NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CovertOps" data-source="post: 5326924" data-attributes="member: 65152">First let me say that...no I have never played Dogs so comments related to that are based on what has been said here.  Second I caught up on the page and a half that I missed over the weekend after I posted the previous reply that I had mostly finished.  Third, on the previous page Alex319 did a much better job of explaining the debate here.Since I have misunderstood how Dogs works, with your clarification I will say that this supports my "level of abstraction" comments.  Since you weren't clear on that I'll try to clarify.  In both Dogs (as I understand it) and in 4e the fiction is "I swing my sword at x target(s)".  There is no difference between the systems in that regard.  I'm using "abstract" the same way you're using "fortune-in-the-middle" vs. "fortune-at-the-end".  I would also use this method to describe the change from 3e -> 4e between "full attack" where you roll multiple times (still with each attack being "fortune-at-the-end") vs. the 4e method where you just roll once and your (higher level) power does more damage.  One goal of 4e (of the many) was a simplified/streamlined combat system (in comparison to 3e).  There were many causalities of this process (full attack among them).  A "fortune-in-the-middle" mechanic (if such a mechanic had existed in 3/3.5e) would also have been on the editing room floor.The other reason that "level of abstraction" is appropriate to this situation is that your basic premise is that "I Twin Strike the orc" (mechanic) is not the same as "I swing both my swords at the orc" (fiction).  I would argue that your premise ignores this stated goal of 4e (combat simplification) and that the two statements ARE in fact INTENDED TO BE the same exact thing.  This however, apparently rubs you the wrong way for taste reasons (grabbing a swarm and skill usage aside for the moment...as I have said repeatedly - I personally am not arguing against the fiction requirements of skill usage).Lets face it.  This is an obvious corner case.  To quote a famous show..."He's dead Jim."  I'm not sure here what you're trying to protest about.  Is it the fact that you shouldn't be able to grab creatures that are much larger than you (in which case the swarm keyword has nothing to do with your position), OR are you trying to say that JUST swarms in general can't be grabbed (remembering that swarms being treated as a single creature is in and of itself an abstraction) OR perhaps both.  That said, there are only two things that matter to me about this:1) There is a build of fighter that relies on grabs in order to function correctly (mechanically).2) If you're going to make it so you're limited to only grabbing Large and smaller size creatures then the players should know this before they build their PCs.Beyond those 2 points it's all house rule territory and what do in your game doesn't matter to me.  If I was sitting at your table I'd expect to either have the rules work as written OR be told ahead of time that you use a house rule regarding the Brawler build Fighter as part of the social contract.  The rules have never been about corner cases like this.  They are to ensure that when the players sit down they know what to expect (within reason).These are just more examples of "level of abstraction".  I hope the above cleared up what I mean by that.  Twin Strike is going for a specific "flavor", but in general if you look at any class you'll see that the higher level an ability is the more damage it does.  This "scaling" replaces "full attack" in general (again specific cases - such as Twin Strike - can break this "general" rule).As for area attacks you haven't changed the amount of dice rolling going on, but merely changed who's rolling the dice.  In 3e the caster would roll damage and each target would possibly make a saving throw or check magic resistance.  In 4e you roll to hit each target (replaces saving throw) and magic resistance doesn't exist any more (simplification).  The "Miss" line of a power replaces what happened if you "saved".</blockquote>

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