Dragon's Tail Cut?

[MerricB]

Foehammer is a manuever name I like.

Cheers!

 

[BryonD]

I would love to have spells named bursting of the fifth sun and rise of deathly stars!

Ok. But what makes more sense and what is more cool:

a) The Earth and Sky Eternal College of Arcane Arts teaches a spell called "bursting of the fifth sun"

or

b) Every mage schoool everywhere just happens to call the spell formerly known as fireball "bursting of the fifth sun"?


IMO, A is cool and B is wildly stupid.

 

[Counterspin]

Yawn. I understand why so many of the arguments about 4e are important. The base system produces a metagame, and its' direction effects all of us in some small way. But the naming conventions are not on that list. If the mechanics are solid, I don't care what they name them, frankly.

 

[Stormtalon]

I'd like to separate intuitive from ambiguous.

IMHO y'all are asking for intuitive names, and that's a fine thing, but separate from their ambiguity.

How likely am I to remember Hamstring Attack? Really depends on how many other, very similar maneuvers are on the palette. You bet I'll forget WTF it does if I'm looking at a maneuver list like:
- Hamartia Attack*
- Hamble Attack
- Hammer Attack
- Hampering Attack
- Hampered Attack
- Hamstring Attack

... and so would you.

Cheers, -- N

*) Bard only.

You forgot Hamster Attack, btw.

Go for the eyes, Boo, GO FOR THE EYES!!

 

[hazel monday]

If the mechanics are solid, I don't care what they name them, frankly.

I think the names of the things in the game are very important. If I can't say the names of manuevers and spells without cringing at how corny they are, i'm not gonna be able to play the game. If they change the name of the fighter to "Puffy Fairy Princess", I don't care how sound the mechanics are. No one in my group's gonna play it.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I hope I'm not one of those certain folks you have in mind. Guilty as charged on the snide and snippy, but my position is actually arrived at through very careful consideration. (As well as, if you'll permit the appeal to authority, a degree in Technical Writing.)



More folks who GET IT.

And notice that they get it, not solely on aesthetic grounds, but because they understand on a gut level that the handle has to have instant meaning.

The ideal handle of a rule component defines itself. It does not require you to learn what the handle means before you can attach any meaning to it.

The designer simply does not have free reign to assign whatever handle he wants to rules components-- not if he wants his rules to be as widely useful as possible.

I'm not advocating a flavorless book of mechanics. There are ways to make a rulebook interesting without making the rules unapproachable; and there are places where creative, descriptive fluff is appreciated and appropriate.

The handle of a rules component is not the appropriate place.

Compare "Dragon's Tail Cut" to "Mire of Minauros". Apparently, DTC requires you to cut something, but it doesn't tell you much more than that. However, MoM suggests that the effect involves miring something. Going in without any idea of what the two abilities do, it's much more likely that a new player would guess that Mire of Minauros gets his opponents stuck in one place for a while, although it's not likely that the player would guess that there's also acid damage involved.

Both of these are flavourful names drawn from the 4E previews. The latter, however, is strictly a better name because it does provide some clue as to what its function is. Both are pretty much ambiguous, but on a continuum from perfectly clear to perfectly obscure, MoM is closer to clear, and DTC is closer to obscure.

So, let's have more Mires and less Tails.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Is anyone else getting sick of 'They dont get it!' as an alternate way of saying 'I dont agree with this?' yet? :\

Wulf backs this up with a very good description of exactly what they're not getting, from the perspective of a professional technical writer. I don't agree that this is just a matter of opinion. It is a critique of WotC's design strategy with regards to naming conventions.

 

[Nifft]

You forgot Hamster Attack, btw.

Go for the eyes, Boo, GO FOR THE EYES!!

For me, and I suspect for many others, that's the one maneuver from that list which would NEVER be confused for anything else.

I want more Minsc.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Flavor

I'm with Wulf - I would rather see names that are less flavorful, more descriptive of function.

If these names are the only ones given, then we are pretty much forced to use them in order to have a common language.

I'm holding out hope that the SRD at least won't use these kinds of names and we will get something more generic to use.

 

[hong]

As did I, but only because I already play the game and am steeped in its lore. If I did not already know that a dragon's tail swept players off their feet then I would have no frame of reference.

No, no. I didn't grok it because of having seen dragon tail attacks in 3E. I grokked it because Rich Baker actually went to the trouble of giving a short fluff description of the idea behind the name.

And Tenser's Transformation (which is almost completely meaningless), and so on.

But "getting used to it" and "being able to pick it up and understand it instantly" are two very different things.

I understood it instantly. Or at least, within 5 seconds, which is how long it took to read the description.

One is good for a new rules revision that is ostensibly designed to attract new players; one is not.

I would think that if you want to attract new players, you want something a bit more evocative than "knockdown".