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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 3845101" data-attributes="member: 2011">Actually in 4E, early indications are that rolling a 4 will result in partial success.This discussion is like the 3.5 discussions on Tumbling and Combat Casting. The rule is the way it is, but for some people, that does not make sense. For other people, they defend the way the rule is written, merely because that is the way the rule is written.Static DCs (e.g. your climb rope example) should be against objects.Dynamic DCs (i.e. the DC changes based on the abilities of the opponents, usually via an opposed roll, e.g. the way Tumble should be) should be against creatures.And it looks like this might be occurring within 4E as well to some extent.It's a matter of rule logic vs. rule balance vs. rule simplicity. Tumbling in 3.5 was simple, but it wasn't balanced. Once assassins got good enough to Tumble Past every single time, the very REASON that Tumble was put into the game (i.e. to mitigate the problem of opponents getting way past a line of defenders in a circular initiative system) is totally avoided.Ditto for Second Wind as I explained above.When discussing metagaming rules (like Second Wind and Tumble) whose sole purpose is to address a gaming issue, the designers have to ensure that the gaming issue is handled in all cases.Not in some cases, in all of them.Otherwise, the game starts to develop flaws and issues.Ditto for feats, special abilities, and equipment.The moment they introduce ways that allow a player to sidestep some metagaming rule, they introduce problems into the game.For example, drawing a potion is a move action in 3.5. There are good solid design reasons for this. So what do the designers do? They introduce fast draw type pouches to allow anyone to get the equivalent of a mini-Fast Draw feat for potions. All for the cost of a handful of gold.This is silly. It breaks the original design and sidesteps a rule that was put into the game for a very important balance reason.They have to stop doing this. They have to carefully screen feats and special abilities and equipment so that they don't sidestep carefully designed, balanced, and playtested rules.Just because an idea is cool does not mean that it is balanced.And, they have to come up with meta-design rules about how to design the game. One such rule is that all conflict with a creature should result in a Dynamic DC (i.e. an opposed roll of some sort or a roll against a variable aspect of that creature, e.g. BAB) whereas all conflict with an object shoudl result in a Static DC (i.e. the DC is always the same shy of situational modifiers for simplicity).Without such meta-design rules, Grapple is totally mechanically different than Trip which is totally mechanically different than Turn Undead which is totally mechanically different than Tumbling Past.And when this happens, cracks seep into the design of the game so that players can take advantage of rules loopholes.In the case of Second Wind, when your player wants to stab himself with a dagger before going to bed at night, just so that he will have more hit points in the morning, there is a design flaw in that rule and it is not accomplishing the metagaming goal that it is designed to accomplish.</blockquote>

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