Why is the Vancian system still so popular?

[Hussar]

Pemerton. You just clearly have different core assumptions than people who dislike martial dailies.

But, this gets to the heart of why the discussion is so frustrating.

I really don't care which ruleset is more this or more that. I really don't. The primary criteria for judging any mechanic is, IMO how flexible is this mechanic? If you have two mechanics, one can only do X, and one can do X and Y, then the second mechanic is better. And, yes, I'd say objectively better.

With Martial powers, there seems to be two objections. The first is probably easiest to deal with: martial powers have quasi-magical effects. Come and Get It is the poster child here. Powers that have no obvious correlation to the in-game fiction. As I said, the solution here is pretty simple, don't use those mechanics. They aren't that common, you have at least three or four other choices at any level which do map directly onto the in-game fiction and the game will certainly not break or be affected in any way by their removal.

Now, the second issue is a bit stickier. The idea the martial powers must be repeatable. That if I can trip someone now, why can't I trip someone else six seconds later. And I can probably get behind this criticism a lot better. It's hard to justify, if you insist that every power is an actual technique that the fighter is attempting to do.

I think it's fixable though. Essentials, for example, gives us martial characters with no Dailies. Encounter powers don't seem to be a huge issue, or at least, not as much of an issue, so, it's certainly a problem that can be resolved. The solution here is to simply make sure that the option of having martial characters that do not use daily effects is available out of the gate.

The problem is, earlier edition combat mechanics don't include a lot of the elements that are in 4e combat. The focus on movement, for example. Not that I'm saying earlier edition combats were static, but, rather, they are a lot less mobile than a 4e combat. Mobility just isn't such a big deal in earlier editions.

I'm not sure how you could take, say, 2ed combat mechanics and make them about mobility.

The goal here, should always be to find mechanics that can satisfy the broadest approach possible. 3e multiclass mechanics are more versatile than any other edition's multiclassing mechanics. You can adapt 3e multiclassing to any edition without a lot of work - Gestalt rules for AD&D, and Substitution levels for 4e. Thus, I'd prefer to see 3e multiclassing rules in 5e.

4e AEDU rules are more versatile than other combat mechanics. Thus, I'd prefer to see them in 5e than, say, Vancian casting. Unfortunately, for me, I'm going to get over ruled on this one, but, I predict that the Vancian casting we get will look a LOT like 4e wizards. Maybe more dailies, less encounters, but, we'll see.

 

[FireLance]

I think it's fixable though. Essentials, for example, gives us martial characters with no Dailies. Encounter powers don't seem to be a huge issue, or at least, not as much of an issue, so, it's certainly a problem that can be resolved. The solution here is to simply make sure that the option of having martial characters that do not use daily effects is available out of the gate.

Rather, the daily abilities are not hard-wired into the martial classes. Essentials classes can take daily utility powers, but that would be a player choice instead of something which the rules require them to do.

I think another factor which makes the Essentials martial encounter powers more palatable to some people is that they are also repeatable (once you get more than one, anyway). The answer to, "Why can't you do it again?" is, "It takes a lot of effort and I don't have it in me to do it again right now. I need to rest for five minutes first."

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

That said, I don't know Incarnates or Binders - but the Martial Adept still wouldn't be tier 1. He might be a very broken tier 2 but simply doesn't have the flexibility that makes the tier 1s impossible.

Well, most of the late-3e material couldn't reach T1 simply because they had only 1 book of their resource system (or 1/3 a book in the binder's case), while psionicists had 2 books and a smattering of powers elsewhere and Vancian casters had spells in every frakking book. If the PHB, all of the Completes, and all of the setting books had new martial maneuvers, they could do quite a bit more. Again, it's the power and number of individual options that make the difference, not the resource systems used.

What it means is that if a game is balanced on four encounters/day (which is pretty Fantasy ing Vietnam to borrow the rpg.net description) and daily powers are a substantial part of the class's power then the second you try for a less hack-and-slash game and take it down to a still-extreme two fights/day, the people focussing on daily powers can nova much much harder.

Another assumption on your part. There's nothing inherent in non-daily systems preventing people from nova-ing. If you had a fatigue-based systems like 4e psionics, for instance, where you could boost encounter-equivalent powers into daily-equivalent powers, you can nova just as well as the casters; if you have plot points or the equivalent which you spend to activate powers and otherwise exert narrative control, you could spend more points for a bigger effect.

"Fighter": First I'm a Ranger. Second, stop distracting me from my shot. Third, I'll do that when you start swinging on every chandelier you see just because you did it that once. They are running away. It's not worth spending the next five minutes checking my bow for cracks just because you want me to shoot fleeing enemies in the back. I'll stick to my normal rapid fire of Twin Strike.

So if you can practically guarantee a one-hit kill on enemies with your Swarm of Arrows strike, why would you limit yourself to Twin Strikes when they'd be less effective? It can't be bow strength, since you can pull off your Swarm of Arrows strike and Horizon Distance strike and Pin Them To The Wall strike once each day, so surely your bow could handle two or three Swarm of Arrows strikes. It can't be a matter of tiredness, since you can do Twin Strikes for a solid 2 minutes in combat without any loss of effectiveness.

If equipment maintenance were a thing, if there were penalties for spamming moves, if combat fatigue rules were implemented, if there were situational requirements for certain maneuvers, those would be sensible limitations. 1/day/maneuver, though, just doesn't work for many people. If you absolutely had to go with daily power slots, I'd at least prefer being able to mix-and-match powers to fit the tactical consideration--the 5e fighter would be the 3e spontaneous sorcerer to the 4e fighter's Vancian wizard, as it were--but I'd obviously prefer something not daily slot-based at all.

You could have a daily fatigue based system. But it's a matter of power density. If a game is expected to have four encounters per day on average to balance daily powers against encounter powers, both an average of two and consistently tight dungeoncrawls of eight are going to cause serious problems.

This isn't actually an argument for martial dailies, since the martial types would be either nova-ing or running short of dailies just like the casters. A martial fatigue system would be better in that instance, since powers could be rationed out for longer days just like how in AD&D dungeoncrawls--at least in my experience--wizards just spread out their casting to accommodate the less-frequent spell preparation, and for shorter days they could afford to take more risks/go all out/whatever (depending on how exactly fatigue worked) because they knew to expect shorter days.

But there's a lot more misses than hits. And I'm not sure how balanced the T3 classes are by 4e standards. They just aren't absurdly unbalaned.

Of course there are misses. This is WotC we're talking about.

The single biggest, most important mechanic in D&D combat is Hit Points. And those are the elephant in the room. If I can accept hit points as a combat fundamental I have no problem at all with martial dailies.

The difference between HP and martial dailies is one of granularity. If all attacks dealt 1 damage and people had a handful of HP, HP would be much less acceptable, regardless of whether you personally view HP as physical health, luck, morale, divine guidance, or whatever else; the system would be far too rigid and unrealistic even compared to the very-abstract current system ("Why can I take exactly 2 dagger hits" etc.). The randomness, range, and other aspects of the HP system help take the edges off the glaring abstraction and allow it to be more easily rationalized.

Likewise, if you take the 1/day/power martial power system and spread it out using a fatigue system or stunt system or plot system or whatever, the ability to use multiple different powers different numbers of times per day based on the circumstances helps people swallow the abstraction and obscures the fact that, at the end of the day (no pun intended), you're still restricting a certain kind of sword swing to limited uses for balance reasons.

I don't see what's objectionable about using narrative control metagame mechanics to balance ingame abilities. I understand that the Buffy game does this. And HeroWars/Quest is a game in which metagame mechanics can be spent either on character development or on boosting die rolls, which is somewhat analogous to choosing between process simulation and narrative control. And I published an idea along these lines in a HARP/RM online fanzine in 2007, based expressly on the idea that a PC could either opt for metagame/luck based success, or ingame/skill based success.

It's fine to use narrative/metagame mechanics to balance in-game abilities. Plot points, action points, whatever you call them are fine even in mostly-simulationist systems. The problems come in when the narrative/metagame nature of those resources impinges on the game world generally, and on believability specifically.

Action points affect die rolls; characters can only get a vague sense of "I'm lucky that important attack against the BBEG hit!" from use of action points. Plot points affect the narrative; characters might find it a bit coincidental that they keep finding conveniently-placed hay bales to fall on, but that's all. Daily powers take a metagame reasoning (we need to restrict use of this power for balance reasons...) and use it to create powers with metagame restrictions (...therefore you can use each one 1/day only...) that are visible within the game world (...so it's impossible to use the same trick more than once a day even if the situation would call for it, for no logical in-game observable reason).

There's a difference between mechanics which attempt to abstract the simulation (such as ToB's encounter-maneuvers-with-recharge, which try to model the ebb and flow of combat) that lend themselves to a particular rationale and accomplish their goal more or less elegantly and mechanics which don't have a particular in-game goal in mind and don't attempt to model a particular rationale. Encounter powers are a much simpler alternative to tracking stances, openings, momentum, and that sort of thing; the single explanation of "you can't use it again immediately because you're out of position/the enemy has his guard up at the moment/similar" works well enough, even though there are corner cases (e.g. surprised opponents) that make it not work as well. Daily powers have no such single explanation, and even if they did there's no in-game rationale daily powers serve that couldn't be better served by a different resource system.

Who are "they" in this clause? Nothing in the rule books calls out martial dailies as process simulation abilties. And treating them as essentially metagame abilities is a pretty obvious option for anyone familiar with the idea.

The lack of verbiage differentiates them, actually. All of the powers' fluff describe in-game occurrences that seem mundane enough (e.g. Reaving Strike, Fighter 19: "You swing your weapon in a terrific arc, hitting with such force that your foe stumbles backward."), the powers aren't significantly different thematically from at-will and encounter powers (that is, there's no distinction along the lines of "encounter powers boost your attacks, daily powers negatively impact opponents because plot" or the like), and all of the other powers in the game are treated as if they are actually being used that way in-game.

The rulebooks themselves somewhat gloss over the issue, in much the same way as D&D traditionally glosses over the issue of what hit points represent (if anything).

You mean aside from the definition of HP provided in each edition's DMG?

Let's take Conan first. I assume that Conan is swinging his sword with all his might every blow. REH tends to write him that way. The point of a power like Brute Strike isn't that the PC swings harder - rather, it's that the player gets to choose that this will be a strike that hits hard!

And when we look at a power like Stop Thrust - within the fiction, it is just another instance of the fighter doing what s/he does all the time - attacks people, including moving people, and gets in their way and stops them moving. It's nothing special.

Of course, mechanically it is something special: it's off-turn damage, and it let's the fighter control movement without having to hit with an opportunity attack. But I'm sure that no one thinks that the world of 4e fights is a strange stop-motion world. The whole idea of "immediate reactions" and "opportunity attacks" is just a mechanical abstraction, intended to introduce some sort of mechanical fluidity to mirror, however inadequately, the ingame fluidity of attacking and moving. And Stop Thruts is just one of the mechanics that achieves this.

So, in the fiction, there is not Stop Thrust technique. There's just the fighter doing what s/he always does, attacking things aggressively, including those who try to move away or move past, and thereby dominating and controlling the melee.

I don't see how the "why can't you do it again?" objection can even get off the ground, unless someone really does think that the world of the fiction is a stop motion world, and hence really does think that Stop Thrust is an observable technique that defies the reality of those bizarre stop motion physics!

So the fighter is always doing fighter-y stuff, and is always attempting to control enemies' movements. Why is Stop Thrust only ever successful once per day? Why is any other daily power only ever successful once per day? Why can a 17th-level fighter only push a target 3 squares and follow immediately (Mountain Breaking Blow) once per day, why can't he follow up every time he pushes someone? Why is attacking and moving away again (Harrying Blow, Fighter 17) not something you can keep doing over and over again? Mechanically, we know that being able to continue pushing someone away from the party or being able to keep out of range of an enemy's attacks is abusable, but narratively why wouldn't you, say, keep away a squad of soldiers by continually attacking the nearest one and moving away so as not to be surrounded, or keep pushing soldiers away to keep them separated?

In some games, action points do not have any distinctive fictional content - they are just dice manipulators, that permit failures to be turned into successes, or successes to be increased. In HARP, for example, using a fate point can grant +50 to a roll. Turning a roll of 40 into a roll of 90 by spending a Fate Point doesn't change the fiction from if a 90 had been rolled. Likwise in Burning Wheel - spending artha to add dice is not inherently different from having those dice in your pool to beging with, from some other mechanical source.

And most martial dailies are, in my view, not different from action or fate points at all. They do exactly what you say - permit the player control over the randomness of the dice (eg by giving more dice to roll, thereby tending to ensure a higher result) and/or permitting stepping out of the rigid timing mechanics. But as I've said, those timing mechanics only exist at the metagame level, unless you really think the fictional world of 3E and 4e D&D is a strang stop motion one.

And that point is a key difference between the two. If you spend an action point to change a roll of 7 to a roll of 13 and thereby turn a miss into a hit, not this event could have happened anyway--there is no observable aspect of it in-game to make it different from any other lucky roll. If, however, you have this really cool move that would be really handy against the goblins you're facing, but can only use it once, there's a disconnect between the metagame and the fiction. That's what makes the one more acceptable than the other.

 

[Hussar]

And that point is a key difference between the two. If you spend an action point to change a roll of 7 to a roll of 13 and thereby turn a miss into a hit, not this event could have happened anyway--there is no observable aspect of it in-game to make it different from any other lucky roll. If, however, you have this really cool move that would be really handy against the goblins you're facing, but can only use it once, there's a disconnect between the metagame and the fiction. That's what makes the one more acceptable than the other.

Only if you insist that that cool move is something that the character distinctly knows in game and not simply a meta-game construct, identical to an Action Point. The reason you can do that Daily NOW, is because the player has decided to influence the in-game fiction to determine that it happens now. He cannot do it later, for exactly the same reason that you cannot change the die roll later.

 

[Bluenose]

If, however, you have this really cool move that would be really handy against the goblins you're facing, but can only use it once, there's a disconnect between the metagame and the fiction. That's what makes the one more acceptable than the other.

A "really cool move" that is useful in all situations would be an At-Will ability, in 4e Martial terms. Anything else, such as a Stop Thrust, is situationally useful. Use it at the wrong time, and the blow it's trying to block goes straight through and kills you. Or scores the point, if you're a sports fencer. That's why you don't use a Stop Thrust all the time.

 

[Libramarian]

Only if you insist that that cool move is something that the character distinctly knows in game and not simply a meta-game construct, identical to an Action Point. The reason you can do that Daily NOW, is because the player has decided to influence the in-game fiction to determine that it happens now. He cannot do it later, for exactly the same reason that you cannot change the die roll later.

Yeah OK, I get the point of metagame mechanics like this. They were popularized by the Forge gaming scene for use in game designs highly focused on Narrativist play.

My question is: does the martial daily in 4e actually serve a legit Narrativist purpose?

In your average 4e combat, does giving the player the ability to choose when they blow their daily actually help them to address a premise and create a theme?

I don't think it does. In fact I think that question sounds deeply silly. Pretty sure the average 4e game is just a goofy fantasy dungeonbash, just like the average game in any other edition of D&D.

What the 4e martial daily does is make it easy to balance martial characters by doing it in the most obvious and boring way possible (imo).

I see it as *lazy* to throw "process-simulation" under the bus so readily to accomplish this design goal. And unwise when the goal is one that many D&D players say they don't really care about much anyway (class balance).

 

[FireLance]

I see it as *lazy* to throw "process-simulation" under the bus so readily to accomplish this design goal. And unwise when the goal is one that many D&D players say they don't really care about much anyway (class balance).

There are also quite a number of D&D players who say that they do care about class balance. While the relative importance of process simulation and balance is debatable, and may actually vary from gamer to gamer, I would say that neither is unimportant.

 

[pemerton]

You mean aside from the definition of HP provided in each edition's DMG?

Come over to the Falling Damage thread or the April 3rd thread (which is another hp/surge discussion) and I think you'll see that those essays leave room for a lot of variation in interpretation of hp!

Daily powers take a metagame reasoning (we need to restrict use of this power for balance reasons...) and use it to create powers with metagame restrictions (...therefore you can use each one 1/day only...) that are visible within the game world (...so it's impossible to use the same trick more than once a day even if the situation would call for it, for no logical in-game observable reason).

<snip>

All of the powers' fluff describe in-game occurrences that seem mundane enough (e.g. Reaving Strike, Fighter 19: "You swing your weapon in a terrific arc, hitting with such force that your foe stumbles backward."), the powers aren't significantly different thematically from at-will and encounter powers (that is, there's no distinction along the lines of "encounter powers boost your attacks, daily powers negatively impact opponents because plot" or the like), and all of the other powers in the game are treated as if they are actually being used that way in-game.

<snip>

So the fighter is always doing fighter-y stuff, and is always attempting to control enemies' movements. Why is Stop Thrust only ever successful once per day? Why is any other daily power only ever successful once per day? Why can a 17th-level fighter only push a target 3 squares and follow immediately (Mountain Breaking Blow) once per day, why can't he follow up every time he pushes someone?

<snip>

If you spend an action point to change a roll of 7 to a roll of 13 and thereby turn a miss into a hit, not this event could have happened anyway--there is no observable aspect of it in-game to make it different from any other lucky roll. If, however, you have this really cool move that would be really handy against the goblins you're facing, but can only use it once, there's a disconnect between the metagame and the fiction. That's what makes the one more acceptable than the other.

This is where I believe the crux lies.

I simply don't agree that martial dailies represent special techniques that are distinctive in the gameworld.

Take Stop Thrust again. That is a shift then attack (as a reaction) then immobilise. Contrast it to the following sequence of at-will manoeuvres - the fighter moves on his/her turn, to a square where s/he thinks an enemy might try to move past. The enemy moves past. The fighter takes an opportunity attack, hits and therefore stops the enemy's motion. Mechanically, these are different things. In the fiction, I contend that they are indistinguishable. Because in the fiction there is no such thing as an opportunity attack, an immediate reaction, etc. The fiction is not a world of turn-based attacks and movement.

What the daily does, in the case of Stop Thrust, is not to change the fiction, but to give the player an opportunity to exploit aspects of the metagame resolution methods (action economy, turns, movement rules etc) to produce a more desirable outcome, of his/her fighter hitting a moving target and pinning it down. But it doesn't change the fiction, any more than using a fate point to change a die roll changes the fiction.

Now if the retort is "It's still noticable that, 1x/day, the fighter gets lucky with his/her manoevring and pinning of foes", I would say that (i) the same pattern of daily luck would be visible in a system in which players got one fate point per game day, or even per adventure ("Every time we go on an expedition, there's always a haystack at the bottom of the first cliff you fall over!"), but (ii) just as random patterns of dice rolls would even that out in the fate point mechanic, so the random patterns of hitting and missing and NPCs drawing or not drawing oppy's and the like will even it out in the case of the fighter with Stop Thrust.

Furthermore, (iii) 4e has numerous mechanical features (it's feats, for examle, and it's item and class build rules too) which push in favour of specialisation. So a fighter built with one forced movement power probably has others, to maximise synergy. And then it's no longer the case that (for example) the fighter can only push and follow 3 times per day. Because somtimes the fighter pushes and follows using Footwork Lure. Sometimes the fighter pushes using an encounter power, and then follows using an ordinary move action. (And the difference between these is not discernible in the fiction, unless we assume that the fiction is about a stop motion world.) And it's not even observable in the fiction that only once per day is it a push 3, because sometimes the fighter uses Mountain Breaking Blow in a small room, and the maximum push is 1 or 2. Or sometime the fighter uses some other power in combination with an enhancer of some sort, and the push is greater than it normally would be, and now s/he is pushing 3 more than once per day.

Maybe the fighter in my game is unusually coherent in his build, but he uses Footwork Lure, 3 close burst attacks (Come and Get It, the 3rd level Sweep that adds STR to hit, and Battle Cry from the Warrior Priest paragon path), and one or two daily powers that give forced movement against multiple targets (Brazen Assault perhaps?). He gets out-of turn attacks via oppys, combat challenge, Jackal Strike, Strikebacks, and maybe one or two other things I'm forgetting.And his weapon of choice is a polearm (with all the usual stuff: Rushing Cleats, Polearm Momentum, Polearm Gamble etc). The fiction for this character is pretty simple: if an enemy gets even a little bit close, the fighter drags that enemy in with deft polearm work, and the enemy is not getting out again. He attacks fast, he attacks long, the 10' or 15' around him is basically a ring of polearm steel that he utterly controls.

Now I've got not doubt that it's possible to build a PC where the relationship between power choice, power usage and fiction maximises every possible point of strangeness, and minimimises the smoothness of the story. If people are building fighters whose fiction on every occasion is as corner case as (pre-errata) Come and Get It with a dagger against a group of pike wielders, then I can see where problems might arise. I don't know how many people are building such fighters, although I would think (like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] says) there are plenty of other options available.

I think rangers are pretty close to fighters in this respect, as far as the amenability of their dailies to being incorporated into a consistent fiction. I don't know rogues as well, and maybe they have more distinctively tricky things for their dailies? I've never heard rogues called out as a special case, though.

And as far as warlords are concerned, I would think it's obvious that heaps of their abilities - their healing, their granting of extra movement and attacks, etc - are working at the metagame level. Even more than Stop Thrust, these are powers that manipulate the mechancis, but in the fiction don't exist as distinct manoeuvres, but just reflect the extra "oomph" and coordination of a fighting team guided by a tactical genius.

there's no in-game rationale daily powers serve that couldn't be better served by a different resource system.

I don't think there is any ingame rationale for martial daily powers. I think they're entirely a metagame device. The martial PC only knows that s/he is pretty hot at what s/he does, and every now and then it all comes together!

Pemerton. You just clearly have different core assumptions than people who dislike martial dailies.

If you mean, assumptions about the desirability of metagame mechanics? Sure.

If you mean, assumptions about the desirability of metagame mechanics that are quite different in play from fate points? Sure.

But if you mean an assumption that martial dailies are metagame in nature, then I'm not sure I agree. I mean, if someone could tolerate or even enjoy martial dailies were they metagame, but is put off only because they've become persuaded that they are process simulation, then I would deny that I'm making a different assumption: rather, I'm telling that person that they can have what they want. That's there's no reason to read martial dailies as process simulation, and every reason to treat them as metagame.

In particular, as I've emphasised, the first step is to remember that the world of the fiction is not a stop motion one - the turn structure is just a mechanical device for adjudicating play.

(I would add - it's striking to me how quickly and easily the turn structure has been incorporated into the unstated assumptions many players make about the nature of the D&D world. Like hp as meat. Whereas earlier editions of D&D, even with their initiative roles, all had variations on continuous action in a round. As soon as you realise that the turn structure does not correspond to anything in the gameworld, it becomes obvious that a power like Stop Thrust can't easily represent any distinctive technique within the fiction - because in the fiction there is no such category of action as "immediate reaction", which makes sense only relative to the mechanical turn structure.)

 

[Libramarian]

There are also quite a number of D&D players who say that they do care about class balance. While the relative importance of process simulation and balance is debatable, and may actually vary from gamer to gamer, I would say that neither is unimportant.

That's cool, I'm happy as long as that's recognized as basically the issue -- AEDU as a balancing technique, rather than AEDU as a narrativist technique.

 

[pemerton]

A "really cool move" that is useful in all situations would be an At-Will ability, in 4e Martial terms. Anything else, such as a Stop Thrust, is situationally useful. Use it at the wrong time, and the blow it's trying to block goes straight through and kills you. Or scores the point, if you're a sports fencer. That's why you don't use a Stop Thrust all the time.

My XP comment got cut off. I was going to say that what you describe here is another way to do dailies (or at least some dailies), for those who prefer process simulation over metagame mechanics.