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

[Wicht]

I did, after demonstrating how Power Attack could be labeled 'dissociative' using the same criteria applied to fighter dailies, for instance, admit that I did not actually find Power Attack dissociative, myself, but it's not relevant to the point, .

Actually, it seems pretty germane to me. If it did not pull you out of the fiction in and of itself, its a poor illustration for you to use. That's like arguing a meal is poorly cooked, because, although you liked it, and everyone who ate it with you liked it, it had a dish in it that you once heard someone else complain about.

 

[Wicht]

How do you know that the feat is making you hit less often unless you do the maths?

Well... you are sitting there, aren't you... or maybe you are pacing nervously as you roll the dice,... and the DM says, "you miss." That's a give-away you see. Or, what we gum-shoes in the business like to call "a clue."

But...the real clue is, and this is clever,... when the DM starts saying, "You Miss again." That "again" is a real dead-on ringer. A clincher that tells you all is not as it should be. When you hear that, "Again," you know that you're attacks are perhaps less effective than one might expect.

Though, even then sometimes there is doubt. But you know for sure something is up when you roll a 19 on the dice and the DM says, "And yet again, you miss, as you focus more on trying to do damage and less on getting through his defenses." Generally, if you have reached that point, the savvy player, keen and sharp-witted, knows that maybe he should stop using Power Attack. Unless of course he is confident that he can actually roll a 20 next round and then sometimes maybe, despite all his instincts (and his mates around the table shouting "No you fool!"), he might give it another go.

Or, rather, given that the feat has to be declared before the dice are rolled, of course it is making you hit less often than you otherwise would. The trade off is increased damage. How do you know if the trade off is worthwhile without doing the maths?

If the answer is "rely on intuition" then I don't think that's a very good answer, because in my experience most people's intuitions involving probabilities and expected outcomes aren't that robust.

Maybe I just play with a higher grade of intuitively capable mathematicians than you do?

What sort of calculus, I wonder, does an outfielder do as he is running to catch the high fly ball, to figure out where the arc of the ball is going to take it?

But, as for whether using the feat is worthwhile, or not, sometimes you only know by giving it a try... That suspense in resolution is, some people think, part of the fun of the game. Apparently there are others who prefer using calculators to anticipate whether or not a given move is going to produce the results desired. I have yet to play with many of these souls, but I will take your word for it that they are out there.

If the point of the feat is to boost damage, just give a damage boosting feat.

Ah, but that's not the point of the feat now, is it.

The point of the feat is to offer a trade off in in return for a spike in damage.

The Weapon Focus feat is the feat, as I think I mentioned before, which is the base damage boosting feat (and it works just fine for that). If you want to offer even more damage then the base-line of Weapon Focus, there must be something sacrificed elsewhere. Its a pretty basic concept in mechanical balance and it works just fine with Power Attack.

As to why I say it plays on the maths of the system, and is therefore metagamey, it simply trades on the fact that D&D separates the to hit roll from the damage roll. Which is not modelling anything in the fiction but is just an artefact of the mechanics.

Huh? I have vague memories of going down this road before with someone - might have been you, but the argument makes no real sense to me. I model the fiction via the mechanics just fine. Thank you and all, but that road seems to lead far afield and lets not go there shall we.

 

[Hussar]

Just to beat this horse a tad more.

There are three issues when discussing things like "dissociative mechanics" and a number of others as well, but, I'm going to stick with "dissociative mechanics" for the moment.

1. There is an agenda in the notion of dissociative mechanics. The whole point of the essay was to use the notion of dissociative mechanics to "prove" that not only was 4e not part of the D&D family, but it wasn't even a role playing game at all. Even if you don't mean that when you use the term, you (and I'm using a generic you here, as in anyone) are going to be seen as guilty by association. If you say you don't like 4e because of dissociative mechanics, in the context of that criticism, you are tacitly agreeing with the idea that 4e isn't a role playing game. Repeat that multiple times over the past several years and you can easily see why bringing it up might see a fair bit of pretty hostile push back from people who actually play 4e. It's perfectly understandable. Even if you don't agree with the conclusion, it's unavoidable that you will be tarred with the same h4ter brush.

2. This one I'm actually going to direct at BedRockGames here. Now, you've argued, and I certainly agree with you, that Power Attack isn't dissociative. But, the problem is, by your own admission, dissociative is in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't matter that you don't see it, you have to accept that others do, in the same way that you expect others to accept that you see 4e mechanics as dissociative. After all, you quite righty chastised me for trying to tell you what you are thinking.

Now, imagine for a second that you have the exact same conversation, every single week, sometimes several times a week, for the NEXT TWO YEARS, every time you want to talk about 3e. Every time you start talking about 3e, someone steps up to tell you how 3e is dissociative because of Power Attack. You argued rather eloquently with Tony Vargas, that you didn't think Power Attack was dissociative. Imagine you have to repeat that argument, ad nauseum, over and over and over again, for years. Can you not understand the frustration that that would engender? Remember, the entire point of the criticism is to tell everyone that the game they are playing isn't really a role playing game.

It's no different than the umpteen "3e is video gamey" threads we used to see. Over and over and over again. People telling you that the game you like to play isn't good enough to play in the same sandbox as everyone else.

3. The inconsistency of its application. The funny thing is, people ONLY talk about dissociative mechanics about games they don't like. Games that people do like seem completely free of this criticism, despite obvious parallels. The conversation often goes like this:

A: I don't like 4e because of dissociative mechanics A, B and C.
B: Well, you do like 3rd edition, and mechanics X, Y and Z are easily as dissociated.
A: Nope, don't see it. They aren't really dissociated.
B: Well, if those aren't dissociated then why are A, B, and C?
A: I don't like 4e because of dissociative mechanics A, B and C.
B: ...

If those that talked about how they didn't like 4e because of dissociative mechanics also criticized 5e for the same reason, I'd understand. Good grief, 5e is easily as dissociated as 4e. There are a boatload of mechanics that cannot be explained in the game fiction (fighters non-magical healing, non-magical regeneration, non-magical damage reduction, Battle Master Superiority dice, on and on and on) yet, we see people who strongly dislike 4e jumping right on the 5e wagon.

If people were consistent, then I'd buy the criticism. But, just like "video gamey", it's just a dismissive brush off short hand for, "I don't like this game, but, I don't want the reason I don't like it to be simply my taste, so, there must be something wrong with the game."

Conversations about different editions would go a lot smoother if people would remember that dropping these kinds of bombs into the conversation is essentially Godwinning the thread in an attempt to shout down any opposition.

 

[Bedrockgames]

2. This one I'm actually going to direct at BedRockGames here. Now, you've argued, and I certainly agree with you, that Power Attack isn't dissociative. But, the problem is, by your own admission, dissociative is in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't matter that you don't see it, you have to accept that others do, in the same way that you expect others to accept that you see 4e mechanics as dissociative. After all, you quite righty chastised me for trying to tell you what you are thinking.
.

I get that it has a subjective element but it is also something that has to operate a bit by consensus as well. This is why I say, start with yourself, then your group, then with the broader gaming community. The measure for me is how many people in general do I think will find this mechanic dissociative. While it is clearly a judgment it is based on a very clear criteria as well. I think there some mechanics that you can more easily label dissociative than others for that reason. Using this as a standard, I've found it quite useful (at least for myself, my group and the people I write games for).

 

[Erechel]

3. The inconsistency of its application. The funny thing is, people ONLY talk about dissociative mechanics about games they don't like. Games that people do like seem completely free of this criticism, despite obvious parallels. The conversation often goes like this:

A: I don't like 4e because of dissociative mechanics A, B and C.
B: Well, you do like 3rd edition, and mechanics X, Y and Z are easily as dissociated.
A: Nope, don't see it. They aren't really dissociated.
B: Well, if those aren't dissociated then why are A, B, and C?
A: I don't like 4e because of dissociative mechanics A, B and C.
B: ...

If those that talked about how they didn't like 4e because of dissociative mechanics also criticized 5e for the same reason, I'd understand. Good grief, 5e is easily as dissociated as 4e. There are a boatload of mechanics that cannot be explained in the game fiction (fighters non-magical healing, non-magical regeneration, non-magical damage reduction, Battle Master Superiority dice, on and on and on) yet, we see people who strongly dislike 4e jumping right on the 5e wagon.

If people were consistent, then I'd buy the criticism. But, just like "video gamey", it's just a dismissive brush off short hand for, "I don't like this game, but, I don't want the reason I don't like it to be simply my taste, so, there must be something wrong with the game."

Conversations about different editions would go a lot smoother if people would remember that dropping these kinds of bombs into the conversation is essentially Godwinning the thread in an attempt to shout down any opposition.

But I was actually the person who brought the horse first in this conversation, and I assume that there were always a degree of dissociation. I assume it in 3rd edition, I assume it in 2nd edition, and I assume it in 5th edition (see the Superiority Dice argument). And, by fact, my main concern with 4th edition is a concern I assume that it is not original from this edition, but only made worse, and as a part of a multicausal dislike of the game. As I clearly stated when I bring the Levels example in Dragons of the Summer Flame. Context means a world here.

Rather, I call your statement flawed because the very basis is flawed.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If those that talked about how they didn't like 4e because of dissociative mechanics also criticized 5e for the same reason, I'd understand. Good grief, 5e is easily as dissociated as 4e. There are a boatload of mechanics that cannot be explained in the game fiction (fighters non-magical healing, non-magical regeneration, non-magical damage reduction, Battle Master Superiority dice, on and on and on) yet, we see people who strongly dislike 4e jumping right on the 5e wagon.

If people were consistent, then I'd buy the criticism. But, just like "video gamey", it's just a dismissive brush off short hand for, "I don't like this game, but, I don't want the reason I don't like it to be simply my taste, so, there must be something wrong with the game."

Conversations about different editions would go a lot smoother if people would remember that dropping these kinds of bombs into the conversation is essentially Godwinning the thread in an attempt to shout down any opposition.

These conversations arise online in the midst of aggressive debates over 4E versus 3E, or 4E versus 5E. People are not going to attack their own position much in those kinds of discussions. But away from that debate, I see people say "this is dissociative all the time" for games and mechanics they like. I love Savage Worlds for example, but something like Bennies I find highly dissociative. I can accept it as a necessary feature of genre emulation, but I have to admit I'd prefer they took a less dissociative explanation of it. In D&D, before I new Dissociative mechanics were a thing, I used to complain about stuff like Rage. When 5E was announced and then the books came out, I had some issues with some of the mechanics that seemed dissociative to me. But on the whole, I knew it was an edition that was built on compromise, so I was wiling to accept some of the dissociative elements provided the game didn't feel weighed down or overwhelmed by them to me.

In the case of 4E, it just felt like the designers were more willing to hand wave the connection to the setting, because I think they were really focused on balance and making the mechanics themselves enjoyable. I'm sure not everyone had that reaction. For me personally it was an honest and genuine reaction that was difficult to escape from. It just feels palpable to me when I play it and when I look at the mechanics. I think with 4E it is a volume thing. It is that every fighter and mundane has those pesky dailies and encounter powers. It is not just like having Rage in the game, it is like giving everyone Rage plus a bunch of other abilities that use the same principle.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But I was actually the person who brought the horse first in this conversation, and I assume that there were always a degree of dissociation. I assume it in 3rd edition, I assume it in 2nd edition, and I assume it in 5th edition (see the Superiority Dice argument). And, by fact, my main concern with 4th edition is a concern I assume that it is not original from this edition, but only made worse, and as a part of a multicausal dislike of the game. As I clearly stated when I bring the Levels example in Dragons of the Summer Flame. Context means a world here.

Rather, I call your statement flawed because the very basis is flawed.

there has been, and even justin alexander acknowledges the presence of dissociative mechanics in previous editions. it is simply a matter of how prevalent people find it in a system.

Really I think at this point, it is pretty pointless to debate 4E's level of dissociativeness. We all have our own reactions to the system, we've all got our own analysis, and lord knows many of us disagree on some fundamental points. We just have to accept our experiences of 4E and other editions are very different.

 

[Erechel]

Also, I kinda like the Second Wind, and I relate it to the "FUAAAA" effect. If you don't know Spanish, he says something like "I cannot take it anymore, but I'm going to bring the FUA" "the FUA means to give the extra, what it projects to the Universe". It is a funny drunken man, but I really doubt that he even knows about D&D

 

[Erechel]

"I bring the character, I bring the strenght, and I bring the Power! FUAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" Hehe, it is even a house rule for our fighters to scream ¡FUA! when we use Second Wind.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

urm, they rolled dice, and they stabbed a lot of things with their fictional swords...

So I’m going to attempt to summarize your thoughts on 4e’s daily exploits. Feel free to correct any mistakes I make:

You don’t like daily exploits because X/day stuff in D&D traditionally means supernatural stuff, and because they don’t have any concrete meaning within the game world. Or is it just the former?

You’re happy to creatively explain similar, albeit optional, X/day abilities in other editions as supernatural. But you’re not willing to explain daily exploits as supernatural because...

...You see an important distinction between optional X/day abilities and daily exploits because one hedges out the ‘I’m just a regular badass’ trope by being non-optional, while the other doesn’t. You yourself don’t seem interested in this trope, but...

...You’ve known players who do like playing the ‘I’m just a regular badass’ trope. But they apparently work around D&D’s combat system just fine, despite its at-best tenuous connection to the game world. I.e., stats that have no concrete relationship to the game world and misleading names, as well as a daily-ish resource that has no single in-game meaning. (I'm sure we don't have to rehash the age old attack/damage/AC/hp/saves issue, yes?)

Unless you and these players are unusual in this regard, you use narrative creativity to circumstantially explain all the abstract combat stats, and/or you simply ignore them in order to play the game. And yet you’re not willing to extend similar treatment to daily exploits, and you’re implying that these players you know aren’t willing either.

You’re also willing to explain or ignore many of D&D’s traditional rules/guidelines which have no connection to the game world.

Oh, and you don’t have a problem with encounter exploits because…3e X/encounter rages set enough of a precedent?