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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6133722" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I think that brings me back to a thought I didn't complete the other day, which is that it is HARD to say what is and isn't improv in 4e games (at least in mine). Often a player will try to have his character use a power in a new or different way that is related to how it normally works, but not identical. Is this improv, or just using your power in more creative ways? Sometimes I ask for extra checks, and maybe in return you get a bit better or different result, but a lot of times its just "OK, sure, make an attack roll". OTOH its VERY hard to separate skill use from improv, in fact the two things really aren't separable except maybe to say most skill uses don't do damage directly, whereas page 42 clearly is oriented towards improvised ATTACKS. In any case, improv isn't some sort of separate category of thing within the 4e rules.Personally I find that the players I play with just do stuff. Naturally on most rounds in a fight when they're faced with a simple "kill that guy in front of me" situation they resort to straight up power use. OTOH as soon as they have some other goal or a less straightforward situation then they just do something and checks get made as needed. I can't tell you that is a lot or a little 'improv', all I can tell you is that when the goliath barbarian wanted to get down to the lower floor level and attack he just said "I'm charging" and leaped down and made an attack (I asked for an Acrobatics check for this to work, is that improv or what?). This happens all the time. Sometimes a specific situation has a rule covering it, so when the minotaur shield rushes the skeleton and knocks it off the ledge we have a bull rush rule for that, but if we didn't we would still do pretty much the same thing (Str vs Fort, right).Anyway, I think DDN is running into a couple issues here, but it amounts to the skill system is complicated with extra dice and etc that get in the way. I don't think that stuff is adding a lot of value. It reminds me of lots of weird 2e stuff, combat doesn't work like skills, etc. If I could tell the DDN team to do something that would sell me it would be to take all the good ideas they've got and apply them to 4e instead of attempting the quixotic task of making a 21st Century retread of a game that was obsolete 25 years ago.</blockquote>

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