AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Ever heard of getting into the groove? If an activity takes a certain mind set it may take a bit of time to adjust. For instance play a series of games of chess with me and you will see the phenomena each game I get progressively better .... wait a while then play me again.
That getting in the groove, may not be a universal but I play for the tropes
"Heroes arise to the need" or as is "when the going gets tough the tough get going"
... ie the battle heating up with more intense moves playing out later is a fantasy battle flavor...
You can call it gamist I call it literary or synching very nicely with well established fictional tropes.
Well, I don't reject it outright. I just thought things like the 13a escalation die was a bit hokey. I mean, 4e actually does it pretty awesomely with the whole balance of hit points and power selections between monsters and PCs kind of naturally leading to a sort of back-and-forth. Admittedly, if you don't pay some attention to encounter design then you're likely to get some instances of sloggy endings, which I'm all for eliminating by design. I just feel like escalation dice are a kind of lazy designer's way out.
In terms of other timing things, like 'combo mechanics', there CAN clearly be narrative basis for them, magic can explain anything, and even martial 'not explicitly magical' moves could exist that are intentional combos and might work semi-reliably. 'wind ups' (where a character gets a bonus for doing X before Y, or for repeating X several times) I found a bit less believable and thematic in general. I mean, sure, they can exist too, but I'm not a huge fan of basing a class purely on that or something like that.