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

[Dannyalcatraz]

See also boxers- quick jabs tend to land more often than haymakers. Smarter boxers use their quicker, more accurate strikes to wear down their opponent's defenses and confuse them, setting them up for the more powerful finishing blows.

 

[Wicht]

See also boxers- quick jabs tend to land more often than haymakers. Smarter boxers use their quicker, more accurate strikes to wear down their opponent's defenses and confuse them, setting them up for the more powerful finishing blows.

Wait a moment - you mean that good boxers can use both the quick jabs and the powerful finishing blows.... in the same fight!

Whoa.....

Mind blown.

 

[Bluenose]

I don't get that. You decide to put more focus into swinging really hard then you do aiming. Why is that ridiculous? Or dissociated from what the character might actually attempt? What am I missing?

That's a description of the results, not the method. What does the character do to achieve those results? Does aiming where the opponent isn't mean you swing harder? Does Does it represent swinging so hard that you overbalance (costing accuracy) but miraculously manage to retain enough of timing and momentum in your swing that you happen to hit the opponent at just the right moment to maximise the effect - while simulataneously recovering your balance enough to make more swings immediately and to not be compromised on defence? How, basically, does it work. For the purposes of immersion and not-dissociation, where the character is choosing to do something that increases damage and reduces accuracy in an entirely reliable and predictable way?

See also boxers- quick jabs tend to land more often than haymakers. Smarter boxers use their quicker, more accurate strikes to wear down their opponent's defenses and confuse them, setting them up for the more powerful finishing blows.

Some do that. But there's more than two ways to operate, and the idea that one is "smart" and the others aren't doesn't hold up. Apart from anything else, most boxers relying on quick jabs throw a lot more misses (or at least punches that get blocked) than people throwing a smaller number of heavy punches - as shown by statistics from professional bouts.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That's a description of the results, not the method. What does the character do to achieve those results? Does aiming where the opponent isn't mean you swing harder? Does Does it represent swinging so hard that you overbalance (costing accuracy) but miraculously manage to retain enough of timing and momentum in your swing that you happen to hit the opponent at just the right moment to maximise the effect - while simulataneously recovering your balance enough to make more swings immediately and to not be compromised on defence? How, basically, does it work. For the purposes of immersion and not-dissociation, where the character is choosing to do something that increases damage and reduces accuracy in an entirely reliable and predictable way?
.

This is a level of hairsplitting people who worry about dissociation are not usually concerned with (unless they are playing a game that is super focused on realism). "I swing harder than usual" is something your character does. So there is no disconnection between power attack and what your character is doing. Yes you could always break it down into smaller parts. I've just never played with people who worry that much about the details. If they were doing so though, power attack wouldn't be a problem because it would just be a matter of determining when power attack because relevant and needs to be invoked. The fundamental metric is "is the character putting more power into the attack in a way that would reduce accuracy".

Dissociative and abstract are not the same thing.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Some do that. But there's more than two ways to operate, and the idea that one is "smart" and the others aren't doesn't hold up. Apart from anything else, most boxers relying on quick jabs throw a lot more misses (or at least punches that get blocked) than people throwing a smaller number of heavy punches - as shown by statistics from professional bouts.

I used to box for a hobby and I think this is the sort of thing one can cut up any number of ways. There are a lot of subtleties in a real fight that a system will only capture a glimpse of and most people I know with a background in this stuff who also play RPGs all generally disagree on how it should be represented mechanically. So i am always wary of bringing this real world stuff into gaming myself even though I do have experience with it.

It is true, you throw a lot of jabs and many don't land. That isn't really their purpose. Jabs can be either deployed at high volume with the intent to pepper and fluster your opponent, but there is also the stiff jab, and that is different. The stiff jab you choose more carefully and that is going to be more accurate than a power shot.

I think this gets really complicated though because if you just go in throwing bombs. Most of them will miss. But throwing bombs is exhausting so people generally don't do that. Instead they carefully pick when they throw their bombs and they usually do it following a combo. So if you really want to get into how to model that, I would go with the method I mentioned earlier with heavy attacks somehow depleting energy (for example temporary con loss). But lowered accuracy also jives with a heavier hit, so I think that is accurate too. But bombs are harder to land, that is why you have to carefully set them up. The basic problem is people can see them coming more than the can see a quick jab or a quick cross coming. If you just charge in throwing heavy hooks, heavy crosses and overhand rights, they'll see those coming. People throw combos and set people up for heavy shots so they can catch them off guard.

Importantly though, we aren't really talking about boxing. We are talking about guys with swords. I don't know much about that at all. All that matters to me in terms of dissociative mechanics is if I experience a striking disconnect between the action my character is taking and the mechanic itself. Power attack doesn't create that problem for me. I'm sure some do find it dissociative but it is not usually a point I here people raise about it.

 

[Wicht]

That's a description of the results, not the method. What does the character do to achieve those results?

The player rolls the dice.

Seriously.

There is a certain level of abstraction to all of this, and in the end, what the Player is doing is describing what they want the character to attempt to do - the dice and abilities (such as feats) determine how successful they are.

As for how well the feat mirrors actual possibilities, I actually think of splitting wood when I think of Power Attack. I know that I can put more power into any given swing to split a log, but that I also don't aim quite as well when I do so. Likewise the swing set-up is slower. Often, I will begin to split with slightly weaker, but well aimed shots and then when the wood is prepped with an initial crack, I will go for the power swing. Or sometimes, if the wood grain is nice and straight, I start with the power swing and hope for the best,... but I still never aim quite as well when I put more energy into the swing.

So the idea works for me. ymmv

 

[Tony Vargas]

This is a level of hairsplitting people who worry about dissociation are not usually concerned with

People worried about dissociating are hairsplitting to begin with, quibbling with implications of how you might translate abstract game mechanics into imagined actions of imaginary characters in an imaginary world.

(unless they are playing a game that is super focused on realism). "I swing harder than usual" is something your character does. So there is no disconnection between power attack and what your character is doing.

There's no disconnect between other abstract mechanics and in-game events, either, unless you force their to be. Power Attack? Obviously if you're swinging a lot harder, that's obvious to your enemy, and he'll make more of an effort to avoid it, thus the penalty. But, wait! Your enemy can't decide /not/ to do so, nor can he decide to make that extra effort when he's low oh hps, so you're exercising control over something other than your character when you Power Attack! Oh no, another dissociative mechanic!

It's not, really, because no mechanic ever is, only the visualization constructed by the player to /make/ it dissociative is. As you point out, it's easy to, instead, imagine power attack as simply swinging harder, but wildly. Just as it's easy to imagine Action Surge and Battlemaster CS dice as being 'exhausting,' even though using up one doesn't exhaust the other, rather than the player decision somehow forcing circumstances not under the PC's control. Just as it's easy to imagine any martial encounter or daily in 4e, exactly as the PH1 described them, as being exhausting in the same, 'selective' way that Action Surge, Second Wind, and CS dice are in 5e and Stunning Fist, Rage, and a few other extraordinary powers in 3.5 were.

Dissociative and abstract are not the same thing.

True. Abstraction is real.

However, they are closely related: any dissociative mechanic is going to be abstract, because it's abstraction that leaves room to manufacture the disconnect. And, of course, because any TTRPG mechanic is necessarily abstract.
If you find any mechanic not to be dissociative, you just haven't tried hard enough to come up with an inappropriate enough way of imagining it.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I am not sure what you are referring to with wizard heal be gone, we may have got our wires crossed on that one.

Yeah, sorry, this is just me being playful with words to talk about D&D's wizards-can't-heal tradition.

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.

Agreed on pretty much all counts, and that sounds like a great game design strategy. My point is that dissociative mechanics are only one variety of 'Er, what exactly does this mean in the game world?' stuff that can jar players during actual play.

Rather than deal with these point by point (unless you really want someone too...)

No, I'm quite happy to leave them as open questions, because the answers aren't important. I'm throwing these questions out to demonstrate how full of immersive hurdles D&D has been from the start. Your willingness to invent explanations for -- or to rationalize, as you say -- many of the traditional questions matches the subjective state of things that you point out. Gamers tend to internalize explanations for many of these questions when they're young, when things are fresh and new and before they develop critical thinking skills. Sometimes even to the point of conflating explanations they learned from their first DM with missing textual explanation. I did it, and I'm sure you did too.

But then we get older, and we lose a certain amount of adaptability. New questions no more difficult to answer than old questions become deal-breakers because we're comfortable with the familiar, and lack the mental energy to assimilate the new. And this is where 4e overstepped, as you say, with many traditional D&Ders. Too much too soon, as it were.

Your acceptance of optional X/day abilities is totally understandable, btw, and your explanation of Stunning Fist being a supernatural ability is essentially how I explain daily and encounter exploits.

 

[Wicht]

Your acceptance of optional X/day abilities is totally understandable, btw, and your explanation of Stunning Fist being a supernatural ability is essentially how I explain daily and encounter exploits.

Which I think is actually at the heart of a lot of the dissatisfaction which occurred...

Turning all Fighters into mystic warriors loses a lot of potential tropes (cf. Conan). There's nothing inherently wrong with such stories and for certain settings (Wuxia, Fantasy Anime, Power Ball Z, etc.) it works just fine. But if you want to play a more traditional sword and sorcery where your fighter is just a guy really good at shoving half a yard of steel into things, then you might have a harder time making the mental adjustment.

My younger son thinks of 4e as a "Super-heroes" fantasy game. That was his first impression when we looked at the rules and it has stuck with him to this day. And, again, while there is nothing wrong with such a thing, if that's how you perceive it,you can't tell all the same stories with it that you can tell with another system, at least not in the same way, or perhaps not as easily.

 

[Erechel]

Dissociative and abstract are not the same thing.

I certainly agree with that. Dissociative is something purely mechanical with no in-world explanation or reason. Abstraction is putting mathematics to work for science/ gaming/ etc; yes, the character won't probably know about them, but he can explain what he do more or less accurately. It is the reason of an abstract "to hit" number to reflect the ability to punch someone.

Importantly though, we aren't really talking about boxing. We are talking about guys with swords. I don't know much about that at all. All that matters to me in terms of dissociative mechanics is if I experience a striking disconnect between the action my character is taking and the mechanic itself. Power attack doesn't create that problem for me. I'm sure some do find it dissociative but it is not usually a point I here people raise about it.

I use to practice with "sort of medieval" (medieval reenactment is more a matter of assumptions and conjectures than of a real tradition, but there are some books, like the one of Hans Talhoffer) swordsmanship for two years straight in Buenos Aires. There is a concept called "Charge" (I really don't know how to properly translate it to English, but this word is an approximation). It is the amount of swing that you make with the sword before launching an attack. This actually "charges" your weapon with kinetic energy. There are three different "charges": complete, direct, and altered. Altered is the fastest one, is a slight move from the wrist to make minimal damage but to bother and frighten your rival; it is very physically demanding, specially to your wrist, and almost impossible with heavy weapons. Direct is continual, "medium" damaging blow; is slower than altered, but is fast enough and endurable enough to be your main attack: you can do a lot of damage with a proper hit, but you won't do the maximum, skull/shield breaking blow. Complete charge is the Mortal Kombat's "Finish Him" move: a slower, easier to dodge attack, but a heavy one. A complete charge is a circular movement that pass from your front leg, and behind your head, to the front again advancing one step, and usually comes after two or three "direct charge" attacks, when your enemy is unbalanced or stunned. It is supossed to be the hit that surpasses the physical armor, and knocks down your enemy. It is, indeed very similar to the main conception of Power Attack, a more powerful, but slower and easier to dodge blow.