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Message: <blockquote data-quote="heretic888" data-source="post: 4073933" data-attributes="member: 60326">Hi Greg,Yep.If an opponent has equal or greater combat ability to you (attack bonus, AC, hit points, etc) , then using encounter or daily powers against him is *also* "riskier" and "more difficult to pull off". As such, this particular point can claim no greater sense of verisimilitude for BoIM than it can for 4E.No offense, but I can narrate all that without implementing a complicated sub-system that encourages system mastery reward and tactical monotony.Seriously, these are exactly the kind of narrative devices I was using to explain how encounter and daily martial powers might "work" in my last two or three posts. The only difference is I believe it *takes away* from the fun and spontaneity of the game to transform all these narrations into a set of numbers, rules, and unnecessary crunch. Honestly, it sounds to me that what you are describing means a player has to invoke system mastery reward just to make use of these mechanics. If you don't know the combat system inside and out, you basically can't use these maneuvers against thematically relevant enemies (i.e., other badass martial dudes).Such a design is extremely unfriendly to beginners and casual players.You can do that with encounter and daily powers, too, and you don't need complicated mechanics and tactical monotony to do it, either.  Once again, encounter and daily powers can accomplish this just as well, but don't have the negatives that this system has to overcome to use.Also, while it is true that there may be certain opponents that just this particular maneuver will totally kick ass against, in general characters will still be firing off their strongest moves as often as they possibly can. There is still monotony, it just isn't absolute.  More system mastery reward. Not only do I have to know the combat system inside and out, but everyone in my party does, too. Ewwwww.Also, I think fans of martial power source characters might be a little annoyed that they have to rely on others to use any of their better abilities, whereas the arcane and divine guys need not do anything other than point and shoot. Okay, look. We basically have two competing martial systems here.On the one hand, we have the 4E power model which provides characters with a set of once-per-encounter and once-per-day abilities whose requirements and conditions to use can be narrated by players as they see fit, allowing for alternative interpretations and unique narratives that no one here has taken into account yet. Expenditure of action points and/or feats *may* allow characters in this system to use these abilities more often, if needed.On the other hand, we have the BoIM maneuver model which provides a set of abilities with very specific mechanical conditions that dictates when they can and cannot be used (and therefore rules out unique narrative explanations for such abilities). Unfortunate features of this model include system mastery reward, the slowing down and complicating of combat by imposing additional arithmetic, encouraging tactical monotony, restricting narrative possibilities, and general-use inefficacy of the abilities against other martial characters.Now, if *I* were designing a new edition of D&D, why would I *ever* choose the latter model over the former model?? I mean, seriously??Laterz.</blockquote>

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