In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[JamesonCourage]

That they pick specific powers that don't fit their character concept is indeed a problem. I don't see that offering powers that do not fit all possible character concepts and relying on the players to built to their concept is one.

I totally agree. My knowledge of powers in 4e is remarkably lacking, and if players are able to to avoid dissociated powers entirely, that's great. If, however, 4e has indeed embraced narrative powers (which are dissociative), and they make up a substantial portion of the options for characters, I do see another problem with those players who want both variety and associated abilities.

Now, like I said, I think all powers in 4e could be associated. You can move them from narrative to in-game easily enough. But, this causes the same problems I noted earlier -that people may have a hard time associating abilities in a way that doesn't break their concept.

Now, for people that like narrative control abilities (of which there is nothing wrong with -I for one love Hero Points in Mutants and Masterminds 2e, and use a similar mechanic in my 3.5-based game), making all powers or abilities associated becomes an issue.

I'm not damning dissociated mechanics in this discussion. I originally put my input in when people seemed to be denying whether or not they existed. I, personally, do not like them in large quantities, but I know that preferences vary.

Which leads me to: as always, play what you like

 

[Crazy Jerome]

So, to the character, it isn't that once per day they can use Trick Strike which does... you know I've forgotten at this point. But, the use of the "ability" is just their natural ebb and flow of the battlefield, how they react to situations that come up every once in a while - not too often but often enough. To them, an opening has shown itself, whether that be an opponent tripping, a quick feint, a distraction, or whatever. To them, that's just how they fight.

This is the way I see it, more or less. It happens to correspond to the closet real-world analogs of how things might work: How a fencer occasionaly goes with "what feel right" in a split second decision, even at world-class level. (I know someone who has medaled in veteran world championship.) Playing tennis, and reaching back across your body to volley a fast volley right back into the face of the guy charging the net, and it going exactly where you want. Being in a car accident, and though it only took a few seconds, "time stood still," and you noticed and reacted to every little detail.

If anything, any failure my imagination suffers in relating the characters to the world is not the timing, but the frequency. 1/day is way too often by that above criteria. But in a fantasy game, about heroic characters, I can put this down to the genre. (And really, I'd expect time to slow down for Conan a lot more reliably than I'd expect it to slow down for real-world accident victims.)

Truth is stranger than fiction, but 4E made a pretty good stab at making its fiction almost as strange as truth.

 

[Yesway Jose]

Not at all. Presumably you're imagining and contributing to the fiction - saying where your PC is moving, who it is attacking, with what, etc.

For some reason, explaining this feel painstakingly obvious to me, so I'm still not conscious of where the disconnect is.

Of course, such mechanics contribute to the narrative. I *assume* there are very few (if any at all?) mechanics that never contribute directly or indirectly the narrative.

I was asking ThirdWizard: why certain mechanics (like 1xday) *encourage* the player to announce *more* narrative (on top of the narrative already implied by stating the action itself).

Let me clarify what I mean by *more* (in this example, I believe the 1xday power was defined and/or flavored as "Trip opponent"):
1) "I trip the opponent" = (minimum?) contribution to narrative
2) "I trip the opponent with a leg sweep, bringing him crashing down to the tiles" = contributing *more* narrative

Let me clarify what I mean by *encourage*:
A) some people (hereby defined as "Storytelling Joe") are inclined to #2 for its own sake
B) most people (hereby defined as "Average Roleplaying Joe") are inclined to #1
C) Average Roleplaying Joe may do #2 with extrinsic motivation to do so
D) C (above) is usually NOT true if #1 and #2 are perceived to result in the same (mechanical or non-mechanical) outcome *from the viewpoint of Average Roleplaying Joe* (and NOT how YOU define to be a different outcome, because I don't define YOU as Average Roleplaying Joe)
E) a mechanic that *encourages* *more* narrative is one that provides the motivation that makes C to be true and D to be false

To summarize (but not to be taken out of context from the above anally obvious statements), Average Roleplaying Joe is always inclined to do #1 instead of #2 if he perceives that the outcome is the same either way (in this case, the target is prone is the outcome that's relevant to him and not the narrative process that resulted in said outcome). Or to put it another way, #1 is the easiest most efficient 'shortcut' to achieving the said outcome.

In 4e, the player of the thief who says "I use Trick Strike against X" is also contributing to the narrative - because s/he is now brining it about that her/his PC will engage, and be more likely to prevail, in a particularly showy duel with X. And subsequent play will bring this about in the fiction - eg the player will explain where her PC is shifting X to - which is part of the narrative.

As above, I agree that Trick Strike contributes to the narrative, but who has been arguing otherwise?

Maybe it's your definition of "contributes" that you're not seeing eye-to-eye with me and/ others. I'm reading it literally. Do you mean contributing to the narrative in a certain way, or just in an absolute sense?

Like if the power is "Purple Teddybear Strike". The rogue throws purple stuffed teddybears at the opponent and pushes them back 1 square. Technically, that power DOES contribute to the narrative. Before, an opponent was standing in one spot. Rogue uses Purple Teddybear Strike. Opponent is now 10 feet away from his original position. The narrative has changed, and the use of Purple Teddybear Strike contributed to that change in narrative. Did I missing some key factor here?

Well, what you see as extrapolation I see as full contextualisation. After all, page 42 is a key part of 4e's combat resolution mechanics, so even standard combat actions take place under the shadow of page 42, and feed into it. And romances (or emnities, or whatever) are going to be central, presumably, to a lot of encounter set ups, and thereby provide the context in which it becomes meaningful for the players to makes choices about using their daily powers.

I don't understand this. I think Page 42 is a great example of E (above). But "standard combat actions take place under the shadow of page 42" and the rest -- I don't know what that means!

I must also insist that, in this framework, we are restricting our discussion to an average game with Average Roleplaying Joe, so that you do not wander off to corner cases or new "contextualizations" which does not represent common gameplay.

 

[Teemu]

HA!!!!

This could EASILY be the complaint that has been routinely offered against the entire 4E system. You completely reject that it applies to 4E and yet YOU use it to describe essentials.

I think you're confusing D&D Encounters with D&D Essentials.

 

[Hussar]

This is an excellent point, but also, there are some things that I, personally cannot justify in 4e. I've tried (maybe not hard enough, I'll grant you...my 4e DM is better at it than I am) but I've failed.


How would you (or anyone who understands 4e better than I) explain Daily powers within the setting? I mean, I'm ok with saying they're dissociated, and that's not a bad thing...they're there to make the game more fun, if less "realistic" in a sense.

But, if you could provide a nice, solid explanation of dailies (particularly dailies for non magical characters, as "it's magic" lets one get away with a lot), I'd certainly appreciate it, and it'd enhance my 4e gaming.

I'd explain it from a results point of view, which is where I was going with the football example above.

Take a simple daily that lets you do buckets of damage. We'll ignore the rider effects for the moment.

Now, compare this to a really brilliant critical hit from 3e. At the end of the day, there's not much of a difference - both attacks do buckets of damage. The difference is, with the daily, the player chooses when it occurs, and with the 3e critical hit, the dice do the deciding.

But, let's keep looking at our 3e crit. How likely is it that you get that brilliant critical? For one, you've got to threaten the crit in the first place, then you have to confirm the crit, and then you have to roll well enough on your damage that you have a crit and not just a high damage regular hit. Plus, you have to score that crit on a target that will notice the extra damage as well. Critting a baddie that has 2 hit points doesn't really show off the crit does it? Dead is dead. How would you differentiate between a crit on someone with 2 hit points and a regular hit that does enough damage to outright kill the target (ie, more than 12 points of damage)?

After all, if you crit, but do minimum damage, how do you explain, in game, the difference between that crit and a really good regular hit? They did the same (or close enough) damage after all.

Let's ballpark the figures and say that there's about a 3% chance on any given attack that you will score a great critical hit. Yes, I know that's a totally arbitrary number, but, stick with me here.

Now, let's assume that in a given fight, a fighter gets ten attacks. I personally think that's pretty high, but, again, we're ballparking.

That means I'm going to get a spectacular crit a bit more often than once per four fights, but, again, it's in the neighbourhood.

So, now, it looks like a crit mechanic looks a lot like a daily mechanic. Most of the time, it gets pretty much the same results. Over the course of 40 attacks, you get one big crit. Which is likely pretty close to how many attacks a fighter will make between rest periods.

Since the end result is pretty much the same, does the process actually matter? Does it matter that a "spectacular crit" becomes a player character resource? The end result of the events in the game world play out virtually the same.

 

[Hussar]

Mr. G - while I totally agree that 4e combat isn't the speediest thing to resolve, having played in games which use the concepts like the Type 1 Referee I was talking about (making some sort of perception check against a DC etc. etc) like, say, GURPS combat, I've seen games that are WAYYY slower to resolve than 4e.

 

[Neonchameleon]

No, I'm sorry but that is the position that comes from FANS.

Links?

HA!!!!

This could EASILY be the complaint that has been routinely offered against the entire 4E system. You completely reject that it applies to 4E and yet YOU use it to describe essentials.

I had to re-read what I wrote to check I did what I intended to. Because you have apparently completely misread me and made a mistake with your terminology. Encounters is not Essentials. Essentials is a set of rulebooks and rules for 4e. Encounters is an organised play program. And it is designed to be drop in and lowest common denominator set up for new players.

Any set of games designed for drop in sessions with completely new players and DMs who have never DMd before and that is using exactly the same scenarios throughout the world must be lowest common denominator. And there is a point to it being lowest common denominator. Calling it lowest common denominator is no more an insult than many descriptions of the Tomb of Horrors. I can criticise The Forest Oracle or Tomb of Horrors without it being a reflection on the system. And Encounters is effectively a set of modules like those two. It's excellent at getting people through the door to start playing 4e and from that perspective is a resounding success. But can leave people with the impression that's all 4e is at which point I don't blame them for giving up any more than I would people who thought that ToH was all there was to AD&D.

Essentials on the other hand is effectively a set of splatbooks that adds some nice things to D&D 4e for players that had been left in the cold. And for the record, the Essentials thief is more competent out of combat than the PHB rogue while being less tricky in combat. Likewise for the ranger builds. So saying that Essentials was all about the combat when compared to pre-Essentials D&D is IMO counter-factual (although they should have provided much more ritual support).

 

[Yesway Jose]

Since the end result is pretty much the same, does the process actually matter? Does it matter that a "spectacular crit" becomes a player character resource? The end result of the events in the game world play out virtually the same.

What if encounter 1 was with a water elemental, encounter 2 was with a rock elemental, and encounter 3 was with a fully armored/scaled monster with a missing piece/scale on its backside exposing a fleshy weak spot.

Only the DM knows that of course, you can't predict the series of encounters no matter what stance you're in.

Would it feel at all unsatisfactory to you if you used the crit daily for the 1st or 2nd encounter, and thus were unable to use it for encounter 3, and you end up slowly hacking away at the monster's armor for rounds and rounds because nobody has a crit power left to get at that weakspot?

What if you didn't use the daily up to encounter 3, but you withheld using the power because the monster didn't seem powerful enough to use up a daily and you preferred to save it for the climactic battle encounter 4, and then found out that there was no encounter 4 that day? So you ended up slowly hacking away at the monster's armor for rounds and rounds because the player wanted to save the power for an encounter that never happened?

What if used your daily crit on encounter 1, and then at encounter 3, there was some sort of mechanic and/or DM adjudication that allowed you to recharge your daily crit in order to exploit the fiction, would that be satisfying?

What is more satisfying -- to apply a critical daily to a powerful water elemental, or to a weaker armored foe with a fictionally obvious weak spot?

Finally, do these kinds of issues never come up in actual 4E game play?

BTW, I get it that it's not like your PC lost the ability to try to critical in-game. I assume that if you used the daily in encounter 1, then fictionally, your PC was trying to get at that weak spot and just couldn't do it. That's the disconnect for me. I can visualize that weak spot in the armor. I can imagine having some chance (not a certainty, but a hope) to get that blade there and skewer the monster's heart. But I can't. By that point, the story is already written in stone. There's no hope.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Since the end result is pretty much the same, does the process actually matter? Does it matter that a "spectacular crit" becomes a player character resource? The end result of the events in the game world play out virtually the same.

Hussar, I agree with your analysis, but I do want to point out that what you just provided was the best argument I have seen yet for changing or removing criticals from 4E. The actual criticals in 4E still behave in the same random way, albeit somewhat more rarely than in 3E. (It is really uncanny how often the players at our table critical on a minion or on an almost dead foe.)

Now that I think about it from that slant (preferring to let the player use the thing as a resource), I believe that I'd like to replace the "good thing happens when we roll a 20" aspect of criticals with something renamed, because it isn't really a critical at all anymore. Something like a "recharge", where you get an encounter power back or get the free use of one. Mechanically, that is a bit of a "delayed critical," in that you do get to do more damage later in the fight. But since the player gets to pick, it only fails to matter if the fight is nearing a concluson.

From a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser style of emulation, I think that might often simulate the genre a bit better, in ways that might be somewhat more palatable to those on the other side of the main argument here. The "critical" nature of the lucky roll is that the current opponent is put at an unexpected disadvantage, which the error then must take advantage of. The (almost dead) opponent stumbled and went down to the lightning thrust, which mean that the Mouser rolled past him into the axeman in the second rank who was not expecting it. Or the (healthier) opponent stumbled from Fafhrd's brutal hit, setting him up for the backswing on the next blow.

Hmm, I rather like the dynamic possiblities implied by this, not to mention the implications for anticipation. You get a "crit", people want to get through the round in a hurry to see what you do with it. Meanwhile, you've got a round to decide what you do with it.

 

[ThirdWizard]

What if encounter 1 was with a water elemental, encounter 2 was with a rock elemental, and encounter 3 was with a fully armored/scaled monster with a missing piece/scale on its backside exposing a fleshy weak spot.

Only the DM knows that of course, you can't predict the series of encounters no matter what stance you're in.

Would it feel at all unsatisfactory to you if you used the crit daily for the 1st or 2nd encounter, and thus were unable to use it for encounter 3, and you end up slowly hacking away at the monster's armor for rounds and rounds because nobody has a crit power left to get at that weakspot?

That's just a badly designed monster or badly designed adventure pacing, take your pick. The fun of an encounter shouldn't rely on the party having specific resources. Take the flipside, where criticals aren't a daily power but random. Now you're sitting there waiting to roll a 20? Is that any better? "Did you roll a 20?" "Nope" "Okay next in intiative" It sounds just as boring. So, your scenario really has nothing to do with daily powers at all!

Also, this doesn't have to do with dissociated mechanics, but resource usage. Resource mechanics can be daily and still be associated, as any player of previous editions of D&D can attest.

Finally, do these kinds of issues never come up in actual 4E game play?

Not if you design your minsters well. A monster really shouldn't interact with powers on that level. Making a monster that can only be hurt by fire is different than making a monster who can only be hurt by fireball, after all. One is tied to something that can be engineered by intelligent players/PCs, the other requires that PCs happen to have a particular class in the party with a particular resource.

BTW, I get it that it's not like your PC lost the ability to try to critical in-game. I assume that if you used the daily in encounter 1, then fictionally, your PC was trying to get at that weak spot and just couldn't do it. That's the disconnect for me. I can visualize that weak spot in the armor. I can imagine having some chance (not a certainty, but a hope) to get that blade there and skewer the monster's heart. But I can't. By that point, the story is already written in stone. There's no hope.

Wouldn't that be defined in the game mechanics by the monster having a high AC, though?

But, its the same thing as saying "This troll can only be damaged by fireball" in 3e, and the wizard going "I used that spell on the minotaur" and then having frustrated players afterward. It's just bad DMing.

EDIT: I'll add that in 4e, you can get through encounters without using any daily powers without problems. They're just nice. Thus, it is extremely rare that a party stops because they are out of daily powers. So, you might be ascribing too much importance to them in this instance.