language and equally-good senses will have a better time identifying a feint if they are combat skilled themselves. You could easily leave out BAB against feints, but that leaves a hole in the flavor: Joe the Fighter fights all the time, why can't he figure out feints better than Bob the Sage?

Same with using Bluff/Intimidate/etc. for forced movement. If Joe the Fighter is an actor in his spare time and Mike the Fighter is an accountant, Joe will likely be better at imitating body language and such to make a more convincing feint. Thus, without any mechanics at all, one would expect just by comparing the two of them that, assuming equal combat training, Joe would be better at feinting than Mike and therefore better at convincing enemies to make those mistakes that forced movement represents. If Joe and Mike both have an ability that makes them equally good at fooling people, that's unintuitive, the same way that being able to add the better of your stat and your ranks to a skill check--but not both--is unintuitive, because we know from our experience that someone who is both naturally good at something and trained at something is better than someone with training but no talent or talent but no training.

There's a big gap between separating out Ref and AC or Tumble and Balance on the one hand and going full-on body trauma and hit locations on the other. Abstractions should be streamlined enough to be simple to understand and easy to resolve, but detailed enough that they match our intuitions and understanding of the world. If they're too detailed, you get grappling: accurate and satisfying for people who like that amount of detail, but clunky to use at the table and thus a waste of book space if people avoid using it. If they're not detailed enough, you get CaGI: clean and tactically-enabling, but counterintuitive and thus immersion-breaking for some people. If you have a mechanic that some people find insufficiently detailed, and you can fix that problem without making it much more complicated, why wouldn't you take that opportunity to satisfy them, particularly if you're trying to market your game to that segment?[/sblock]

 

[Manbearcat]

@Eldritch_Lord

I was speaking generally about "forced movement" as there was malcontent expressed about the mechanic conceptually (and CaGI was used as the prime offender to illuminate the point).

However, if you want to compare 3.x Combat Feint/Bluff to CaGI, I will attempt to do so.

What are my primary concerns when it comes to mechanical tactical options? In this order, they are:

1 - Is it fun?
2 - Does it promote dynamism and depth within the tactical interface and the accompanying running combat narrative in a genre/archetype-relevant fashion?
3 - Is it balanced with other options such that it is good enough to be chosen against other options while not being too good such that there is no choice (you must take it)?
4 - Is it abstract/versatile enough that it can allow for multiple renderings/applications within the running combat narrative?
5 - Is it mechanically functional/streamlined with respect to ease-of-use?
6 - Finally, is it so abstract as to have no meaning at all (process simulation agenda)?

3.x combat feint/bluff fails miserably here as it is fiddly, but more importantly, it is an action economy catastrophe. It was never used in my game save by one Rogue who decided to take the Improved Feint feat. However, once he realized that;

- He was always able to catch a target flat-footed in the first round of combat
- He was typically able to flank someone in subsequent rounds
- Moving (improved feint is a move action rather than standard) rendered his full attack routine inert (thus crushing his DPR)

He traded it for Flick of the Wrist (which requires an easy to meet condition, no action economy expenditure, and no contest). On most of those metrics, 3.x Combat Feint fails. As such, for all intents and purposes, it did not exist for my group. Further, beyond all of this, if we're truly interested in accurate process-sim, a true Combat Feint should be an expression of equal parts Dexterity (coordination + quickness), Intelligence (information processing to size up your opponent's posture/stance/acumen quickly + learned technique to disguise your true attack with what you are feinting...a la a pump fake in football modelling a real pass and a change up looking like a fastball out of the pitcher's hand). Panache, Presence or Drive may come into play but only in an exceedingly narrow narrative view of a bluff...and it certainly wouldn't trump Dex and Int. In my estimation, this is the poster child for arbitrary granularity (and incoherent granularity at that). They would have been better served going with Sleight of Hand (although if they truly wanted granularity that would have still been insufficient).

Alternatively, CaGI hits all of those marks (and well) but, clearly, for some folks, it fails at 6. So lets talk about 4 and 6.

Do we really need to have a mechanical resolution aspect of "you shift back one square" and then the enemies come at you? I say no. Not only does that serve no real purpose mechanically, it is one of those odd granularities for no end. It can, and should, be assumed that actors in combat are constantly moving. They are not standing still for 6 seconds waiting for their turn. If that is true, it is easily enough accomplished just by narrating the power as "I swiftly turn and take a hard step or two toward <the alley, the docks, the stairs, the embankment, etc>. As I hear the roars of my foes and the thunder of their footsteps closing in...I whirl on them, the gleam of death in my eyes." Further, forcing a 5 foot move hurts 4. It narrows the scope of narrative possibilities. It makes CaGI comport only with the possibility of such a feint as I outlined. It drowns out the possibility of a challenge such as; "I take my great sword in both hands and bury it into the ground, halfway to the hilt, before me. I crouch like a wild beast. A roar that awakes my prideful ancestors bellows from somewhere deep within me. My enemies accept the challenge. I cut them down like dogs." And on and on.

In short. CaGI works perfectly for my agenda and my playstyle preferences. Combat Feint does not. However, I do understand there are differences on this and I can respect them easily enough.

 

[Tovec]

If it was really "whatever" you wouldn't have bothered to gripe.

My whatever comment was meant to imply that I didn't care. And I didn't. I found it odd how you decided to dissect my point and I said so, but that was your call and I really don't care (now or then) how you did it.

I decided to address your post point-by-point because you explicitly numbered and labeled things as "Premise 1," and "Premise 2" and then constructed your arguments around those premises being sound.

And I would not have had any questions or even find it odd had you decided to chop up my post by premise. Instead you chopped it up by premise and then by subparts so that the premises were disconnected from the underlying comments about them or explaining them. I tried to put all the relevant information about a premise in the same paragraph but you had other ideas and that is fine. It just struck me as odd.

When they were not sound, I addressed them.

Ah, I know you think you did. But I see holes in your statements that were still unresolved, that is how a dialogue is created. For example, I asked many questions in each of my premises in my first reply to this thread, none of which you have answered (adequately or not). I'm not going to repeat them now as I have asked them twice and twice have been ignored so I'll move on and look at the new material you have given me.

Actually, in baseball when you throw a bean ball you usually don't succeed in hitting someone in the head unless things line up just so. The typical outcome is the batter winds up eating dirt and backs off the plate. A bean ball is more vicious and dangerous than a buzzing a batter high and inside because if you're just as satisfied if you put it in the guy's ear.

I hate to disagree but..
In baseball, you DON'T intentionally throw a baseball in the attempt to bean the batter. It may happen accidentally or you may attempt to MISS (and "buzz" him) but if you attempted to intentionally bean the batter you would quickly no longer find yourself as the pitcher of a team and possibly even throw out of the league.

I mean yes, it might happen that ONCE you may attempt it. But such a case would be rare, and you certainly would not become proficient enough to be able to directly cause the batter to move a certain number of squares or indeed take any other action just because you threw a ball at his head.

And once again, the batter MAY end up on the ground or in some way avoiding the ball. Certainly the batter would ATTEMPT to avoid the blow however he could. But either way the pitcher would be TRYING to make the batter move OR to hit him. I don't see how he would be attempting to HIT HIM AND MAKE HIM MOVE.

In the same regard, if the fool is stupid enough to not fall for a jab at the eyes and you happen to slide your sword into his brain pan that's a win. Again, D&D as a game generally relies on a premise of non-suicidal monsters and those random critical hits are just tha - random critical hits.

Right, and who is arguing that people would try TO get hit intentionally? Especially to get hit fatally? I would say that if someone is going to do so, and to receive a favourable result that they would have to fight against instinct. I don't know what you are trying to argue, nor what you are arguing against.

As I said last post, we seem to be talking about two different things. You are talking about the abstract nature of HPs (something I actually happen to take exception with but something I'm not discussing let alone fighting in this post) and I am discussing (or was) the specific example that YOU GAVE about a pitcher trying to bean a batter.

Because it's not a bluff. It is a deadly attack that happens to present a controlled zone of egress. There are plenty of situations is combat where a series of lows drives an opponent back because the alternative is immediate defeat.

Okay, let me just convert this. My knowledge base is in 3.5 so that is the only basis that I can discuss such things. I understand that it is not a perfect comparison but then again nothing I'm discussing so far relies on 4e mechanics per se.

To explain my 'bluff' comment that you seem to disagree with I will unfortunately have to go back to the pitcher-batter example. Please tell me, using this renewed example and my following explanation, where I go wrong as to why it is 'not a bluff'.

Example given by you but polished by me:
(Part 1 - from your post) "I'm not talking about a buzzing a batter. I'm talking about deliberately beaning him."

So if the pitcher is trying to bean the batter. He makes a ranged attack vs the batters (possible touch) AC. That is it. If he hits the AC then the batter is hit with the ball (beaned).

(Part 2) If he does not choose to move he is dead (this time talking about an orc and arrow, which I'm ignoring).

Right, but in DnD terms he isn't dead. But I'm going to bypass this part because it deals with the abstract nature of HP and not the issue that we are discussing.

(Part 3 - in my first reply to you) Me: Okay, so if the batter does not SEE the attack (the ball coming) then he should NOT be able to get out of the way.

Seems simple to me. It is vs AC, his defense against the attack is his ability to dodge it. In 3e terms that would be considered his flat-footed. (Or flat-footed touch which is usually AC 10.)

(Part 4) If he DOES see the attack then he should attempt to get out of the way, this we have established. However, if he does see the attack and does jump out of the way and DOES SO BECAUSE the pitcher wants him to, how is it not a bluff/feint?

If the pitcher WANTS the batter to move, and in this way is dictating his action, how is he not bluffing (or feinting) the batter? If the batter doesn't move then he is getting hit. If the pitcher is TRYING to get the batter to move, then the getting hit would be going against what he wants.

This is the main part I'm asking, over and over, about how that works. I say that if he wants to put the batter out of position then that is fine, it is called (in 3e terms) a bluff/feint. It isn't however automatic from making the attack (aka making the feint attempt) and it doesn't directly dictate how far the batter should move (or in what direction). None of this has been answered because you seem to be caught up on the abstract nature of HP and hits back in part 2.

(Part 5) I don't know that I've explicitly discussed this part before but it seems fitting now. If he pitcher DOES want the batter to move and in a specific way/direction/fashion then he needs to apply some physical force (bullrush, trip, etc.) If he doesn't apply a physical force, and yet is able to dictate exactly how far the batter is moving then he must have some form of mind control. Especially since there are MANY different options how the batter could react from an attempted beaning.

A followup to the mind control note is: if it is mind control then it is some form of magic. And that some form of magic =/= a warrior, it does = a wizard.

Coup de grace is what happens when you don't or can't protect yourself. You go to 0 HP.

Right, which is why there is a mechanic which is coup de grace. All other attacks, which are not coup de grace are therefore different.

Sigh, the abstract nature of DnD's HP system. I don't know why this is a sticking point in your argument when it doesn't deal AT ALL in the situation of forced movement that you described. Yes, it does barely relate to the arrow to the temple for the orc, but that wasn't the major example given OR further elaborated upon.

Yes, attacks are meant to be deadly. Attacks in DnD rarely are. I think that is a problem but it has no real basis in the discussion we are having so I'm going to drop it, I think you should too unless you tie it in somehow.

As we already extablished earlier the pitcher should either (a) be trying to hit the batter, or (b) be trying to move him.

As noted above, this is a false premise.

It wasn't really a premise that time. It was the only two explanations I can see coming from the example of: pitcher throws ball attempting to bean batter. The solution seems fairly binary to me. Either he WANTS to hit him or he DOESN'T. The actual hitting him is really unimportant in the grand scheme, as you said yourself.

A baseball is not a deadly weapon. The threat range of a single baseball is somewhat more limited than 6 seconds of someone shooting a bow or swinging an axe with intent to kill.

Didn't you kind of say that baseballs are kind of deadly? Or was it just that they could cause concussions. Either way, it is not a kind thing.

Besides, the deadliness isn't really the issue at hand either. The issue was the forced movement. If you want to start another thread on changing HP then two things will happen. First, you won't be the only one because HP is one of the major sticking features for all DnD players for all editions (and for good reason). Second, I'll try and stop by to discuss it with you. And hopefully give the solutions I have found with my own d20 system. I agree that swordblow or arrowshot should be more deadly. The relevent issue is how the pitcher is able to move the batter.

That's arguing past the forest to the tree. The pitcher is merely a concrete example that falls under the abstract concept.

Right, but I have given examples of how the pitcher-batter SHOULD be a simple and concrete example, but using the false dichotomy of the forced movement makes it un-so. Why do the game mechanics have to be so abstract when what they are modeling aren't?

It's the ability of the actor who is spending his action and already successfully defeated the target's defense to hit him.

The combat system is only going to get so far down in granular detail. There are other games with way more detail.

Sorry, but he got his defense beaten and is in deadly jepordy on the attacker's terms. Now it is all "death or cake." The game wisely assumes everyone will choose "cake," as a default. That would be kind of embarrassing, running out of cake like that. Pretty soon you'd had people asking for chicken or fish and chips and it'd be bedlam.

When you start talking about granular detail you lose me. I really don't follow what your meaning about this is. I really have nothing more to say about these points until I understand what you are saying about them.

For me, this is the key.

@Tovec and @Kamikaze Midget are saying that it should be in the defender's hands as to whether or not movement occurs (which, in practice, means in the GM's hands). But a skilled fighter chooses where to put his/her enemy, by providing only two choicse - move to where I want you, or be defeated by a winning blow.

I can only speak for myself, but; not entirely. I think that there should be an honest to goodness mechanic at work when the fighter (or anyone) tries to force-move someone. I like the examples given after this post about the fighter's threat level. I don't like any mechanic where someone is forced into an action, be that movement or attacking, when it would be disadvantageous for them to do so. I think that a mechanic where they must roll a will save or be forced to engage the heavily-armor-clad individual with the large metal weapon is a poor mechanic. I think it would be equally poor if it were a bluff or feint unless there was more of a roleplay reason behind it. I think that nearly any time the attacker is DIRECTLY stating what the defender will do it is a poor system. The defender (as stated previously) may consider the attacker to be a bigger threat. They may also have a ranged weapon and be able to attack with that on their next action. They may not want to provoke AoO against their current combatant for suddenly leaving. There are many other reasons why, even if the fighter does proverbially open himself up to attack that the defender may choose not to use it. In these ways forced movement just breaks my disbelief. It isn't about internal consistency or anything at that stage. It is about being able to directly force them to do an action; be that pull OR push, and having 100% accuracy and autonomy in dictating how the defender does it.

If the fighter is using magic then that is a different kettle of worms but at least then there is an explanation. Not a good one, and I would be dissatisfied with a magical-fighter but at least then it makes sense.

A skilled captain works with his/her unit in a similar way - controlling the movement of the enemies by controlling the disposition of his/her own forces, and the threats that they create.

This is what 4e-style forced movement models (as well as other stuff too, including mind control, physical force, recoiling in fear, etc).

I like that post you had a while back about why a fighter (or lack of certain mechanics) makes a poor warlord. I agreed with it. Because of it, I have nothing more to say here, especially given what I said above.

 

[pemerton]

To me, and to scads of D&D players, this stuff does matter.

You may have misread me. I didn't say that it didn't matter. I said that stuff can matter even though the mechanics don't give voice to it.

Some mechanics DO model how a cleric casts spells differently (arcane spell failure chance in heavy armor, domain spells, spontaneous healing, the existence of spellbooks versus accessing the entire spell list). I love those mechanics! These help reinforce the cleric as a more passive recipient of magic, than an active crafter of it -- it's easier for them. Those aren't trivial things, they're important to pretending to be that character.

To me, the most distinctive thing about a cleric is that s/he prays, and works miracles as a result of those prayers. But there is no mechanic for praying. (Other fantasy RPGs do have such mechanics - again, I mention Burning Wheel.)

It doesn't follow from the absence of such mechanics that, when I play AD&D, it doesn't matter that my cleric is praying. The most banal example is that NPCs may react to my cleric in a way that reflects that s/he is a priest. Similarly, depending on the narration around Come and Get It in a 4e game, NPCs may react in various ways to a fighter PC. (Less banal examples are also possible.)

Yes, it's a game, but it's a game about pretending to be an imaginary person.

<snip>

It's not a starting point, though. It's proven through actions: the OD&D MU has a spellbook with a lot of spells in it and with powerful high-level spells that can change the world and that's exactly what you'd expect out of a master of magic. They teleport, they dominate, they shape weather -- heady stuff that demonstrates their mastery of the unseen world.

In this sense, a 4e fighter proves that s/he is at the centre of the action. S/he is constantly surrounded by foes, who try to escape the vortex but cannot, and are cut down either by the fighter him-/herself or by his/her ninja and sorcerer friends.

The degree of tautology is no greater for the fighter than the MU.

The Fighter needs to have a REASON they are at the center of the action. If there's no supporting evidence, it's not believable.

The supporting evidence is overwhelming, for the reasons I've given above, plus [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s more elaborate description.

It's true that the game leaves it an open question what technique the fighter is using - weapon play, taunting, all of the above, something else again. But likewise the game leaves it an open question what technique the mage is using - contrast, in this respect, Runequest, which answers in some detail these questions of technique (eg it has rules for subduing spirits so that they can be used to power spells).

It's not fun if I can't pretend that I'm playing people in this make-believe world, and that requires the actual details of WHY the fighter is at the center of the action.

With respect, make it up! You have to make up the source of your MU's power, and the techniques s/he uses. You have to make up the content of your cleric's prayers, and the rites s/he performs. Similarly, I encourage you to make up what it your fighter is doing to control the battlefield.

Conversely, if you've played for all these years not caring about the techniques and practices of your spellcasters, why is it so important to work out what they are for your fighter?

 

[pemerton]

In baseball, you DON'T intentionally throw a baseball in the attempt to bean the batter. It may happen accidentally or you may attempt to MISS (and "buzz" him) but if you attempted to intentionally bean the batter you would quickly no longer find yourself as the pitcher of a team and possibly even throw out of the league.

<snip>

I think that there should be an honest to goodness mechanic at work when the fighter (or anyone) tries to force-move someone.

<snip>

I don't like any mechanic where someone is forced into an action, be that movement or attacking, when it would be disadvantageous for them to do so.

I don't know much about baseball, so I'll have a go at [MENTION=50304]mlund[/MENTION]'s example with reference to cricket, which I know a little bit more about.

In the early 1930s the English cricket team used a technique against the Australians that they called "leg theory" and that the Australians called "bodyline". Basically, the technique involved two components: (1) a fast delivery that tended to bounce into the body or head of the bastsman, requiring either ducking to avoid injury or playing a defensive shot; (2) a cordon of fieldsmen to catch those defensively-played shots. (The rules of cricket have since been changed to prohibit bodyline - dangerous deliveries are forbidden, and the cordon of fielders is also forbidden.)

How would you model bodyline tactics in an RPG, at something like a D&D-ish combat level of abstraction? It's not a Bluff check - there is no deception involved - if you don't either duck or play defensively, you'll be sconed! Nor is it a Will save or Wisdom check for the defending player - it's not about resisting a lure, or spotting a deception. The physical threat posed by the delivery forces a certain play by the defender: so you'd test the bowler's skill (this would be the "attack roll") vs the defence of the batsman (this would be the "AC" - no active defence in a D&D-ish system). And if the batsman "hits", the defender has played the ball to the cordon - that's what a "hit" means in this case - and is caught out.

That's a simple example of "forced action" which is voluntary on the part of the defender, but in a D&D-style system is best modelled by reference to the skill of the attacker.

Come and Get It has an extra dimension, namely, that no attack roll is required to force the movement - when the player chooses to use Come and Get It, the PC never gets it wrong - it's a bit like the skill mastery option for the pre-expertise-dice rogue in that respect. Some warlord powers require a hit to trigger the forced movement, others don't - it depends on the power in question - but that is orthogonal to the basic point, which is that they model the capacity of the attacker, through skill, to determine the actions taken by the defender.

 

[pemerton]

Come and Get It as you describe it doesn't begin from flavor or fiction, fighter powers in general do. No one disagrees that a fighter's set of powers work together to define the fighter's flavor, just as a wizard's spells in aggregate determine his flavor, but in your description of CaGI you have said nothing about the power's flavor at all.

I haven't said anything about the fiction that produces the result (if you like, the "input fiction"). I've talked about the fiction that results from using it however (the "output fiction"). Come and Get It is designed with that output fiction in mind from the get-go. It's as fiction-first as anything else in D&D - it's just not process first.

An attack roll, unlike CaGI, can be given an explanation based on the mechanics: AC is composed of Dex, armor, and other factors, so if you miss by X where normal AC > X > AC minus armor you can point to that and say that the blow bounced off the armor. Being flavor-based doesn't mean each mechanic has to have one and only one explanation (again, abstraction renders that infeasible) but it does mean you should have something to point to that says "this mechanic maps to something in the game world.

Also, an attack roll, unlike CaGI, is composed of fairly flavor-based components and is opposed by a fairly flavor-based defense. Your attack roll is composed of factors that observably change in-world (Str, proficiency, etc.) and AC is composed of the same (armor, Dex, etc.). Take Str damage, your attack bonus drops; use a nonproficient weapon, your attack bonus drops; take your armor off, lose your armor bonus to AC; be unconscious, lose your Dex bonus to AC; and so forth. AC is also composed of nebulous factors like "the enemy is actively parrying" that don't always work, but there's always something to fall back on.

On the "process" interpretation, acuity matters to AC in D&D only if you're a monk. Agility matters to attacking in D&D only if you have the Weapon Finesse feat (or some similar ability).

I prefer to assume that, in the gameworld as in the real world, acuity and agility matter in combat, and that they are factors in play even though the system doesn't model them. For example, I assume that it a possible explanation of a successful hit is that the enemy's sweat ran into his eye, distracting him - even though there is no mechanical support for that narration.

Come and Get It involves processes that aren't fully modelled by the mechanics. But, to borrow your phrase, "there is always something to fall back on", namely, the preestablished fiction (the personality of the PC, the NPCs, the present combat situation, etc), plus whatever is narrated around the use of Come and Get It.

For an attack roll to be equivalent to CaGI, the attack roll and AC would have to be singular values, i.e. you get BAB to attacks and BDB to AC with no differentiation or attached flavor, so when you roll 1d20+abstract value vs. 10+abstract value you have no idea why you missed or even why you hit.

My point is that this is, in effect, already the case. Did your lack of proficiency cause you to miss? The rules don't answer that question - when you roll with a proficiency penalty, and miss, the rules don't explain whether this was due to lack of proficiency, or due to slipping on mud, or due to the impenetrability of the enemy's armour, or any of a number of possible factors. (Runequest is a contrast here - it provides more detailed answers to some of these questions, for example by distinguishing between failure due to failed attack and failure due to successful parry or dodge. That's not to say there aren't infelicities in going RQ's way.)

Targets of a mark explicitly know that they're marked, so there's got to be something observable that gives them that information--and it's not even "Hey, DM, run your NPCs as if they notice something threatening about Joe the Fighter," it's "the NPCs know they're marked."

The standard format of D&D rules, especially in 4e, is to draw no distinction between character and player. So when the rules say that the target knows they're marked, I think this is easily enough read as "the player of the character knows they're marked" as "the character, in game, knows they're marked". After all, the language for gaining Action Points is expressed the same way, but presumably the character doesn't know they have action points (given that, as you say, they are a metagame resource). And the language for gaining and losing hit points is expressed the same way too, but presumably the character doesn't know how many hit points they have (the character doesn't have an internal meter for "reservoirs of divine luck", I'm assuming).

So in fact I don't agree that there is something observable about being marked. I think it can differ from case to case. Paladins are different from fighters, for example, in the way I run them.

PCs can estimate if jumping off a cliff has a guaranteed chance to kill them, a so-so chance, or none at all.

I don't agree with this. What information is the PC obtaining and processing, exactly? How much divine favour s/he has left in the tank?

Of course, the player knows, and acts on that basis. In my view all that the PC can say, in character, is "I feel lucky!" or "I'll take my chances!".

As you noted, things like level, HD, and such have measurable in-game effects and are less metagame than you'd expect. If you want to research how many HD the BBEG has so you can use soul bind on him, you can explicitly find that out. In AD&D levels have names that can be used, and level-based effects like followers, caster level, and such can be measured in-game.

That's perhaps one way to go. You might go the same way with hit points. My own view is that it leads to Order-of-the-Stick style absurdities, but tastes obviously differ.

Whatever it is that you leran when you research the use of Soul Bind, for example, in my own game it would not be "level".

I also want mechanics that deliver the fiction that I want, but I want there to be a justification behind the mechanics.

Here is a justification for Come and Get It: it reliably delivers compelling episodes of combat, in a way that empowers the player whose PC has the power.

I assume that's not the sort of justification you are interested in. As best I can tell, by "justification" you mean "mechanics that more-or-less model the ingame causal process of action resolution".

The transition to 4e both changed the amount of metagame mechanics in the system and made some of them more obviously metagame by their interaction with other mechanics. A lot of people have a certain threshold of metagaming in their mechanics below which they're fine with it (even if they might prefer not to have it) and above which they have a problem.

This is all true. But it's not about "fiction first" vs "mechanics first". It's about degree of preference for process simulation in the mechanics, as opposed to fortune-in-the-middle, metagame, and other non-process-simulation approaches.

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION], for example, has written an essay (earlier this year, from memory, but I could be misremembering) arguing that fortune-in-the-middle is incompatible, as such, with the essence of roleplaying. Naturally enough I disagree, if only on the following basis: HeroWars/Quest is a quintessential example of a certain style of RPG, and uses exclusively FitM mechanics.

All the Men and Elves pile on Sauron because he's practically invulnerable and can kill a dozen soldiers with one sweep of his weapon. Stormtroopers focus-fire Jedi because they can deflect a single stormtrooper's blaster fire without difficulty and they can run circles around single troops. The free humans send a whole team after Agent Smith because he's an dodges bullets like a pro and can take on any human one-on-one. All of those examples have two things in common: They're very deadly in single combat, to the point that you need to outnumber them because single opponents have zero chance against them, and they have a very good defense against common attack forms, to the point that only sheer quantity can really do anything about it.

Joe the Fighter isn't the most lethal guy on his team; Bob the Ranger is much more dangerous offensively. Joe the Fighter isn't very much more resilient than his teammates; his defenses are probably 5-6 higher than Dave the Wizard including the mark and he has around double the hit points, but that doesn't make him harder to kill the way damage mitigation or non-AC defense does, it just makes it take longer.

<snip>

There is no logical reason for the enemies to swarm him when they can just avoid him and go after his teammates.

<snip>

Fiction and gaming have different expectations.

<snip>

That's why I'm not particularly understanding the objection to making these small tweaks, I guess, just like the other side isn't particularly understanding our objection on immersion grounds. You don't see why vague/metagame-y mechanics hurt our enjoyment, and I don't see why a page or so of mechanic alterations to better fit the flavor in our view hurts your enjoyment.

I don't understand the difference between "harder to kill" and "it just makes it take longer." That it takes longer to do X rather than Y, after all, is one typical way of showing that doing X is harder than doing Y!

But that to one side, your whole point here is already permeated with process-simulation assumptions - for example, that the greater deadliness of the ranger is evident to the inhabitants of the gameworld as some sort of empirical fact, rather than a metagame stipulation intended to give difference PCs certain flavours and their players certain options at the table. Also, that gaming and fiction have different expectations.

I also don't agree that I don't understand your objections. I understand them; I just don't share them. Process simulation, as such, holds no special attraction for me in RPG resolution. (Which is not to say I'm against it - some process-simulation systems do a very good job of producing gripping RPG moments - Rolemaster melee combat resolution, at it's best, is one example in my experience.)

Of course from the process simulation perspective 4e is not very attractive. But that's no great surprise. The key points of criticism of 4e by those who prefer process simulation mechanics were identified by Ron Edwards in an essay written in 2003, more than 5 years before 4e was released:

f Simulationist-facilitating design is not involved, then the whole picture changes. Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things:

* Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.

* Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such [ie explanation by reference to ingame causal processes] can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.

* More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.

* Reward systems that reflect player choices (strategy, aesthetics, whatever) rather than on in-game character logic or on conformity to a pre-stated plan of play.​

Every contentious feature of 4e lives in one or more of Edwards' dot points. Which is to say, the contention was entirely forseeable. The only reason I assume that WotC didn't worry about is that they (wrongly, as it turned out) assumed that no one playing D&D would have such strong simulationist preferences, given how non-simulationist it is in its design. (Even 3E, the most simulationist version of D&D, doesn't hold a candle to a game like Rolemaster or Runequest, or even a narrativist game like Burning Wheel that nevertheless has a highly simulationist basic underlying chassis.)

As to why I don't want process simulation changes of the sort you're proposing: for the reasons [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has posted. They are clunky, limiting, and get in the way. They impose needless obstacles between the declaration of actions by participants, and the generation of gripping and compelling episodes of play. And for all the well-known reasons, they tend to burden non-spell-casters far more heavily than casters, because casters are allowed to get all the benefits of metagame power while cloaking it a thin veneer of "this all has an ingame explanation, though none of us actually know what it is and it never actually figures in any action resolution".

 

[mlund]

In baseball, you DON'T intentionally throw a baseball in the attempt to bean the batter. It may happen accidentally or you may attempt to MISS (and "buzz" him) but if you attempted to intentionally bean the batter you would quickly no longer find yourself as the pitcher of a team and possibly even throw out of the league.

That's simply untrue. There are plenty of times where a pitcher deliberately throws at a batter in major leagues. Sometimes you get fined. Sometimes you provoke a brawl. On rare occasion you send a guy to the hospital. Depending on the amount of aggression or malice involved in the act the technique varies.

Tangent Baseball Explanation:
[sblock]
Throwing at the head is generally the most dangerous and harmful technique. About the best way it can be done is throwing righty-on-lefty or lefty-on-righty, set up with one or more pitches down and away from the batter, drawing him closer over the plate. Then you throw a high, fast, inside cut fastball the breaks inside.

If you just want to "buzz" him you don't throw the cut-fastball so when the batter leans or staggers back out of the way the ball doesn't continue to ride in and hit him.

If you just want to retaliate because of a hit batter but not risk any serious injury to the victim you aim their lower back or buttocks. It hurts and qualifies as a "message pitch," but that's about it.[/sblock]

The trick with a bean-ball is it doesn't have to hit. It's purpose is to either hurt the batter or make him eat dirt avoiding the injury. Either outcome is acceptable. It's a malicious intimidation technique that may or may not cause physical injury and using it shows a cavalier disregard for the safety of the batter.

But in terms of scope, it's a single instance of attempted battery without using a deadly weapon.

and you certainly would not become proficient enough to be able to directly cause the batter to move a certain number of squares or indeed take any other action just because you threw a ball at his head

It doesn't have the same effect as a warrior's standard action in a deadly fight because it's a not the same scope. The severity of the threat (injury vs. fatality) and the amount of time involved (.5 seconds vs. 6 seconds) are completely different scales.

The direction, however, is almost entirely dictated by the nature of the pitch. Do it right and 99.9% of the time the batter falls backward and to the ground - because that is the instinctive and technically optimal trained response to the perceived threat. Throw behind the batter and he'll dive across the plate.

But either way the pitcher would be TRYING to make the batter move OR to hit him. I don't see how he would be attempting to HIT HIM AND MAKE HIM MOVE.

That's because you've constructed a false dichotomy where none actually exists. The bean-ball is an attempt to hit, endanger, move, and intimidate the batter all at once. The mechanism is solely the attempt to hit the batter, but the other purposes of the attack remain. Hitting is variable. Intimidation is subjective. Endangerment and movement are both givens.

I don't know what you are trying to argue, nor what you are arguing against.

Non-suicidal responses to certain attempts on your life can be narrowed down quickly by the nature and technique of an attack.

Please tell me, using this renewed example and my following explanation, where I go wrong as to why it is 'not a bluff'.

The false dichotomy between an attempt to hit someone and attempt to force them to move is really the sticking point.

So if the pitcher is trying to bean the batter. He makes a ranged attack vs the batters (possible touch) AC. That is it. If he hits the AC then the batter is hit with the ball (beaned).

Actually, since the batter is stuck in the batter's box until about .4 seconds before the ball makes impact it's really not going to model well as an attack against AC, or even touch AC. Basically, the batter makes a Reflex save. On a successful save he falls back about 6 inches and falls prone. On a failed save he falls back about 6 inches and takes damage based on how badly he failed his save. On a natural 1 he takes a critical hit to the skull and may suffer a concussion or be maimed.

Right, but in DnD terms he isn't dead.

In D&D terms he doesn't have that option. D&D mechanics assume participants in combat are deliberately trying to keep alive and are reasonably capable of doing so. Otherwise they get like 1HP or the helpless condition to denote their lack of survival ability.

(Part 4) If he DOES see the attack then he should attempt to get out of the way, this we have established. However, if he does see the attack and does jump out of the way and DOES SO BECAUSE the pitcher wants him to, how is it not a bluff/feint?

Because there's no deception? It's a deliberate attack with two perfectly acceptable outcomes - both of which involve the batter moving. The danger zone created is entirely real. But this is more of that false dichotomy problem with your reasoning that's already been identified.

If he doesn't apply a physical force, and yet is able to dictate exactly how far the batter is moving then he must have some form of mind control. Especially since there are MANY different options how the batter could react from an attempted beaning.

For the limited scope of baseball, there aren't many practical variations.

A followup to the mind control note is: if it is mind control then it is some form of magic. And that some form of magic =/= a warrior, it does = a wizard.

Yes, yes. Anything forced or assumed is mind-control. Magicians good, Grogs bad, or it's not "realistic" enough. I think I've heard this before.

Right, which is why there is a mechanic which is coup de grace. All other attacks, which are not coup de grace are therefore different.

Coup de Grace is mentioned because it is a mechanic that describes what happens when someone is attacked without being able or willing to defend themselves effectively.

D&D assumes combatants always choose to jump out over the way of the on-coming bus (and are thusly "forced" without any mind-control, just a valid behavioral assumption) if the alternative is being run over and killed instantly. Sometimes it's 6 seconds of swings from an axe instead of a bus.

And yes, a single axe blow to the head can kill any human being instantly. Some editions of D&D do not model this because it does not make for a fun game. Instead it's just eaten up in the abstraction of combat.

Yes, attacks are meant to be deadly. Attacks in DnD rarely are.

Yes, because combat metrics are necessary abstracted to provide for the scope of the game.

Just like the meta-physical mechanics of spell-casting are largely abstracted.

When you start talking about granular detail you lose me.

The whole idea that you have dozens of different ways to respond to a baseball, arrow, or axe swinging in towards your head is true, but largely irrelevant because that level of granularity in combat is not something any edition of D&D has adopted.

At best we see something like Parry - an out of turn reaction that reduced damage from a "hit and move" attack and if it is successful enough (reduced the damage to 0) the attack becomes a miss and the movement does not happen. I suppose there's also the readied action option in general, something like, "If he comes within 10 feet of me I run away so he can't attack me."

I think that there should be an honest to goodness mechanic at work when the fighter (or anyone) tries to force-move someone.

The idea that there must be a mechanic that includes "or anyone" is just more of the "all Grogs use the same mechanics (physics) because they aren't magical" thinking that I can't abide in my D&D.

I don't like any mechanic where someone is forced into an action, be that movement or attacking, when it would be disadvantageous for them to do so.

See, with attacks, anyway, I'm perfectly fine with a "cake or death" situation where the game automatically assumes you'll pick "cake."

I think that a mechanic where they must roll a will save or be forced to engage the heavily-armor-clad individual with the large metal weapon is a poor mechanic.

I actually agree with that. I'd rather see an imposed penalty efffect until the target actually submits to engaging. I also think the Kender Taunt and the Gnomish Ingenuity mechanics from Dragonlance are silly. However, I accept the literary quirks of the setting if I have a mind to play in it.

I think that nearly any time the attacker is DIRECTLY stating what the defender will do it is a poor system.

I'm perfectly fine with the defender getting into a "cake or death" situation if an attack hits. He already tried to have it his own way and failed.

It isn't about internal consistency or anything at that stage. It is about being able to directly force them to do an action; be that pull OR push, and having 100% accuracy and autonomy in dictating how the defender does it.

Again, it's not 100% accurate since you have to roll to hit. Secondly, it's only autonomous in the abstracted layer of combat mechanics because a less-autonomous implementation digs down into a level of minutia D&D doesn't deal in (IE - "granularity").

Would it make a real difference to you if the effect said, "Hit: The victim must choose to either immediate move 5' away from you and suffer you attack damage or suffer a coup de grace. This movement does not provoke opportunity attacks." ?

- Marty Lund

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

To keep post length in check, assume anything I don't respond to is something I agree with or at least agree-to-disagree with.

I haven't said anything about the fiction that produces the result (if you like, the "input fiction"). I've talked about the fiction that results from using it however (the "output fiction"). Come and Get It is designed with that output fiction in mind from the get-go. It's as fiction-first as anything else in D&D - it's just not process first.

That we agree on. When I say flavor-based and effects-based, I'm not saying that effect-based systems can't or don't have flavor, I'm talking about the "inputs," in case that wasn't clear. Flavor-based abilities take fiction as input and produce mechanics ("Here's the flavor I have, how do I represent that mechanically?") while effects-based systems take mechanics as input and produce fiction ("Here's the flavor I want to end up with, what mechanics do I use to get there?"). You can think of flavor-based vs. effects-based abilities as fiction-in vs. fiction-out abilities if that makes more sense.

The standard format of D&D rules, especially in 4e, is to draw no distinction between character and player. So when the rules say that the target knows they're marked, I think this is easily enough read as "the player of the character knows they're marked" as "the character, in game, knows they're marked".
[...]
So in fact I don't agree that there is something observable about being marked. I think it can differ from case to case. Paladins are different from fighters, for example, in the way I run them.

That makes sense, I suppose. My group figured that since the paladin's mark is already pretty obvious in-game (it's a magical compulsion that smites people), the language about marks being known by their targets was to establish that even marks that aren't an obvious thing in-game are known by their targets, because there's no need to say that a magical compulsion affects behavior. If marks were explicitly a metagame thing instead of leaving it up to interpretation, that would certainly address a lot of my objections to them.

Whatever it is that you leran when you research the use of Soul Bind, for example, in my own game it would not be "level".

I agree, and in my games it's the same way. But even if it's not called "level" exactly, there's something that characters have that makes soul bind require better gems in 1000-gp increments, so there's still the implication that people know vaguely about this in-game, just like how in-game spell ranges probably don't come in precise 5-foot increments but it's an observable property that your spells can reach farther with more experience on your part.

Here is a justification for Come and Get It: it reliably delivers compelling episodes of combat, in a way that empowers the player whose PC has the power.

I assume that's not the sort of justification you are interested in. As best I can tell, by "justification" you mean "mechanics that more-or-less model the ingame causal process of action resolution".

Right. I'm not asking for a justification as to why you want a mechanic that does that--I like fighters who are the focal point of battles as well--but for a justification as to why that implementation does that. I'm not asking for grappling-like levels of detail and fiddly modifiers, just a nod to the flavor so someone looking at the power can say (random example) "Oh, you add the higher of your BAB and your Knowledge (Tactics) ranks to this roll, it probably involves you outsmarting your enemies" or whatever.

I don't understand the difference between "harder to kill" and "it just makes it take longer." That it takes longer to do X rather than Y, after all, is one typical way of showing that doing X is harder than doing Y!

"Harder to kill" perhaps wasn't the right phrase to use. I'm using that in the sense that, to use a modern example, it is no harder to destroy a dozen wooden boards with an AK-47 than it is to destroy one wooden board--you need more bullets and time, but one AK will get the job done--but it is harder to destroy a tank because you'll need a different kind of ammo or a different weapon to do that. Similarly, if all the fighter has to make him more resilient than a wizard is more of the same resources (hit points), then if the fighter has double the HP you just send twice as many minions after the fighter than you do for the wizard; however, if he has DR to make individual attacks less effective, miss chances to negate lucky crits, and stuff like that, then it justifies sending all of your troops to pile on the fighter because anything less doesn't really have a chance of succeeding.

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION], for example, has written an essay (earlier this year, from memory, but I could be misremembering) arguing that fortune-in-the-middle is incompatible, as such, with the essence of roleplaying. Naturally enough I disagree, if only on the following basis: HeroWars/Quest is a quintessential example of a certain style of RPG, and uses exclusively FitM mechanics.

But that to one side, your whole point here is already permeated with process-simulation assumptions - for example, that the greater deadliness of the ranger is evident to the inhabitants of the gameworld as some sort of empirical fact, rather than a metagame stipulation intended to give difference PCs certain flavours and their players certain options at the table. Also, that gaming and fiction have different expectations.

I also don't agree that I don't understand your objections. I understand them; I just don't share them. Process simulation, as such, holds no special attraction for me in RPG resolution. (Which is not to say I'm against it - some process-simulation systems do a very good job of producing gripping RPG moments - Rolemaster melee combat resolution, at it's best, is one example in my experience.)

My assumption of process simulation is merely the (justified, I think) assumption that D&D's approach to mechanics has been one of process simulation going all the way back to 1e's "Gygaxian naturalism". I'm arguing for revising non-process-simulation mechanics in D&D because that's what most of the system is like and those non-process-simulation are departing from the standard and quite possibly diverging from what the existing audience of the game wants and upsetting a large portion of said audience, as in 4e's case. I'd be arguing the opposite if someone tried to introduce flavor-based mechanics into the decidedly fortune-in-the-middle FATE or effects-based GURPS, because in those systems process simulation is the outlier rather than the norm.

Look at all the people on this and other forums who said around 4e's release that if 4e were released under a different name than D&D they'd like it just fine, or that they'd never liked D&D before 4e and are glad this new edition is more to their tastes. I can't speak for anyone else, but when I play D&D I like and expect to see more Gygaxian naturalism and process simulation, when I play Shadowrun I like and expect to see more Orwellian corporations and limited narrative intervention, and while I play both games I expect certain experiences with each game and play different games when I'm in the mood for their individual styles. While both Shadowrun and D&D involve small parties of paranoid risk-takers going for the big haul, my group adapts its playstyle based on the game--we're more cautious in Shadowrun and base our plans around being able to pull out a few awesome stunts if required, thanks to Shadowrun's higher PC fragility and Edge, while we're more unorthodox in D&D and base our plans around being able to start off with something crazy without worrying about it later based on D&D's higher PC resilience and healing, for instance.

So no single part of the GNS trio is better than any other, but if a game has been heavy on the S with a side of G and then suddenly changes to be heavy on the G with a side of N, I'm not going to be happy because I was playing it for the S, while someone who didn't like the game before because they preferred a G+N mix might now pick it up.

As to why I don't want process simulation changes of the sort you're proposing: for the reasons [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has posted. They are clunky, limiting, and get in the way. They impose needless obstacles between the declaration of actions by participants, and the generation of gripping and compelling episodes of play. And for all the well-known reasons, they tend to burden non-spell-casters far more heavily than casters, because casters are allowed to get all the benefits of metagame power while cloaking it a thin veneer of "this all has an ingame explanation, though none of us actually know what it is and it never actually figures in any action resolution".

I'm not very active on this forum so you probably only see my posts on making the narrative aspects of 4e more simulationists, but I'm one of those people who views D&D characters as starting out relatively realistic at low levels and becoming superhuman as they level and so advocates that noncasters get Nice Things like running on air, jumping hundreds of feet, parrying spells, cutting holes in reality to reach other planes, and so forth.

So it's not a case of me attempting to stealth-nerf noncasters by denying them metagame abilities, it's a case of me wanting noncasters to be awesome in-world rather than out-of-game. I have no problem with a paragon-tier fighter stabbing an ogre and sending him flying twenty feet (Silverstep, L13) or an epic rogue double-jumping (Cloud Jump, L22), in fact I think sending people flying is something a fighter should be able to "just do" and add to his other attacks and that double-jumping should be something a rogue can do before epic. I do have a problem when a fighter can make enemies rush him for no reason (CaGI) or a rogue can run past people and make them hit themselves in the face (Bloody Path, L15).

I would have much less of a problem with those sorts of powers if CaGI involved smashing the ground with his weapon so hard that it cracked the ground and caused his enemies to come stumbling towards him, or if Bloody Path involved the rogue making an attack against every creature he passed. Much better those explanations than assuming that orcs charge you because charging the fighter is the "expected" course of action, or that your enemies are so incompetent that they will hit themselves (not even nearby allies!) or that later enemies would keep attacking you even after they saw other enemies get tricked into hitting themselves. That makes noncasters look amazingly skilled because their enemies are just tactically inept, not because the noncasters are actually amazingly skilled.