What's wrong with them being physical abilities (though, really, there are plenty of non-magical mental abilities, too).
What's wrong with them being physical abilities is that that's a dissociated mechanic. We know how physical abilities work, and they don't work like that - except the game says that they do for those, but not for anything else, placing a metagame restriction on physical powers that's not reinforced by what's presented within the context of the game world.
Tony Vargas said:
It's not like the word is meaningless. The meaning is quite clear, the hero can make super-human efforts of strength, courage, and so forth, but cannot do so without limit. When he doesn't make such an effort, he is keeping those extraordinary resources 'in reserve.' Thus 'reserves.' It's a perfectly normal, English-language use of the word, not even the crazy jargon that the mechanics side relies upon so heavily.
The meaning is in no way clear. Without any further clarification, we're left to make the presumption (as suggested by the fighter's non-magical presentation overall) that these are physical abilities, and while we intuitively know how a "reserve" of physical ability would work, we also intuitively know that it doesn't work the way it's presented in the books. Ergo, the book's presentation is therefore telling us something different...but not telling us what or how. Hence the dissociation.
Well, sure, IRL, /usually/. OTOH, you can be exhausted from doing knowledge work and unable to make progress, but well-able to go outside play a game of basketball.
That's an apples-to-oranges comparison. Concentrating too hard on trying to read a textbook isn't going to physically exhaust your muscles the same way a game of basketball will. The idea of deep physical reserves that are partitioned to specific actions is like saying you can play a game of basketball until it exhausts you, and then you'll be too tired to play basketball again (very well), but still have the ability to go play a game of football at your peak performance.
Tony Vargas said:
But, really, why would the limitations of real people, doing ordinary things, have any bearing on what heroic characters from a fantasy story might or might not do?
You've inverted the question. The game is saying that you
can't use an encounter or daily power again immediately (with the same level of effectiveness), despite having "deep reserves" that are available for other abilities. If in the real world I'd be able to spend those "deep reserves" on using the same stunt a second time, why is a fantasy game - with ostensibly greater freedom of action - placing a limitation on me from doing that?
These dissociated mechanics are the limits.
Tony Vargas said:
That sounds like you're getting meta-gamey, there. If the character knows that if he makes the extraordinary effort to pull off a dramatic stunt, that he won't be able to do it again, as well, right away - and the player knows he has an encounter power and recourse to p42, what's dissociated?
The fact that there's no reason for why the character to say "well, I can't do that again until my next fight, despite being able to do everything else just fine, for no particular reason that I'm aware of."
Again, metagame mechanics aren't the issue - the issue is when they're dissociated.
Tony Vargas said:
I mean, if you're saying the player needs to know /better/ than the character the explanation for the limitation, /that/ sounds like breaking association more than establishing it.
At this point, it'd be a breakthrough if the character understood why they're being limited. The nature of a dissociated mechanic is that the player already knows better what's going on than what the character does, since there's an out-of-game reason for a restriction that has no corresponding in-game representation.
Tony Vargas said:
You're begging the question. You claim that 'deep reserves' can't be discrete because they're not magical. Why not? What makes you think all non-magical ability is absolutely generic?
The burden of proof that a non-supernatural ability isn't "generic" (though I'm not sure what you mean by that term) is on it to explain, not on us to presume. If something presents itself as being an ability found in the real world, and then changes the basic assumptions of how it functions, it needs to explain the what and how of what's changed.
Tony Vargas said:
In fantasy, magical and non-magical abilities both tend to be represented as being unique skills and talents. A great swordsman isn't automatically also a great poet. A wizard who can conjure lightning can't necessarily make it rain. If anything, magic is more often depicted as a generic resource.
I'm honestly not sure what you're saying here. The issue isn't that "deep reserves" can't be spent to compose a sonnet or something - it's that they're presenting themselves as a reservoir of sudden physical prowess, akin to a burst of adrenaline, that pushes you to great heights for a particular task, but then leaves you too tired to do that again...except for performing any other task.
Tony Vargas said:
How magic works is generally /not explained at all/. If not explaining why something works a certain way, only that it does work that way, is not
Magic is explained, always. However it works within the context of the game world is implicit in what the characters know and can perceive. Even if you don't say precisely
why each spell must be prepared as a discrete package of magical power, the characters still know that that's the only way it can be. Magic always has an in-game representation, and this representation is always associated because magic gets to set what its own limits are.
Tony Vargas said:
We know that, in 4e, per the PH1, that martial exploits are /not/ supernatural, but can perform superhuman feats. Preternatural sums that up neatly. So, the 'deep reserves' that make martial dailies associative, are not magic and not supernatural, but they are clearly extraordinary - not something just everyone has, for instance. That's seems perfectly reasonable, plausible and consistent with such abilities being possessed by heroic figures in a fantasy setting.
You're splitting definitions here. If you want to say that fighter powers are a supernatural/preternatural/non-natural power, then just say that. Once you stop saying that it's just a burst of physical ability with no non-natural aspects to it whatsoever, then the problem falls away.
Tony Vargas said:
What do you mean by a 'conventional understanding of the way things work?' The way things are conventionally understood to work in the fantasy genre, for instance, includes magic - and includes heroes who don't use magic, yet perform all sorts of super-human feats, and would be fairly well-defined by the set of common genre memes and tropes. If you mean that magic isn't bound by the understanding of people who don't understand magic - well, sure, that's a given.
I'm saying that if you present something as working in a manner analogous to how it works in real life - which includes physical abilities with no superpreternatural aspects to them - then that's the baseline that they're going to be measured against. Changing an aspect of them in that regard will require an explanation so that you can associate how their alterations are represented in the game world.
Tony Vargas said:
And if magic has no defining characteristics, then it explains nothing (as in the case of the English language idiom 'like magic'), and is neither reasonable nor plausible nor understandable by the character, and thus /always/ dissociative at the level of rigour you're demanding of the explanation of martial dailies, above.
Magic is
never dissociative, because it's always understandable by the character - magic has no real world analogue to be held against, and so is always self-defined. Something I've said many times now which you still don't seem to understand.
pemerton said:
Personally I prefer to treat martial daily and encounter powers as metagame mechanics rather than to use the flavour-text that @Tony Vargas has mentioned. But there is no disputing that the flavour text is there for those who want to use it.
Flavor text alone isn't enough. It needs to associate the metagame power with the in-game effect.
pemerton said:
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.
Nobody has a clear idea exactly what "deep reserves" are, since they're ostensibly presenting themselves as purely physical abilities and then performing in a manner that's clearly different than that.
With regards to the clerical training thing, I'm not sure I see what the problem is. Clerical training is associated in terms of mechanics and in-game effects - you have a cleric class (and spellcasting progression) that represents some sort of spiritual/religious/occult training that forges a strong enough connection to a deity that lets it (at its choosing) grant you spells. You don't need every detail meticulously defined to have something be associated - if you want your fighter to undergo the proper piety rituals that will grant him the ability to cast clerical spells, you have an associated method of doing that: he can take a level of cleric.
pemerton said:
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.
Right back at you: how come
you get to decide what is an isn't an absurdity? I can tell you that for me, dropping a highly intuitive combat and healing system for a dissociated one like in 4E is a deal-breaker for me GMing a FRPG. The idea that a
cure light wounds can save a dying commoner but just heal scratches for a high-level hero is too small an issue to discard a system that otherwise works near-perfectly.
Seriously, if your only counterpoint is "that's just your opinion, I have my own," then you should know ahead of time that the response is "no kidding, I know that and I don't dispute that and there's nothing wrong with that, so why are you bringing that point up at all?"
Some of this discussion could be considered questions of fact - if something is or is not dissociated, for example. For the rest of it, it's understood to be a matter of personal preference.
pemerton said:
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 not "pure" metagame - it's associated because there's an in-game reason for it. You left yourself open in a matter that, despite your high Dexterity (seriously, why would that mean that you're somehow never going to leave an opening in combat?), allowed an enemy to get the drop on you. It's right there in the name "attack of opportunity." That's an example of associated mechanics in action - there's a strong connection between what the mechanics are and what they're telling us about what's happening from an in-game perspective.
pemerton said:
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, TwoSix) whom it does move.
From an in-game standpoint, that is "just because." If it's not associated, then it has no in-character analogue for why something with a measurable in-game impact is happening.
pemerton said:
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 player's declaration of his character's action and the action the character attempts are the same thing. That's at the core of associated mechanics, and rightly so.
The idea that turn-based initiative/combat somehow breaks that association is a fiction. The segmenting of actions and turns that the player perceives is merely a manner of presentation - the characters do not act one after another; rather, the actions all happen simultaneously, with those that are higher on the initiative order merely happening to land first. Since there's no in-character recognition of when one turn ends and another begins, there's thusly no in-game understanding that one character is "always going before" another - if you're going at a 10 and another character goes on a 3, it might look to them like they're going before you do, since they don't see the "break" between the end of round one and the beginning of round two.
pemerton said:
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.
I'm honestly confused as to what you're saying here. PCs in any version of the game can try to jump to the moon - they'll just fail (that's as true as 4E as it is elsewhere). On the other hand, a PC in 4E can't try to trip someone more than once without suddenly getting worse at it for no particular in-game reason, whereas that's not the case for a PC in a previous edition.
pemerton said:
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.
The fact that you're impinging on the attempt's effectiveness, which is noticeable from an in-game standpoint, for no in-game reason, says otherwise. That is abrogating the character's ability to try to do anything, since there's no explanation for why he's suddenly more prone to failure.
pemerton said:
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.
There is no in-game reason, at least not one that could be called reasonable. If you say the character can't suddenly trip because they're tired, then why are they not so tired that it affects any of their other abilities at all? If it's because the enemy is now wise to their tricks, then why doesn't it work at full effectiveness against enemies that have just arrived and didn't see the character perform that stunt previously? If it's because of bad luck, then why is it now consistently worse with no eventual stroke of good luck?
These reasons all fail upon even casual examination. Hence why it's dubious to say that these dissociated mechanics have an in-game association due to you being able to hang flavor text on them.
pemerton said:
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.
This presumes that "effectiveness" is somehow judged by the results, rather than by the degree of ability with which it can be performed (or that the character is unaware of what the penalties or diminished possible results from an in-game standpoint). If one attempt just requires a comparatively modest attack roll, and another requires a very high stunt check, these different mechanics presumably have some sort of in-game analogue for why a different mechanic is being used. In that case, there's going to be an in-character understanding that the stunt mechanics (which have already been determined to be worse for the character to use, hence why the encounter and daily powers are presented as limited resources) are less effective overall.
If a character fails an attack roll that has no penalties, and then makes an attack roll that has major penalties, those penalties themselves have an in-game representation. Ergo, the character will know that the second attack was less efficacious as an attack unto itself - it simply succeeded despite that.
pemerton said:
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).
See above. Those game mechanics are associated, and so represent something to the character. It has firm grounding in what's happening as the character perceives it.
pemerton said:
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.
Which leaves the problematic issue of Schrodinger's paradox, since then you are actually unable to define something until you attempt to resolve it. Hence the issue with warlords shouting wounds closed.
pemerton said:
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 know this because the 4E fighter tries to trip once, and then suddenly sucks at tripping again immediately afterwards, for no particular in-game reason. The 2E fighter doesn't suddenly get worse at something after trying it once.
pemerton said:
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.
See above. That's not an issue of mathematics - it's an issue of one character suddenly having penalties for no in-game reason, while the other doesn't.
pemerton said:
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.
That rationale quickly falls apart if events don't play out in a way that pre-emptively supports that particular method of resolution. As noted above, explaining the lack of ability to trip as well as you just did as fatigue doesn't work when noted against a wider backdrop of a lack of fatigue, etc.
pemerton said:
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.
See above. Having no reasonable explanation for why his effectiveness has suddenly taken a massive hit is a dissociated mechanic that doesn't allow them to attempt to do something; in this case, to try and trip again without finding themselves suddenly gimped.
The in-character narrative would be "I quickly went to trip the new guards that had just been summoned. But for some reason, I still couldn't try to knock him over as well as I had tripped that first guy. Was it because I was too tired? No, I still felt perfectly able to perform my Spinning Hurricane Slash without any fatigue inhibiting me. Was it because these new guards were wise to my tricks? No, they had just arrived, and hadn't seen me use them before. Was it because I was just suddenly really unlucky? No, at some point I should have gotten lucky again, after all these waves of guards had arrived. No...there was some sort of force or effect making me suddenly be terrible at a move I had just recently performed so well. But what? What?"
