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Critiques of 4e: about style not substance?
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<blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 4288885" data-attributes="member: 704"><p>Using the "He delights in the mayhem he creates" quote to try to explain an immobilization effect can work, but quite frankly, it is very generic, and could also be used to explain plenty of other things.</p><p></p><p>Personally, I do not see it as a big deal, but that does not make Pawsplays concerns about it an invalid criticism. The monsters attacks are all very condensed, and when an effect is attached to an attack, and that effect is not intuitive to the name of the attack, it can show.</p><p></p><p>(from the pdf)</p><p>Triple Flail (standard; at-will) ✦ Weapon</p><p>Reach 2; +32 vs. AC; 2d8 + 10 damage, and the target is immobilized (save ends). Aftereffect: 15 damage.</p><p></p><p>In play and at the table, when the players are in a life and death fight with a Demon lord, that really is all you need to know. But where does this brevity come back to bite you? After the fight when one of your players loots the demon lord, the next fight may have the player wanting to use the Demon lords triple flail. Now as DM, you have several things to figure out. Is the immobilization power a result of the demon lord being a demon lord, or is it a property of the weapon? And if one of your players asks why his character is immobilized, telling him it is what the stat block says is not a satisfying answer.</p><p></p><p>Now, while I concede that kind of thing places a greater burden on the Dm in play, it is a trade off I am willing to make. Third Edition has stat blocks that were cluttered with extraneous information, and has combat that took increasing amounts of effort to manage as you went up in level. It has low level combat that was too hard to make interesting and keep your players alive. It has high level combat that is hard to keep interesting without all your monsters being blasted to paste without having an affect on the players. It has subsystems that were outright broken like grapple for large creatures which would also always have high strength putting their grapple checks well beyond what level appropriate opponents could handle.</p><p></p><p>For me, if one of the few things I have to worry about is coming up with fitting flavor descriptors for some in game powers, I think I can make that trade off. Does that make the lack of adequate flavor descriptions not a problem? No, not for my games.</p><p></p><p>END COMMUNICATION</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lord Zardoz, post: 4288885, member: 704"] Using the "He delights in the mayhem he creates" quote to try to explain an immobilization effect can work, but quite frankly, it is very generic, and could also be used to explain plenty of other things. Personally, I do not see it as a big deal, but that does not make Pawsplays concerns about it an invalid criticism. The monsters attacks are all very condensed, and when an effect is attached to an attack, and that effect is not intuitive to the name of the attack, it can show. (from the pdf) Triple Flail (standard; at-will) ✦ Weapon Reach 2; +32 vs. AC; 2d8 + 10 damage, and the target is immobilized (save ends). Aftereffect: 15 damage. In play and at the table, when the players are in a life and death fight with a Demon lord, that really is all you need to know. But where does this brevity come back to bite you? After the fight when one of your players loots the demon lord, the next fight may have the player wanting to use the Demon lords triple flail. Now as DM, you have several things to figure out. Is the immobilization power a result of the demon lord being a demon lord, or is it a property of the weapon? And if one of your players asks why his character is immobilized, telling him it is what the stat block says is not a satisfying answer. Now, while I concede that kind of thing places a greater burden on the Dm in play, it is a trade off I am willing to make. Third Edition has stat blocks that were cluttered with extraneous information, and has combat that took increasing amounts of effort to manage as you went up in level. It has low level combat that was too hard to make interesting and keep your players alive. It has high level combat that is hard to keep interesting without all your monsters being blasted to paste without having an affect on the players. It has subsystems that were outright broken like grapple for large creatures which would also always have high strength putting their grapple checks well beyond what level appropriate opponents could handle. For me, if one of the few things I have to worry about is coming up with fitting flavor descriptors for some in game powers, I think I can make that trade off. Does that make the lack of adequate flavor descriptions not a problem? No, not for my games. END COMMUNICATION [/QUOTE]
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