Ampersand: Sneak Attack

[Lizard]

I find it funny that there are players who would balk at the "realism" of AW/PE/PD abilities in 4e while at the same time accepting Hit Points, Armor Class, and Falling Damage as presented in 3e.

Those are explicitly abstract. They give only final numbers; they don't describe actions. An "attack" in most versions of D&D is not explicitly described; it's a mix of feints, parries, twists, and so on. You roll the dice, look at the numbers, and reverse-engineer to describe the action.

Other things are more 'real'. A bow attack, for example, uses one arrow per roll -- it cannot be described as an abstraction showing multiple attacks. If you grapple someone, you have him held. You have your arms (or whatever) around him. The move to grapple might be abstracted, but the final result is not -- he's either grrappled, or he isn't. A bull rush, or the rogue maneuver descrived earlier, is 'real', in that someone is really moved X squares..he's not subject to an abstract, unmapped 'positional defect'[1].

So while it's easy to imagine a three foot halfling managing to slice open a dragon's throat when the dragon leans down to snap at him (because there are no explicit rules for hit location, and size differences are calculated in armor class and damage), it's much harder to imagine that same halfling bull-rushing the dragon off a cliff without the use of 'magic' or special training'. (Working in size and strength modifiers to the check, I'm not sure even a 20th level fighter could do it to a CR 20 dragon, but I'm not sure...) The dragon 'really moves' -- he's now X squares away from where he was.

The manuevers in 4e are described in fairly explicit fashion, and their effects often involve moving or shifting targets. The strain of coming up with 'believable' (not necessarily 'realistic') descriptions for these manuevers might prove taxing for many groups, when you have to do it over and over and over, and not get repetitive or boring. ("So, the dragon tried to bite me and misjudged and tumbled tail-over-head 5 squares...again?")

We'll see. The problem is, D&D combat is very much NOT 'shift your brain in neutral'. It's detailed, complex, and tactical. It's a wonderful system. 4e looks to be every bit as crunchy. This means that you're constantly shifting between detailed resolution and abstract description, and the more barriers there are to making that shift, the less fun combat becomes.

 

[outsider]

In the rogue's case I'd say that their special abilities require specific openings in their opponents' defenses which don't come along that often.

For a good real life example of this sort of thing, consider the Gogoplata choke. There's probably hundreds of Jujitsu artists that know how to do this manuever. They could, in theory, try to do it as often as they wanted to per day. However, as far as I know, only four mixed martial arts fights have ever been ended by the move.

 

[Wulfram]

I find it funny that there are players who would balk at the "realism" of AW/PE/PD abilities in 4e while at the same time accepting Hit Points, Armor Class, and Falling Damage as presented in 3e.

Just because you have some, necessary, abstraction, doesn't mean that realism or verisimilitude should be just chucked out as worthless. This is the sort of argument that makes the slippery slope argument not a fallacy.

Anyway, HP and AC are established parts of DnD, and no longer worth complaining about - though I certainly wouldn't have objected if they'd something different for Armour in 4e. 3e Falling damage rules are poor, and I think generally accepted as such.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

If my Japanese knowledge doesn't fall me, the way to pluralize something (that, granted, is used very seldomly) is to append tachi (sometimes changing the the 't' to a voiced 'd') to the word in question. Thus, katanatachi. However, Japanese very rarely employs the plural where English does. 'Where are all the katanas?' probably would not use the plural in Japanese.

Anyway. Re: the sneak attack with various weapons issue, it's possible that there's a question of concealability as well as accuracy. I do think the argument that the added versatility of a crossbow as opposed to a bow has some merit, as well.

I think "noun-tachi" more correctly translates to "some nouns" rather than a simple plural. There aren't really plural nouns in Japanese.

 

[shilsen]

Just because you have some, necessary, abstraction, doesn't mean that realism or verisimilitude should be just chucked out as worthless. This is the sort of argument that makes the slippery slope argument not a fallacy.

Personally, I think realism absolutely should be chucked out as worthless. Whereas I think verisimilitude is useful. Since this is a semantic point, I'm defining realism here as "fidelity to real life" and verisimilitude as "having internal consistency". The D&D world is so basically separated from our world that I think a search for realism in some areas is meaningless. In a world where cats can kill commoners, ravens fly at a quarter the speed of ravens in our world, and gravity doesn't work the same way, trying to get realistic doesn't make sense to me. But internal consistency is something I like. When you're reading Beowulf and he can hold his breath underwater for hours and swim in full plate, that's utterly unrealistic, but it does seem internally consistent for the world Beowulf lives in.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Having seen the rogue write-up, I can say I'm not a fan of w/e/d abilities. I know the gamist logic behind it, as it avoids players using the same optimal ability once and again, but I can't agree with the solution they came up with. I'd preferred if they'd resolved this just making the different abilities useful in different combat situations, so the tactic decision would be "What is the best move I can take now?", not "What is the best move I have still available?".

This, and the take on skills (I love the granularity of 3.X's skill system, and that was the main reason for me to not switch to True20) are my main argues against 4E as for now. My other grips (as the squared fireballs or the magic item limitations) are so easily houseruled they shouldn't become a real issue unless I find as many of them as to make me remember an awful lot of house rules, but the w/e/d abilities and the oversimplified skill system seem too much tightly tied to the rules to be houseruled away.

OTOH, I love the simplified maths. They make so easier to create NPCs on the fly.

per encounter abilities are those which need the enemy to be unaware... so the fluff seems ok. the problem is: what if you want to use that power against an enemy who didn´t notice you doing this trick against his friend before. Soer enemy would maybe be better than per encounter...

 

[ajanders]

I second Shil's post, and not just because he controls the gninjae.

Let's consider, please, a Dromite character.

That's a telepathic ant who shoots fire out of her brain.
With that as a starting point, saying she can only use Laser-Guided Dagger of Death Attack once a day is unrealistic seems pettish.

My concern with "per encounter" abilities is mostly due to WOTC's vagueness about how long an encounter should be.
That makes how long an ability takes to recharge and how long it lasts variable, which is hard on my versimilitude.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I second Shil's post, and not just because he controls the gninjae.

Let's consider, please, a Dromite character.

That's a telepathic ant who shoots fire out of her brain.
With that as a starting point, saying she can only use Laser-Guided Dagger of Death Attack once a day is unrealistic seems pettish.

My concern with "per encounter" abilities is mostly due to WOTC's vagueness about how long an encounter should be.
That makes how long an ability takes to recharge and how long it lasts variable, which is hard on my versimilitude.

They haven't yet bothered to put the precise definition in any of their previews, but from the Book of Nine Swords, it seems as if they are willing to make a relatively "fixed" definition. They might not say "a encounter is a 120 seconds time span", but they will probably define something like "after 1 to 5 minutes of rest (or at least non-fighting), you can recover your per encounter powers. Which also means that you can still play a "war of attrition" with per encounter powers by sending waves of enemies in short order. Obviously, this should be used with care.
The nice thing is that even if you go for an attrition fight, their can be three out-comes for the PCs: (1) failure, (2) survival (most daily resources had to be expended, the group will probably want to rest), (3) victory (daily resources were barely touched, the group can go on.). But even (2) allows the group to continue - it's just a lot riskier - but it's not suicide. If the next encounters aren't as tough as the last one, your per encounter powers are still there - you still have some resources.
3.x didn't allow a big difference between (2) and (3). If you came out of fight that didn't cost you any daily resources, this meant it was an easy fight. (And for the spellcasters, probably a little bit boring, too.)

 

[tomBitonti]

Those are explicitly abstract. They give only final numbers; they don't describe actions. An "attack" in most versions of D&D is not explicitly described; it's a mix of feints, parries, twists, and so on. You roll the dice, look at the numbers, and reverse-engineer to describe the action.
...
We'll see. The problem is, D&D combat is very much NOT 'shift your brain in neutral'. It's detailed, complex, and tactical. It's a wonderful system. 4e looks to be every bit as crunchy. This means that you're constantly shifting between detailed resolution and abstract description, and the more barriers there are to making that shift, the less fun combat becomes.

Nicely written; thx!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I know this won't cure the ills of the more immersion oriented among us, but I tend to see Daily and Encounter Powers as a form of narrative control being handed to the players. It's not that a given character is literally incapable of performing the actions represented by the Powers more often than the limitations in the rules allow, its that they don't. It's just not appropriate for cinematic or narratively appropriate for a character to continually perform these daring feats.

In the rogue's case I'd say that their special abilities require specific openings in their opponents' defenses which don't come along that often. Rather than having the DM detail these openings and have the rogue's player react to them, we instead give the player of the rogue a limited amount of narrative power to determine when his opponents leave him with an opening for the maneuvers he is capable of performing.

I agree completely. It's an elegant solution. Why does the rogue use his Spinning Death Blade in round 3? Because that's when the opponent opened himself up in the particular way that's required for that sort of attack. The player decides to use the power in round 3, but the narrative indicates that the reason why the character uses it is because opportunity knocked. It solves the "rationale" problem quite well that way. This is how many people narrate their games anyway.