Ampersand: Sneak Attack

[mach1.9pants]

Yep, a lot of your joy of 4E will come down to your RLV (Required Level of Verisimilitude). The higher your RLV the more annoying 4E will be, IMO

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

This really bugged me. It's an incredibly obvious combination and yet it was left uncombined. This is the kind of thing that makes me worry that they overlooked some things and that the end result will be a clunky set of rules that don't follow basic premises set forth by other changes.

4.5 ed anyone?

My guess: Intimidate is an automatic skill for fighters (like Stealth and Thievery for rogues), so that fighters now have a niche in social encounters. It wouldn't really make sense to have fighters automatically know how to bluff as well, so they kept the two skills separate. (Also, they probably don't want the social skills combined TOO much... having one "Convince People To Do What You Want" skill for social encounters would be like having a "Make Enemies Be Dead" skill for combat encounters!)

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Of course, we should keep in mind, we are only looking at a section of the class. Especially if Bo9S was any indication, there probably is either

a)feat that allows one to reuse an encounter power
b) simple rules in the encounter power section that says, "if you use no powers in a round, you "refresh" your encounter powers.
c) similar rules that allow one to use a daily power more than once.

Nope, it says in Races and Classes that they didn't like recharge mechanics so they ditched them all and there is no way of recovering per encounter powers now.

The rationale was that it was too complicated to play a sub-game at the same time as the real game which was essentially a "card game". One where you had to manage what powers you had in your "hand" and when you could "draw" new ones. They found that players were concentrating too much on the sub-game and that it often played out as:

1) Use my "best" power
2) Recharge to get the power back
3) Use my "best" power again

They wanted players to concentrate on the actual game at hand: How many hitpoints the enemies have left, what tactical decisions to make, how to survive and win given the options you had left.

 

[Campbell]

I think it's a little too premature to judge if Insight should be combined with Perception since we don't have any clear indication of what the skill actually does. I actually hope the next preview covers skills.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I really don't think Perception and Insight should be combined since they seem to deal with different things.

Since Perception would be things dealing with sight, hearing, taste, smell.

While Insight is more social based and such, so; body language, tone of voice, etc.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

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.

Yes, I believe you've summed up the 4th Edition philosophy exactly from everything I've read. Keep in mind the comment about "The rules are not the physics of the game world". It isn't that characters are incapable of performing a maneuver more than once, it's just that they don't do it. It makes the game more fun if people don't, so the game doesn't allow them to. However, from the CHARACTER'S point of view all he did was react with the appropriate technique given the time he had and the openings the enemy gave him.

 

[Celtavian]

re

The problem is that I certainly can't think of any REALLY good reason why any martial character would have abilities that are per encounter or per day.

Sure, you can explain caster types having per encounter abilities and per day abilities simply by saying "It's magic and that's the way it works." Which is enough to convince 95% of people. Whereas if you say, "They are martial powers, that's the way they work" likely won't convince nearly as many people. This is because people KNOW how non-magical people work but magic doesn't exist in real life so ANY excuse sounds plausible.

So, really you have one of two choices: Bow to the "realistic" or "logical" way of doing things and don't give fighters, rogues and similar characters any per encounter or per day abilities OR give them the abilities and not care that the justification is just as thin as the one for caster types.

If the second choice makes the game more fun the play then I say choose that one and gloss over the reasons.

I agree. You can understand abilities like rage or defensive stance being per encounter because of the amount of mental focus they take, but not something like an attack or skill-based martial power that is learned.

4th edition has some fun stuff I may co-opt like healing surges, but overall it looks like a watered down edition of DnD made for the masses aiming for a LCD level of intelligence. I'm not liking more than I'm disliking. I don't see myself upgrading. I've been playing twenty plus years and I finally found an edition of DnD that I just don't like enough to change.

The removal of death effects, the dumbing down of casters, the removal of the randomness of the game replacing it with point buy, removing half-orcs because their background implies a vile act, and many, many changes that I do not like.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

That's essentially my position too.

Yeah, we old-timers are too tired and senile to get up in arms about trivial stuff anymore. Maybe when I was 20, I'd be able to work up the energy to care, but now I'd rather just overlook it and get on with having fun.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Yep, a lot of your joy of 4E will come down to your RLV (Required Level of Verisimilitude). The higher your RLV the more annoying 4E will be, IMO

Meh, I'm thinking a lot of our problems come from old habit and that infamous wariness of anything new.

Vancian magic is an incredibly silly system, as many have pointed out. But over 20+ years, we've all gotten used to it and even refined the definition in extremely convoluted ways to pacify the "simulationists." (How do 3.5e wizard spells work, again? The wizard knows the spells he's learned, except he needs his book to prepare them, and once he casts them he doesn't actually forget them, but still doesn't know how to cast them again...)

If we have to justify per-encounter powers but no longer have to justify Vancian spell memorization, I'll consider it a more than even trade in terms of "verisimilitude."

That being said:

If you want to find a in-gameworld logic for these powers, here's my take:
At Will/Per Encounter/Per Day is a shorthand description for the likelihood of a certain situation coming up and an appropriate maneuver working. An At Will power is something easily done as long as the base conditions are met. Once you learned the technique, you can repeat it often.
Per Encounter powers are a little more difficult. It's not just knowledge, it's good timing and some luck. Per Day is fiendishly difficult. Even if you trained a lot in it, you still need a lot of luck. It's really hard to get the coordination right, and find the right situation to use it.

I don't think this works, because it opens up a gap between player knowledge and character knowledge of the characters' readiness. For example, let's say the party is fully healed but has blown all its daily powers, and is considering whether to press on to the BBEG (whose camp is only another mile or so away) or to sleep first. The best tactical choice is to rest and restore their dailies, of course. But if we're using Mustrum's in-game justification that I quoted, the characters have no way of KNOWING that they won't "get lucky enough" to use their daily powers again (although of course the players do). What's the rogue gonna say - "Hey guys, I think we should stop for the night, I've used up my allotment of luck for the day"?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Yep, a lot of your joy of 4E will come down to your RLV (Required Level of Verisimilitude). The higher your RLV the more annoying 4E will be, IMO

But it's not even verisimilitude. Verisimilitude just requires that what happens is believable. It's certainly fairly easy to believe a rogue stabs an enemy with a dagger right in the weak point of its armor or that a cleric heals someone with his magic. Then on the following round the rogue tumbles behind the enemy for a flank and sticks his blade in his back and twists it.

It's when you delve too deep into the reasons WHY the rules work the way they do that the problems start to come out. I mean WHY did the rogue not stick his blade in a weak point in the armor again this round. If someone is wearing a lot of armor, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to do that every chance he got? The player of the rogue would have LOVED to do that, but the rules prevented it.

And that's where the problem comes in. The first example isn't verisimilitude breaking when viewed in character. However the rules behind the action aren't actually rules that the characters themselves have to follow, they are rules the players need to follow.