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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9099863" data-attributes="member: 42582">What makes me a little snarky is someone talking as if from a position of knowledge, who in fact is unfamiliar with the most basic features of what they're talking about.I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with ignorance, particularly in relation to trivial matters such as RPG rule sets. But I'm surprised to see bold, confident assertions being made from a position of ignorance.PC or NPC is not a property of a character in the fiction. It's a description of who among the game participants owns/controls a character. So the real question is Why do the players get to control the implacable warriors, while the GM is stuck controlling the sea of mediocrities? And the answer is because - as per the blurb on the back of the PHB, THE WORLD NEEDS HEROES, a premise of the game is that the players control the protagonists.The character operates under the same "rules" as everyone else: they draw their sword (or whatever) and engage their foes in melee. They just happen to be implacable, relentless, remorseless, however exactly you wish to characterise it. Like Conan, or Eomer, or Aragorn, or Lancelot.To me, it seems like complaining that (say) Cathy Freeman (Olympic 400m, Sydney 2000) or Gary Kasparov (champion chess player) or Rasputin (notoriously hard to kill) doesn't operate under the same rules as everyone else.Conan always strikes true. He kills were-hyenas by punching them through the skull. Lancelot defeats whatever knight he jousts! Aragorn and Eomer meet on the field of battle, having cut their way through a sea of Orcs.You are imposing an a priori conception of what the mechanics must mean, and then complaining that the fiction doesn't match that conception. And you're correct, it doesn't. So perhaps you shouldn't play 4e. But I can report from experience that I had no trouble understanding how the mechanics and the fiction relate - even though for the previous 19 years my main game had been Rolemaster, which has a completely different way of relating mechanics and fiction (and would have no room, either mechanically or conceptually, for "damage on a miss").</blockquote>

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