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="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5865834" data-attributes="member: 54877">I see 4E as essentially neutral on the question of a narrative game, with mild, active support for a certain slice of narrative combat.  It won't do much to help you run such a game (or teach you how to do it), but it won't get in your way, either, if you already know how. Last session, we had a minitaur fighter charge into some old, large doors to "bull rush" the doors onto some spider swarms.  Then a couple of the other characters used their shields to roll around on the swarms.  Meanwhile, the rogue was freaking out and stabbing, relatively ineffectively, because she is a precision character without much strength or option to hit a swarm. No doubt the drama was heightened by the fact that three of the players were ladies that are somewhat spider-adverse in real life.  A simple description of thousands of spiders swarming all over the floors, ceilings, walls, pillars, etc. was enough to set the scene firmly in their minds. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" /> <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  (If I ever had a swarm of cockroaches swarm my wife's character, she might have a heart attack.  That's one place I've never gone. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) I could have run that scene in any version of D&D.  There was nothing particular special about the build up that wouldn't have worked in Basic or AD&D or 3E well enough, though some of the assumptions in place from earlier sessions would have taken a bit more care.  And of course the three players reactions to spiders was mainly them and prior build up from Fantasy Hero games.  (Spiders and magical cats.  Works every time. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />)  That part was, as I said, mildly easier in 4E.  Then in the combat, I could have adjudicated such actions in any version.  What 4E brought to the table was p. 42 as a way to make such adjudication readily balanced (without much time or thought invested in it). More subtle, the serious competence of the characters in earlier scenes is what made this scene really click--and made the players desperately seek alternate means without any prompting from me.  The only other time I've achieved that last part in D&D was when running "Killer D&D" in an early version.  If I tried that in 3E, I'd probably kill the characters before they'd have time to feel so pressed (or have to fudge them out of being killed, which I don't care for either). So encounter powers (and dailies) are not themselves that interesting, but they do set a framework and expectation that can make the interesting things more likely.  If the rogue had been doing 1d4+1 all this time, or something similar, her "precision" would have been mere flavor, and getting half damage against swarms wouldn't have meant much either way. But because her "precision" is modeled in the combat engine, when it doesn't work, it creates pressure on the participants--all of them. If the mere flavor is enough for someone, then the above is not likely to register as useful.  It is not enough for me.  I want some support from the mechanics that is inline with the flavor--or at the very least, not actively opposing it.</blockquote>

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