LostSoul
Adventurer
Before I get to the examples, let me say that I agree with this, but that's also why in my earlier post I raised the issue of what actually counts as "fully playing the game"? If you take page 42 of the DMG seriously, and also the text for the Acrobatics skill in the PHB (to which I first had my attention drawn by your suggestion that a Rogue dive into the maw of a purple worm to rescue a swallowed magic-user - great stuff!), then playing the game requires having regard to the fictional context. Play which has regard only to the stat block, and which therefore disregards p 42, and which privileges Athletics over Acrobatics as a skill (because the Athletics rules have stats in them), can ignore the fiction, I agree.
Maybe the game is to some extent incoherent in its rules - presenting such tight stat blocks that they create a strong reason no to depart from them (hence your desire to rewrite parts of the game to expressly create the lacuna for GM input), but also presenting open-ended fiction-first rules like p 42 and Acrobatics.
That's the way I first looked at the game - the fictional content does trump everything else, because there are simple and quick rules for the DM to adjudicate any sort of action the PCs want to try. I looked at the action economy and figured that, if you can reduce an opponent's resources (HP) with a Standard Action, how you decide to do that should depend on the fiction; you shouldn't have to use an attack power. The Standard Action was the important thing, not the modifier being used.
Thus Intimidate checks to deal HP damage.
Playing the game, though, even with this mindset, the people I played with fell too often into the trap of only looking at their powers as their only options. "Power fixation." I have come to believe that this is because the powers don't require you to stop and think about the fictional situation beyond the grid/conditions/HP level.
The simplest way would be to have the DM say "No" to powers based on the fictional situation, but that's not the general tone of DM advice for 4E.
Does the game foster "incoherent" play, in the Forge sense? Possibly. The DM advice suggests that the PCs are heroes, the rules reduce some consequences, but the game is hard-edged and can make player skill the sole factor in victory. What's more, Quests and the loose way that colour ties to the mechanics can enable a heavily Premise-based game.
The advice leans towards a "Right to Dream" experience, I think (scaling everything to PC level without enough emphasis on "problematic features of human existence"), but those playing through the WotC modules will likely see that quashed when they come face-to-axe with Irontooth.
This is an interesting one. The rules for Oozes describe them as "amorphous", and the flavour text for Ochre Jellies says that they can slip under doors and pour through narrow cracks, and that they can't climb steps, but none of this is reflected in the stat block - whereas other stat blocks do give special squeezing powers (like Larva mages). And while the PHB rules for squeezing give the GM a lot of discretion for Medium or smaller creatures, this is not the case for Large creatures like Jellies and Puddings.
On balance, this seems to me to be a case of poorly written stats, where the stats don't give full effect to the desingers' intentions. Alternatively, it could be that the keyword "ooze", in describing oozes as amorphous and giving them special squeezing privileges, hasn't quite said everything that it should have about oozes going under doors and the like. Either way, I'd have no problem letting a black pudding - "like a massive pool of tar" - slide under a door. And I don't think my players could really accuse me of breaking the rules in doing so.
I don't think so either. My question is, because the rules say it can't, does that mean the DM should rule that it can't, or should the DM rule on some other principle? I'm not sure which way the advice leans. Personally I don't think there needs to be a rule or power that says that oozes can slip under doors (gelatinous cubes excepted); the DM can make a judgement call. I think the "rule for everything" approach takes away from that human element.
I'm mostly in the latter camp - monsters are colour, and I adjust levels if I have to. However, part of the colour I am looking for in my campaign is "the story of D&D", and that puts limits on how far you can vary levels - eg once you're paragon you're not really meant to be dealing with orcs anymore, unless they're from Gruumsh's plane!
I think that's a great way to handle the game. The monster creation/alteration rules make it easy to tell the kind of story you want.
I should say that I'm not talking about a pre-plotted story; just that the DM can provide an appropriate level of adversity that's independent of colour, which means that the DM can pick and choose the appropriate colour for the theme of the story. This does have other effects, like making long-term strategic planning more difficult for players. That's the kind of thing I mean when different 4E techniques can be used to address different metagame goals.
On all these issues I've been too influenced by your posts back in the early 4e days to have an independent view! I don't think I've yet had a PC use Intimidate to do psychic damage, but I've had a PC use Religion to get combat advantage against a Wight. I haven't thought about using Diplomacy to heal, but that's a very interesting idea - I think the relationship should matter, affecting the DC (moderate vs hard). The action would have to be a standard one, to preserve action economy balance. To balance it against healing powers, I think that the PC using diplomacy might have to take some psychic damage if the attempt fails - they are gutted as they realise the relationship doesn't mean the same thing to the other person, or at least doesn't have the same power to drive them, as it does the would-be healing PC.
"Annakin, you're breaking my heart!"
That quote jumps to mind - it's as though Annakin failed in an Intimidate check and therefore dealt psychic HP damage to Amidala.
I'm not sure the game is balanced for this kind of play - you might need to apply some modifiers to defences - but I don't think it would be hard to achieve.
In my view the biggest gap in the 4e rules is advice on how to use p 42, and the skill challenge rules more generally, to achieve various play goals in various contexts - and in particular, how these parts of the game are meant to interact with the combat mechanics. It's the absence of that sort of material that (for me, at least) gives the biggest feeling of incoherence of the sort I talked about above.
Yep. I think there's a lot of space for discussion on how different techniques can enhance or subtract from specific metagame goals. (My problems with narrative control/authorial "power points" being one of them.)