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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6600246" data-attributes="member: 42582">It might seem ridiculous to you. I am familiar with things that cannot be done more than once in a given day. I listed some.And I indicated some. Fast sprints (this takes some training, to get to the level where you can do strong performances but not repeatedly without rest). Pull ups (depending on upper body strength, obviously). Coming up with clever moves in argument (there are exceptions - Frank Jackson at his best perhaps can come up with clever moves all day; 4e has various power-recovery mechanics that model this sort of genius).And if that's the best you can do, the game will probably suck, sure.But that's not what people who play 4e do.Just as, when a PC is at 1 hp, you don't answer the question "Why will I drop if I'm hit one more time?" by saying "You're at full strength but can't parry any more blows", although that answer would fit just as well with the hp mechanics as your answer for the daily power.My point is that there are a range of devices for rationing. Rolling a d8 for damage rations damage spikes. Choosing when to use a 2W power rations damage spikes, but gives the player choice rather than making it random. What is happening in the fiction in either case? Probably the same thing - the character hit harder. The difference is that 4e changes the rationing device (or rather, adds one - dice are still rolled, but by choosing the power you are choosing to have your PC try harder).What story did people tell themselves to explain, in the fictional context, the various rationing of retries that was part of AD&D? I guess the answer is different for different people, but what I'm asking you to do is to recollect however it was that you did it, and then imagine that that is what players at my table are doing during a 4e session.That's emphatically not an invitation to you to do the same. Rather, it's an invitation to you to see that people playing 4e aren't some wacky crowd of people who don't understand what RPGing is about. They're just doing the same thing that you do when damage dice are rolled and the outcome has to be narrated; or when a thief can't retry because s/he hasn't gained a level yet; and doing it on these other occasions too.There are some D&D players (they post on these boards; I don't think you're one of them, but I may be wrong) who don't like these features of D&D's mechanics, but see these mechanical rationing devices that require spontaneous narration of fiction as necessary evils. I can see why they would not want the "necessary evils" to spread further. (These are the players who make me wonder why they're not playing systems that dispense with the "necessary evils", but that's another matter.)There are some D&D players - you may be one - who are comfortable with them in some contexts (eg round-by-round action economy) but not in other contexts (eg day-by-day action economy). Perhaps you also think the verisimilitude of the action economy increased when the combat round was reduced from a minute to 6 seconds, because you can more easily integrate the Gygaxian deeming of no more than one opportunity per round into the fiction of a 6-second exchange than a 60-second one. That would be interesting to hear you (or anyone else) talk about, were it the case.I'm not inviting anyone who doesn't want to play 4e to do so. I'm inviting them - in the context of a discussion board whose main purpose is to talk about playing RPGs, including especially D&D -to engage in productive conversation about the parameters and details of various mechanics, how they relate to the fiction and to goals of play, what techniques are usable across a range of approaches and what are not, etc.I don't play Gygaxian dungeon crawls, and I know from experience that I suck at GMing them. That doesn't stop me from having interesting and fruitful discussions about how they work, what some of the relevant techniques are, etc. I don't have to enjoy Gygaxian play to see why someone else might, and to engage with them productively about it.I don't see why the same isn't true of 4e.The closest I have come to that sort of response (in this or other threads) is to ask "How can you like X but not Z"?You seem to think the question is rhetorical. It's not. It takes as a premise that you don't like Z, and do like X, and invites some discussion as to what the salient difference is. For instance, earlier in this post I've quoted you posting a dialogue that shows you think martial dailies are absurd because how can the character be tired in this one respect but otherwise at full strength. I look at that and my mind immediately turns to the hit point mechanic, which to me seems identical in this respect - a character on 1 hp is at full strength (moving, jumping, fighting etc) except in one respect - any single hit will drop him/her.If you don't care to elaborate what strikes you as the salient diffrence, that's your prerogative. But it's not self-evident, any more than - to you - it's probably not self-evident that hit points, which have been part of D&D from the beginning, are just another martial daily power.I've never asserted or implied any such thing. It's obvious that 3E was and remains a popular game. It strikes me as equally obvious that the reason that WotC ceased publishing it wasn't because it was unpopular, but because they couldn't see a way to further profit from it in accordance with their financial goals.I think it's generally a mistake to conflate the analysis of publication and sales trends (a commercial phenomenon) with an analysis of the popularity of RPGs (a social/cultural phenomenon). The two are related in various ways, but far from identical.</blockquote>

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