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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4673738" data-attributes="member: 1054">That was me with the bannister.And, yes, what you're describing makes my head go all splodey-like. I "get" that hit points are abstract -- they always have been. However, most means of reducing hit points are not. A longsword doesn't scale with level -- if your epic level character is somehow deprived of his magic longsword and forced to use a normal one, his basic attack is 1d8+Str, just like it was at first level, no matter how many hit points his enemy has. So why should his stunt damage scale? "Because if it didn't, it wouldn't be worth doing"? Well, then, maybe it's NOT. Wizards do not cast Magic Missile at Orcus (unless they're out of all dailies, encounters, magic items, etc). Fighters DON'T use basic attacks if they have any other choice. And if you want epic-level stunt damage, IMO, you'd better come up with an epic-level stunt: Don't slide down a bannister, dive from 50 feet up with your blade pointed straight down, skewering the foe in a way no first level character could imagine doing (not if he wanted to live...)What I, and others, are complaining -- or at least non-plussed -- about is *inconsistency*. Is 4e a wholly narrative game where everything is scaled, so that you could just as easily describe damage as a fixed % of hit points? (i.e, this attack does 5% damage to a level appropriate monster, plus or minus 1 percent for each level above/below the PC)? Or does "10 hit points" *mean* something: Enough to bloody a kobold, not enough to scratch a dragon, and it means the same thing whether the source of the 10 hit points is a first level character or a 20th level one? Are DCs objective or subjective? Should the DM use "common sense", or simply say whatever it says in the rules, goes? (Before you wholeheartedly say "the former", consider that official party line is that the DM should ignore "common sense" when it comes to "How do you knock an ooze prone?" and "How do you 'pin' a flying monster which is not next to any surface?") The game design seems to be caught midway between old-style simulationism and new-style narrativism, and it seems fans tend to support whichever interpretation puts 4e in the most positive light. If simulation plays better in a given situation, 4e is simulationist; if narrativism plays better, 4e is narrativist. It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping!4e is, indeed, a lot of fun to play and I look forward to our weekly game a lot, but in order to have fun with it, I have to disconnect a lot of logic circuits and, especially in combat, stop trying to imagine myself "in" the action and instead go into full on Tactical Minis Game mode, so I'm not bothered by "immobilized" creatures being shoved all over the map, non-Euclidean geometry, and the fact I can be immobilized inside a gelatinous cube and whirl my twin bastard swords around with no penalty whatsoever (as I did last week). "Common sense" says that someone who is grabbed, held, or otherwise restrained should not be as effective in combat as a free man, but 4e's "immobilized" condition merely keeps me from leaving my square under my own power -- I can fight just as effectively as anyone else, and as a melee combatant, I usually don't even WANT to move.</blockquote>

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