D&D 4E Mike Mearls on how 4E could have looked

[Jester David]

Well might as well just call that an Encounter power our other ideas were about making things that show how it makes sense for something to be an encounter power NOT embracing the gamist.

I think the ship of pure simulation and no gamist mechanics has sailed.
That said, I think it's still better to focus and design around the narrative than the game, and make the mechanics reflect what is happening "in world" rather than "at the table". But there's some wiggle room.

For something that is meant to be used once a fight, you can find other ways to differentiate when it begins and ends. Again, rolling initiative is a good one. Or having to spend 1 minute performing a quick ritual.


The catch with "once per encounter" as a signifier is… what is an encounter? Is a lengthy roleplaying encounter that ends with a combat one encounter or two? Such as a skill challenge chase that ends with a fight?
Focusing on the narrative is key for that. If the story is "you can't use this power more than once, because it's tiring" then that should be reflected in the mechanics. The archetypal 4e example was that it was weird that you could have three Encounter powers, but could only perform each one. Or two Daily powers for that matter. Sometimes it would have been handy to use the same one twice. Or that you couldn't do it again and suffer damage from straining yourself.

Right but a 1 or 2 minute battle having a move that generates a marathon degree of fatigue?

Short rest powers tend to be larger for that reason. Or have multiple uses that all recharge on a short rest, such as the bard's ability to inspire or the battle master fighter's maneuvers. So you can use two or three of them each battle until you get winded and need a longer break.

Kind of works for wounding related effects but less so on the actual abilities which might be more like winding and simple muscle fatigue. Like I said if your super leap does
generate stress on the order of a pulled muscle. Then the 5e short rest could work ok.

If I were designing such a power for 5e, I'd make it broader. "Feat of Might" and make it based around various physical activities. So the fighter can trigger the ability when leaping if they want, but haven't wasted a power choice if the adventure doesn't feature anything you need to leap over. They can still add it to other Athletics or Strength checks, such as swimming, lifting heavy objects, or climbing.
Then I'd grant a number of uses. Either a flat number (say, 4) or tie it to an ability score (say Strength). After using the ability that number of times, a short rest is required to recharge it.

Alternatively, I'd add a requirement that after using the ability, you can't perform another Feat of Might for, oh, 5 minutes. If you use the power before that time has elapsed, you gain 1 level of exhaustion.

 

[the Jester]

I don't know whether it was intentional or not for specific people, I can't speak to everyone else but I can state that for me some examples of what constituted say a Heroic tier difficulty door that had a DC of 8 vs one with a DC of 26... would have went a long way to not only reinforcing this assumed fiction change but also provided some guidance.

I'm not sure if anyone has already addressed this, but there was such a chart in (IIRC) the 4e DMG. Though it may have been the DMG2.

 

[the Jester]

Ah ok now I understand your point better. Probably on me as I didn't get that from reading your post at all. Thanks for explaining. Though again I rarely see this done officially when it comes to 4e minions... they tend to have the same special abilities as their non-minionized counterparts, I would agree that it probably would be a good practice to follow.

Huh. I saw this all the time. Though admittedly, early 4e monster design was often terrible, and probably had less of this.

 

[Garthanos]

This is also true in 5E, though?

Doesnt seem like it at all the difference based on the attribute boosting is insignificant unless you are specifically at edge case unless I am missing some hidden other benefit.

 

[Shasarak]

My dad once pointed out to his teachers in martial arts that if he smacks an enemy in a exposed spot perhaps in an arm it was both easier to hit than those vital deadly hits they were pushing but was still a set up to increase the chance the follow up could be that deadly spot. (They actually asked him to become a teacher but that would have meant staying in Korea longer)

Basically its saying damage and to hit are inter-related. (going up on one goes down on the other)

Its quite reasonable when attacking enemies that are harder to hit with big deadly or massively impairing strokes you take easier but less effective openings... so minionized enemies are doing that they are settling for less effective hits hoping they will get the bigger ones later.

The zero change in ac while levelling could be perceptually fixed if people accepted that some of those hits were really misses because of the abstraction of hit points -- but we cannot have that no never that.

Why would a hit really be a miss? It does not "solve" any real problem that I can see as well as not being logical and destroying language by trying to introduce Newspeak into the game.

 

[Garthanos]

Short rest powers tend to be larger for that reason. Or have multiple uses that all recharge on a short rest, such as the bard's ability to inspire or the battle master fighter's maneuvers. So you can use two or three of them each battle until you get winded and need a longer break.

They do not seem so much larger than encounter powers unless scales have changed a lot. Nothing like a marathon for sure. Heck most battle-masters abilities look almost like an at-will if they were spending one of the fighters attacks (instead of combining with it)

 

[Garthanos]

It does not "solve" any real problem that I can see

The ridiculous unrealistic idea that a skilled fighter is just as easy to hit at low level as they are at high I found and still find preposterous.

 

[Shasarak]

It is an ability the Flier generally has they can fly over the battle to locations beyond many enemies without ever provoking and opportunity attack while
that spell is doing its thing.

The fighter while whirling his wall of steel might actually make a good target to nearby guys and make him better at defending allies by becoming tempting (perhaps the wall of steel does minor damage to melee enemies when they attack him) - stylistically different than the monk deflecting the ranged enemy attacks and letting the fighter do his cuisinart ability.

The Knight crashes through the front row might be doing so to engage a big enemy without digging through the row of Pawns

My Cu Cuhlaine mention earlier with the Salmon leap trick does a jump move through enemy lines with nice celtic flavor.

I was specifically targeting that one spell with my examples not just anything
with "impact" so I didnt make as broad of answer as I could have,

I dont know if I agree. If you want to charge through the line of battle then you can but attacks of opportunity are the price you pay to do it. Why would a flyer get to fly through a battle with no one being able to react enough to put their sword up in the way? No seems like a bit of a cheat saying sorry your Fighter is just a big chump who has to stand their and get attacked, no save for you.

 

[Parmandur]

Doesnt seem like it at all the difference based on the attribute boosting is insignificant unless you are specifically at edge case unless I am missing some hidden other benefit.

It can easily make the difference between a check being possible or impossible: doesn't get bigger than that. DC 20, 25 or 30 isn't really a fringe case for adventurers. Other than Rogues, it is about the same value as Proficiency. Without both Attribute and Proficiency together, many checks would be unobtainable.

 

[Shasarak]

The ridiculous unrealistic idea that a skilled fighter is just as easy to hit at low level as they are at high I found and still find preposterous.

That is not a problem. The idea that a Fighter gets some kind of magic force field protecting him is a problem. Instead the Fighter uses his increasing skill to turn previously mortal blows into glancing hits. Which is exactly why we have increasing Hit Points.