True, but have we really nailed down the goals of this discussion? My point is that 4e has perfectly coherent explanations for its designed abilities, and that many of its design goals don't serve the interest of exactly defining what a character's abilities are, and how they should be narrated. Rather, they serve the interest of generating a certain kind of story, and leave defining the process of how it happened to the player and DM.
I understand the point you're making, and I have little doubt that 4E had reasons for embracing dissociated mechanics as much as it did; likely they're the reasons that you laid out. However, as I noted, one of the fundamental natures of an RPG is that "anything can be attempted." 4E, with its encounter and daily limitations on non-mystical physical abilities, violated that concept, which was a major problem for a lot of people.
Now, you've outlined a method whereby you can "fix" that, but that seems to work backwards (at least from a place where it wasn't broken to begin with), and in doing so begin to smudge the line of "generating a certain kind of story via funneling a character through their available options," which strikes me as an inelegant attempt to have your cake and eat it too.
Some people prefer a design goal that does define exactly what a character's abilities are, and leaves the process of generating the story to the player and the DM.
To-may-to, to-mah-to. Most powers work in the trad framework, some don't is the main point.
I'm not sure what the "trad framework" is.
By artificial, you mean not flowing from the setting's physics, correct? There's no explicit "fatigue" or "divine providence" explanation for why the effects occur with the frequency they do?
I mean artificial in that it's dissociated, with no in-game explanation or mechanism for why your ability to make an attempt should be curtailed.
So I suppose that's a yes.
But the rules do work in that way. I've done it. You simply have to be aware of it.
The rules, per se, do not work that way. You've houseruled a solution to try and allow limited powers to be used unlimited times, with some degree of diminished efficacy and/or lesser chance of working. Ironically, the question of why they suddenly are less likely to work and/or work less well is itself dissociated.
Regardless, your solution is the Rule 0 Fallacy in action. You're suggesting this isn't a problem because you can fix it.
Yea, but I get the feeling you don't want to accomplish that anyway. Do you feel that seeing a variance of martial techniques in a fight is a worthwhile design goal?
If it comes at the expense of limiting what a character can do "because the rules say so," then no, I don't.
It's not the DM's imposition, it's the system's imposition by creating encounter powers in the first place.
It's still a degree of co-option of the player's agency for their character, save that it's been hard-coded into the rules instead of happening via GM fiat. This is arguably worse.
And again, you're confused by conflating a "power" with "its mechanic of resolution". Which is understandable, because that's how previous editions do it. But "Spinning Hurricane Slash" is something that occurs in the fiction. The fact that sometimes it does more damage and knocks somebody down is something the player chooses, by using the power of the same name.
You're mistaken in thinking that merging a "power" with "its mechanic of resolution" is either confused, or a conflation.
That's what associated mechanics are. Hence why previous editions did it that way - they placed a primacy on what the character could try to do. Under your scenario, the player may choose for a power to suddenly work more or less well, but that's not reflected in the actions the characters take, which is problematic.
Look at the 4e Slayer as an example. He doesn't have weirdly named abilities. He just attacks. Once a fight, the player says "I'll use Power Strike to do more damage". You can view that as the Slayer decided to hit much harder that turn, or it could be that he just got a lucky hit in, or maybe he attempted a Spinning Hurricane Slash. Up to you, as the player. The 4e Slayer simply possesses a generic version of what the 4e fighter has as more specific named powers, the ability to narrate in an extra effect by cashing in a limited resource.
The problem isn't contextualizing what the power does; it's in contextualizing why this physical power can't be used more often than once per fight. None of your flavor text descriptions answer that. Why can't he hit harder a second time?
Well, since my viewpoint makes the game coherent and run smoothly, and your viewpoint makes the game run poorly and incoherently, might I suggest my vantage point has certain benefits?
I'm not saying that your viewpoint is utterly valueless. I simply believe that you're gaining very little in exchange for sacrificing a lot (earlier editions had coherent and smoothly-run games, without the need to artificially restrict character agency).
Without a character in front of me, I extrapolated from the rules as I know them. I know there are fighter encounter powers that let you do 1[W] and knock prone. 8+ seems fairly typical for a non-minmaxed fighter facing a level-equivalent enemy.
As for the Spinning Hurricane Slash attempt with no encounter power, I typically allow at-will level effectiveness for stunts with a medium check. 14+ might be a little high, it's probably closer to 11 or 12. Or, if they wanted to do damage, that would be a basic attack, narrated as a Spinning Hurricane Slash.
I wasn't asking about the specifics per se. I was asking if your paradigm of "allow for limited-use powers to be used at will, but set up so that further uses are less effective and/or more difficult to do" was something invented by you, rather than being in the 4E rules.
Well sure, hard to argue with a mostly tautological definition. I just think of most of the crazy martial powers as player resources, not character ones. The fighter doesn't attempt CaGI, it just happens.
I'm not sure what CaGI means, but if it's a character action, then it very clearly doesn't just happen - it's something (as Jim Moriarty said) they
do.
[video=youtube;7dLg0uIhBXU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dLg0uIhBXU[/video]
I don't think the character has any indication he can do three things in a turn, and he has a limited selection of options for each one. I think from the character's perspective, he just acts.
It's pretty intuitive for a character to have an understanding of how much they can accomplish in a given span of time.