Confirm or Deny: D&D4e would be going strong had it not been titled D&D

[pemerton]

Guys, no one is coming out as the rational or non-vitriolic party at this point.

Can you point to anyone in this thread, other than a single poster, who has called a whole edition's-worth of players munchkins?

Do you think that me saying I don't like Power Attack is the same as a poster telling me that I am a munhkin (= bad RPGer - it's not an ambiguous term) because I like and play 4e?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Anyhow, the wizards-heal-begone thing as well as many other D&D issues aren't a matter of dissociation as JA has apparently defined the term; and that's my point. It's a term which exists to single out one particular variety of mechanics -- specifically with regards to one particular edition of one particular game, hmmm -- in a game and hobby full of 'Er, what exactly does this mean in the game world?' mechanics. For the sake of your own potential gamer audience, I do hope you're not so selective.

I am not sure what you are referring to with wizard heal be gone, we may have got our wires crossed on that one. I think the term is actually very useful, though it did arise out of debates occurring around edition transition. I don't think it is as arbitrary or selective as you seem to think. Again I am not going to debate point by point because there is a strong subjective element to it. It is also one of these things where the issue is how glaring the problem is throughout a system, how easy it is to ignore where it does exist, etc. A lot of times you get these back and forths on the concept that go on endlessly. I have zero interest in that discussion these days because I just end up reading arguments I've seen before and making points I've made 1000 times.

With my own material, the standard we employ is simply whether we find it dissociative in play. I don't care if people can analyze it afterwards and find something dissociative. To me that isn't very important. What is important is if people notice it as they are actually playing. When that occurs, it is a good indication to me that I need to change stuff around a bit.

 

[pemerton]

In what way is the math of power attack hard?

Because without probabilistic calculations you can't tell whether using the feat is increasing or reducing your damage output.

It is true that the average damage per round math is a bit more complex than an initial review would indicate

<snio>

Overuse may make the character hit less often and, in the long run, do less damage over time.

How is it good feat design that, unless you can do the maths, the feat you took to increase your damage output might result in you doing less damage over time?

And in the fiction, what is happening? The expert fighter is continually misjudging his/her attacks and swinging wildly but wide? To me, the whole thing is absurd. It's purely metagame, playing the maths of the system.

A better approach to modelling wild or reckless attacks would be to take a penalty to AC in order to gain a damage bonus.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Can you point to anyone in this thread, other than a single poster, who has called a whole edition's-worth of players munchkins?

I never claimed that anyone said a whole edition worth of players was munchkins on either side. So I don't see why I need to identify posters who have done so. There has been plenty of snark to go around on both sides. Do you genuinely believe this is a discussion where one side is made up of innocent people who've been nothing but nice and the other is made up of instigators who have been needlessly cruel?

If you only see negative or hostile remarks from one side of this debate, then you are being pretty selective in your reading.

 

[pemerton]

A brief repost seems in order:

Justin Alexander says

In the case of Wushu, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of narrative control. In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game.​

The "narrative control" that he refers to in relation to Wushu has, some paragraphs earlier in his essay, been described as follows:

“I leap into the air (1), drawing my swords in a single fluid motion (2), parrying the samurai’s sword as I pass above his head (3), and land behind him (4).”

. . .

n the case of Wushu these mechanics were designed to encourage dynamic, over-the-top action sequences: Since it’s just as easy to slide dramatically under a car and emerge on the other side with guns blazing as it is to duck behind cover and lay down suppressing fire, the mechanics make it possible for the players to do whatever the coolest thing they can possibly think of is (without worrying about whether or not the awesomeness they’re imagining will make it too difficult for their character to pull it off).​

No doubt it's obvious to Justin Alexander why leaping into the air, drawing one's swords in a single fluid motion, parrying the samuria's sword and landing behind him; or sliding dramatically under a car and emerging on the other side with guns blazing; is awesome narrative control, whereas having the goblins charge the fighter but be cut down en route (Come and Get It); or having the sorcerer teleport out of the exploding fireball, thereby taking no damage (Swift Escape); or having the evil war devil's allies besiege a protagonist (Besieged Foe); is not awesome at all but rather a mere "tactical miniatures game".

But the difference escapes me. My take-away is that Alexander enjoys Wushu, doesn't enjoy 4e - perhaps because it uses too many miniatures and not enough cars? - and felt the need to write thousands of words explaining why this wasn't a mere preference for cars over miniatures, but was an intellectually-driven choice that any rational person should agree with.

 

[pemerton]

I never claimed that anyone said a whole edition worth of players was munchkins on either side.

No. I did. I refer you to post 198 upthread. That is the post that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and I called out. I took you to be implying that that post was no different in tone or language or invective from the rest of the thread.

 

[Bedrockgames]

A brief repost seems in order:

Justin Alexander says

In the case of Wushu, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of narrative control. In the case of 4th Edition, fidelity to the game world is being traded off in favor of a tactical miniatures game.​

The "narrative control" that he refers to in relation to Wushu has, some paragraphs earlier in his essay, been described as follows:

“I leap into the air (1), drawing my swords in a single fluid motion (2), parrying the samurai’s sword as I pass above his head (3), and land behind him (4).”

. . .

n the case of Wushu these mechanics were designed to encourage dynamic, over-the-top action sequences: Since it’s just as easy to slide dramatically under a car and emerge on the other side with guns blazing as it is to duck behind cover and lay down suppressing fire, the mechanics make it possible for the players to do whatever the coolest thing they can possibly think of is (without worrying about whether or not the awesomeness they’re imagining will make it too difficult for their character to pull it off).​

No doubt it's obvious to Justin Alexander why leaping into the air, drawing one's swords in a single fluid motion, parrying the samuria's sword and landing behind him; or sliding dramatically under a car and emerging on the other side with guns blazing; is awesome narrative control, whereas having the goblins charge the fighter but be cut down en route (Come and Get It); or having the sorcerer teleport out of the exploding fireball, thereby taking no damage (Swift Escape); or having the evil war devil's allies besiege a protagonist (Besieged Foe); is not awesome at all but rather a mere "tactical miniatures game".

But the difference escapes me. My take-away is that Alexander enjoys Wushu, doesn't enjoy 4e - perhaps because it uses too many miniatures and not enough cars? - and felt the need to write thousands of words explaining why this wasn't a mere preference for cars over miniatures, but was an intellectually-driven choice that any rational person should agree with.

You'd have to ask Justin Alexander, or read the parts of the essay where he explains why he is okay with it in Wushu but not so much in 4E. I don't think you will agree with his conclusions but his reasoning won't be a mystery to you any longer.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No. I did. I refer you to post 198 upthread. That is the post that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and I called out. I took you to be implying that that post was no different in tone or language or invective from the rest of the thread.

I was suggesting that overall in this discussions I've seen about equal amounts of vitriol and invective from both sides. I wasn't making any connection at all to specific posts or specific insults.

 

[Wicht]

Sadly, the on-again-off-again infravision thing was before my time, so the best citation I can provide is Old Geezer on rpg.net.

Yeah, I've played across 5 or so editions since 1982 and I don't recall ever having such a thing happening.

Now what did occur, iirc, was infravision would not work in areas in which there was torch light (heat messing with the senses don't you know) so that if you wanted to use infravision you needed to be outside the area of the torchlight (which could work as those with infravision stayed in the lead as scouts). But it was not an on again, off again thing for game balance - it was trying to define infravision as heat vision (which had its own sort of quirky problems; darkvision is a vast improvement in that regards).

I can however point you to page 182 of the 2e DMG, under the 'Light Generation' heading for the PC-sensing magical swords.

Eh, the inability to turn off the light of a magical sword is given, not as a hard and fast rule, but as something a DM could do if chosen: "The DM can rule that magical weapons shed light... and can't be concealed when drawn."

But in practice, in my experience, light shedding swords tended to have an on/off switch and/or an activating factor (ala Sting and Orcs). Again, it was mostly a DM style thing as to how to make it work story-wise...

Speaking of magic swords, what happens when a pre-3e wizard picks one up and gives it a swing, despite not having magic swords on their list of allowed magical items?

Normally, they took a penalty to their attack, unless they had multi-classed.

What's the in-world explanation for every single member of demihuman races being restricted from certain classes, regardless of birthplace or upbringing? How about wizards being unable to add looted spells to their repertoire beyond a certain limit based on Int, regardless of how many or how big their spell books are? (PHB, page 17.) Why does changing alignment involuntarily have no effect on xp, but changing voluntarily suddenly makes it twice as hard to learn everything from sword-swinging to spell-slinging? (DMG page 28-29.)

Speaking of positive and negative energy in WotC D&D, why is one in the necro school while the other is in conjuration? Speaking of 3.x, why do rogues get a single odd optional 1/day feature? Nobody seems to have a problem with monks stunning people with a single blow, because monks are quasi-magical kung-fu masters, but what exactly is happening when a fighter takes the Stunning Fist feat and starts stunning stuff X/day? And out of curiosity, how are these things different from the martial daily exploits you don't like, other than being oddities within their own edition?

I'm sure you could think of explanations for these things, as well as all of the other oddities which permeate D&D, just like you did for the wizard-heal-begone tradition.

Rather than deal with these point by point (unless you really want someone too...), let me make two points...

One, you remind me, in part why I felt like the 3e rules were so readily adopted, in that, they made canon certain things that many of us were already doing, via house-rules, such as allowing demihumans to take whatever classes they wanted,...

Two, I have already said, I think, that all of these things are highly subjective matters of personal taste. What bugs one person in one context may not bug another, and that same thing may not even bug the original person in a slightly different context. A lot of times it all boils down to how well a person can rationalize any given mechanic. And some of it is simply presentation and options. In, for instance the case of the Stunning Fist, not every fighter was forced to choose such an option in 3e. By forcing the choice, I think 4e misstepped by not allowing those for whom it might be problematic with having alternatives. Secondly, DnD has traditionally put a limit on many player chosen supernatural effects (ie Vancian Spellcasting). If one views Stunning Fist as a supernatural effect then there is less disconnect. But, again, if one then forces this choice on all fighters, one runs the risk of having a subset of the population interpret (because of traditional interpretation) all fighter effects as suddenly being supernatural. Which I think did happen. While some could internally rationalize it as different than this, others could not. This is not to say one side or the other was right, it is simply what it is: a matter of taste and individual perception.

 

[Wicht]

Can you point to anyone in this thread, other than a single poster, who has called a whole edition's-worth of players munchkins?

Do you think that me saying I don't like Power Attack is the same as a poster telling me that I am a munhkin (= bad RPGer - it's not an ambiguous term) because I like and play 4e?

As Mr Vargas has already pointed out, part of the problem here is that for at least one person posting, English is a Second Language. It would be kindly to read his posts as charitable as possible, as sometimes, even people who have mastered the language have difficulty conveying their actual attitude via the written word.