Can a swarm be grabbed?

[Majoru Oakheart]

Wrong. You're saying that you roleplay and then when you get to combat everything is abstract (i.e. a boardgame). I'm speaking specifically about combat. And if you get to combat and the fiction ceases to matter, well, you're not playing an RPG at that point. You've switched into "boardgame" mode. If you're letting the grappler fighter use his powers with no fictional circumstances backing them up, then that's weak.

No offense, but that's not the definition of a role playing game. As long as you are still playing a character in a world that has some rules, you are still role playing. This world just has slightly different rules than the "real world".

What it comes down to for me is that we are still playing a game to have fun. If not being able to use your powers against an enemy is no fun, then "realism" takes a back seat to fun. It's not that I don't consider "fiction", it's that it always takes a back seat to game balance and to the fun of the players.

Any time realism becomes the primary motivator in a game you end up with a situation where one player gets favored over another. Often this favoritism leans towards spellcasters over non-spell casters.

Take, for instance, 2 at-will powers: One arcane, One martial. They both do some poison damage. You are attacking a Fire Elemental. They have no veins, they are made of fire. They aren't immune to poison in 4e. The DM asks each character: "How exactly do you poison a Fire Elemental?"

The Wizard replies with "I modify the casting of the spell slightly as I'm casting it so that the substance I shoot at the Elemental acts the same as a poison would for a human. I'm really good at Arcana and would know how to modify my spells on the fly and I'd also know what hurts Elementals."

The Rogue replies with "Umm...I don't know. I just stab it with my poisoned dagger the same way I do all other creatures."

And the DM allows the Wizard to use his powers and reduces the Rogue's powers to quite a few less than he normally has, making it less fun to play.

This either has the side effect of causing players to all decide to play spell casters or to suffer.

It resulted in situations where a Rogue could do nearly 0 damage for an entire session due to choice of monsters while the Cleric suddenly became the most powerful member in the group. I had a player quit simply because he was tired of his character doing nothing when we were adventuring in an ancient dungeon where there was nothing alive in it.

I think this is the reason why some gamers who stuck with 3.5 hate 4E, because you actually have to work to make the fiction stick in 4E combat, whereas 3E kind of relied on the fiction.

It's exactly BECAUSE 3.5 "relied on the fiction" that everything it didn't say was so glaring. If one particular monster wasn't immune to grappling but it was immune to a list of 10 other things, you have to assume that there's a reason it isn't immune to grappling or it would have been listed there. Either that or you had to second guess a huge new list of things everything was immune to. Which often meant players had to rely on the DMs whims as to when their powers worked.

I, and the people I played with, adhered to the rules just as closely in 3.5e. It's just that the rules in 3.5e were much more arbitrary(or "realistic" depending on your point of view).

Nowadays, it's just easier to say "Everyone's powers should work unless the rules say otherwise." I don't care whether the grappler fighter is grabbing some of the insects and the others refuse to leave their brethren, he's being so threatening that the insects feel compelled to stay nearby him(perhaps he put his arm in the middle of them and they are now crawling all over his body), he swings he sword so hard that it creates a vacuum that sucks the insects in, or any other explanation you can come up with. To me, the explanation isn't really important. I want to get the round of combat over with so we can get to the next one...as quickly as possible so we can get back to the role playing part of the game.

And I want that round of combat not to end with one of the players saying "I guess I don't do anything, since half my powers grab and the other half can only target grabbed creatures"

 

[Gradine]

Just to toss my own two cents in to actual discussion (beyond just snarky hypocritical humor), but you know what has never made any sense to me? Vancian spellcasting. I understand that it comes from a series of novels, but it still always struck me as a half-assed rationale behind what I always thought was a poorly designed magic system. In fact, the only kind of spellcasting that really makes sense to me, from a simulationist standpoint anyway, is Casting From Hit Points.

Are Martial dailies/encounters nothing more than a mechanic designed to keep martial classes balanced against spellcasters at all levels? Well, no duh. I don't think too many people are mourning the lack of balance between these two. Are most of explanations given to justify Martial powers just half-assed excuses to defend a well-balanced game? Yes. Can you remove the phrase "Martial" from that previous sentence and have it still be completely true? Absolutely, undeniably yes.

I'm sorry, but there isn't anything about any of the classes that makes perfect sense (or really any kind of sense) in-context of any physically or magically existing world. I mean, you have wizards slinging Firecubes, for pete's sake! And that's just scratching the surface. Saying that "A wizard did it" is acceptable to everything other than the poor martial classes is myopic and, frankly, what has led to the horrible unbalancing of such characters in every previous edition.

Of course, none of that is the point. I have already mentioned (maybe it was another thread, don't remember) that "making sense" has never been a design goal of 4e. The design goal was instead to make a fun, well-balanced role-playing game. Anything else is gravy. Many here happen to agree with that. If "making sense" is important to you in a tabletop RPG than 4e is unequivocally not the game for you. But lambasting something for not being what it never had any intention of being quite frankly doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Solvarn]

Monopoly

It kind of gets to the point where you have to understand that this is a game, not a really good effort at realism.

I can play Monopoly and not be upset that the mortgage rules are unrealistic.

 

[Odhanan]

a. Because you only found opportunity to use it once.
b. Because your enemies only left themselves open once in the encounter.
c. Because it wasn't tactically sound to use the power in the encounter more than once.

These reinforce the narrative-story rationale behind Daily and Encounter powers to me, because if what you are saying is true, then me, player, choosing to use a particular Daily power doesn't mean that I'm playing my character doing something in the game-world, but ALSO means that as a player, out-of-character, I get to decide that now is the opportunity to use this particular power or that the enemies are now leaving themselves open to its use... which means I am affecting game elements, a "story" or "narrative", outside of my character. That is something that rubs me the wrong way.

As for c. I expect as the player to choose whether it is sound to use this or that tactic more than once in an encounter. I don't want the game mechanics to make these kinds of choices for me.

 

[Odhanan]

It kind of gets to the point where you have to understand that this is a game, not a really good effort at realism.

I can play Monopoly and not be upset that the mortgage rules are unrealistic.

Monopoly also isn't a role playing game. For some people, the pleasure there is in playing a role playing game relies on one's ability to immerse him/herself in the game world through his or her character. These people will want to use rules that makes sense to them in the context of the game world.

If they are not getting this out of the rules system, there is no incentive to them to play this particular role playing game instead of Stratego, Monopoly, Modern Warfare 2 or God knows what else that is not a role playing game. That's the point.

Some people don't care or want to bother with these things. That's perfectly fine by me. But just because some other people do care about these things doesn't make them guilty of "badwrongfun" or some sort of nutjobs taking things necessarily too seriously.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

As for c. I expect as the player to choose whether it is sound to use this or that tactic more than once in an encounter. I don't want the game mechanics to make these kinds of choices for me.

The thing is, without a restriction on how often you can use your powers, you end up with only a few options for what happens with Martial characters:

a) There are no other options except Attack With Weapon. You use this every round since you have no special powers.

b) There are other options, but to balance the game they are all poor choices so no one ever uses them and it essentially becomes a).

c) There are other options, but unless you specialize in one, they are poor choices. If you do specialize in one, it becomes the best option every time and it essentially becomes a).

d) Different options function best in different circumstances. However, each circumstance has a best option, the best option is always chosen, and the game plays itself (i.e. The enemy has low strength and is bad at grappling, they can't cast spells while grappling. If I use a grapple right now, I have essentially won. OR The enemy is really specialized in their weapon, if I disarm it, I have essentially won). This also penalizes players who aren't savvy with the rules as they won't know the best circumstances to use special moves in. Since there is only one choice in any given round, it essentially becomes a).

e) There are a lot of other options and they are all balanced perfectly with Attack With Weapon. So it doesn't matter what choice you make, since they are all the same. Which essentially becomes a).


The only way to stop everything from becoming a) is to put restrictions on how often special options can be used. We need to decide how to restrict more powerful special options. If we follow your logic then we can't arbitrarily restrict options based on number of times per day, since it doesn't make any sense. We can't restrict them based on tactical opportunities since that causes d). We can't restrict them based on narrative control. How can we restrict them then?

There was one suggestion listed(allow the same option multiple times but with negatives each time), but it pretty much devolves into a form of d). It means "Use the best option until the penalty becomes so bad it isn't the best option anymore. Then switch to the next best option. Repeat".

 

[Odhanan]

Instances where the power structure in the 4E core books could make sense in game world terms to me:

- The characters are robots (or clones, or pre-human experiments etc) with specific combat moves programmed into them. Their memories reboot after an encounter partially, whereas some more complex routines need to be rebooted after an extended rest (dailies). This would explain why some complex combat moves could only be performed once. This is a limitation inherent to the character's nature.

- The universe itself limits the capabilities of the characters. It could be an edict of the Gods, or some universal Law of the Cosmos. Maybe the game is all about a competition taking place in some artificial universe. Or the whole game world in fact is a virtual reality generated by computers. Or something similar that implies that the laws of nature themselves force these limitations onto the characters.​

Applications could include a universe where PCs are pre-human heroes trying to break free from the rules of the Gods, the Architects, whatever forces controls them, or a d20 Modern game where characters may enter a virtual reality that is in effect a 4E game within the boundaries of the virtual world/matrix, and so on, so forth.

 

[Camelot]

- The universe itself limits the capabilities of the characters. It could be an edict of the Gods, or some universal Law of the Cosmos. Maybe the game is all about a competition taking place in some artificial universe. Or the whole game world in fact is a virtual reality generated by computers. Or something similar that implies that the laws of nature themselves force these limitations onto the characters.

Or the whole game world is in fact a fantasy world of magic that is being simulated by the aforementioned game.

 

[Odhanan]

Or the whole game world is in fact a fantasy world of magic that is being simulated by the aforementioned game.

Which is metagaming, and not what I'm looking for with a role playing game.

 

[Solvarn]

Some people don't care or want to bother with these things. That's perfectly fine by me. But just because some other people do care about these things doesn't make them guilty of "badwrongfun" or some sort of nutjobs taking things necessarily too seriously.

Not at all, it's really more of a wrong system type thing. You can try to make 4E something it isn't, or play a different system that is more aligned with what you are wanting.