D&D 4E 4e and reality

[DracoSuave]

Look.

The martial power source allows for the following things, explicitly:

You could grow to twice your size permanently.

You could die, and reappear right where you fell, out of thin air, ready to do battle immediately.

You could die, go to whatever hell you were destined to go to, and simply get up and walk out and be back within a day with nothing but an interesting story of your journey.

You can hit someone, and cause them to fly 20 feet away... even put a bit of english on it.

You can inspire people to shrug off injury, cleanse themselves of poison, extinguish immolation, dispel magical compulsions, cease turning to stone, and yes, even to fight successfully against the onset of death itself.

These are examples of what -martial- characters can do, and by only tapping the martial power source. And somehow, it is plausible for a dead man to simply walk away from hell itself unimpeded, but grappling a swarm isn't!?!

I could see myself saying 'No, you cannot use a grab action on a swarm' because that's a mundane act. But the second I see the keyword 'Martial' there, we've gone outside the realm of the mundane and the normal rules of physics, science, human limitation, all of it ceases to apply. The presence of a power source makes it the stuff of legends and heroes, and in power fantasy, they don't play by our mortal rules.

 

[Aegeri]

I love your posts in this thread Draco and yet I cannot give you EXP.

We truly live in a cruel and unfair world.

 

[Scribble]

You could grow to twice your size permanently.

This is sooooo gonna start makin some whacked out stuff show up on our scrolling adds...

 

[Mad Hamish]

You could grow to twice your size permanently.

This is sooooo gonna start makin some whacked out stuff show up on our scrolling adds...

The adventures of Cialis the staff ranger...

 

[Alex319]

Nor do the rules guarantee fairness. They in fact really guarantee nothing.

I never claimed that the rules "guarantee" fairness.

Anyway, let me bring up the last point I made, which I've looked a lot but never got a satisfactory answer to:

If martial powers have to be consistent with real-world physics and combat techniques, why don't divine powers have to be consistent with real-world religious and theological ideas*, and why don't arcane powers have to be consistent with real-world magical** traditions?***

If the answer is "Because the D+D world has a different cosmology and religion than we do, so real-world information doesn't apply", then why can't the same explanation be used for martial powers: "Because fighting in the D+D world is different than in our world?"

*Just to be clear, it is not my intention to get into any form of debate about whether real-world religion is true or not. When I say "real-world religious and theological ideas" I mean "ideas that people believe in or have had, as they would apply to a D+D style world", irrespective of how they apply to our world.

**Same caveat above applies to any discussions of whether supernatural phenomena exist in the real world.

***Or even "Why don't arcane powers have to be consistent with what we can do in real life with electricity", because electricity is probably the closest thing we have in the real world to arcane power: you can "charge up" devices with it, if it "runs out" you can't use it until you "recharge" it, all kinds of different types of things run off the same "power source", etc.

 

[Tony Vargas]

There are ALL SORTS of situations where casters have reduced capabilities. Since when have I seen an environmental effect that ONLY made swordplay less effective? We're not talking about environmental effects with a defined mechanic Yet there are plenty of times where this that or the other spell effects are negated or reduced. TONS of monsters have immunity or resistance to various damage types which are virtually never even inconvenient to a martial character.

We're not talking about an environmental effect or an immunity. Sure, monsters have resistances, or on rare occassion, immunities - they also have vulnerabilities. Casters typically have more than one damage type to call on, so they hit the vulnerabilities and avoid hitting the immunities or resistance if they can. You're not changing the rules when a Stinking Cloud does nothing to a zombie, the Stinking Cloud does poison damage, the zombie is immune to poison and disease. Now, if you decide the zombie is also immune to magic missles or can't be dazed by a color spray because "it's eyes are already dead," then you'd have a comparable example.

If one is going to show up every level or two as an element of an encounter, big deal.

Again, if it's no big deal to break the rules, why is it intollerable to simply play by them. So a swarm gets grabbed or a gelatinous cube gets knocked prone by Icy Terrain once in a while. No big deal.

 

[pemerton]

Interesting observation, not least because it coincides with my position on games - it turns out that I like "purist for system" simulation games and play them by choice.

I wonder if it is because I played that sort of game first?

I GMed Rolemaster for nearly 20 years, so I like those sorts of games too - although I think it will be a while, if ever, before I return to them in a big way.

And I didn't start with them - I started with Cook/Moldvay D&D, and only played a bit of Traveller on the side - but fell in love with Rolemaster the first time I played it.

I think "purist-for-system" can scratch a few different itches. It can certainly support exploration play, like Classic Traveller planet-crawling. But I've found it can also support very character-focused play, because of the richness of detail these systems tend to give you in character building (think Rolemaster, or Traveller, or Champions - even a RQ character, while perhaps a little sparse in comparison, is very rich compared to an AD&D PC). The issue I've tended to find is that purist-for-system combat mechanics, being a bit more focused on causal realism, are often pretty deadly. Which can be bad for a game focused on loving attention to the PCs.

Paradoxically, though, these same detailed and deadly combat mechanics that can kill off PCs like flies also often give the PC a chance to shine and express him/herself that (in my view) isn't found in a game like AD&D. So it's too simplistic just to say that they're the bane of a character based game. And luckily, mid-to-high level Rolemaster tends to have the healing magic to work around the deadliness problem while still allowing full rein for PC self-expression! (I've never tried to solve the problem in Traveller or Runequest.)

 

[pemerton]

Out of interest, where in the rules does it present this? Is it in the PHB or the DMG?

Like others have said, there is a strong implication in the PHB, where it talks about reflavouring powers. And this implication has been made express by the FAQ on prone oozes.

Effects-based rules, like HERO/Champions, have been doing this for decades. It's not that the fluff doesn't matter, it's more like the rules don't need to dictate a fixed and specific relationship between the mechanics and the fluff

But in these games it tends to be that the (re)flavouring happens once, at the character build stage, whereas 4e contemplates it being done from moment to moment. I think it is this extra aspect, of no fixed relationship between mechanics and gameworld even for a given PC's power, that some (not me) object to.

I'm happy enough to have the character use his abilities. I still would like the player to exercise some creativity.

I'm very happy with this in a skill challenge. I'm happy enough with this in combat, provided that (as others have said) it doesn't become too onerous for players of martial vs other PCs.

I don't see encounter and daily use limits as really having anything to do with 'realism' at all. I know I've said this 100 times in other threads but it seems never to sink in. These limits are NOT character limits, they are player limits that are imposed on the player's power to alter the narrative of the story by having his character do cool extra powerful things.

<snip>

the game is played by the players, not the characters, and some rules are there to balance PLAYER interaction with the game, not explain things in terms of the characters.

To be honest, I'm surprised this has to keep being said. 4e is a game that is obviously designed around a clear and robust game/metagame divide.

 

[pemerton]

Grappling a swarm doesn't make sense, any more than grappling a waterfall makes sense.

My character is in a game of power fantasy. He is expected, in the narrative, to do fantastic things. The bounds of our mundane reality are not his reality.

Just to add to what DracoSuave said, isn't there a wrestling match with a river in the Iliad?

I'm a mythic wrestler dealing with an archer on top of a hill? I grab hold of the hill and shake that archer off of it.

Love it!

If I wanted to play mythic power fantasy I'd play heroquest or champions or something similar.

If I want classic swords and sorcery I'd play D&D (at least up to 3.5e, anyway!)

I'm one of many who think that 4e is a pretty different game from 1st ed AD&D and Basic. (I personally think that 2nd ed AD&D and 3E were a bit confused.)

After all, every PC is guaranteed an epic destiny if the game lasts that long. And The Plane Above canvasses these epic PCs travelling into deep myth to fundamentally transform history and cosmology (Heroquesting by another name!). How much more mythic fantasy can it get?

 

[eamon]

We play D&D primarily because of the flavor and the fluff.

I play DnD because I absolutely love the consistency and balance in the combat system in 4th edition.

I still think it's a shame we can't at least try for both - but this sums up this thread for me.