Once per day non-magical effects destroy suspension of disbelief

[AllisterH]

As weird as it sounds, I find the once a day powers more closely match what I see in novels and film. You don't see the protoganist pull off that special move all the time (that Karate Kid is a good example).

 

[Henry]

The wizard could cast magic missile all day, if he had prepared multiple castings of it, until he ran out of prepped spells. Not once a day.

That's not all day, that's more like 30 or 40 times, tops, and that's if he uses every last vestige of his capability to do it, leaving nothing left but magic items to back him up. (48 times, with a 24 INT? Something like that?) In other words, a lot, but not all day, every fight he might find himself in, and a fighter could swing his sword a lot longer than that, even.

My point? Same as the rest, every game has its abstractions for balance. 4e's happens to be to limit powerful abilities, magical or otherwise, to a certain number of times per day.

 

[Psion]

Well, they are "magic" items so I don't really need to rationalize that so much.

I'm vaguely tempted to do a search and see if you are one of the 4e fans who also danced on the grave of vancian magic because "it didn't make sense."

 

[charlesatan]

I'm vaguely tempted to do a search and see if you are one of the 4e fans who also danced on the grave of vancian magic because "it didn't make sense."

There should be no incriminating posts on me but for the record, I don't like the Vancian Magic system, but for game play reasons (long list of things to track--and I've been the one playing the epic-level spellcasters) rather than "it didn't make sense" (because it's a game!).

 

[Shadeydm]

oh, but for what it's worth, i agree with the op. Daily martial powers (and encounter ones, too) strike me as lame and don't jive with my own view of how such things should work.

qft!

 

[jackston2]

My apologies if this has already been said, but

Think of it this way:

You can make rules to justify anything, even once per day abilities, but is it worth it?

Example: You are a fighter. You can use Mighty Face-Eating Bite if you make an endurance check DC 0. Every time you use this ability again without having first rested, the DC goes up by 50.

It's the same thing as once per day, but it requires so much more mental work and book space.

Think of it like the Grapple issue.

You can roll an Opportunity Attack, Touch Attack, and two Opposed Strength Checks, or you can simply roll Fortitude versus Reflex.

They both accomplish the same thing! But one is faster!

Like someone said before: those kinds of rules are fun to read but a pain to play.

 

[billd91]

That's not all day, that's more like 30 or 40 times, tops, and that's if he uses every last vestige of his capability to do it, leaving nothing left but magic items to back him up. (48 times, with a 24 INT? Something like that?) In other words, a lot, but not all day, every fight he might find himself in, and a fighter could swing his sword a lot longer than that, even.

My point? Same as the rest, every game has its abstractions for balance. 4e's happens to be to limit powerful abilities, magical or otherwise, to a certain number of times per day.

And my point? That's it's a hell of a lot more than once and gives you the impression that he's actually done some work that's going to need a decent night's sleep to recover from. That's the difference. One actually gives you the impression of something, the other gives you squat.

 

[billd91]

If it used to do what you want, then use what used to work. If it's that important to you.

Oh, I am. I most certainly am.

 

[CountPopeula]

Has anyone noticed that in these discussions of daily powers, the "fixes" are always something incredibly complicated? Like HERO complicated? I think that says a lot for the simplicity of 4e.

I think part of the problem is as what was really the first rpg, D&D never really had a niche in people's mind. The new direction is giving it a niche. That niche is somewhere close to Anima: Tactics, honestly.

But it leaves people outside the scope of the game going "Hey, what about me?" Where if it were a different game, say GURPS or WoD (Which had much bigger problems with unhappiness with the edition change) or Anima, people would just say "Well, I'll play something else." But everyone seems to think D&D should be all things to all people.

Where on the narritivist/simulationist/gamist scale do you see D&D? Because I think the direction is more gamist, more in competition with Warmachine and Anima than with Vampire or HERO.

If you remember way back to the launch of third edition, the company vision was that Chainmail would be the big item, and D&D would be a support system for people who wanted a little more roleplaying with their miniature tactics game.

 

[Beginning of the End]

OK, I'll refrain from sig-pointing to ask ... why? Why is it less ridiculous to say a particular unusual situation is likely to arise only about once every five minutes of combat than to say another unusual situation is likely to arise only about once every thirty minutes?

This explanation still leaves the mechanics fundamentally dissociated from the game world.

The problem with such mechanics, for me, is that they make roleplaying more difficult. When I'm roleplaying, I put myself in the shoes of my characters and try to make the same decisions they would make. The resolution of the course of action I decide upon will be done using mechanics my character has no awareness of -- but because there is a direct one-to-one mapping between those mechanics and the game world -- I don't become dissociated from my character.

If we choose to explain these mechanics in the way you suggest (and we pretty much have to, because (a) no explanation is given for them in the rulebooks and (b) no other explanation I've seen is even remotely viable), then you've suddenly introduced significant decision points for me -- as a player -- which have no relevance to the character at all. For the character, they're just taking advantage of an opportunity which has presented itself. But I, as a player, am deciding when that opportunity happens. My experience and the character's experience have been sundered.

That's my problem with dissociated mechanics: They distance me from my characer. And since roleplaying is the #1 reason that I, personally, play roleplaying games, that's a huge problem for me.

More generally, I find the explanation doesn't hold up very well to any kind of meaningful analysis. For example, let's take a look at a talented fighter who knows a Nifty Exploit. All he's waiting for is for an enemy to leave his back open so that he can use his Nifty Exploit...

On Day 1, our talented fighter fights a whole bunch of opponents who are significantly less talented and less skilled than him. He fights his way through five such encounters, dispatching dozens of opponents. During all of these fights against all of these opponents he finds only one opportunity to use his Nifty Exploit.

On Day 2, our talented fighter faces off against a single opponent who is actually much more skilled than he is. He's just as likely to find one (and only one!) opportunity to use his Nifty Exploit against this much more talented opponent as he was to find one (and only one!) opportunity to use it against a legion of lesser opponents.

How does that make any sense? It doesn't.

So now we try to excuse this by saying something like, "Well, see, against those lesser opponents the talented fighter never really felt the need to use his Nifty Exploit, so he didn't."

Of course now you've not only handed me a dissociated mechanic (which I don't like), you've been forced to justify it by also taking control of my own character away from me.

Describing these as "Voltron mechanics" or narrative mechanics has a bit more mileage to it. I'm certainly willing to accept the inherent disadvantages dissociated mechanics if I'm trading those off against the advantages of gaining meaningful narrative control. But, personally, I don't consider "when does Voltron pull out his Win the Battle Sword?" to be meaningful narrative control.

Or, to put it another way: Usually when I'm playing an RPG it's because I enjoy pretending to be somebody else (i.e. roleplaying). Sometimes people come along and say, "Hey, for this game I'm going to interfere with your ability to roleplay. But, in exchange, you'll get to be a co-author of the story." And that can be pretty cool, too, so I'm more than willing to do that.

But if you offer me that deal and then say, "And by 'co-author the story' I mean 'decide when your characters gets to use an Awesome Combat Move(TM)'." Then that's pretty lame and I'm not interested. Besides, I was doing all kinds of Awesome Combat Moves in 3rd Edition without anybody mucking up my roleplaying.