Elephant in the room: rogue and fighter dailies.

[Mishihari Lord]

I dislike daily/encounter/whatever powers and hope they disappear from 5E. This is mainly because they are a meta resource having nothing to do with the in-game fiction. Making decisions about meta resources pulls me out of character stance into author stance which greatly detracts from my immersion.

(Thanks to the posters above whose discussion helped me figure out exactly why I dislike daily etc powers.)

I can tolerate some meta mechanics, but I prefer them to be more abstract and to be explicitly called out as meta mechanics rather than being disguised as standard mechanics.

Here's a top-level of a system I kind of like for fighter mechanics: The fighter can activate a mechanic if he hits an enemy by a required margin. Frex, if a fighter hits a target by at least 7, he can trip, which knocks an opponent prone if he misses a dex check. In order to give the fighter some control of when these kick in he's given a Stamina of 5 per level, a Stamina point can be used at any point to give a +1 to hit, and Stamina refreshes at the same time hit points do.

I like this system for a couple of reasons. It links maneuvers to the fiction. The margins can be varied to give a desired frequency to maneuvers. It gives a little more depth to decisions about when to use Stamina and maneuvers.

 

[Obryn]

Here are some other harrangues against Vancian magic strictly because of fire-and-forget:
1.http://www.enworld.org/forum/5771177-post50.html
2.http://www.enworld.org/forum/5772037-post63.html
3.http://www.enworld.org/forum/5882358-post25.html

In 1, he's also mentioning he doesn't like the daily mechanic for other classes, either, so there's no real inconsistency.
In 2, you can bring this up with Hussar, since he's here. I don't think he's saying what your initial post was implying was his point, though.
In 3, he's more looking at sorcerers and spontaneous casters and I don't have any idea what he thinks about fighter dailies.

And this gem which says that 4E doesn't really have Vancian casting:
4. http://www.enworld.org/forum/5770749-post33.html

If you define "vancian" as "pick X spells of Y level every day from a broad spell list, fire and forget, and you have no spells other than that" ... then it doesn't. If you just reduce the definition to "daily spells" then it does. It's a matter of definitions, and I think in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the poster is pretty well aware that 4e has daily powers.

And some posts from other places than ENWorld:
5.Critique on Fire-and-Forget | Game On :: Aleph Gaming
6.dungeons and dragons - How does D&D Vancian magic make sense in-game? - Role-playing Games

5. I don't know what they think about martial dailies, especially since it was written pre-4e. They have a beef with using a spellcasting system that doesn't resemble the fiction they want to use, so I don't know if they have incompatible views.
6. Same thing, but a random dude on a Q&A forum. Again, no clue on what they think about martial dailies.

-O

 

[nnms]

I can tolerate some meta mechanics, but I prefer them to be more abstract and to be explicitly called out as meta mechanics rather than being disguised as standard mechanics.

So you want a clear separation between mechanics that explicitly have you altering the plot, as a person at the table and those mechanics which are there to resolve the outcome of attempted actions by the characters?

Here's a top-level of a system I kind of like for fighter mechanics: The fighter can activate a mechanic if he hits an enemy by a required margin. Frex, if a fighter hits a target by at least 7, he can trip, which knocks an opponent prone if he misses a dex check. In order to give the fighter some control of when these kick in he's given a Stamina of 5 per level, a Stamina point can be used at any point to give a +1 to hit, and Stamina refreshes at the same time hit points do.

I like this system for a couple of reasons. It links maneuvers to the fiction. The margins can be varied to give a desired frequency to maneuvers. It gives a little more depth to decisions about when to use Stamina and maneuvers.

It gives you a meta mechanic as well. When to spend stamina points as being part of spot-light management

I like a system like that where you can build on one attempt to unlock other maneuvers. Like unbalancing someone as a side effect of a good attack roll means they are now open to a trip attack should you choose to use one on your next turn.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

So you want a clear separation between mechanics that explicitly have you altering the plot, as a person at the table and those mechanics which are there to resolve the outcome of attempted actions by the characters?

Yes

It gives you a meta mechanic as well. When to spend stamina points as being part of spot-light management

Nope. Stamina as described is not a meta mechanic because it represents something real in the game-fiction, that being the how tired the PC is. It represents a fighter's ability to put an extra effort into a chosen attack, i.e. to put extra strength and speed into an attack. When it's gone, he's too tired to do it anymore.

I like a system like that where you can build on one attempt to unlock other maneuvers. Like unbalancing someone as a side effect of a good attack roll means they are now open to a trip attack should you choose to use one on your next turn.

Now that's a cool idea.

 

[Bobbum Man]

It boils down to dissociated mechanics.

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

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

So when you see an amazing football, the player isn't thinking, "Well, time to use my 'once per game' catch." Nor do they think, "Well, I'd better skip making this catch because I might need that 'once per game' ability later on." But that is what you, as a player, are thinking when you use these dissociated mechanics.

That's the difference.

Yeah....Justin Alexander is really good at taking a big, smelly, passive-aggressive asparagus piss on people who are having fun doing things he doesn't like. He even managed to wrap his trolling up in a very convincing shroud of rhetoric. Make no mistake though, the ONLY reason the whole dissociated mechanics idea came around was so people would have a superficially reasonable argument when claiming that 4E players aren't really "role-playing" when their Fighter uses a daily power.

Dissociated mechanics is a b.s. metric to judge roleplaying on and here's why:

1) What constitutes "role-playing" has never had a unanimously agreed upon definition. Some people think that games like Fiasco don't count because they don't have GM's. But whatever...let's pretend that it's solely down to interacting with the game world through the eyes on one's character...that brings us to:

2) Every role-playing game game out there has dissociated mechanics somewhere. Every. Single. One. At least some level of abstraction is necessary for a game to function on a level where it can actually be played and enjoyed by people who aren't robots.

WEG Star Wars had drama points. Spirit of the Century has fate points. Say...does a madman know how many insanity points he has? What keeps a shadowrun character from taking so many cyberware enhancements that they lose all of their essence? Do they have am essence gauge on their person? And in D&D...how is it that the fighter always knows approximately how approximately how many axe blows to the face (s)he can take before dying?

What's more...I'm not a board game guy, but I'm willing to bet that someone out there can name at least one that is less dissociated than an AD&D.

3) But I guess it's all about immersion, right? Because most of our gaming sessions are poignant works of impromptu theater and salient works of true artistic merit, rather than a table full of grown men making dick and fart jokes in monty python voices. I defy someone to post an audio recording of a play session for ANY game that doesn't eventually wind up sounding like an order of the stick comic. I DEFY them.

But let's go back to the first point about role playing. We might not know exactly how to define it, but we now what the end goal is: Immersion. If someone feels immersed while playing a game, even a while spending a healing surge or something, are they not actually roleplaying then, despite the feeling of immersion? Are they wrong for being immersed in the game? Were they actually NOT immersed in the game? If so, can you prove what was really going on in their heads?

4)It's a silly game where players pretend to be magical elves. The Alexandrian is a skilled bull crap artist, which makes his bullying somehow look urbane rather than petty and childish, but in essence he's trying to quantify rpg mechanics in an almost academic manner, while the rest of us are sitting around a table and trying to make our friends shoot mountain dew out of their noses.

So...daily martial powers in 4E. Exactly like an amazing touchdown, or a grand slam, or a triple double, or a critical hit for that matter. There is NO real difference.

 

[nnms]

Someone mentioned this earlier, but this adjudication approach tends to discourage my preferred play style - when the repetitive grinding approach is massively more efficient and effective than the flavourful or exciting alternative.

This depends on the details of the surrounding system. In Runequest, for example, the result of knocking something down can be so important. It can represent the end of a fight in many situations.

By building in multiple failure points to the unorthodox action, you make it less likely to succeed, so it's more sensible to take the orthodox approach of hitting someone with a sword.

Doesn't this depend on the specifics of the probabilities the system uses? If each failure point is equal in chance to the failure point of a single attack, then sure, mundane attacking is always better. But that's hardly a universal approach. In 3.x, for example, it's quite easy to get acrobatics and athletics type skills high enough that you can't really fail except for the actual attack against the target which is still an attack roll.

If cinematic action tends to be less efficient or effective, or more prone to failure, it's thereby discouraged, and it tends to inhibit the gameplay I enjoy the most.

Absolutely. But handling it as a bunch of individual resolution points doesn't have to mean that it is less efficient/effective/likely to succeed nor than its results are going to be inferior to the mundane option of simply attacking. That depends entirely on the particulars of the system.

In Runequest, using the trip maneuver successfully applies massive penalties to the target (including potentially losing multiple attacks as you keep the press on them as they get up as well as a hefty bonus to attack them and a hefty penalty to their ability to parry or dodge your attacks).

I think D&D Next needs to have two things in its next update.

1) A module that restores 4E AEDU, encounters as refresh points and forced movement and the like on the grid.

2) A module that further enhances "theatre of the mind" play by allowing one to play without any mundane ability that is limited in its success as a per day resource.

 

[nnms]

Yeah....Justin Alexander is really good at taking a big, smelly, passive-aggressive asparagus piss on people who are having fun doing things he doesn't like.

And then you go and do the same thing in this post.

I'm sorry that your sessions are just an endless barrage of dick jokes and the like. Try going for higher standards.

EDIT: Check out some actual play podcasts and you'll find people can easily increase the quality of their play and not make a ton of stupid jokes and acting immature.

 

[Obryn]

And then you go and do the same thing in this post.

I didn't see anything passive-aggressive.

Regardless, now I am sad I can't +rep his post. Not worded how I would, but ...

-O

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Yeah....Justin Alexander is really good at taking a big, smelly, passive-aggressive asparagus piss on people who are having fun doing things he doesn't like. He even managed to wrap his trolling up in a very convincing shroud of rhetoric. Make no mistake though, the ONLY reason the whole dissociated mechanics idea came around was so people would have a superficially reasonable argument when claiming that 4E players aren't really "role-playing" when their Fighter uses a daily power. ... (more stuff)

No, not at all. What he did was figure out one important reason why certain people don't like certain games and express it clearly.

This was pretty valuable for me personally. I knew I didn't like 4E, but his writing helped me figure out why I didn't like it.

I really don't like dissociated mechanics in general. I'll put up with them if there's a really good reason to do so (e.g. hit points), but when writing a rule I'll always try to find something related to in-game fiction or character knowledge first.

 

[FireLance]

"Vancian" implies three things... (1) a strict Daily spell allocation, (2) lack of Encounter & at-will spells, and (3) huge amounts of day-to-day flexibility. It's not just "has Daily spells."

For what it's worth, "Vancian" to me implies the following (from a previous post):

1. Spell slots - A spellcaster's access to spells is expressed in terms of spell slots. Each slot can contain a single spell. This distinguishes the Vancian system from systems that make use of spell points (such as 3e psionics).

2. Preparation - A spellcaster has to decide beforehand which spells occupy his spell slots. This distinguishes the Vancian system from spontaneous casting systems (such as the 3e sorcerer).

3. Fire and forget - Once a spell is cast, it is removed from the spell slot and cannot be re-used until the spellcaster prepares it again.

The following elements are strongly associated with traditional D&D-style Vancian spellcasting, but are (IMO) not critical elements of a Vancian system:

4. Daily refresh cycle - spellcasters are only allowed to prepare spells once per day, or each spell slot can only be prepared to hold a spell once per day.

5. Generic spell slots - each spell slot can hold any type of spell: offensive, defensive or utility.

6. Wide variety of choice - spellcasters can choose what spell to prepare in each spell slot from a wide variety of options, either because they automatically gain access to them (as was the case for the 3e cleric) or because they can gradually build up these options (e.g. a 3e wizard adding spells to his spellbook).

When comparing the AEDU system to the Vancian system, the key dissatisfaction is usually that it is less flexible, in particular, points 2, 5 and 6. Most classes do not get to choose which daily power to prepare after an extended rest, utility powers are siloed from attack powers, and even for classes who do get to choose which spells to prepare, there are usually only two to three options per spell slot. Because of point 4, some are also uncomfortable with the idea of encounter spells.

Some of the inflexibility issues can possibly be fixed, such as granting more classes the choice of daily powers to prepare, and increasing the number of choices for each class (points 2 and 6). However, certain inflexibilities, such as the split between attack and utility powers, and factors such as the presence of encounter powers (points 4 and 5), are inherent to the AEDU system.