Cynicism of an AD&D refugee

[Thasmodious]

but making a non magical maneuver limited on an encounter basis, while possibly balanced, comes up really lacking in the versimilitude department.

Only to the unimaginative. This has been discussed several times already. Exploits are called exploits for a reason, they require a decently specific set of circumstances to pull off. Descriptive players and DMs should have no problem describing that with the encounter and daily exploits. Many powers lend themselves to this limitation naturally. Others require a bit of creativity.

Another way to look at it is simply that your suite of encounter and daily exploits are representative of the style of fighting you're good at. Using those powers is just a representation of specific moments of brilliance, where things come together, over and above. Fighting with a big hammer, you are often making sweeping bashed and huge overhead blows. Sometimes, the situation is right, you find an opening and bam - crushing blow. Sometimes you set up the perfect opening and Brute Strike follows. That's what the exploits often are, just particularly good expressions of your fighting style.

"You're always good with the spear Stabby Man, but when you feinted to the left to draw that orcs shield to the side and then faked a thrust at his right to get him to block and expose his chest to you, then ran him through, that was inspired!"
"Aww shucks, Sneaky Girl, your eyes shure is purty."

 

[Thasmodious]

Also, IMHO, two-handed-weapon fighters are kind of a sucker bet. One of a fighter's many jobs is to stand up and take attacks. Their significantly lower AC means they will drop sooner.

It's mitigating. If they are doing more damage then their sword and board counterpart, they are dropping enemies sooner, too. So it works out about the same. Building a fighter to defend by dealing heavy damage is quite viable, and they can outdamage strikers depending on their own focus. Strikers aren't just heavy damage dealers or have to do the most damage. A big part of their shtick is mobility. They maneuver about the battlefield doing consistently heavy damage. A defender with a big weapon can certainly come close. The longer the battle or the later in the day, the more heavy damage will belong to the strikers, certainly.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Please enlighten me, I will readily admit that I know nothing of these builds...but if you have defender builds that outclass the strikers in damage, how is this balanced? How is this not the whole stepping on toes problem that was supposedly fixed by 4e?

Fighters are part Striker. So them doing Striker caliber damage isn't bad. The game is designed that way.

Remember every class is at least 2 haves.
Fighter: Defender sub Striker
Ranger: Striker sub Defender
Rogue: Striker sub Controller
Warlock: Striker sub Controller
Cleric: Leader sub Controller
Warlord: Leader sub Defender
Wizard: Controller sub striker

 

[ExploderWizard]

Only to the unimaginative. This has been discussed several times already. Exploits are called exploits for a reason, they require a decently specific set of circumstances to pull off. Descriptive players and DMs should have no problem describing that with the encounter and daily exploits. Many powers lend themselves to this limitation naturally. Others require a bit of creativity.

Not quite. Coming up with BS reasons to cover up lazy game design does not make someone more imaginative. Imagination is required when designing mechanics so that the action makes sense while using those mechanics. I proposed a solution to a clumsy mechanic that might help out with a little work. It may not be the best possible solution but it seems more reasonable and imaginative than an on/off switch for mundane maneuvers.

I am all for creativity in description. When it has to become a shield for under-developed or poorly constructed rules then I draw the line.

 

[Thasmodious]

Not quite. Coming up with BS reasons to cover up lazy game design does not make someone more imaginative.

Come on, that's just stupid. There is nothing lazy about a game design using this framework. You're not covering anything up. A fighter with a sword fights a certain way. In any battle, the situation is fluid, openings occur, maneuvers are made, some strikes are better than others. Exploits represent that in a way that makes sense.

"I'm all out of crushing blows" is looking at it the wrong way.

"Man, did you see me catch that orc square in the chest after he was distracted by Bowman's arrow grazing his head (crushing blow), then when Sneaky Gurl threw dust in that big orcs eyes and cut his hamstring, man, he never saw that maul coming at him from the side at all. That one felt good, landed full (brute strike), I don't see how he was still standing after that one. Then Bowman nailed that awesome shot through his center. After that, he just didn't have as much on those axe blows (excrutiating shot), and it was just a matter of time until I beat him down, no matter how much he was cowering behind that shield (reaping strikes until dead)."

Thats just basic description and martial characters fighting according to their styles which is all exploits are. They are not hard to rationalize, make good sense, balanced, and, imo, rather brilliant game design. You're incessant inability to wrap your brain around the concept does not mean someone else failed. It's you that has the problem.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Come on, that's just stupid. There is nothing lazy about a game design using this framework. You're not covering anything up. A fighter with a sword fights a certain way. In any battle, the situation is fluid, openings occur, maneuvers are made, some strikes are better than others. Exploits represent that in a way that makes sense.

"I'm all out of crushing blows" is looking at it the wrong way.

"Man, did you see me catch that orc square in the chest after he was distracted by Bowman's arrow grazing his head (crushing blow), then when Sneaky Gurl threw dust in that big orcs eyes and cut his hamstring, man, he never saw that maul coming at him from the side at all. That one felt good, landed full (brute strike), I don't see how he was still standing after that one. Then Bowman nailed that awesome shot through his center. After that, he just didn't have as much on those axe blows (excrutiating shot), and it was just a matter of time until I beat him down, no matter how much he was cowering behind that shield (reaping strikes until dead)."

Thats just basic description and martial characters fighting according to their styles which is all exploits are. They are not hard to rationalize, make good sense, balanced, and, imo, rather brilliant game design. You're incessant inability to wrap your brain around the concept does not mean someone else failed. It's you that has the problem.

Yeah you have a point. You could use those swell descriptions to narrate any fight, regardless of mechanics. I could describe that as a fight between an OD&D fighter and an orc chieftain and it would work out fine.

Its all in the description, so if you resolved that fight with a few hit rolls and d6 damage rolls and arrived at the same results then you get the same thing out a little booklet as that massive rulebook. How incredible.

The original game seems to work just fine with a little creativity. You don't have a creativity problem do you.

 

[Thasmodious]

Yeah you have a point. You could use those swell descriptions to narrate any fight, regardless of mechanics. I could describe that as a fight between an OD&D fighter and an orc chieftain and it would work out fine.

Its all in the description, so if you resolved that fight with a few hit rolls and d6 damage rolls and arrived at the same results then you get the same thing out a little booklet as that massive rulebook. How incredible.

The original game seems to work just fine with a little creativity. You don't have a creativity problem do you.

Of course you could use such description for any fight, that's entirely the point. And I love OD&D. Played an OD&D game just last year. It's just, for me, that the game has evolved in a positive direction to give me better tools to do the same things I've always done and wanted to do with D&D.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Thasmodious, it is not about being unimaginative to dislike Encounter powers. Just like it doesn't have anything to do not willing to manage an expensive spell list or count power attack variables in head or recalculate attack bonuses based on ability score modifications.

ExploderWizard, it's not lazy design to use encounter powers instead of a more involved method that achieves similar results.

It is about deciding what you prefer from your game. Some people like to think of every rule element as representing something clearly defined in the game world - no fancy "narrative control" of players involved, just saying: I want to hit harder (maybe even make a called shot) - sure I expect this to be more difficult, but I always want this option. I want to see them, I don't want it abstracted by saying "this is the round where you might actually have a chance to pull of your hard-hitting attack". Even if this means I need to crunch a few numbers and spend a lot of time working out the math to play effectively - or just the character I envision to play.

Or it's about choosing a high degree of usability and a fast playability, without taking away gameplay depth and tactical challenges. It's about making things more predictable, evoking a certain theme by rules (without the ability to change the theme with easy modifications), it is about making the play quick to learn but hard to master, but without loading people with statistics or number crunching - even if this costs us some "close to character immersion"...

There is no unimaginative and no laziness involved. It's all about preferences and the goals the player has and the goals the designers had with their system, and whether these goals match and are achieved.

Yeah you have a point. You could use those swell descriptions to narrate any fight, regardless of mechanics. I could describe that as a fight between an OD&D fighter and an orc chieftain and it would work out fine.

Its all in the description, so if you resolved that fight with a few hit rolls and d6 damage rolls and arrived at the same results then you get the same thing out a little booklet as that massive rulebook. How incredible.

But it wouldn't be the same kind of gamist fun. That's the difference. In the end, it all comes down to taking your enemy out. You could resolve this with 250 die rolls, or with just one. The goal is to find something that's neither too complex, nor too easy, so there are "tactics" in playing effectively and good and bad decisions to be made when selecting from options. In 4E, part of the approach is to make decision at play time more important then decisions at creation time and decisions during combat more important then decisions at "start-of-the-day-spell-selection-and-buffing" time.

 

[Thasmodious]

Thasmodious, it is not about being unimaginative to dislike Encounter powers.

I wasn't saying that if you don't like encounter powers then you have no imagination. I was responding to the charge that it is impossible to rationalize the ability to do certain things only once an encounter or once a day.

I can entirely understand people disliking the power structure of 4e. There is no doubt that it is the single biggest change and not everyone will be on board for something like that. It's a different matter to tell 4e players that the things they are doing cannot be explained as anything but lazy design and gamist nonsense, unexplainable in-game. That I will respond to.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I wasn't saying that if you don't like encounter powers then you have no imagination. I was responding to the charge that it is impossible to rationalize the ability to do certain things only once an encounter or once a day.

Impossible? No.

Undesireable? IMHO, yes.

YMMV.


RC