There are also epic destinies and similar player-side PC build stuff that cares about power source.
Indeed, which is a good thing, as I liked Power Sources.
But as you say it is very rare for it to matter to action resolution.
But since this is a thread about narrativism and fiction, on the other hand, I just wanted to point out that they mattered a lot.
And at a certain point - and this is something that has come up in another recent thread (the Evil Gods one) - we have to ask: are we trying to reconstruct this game and its fiction on the model of an axiomatic system? Or are we trying to make sense of it as an aesthetically significant artefact, similarly to how a literary critic might?
If the former, then maybe we're obliged to factor in that one lich power as part of our reconstruction. But that's not what I'm doing. I'm asking if I play this game, using a typical range of the published story elements (PC build elements, MM entries, etc) will the game require me to come up with a mechanical notion of magic vs non-magic. And the answer is no.
By way of contrast, the game will make us have to think about characters in the fiction who are ready to go all-out and who are exhausted or otherwise far from the peak of their game. And so eg whereas a beholder's central eye is traditionally an anti-magic cone, in 4e - where (at least for the one I used) it stops the use of encounter and daily powers - it is a ray that debilitates the character or suppresses their skill. Some people probably think this is a crappy change that wrecks the play and story of beholders. I thought it was fine - in play it doesn't stop the affected PC(s) participating (they still have their at-wills, unlike an AD&D wizard who can't do anything useful in an anti-magic zone), but it does suggest that the aberrant beholder is distorting reality via its gaze so that those PCs' normal skill and prowess are severely limited.
First, thanks for this discussion, it's really interesting now that we have moved away from edition wars and back into the very topic of the thread. And thanks for bringing up controversial elements like this in a completely open manner, it shows real care about biases and their negative effect in discussion.
On the one hand, I agree with you, if we judge the 4e implementation of the Eye Ray purely on its effects, not looking at the past, I might get some traction about the concept that this is an aberration coming from the far realm, and that it distorts reality rather than suppressing magic, why not.
Where it bugs me is that the distinction between at-will, encounter and daily power is a purely technical one, nothing in the rules explains why an aberration would disrupt some rather than others, especially since the source of these powers is very different.
As we used to say when creating our LARPs, it was hard to balance between powerful spells and sword blows, because the last ones are "at will", but in 4e, both sword blows and "damaging cantrips" from spellcasters are at-will, which is a good thing in terms of balance, but I wonder what kind of fiction you wove around explaining the limits of the beholder's gaze ?
But whether or not one likes it, it's pretty clear what is happening in the fiction, and how the mechanics support this.
The problem is that, for me, and as demonstrated in multiple examples now, the 4e answer is not in the fiction, it is extremely mechanistic, and it is up to the fiction to run after and try to explain it. In the beholder's example above, I'm still not sure what kind of fiction you actually wove to explain that some sword blows could be dealt and not others, and some magic could be woven and not other, for example.
Insisting that it's incoherent by importing, unargued, the premise that 4e must preserve distinctions that mattered in other editions of D&D just seems silly to me.
I agree, an edition should be judged on its own merit, but I hope that you see, thanks to another excellent example of yours, that it's not about keeping the distinctions from the past, that some of us have real trouble making the narrative fit the way 4e was built in terms of mechanics.
That being said, as mentioned multiple times now, I really liked the narrative that 4e wove around a number of things, whether it was about the multiverse (taking the planes and weaving them in a more harmonious manner, it did not make the cut for me because I love Planescape too much, but it was well done, and the Feywild and Shadowfell - who thankfully were kept in 5e - were brilliant additions), about the type of campaign (give me the points of lights any time to start a campaign that can be built around the PCs as they grow in power rather than the hideous bloat of the many-time-retconned FR), and about Power Sources, which I thought really renewed the concept of magic.
That being said, on that last point, I really like magic that is "explainable" - and this is also why I love Brandon Sanderson as an author, his magic systems are always inventive, well built, with all the hallmarks of brilliance around them, extremely powerful when mastered but with clear limitations that prevent abuse and create dramatic rebounds. And therefore, I would have liked to see the interplay between schools of magic and the power sources.
Playing any other edition than 4e, I love the fact that detect magic gives you hints about the schools, because a bit of clever investigation of the environment, the type of adversary and the schools of magic used in a ritual, item, or trap can give you the feel that you are living in the world and pulling it apart string by string to discover the hidden truth beneath.
So when I regret the lack of clear "magic" in 4e, don't think that it is because of nostalgia, please understand that there are other things hidden behind it, both technical but also extremely narrativist, and some wealth of gameplay linked to it.
While it's not incoherent - what you are explaining seems a very good and legitimate reason for D&D fans to dislike 4e.
And that is certainly a truth, but in my case, it was really not the profound reason. The fact is that when we are playing, we are oscillating between three different modes:
- Technical, and your long post with examples of play that I still need to answer to shows that even when shooting for epic/story there is a core of that in the game.
- Narrativist in the sense of reference novels/movies/shows, because we love those and it gives us cool descriptions and situations that we try to emulate.
- Narrativist in the sense of D&D feel, because it's clear that D&D, through the ages, has woven its own mythology, and its own set of situations and narrative style.
And while some of us loved the technical side of 4e (for me, it's too formal and boardgamy, but to each his own and I could go with that), the real problem was that I could not really get my footing for the D&D narrativist feel because so many of the paradigms were broken by 4e. It's not the fault of the edition in itself, it was brilliantly designed, but I could not narrate "D&D stories" like I used to, I had lost a lot of my bearings.
And in turn, I did not get enough grips on the specific 4e elements to be able to envision novels/movies/shows in the light of 4e mechanics. I could do that from the standard D&D paradigms, but not from the very much modified 4e ones.
I can agree and disagree with your thought here. I agree that 4th invited players to think differently about character powers than the traditional framing. That might have been in some sense a continuation of 3rd edition's concern with supernatural (magical), spell-like (magical) and extraordinary (non-magical) abilities. The 4th edition framing doesn't require a notion of magic versus non-magic, although to my reading it does tolerate and suggest it.
It does for me too, honestly, although it's not all over the rules, but it's in enough places to more than suggest it, and it was actually not a problem for us.
Where I disagree is that there is any necessary dichotomy between axiomatic system and aesthetically significant artifact. An axiomatic system can be an aesthetically significant artifact! (And of course, an axiomatic system can be an essential part of an aesthetically significant artifact, such that the significance would be lessened or lost were it absent.)
And there I agree that, taken on its own and in its entirety, 4e was both axiomatic and pleasant. It was mechanically really well done (too formal and limited to me, but tastes vary and some of my friends loved it), and all he environment had been redone around its concepts, so I think, on its own, it succeeded in meeting both criteria.
Unfortunately, and back to the subject of this thread, it did not match with my expectations in terms of narration and fiction, but it was because of MY expectations, not because of inherent faults in 4e.
Are we good ?
