Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[Balesir]

See post 226. I think you are mistaking intelligence for sentience/self-awareness. They're not the same. Robots have intelligence but not self-awareness. You have to be self-aware to understand an insult.

Rather than debate the nature of artificial intelligence (which, to pass the "Turing test", would have to understand insults), I'll just say that I don't regard an "insult", per se, as being necessary. As I said later in that same post, it's an attack against a mental weakness related to emotion - and emotion, in the form of the "hunger", the undead clearly have. Again, it's a principle, not a formula.

 

[D'karr]

And yet by saying "Flavor doesn't matter" you are reducing the game to exactly this. All what is left now is "gamespeak" that you can do X damage each round with the keyword "psychic".

And then you get exactly this kind of problems that the "gamespeak" allows you to do something which, according to the flavor of the current situation, doesn't make sense and it also makes it harder to use the power creatively as the gamespeak, the only thing you have for this power, only covers combat but no other situations.

I'm sure that at no point did I say that "Flavor doesn't matter." What I specifically said was that Flavor is not Rules Text. So I can use the flavor of a power to narrate my description in whatever way suits me and a DM can use it to inform the narration that is happening at the table. There is no good reason for why I would have to slavishly follow the Flavor Text, because it is not a Rules Element.

I can't choose to say that I'm going to use STR for an attack if the power is based off CHA. That is obviously rules text. However I can choose to describe the effects of a power by using the Flavor Text, or by making up my own Flavor Text for the situation.

In the case of Vicious Mockery (an Arcane Power BTW) - I can describe the effect as making fun of the skeleton, or I can choose to say that the arcane mocking words tear at the necrotic forces that hold the skeleton's "unlife" together. Because flavor text is NOT rules text, I can choose to describe in whatever way suits my fancy at the time.

I've heard the "you can't use this power, but for combat situations" before, and I totally disagree. I've had players use Vicious Mockery in a skill challenge to have a crowd of people impede movement for some guards that were chasing them.

The DM is not a computer AI that has restricted actions, and only the ones defined in the "rules" are acceptable.

Powers, and their implementation in game, are only as restricted as the DM and players at that particular table. If the player can't come up with a "creative" way to use the power out of combat that is not a fault of the power but of the player, and possibly of the DM.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Which translates into "Flavor doesn't matter".
What remains when you make flavor "mallable" (= not fixed) is "Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls"

Thats all what remains and bang you have a "gamespeak" boardgame.

Unless you reflavour it yourself. Then you just have different flavour. Flavour still matters, in fact, I'd say it matters more, since you get to decide what it is.

It's like in AD&D when there was no flavour text but what the players and the DM gave it. Back then it could just as easily be considered 'just a bunch of rules text.' In fact, I recell a passage in the DMG devoted to just that - how to come up with flavour text on the fly so that it didn't end up being all rules-speak at the table.

To me, if every power's flavour had to remain the exact same every time, I'd find it a little boring.

 

[Imaro]

First off there's this bit:

"Most undead, even those that seem intelligent, are this sort of creature - driven to inhuman behaviour by lack of governance of a soul and a hunger for life that can't be sated. Nearly mindless undead have been infused with just enough impetus to give the remains mobility but little else."

From which I take it that they have some degree of "mind". Add to that that, in order to follow commands, discriminate intruders from rats or masters or fellow guardians (or whatever) and in order to fight with any facility at all, they must have some degree of basic understanding and instinct. Add, also, that they have the "hunger" referred to, and I see plenty for an arcane "lampoon" to work with.

Definition of SENTIENT

1: responsive to or conscious of sense impressions <sentient beings>

2: aware

3: finely sensitive in perception or feeling





My claim was that they don't have sentience... which they don't, as illustrated by the fact that the text makes a clear distinction between sentient undead and those that are not...

" Sentient undead have a stronger animus that might even have access to the memories of the deceased, but such monstrosities have few or none of the sympathies they had in life. A wight has a body and a feral awareness granted by the animus, but no soul. Even the dreaded wraith is simple a soulless animus, deeply corrupted and infused with strong necromantic energy."

So we are talking about undead who are neither conscious of or can sense any type of impressions and are not independently aware... yet they respond to mystically charged insults spoken to them...Yeah, ok... again you might as well insult a chair to death.

I think, too, you place an inordinate stress on the word "Mockery". This is an arcane attack that works on a target's emotions - especially, but not limited to, anger. I find that 4E works poorly if you insist that the rules define the fluff that surrounds the basic principle of an attack or other power or ability. The attack form (or the form for any power or ability, in fact) is a principle in 4E, not a rote formula that is spammed out time after time. I find that this very concept makes for a far more believable scenario than a selection, however large, of rote moves that are repeated identically in every encounter.

I think that many fans of 4e tend to create theories, ideas, and views for what many consider 4e's flaws. The thing is that these thoughts are rarely supported by the text or the comments and posts of the developers and designers.

So ok, I'm game... please show me in the PHB where a power is described or even hinted at as a "principle" as opposed to a rote formula type action? I mean I'd be willing to entertain this notion if the powers had ways to modify or change their effects slightly built into them... but they don't. In fact the mechanics that always require you to do A and upon completion give effect B moreso support them as rotes than anything else. Now if you want to look at them that way in order to justify certain things...then cool, but I don't think anything in the game points to this interpretation. Though I'm willing to entertain examples.

 

[Balesir]

Which translates into "Flavor doesn't matter".
What remains when you make flavor "mallable" (= not fixed) is "Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls"

Thats all what remains and bang you have a "gamespeak" boardgame.

No, you have a set of principles upon which to base and adjudicate what results arise in the fiction. Principles and routines that provide an agreed set of criteria upon which the imagination can build a vision of what is happening in the game world.

What happened to "this is a game where players use their imaginations"?

 

[Derren]

What happened to "this is a game where players use their imaginations"?

It got stifled by "Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls"

Because now you have a lot of combat only abilities which you can't even use creatively as no one knows what those abilities are (No flavor).

Unless of course you are running freeform, but why play D&D then?

 

[D'karr]

It got stifled by "Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls"

Because now you have a lot of combat only abilities which you can't even use creatively as no one knows what those abilities are (No flavor).

Unless of course you are running freeform, but why play D&D then?

The cynical extreme would be to take "Flavor is Malleable" and transform it to "Flavor doesn't matter", or worse yet "No Flavor."

Everything that I've said in my comments was done in D&D, and yes I have a lot of players that have used their "combat powers" in ways outside of combat.

Saying that the 4e Powers are simply a collection of rules is pretty much an exaggeration, as what we have been discussing is the Flavor Text of 4e Powers and that is obviously not a collection of rules.

 

[Imaro]

It got stifled by "Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls"

Because now you have a lot of combat only abilities which you can't even use creatively as no one knows what those abilities are (No flavor).

Unless of course you are running freeform, but why play D&D then?

Good point.

In 4e how can one be creative with his or her powers in a fictional game world when said powers have one specific set of mechanics and effects but (according to many proponents of 4e on here) no concrete attachment whatsoever to the game world's fiction until you create it?

Of course whatever you flavor the power it can still only do whatever it's particular effect is. This almost seems like a sort of hollow creativity.

I guess you can ask the GM to let you do other things, but then what's the limit of the power in your narrative description and who decides it? Especially taking into account that the flavor can be anything anyone wants it to be for a power.

 

[Derren]

The cynical extreme would be to take "Flavor is Malleable" and transform it to "Flavor doesn't matter", or worse yet "No Flavor."

No, its just the logical extention of "Flavor is mallable".
Why do you say that when the flavor and rules conflict to change the flavor?

Your answer to "Insulting a skeletton doesn't make sense" is "Well change the flavor then". Why not change the rules instead?
By refusing to do that, or even accept it as possible solution, you are saying that flavor are less important, matter less, than rules.

 

[darjr]

I think Derren is approaching my issues with 4e. If the flavor could be anything, then it doesn't matter what it IS. I agree that 'the flavor could be anything' is an exageration, but to me it isn't much of one.