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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alex319" data-source="post: 4822747" data-attributes="member: 45678">Just to play devil's advocate here...This could have a problem. Do players know (and play as if they know) what powers their characters have?If not, then you essentially have a scenario where the only way for a player to use a power is to effectively "guess" fluff that matches the mechanical description of a power. For example, in order for a player to use Lead the Attack (Warlord Daily 1), he would have to describe an attack that works in such a way as to make the opponent easier to hit (e.g. "I try to slice off his armor"). And he would have to do so without knowing that he has a power that is particularly effective at doing just that. (His friend who didn't have that power could describe the same thing, but it would end up being resolved as an at-will or a stunt, so it would be less effective, and he wouldn't know why.)On the other hand, if players do know what powers their character has and use that information in describing their fluff, then it's not clear that you've actually changed much. Players are still choosing what powers they want to use first, then describing fluff based off of those powers in order to use those powers. In the above example, a player would decide he wants to use Lead the Attack, and then come up with a fluff description appropriate to the situation. So it's still "powers first" and not "fluff first," which isn't what you seem to want.I think that this phenomenon quite possibly explains a lot of the resistance to some of the changes in combat from 3e to 4e - the changes make the former style of play a lot harder to do successfully. For example, the removal of the disarm maneuver was labeled as "unsimulationist," but after 4e came out, nobody said "wow, look at all the new combat options like Lead the Attack - 3e was much less simulationist because it didn't have all those options." Why is disarming considered more "simulationist" than any of the new 4e combat options? I highly doubt most of the people complaining had enough experience in actual real-life combat to judge which maneuvers are more realistic. Instead, I hypothesize that the reason is because "I try to knock the weapon out of his hands" is something that a player who didn't know the rules is likely to come up with on his own, while "I try to hit the enemy at the right angle to jar his armor loose and make him easier to hit" is not something a player would likely come up with on his own unless he was aiming for that particular power effect. Thus 3e can be better than 4e at supporting the "player comes up with fluff, then DM translates it into mechanics" because 3e mechanics are more geared towards the kind of fluff players are likely to independently come up with.Interestingly, probably the best systems to support the "fluff first, then mechanics" are pure generic, effect-based systems like FATE. In FATE, there's a set of very generic rules (basically boiling down to "everyone makes one roll each turn, adding appropriate modifiers, and whoever rolls higher than their opponent deals damage to them based on how much they beat his roll by, and other effects can be substituted for damage at the DM's discretion"). Thus players can describe whatever attack they want, and the system will handle it, and the only DM judgement required is how many "damage points" a particular effect is worth. The advantage of this kind of system is its simplicity and universality. The disadvantage is that it doesn't allow for a lot of meaningful tactical flexibility out of the box - "me and my friend rush at the guy swinging wildly" has the same chance of hitting as "I distract him while my friend runs up around behind him using the shadows for cover..." Of course the DM can always put that flexibility back in ("you get +1 for coming up with that tactic") but that puts it back in the realm of DM judgement. Of course, since no system can possibly handle all possible fluff that a player could come up with, any system in which fluff affects gameplay would require DM judgement to some extent.</blockquote>

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