D&D 4E Is there a "Cliffs Notes" summary of the entire 4E experience?

[Iosue]

I have a feeling I'm going to hate "Rulings not Rules" as much as I hated "Bad rules make for good games," "ROLE-playing not ROLL-playing," and "according to the RAW..."

(Yeah, even though the first and last of that list are polar opposites. Heck, especially because of that. Darn those pendulums.)

I'm a proponent of the style of game it ostensibly describes, and I'm getting sick of seeing it. It's becoming a shorthand devoid of nuance, and ultimately doesn't actually describe the important elements of that style.

 

[Kraztur]

However, the vast majority of RPGs - all versions of D&D included - would still let you /attempt/ just about anything. You'd just fail. Most of the time when the DM says "you can't do that," he means that it won't work so don't bother.

The claim, upstream, that started this was that certain mechanics (more or less arbitrarily labeled 'dissociative') somehow prevented that.

Ohhhh, so that's what this is all about? I wondered what this theorycraft was aiming for. Oh God.

 

[Emerikol]

Only in the fevered imaginations of a few radicals is the distaste for dissociative mechanics anything more than a taste for a certain playstyle that for its adherents allows greater immersion.

There is no secret plot to keep fighters down or block anyone's fun. It is an honest expression of a particular preference with the way mechanics interact with the player and his character. Those of us bothered by them spot them quickly and easily.

My personal blog has an article on metagame dissonance which is the same thing. If you want a fuller discussion on the details.

I also take issue with the notion that most people disliked 4e sight unseen and never gave it a chance. 4e started out of the gate just fine as everybody just assumed it would turn out okay. It didn't. If the people that ultimately disliked the game could undo their purchase I believe initial sales would have been far more modest. But the actual sales indicate wide adoption at the very beginning.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Apologies. I'm hesitant to use the mathematic terms: "finite" or "countable" on a nonspecialist board.

So in a game like...I dunno chess...you could actually sit down and count each of your specific options (which piece and which legal square) on any given turn. Even in computer RPGs, there are only so many actions the player can take. Although in some crpgs some categories of action may seem to have infinite choices (movement, commonly), they usually don't at any given point of play.

However, in an both improv and ttrpgs, you have an infinite (i.e. uncountable) number of possible responses, even if you say...have to start your sentence with the letter "z" or what have you.

Hmm, I wonder if the idea of "your character can (try and) do anything" then might read differently for someone thinking more mathematically. Because while the choices you can make in an improv game are infinite, they are still constrained by the rules of the game you've agreed to -- you can't "do whatever you want," you have to "do what the rules say."

The rules in a TTRPG are of a fundamentally different stripe, more interested in adjudicating what happens when your character tries to do one of these infinite things than in defining what the possibility space is. Do whatever you want, and the rules will say what happens when you do that, but they won't tell you to start your sentences with the letter Z.

However, the vast majority of RPGs - all versions of D&D included - would still let you /attempt/ just about anything. You'd just fail. Most of the time when the DM says "you can't do that," he means that it won't work so don't bother.


The claim, upstream, that started this was that certain mechanics (more or less arbitrarily labeled 'dissociative') somehow prevented that.

It's a thoughtflow thing. If I have a martial power that I know can only be used once per fictional day, as a player I know that the rules say that I can't do it again if I've done it once.

If, instead, I have a martial power that has no limits on how often it can be used, and the opportunity only comes up once per day, or the DM only allows it once per day, then it has the same fundamental effect, but the thinking is dramatically different, because these are not limits intrinsic to the thing itself -- its number of uses per day isn't part of my thought process as a player.

For those angling to be immersive in their use of character abilities at all opportunities, the former might just kill that immersion because it's purely a metagame construct, while the latter will support immersion precisely because it doesn't rely on the PLAYER being aware of the metagame construct that limits the ability's use, even if the net math effect is largely indistinguishable.

 

[jbear]

The first interesting 4e thread I have read in a while. The thread is already long but I will add my anecdotal experience .

I got into D&D with AD&D back in the day. I am not even sure if we actually read the rules properly but damn we had a lot of fun! When I moved towns at the age of 14 that was the end of D&D for me during my youth pretty much. I scratched that itch be reading fantasy novels. When I went on my big OE when I turned 21 I eventually 'ran away' with a small theatrical circus on the island of Sardinia in Italy. It was basically a self built family circus. Imagine hand built pioneer style wooden wagons pulled by horses and a 50 year old mercedes truck. NO TVs, no modern technology. Old school. There were 6 children in the circus, and when I arrived none of them had a very high opinion of reading. So I told them stories, fantasy stories. And I introduced them to D&D, or at least a hybrid version of what I could remember from my youth. They loved it of course (big time!), and by the time I left (2 years later) they were requesting (fantasy) novels as birthday gifts.

My travels eventually lead me to meet the woman who would become my wife and when we returned to the circus for an extended visit she was incorporated into our D&D game with the kids. When we returned to Spain her father bought me a bunch of D&D 3.5 books (which was evidently the rage at that time unbeknownst to me). This lead to starting a game with the family (Mum, Dad, Sister included) I wasn't too phased by the changes. The art was awesome and there were some math changes that just made sense (bye bye THAC0 and spell save tables). We had a pretty fun time of it together (over one summer's holidays) despite a number of frustrations, the most important being I was always stopping the game to look up one rule or the other.

A few years later when we had kids and began putting down roots, we had made friends with a group of folk who also had young children. I organised a game of D&D. Again this was with 3.5 as those were the books I had. Pretty much everyone was brand new to D&D. Frustrations with the rules emerged immediately. Players wanted to try things and be cinematically heroic. My DM style had been ... hmmm ... how to describe it: I had become a slave to the rules. And at level 1 they were struggling to deal with a few disease infested rats.

This was the first time I had gone online to look for D&D material, in search of a decent adventure. I stumbled across the upcoming release of 4e. It sounded pretty exciting to me.

I bought it, read it, and rebooted the game with a completely new DMing style (Thanks to the wonderful advice in the DMG to 'say yes to your players'. Wow ... giving some of the narrative control to players??? Never thought of that! And the reaction to the far more heroic first level characters was instantly far more engaging.

Being killed by a house cat or a diseased rat was no longer a feature. Instead you fought a swarm of rats! Now that is cool! And scary! A challenge worthy of heroes.

And the maths was even slicker than 3.5. I could literally just memorise it all and very soon I wasn't even looking at the rules any more. All I needed was to look at the monster and all of its rules were self contained. Building encounters ... very straight forward and clear cut. Wow ... DMing and creating an adventure just had become a breeze. And combat had become awesome! Oh, and there was a system to run out of combat play and earn experience points for things that did not involve murdering something! Awesome.

So, yeah. I was pretty happy. I had what I (still) consider, a very slick core engine to build the style of game I like to play upon. And I would have to say that the games I have run since being a 12 year old to now in my mid thirties ... the adventures themselves have all been as fun, exciting and memorable in each of the systems I have used. The differences that I could put my finger on would be:

AD&D: We read enough to get the gist and made the rest up to suit ourselves.
3.5: Frequent stopping to look up rules; Massive amounts of time spent on DM adventure prep; Far less heroic at early levels lead to new player frustration; Developed a more 'inflexible' DMing style based on trying to skill system and DCs correctly which lead to players not trying to do cool things because their (lvl 1) charaters were far too likely to fail.
4e: Could stop looking up rules in books as the unified system made memorisation easy; DM style changed to invite player narrative license; easy adventure prep; more time spent in combat but the time spent was also more fun (interesting terrain and tactics); system to adjudicate XP rewards for play ouside of combat. PCs felt heroic/cinematic.

I added my own house rules to compensate for areas that I wanted to introduce into my game to encourage player creativity, and add a dark horror and grittier tone to the game (my campaign world was basically a crumbling Forgottten Realms/Ravenloft mix). The system handled these changes perfectly well. Given, time during combat took up a lot more of table time than ever before but they were always very fun and memorable combats. We still had sessions where there was no combat at all though: the game was not dominated nor the adventures we had diminished by these combats. In fact some of the battles we had were so truly epic that I will remember them forever.

So I remain one of the few who has very positive experiences to relate with 4e. I must have introduced at least 12 brand new players to D&D over the 3 years we played 4e in Spain. People from all walks of life with no prior D&D history prejudices or even expectations. I know it has its warts but they seemed easy enough to alter and improve.

My own personal point of view regarding the transition period was very disheartening. I had no particular loyalty to an edition. I just loved D&D. But when I began here at ENWorld (my first contact with an online RPG forum) there was a lot of nastiness, anger and bad blood that I found difficult to understand. It almost turned me away from even becoming part of the RP online community to be honest (and from what I hear, ENWorld was good compared to other places).

Now as 5e comes out, I don't feel any personal anger or negative emotions towards WotC for ending their production of 4e. I applaud their attempt to reunite a fractured fanbase. I remain sceptical that it will provide what I want in terms of tactical combat... but I could be wrong. We will see I guess with the PHB and DMG later this year.

I have been messing around with 5e with my 9 year old son and wife using one of the free adventures created by a member of the ENWorld community. I like the playstyle ... so long as I can turn up the tactical combat dial to 'epic' when the moment is right... well, I may take a closer look.

 

[pemerton]

I'm a proponent of the style of game it ostensibly describes, and I'm getting sick of seeing it. It's becoming a shorthand devoid of nuance, and ultimately doesn't actually describe the important elements of that style.

I would be very interested in a thread that took up and developed this intriguing but (for me, at least) not-fully-spelled-out point

 

[pemerton]

You tend to gloss over this alot in other discussions about page 42... but I think it's a pretty important factor in why the argument that you could use table 42 to replicate powers doesn't fly with many people. They arguably left out the most important part of replicating a power, the conditions it imposes

But the example they gave included a non-damaging effect (namely, forced movement of an ogre). So there was no implication that p 42 didn't include non-damage effects/conditions.

I remember threads in the second half of 2008 with various 4e GMs and players discussing the appropriate range of options for p 42. To my mind it's no different from the current threads discussing DC setting and spell rulings for 5e. This sort of rules adjudication is part and parcel of GMing.

It is particularly odd to see as a criticism of 4e, which is so frequently accused of having made the game a slave to the rules, that some of its rules required GM adjudication.

If anybody states a dislike, depending how they articulate it, they're not claiming sort of universal problem.

The Alexandrian didn't just state a dislike. He stated the playing 4e is not roleplaying, but rather is minis skirmish linked by free-form improv. (I quoted it around 200 or so posts upthread.)

If the Alexandrian (and those who reference him) had referred to "first-person full-immersion games" as a separate thing from "story-games", and left the term RPG out of it - would it have been less "dismissive"?

Well, the problem then would be that The Alexandrian would have to label Wushu some wussy "story game", whereas for whatever reason he wants to keep it firmly in the RPG camp.

Also, most so-called "story games" are, for those who play them, first-person full-immersion games. [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] has articulated this upthread in relation to 4e: 4e's mechanics enable him to immerse in his character in a way that other editions of D&D don't, because in 4e his PC can achieve things that Neonchameleon believes possible based on (i) real world experience, and (ii) genre expectations, whereas in those other editions his character is limited in all sorts of ways that, for Neonchameleon, make no sense and hence obstruct immersion.

I would further add: in real life most people go about their business treating their "zone of control" as more than just their own body. For instance, they stand up on a train and try to get into the aisle taking for granted that the other passengers will, in the conventional fashion, move out of the way. Driving in a modern city depends utterly upon people sharing and acting upon these sorts of expectations (think about merging onto a freeway, for instance, or the interplay between drivers and pedestrians at a typical zebra crossing). To insist that, when RPGing, all this must be mediated through player descriptions of PC bodily motions and then GM arbitration of what the NPCs actually do seems a sure way to disrupt immersion for many players, not just Neonchameleon.

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It is empirically and universally true that our desires do not change the makeup or organization of the world around us.

It is also true that a character's desires change the makeup of the world of 4e in that they desire an item, and find it in a treasure hoard.

The second sentence is not true, as other posters have pointed out. A player's desires can have this effect, when communicated to a GM who is using the wishlist approach to treasure distribution.

this is a mechanic that is largely impossible to play in-character

Which is why I used it to respond to pemerton's (apparent) assertion that it's possible to use mechanics like this in-character.

I didn't assert that it is possible to use such mechanics while in-character. I made the (empirical, psychological) claim that it is possible to be in character and out of character at the same time.

At one-and-the same time, for instance, I can speak a line of dialogue in character, and pick up a pencil (a real world, out of character, option). At one and the same time, I can speak a line of dialogue in character (say, "I bet there are Orcus cultists behind that wall") and achieve something out of character (say, bringing it about that the GM places Orcus cultists in the room on the other side of the wall from my PC). More complex examples are also possible; I posted on upthread in the post to which you replied.

In other words: "In character" and "out of character" are abstract, conceptual, or logical states of affairs, not psychological ones; but immersion is a psychological state of affairs. From the fact that one logical state of affairs is different from, or even the opposite of, another, nothing follows about whether or not a given mind can instantiate them both at once. After all, the note "middle C" is necessarily different from the note "E above middle C", yet a given mind can imagine both at once. (At least if the mind in question is musical enough.)

A debate I had several times with Perm was that he saw 4E putting a lot of narrative control in the hands of the players. We specifically debated the difference between being in a character and being in the role of author.

The role of "being in character" and "being in the role of the author" are, against, abstract or logical roles. As concepts, they are distinct. But a given person, in a given episode of gameplay, can fill both roles at once. Again, I gave an example upthread.

What I don't understand about this entire discussion is the sort of hidden assumption that "The DM rolling a die to look up something on a loot table" is somehow less metagamey than the player and the DM collaborating to come up with a plausible continuation to the story they are collaborating on. In other words, I agree that 4e uses a different method to resolve questions like this, but I don't accept the idea that it's somehow morally impure / less RPG-ish than any other system that has been used since 1e.

I think this is a nice point. The classic treasure tables are not written as world simulations (contrast, say, some of the classic weather generation systems; you might argue a similar metagame/world simulation contrast exists between the classic dungeon encounter tables, and the classic wilderness ones).

These tables are written as metagame tools for rationing player resources. They don't become less metagame by being given to the GM.

It is a matter of taste whether you want the metagaming to be done by the GM or the player.

 

[pemerton]

why are these "deep reserves" apparently specific to each daily

It's implausible because it's not defined.

Personally I prefer to treat martial daily and encounter powers as metagame mechanics rather than to use the flavour-text that [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] has mentioned. But there is no disputing that the flavour text is there for those who want to use it.

Part of the reason that I don't use it is because I don't really have a clear handle on what the "deep reserves" in question would be. What I do find odd, though, is that someone would care about that but not care about what exactly the "clerical training" is that allows a cleric PC but not a pious fighter PC to memorise a 6 second prayer that can work miracles. The fact that "clerical training", "natural armour" etc are mere labels with no actual, articulated fiction behind them is why I characterised them upthread as metagame mechanics.


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Hit point loss being physical damage is now and always has been intuitive.

As I said, I'm one of those who finds those to be a minor problem, right up there with "when's the last time your character actually ate some of his rations?" Up-ending an intuitive system of hit point loss being physical damage to solve one minor issue of proportional healing spells is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

How come you get to decide what is or isn't intuitive, what is baby and what is bathwater? I can tell you that for me, dropping a radically counter-intuitive combat and healing system from classic D&D or 3E in exchange for either a "realistic" system a la RQ or RM, or a "heroic" one a la 4e, is basically a necessary condition for me GMing a FRPG. The pre-4e idea that commoners die from light wounds while high level fighters can suffer multiple critical wounds and keep going is, for me, a literal absurdity.

It's not metagame - you made the attempt, and failed. You still got to make the attempt in the first place; you were simply pre-empted before it reached completion. How is that at all similar to the GM answering "you don't have enough hit points to attack, despite being otherwise fully aware and able to act"?

The point is that, when I declare my archery, the GM answers "You don't have enough action-economy-oomph to do that, despite being otherwise fully aware and able to act and having a 30 DEX compared to the goblin's 6, without drawing an attack of opportunity which is resolved first." What is that associated with? It's pure metagame.

it's still a very inelegant design to have two completely different mechanics to resolve the same action "just because."

It's not "just because". It's for reasons of pacing and genre integrity, as others have explained upthread. You may not be moved by that reason, but (i) it is a reason, and (ii) there are other RPGers (eg me, [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]) whom it does move.

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You keep confusing having the ability to attempt to do anything with actually succeeding in that attempt..

The significance of the line between attempt-but-automatically-fail and not-able-to-attempt eludes me.

Me also.

But there is also a conflation taking place - between the action the player takes in declaring an action, and the action a character attempts. These aren't the same thing in any game with non-continuous initiative, because there is some sort of turn-taking or action declaration aspect to resolution. In 4e, the conventions around action declaration are different from earlier versions of D&D (eg if I want to declare as an action the attempt to do something that replicates an already-used encounter power, I have to declare my action by reference to p 42 instead). But that doesn't mean that my character can't attempt whatever it is that I as a player want him/her to attempt.

The character can try to do anything they want, unless they play 4E.

This is not true for two reasons. First, in much the same way that I can't try and jump to the moon (but probably can try and jump across my office), most PCs in any version of D&D can't try and jump to the moon, or cast a wish spell, or for that matter memorise a wish spell.

Second, a character being played in a 4e game has the same scope to try things as a character in any other RPG. The fact that the conventions around action declaration, and the resolution system - both of which are properties of the real world, not the gameworld - might not be one that you personally enjoy doesn't mean that there is no way of declaring and resolving those attempts.

player agency for their character (those last three words are important too) comes from having their characters be able to exercise what I believe is the central premise of a role-playing game: that anything can be attempted, and that when this isn't so there's an in-game rationale for why such a limitation exists.

I'm ont of those who is sceptical of this "central premise", for the reasons that I and others have given. But in any event, in 4e there is an ingame reason. It just isn't necessarily known in advance.


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It's also still dissociated that one use of that action in an "encounter" is somehow more effective than all the other times.

There are contentious assumptions built into this: for instance, that the encounter power is more effective. But what if the encounter misses, and the stunt hits? Then the stunt was more effective. What if both hit, or both miss? Then they were equally effective. Even if the stunt doesn't do damage, and the encounter power does, if both hit it might be that the stunt is more effective: for instance, if the encounter power does 8 hp of damage leaving the target with 10 hp, and moving the target adjacent to a firepit; and the stunt then hits, does no damage, but pushes the target into the fire pit to take 12 hp of damage, then the stunt was more effective.

Your "somehow more effective" is based entirely on your real-world knowledge of the game mechanics. It has no grounding in the actual events of the gameworld, which will only very rarely correspond to the statistically expected outcomes (and the average 4e campaign certainly won't run enough experiments that one should expect statistical norms to emerge in an observable fashion over time).

It may be that focusing on the mechanics is important for your immersion. For others, it is not - the outcome is what matters. For these others, there is no "dissocation". They know what is happening in the gameworld, and how and why it is happening, and have no puzzles or confusions around the connection between those outcomes and the game mechanics.

The 4E fighter clearly can't trip as well as a 2E fighter

How do you know this? Have you taken a sample of all the D&D games played using 4e mechanics, and all those played using 2nd ed AD&D mechanics, and calculated the proportion of trip attempts to successful trips? Because that is what is required to prove your statement.

I can tell you that the polearm fighter in my 4e game regularly wrongfoots his opponents with his polearm, knocking them prone. I personally don't know of any way to model him in 2nd ed AD&D as remotely comparable in effectiveness, but I can't claim to be on top of all the 2nd ed splat.


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the first time the players try to exercise the character agency that's implicit in the 4E rules, they're going to run into completely artificial restrictions.

The restriction is arbitrary, because it has no corresponding in-game function that it's attempting to model or explain.

There is an ingame function that it's attempting to model or explain - namely, that surprising or dramatic things sometimes happen but generally don't constantly happen. There are other ways to model or explain that same function (eg 13th Age's odds/even rule for fighter special effects, 3E's natural d20 ranges for determining "critical" hits), but that doesn't change the fact that 4e's encounter and daily mechanics are modelling or explain this in-game function.

the problem is that dissociated mechanics impinge on a character's ability to attempt to do anything

Please describe - using language that the inhabitants of the gameworld would use, not language that real world people use when playing a game - what a thing is that a 4e fighter can't attempt, and how "dissociated" mechanics relate to this. All the examples you have given so far have depended upon using power names - but martial powers, if "dissociated"/metagame, are part of the metagame, not part of the gameworld. Which is to say the characters in the gameworld don't know about them, and certainly can't talk about them in explaining their personal capacities for action.

Part of roleplaying a fully realized relatable character is the freedom to attempt anything that seems plausible or likeable for me to attempt.

4e satisfies this desideratum, although perhaps you personally don't care for its action-declaration conventions and other action resolution mechanics.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The second sentence is not true, as other posters have pointed out. A player's desires can have this effect, when communicated to a GM who is using the wishlist approach to treasure distribution.

And as I have since pointed out (though it's been a LOT of posts ), the wishlist is the method recommended in the DMG to meet the DMG's explicit recommendation that the character finds the item that they want to use. Which still isn't something it's really possible to do in-character.

At one-and-the same time, for instance, I can speak a line of dialogue in character, and pick up a pencil (a real world, out of character, option). At one and the same time, I can speak a line of dialogue in character (say, "I bet there are Orcus cultists behind that wall") and achieve something out of character (say, bringing it about that the GM places Orcus cultists in the room on the other side of the wall from my PC). More complex examples are also possible; I posted on upthread in the post to which you replied.

The first example isn't really an "option," mentally-speaking. It's not an active choice within a limited set.

The second example means that, if you are aware of the second part as a player, you cannot say the first part in-character, because your thought process and your character's thought process are not the same thought process.

In other words: "In character" and "out of character" are abstract, conceptual, or logical states of affairs, not psychological ones; but immersion is a psychological state of affairs. From the fact that one logical state of affairs is different from, or even the opposite of, another, nothing follows about whether or not a given mind can instantiate them both at once.

To be super-clinical about it:

1. When we are angry, we make choices that are different from when we are happy, or scared. This suggests that emotional states significantly influence decision-making.
2. Emotional states are discrete, measurable, and physiologically distinct (per Ekman). Thus, for instance one cannot be simultaneously both angry and sad (as those terms would be psychologically employed) -- these emotions have different effects on the body and behavior of an individual. They are different contexts for making a decision.
3. The emotional state of the character is distinct from the emotional state of the player. When the character may be anxious or scared, we as a player might be happy or excited.
4. Other players at the table understand the nature of our character via our semiotics, which are primarily in-play defined by the game actions are character takes, which are in turn defined by the emotions we imagine our character is experiencing (per point 1). Thus, to communicate the idea of our character being anxious ("I bet there are goblins on the other side of this door"), we will adopt our character's emotional state, and necessarily (because emotions are discrete) leave our own. We will stop being happy for a moment and become anxious to make the decision "in-character"
5. To adopt your character's emotional state, you will imagine being in their situation, presented with the same context that they are, using your imagination to go to a place that never actually existed. In this, you imagine the fictional context, and as your focus is on that context, your own context must be overwritten in parts, so as to bring forth a distinct, discrete emotion in the performance of your character that you as a player do not have.
6. This abandoning of your own emotional state for your character's furthers the gameplay aesthetic of abnegation, as it literally allows you to leave your own mind, emotionally and contextually.

Which is why when you as a player decide there are orcs behind the door, or give the DM a list of items you will then find in hoards, you are not doing it in-character -- you are not inhabiting the same emotional state as your character (who cannot do these things, and so whose emotional state cannot be influenced by these things).

There is significant variation in an individual's tolerance for this in gameplay, as there is significant variation in the aesthetics sought in gameplay -- not everyone comes to TTRPGs seeking primarily abnegative aesthetics. Some people value that much more highly than others, leading to greater sensitivity when that is disrupted by, for instance, being forced to imagine the game context rather than the fictional context.

Which means that you actually cannot both experience your character's fear about what lies behind the door and simultaneously determine if that fear is founded.

 

[Pickles JG]

And as I have since pointed out (though it's been a LOT of posts ), the wishlist is the method recommended in the DMG to meet the DMG's explicit recommendation that the character finds the item that they want to use. Which still isn't something it's really possible to do in-character.

The character finds the item the PLAYER wants. This seems to be a completely metagame mechanic bu there is no reason to assume the character has any idea that the items she finds will be oness that perfectly suit her.

Meahwhie back at martial dailies &c
I can’t see how my 4e fighter is less capable of tripping than a 2e or not optimised 3e one. I can try to do anything I can think of. The encounter powers I have give me the ability to exceed the usual limits every so often, they are enabling rather than restricting.
My take on them is more like the declarations from FATE or EotE than a physical limitation. Once per scene I am allowed to rule that the ideal opening for my characters power has arisen & I can make an attack with increased chances of getting the desired outcome. Dailies I feel have more of an “exceptional effort” flavour to them but are still mostly about the player framing the scene rather than the character being limited in some way.
I guess that I “reassociate” the power by making this distinction –ie as a player I cause the opportunity to use a power arise & in character I see that this opening has arisen & make use of the opportunity to launch a well directed assault. As Pemerton points out earlier I can do both of these things at the same time without breaking my immersion.
I ran some 3e games with increased player author rights, well 40k using d20 Modern anyway. I used to call it Fengshuiing it as that was where I got the idea from, that of describing a broad setting & letting the players fill in the banks with features they found interesting or useful or fun. I guess I carried that into 4e without really noticing.
When I originally poked this bear by mentioning hit points I meant to also mention levels. How do people feel about these in terms of the player/character/fictional world split?