Discussing 4e Subsystems: POWERS!

[pemerton]

What I'm complaining about is the artificiality of saying that I can only do those things once an encounter or once a day.

Well, it's not artificial in the real world - it's part of game balance. And it's not artificial in the gameworld - the explanation for 1x/encounter in the gameworld has nothing to do with the metagame constraints of the rules, but some ingame explanation. So provided that one keeps game and metagame separate it's not artificial.

I shouldn't have to say, "Well, my character has been attempting this all through the fight but here's the one time where she actually pulls it off". I shouldn't have to justify why things are the way they are. However, with 4e, it seems like I either have to do that in order to keep my suspension of disbelief and desired immersion level or else I just have to stop thinking of it as an RPG and just play it as a glorified minis/board game or something.

I guess the thing is that I want a game that allows me to immerse myself in the narrative as it is happening, not one that requires me to wait until after the fact. With 4e, I just don't feel like I can get that kind of gameplay. With 4e, I can't forget that I'm playing a game.

From these comments it sounds like you don't enjoy keeping game and metagame separate. So 4e probably won't work for you.

There should always be a DC, whether it's one that's been predetermined by the rules or one determined by the DM on the fly, and the player (if I had a dollar for every time I've seen someone use "PC" when they mean "player", I'd be filthy stinking rich) should be able to know if they've succeeded or failed once they've rolled the dice.

Right. This is the RQ/RM/3E approach. It has the advantage that it doesn't lead to game/metagame separation. It has the disadvantage that it can be hard to get game balance right, it can sometime lead to tedium (I think this is Mustrum Ridcully's point), and most of all it means the player can never guarantee that the narrative turns out in such a way as to make his/her PC look cool rather than hopeless - which means the game inevitably tends in the direction of grim and gritty rather than cinematic (RQ or RM moreso than 3E, but only because 3E helps itself to rules like hit points that are hard to reconcile with its more simulationist aspects).

If you are looking for a fantasy RPG which doesn't force a game/metagame separation, and which has fairly straightforward mechanics with flexible character build and action resolution, but also has some features built in to try and keep it towards the cinematic rather than the gritty end of the spectrum, you might want to take a look at HARP.

 

[pemerton]

I am pretty sure this so called narrative control is more a consequence or justification of purely gamist considerations (balance, preventing players from abusing possibly broken powers), than intentional design.

I think you're wrong about this. Given Mearls past association with the Forge, and his knowledge and discussion of Forgist-techniques like PC Bangs on his blog, and given that Heinsoo expressly referred in an interview to the influence on 4e design of indie RPGs, the fact that 4e mechanics are highly similar to many indie RPG mechanics is almost certainly deliberate and not coincidental or an unintended side effect.

I think that's the key difference, though, and it's actually something fundamentally elemental to the system. A bit "Fortune in the Middle."

Exactly.

 

[Thasmodious]

I shouldn't have to explain things away.

Man, I hate that whiny phrase, with a passion. It's like I tell my wife when she says it, which is often - yes, you should, you're the one with the problem/need. Deal with it.

 

[bagger245]

Yeah, there is an issue of realism for martial exploits. If u cast a spell that
draws people towards you so that you can kill them, we see it as magical logic.
But if a fighter who draws people nearer, presumably using taunts etc, we see it as
logical. Whats not logical is that he only can do it once a day? And if he does
do it once a day, everyday, won't that be urm, boring, compared to casting a spell
everyday?
Anyway, I am done with trying to rationaliZe powers in real terms, unless someone
can explain to me well.

 

[pemerton]

Anyway, I am done with trying to rationaliZe powers in real terms, unless someone
can explain to me well.

Hypersmurf had some excellent examples for Come and Get It. One possibility, in which a Fighter uses Come and Get It against two goblin archers in a tree:

As the Fighter raises her sword to threaten the goblins hiding in the trees, the sunlight glints of the blade, dazzling one - who then falls from the tree, despite the best efforts of his comrade to save him - and even more improbably, drags his comrade down with him! As the two goblins land at the feet of the fighter, she cleaves them with her blade.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Man, I hate that whiny phrase, with a passion. It's like I tell my wife when she says it, which is often - yes, you should, you're the one with the problem/need. Deal with it.

Only it's not his problem, and no matter how deep your fingers can go into your ears (Mine can hardly scratch the surface), it doesn't change that the problem is the dearth in explanations. You can rant until you're blue in the face and bring up your hilarious relationship tidbits as much as you want - the problem is with the lack of explanations, not with someone asking FOR an explanation.

 

[pemerton]

the problem is with the lack of explanations, not with someone asking FOR an explanation.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean here by "explanation", but I think that the 4e rulebooks do not do a very good job of explaining how narration should be handled when playing 4e in order to maintain ingame verisimilitude (with the odd genre-legitimated deviation therefrom) while applying the game rules as written.

There are hints, such as the comments in the PHB on reskinning powers, and the discussions in the DMG on p 42 (which suggests that the difficulty of a stunt should be set taking into account metagame as well as ingame considerations, namely, that you as GM want to encourage some sorts of stunts more than others) and in relation to skill challenges.

But when you compare it to the discussion in the rulebooks for HeroWars/Quest, it's pretty minimal.

I think one reason for that might be a certain hesitancy on the part of the designers to try and tell people how to play D&D, when it is a game aimed at such a broad market. I'm not sure myself that that's a good reason, but then I'm not the one responsible for making sure that 4e meets sales expectations.

I do think it means that 4e fails at the goal of making system mastery unimportant - it's just that instead of mechanical system mastery, what is required is narrative system mastery, because the gamebooks don't come out and tell you what sorts of narration will work and what won't.

 

[bagger245]

Like I stated before, the fluff of the powers is the way to go for me. Much easier to
handle and incorporate into narrative gameplay.
Now I am trying to convince my friends to give 4th ed another try, instad of looking at
it as a purely miniature based game...

 

[Jack99]

This is a really good point that kinda got lost in the scrum.

The 15 minute adventuring day isn't that there is a limit to what players can do, it is that it lasts 15 minutes, because they blow everything they have in the first combat. 4e did away with that, since there is very little chance of a player burning through all his surges in one combat (baring draining undeads). So no, not really a good point.

I've been reading this thread and it seem that the DM has to tell players that they are allowed
to improvise the powers. That is like telling someone that you could move a knight differently
in chess, imo. Not writing things what you can do is better than writing it down. For those of you
who could make 4th ed work for you, especially those that came from older editions, not 3.5,
I applaud you.

You got it backwards- What we are saying to players is that you can improvise the fluff around the mechanics, not the other way around. So your tide of iron will still do 1[W]+push 1 sq, no matter how you describe it. Your example of the knight in chess is totally the opposite, since how it moves is the mechanics.

 

[pemerton]

Like I stated before, the fluff of the powers is the way to go for me. Much easier to handle and incorporate into narrative gameplay.

Like Jack99 said, if I've understood you rightly then you're doing the exact opposite of what the PHB (p 55) and the FAQ tell us, which is that the flavour of powers is optional, and that you should use whatever flavour you like to best make sense of the mechanical effect (which is not optional, but is determined by the rules).

Playing your way - locking in the flavour while free-forming the mechanics - will I think give a very different experience from 4e, perhaps something closer to OD&D or early AD&D.