Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FourthBear" data-source="post: 4014518" data-attributes="member: 55846">I disagree with this claim.  With one exception, every one of your examples of how 4e will turn narrative power over to the players are trivial in comparison to their actual role: to strengthen worldbuilding and in some cases, even turn the narrative power over to the DM.Making monsters more recognizable and distinctive: it has been noted explicitly that monster design will be exception based with fewer design restrictions on the DM.  Classes of monsters will no longer be created in the type based methods that led to simple blocks of traits shared by all members of that type.  This and more spontaneous monster design will just as often decrease predictablilty for player decisions.  The DM will be encouraged to give creatures those traits that lead to good encounters with less regard to the systematic PC-like generation systems of 3e.Rebalancing magic items and encounter build rules:  This one really baffles me.  The intent is to allow DMs a better chance of estimating the challenge of an encounter.  An improved ability here is now claimed to somehow increase player narrative power by preventing *accidental* DM unbalanced choices.  So giving the DM better tools to predict the difficulty of an encounter *decreases* the DM's narrative power, despite the fact that he is the one responsible for all of the encounters.  That is truly perverse reasoning.Introducing Second Wind rules and making APs core: Here is an option that I do think will place more narrative power in the hands of the players.  I do not find it particularly compelling as an argument that the 4e design is somehow intended to transfer narrative power to players as an overall goal, however.Giving all PCs per-encounter abilities: This allows the DM to now pace adventures and encounters to his own wishes, rather than restrict them to the vagaries of his player's choices in the use of their limited resources.  Have we all forgotten the infamous "15-minute adventuring day?"  Or are we now claiming that it represented a triumph of DM narrative power that has been overturned?  With limited per day resources, the players are fully capable of exhausting them, leaving the DM with the choice to either overwhelm them or allow them to rest.  With per encounter abilities, the DM controls the pacing of encounters just as he always should: during the creation and placement of the encounters in the gameworld.  The DM decides when and how the encounters trigger, not the players.Introducing the PoL assumption that PoLs are safehavens until the players choose to trigger adversity.  Considering that this is not a rule, but a suggestion for worldbuilding, this hardly seems to transfer narrative control over to the players any more than the assumption that PoL settings will have less area understood by the players and under PC-friendly control and more of the map under the DM's exclusive understanding and control makes the reverse.</blockquote>

Verification