4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[Sunseeker]

Indeed it is - what an amazing piece of luck that even the fighter has a range of powers from which to pick!

So then, color me confused as this thread seems to gain 5 pages a day and some of the posts are very very long.

What exactly is the problem here? We've established that re-flavoring a power, hell even changing the damage type is fully applicable. And now we've established that there is a reasonable range to which it can be done without creating entirely new powers. I mean, this is pretty typical of any spell or ability from any edition. A creature has the natural ability to shapeshift from a gargoyle to an elf...but in a world without elves, instead it shapeshifts into a dwarf. But if we continue on to say that it really teleports out of this dimension and replaces itsself with a random dwarf from across the planes whose mind it super-imposes itsself onto....we've got a whole different kettle of fish.

 

[TwoSix]

So then, color me confused as this thread seems to gain 5 pages a day and some of the posts are very very long.

Because some people love 4e and some people hate it?

 

[Fox Lee]

If you want to Valiant Smite, you have to be Valiant, like it says on the fluff*.

(Forgive the late response, I tried to send this yeasterday morning, but the site had gone down and I was not about to be thwarted by that >:\)

Schwaaaaa? That's a totally made-up idea. You can roleplay your valiant strike however you dang well please, fluff or no fluff - this is sometimes implicit in older versions, but 4e outrightly explicates it. It's the assumption that you're doing what is described in the flavour text, but that's only if you don't provide some other idea yourself.

It's not even permanent - for my group, interpreting what power xyz uniquely represented in this instance is par for the course. That attack gave my warden a defence boost? Okay, that's because I didn't hit the enemy directly, I hit the ground to cause an eruption of stone all earthbending-style, and now it's protecting my flank. The ranger I GM for was temporarily granted combat advantage for that attack? That's because he ran up the wall and flipped over the guy's head at the last minute, leaving him totally off-balance, then BAM!

In any case, y'all should stop ignoring the fact that everything in 4e that isn't rules text is yours to interpret, play with, and shape as you will. What you do with it - whether you use everything as written, re-interpret the mechanics to give an altered flavour, or completely rename and refluff every last thing on your sheet - depends on what you find fun.

Since we're talking about paladins, let me share mine, a woman named Marshal. I have a long-standing hatred of god-figures in D&D as well as real life, so when I made a paladin you can bet I wasn't about to make her a pious god-botherer. Instead, I looked at the paladin powers I liked best - big smashy hits like Blood of the Mighty - and the channel divinity feat I wanted (Tempus), and imagined a philosophy that would fit with those sorts of powers. As a unifying theme, it seemed like what she most embodied was swift, remarkable violence.

From that, I decided I had a "problem child" with major rage issues, who had been shipped off to some kind of reform school by her embarrassed noble family. There she gained a mentor figure who realised that she couldn't overcome her violent nature, so instead taught her to use it to her advantage. She learned to regulate her anger and use it wisely, and developed a personal philosophy we referred to as the Ideal of Perfect Violence: if warfare is a necessary evil, you must decimate your enemies as quickly as possible in order to minimise suffering on both sides.

By the start of the campaign, her parents had passed away and she was working as the Second to her mentor, in his mercenary band. He was killed by undead at the beginning of the game, and after inheriting command, her response was to sell off her entire inheritance so she could pay the rest of the troupe to avenge his death. And we were off to the races!

Obviously, nothing about Marshal is a conventional paladin, but she was a good-aligned idealist who followed a philosophy she elevated to divine importance, recognised a darkness within herself and strove to make it a tool she could turn against her enemies, and literally gave up her worldy fortune to go on a righteous undead-slaying crusade. She was a great paladin. She was exciting to play without being simple, motivated in a way that would help push the group forward, and deeply integrated into the story - and her whole concept developed from me interpreting the underlying mechanics instead of obeying the bult-in fluff.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that rewards for playing a character "correctly" should be treated as a tool for giving newer/less-confident roleplayers a simple, archetypical template they can use to play their character. Better and more experienced roleplayers don't need such guidance, and punishing them for having a different concept - regardless of whether or not it causes problems, but simply because it doesn't fit in a WotC fluff writer's mould - is damn near unpardonable as a GM.

And while we're on the subject, I completely oppose rewarding players for having high values in their critical stats. Players already have a mechanical motivation to avoid poor class/race combinations, one which is so prominent that threads like this are rife with "4e made it too punishing to play class/race combo xyz". Syngery is its own reward, and the last thing you need to do is reward the most powerful/best built character with more power. Extra power for good builds is just giving the fat kid more cake - even if being fat is admirable, it's simply not necessary.

 

[Sunseeker]

Because some people love 4e and some people hate it?

I get that part. I'm just not sure what the disagreement over the current issue of re-flavoring powers and powers calling for specific themes is about. Yes, each class as an ingrained concept, or theme or flavor to it. How is this news?

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Now, IMO, I don't think both of these claims can be right so I am curious in getting down to whether the game actually pushes and forces a player to play and adopt these thematic elements... which would seem to be the case if the mechanics reinforced them, or whether this is being enforced by table rules, DM and player agreement etc... which would seem to support the 4e is generic camp. I hope that sheds more light on the subject.

Swimming upthread a bit.

I honestly don't think this is a contradiction. The classes quite obviously have a fair degree of built in flavour to them. However, since the flavour is not specifically tied to a specific mechanic, you can, fairly easily, reflavour virtually anything.

IOW, Valiant Strike, as written, is meant to show a valiant paladin wading into the thick of things, standing strong in the face of overwhelming opposition. However, 4e is very clear on this, you can reflavour and repurpose this power, giving it a completely different flavour, to fit with a new character concept.

So long as the table agrees with the repurposing, there's no harm, no foul. There is no contradiction because the newly purposed power isn't the same as the original power.

I guess a problem could be had if one archetype took a re-flavored power that was contradictory. But, why would a player do that? There's no mechanical benefit since both powers mechanically are the same. Only the flavour changes.

 

[TwoSix]

I get that part. I'm just not sure what the disagreement over the current issue of re-flavoring powers and powers calling for specific themes is about. Yes, each class as an ingrained concept, or theme or flavor to it. How is this news?

Side 1) 4e provides narrative hooks by providing mechanics that reinforce and reward the class/archetype's expected playstyle.

Side 2) No it doesn't, since 4e encourages you to reflavor, there's no expected playstyle to reinforce. Your own personal narration of the power is doing all the work.

 

[Sunseeker]

Side 1) 4e provides narrative hooks by providing mechanics that reinforce and reward the class/archetype's expected playstyle.

Side 2) No it doesn't, since 4e encourages you to reflavor, there's no expected playstyle to reinforce. Your own personal narration of the power is doing all the work.

And what I take issue with here is that these issues are not contradictory. Yes classes do have an inbuilt flavor to them, if you choose not to reflavor through RP, then yes, the powers cater towards an expected theme. 4e does encourage you to reflavor IF you want to, and in that case the class then plays to your expected playstyle through the same mechanics.

There's sides here when there don't even need to be sides.

 

[TwoSix]

There's sides here when there don't even need to be sides.

But then how would there be an edition war by proxy?

 

[B.T.]

Since we're talking about paladins, let me share mine, a woman named Marshal. I have a long-standing hatred of god-figures in D&D as well as real life, so when I made a paladin you can bet I wasn't about to make her a pious god-botherer. Instead, I looked at the paladin powers I liked best - big smashy hits like Blood of the Mighty - and the channel divinity feat I wanted (Tempus), and imagined a philosophy that would fit with those sorts of powers. As a unifying theme, it seemed like what she most embodied was swift, remarkable violence.

From that, I decided I had a "problem child" with major rage issues, who had been shipped off to some kind of reform school by her embarrassed noble family. There she gained a mentor figure who realised that she couldn't overcome her violent nature, so instead taught her to use it to her advantage. She learned to regulate her anger and use it wisely, and developed a personal philosophy we referred to as the Ideal of Perfect Violence: if warfare is a necessary evil, you must decimate your enemies as quickly as possible in order to minimise suffering on both sides.

You played a class that is explicitly about serving a deity, but you made her an angry atheist. I would have told you to play a barbarian.

Then again:

In any case, y'all should stop ignoring the fact that everything in 4e that isn't rules text is yours to interpret, play with, and shape as you will. What you do with it - whether you use everything as written, re-interpret the mechanics to give an altered flavour, or completely rename and refluff every last thing on your sheet - depends on what you find fun.

I reject this. I believe that mechanics should be tied with what they are trying to represent. It doesn't mean you can't reflavor your powers, but it does mean your powers need to be more than +X to hit, +Y damage, +Z effect. If you're making a sneak attack, you're stabbing your opponent in the back, not taking advantage of an oppening to charge your weapon with ki energy to do +3d6 damage.

 

[Hussar]

I think the biggest problem that people seem to have with 4e is with the whole flavour text thing in a nutshell. It seems to me that people want each power to operate similarly to the way things like that operated in earlier editions - a given "effect" has one, and only one, possible interpretation and you must never, ever deviate from that.

In 3e, a barbarian goes into "rage". That has specific mechanical effects. But the flavour of the "rage" effect is always, always the same, once it's been established in the game. It might vary from table to table, but, once it is established at a specific table, that table will always use that flavour from then on. You see this more with spells in 3e and earlier editions, where the flavour often carried mechanical elements and thus any change to the flavor was a fairly large change to the spell itself. A 1e fireball is an expanding ball of fire. It can't be anything else since "expanding ball of fire" has specific mechanical effects such as hitting yourself.

4e doesn't work like that. The player is free to change the flavour, or not, of any effect at any time. Nothing has to work the same way every time. So, "Valiant Strike" could be described in any number of ways, depending on the situation. And, so long as the table is groovy with whatever explanation, then no problem.

So, we see critics say, "Well, no, you cannot explore thematic elements since the flavor text isn't fixed." And this has been answered. The thematic elements aren't contained within the flavour text. The flavour text is defined by the thematic elements. My heroic paladin narrates Valiant Strike one way because he's a heroic paladin. My cowardly paladin narrates it differently (although possibly a bit strange given the mechanics of that particular power) and again, the narration is informed by the thematic elements of the character, not the other way around.

It seems to me that the criticisms are based on a very narrow reading of the game where you must have one, and only one, narration for every effect and must never deviate from that narration. Which, really, is how 3e worked. But 4e isn't 3e. It works differently and it's helpful to remember that.