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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6077821" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think we has a version of this conversation on another recent thread.You dislike metagame mechanics in which the personality of the PC emerges to advantage at the mechanical level. I'm pretty sure, for instance, that you'd hate a game in which a player gets a bonus when rolling his/her PC's attack when the target of the attack is the PC's lifelong nemesis.But such RPGs exist. In large numbers. And many people like them. 4e doesn't go as far in this direction as a game like HeroWars/Quest or The Riddle of Steel, but it has more than just a hint of it. To wit, Valiant Strike. Come and Get It. Etc etc.The current discussion, at least as I see it, isn't really about whether this is a good thing or not. It's about the extent to which, and way in which, this is a distictive feature of 4e as an edition of D&D. (Certainly for those many of those who play and enjoy 4e it seems to be.)I think you're misunderstanding the 4e marketing strategy.4e splats aren't about power. They're about breadth.Narrativist games like Over the Edge, HeroWars/Quest and Maelstrom Storytelling use free descriptors in PC building. This is how they ensure that PCs reflect players' thematic interests and concerns. Two consequences follow from this approach: fairly light and abstract mechanics that are neutral across a very wide range of possible descriptors; and the inability to sell a lot of new splat, because people are pretty capable of coming up with their own free descriptors.4e takes a different approach. It builds PCs using very tightly defined abilities in a mechanically heavy system, rather than free descriptors. Not just powers and class features, but feats and moreso paragon paths, epic destinies and themes all fall under this description. Coming up with a new flavour for your PC, then, isn't just about coining the right descriptor - its about giving it mechanical expression that is coherent with the rest of the game, effective and balanced. This is what 4e's splats offer to players: you are paying someone else to do this design and development work for you, in order to open up new options (swashbuckling fighters, brawling fighters, stab-and-throw rangers, etc).Power ups have nothing to do with it. It's about the viability of a wider range of PCs.Now you've made it clear you don't like this: you prefer generic classes in which thematic difference has no or minimal thematic expression. That's fine, and obviously it means 4e is not the game for you. But that personal preference on your part really tells us nothing about how 4e works, except in this indirect way: in so far as 4e doesn't satisfy your preference, it's probably game in which classes are not all that generic, and in which thematic difference is intimately connected to mechanical nuance. And in fact I would say that's largely the case!**************  [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION]: I picked up a copy of Marvel Heroic Civil War Premium Event Book yesterday, and am currently working through the OM. In terms of my typology of (quasi-)narrativist PC build models above, and with the caveat that I haven't actual read the datafile chapter yet, I would say that MHRP is closer to the free descriptor approach, but is leveraging its licensed content to generate saleable splat, so that players can see the "official" descriptors for their favourite superheroes. HeroWars/Quest has elements of this approach in its sales of Glorantha splat.</blockquote>

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