Why is the Vancian system still so popular?

[Eldritch_Lord]

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.

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.

[...]

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!

As I mentioned earlier, and as Zustiur so eloquently expanded on, the disconnect between "This is real in the game world" and "This is a metagame thing" is a deal breaker. Your wizard can use particular spells, he can talk about his powers in-game, he can strategize about using them, because they are game world artifacts. Your fighter, though, is in some sort of hazy nebulous state where he just fights, and can do some things some of the time and can't do them other times for no particularly consistent reason. You can tell your wizard to Fireball the goblins rushing towards you, but not tell your fighter to Stop Thrust the one getting away, because apparently fighters don't have individual techniques, they have dramatically appropriate openings.

It's that vague middle state that I really object to. Completely disconnect the fighter mechanics from the game and make them purely dramatic/plot appropriate abilities, and we're fine. Completely immerse them in the game and make them individual techniques, and we're fine. Make them halfway immersed sort-of techniques that sort-of work some of the time, and that doesn't really do it for me.

Let me stop you right there. With just the PHB (and the MM1) the big three (C/W/D) are already Tier 1. The Artificer only knows its writeup and the DMG items.

*sigh*

Once again, breadth of options. There are 200-some spells for the wizard alone in the PHB; there are 180-some maneuvers for the swordsage in ToB. The warmage came along late in 3e, but even with that much material to reference it only got some spells from the PHB and Complete Arcane, so a sorcerer with broader access does blasting better than the warmage. The Big 5 have access to the most powerful things in 3e, the alternate systems only have access to one book: their own. Which one book it is really matters.

You don't have as much to nova.

Because what you have there is a daily system. It's the being on different recharge cycles that allows the novaing, not that one's powers the other fatigue. A wizard in classic D&D can force most of a day's power through in short order. A fighter doesn't have this choice to nova because he doesn't have such a pacing mechanic.

I believe you're being deliberately obtuse here. By "daily system" I am, and consistently have been, referring to the 4e martial daily model where you get to use each power a certain fixed number of times per day. Having a certain number of points to turn encounters into dailies, similar to but not identical with 4e psionics, may be a daily system if it has a fixed number of points, or it might not if it works differently (e.g. you regenerate X fatigue points after each encounter, or you can spend HP/penalize defenses/whatever to gain more, or the like).

Which powers can practically guarantee a one hit kill? And why would you save your strength?

If you're facing minions, a 3-hit power can kill more than Twin Strike. If you've already damaged some enemies, using a 4[W] daily power on them is better than using a 2[W] encounter power.

Surprisingly few balance misses in 4e.

I would note for the record that 4e is the edition where a mid-level character was built who could one-shot Orcus a week before the game was even released, where flurries of errata fixed and changed tons of material before Essentials came out, and where Twin Strike is the best striker at-will in the game.


On a general note, we do agree on the most important point, that fighters need a resource system to allow them to pace themselves, to strategize, to be balanced with other resource-system classes, and so forth. We simply disagree on the best way to achieve it. I want the martial resource system to be as explicable in-game as the other sources, to give a unique play experience, and to provide interesting mechanical options. These don't seem to be priorities to you, but I'm arguing that 5e could come up with a martial subsystem that satisfies both your goals and my goals, it's just that that system isn't martial daily powers as expressed in 4e. The aim of martial dailies is one I fully endorse, I just dislike the execution.

 

[triqui]

Just use whatever explanation works at the time? Really?

Rogue: "We have them on the ropes, Mr. Fighter! Shoot them with your Swarm of Arrows Technique!"

Fighter: "No, sorry, Mr. Rogue, I can't do that right now."

Rogue: "But they're running away! Their backs are to you! You have all the opening you need!"

Fighter: "Why would you think I need an opening to use my special techniques?"

Rogue: "...um, because when we were fighting them before, you said you needed an opening to use it and that's why you didn't keep using the same technique on multiple people?"

Fighter: "No, no, right now I'm too tired to use the Swarm of Arrows Technique. Doesn't matter about the opening, I'm just too tired."

Doesn't this work as well for 3.X style of resources? I mean, a Paladin might be too tired to smite evil again, but can lay on hands. A Monk might find a new opening for his stuning fist, but he is just out of stunning fist charges.

I also like Iron Heroes approach or ToB/Bo9S approach. But I think you can find any martial system inconsistent, if you look at it. It's almost impossible to emulate correctly the flow of a real fight.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

Doesn't this work as well for 3.X style of resources? I mean, a Paladin might be too tired to smite evil again, but can lay on hands. A Monk might find a new opening for his stuning fist, but he is just out of stunning fist charges.

It does indeed. I object to the barbarian's rage being daily, Stunning Fist's uses being daily, and other martial mechanics being daily just as much as 4e daily resources. Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, the monk's Wholeness of Body, and similar are magical abilities, so while I object to them being daily on mechanical grounds because they're too weak for daily abilities and should probably be per-encounter or per-hour or the like, the flavor supports them being limited in use. There are a few differences between the two that are important to note, though.

1) In 3e, the number of uses of rage, Stunning Fist, etc. are variable: they increase with level, you can take feats to get more, and they all use a different pool. This means that there isn't a hard cap on uses per day, you can have same-level characters with different numbers of uses of their abilities, and so forth. Repeatability of a particular schtick is helpful for making daily mechanics more tolerable.

2) Not everyone has daily resources. If you want to be someone who has his best tools with him at all times, you can be a fighter or ranger. If you want to be someone who can pull out the big guns, you can be a barbarian or paladin. While, again, this is bad for mechanical reasons (having a resource management system is better than not having one for power, flexibility, and creativity), it allows people who don't like daily resources to play without them.

So while I don't particularly like martial daily powers in any edition, if 5e has to base martial abilities on daily uses, I'd prefer a 3e-esque implementation over a 4e-esque implementation.

I also like Iron Heroes approach or ToB/Bo9S approach. But I think you can find any martial system inconsistent, if you look at it. It's almost impossible to emulate correctly the flow of a real fight.

As I also mentioned before, many systems are good at approximating/abstracting their mechanics in a way that supports their chosen flavor. ToB martial maneuvers are better at mimicking the ebb and flow of combat than 4e encounter exploits because you can recover them later, so the explanation "I need the right opening" actually works--if you're facing someone helpless you can keep using the same maneuver on them, if someone is open for a round because they're stunned or dazed you can take the opportunity to recover maneuvers, and so forth, whereas 4e encounter powers are one-shot deals. Barbarian rages are better at mimicking fatigue than 4e daily powers, as the explanation "I get tired after using them" actually makes sense--you become fatigued after each rage, which generally penalizes you, and you can't rage again while fatigued.

Resource systems can be tweaked to make them more or less coherent, and to make them fit a particular flavor better. Making all exploits in 4e [reliable] would make them fit the "need an opening" explanation better, and allowing some sort of in-combat recharge would do this as well. Allowing you to re-use an exploit at the cost of some fatigue penalty would make them fit the "wears you out" explanation better. If all daily exploits are [reliable], they're not actually strictly daily powers, since you can use them as much as you want until they work; the reliable keyword was a step in the right direction, but not quite enough, and the fact that they could only work once a day is still a sticking point.

 

[pemerton]

Wording plays a part in this. Calling them 'powers' or 'martial exploits' implies that they are learned or possessed in some manner.

<snip>

the fact you have to choose between them as you level up - effectively choosing what your character does or does not know how to do - contributes to the 'character distinctly knows' mentality.

<snip>

The fact you can choose when to use a power makes a huge contribution. With wizards there is no question that he's casting fireball because he (the character) wants to cast fireball. Yet with martial characters, you're saying that the character has no choice in whether he can lunge right now, or whether he can attempt a hit and run. The wizard's chance of success is determined only by the dice. The fighter's chance of success is determined by the dice, AND by 'fate' (where fate is the player's choice).

By forcing all character types to use the same AEDU mechanic, the game forces players to think differently about the situation.

I don't agree that build choice implies ingame choice by the PC. When I roll up my PC, I choose where to put the stats. Clearly this is a choice being made by the player, not the character.

The rules have always suggested that items bought with starting money might reflect an inheritance - this also is not the character choosing things ingame (you don't generally choose your own inheritance), it is a player choice operating at the metagame level.

Likewise choosing a martial power - this can be you choosing how your PC will excel, rather than your PC choosing to learn a new technique.

As for the "power" wording, it's a bit like "hit points" - D&D has a long history of blurring the ingame/metagame boundary in some of its rules elements. Whether this is a strength or a flaw I'm not sure, but I think it does contribute to the flexibility of the system.

In 0-3E, the fighter is trying his hardest all the time, and the dice determine the outcome.
In 4E, the fighter has to wait for the right opportunity in order to try his hardest.

<snip>

If we are handing over control of combat outcomes to the dice, why are we then including mechanics that allow us to control the dice instead?

In my view the 4e fighter is always trying hard. The player get to choose when trying becomes success.

And daily powers do control the dice (among other things). They can give bonuses to hit, increase the crit range (which is analogous to increasing the chance of rolling a crit), or increase the damage range. They can do other things do, of course.

Why not have the dice determine when an encounter or daily power kicks in, rather than the standard at-will attack? That would fit better with the idea that the dice are determining the outcomes of the combat.

Because it would produce suck-ier play? Because it would remove the control over play that the character currently enjoys, by getting to choose when to use daily powers.

Fighters might be able to achieve their 'dailies' multiple times in a day because the dice rolled well, while wizards would be stuck with their daily limit, but would have control over when to use their powers.

That might be a fun game. It might be balanced. Are you familiar with the rules for Adrenal Moves in Rolemaster, which resemble this a little bit? You roll to initiate the move, and then to sustain it - every roll gets harder, and when you come out of the move you have penalties roughly proportional to how long you sustained it. This is something like a system of encounter powers for fighters with effectiveness linked to die rolls rather than player choice (although the player gets to choose when to try and initiate the move).

But it would be quite a different game from 4e.

I accepted it as a meta-game mechanic. I don't see it the same as an action point

This right here is the respect in which it's like an action point. Obviously it's not identical - whether one sees that as part of the charm of D&D (it has all these fiddly, focused metagame mechanics like saving throws (in pre-3E D&D), hit points, martial encounters and dailies, etc) or as a problem is a matter of taste. For me, at least, it's something I like about 4e. It gives play a type of invested visceral character that I think a more abstract action point system might lack.

Your fighter, though, is in some sort of hazy nebulous state where he just fights, and can do some things some of the time and can't do them other times for no particularly consistent reason. You can tell your wizard to Fireball the goblins rushing towards you, but not tell your fighter to Stop Thrust the one getting away, because apparently fighters don't have individual techniques, they have dramatically appropriate openings.

Huh? In the fiction, the PCs tell the fighter to stop the goblin. The fighter tries, and does or doesn't depending on the mechanical options available to the player, and how the dice roll.

At the table, the other players say to the player of the fighter, "Can you use Stop Thrust?" "No, already used it today." "Okay, does anyone have an interrupt that can get the fighter in front of the goblin so that when it keeps moving it will draw an oppy?" "Nope, out of them too." "Bugger. I guess the goblin will get away." That's one way of working out, via the procedures of the game, that within the fiction the figthter tried but failed to stop the goblin.

Maybe my table is radically diffrent from others', but at my table these sorts of conversations - in which the players do their best to deploy their avaialable mechanical resources to succeed in their goals for their PCs - produce emotional investment, immersion in the fictional situation, and help make the game worth playing. (And the best descriptions of this sort of play that I'm aware of in published RPG rulebooks are by Luke Crane in the Burning Wheel books, especially the Adventure Burner.)

It is not the AEDU that helps 4E support narrative play, though the player getting to pick when the EDU part happens does open up a little room. The main thing about 4E powers that support narrative play is that they are effect-driven instead of process/result-driven. (This is similar to how some of the early Forge Narrative play happened in Champions, with its effect-based mechanics.) You could get at least 80% of the same result with all at-will powers, as long as they were effect-based powers.

AEDU on its own doesn't produce narrativism. I think it supports it to some extent, though, by giving the players a degree of control that supports player-driven PC protagonism. To use the example of an escaping goblin, when this happens (say, in Runequest) just because of a series of bad dice rolls, that's one thing. But in 4e, when it is the result of a whole lot of player choices about how to manipulate and spend their mechanical resources, and the priorities that those choices reflect, it an start to become something else.

I think the issue could have been made much better, conceptually, if the daily exploits had all been built off of encounter power the PCs had already selected. If, for example, each encounter power had a "daily" level of achievement listed with it that could be obtained by spending a martial daily token (the number the PC gets is equal to the number of dailies he be able to expend at that level), then the system would have been a little easier to accept. The daily would more clearly fit in as an element of a chosen fighting style, just raised to be an exceptional success of that particular maneuver.

I would have nothing against this, although I think it has cons as well as pluses - there are dailies like Comeback Strike, for example (2W damage and spend a surge) which have no obvious Enouncter power to piggyback on, and cause no narrative trickiness at all because they are very obviosly not tecniques but just metagame plays ("Now's when my guy Comes Back! Take that, you fiends!").

But as I've posted upthread, and many times on other threads, because of the other features of 4e that reward build specialisation (eg synergies with feats, power/build interaction, paragon path etc) there is already going to be high level of coherence in the typical player's power choices, I think.

 

[Zustiur]

Because it would produce suck-ier play? Because it would remove the control over play that the character currently enjoys, by getting to choose when to use daily powers.

That might be a fun game. It might be balanced. Are you familiar with the rules for Adrenal Moves in Rolemaster, which resemble this a little bit? You roll to initiate the move, and then to sustain it - every roll gets harder, and when you come out of the move you have penalties roughly proportional to how long you sustained it. This is something like a system of encounter powers for fighters with effectiveness linked to die rolls rather than player choice (although the player gets to choose when to try and initiate the move).

Just to be clear; I wasn't arguing that we should adopt that system for DND, merely pointing out that it would have made more sense when coupled with the 'powers represent an opportunity in combat' rationale.

Maybe my table is radically diffrent from others', but at my table these sorts of conversations - in which the players do their best to deploy their avaialable mechanical resources to succeed in their goals for their PCs - produce emotional investment, immersion in the fictional situation, and help make the game worth playing. (And the best descriptions of this sort of play that I'm aware of in published RPG rulebooks are by Luke Crane in the Burning Wheel books, especially the Adventure Burner.)

I can't speak for other groups, but your group certainly differs from mine. Specifically; focus on the available mechanical resources does not help our immersion in the fictional situation. Quite the opposite.
Speaking for myself, rather than my whole group; it's the focus on mechanical resources that makes 4E feel like a board game.

AEDU on its own doesn't produce narrativism.

Agreed.

I think it supports it to some extent, though, by giving the players a degree of control that supports player-driven PC protagonism. To use the example of an escaping goblin, when this happens (say, in Runequest) just because of a series of bad dice rolls, that's one thing. But in 4e, when it is the result of a whole lot of player choices about how to manipulate and spend their mechanical resources, and the priorities that those choices reflect, it an start to become something else.

I do understand where you're coming from, but I don't agree.
I think narrativism would be better supported by martial powers all being at will, but with a reduced chance of success (to accommodate balance). Attempting something a second time and failing is part of the story. Not attempting something a second time because you did it earlier removes that event from the story. We don't say, "I attempt Strike of the Manticore, but only manage to achieve Twin Strike". We say, "Bugger, I'm out of powers. I guess I'll just use Twin Strike".
Technically there's nothing to stop you describing it the first way, but I'd be truly amazed to see a group that does play that way. I find nothing narrativist about being reduced to at will attacks. In fact it is generally a sign that the battle is dragging, and thus becoming boring. That never helps the story.


(Rightly or wrongly) I've always felt that DND was a system of rules that tried to approximate the real world chance of succeeding at manual tasks. Magic notwithstanding. AEDU does nothing to simulate the real world as I see it. If anything, I feel that AEDU reverses the situation; now the story has to approximate the mechanics, instead of the mechanics approximating the story.

 

[pemerton]

(Rightly or wrongly) I've always felt that DND was a system of rules that tried to approximate the real world chance of succeeding at manual tasks. Magic notwithstanding. AEDU does nothing to simulate the real world as I see it.

I think that D&D has always had exceptions to simulation. Saving throws in pre-3E D&D (as described by Gygax in his DMG) - 3E changed this, and made them simulationist (Fort, Ref, Will). Hit points. I see 4e's AEDU, at least for martial PCs, as extending the same metagame sensibilities that gave us classic D&D saving throws, and hit points, to the realm of "active" rather than just "passive" action resolution.

I can't speak for other groups, but your group certainly differs from mine. Specifically; focus on the available mechanical resources does not help our immersion in the fictional situation. Quite the opposite.

I'll elaborate a bit, then - not to try and convert you (!), but to explain the dynamics of what I'm talking about.

Recently in my 4e game, the 5 PCs went through a busy day that took multiple sessions to play out. Here's just a list of the encounters that took place before the PCs got an extended rest - the PCs started the day at 14th level and reached 15th part way through (after encounter (f), I think):

a) Comp 2 L14 skill challenge (as a result of which each PC lost one encounter power until their next extended rest);

b) L17 combat;

c) L15 combat;

d) L7 combat;

e) L13 combat;

f) L15 combat;

g) Comp 1 L14 skill challenge;

h) L16 combat;

i) L14 combat;

j) L13 combat;

k) Comp 1 L15 skill challenge;

l) L16 combat (the L15 solo was defeated by being pushed over a bridge down a waterfall);

m) L15 combat (the solo returned later in the night, having survived the fall and climbed back up).​

Now, encounters (g), (h), (i) and (j) took place with no short rest between them - ie on the same suite of encounter powers - with one modest exception that I will explain.

Encounter (g) was the party sorcerer being pursued on his flying carpet by hobgoblin wyvern riders, and trying (and failing - 3 fails before 4 successes) to escape them.

Encounter (h) was the other PCs going to the rescue of the sorcerer (who crash landed about 100 yards from the other PCs) with the excpetion of the paladin, who stayed behind to guard the PCs' tower and gear from the hobgoblin phalanx that suddenly swept down from the hills. The culmination of (h) involved the hobgoblins loosing their pet chimera.

Once all the opponents of (h) were dead, but the battle with the chimera was still going on, I told the players that they could see something in the distance, red and fiery, and apparently getting bigger quite quickly. And I put a die down on the table with a "3" face-up. Now the players knew that their tower had, on an earlier occasion, been visited by a fire drake, and they quickly formed a hypothesis as to what was coming. Which incentivised them in their fight with the chimera. Then, in the same round that I turned my countdown die to "1", I also gave the players an unusual choice: as a standard action, they could regain two encounter powers or spend two healing surges. All, I think, or all but 1, chose to regain two powers - which meant they didn't attack the chimera - which meant it was still standing when the dragon arrived - which complicated the first round or two of encounter (i).

Encounter (j) occurred after the dragon had been defeated. The PC chaos sorcerer commenced an attempt to harness the chaotic elemental energies he felt were escaping from the dragon. By focusing the energies in a vortex of chaos (preparatory to imbuing himself with them) he attracted the attention of nearby mooncalves. In this encounter, the PCs had (from memory) 3 healing surges between them. And defeating the mooncalves ended up turning on making the right choices about which healing abilities to use when on whom, given that they were short on surges, short on healing abilities, and had one surgeless healing item that would suck a daily item use (we use pre-errata magic item rules). In short, it turned on making hard choice about the deployment of mechanical resources.

And for my group, at least, these sorts of situations - encounters which force hard choice after hard choice - generate emotional intensity and pressure. The stakes are real and vivid. The players don't have to imagine that they are under pressure, because they really are under pressure - a mis-call on the proper deployment of a power can spell the difference between success or failure. (Of course the game will go on if a PC dies, but in quite a different direction from what the players expected or were, at the time at least, hoping for.)

In the early encounters ((a) through (f)), where the resources are reasonably plentiful and the stakes therefore lower, the pressure isn't quite the same (although in my view it's to the credit of 4e's design that even in these encounters it is still fairly easy, as a GM, to create pressure). But once the players realise that the PCs are under attack by hobgoblins on wyverns - and there's a second front (the phalanx, which was backed up by ogres) - and they brought a chimera - and the firedrake is returning - and now the sorcerer's gone and conjured up some mooncalves - the pressure mounts. There is pressure in the fiction. And the mechanics, which apply a pressure of resource management to the players, generate a corresponding pressure at the table.

Speaking for myself, rather than my whole group; it's the focus on mechanical resources that makes 4E feel like a board game.

There are many ways, I think, that I could try and set out the differecne between an RPG like 4e and a board game. But probably the most obvious, to me, in this context is the nature of the stakes. In the RPG what is at stake is a product of, is generated by, gets its significance from, the shared fiction. A board game, at least for me, just can't generate the same emotional investment in the stakes as (for example) encounter (j), in which the party is at the end of its tether, yet has to fight on, because the chaos sorcerer couldn't restrain his desire for power. Or encounter (h), in which the paladin is left to singlehandedly hold off a phalanx of hobgoblins while the rest of the party try to save the sorcerer from the assault by wyvern riders.

In a boardgame there is no protagonism. Whereas in an RPG like 4e, manipualting the mechanics is what mediates the fiction to the players and allows them to exercise their protagonism, to push their PCs through the fiction.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

Huh? In the fiction, the PCs tell the fighter to stop the goblin. The fighter tries, and does or doesn't depending on the mechanical options available to the player, and how the dice roll.

At the table, the other players say to the player of the fighter, "Can you use Stop Thrust?" "No, already used it today." "Okay, does anyone have an interrupt that can get the fighter in front of the goblin so that when it keeps moving it will draw an oppy?" "Nope, out of them too." "Bugger. I guess the goblin will get away." That's one way of working out, via the procedures of the game, that within the fiction the figthter tried but failed to stop the goblin.

Maybe my table is radically diffrent from others', but at my table these sorts of conversations - in which the players do their best to deploy their avaialable mechanical resources to succeed in their goals for their PCs - produce emotional investment, immersion in the fictional situation, and help make the game worth playing. (And the best descriptions of this sort of play that I'm aware of in published RPG rulebooks are by Luke Crane in the Burning Wheel books, especially the Adventure Burner.)

That example was in response to Hussar's and your assertions that exploits don't actually correspond to anything in the gameworld, but are simply ways to abstractly influence the narrative--see Hussar's "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." and your longer example.

My point was that if you're going to treat exploits that way, you have a massive disconnect between the fiction and the game for tactical (and conversational) purposes. Out of game, the wizard's player can talk about his various blasting spells by name and their various resource costs, and this maps to the fiction explicitly: you can say "I have one Fireball prepared today and one Shock Sphere that I can recover with a few minutes rest; I should easily be able to blanket the area with arcane energy and kill all the goblins," and that same explanation means something both IC and OOC.

With exploits as a metagame construct, however, out of game the fighter's player can talk about his daily and encounter powers by name and their various resource costs, but this doesn't map to the game world. If you ask the fighter's player if he can have his character move to the first group of goblins, use Sweeping Blow, move to the second group of goblins, use Rain of Blows, move to the third group of goblins, etc., he can tell you he's already used most of his encounters already and will have to do something else after Sweeping Blow. In the fiction, the fighter somehow knows that he only has one multi-target power left and cannot in any way hit multiple goblins--it's not even that he'll go up to each group, try to hit goblins, and somehow only manage to hit one each time, it's that unless you're blatantly ignoring your power lineup your fighter knows during the planning that he can't hit multiple goblins and he should have the wizard handle that even though he multiattacked two or three times in the battle already and should have a good handle on it.

As cheesy as the ToB maneuver names could sometimes be, a warblade being able to talk about his techniques meaningfully in-game made more sense than some vague "I can do fancy moves that do stuff" explanation. If you take that tack, the casters get to know exactly what their powers are and how often they can use them, and classes get to know their class features (e.g. the rogue knows what he needs to do to get sneak attack), but the martial types can't talk about their exploits in-game, and so sometimes making plans in the fiction can make as much sense as a protagonist in a book holding off on a particular tactic because he knows there are still 100 pages left in the book and the author wouldn't let something like that succeed until things really get desperate.

In attempting to fix the "exploit restrictions don't make sense in-game" problem, the solution makes something else not make sense in the fiction. "I can always try, but not always succeed" makes sense. "Looks like I'll only get four good openings, better make 'em count" makes some sense. "I'm too tired to pull off anything fancy" makes sense. "I can't pull off the specific technique you need right now because mumblemumbleplotrelevantmumble" does not make sense.

 

[Neonchameleon]

My point was that if you're going to treat exploits that way, you have a massive disconnect between the fiction and the game for tactical (and conversational) purposes.

To me a huge issue is how long a combat round lasts. One minute, as in AD&D is to me utterly disempowering; my fighter only gets to react to an unfolding combat situation once per minute. The six seconds of 3.x and 4e I can live with. It's about right (a little on the long side) for an OODA loop - the time to glance round, work out what chain of actions you want to do, and execute it - and the decision part happens at a subconscious level or it wouldn't be quick enough. "Move there, feint out the guy on the left, Falling Silk prepared combo, and sweep the blade round to be ready for the guy on the right." It may be what is done but talking about it in terms of techniques isn't what happens at the time.

Six seconds is just too much to condense into an always-repeatable line. (As is an entire loop in a complex situation). And the answer to "Why not use pin the horizon" is probably best phrased as "This isn't a &*#$ing dojo. You practice the katas in the dojo to have the muscle memory for when things get complex." The wizard on the other hand needs three to four seconds saying silly things or wiggling his fingers to cast the spell and this isn't a problem. If anything the fighter turns round and mocks the wizard for having to stand still for three seconds in combat, making himself a target.

and so sometimes making plans in the fiction can make as much sense as a protagonist in a book holding off on a particular tactic because he knows there are still 100 pages left in the book and the author wouldn't let something like that succeed until things really get desperate

I have never found this disconnect. Ever. What the fighter says is something like "I will hold the line here." Or "I'll chase him down and then knock him off the roof." The matter of how, being a matter of muscle memory and instinctive decisions is a level of detail further than most plans are made. Planning to that level of detail is IME doomed to failure.

 

[triqui]

It does indeed. I object to the barbarian's rage being daily, Stunning Fist's uses being daily, and other martial mechanics being daily just as much as 4e daily resources. Smite Evil, Lay on Hands, the monk's Wholeness of Body, and similar are magical abilities, so while I object to them being daily on mechanical grounds because they're too weak for daily abilities and should probably be per-encounter or per-hour or the like, the flavor supports them being limited in use. There are a few differences between the two that are important to note, though.

I'm not really convinced. Those abilities aren't spells (and certainly not vancian spells). I don't see how a Paladin can say "i can't smite that demon once again today, my faith/self confidence in my god/virtue isn't strong enough. I can heal you laying my hands on you, though. I haven't tapped that part of my god/virtue yet." It's not very organic either. I'd rather have the paladin have a "devotion" score (or whatever fancy better name the devs might use), and then use those devotion points in healing, or smiting, or maybe turning undeads or deploying a holy aura against fear or whatever.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I can't help but feel that about half the fuss over this kind of stuff are literary disputes, rather than game disputes.