Well for one thing, if you use Fate Points or their ilk, you're going off the reservation as far as D&D is concerned.
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If you're going to use them, they're for all players
Yet Arcana Unearthed/Evolved uses them (Hero Points, I think they're called), and furthermore you can take a feat for your PC to get more of them - so they are not given in equal amounts to all players, and they are used - via that feat - as a balancing element in mechanical effectiveness across PCs. And Arcana Unearthed is not "off the reservation". It's a D&D variant that hews very closely to 3E in its mechanics.
in the hands of one player, they're fine. In the hands of one character, they break the fourth wall.
Huh? PCs don't have Fate Points - unless the PC is, in the ingame fiction, playing an RPG in which s/he has Fate Points to spend.
One player is playing a wizard, but is attacking in melee for some reason. He thinks to himself "gee, I really need this next attack to hit". So, remembering that he prepared a true strike spell this morning, he casts it. The attack hits. The player shares the character's relief.
Another player is playing a monk (as described above). He thinks to himself "gee, I really need this next attack to hit". So he...does what? Uses a power? What does that mean to the character? What does the character experience as this is happening?
In your wizard example, is it the player or the character who thinks "I really need this next attack to hit?" Or is it both?
You seem to assume it will always be both, but that's not obvious. Let's say the attack is a melee attack to break a clay seal on a gate. The player knows, due to foreshadowing, or GM cliche-prediction, or whatever, that shattering the seal is crucial to achieving victory in the quest. Whereas the PC doesn't know those things - the inhabitants of a fiction don't experience foreshadowing, nor predict narrative cliches. Why, then, does the wizard cast True Strike? If the participants in the game want to know, some answer (eg a sudden burst of intuition) will have to be narrated.
Likewise for the monk.
What does the character know about his access to this power (or lack thereof, now that he's used it)? Are you saying you don't see where this is nonsensical?
The only thing that's nonsensical is assuming that the character knows anything about a purely metagame element. It is a
player resource that the player knows about, and chooses to expend. (And to pre-empt a reptition of an earlier go around - it does not belong to the player independently of playing that particular PC. It is a resource that the player enjoys access to in virtue of being the player of this PC in this game. If the PC is handed to a different player, that new player gains control over and access to the metagame resource.)
One represents the hand of god, the will of the universe, the need to have a fun game, or some other intangible concept. The other represents the learning and execution of physical skills that are absolutely real in the game world.
No. A martial daily or encounter power does not respresent learning and execution of physical skills - at least, not exclusively. It represents elements of that, but also such things as "the will of the universe" and "the need to have a fun game". In that respect it's much like a hit point, or a pre-3E saving throw.
The appropriate use of such a metagame resource is when a player wants his attack to hit, and spends his fate points or whatever, and something happens that is clearly not understood or controlled by the character that makes the attack hit. The player is enjoying his success, but the character has no idea what happened. He's just glad to still be alive. That's pretty much what "metagame" means.
Yes. This is what happens when a player uses Come and Get It. The player enjoys the PC's success at wrongfooting the enemy. Why and how the enemy was wrongfooted is a separate matter - the use of Come and Get It triggers the possible need for filling in that part of the fiction, but doesn't actually fill it in.
Actually, even in this case, it is a big deal. Because it doesn't balance the world. Are we to assume that every character in the world, from heroes to commoners, has sufficient metagame benefits to make them "balanced"? If not, one still needs to explain the role of powerful magic in the world, i.e. why wizards don't rule everything. If so, my head just exploded.
Balancing the world may be important to some players. It is not important to others. The world of LotR is not "balanced" - the hobbits have access to a plethora of metal goods, for example, despite having no apparent mining or industrial production. Where does it come from? And how is the inn at Bree economically viable, if travel is so dangerous (eg you'll get eaten by willows if Tom Bombadil doesn't rescue you).
The point of LotR, however, isn't about economics. The entire social setting is a backdrop for a different narrative purpose.
Why don't wizards rule everything in the typical D&D world? Most of the time, in my games, a hand wave will do: the gods have decreed otherwise; the traditions of wizardry are inherently conservative; there aren't very many wizards out there besides the PCs.
For those where setting and world building are more important, then they can work out their own stories. Whatever those stories are, they don't show that metagame abilities are bad RPG design.
if balance between classes is such a concern, what's wrong with fixing it in the context of the world? Why not limit spell access and use in some way? Why not make it so Haste ages you every time you use it or give wizards only a couple of spell slots a day? D&D's spellcasters are indeed supremely capable. Fixing magic is much easier than giving fighters mulligans and favors. Why is this angle ignored?
Ignored by whom? Not by the designers of OGL Conan. Not by Monte Cook when he designed Arcana Unearthed (though it's not as low magic as Conan). Not by the designers of Burning Wheel. Not by the designers, back in the day, of Runequest.
But if you're worried about Fate Points being too radical for D&D, I don't see how you can be so insouciant about removing high level spells and spellcasters.
And if you're worried about the design of D&Dnext accommodating those who don't like metagame mechanics, why is it not equally important that it accommodate those who like high magic, gonzo fantasy?
In any event, the fact that a low-magic RPG is viable doesn't show that metagame abilities for martial PCs isn't one way of "fixing the fighter" (to allude to the thread title).
Because the rules effect the RESOLUTION of the action, not the action itself. A fighter could whack at goblins all day and have the same chance of hitting everyone (based on the d20 roll) and all an action point does is improve those odds.
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Fate/Luck/Skill/Deific Mojo/Badassdom points change the dice rolls, which is already a metagame contruction which is resolving a major area of concern: Can I do X? We accept some level of meta rules are needed to actually play the game, which is why its impossible to assign yourself ability scores. But these are the invisible rules. A fighter when he swings his sword isn't taking into account his level, strength, magical plus, and feats, but we (as players) do. When a fighter has to decide "Do I use my Sweeping Strike now or save it?" He's making a choice that should reflect his own thinking.
It's not the fighter who makes that choice, or is wondering what to do. It is the
player, at the table. Deciding to spend a fate point to manipualte the dice rolls is a metagame decision. Deciding to use an encounter power to manipulate the action economy, or the tactical positioning of the NPCs, is likewise a metagame decision.
If you think the action economy is
not metagame, but some sort of ingame reality, then I can see why you might have trouble with this. But I don't see how anyone can think a turn-based action economy is not metagame. The gameworld is not stop-motion, is it?
I want an in-game reason why that fighter can staggering blow only once per day.
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4e reminds me at every pass that I'm playing a game and not interacting with the story.
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In the end, you can argue why metagame like level, hp, AC, alignment, saves, ability scores, and thac0 are acceptable but martial dailies, action points, forced movement and healing surges are not. I respond that its a spectrum that has always swung back and forth
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My threshold is different than yours.
These are biographical facts about you (as you seem to recognise). They do not tell us anything about what is or is not a tenable game design. Nor do they tell us anything about how people who play 4e play their game (for example, I believe that no 4e player would play in the way suggested by your dialogues upthread).
You seriously clear out every dungeon in a single day? You've never rested and went back? Never had a multiday journey with random encounters? Really?
I mean, I heard some bad things about 4e adventure design, but REALLY?
I don't understand any of this.
First, my claim was that not every day has a fight in it, and that even on those days that do have fights, not every daily power will be used on every one of those days. I don't see what this has to do with clearing out dungeons in a single day, nor with resting, nor with multiday journeys. Except that I would have thought that a multiday journey might provide one instance of not every day having a fight, or not every day that has fight being a day on which all daily powers are used.
Second, even if it is the case that in your game every day has a fight in it, and every day in which a fight takes place every daily power is used, not everyone's game has to look like yours.
Third, I don't use random encounters. I choose the encounters I run deliberately, for narrative and pacing effects.
Fourth, I don't run a game with "dungeons" that the PCs "clear out". I find that sort of game to be lacking in verisimilitude.
Fifth, I linked upthread to my actual play posts of my 4e campaign:
Here are some links to some actual play reports that I have posted. If you're going to start critiquing my scenario design and adjudication, I'd invite you to at least first have a read of some of them.
