Players choose what their PCs do . . .

[Lanefan]

Bold emphasis mine. How is the change from x hit points to 1 hit point a change in the fiction?

Because toughness, in the fiction, is a constant: if it takes 35 points worth of damage for a merchant or a wolf or even another ghoul to kill Bob the Ghoul, that tells me it takes 35 points of damage for anything to kill that same ghoul, because that's how tough that ghoul is.

And sure, there'll be creatures and adventurers out there for whom dishing out 35 points of damage is a triviality, but that doesn't excuse them from still having to dish them out.

 

[Lanefan]

Really really. OK, actually really/not-really, he doesn't need to add a new 'arcane power' to the game in order to add a new 'spell' to the fiction - game/fiction are readily separable in 4e, because rule vs fluff text is clearly presented rather than mixed together - introducing new fiction can often be accomplished by finding the best possible representation extant in the mechanics, and adjusting it's fluff. Thus instead of needing to research a new version of magic missile or cast 2e Sense Shifting or take 3e Spell Thematics, you just describe your mm as something else.

Or, another way to look at it is they're designing all their 'spells' (or other powers) 'new,' because the rest of the world isn't necessarily using PC classes. It depends on the DM's setting and the PC's concept. Just because a spell is in the PH or Arcane Power doesn't mean it has necessarily ever been cast before - the history of the setting is up to the DM.

If they're already designing all their spells-powers as 'new' then the field's wide open to on-the-fly design whatever the frick we like, as this rationale immediately removes any requirement to stick to what's in the PH or other sourcebook(s). I'm not sure this would be viable in any edition.

Finally, it's not like the spell research system back in the day was all that - it could be used to research an extant spell the caster just didn't know fairly straightforwardly, if very expensively, but a genuinely new spell was simply kicked to the DM, he either approved/re-wrote it or declared the attempt a failure (without telling the poor sucker if he'd had a chance & just been unlucky, or if his spell was hogwash and would never work).
That level of arbitrary works in any system...

In the fiction it ought to be trivially easy for a DM to find a way to explain why a new spell failed, particularly if the player has the PC go and ask someone and-or has their PC do their research and design while in contact with other wizards. In fact I'd say a DM who doesn't explain why it went wrong is shortchanging the PC/player.

Resource management is still part of the game, as it always has been. Maybe his point was just that the emphasis, in 4e, can shift off resource management more readily than in other eds because doing so won't shift encounter balance as profoundly, nor risk radical intraparty imbalances? ::shrug::

Perhaps, though a DM/table can choose to ignore resource management in any edition should they so desire - nothing special about 4e in this regard. That said, doing so would have different knock-on effects in each edition and maybe these are fewer or more subdued in 4e?

The ghoul doesn't change 'in the fiction' it's the same ghoul (it could even be the exact same individual who had fought the PCs to a draw many levels back, for instance), the PC is just so much more powerful, that the DM, rather than play through the PC auto-hitting ghouls that (non-critically) hit him only on a natural 20, and slowly mowing his way through a mechanically tedious encounter, chooses an alternate resolution threshold to defeat it. Instead of hitting a low AC repeatedly, he hits an ~10 higher AC, once.

I see the game-play efficiency rationale but to me the internal consistency is paramount; and when it conflicts with efficiency, efficiency just has to take a back seat.

It's really no different than, in 1e, giving the fighter 1 attack/level vs less than 1-HD monsters, and taking the average on their pathetic attack chance vs him, rather than rolling to hit 20 times a round

Oh, I'll roll all 20 of those - if only because my game has crits and fumbles - and I'll also expect the player to roll for each attack vs. the mooks.

similarly, the minion's fixed damage is analogous to that old taking the average trick.

Fixed damage in physical combat is something else I'll never use.

The basic D&D d20 resolution system is just limited in the disparity between combatants that it can handle, so, at some point, you have to do something, whether that's introducing called shots, contracting the scope of the game to fit the mechanics, taking averages for hordes instead of rolling dozens of times, or statting the (exact) same in-fiction monsters as minions - or even aggregating many into swarms (something 3e also did to good effect, and 5e hasn't tossed out that I'm aware of).

You're right that the system sometimes isn't granular enough to do everything that's asked of it, but otherwise the answer is to simply take the time to do it right.

That, and in the 4e adventure modules I've seen (and run!) it's rare that the design calls for hordes of minions - more common seems to be that there's maybe one minion for each non-minion in a given encounter, which makes the too-much-rolling issue a moot point.

 

[Lanefan]

Is it trying to game the system that you're worried about or do you not like the cognitive workspace of advocating for "big picture" or "long view" goals? If so, do you feel that it diminishes some of the visceral experience or the immediacy of inhabiting this moment? Something like Yoda's lament about Luke's lack of mindfulness; "All his life has he looked away...to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing."

I'm neither you nor [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] and thus stand to be corrected if I'm wrong here, but both the post you're responding to and your response made me wonder if this is what you're both kind of getting at: the issue isn't one of advocating for long-term goals, it's one of player expectation that those long-term goals will be achieved as desired as opposed to may be achieved and maybe not exactly as desired.

Because yes, if all a player is in effect doing is playing through her own conception of her character's arc and using the other PCs, the setting, and the adventuring as no more than a backdrop then - other than providing said backdrop - what's the purpose of the game at all?

 

[Lanefan]

AD&D has no system for a fighter to invent a new weapon. If a player of a fighter wants to introduce a new mechanical element into the system that has a correlate in the fiction - like, say, a new design of polearm or a javelin with better flight capabilities or whatever it might be - s/he has to establish a house rule.

In 4e there is nothing stopping house rules. Two of the PCs in my game have themes that I houseruled for them, in consultation with their players; and this included making up some new powers. A GM and player could houserule a new power for a mage, or a new ritual.

But there is no ingame process for generating new houserule elements comparable to the spell research system in classic D&D.

Which is something of a departure not only from classic D&D; even 3e had rules and processes for generation of new houserule elements, mostly centered on magic item invention and construction.

As for fighters inventing a new weapon, it's a question of physical limitations. There's only so many ways to build a handheld device designed to hurt or kill other living things, and one can fairly easily assume in the fiction that most if not all of those ways have been tried (of course, if someone wants to try something new anyway, more power to 'em). But spells are much more wide open in what they can do, from the very mundane to the truly magnificent, and thus it's very reasonable to assume in the fiction there's still design space for new ideas.

And the play of a 4e mage is not based around the "spell for every occasion" approach of playing a magic-user in AD&D.

Depends how one plays them, I suppose; and on what the setting/DM allows.

I can only report my play experiences. I've played a lot of AD&D. I've played a lot of 4e. The former has a strong resource-management element - worrying about hit points, managing spell load-outs, and - in some contexts, at least - managing inventory.

4e does not. Hit points are not precious as they are in AD&D, because of the very different healing mechanics. Healing surges are an important resource, but generate a very different dynamic from AD&D. The bulk of a PC's effectiveness in a non-combat situation comes from either skills or rituals, the former of which are not resource-limited and the latter of which are limited by components - in effect, money - and not by the sort of preparation that characterises inventory and spell load-out in AD&D.

What this tells me is that much of the non-hit-point resource management side has been concatenated down into managing one's finances, and that managing healing surges has somewhat taken the place of - or augmented - managing hit points.

The bulk of a PC's effectiveness in a combat situation comes from encounter powers, which are a resource within the combat context but not beyond it: this is what makes 4e a scene-based game, whereas AD&D is not that.

Well, except for dailies, which do have to be managed if the DM is keeping the PCs under any sort of pressure through the day. And all classes have to worry about this in 4e, not just casters; so in that way at least 4e expanded the resource management game a bit.

Changing the resolution numbers (AC and other defences, hp, to hit, damage) used to resolve the combat is not changing the ghoul in the fiction. This has been my point throughout this exchange.

Already commented to this in other posts above.

 

[Umbran]

Because toughness, in the fiction, is a constant: if it takes 35 points worth of damage for a merchant or a wolf or even another ghoul to kill Bob the Ghoul, that tells me it takes 35 points of damage for anything to kill that same ghoul, because that's how tough that ghoul is.

I suggest that "toughness" in the fiction is not an objective constant. A thing that it tough for a shopkeeper to kill may not be tough for a 10th level fighter to kill. When you were first level, the bugbear was tough. When you're 15th, not so much....

This is because "a point of damage" is not a thing in the fiction. The game abstraction may be a constant, but the fictional results are not. The fiction doesn't know from points of damage. The fiction knows of swinging swords and balls of fire. So, how much effort does a competent fighter need to put into killing it before it dies? That tells you how tough it is, not its hit points alone. A high hit point, low AC thing may be considered tough. So might a low hit point, high AC target. The in-fiction toughness can be gotten at through more than one mechanical approach.

 

[GrahamWills]

Yet, you perceive one system - DitV - as maximally immersion-breaking, while GrahamWillis finds that same system enhances his immersion

Actually, no, I stated "I agree with the generally-stated position that the more system you have, the more apt it is to break immersion."; what I actually stated is that I find DitV's system less breaking than PbtA's version. Not that either is more immersive than no system at all.

 

[Campbell]

I'm neither you nor [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] and thus stand to be corrected if I'm wrong here, but both the post you're responding to and your response made me wonder if this is what you're both kind of getting at: the issue isn't one of advocating for long-term goals, it's one of player expectation that those long-term goals will be achieved as desired as opposed to may be achieved and maybe not exactly as desired.

Because yes, if all a player is in effect doing is playing through her own conception of her character's arc and using the other PCs, the setting, and the adventuring as no more than a backdrop then - other than providing said backdrop - what's the purpose of the game at all?

There's more to it, but this is a big part of it.

 

[Campbell]

So when I talk about playing with integrity I am speaking to playing your character with integrity. What I mean by this is in the moment of play when you are making decisions for your character you should strive to only be guided by your sense of their hopes, dreams, goals and take on their emotions so they become your emotions and do this without regard for where you, the player, might hope things lead or some sense of "the story". To at all times be a curious explorer of the fiction, to finding out who this character really is when tested.

I'm not saying being guided by other things is universally bad play. I don't like really enjoy it, but everyone like has their own fun man. 7th Sea 2e and Fate are both really well designed games that cut against my interests. I'm glad they exist for people who enjoy them.

I would also add that I have nothing against characters with long term goals or capable antagonists. Both are things I celebrate and are welcomed whole heartily by me. I'm simply talking about a way of playing role playing games where we follow the fiction like a dog after a bone. Like, I want to feel the weight of my character's decisions in my bones. I want access to their unique insights. I want there to be actual weight to their relationships and emotions. I also want a commitment from the rest of the group to see what happens and not decide ahead of time what should happen. I want to be a fan of the other character and the world and see where journey takes us.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Because toughness, in the fiction, is a constant: if it takes 35 points worth of damage for a merchant or a wolf or even another ghoul to kill Bob the Ghoul, that tells me it takes 35 points of damage for anything to kill that same ghoul, because that's how tough that ghoul is.

That's really not "in the fiction," though, that's /in the system/.

In fiction, a creature that the hero has a hard time beating down, one time, might go down quickly, another. And, IRL, randomness of terminal ballistics and the remarkable resilience and frightening fragility of human life is much, much stranger than fiction.

If they're already designing all their spells-powers as 'new' then the field's wide open to on-the-fly design whatever the frick we like, as this rationale immediately removes any requirement to stick to what's in the PH or other sourcebook(s). I'm not sure this would be viable in any edition.

Page 42 could be interpreted that way, if you like. But it's very clear, in 4e, that you can 'fluff' a spell however you like so long as it doesn't cross the line of changing the mechanics. You don't /need/ a new arcane power to be published or a vague DM-fiat procedure to create a new mechanic in order to get a 'new' spell, /in the fiction/. You just take your idea for a new spell, pick an existing one with mechanics that fit, and re-skin it to match.

It's the same thing 3e did with weapons after trimming the list so heavily and - with the glaring exception of the Katana - that worked just fine. (Heck, voluminous as the 1e weapon list was, it /still/ used re-skinning equivalency.)

In the fiction it ought to be trivially easy for a DM to find a way to explain why a new spell failed, particularly if the player has the PC go and ask someone and-or has their PC do their research and design while in contact with other wizards. In fact I'd say a DM who doesn't explain why it went wrong is shortchanging the PC/player.

IIRC, the 1e spell-research rules specifically said the player wouldn't know whether he failed in his research because the DM deemed the spell impossible (unacceptable) or because he just got unlucky. Of course, it's been a while...

Perhaps, though a DM/table can choose to ignore resource management in any edition should they so desire - nothing special about 4e in this regard. That said, doing so would have different knock-on effects in each edition and maybe these are fewer or more subdued in 4e?

Not ignore in the sense of removing the resource restrictions, just shift the focus away from. That is, in 4e, if you shift the pacing of play away from challenging PCs on a resource-attrition schedule, the classes remain balanced & contributing alongside eachother, and only the relative difficulty of encounters and other challenges is impacted. In any other edition, deviating too much from expected pacing quickly makes resource-heavy classes overpowered - or, on the other extreme, overextended - compared to the resource-light classes, and the dynamic of play becomes uneven, with some players wondering why they even show up.

I see the game-play efficiency rationale but to me the internal consistency is paramount; and when it conflicts with efficiency, efficiency just has to take a back seat.

Just remember that internal consistency is internal /to the fiction/, not the system.

Oh, I'll roll all 20 of those - if only because my game has crits and fumbles - and I'll also expect the player to roll for each attack vs. the mooks.

That's fine for you. 1e didn't have crits or fumbles, and did recommend just 'taking the average' to save yourself rolling all those unlikely-to-hit/unlikely-to-miss attacks. So the precedent for alternate resolution is there.

That, and in the 4e adventure modules I've seen (and run!) it's rare that the design calls for hordes of minions - more common seems to be that there's maybe one minion for each non-minion in a given encounter, which makes the too-much-rolling issue a moot point.

You can have dozens of minions in a high level encounter, and they're quicker & simpler to deal with than dozens of wildly under-leveled monsters, while staying more relevant to the encounter. That's the point, and it works pretty well.

Classic D&D had a similar point - with fighters 1/level attacks, taking averages, and even falling back on chainmail (or later Battlesystem) - but successive eds were looking for better ways precisely because that didn't work so well. 4e found one. 5e tried something a little different (not /that/ different, for instance, all 5e monsters have a don't-roll-damage option like 4e minions) - BA, and TBH, it retains too many of the original issues, and introduces a new one: being outnumbered telling too heavily.

 

[Campbell]

So when it comes down to intent based resolution I have no real issues with it if players stick to character intent and are advocating for their character. Most of my issue comes down to the possibility for intent or stakes negotiation to slide into what the player wants to happen for story reasons completely outside of what their character is attempting. In some rare cases they might declare an intent that is actually a loss for their character. Basically the danger of player side railroading. I mean it's easy enough to avoid if the play group is disciplined. Like I don't think it's an issue that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] really have to deal with. Just like you can be disciplined and follow the fiction in GM mediated games.

In general I don't think we talk enough about player side railroading. Mostly because of the authority gap it tends to be highly dependent on the GM.