D&D 4E How did 4e take simulation away from D&D?

[eriktheguy]

As a simulationist, I have far bigger fish to fry in relation to 4e (and for some of these previous editions of D&D):
* Hit points (you are either relatively uninjured or dead - your character can never be in between.)

There's bloodied (injured enough to trigger keyword effects but not too much that you can't fight), and unconscious (injured enough not to be able to fight, but not dead). You have a ton of HP, but only a little is available in each fight (HP vs surges). 4e actually puts you out of commission when you only lose a small fraction of your total daily HP. That's much faster than any previous edition. I actually just tell my players they are out of commission when they reach 0 HP, but still let them observe. This feels more like a real battlefield casualty; the injured warrior watches helplessly from the sidelines.

* Saves (everyone gets rid of a condition on 10+ on a d20; regardless of whether they have a good or poor natural ability to get over it - for me this is my biggest "simulationist gripe")

Your ability to get over it is represented by Fort, Ref and Will, which enemies need to hit to inflict the condition. It's the same as previous editions. Saving throws are used to track duration, not represent hardiness. Also there are lots of races, classes, feats with a good natural ability to get over various conditions.
If you change the name from 'save' to 'duration check' and you refer to 'Non-AC defenses' as 'saves', you might not even notice.

* Why can I only do this mundane (if highly skilled) move once an encounter or once a day - it makes no sense. If it is situational, tell me the situation even if it is really situational (target granting combat advantage, is immobilized and I get a critical) rather than giving me a bland once an encounter/day. For magical instances, encounters and dailies can be a little more suitable but other times are just as bad.

This is a common theme with simulation in fantasy games. Classes which rely on martial training get penalized by "common sense". Classes which use magic don't because "it's magic". There's no reason that a Wizard shouldn't be able to take a breather before the next fight and prepare fireball again, other than the arbitrary constrains of the system.
On the other hand, I can design a fighter whose encounter and daily exploits are performed by expending chi energy or calling on my ancestors, thus explaining the limitations. The limitation 'makes sense', because it is mysterious.
In fantasy characters do things that aren't realistic, even martial characters. Applying simulation to them only, while excusing any class that is 'mysterious' is kind of silly.

* The game mathematics is on a relative playing field rather than an absolute one.
* Half-level increase to everything is suitable in some situations but definitely not in others. I would much prefer a system that can take these factors into account with a more refined granularity.

These two are really the same point. There are lots of opinions around here about whether the game should be more complex or simpler. I think improving simulation leans towards the complex side. I'd like to know what you think about +1/2 level to everything doesn't make sense though.

* Skill Challenges. I love the idea of skill challenges, but I would prefer a more rigourous system to be generally applied to "exploration" or "social" mode. By the time our group bent skill challenges to our style, it seemed like we were halfway back to where we were in 3e.

I and many others agree with you. I've dropped them altogether, but I have incorporated the ideas of DCs based on the level of the situation, and a number of successes before failures.

* Some mundane powers that feel too "magical" and over the top. I'm not a wuxia fan, or more to the point I don't like finding rice inside my haggis.

If martial characters couldn't do the impossible, they wouldn't be allowed past level 5.

* The mathematics behind magic item pricing. I like exponentials as much as the next mathematician but that doesn't mean I'm going to get my old high school textbook and try and smoke it like the designers seemed to do. D&D has never done economics well - but this really was a few steps too far into whacky land.

There is no math. Give out the parcels in the DMG, and your players subtract the gold that they spend on items when they buy them. Maybe just dust off your old calculator, but leave the textbook on the shelf. At worst it's a bit of bookkeeping. If you like simulation and dislike bookkeeping... I have bad news.

 

[KarinsDad]

I think most skill challenges should have a chance of success at least comparable to that of most combats - that is, pretty good.

For a complex challenges, this requires that the players be able to make their way through it with most checks close to autosuccess.

Except in combat, the ebbs and flows have mechanisms to handle minor setbacks. A PC goes unconscious, another PC heals him. A PC is stunned, another PC gives him a save. A ranged NPC is out of range of melee PCs, the players figure out ways to bring him back into range. And in combat, failure often means death.

Skill checks don't have this. The ability to adapt and overcome multiple failures is extremely limited and the penalty for failure is usually not severe at all.

And for the most part, the SC part of the game is somewhat out of the hands of the players. Yes, the players decide which skill to use and a given DM might even give a +2 bonus, but meh.

If the PCs have a 90+% chance of success for each individual roll in a complex skill challenge, then the only thing complex about this skill challenge is attempting to not roll super low on the dice a ton of times in a row.

The individual checks themselves are easy.

So no, a complex SC shouldn't be with a ton of easy checks. It should be fewer more difficult checks and multiple good ways for players to overcome adversity, but that's not how WotC designed it.

They designed complex SCs to be exercises in dice rolling with a high chance of success for each one, otherwise, the PCs will easily fail the challenge.

Yes. It's the most glaringly weak part of the rulebooks. And the RC has even less guidance than the PHB + DMG + DMG2, which is a bizarre step backwards. Does WotC think SCs are a serious part of the game or not?

Not.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think they are. But as a part of xp. Whether you success or not does not matter anymore. It is just a mechanism to decide what is next, or how many surges you lose. Just like combat. You can do well or less well, but you eventually succed.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

I wanted to give an option that might help you rationalize this:

The situation is that the target must react in precisely the wrong way to a particular kind of feint your character makes. It is rare enough that a target will react that way to make rolling for it impractical, and DM fiat runs the risk of being(or even seeming) biased. So player fiat determines when the target does that, with a restriction to keep the player from abusing it.

Does that help, with attack powers at least?

Eh.

Powers aren't really meant to be a "simulationist" thing, no more then barbarian rages or paladin smites per day were.

I know, but I like coming up with justifications for things. As a fun mental exercise.

No matter how many times you explain how the abstraction can be easily translated into a narrative element, it's not going to change anything. They don't want to accept that this is what the system was designed for.

Herremann the Wise did ask. And I've actually seen(in rare cases) people respond to a justification they hadn't heard before, or even just a rephrasing of one they had.

You can never tell what'll click for somebody.

And thank you theNater for the effort spent (XP coming your way) and the courtesy and helpful intentions of your response - much appreciated compared to the dismissive "they" quoted above. I think sometimes some of us forget that we all like some flavour of D&D, we all sit around a table with our friends roleplaying and crafting fantastic stories and ideas, and that we all carry (if sometimes hidden) a big shiny "nerd badge". I much prefer "We", "us", or "some of us"; not "them".

I understand the route that the designers took with powers in terms of transferring narrative control to the players and as you highlight, that from a gamist perspective, the encounter/daily restriction is the plain easiest way of dealing with this. As a simulationist-type player though, I am more than happy and tolerant to suffer a little complexity if it means that the mechanics presented mirror the "fantastic realism" that I enjoy to play with in the game. You highlight "It is rare enough that a target will react that way to make rolling for it impractical..." where as from my perspective, there is always a possible and efficient mechanic that would be practical enough.

To explain a little further, if you have a look at when daily attack powers are used, they are heavily skewed towards boss monsters or the "tougher" ones so to speak. This sets off my mental probability alarm when viewed as a whole. Why does my character's best abilities always come off against the tougher monsters but never against the mooks? This heavy skewing highlights the metagaming aspect of powers and saving them for when your character needs them - something that is a little hard to interpret in-game from a simulationist perspective.

You highlight however the true divide that is attack from non-attack daily powers. Non-attack daily powers becomes something a little harder to rationalise in or out of game from a simulationist perspective.

In any case, I think this all correctly highlights one of the ways that (to answer the thread title) 4e took simulation away from D&D.

And to answer Dannager and from a personal perspective, I have accepted this partial removal of simulationism from 4e D&D compared to previous editions otherwise I wouldn't be playing and enjoying it. Surely though I am still permitted to have an alternative preference in terms of style of play without being dumped into the category of "them"?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[pemerton]

I think they are. But as a part of xp. Whether you success or not does not matter anymore. It is just a mechanism to decide what is next, or how many surges you lose. Just like combat. You can do well or less well, but you eventually succed.

That's one interesting way of looking at it - thanks.

But I'm still not sure it answers KD's point - because if success/failure is all that matters to the dynamics of the challenge, then the challenge won't be all that dynamic:

Except in combat, the ebbs and flows have mechanisms to handle minor setbacks.

<snip>

Skill checks don't have this. The ability to adapt and overcome multiple failures is extremely limited and the penalty for failure is usually not severe at all.

And for the most part, the SC part of the game is somewhat out of the hands of the players. Yes, the players decide which skill to use and a given DM might even give a +2 bonus, but meh.

<snip>

They designed complex SCs to be exercises in dice rolling with a high chance of success for each one, otherwise, the PCs will easily fail the challenge.

I think you make a good point here, but I don't agree with your final line. I think that the sorts of ebbs and flows you describe need to be introduced by the GM in narrating the consequences of skill checks, so as to establish a context for the next step in the players' engagement of the challenge. Besides failed checks as the cue for this, advantages (from Essentials) can also be used - ie something lukcy happens to help the PCs, but it introduces a complication of some sort into the situation that the players must now work out how to respond to - or even narrow successes, or successes on a group check where one or more PCs fail their individual components of it.

At least, these are the techniques I try to use to have a complex skill challenge be more than just an exercise in dice rolling, while still keeping to the published DCs. It has worked for me and my group. But it's not a technique I could have learned from the D&D rulebooks - in my case, I've learned it from the rules for other games with comparable action resolution mechanics (HeroWars/Quest, The Burning Wheel, Maelstrom Storytelling).

 

[Herremann the Wise]

* Hit points (you are either relatively uninjured or dead - your character can never be in between.)

There's bloodied (injured enough to trigger keyword effects but not too much that you can't fight), and unconscious (injured enough not to be able to fight, but not dead). You have a ton of HP, but only a little is available in each fight (HP vs surges). 4e actually puts you out of commission when you only lose a small fraction of your total daily HP. That's much faster than any previous edition. I actually just tell my players they are out of commission when they reach 0 HP, but still let them observe. This feels more like a real battlefield casualty; the injured warrior watches helplessly from the sidelines.

But no matter how injured my character is, as long as they are not dead, they can by mundane means fully recover to fighting trim within a day. This is a big kick in the pants for a simulationist style of play. However, hit points in D&D have always been weird. A way of dealing with this (from a simulationist's point of view) is to separate the hit points (representing the capacity to avoid or turn damage, divine influence, luck etc.) and physical damage. Hit points are restored quickly while physical damage is healed at a much slower/normal rate. 4e is designed more for fun than representing the "ickiness" of damage and infection - and this is most certainly not a bad thing.

* Saves (everyone gets rid of a condition on 10+ on a d20; regardless of whether they have a good or poor natural ability to get over it - for me this is my biggest "simulationist gripe")

Your ability to get over it is represented by Fort, Ref and Will, which enemies need to hit to inflict the condition. It's the same as previous editions. Saving throws are used to track duration, not represent hardiness. Also there are lots of races, classes, feats with a good natural ability to get over various conditions.
If you change the name from 'save' to 'duration check' and you refer to 'Non-AC defenses' as 'saves', you might not even notice.

Yes I would, and as I say, this is the biggest simulationist gripe for me. In 4e the "puny" wizard "recovers" from being poisoned at a rate equal to or better than the "tough" barbarian 69% of the time! This is completely and utterly at odds with the mental picture I have of fantasy and the various tropes we include in a typical campaign. I accept this as part of streamlining the game but it still bothers me and would be the first thing ejected when creating a new edition.

This is a common theme with simulation in fantasy games. Classes which rely on martial training get penalized by "common sense". Classes which use magic don't because "it's magic". There's no reason that a Wizard shouldn't be able to take a breather before the next fight and prepare fireball again, other than the arbitrary constrains of the system.

Not always true. A major trope of fantasy fiction is the physical effect of casting powerful magic. This is a very easy limiting factor to introduce. The other factor that can be addressed is the high rate of spellcasting compared to more mundane attack forms. If the rate at which a spellcaster can blast out a fireball is scaled back a little, then martial classes do not end up being penalized, particularly if those martial classes are empowered to get more out of their attacks than hp damage.

On the other hand, I can design a fighter whose encounter and daily exploits are performed by expending chi energy or calling on my ancestors, thus explaining the limitations. The limitation 'makes sense', because it is mysterious.

Which is fine if you want a "mysteriously" powered non-mundane fighter. And I can certainly jive with such variants from a Primal perspective (even though chi in my fantasy game still illicits that rice in the haggis issue I personally have). I still would want such restrictions explained more fully than encounter/daily - although my simulationist issue here is most definitely related to the mechanics of such things.

* Why can I only do this mundane (if highly skilled) move once an encounter or once a day - it makes no sense. If it is situational, tell me the situation even if it is really situational (target granting combat advantage, is immobilized and I get a critical) rather than giving me a bland once an encounter/day. For magical instances, encounters and dailies can be a little more suitable but other times are just as bad.

In fantasy characters do things that aren't realistic, even martial characters. Applying simulation to them only, while excusing any class that is 'mysterious' is kind of silly.

Why is that silly. For me, this is the very important aspect of separating the magical from the mundane. If even the non-magical characters can do magical things, then not only does it dramatically downgrade the mystery-level for me, it completely loses it.

* The game mathematics is on a relative playing field rather than an absolute one.
* Half-level increase to everything is suitable in some situations but definitely not in others. I would much prefer a system that can take these factors into account with a more refined granularity.

These two are really the same point. There are lots of opinions around here about whether the game should be more complex or simpler. I think improving simulation leans towards the complex side. I'd like to know what you think about +1/2 level to everything doesn't make sense though.

Some things that get the half-level increase such as perception are generally well deserved as a character increases in ability and level (although an exception to this is easily enough crafted). I think it was KarinsDad on a different thread that highlighted the importance of this "adventuring experience" be hard-coded into the rules and how 3e's skill points failed to do this. Initiative is another area where the half-level bonus is suited and well earned compared to 3e initiative. However, why is my puny wizard getting significantly stronger as he increases in level? Why is my dumb-fighter getting so much more intelligent? Why are they getting better at skills they have likely never used? 3e does not give enough weight to this adventuring experience while 4e values and applies it too loosely. I would prefer a happy elegant medium between the two.

* Skill Challenges. I love the idea of skill challenges, but I would prefer a more rigourous system to be generally applied to "exploration" or "social" mode. By the time our group bent skill challenges to our style, it seemed like we were halfway back to where we were in 3e.

I and many others agree with you. I've dropped them altogether, but I have incorporated the ideas of DCs based on the level of the situation, and a number of successes before failures.

For me, the creation of a skill challenge is a case of going through and carefully examining the effect of different skills in different parts of the challenge. However, rather than presenting it obviously in terms of success and failure, I think I prefer a more organically-presented approach where the situation itself determines outcomes rather than the meta-gamey nature of calculating successes and failures. Fantastic as a guide but in the end, I think the rules just help you focus more fully on the situation than what you otherwise might have in previous editions. I am happy that many people here do enjoy their skill challenges and in so doing come up with some fantastic story elements for their game (a deserved shout-out to Pemerton in this regard).

* Some mundane powers that feel too "magical" and over the top. I'm not a wuxia fan, or more to the point I don't like finding rice inside my haggis.

If martial characters couldn't do the impossible, they wouldn't be allowed past level 5.

I really disagree with this. There are a lot of mundane ways that a fighter can affect the battlefield that are powerful and effective. 4e opened the door here for some really good stuff but there are some examples that go a little too far for my "simulationist sensibilities". For me if you have ever read David Gemmell's books and characters such as Druss the Legend, then you have the perfect blueprint for high level mundane fighters. It is possible and it can be done. Again, if you could mix the best of 3e/4e on this, I think you would really have something good.

* The mathematics behind magic item pricing. I like exponentials as much as the next mathematician but that doesn't mean I'm going to get my old high school textbook and try and smoke it like the designers seemed to do. D&D has never done economics well - but this really was a few steps too far into whacky land.

There is no math. Give out the parcels in the DMG, and your players subtract the gold that they spend on items when they buy them. Maybe just dust off your old calculator, but leave the textbook on the shelf. At worst it's a bit of bookkeeping. If you like simulation and dislike bookkeeping... I have bad news.

It is not the size of the numbers that bothers me or the bookkeeping (which as you can imagine is an important and intrinsic part of the game for me - I produce 14-20 page character sheets for my player's in my 3e game). It is the exponential difference between +1, +2, +3, +4, +5 and +6 items that bothers me. It is unimaginative, differentiates far too much in terms of coin and hearkens back to the previous point of relative mathematics versus absolute. It fails to make any quasi-realistic economic sense - something D&D has never been good at but gets a huge fail on in 4e. I suppose the designers thought. "well we're not doing and have never done a good job at economics in D&D; so let's just forget about it completely and just focus on relative value to a party of level x. Not my preference is all.

Anyway, my point in all of this is to give some insight into a simulationist's perspective and to attempt to answer the thread title - something which seemed to get sidetracked on the "craft [basketweaving]" mode of discussion that has little if anything to do with a simulationism. In the end, they are just my preferences and certainly not a true or correct way to play the game. If you are having fun playing, then you must be doing it right.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[Aegeri]

To explain a little further, if you have a look at when daily attack powers are used, they are heavily skewed towards boss monsters or the "tougher" ones so to speak. This sets off my mental probability alarm when viewed as a whole. Why does my character's best abilities always come off against the tougher monsters but never against the mooks? This heavy skewing highlights the metagaming aspect of powers and saving them for when your character needs them - something that is a little hard to interpret in-game from a simulationist perspective.

Because more often than not heroes rise up to their greatest challenges in their most dire hour of need. Their most powerful opponents, desperate last stand situations against hordes of enemies and similar, can all explain why the deepest maneuvers are only possible a limited amount of times each day.

Yes I would, and as I say, this is the biggest simulationist gripe for me. In 4e the "puny" wizard "recovers" from being poisoned at a rate equal to or better than the "tough" barbarian 69% of the time!

Except that the "Puny" wizard if he doesn't take a lot of con - while the barbarian will have a higher strength by far at least - has a lower fortitude. So he's far more easily poisoned than the barbarian is in the first place. 4E puts the onus on inflicting effects on the attacker - not the defender. The Barbarian and Wizard may save the same (excluding feats), but the Wizard is far more easily affected in the first place. So your argument really doesn't work, except for misunderstanding the onus on the defender/attacker in 4E.

Why is that silly. For me, this is the very important aspect of separating the magical from the mundane. If even the non-magical characters can do magical things, then not only does it dramatically downgrade the mystery-level for me, it completely loses it.

Martial characters in legend can do just as extreme things as spellcasters. Why putting the term "magic" on things suddenly excuses all illogical acts wizards can do, while stating your fighter uses "heroic will" to do what they do doesn't is extremely silly to me.

 

[pemerton]

But no matter how injured my character is, as long as they are not dead, they can by mundane means fully recover to fighting trim within a day. This is a big kick in the pants for a simulationist style of play.

Not that you need the advice, but I think one of the easiest house rules for 4e would be to delay the rate at which healing surges are recovered. Whereas getting rid of surges altogether would radically change the design paramaters and pacing of 4e combat, this change would affect adventure design and pacing, but have no other balance effect that I can see.

It is not the size of the numbers that bothers me or the bookkeeping (which as you can imagine is an important and intrinsic part of the game for me - I produce 14-20 page character sheets for my player's in my 3e game). It is the exponential difference between +1, +2, +3, +4, +5 and +6 items that bothers me.

This bothers me for a different reason - XP double every 4 monster levels, but treasure quintuples every 5 item levels, meaning that you can't just assign a treasure parcel to an encounter and then leave it for the players to come across whenever it comes up in the game - because the treasure will become "level inappropriate" more quickly than will the encounter.

For me, the creation of a skill challenge is a case of going through and carefully examining the effect of different skills in different parts of the challenge. However, rather than presenting it obviously in terms of success and failure, I think I prefer a more organically-presented approach where the situation itself determines outcomes rather than the meta-gamey nature of calculating successes and failures. Fantastic as a guide but in the end, I think the rules just help you focus more fully on the situation than what you otherwise might have in previous editions. I am happy that many people here do enjoy their skill challenges and in so doing come up with some fantastic story elements for their game (a deserved shout-out to Pemerton in this regard).

Thanks for the shout-out!

And I basically agree with you here, that the whole point of the mechanics has to be the way that they make everyone at the table focus on the situation - but with the caveat that I think the success/failure numbers can help with this, by adding some discipline both to players and GMs to shape the fiction in unexpected ways.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Not that you need the advice, but I think one of the easiest house rules for 4e would be to delay the rate at which healing surges are recovered. Whereas getting rid of surges altogether would radically change the design paramaters and pacing of 4e combat, this change would affect adventure design and pacing, but have no other balance effect that I can see.

I have started an experiment with this very thing - I've decided to slow the pace of "recovery" and add an incentive to use "novas" very carefully. It also helps to compensate for the lower-than-expected encounter rate typical to my games.

The way I am doing it is as follows:

1) HP does not automatically recover with an extended rest - PCs still need
to spend surges. Surges replenish as normal (I may tinker with this).

2) Daily powers require spending surges to recover. A character's highest level daily power takes 4 healing surges to recover (and this may be done in combat as well). The next highest takes 1 surge less, third highest 2 surges less, and 4th highest recovers with 3 surges less.

I also use a different economy for Action Points:

* All APs are cumulative and persistent, but you can still only spend 1 per encounter (except to exchange for surges or to recover powers)

* If you have no APs, you do not automatically reset to 1 after an extended rest.

* You gain additional APs as normal for reaching milestones.

* When you level up, you gain 1 AP per tier (1 per level-up during Heroic, 2 per level-up during Paragon, 3 per level-up during Epic).

Anecdotally, so far, this has had the intended effect of making players think twice before "going nova," but nova potential is also a little higher, due to power recovery mechanics. Milestones as one of the few ways to gain APs encourages longer "adventuring days" with fewer nova rounds.

A really tough adventuring day that wipes out all a PCs HP, surges and daily powers can take a while to recover fully from. It makes being wounded and exhausted feel more gritty, without bogging the game down for too long.

In addition, I occasionally award APs and/or surges as rewards for completing quests, exploring, doing something clever, good roleplaying, etc.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Because more often than not heroes rise up to their greatest challenges in their most dire hour of need. Their most powerful opponents, desperate last stand situations against hordes of enemies and similar, can all explain why the deepest maneuvers are only possible a limited amount of times each day.

And this is a cool way to interpret it and shows the strength of 4e when the narrative and gamist elements are pulling so strongly in the same direction. But what happens if your big attack misses or you used it up in an earlier encounter? Wouldn't you prefer for your character to at least have the opportunity to give their best attack a go against the BBEG. This is why from a simulationist point of view, I would prefer that pulling your big move off is based on difficulty to do rather than a binary possible/impossible because it was limited by an artificial restriction. As I mentioned before, for some people they will barely even notice or even less worry about such things and they must wonder why people like me get a little bothered by it.

In 4e the "puny" wizard "recovers" from being poisoned at a rate equal to or better than the "tough" barbarian 69% of the time!

Except that the "Puny" wizard if he doesn't take a lot of con - while the barbarian will have a higher strength by far at least - has a lower fortitude. So he's far more easily poisoned than the barbarian is in the first place. 4E puts the onus on inflicting effects on the attacker - not the defender. The Barbarian and Wizard may save the same (excluding feats), but the Wizard is far more easily affected in the first place.

I appreciate the onus placed upon the attacker but even still when combined altogether, there is not the level of differentiation between the two that I would prefer to see. Against more powerful enemies, the ratio of being affected actually improves in the wizard's favour, not the barbarian's. In play as such, the wizard does not seem to be suffering as much as the barbarian. Combine this with the overall incredibly speedy rate of recovery in 4e (Poison has literally a momentary effect that in most cases is quickly and completely nullified) and hopefully you can understand why this causes a simulationist style of play some measure of bother.

So your argument really doesn't work, except for misunderstanding the onus on the defender/attacker in 4E.

I believe the argument still stands but you highlight the other part of this equation that rails against what a simulationist is thinking. It's kind of like AC as presented in 3e/4e or the alternative approach of AC in co-ordination with damage reduction . The former approximates the situation well enough, while the latter gives the more intricate details and story, without that story needing to be interpreted in retrospect. For example, for the story to make sense, you need to assume that a lot of the time for the barbarian when their fort is not breached, that they are hit but the poison has no effect (similar to plate armor in 3e where a lot of the misses are meant to be the armor absorbing the blow). However, when it comes to poison, the barbarian is technically still being hit but not poisoned yet not damaged either - which is all a little weird.

In my mind, the 4e onus on the attacker approach is additionally not that successful for the simulationist as using poison again as the example, it does not accurately take into account how difficult a target is to hit and thus be poisoned. For example you might have a fighter and rogue with a fairly differentiated Fort defense but the rogue is much more dextrous with a superior reflex defense. Yet, the rogue must suffer the poison effect more often, even though the chances of the enemy actually hitting him should be much less so. What I'm trying to point out here is that having powers attack a single defense can skew or muddy the results of what the actions seem to be simulating. The mechanics are not able (and nor were they designed) for the reporting of such important simulationist details. You end up with a fun game with lots of tactical decisions but there is a noticable distortion of what is being simulated. This was obviously the goal of the designers as Rob Heinsoo indicated in that interview when he was talking about the game pushing away from a simulationist approach.

Martial characters in legend can do just as extreme things as spellcasters. Why putting the term "magic" on things suddenly excuses all illogical acts wizards can do, while stating your fighter uses "heroic will" to do what they do doesn't is extremely silly to me.

Magic should still have it's mysterious and dark side (in my opinion). There is a generally accepted body of things that "magic" can achieve in fantasy but in 3e/4e there is little to restrict the rather perfect casting of magic - one area where magic does not match up with what I imagine magic to be like. In terms of 4e, things of a divine, primal or arcane nature can achieve these strangenesses. Things of a martial nature should still be able to do some damn impressive things; just damn impressive mundane things. If they are doing something "magical" I would prefer it to be through divine or in certain circumstances primal intervention or means but never arcane unless there is an arcane element to the character. And to have it a part of the martialist's daily regimen again stretches my belief in what magic is in a fantasy game. From a baseline point of view, I generally expect my wizards to be doing the extreme/mysterious things while the martial types are being obvious and effective. It is a matter of comparing the strange things an arcanist can perform as against the strange things a martialist can suffer (and keep going). If you prefer a different baseline, more power to you - to each their own. I think it all comes down to what we have in our heads in terms of fantasy and how well we can bend the game to be like that.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise