Encounter power buffs outside of combat

[kennew142]

If the game world physics DON'T map to the rules, then, as another poster noted, if the players have their characters make tactical decisions based on the rules, not on the presumably different understanding of the world their character has, they're metagaming.

I find that more unsatisfying.

I'd rather have the people living in the world understand the rules by which it works and act accordingly. This doesn't mean they talk of 'classes', 'levels', and 'hit points' -- but it does mean they know that sometimes, a single man is tough enough to kill an army single-handedly, that a well-trained thief can evade any mundane guards or traps, or that if you leave a man's head attached to his body when you kill him, a moderately skilled priest can grill the corpse for information.

To each his own, but I've never understood the argument. I don't see it as metagaming if a player acts according to the rules. IMO the rules are designed to allow us to tell an interactive story. They don't equate to the physics of the world. They allow us, as near-omniscient outside observers, to model how the characters interact with the world in a simplistic (compared to actual physics) model, involving turns, encounters, numerical ratings of hit points, defenses, skills, etc....

Attempting to model a world's physics by the game rules leads to ridiculous situations like you've described. This has been true for every edition of D&D. If the game rules require a PC to kill X number of enemies in order to advance to a level where they can raise the dead, does that mean that every NPC cleric has a lengthy combat resume? What about pacifist clerics of healing gods, can they never advance as healers just because they don't slaughter orcs for a living? To cite an even more laughable example, what about a baker? If he want to be able to produce elaborate baked goods, he can only learn it by killing kobolds?

If the experience system doesn't have to model the natural laws by which butchers, bakers and candlestick makers learn their trades, why do the game rules we use to model powers and timekeeping have to reflect natural laws instead of simple gaming conventions?

The following isn't necessarily directed at Lizard, but at a generic you that includes me on occasion, when I don't like a rule.

It seems that this argument falls on its face whenever it's applied across the board. It works much better when you're trying to make illogical arguments in order to invalidate game rules you don't like. Any game rule can be made to seem ridiculous if it's overanalyzed. No game system is complex enough to model the actual laws of nature/physics. They simplify reality in order to model it just enough to make an enjoyable game.

 

[Professor Phobos]

You like true verisimilitudinous simulationism. That's cool. But that's not the goal of 4E's design, and saying that the designers should account for it is rather like saying the designers of Call of Cthulhu should consider the impact of the rules making it impossible to ninja-kick a deep one until its head explodes. It's not what the game is striving to be, and trying to shoehorn it in dilutes the focus of what the game is.

Though, oddly enough, given how broken the CoC unarmed combat rules are, it's entirely possible to do that. Martial Arts+A high Db could easily result in 2d4+1d6 damage for a kick, and if it's a special that could go as high as 4d4+2d6, which is a lot in Call of Cthulhu and more than enough to scrag or at least badly injure a Deep One.

 

[Kordeth]

Though, oddly enough, given how broken the CoC unarmed combat rules are, it's entirely possible to do that. Martial Arts+A high Db could easily result in 2d4+1d6 damage for a kick, and if it's a special that could go as high as 4d4+2d6, which is a lot in Call of Cthulhu and more than enough to scrag or at least badly injure a Deep One.

....

Well, crud.

 

[Professor Phobos]

....

Well, crud.

Don't worry about it. The CoC gaming population politely ignores it and sticks with their useless, ineffectual firearms before running away screaming. It's like that uncle who is a functional alcoholic and never quite loses control at family gatherings but is still obviously soused- no one mentions it.

 

[FadedC]

If you have abilities which 'work' when you're fighting something, and not when you don't, everyone in the world knows this -- they might not know WHY, they might not CARE, but they know it's true, and they'll take advantage of it. If only "PC" dwarves get the dwarven ability to heal as a minor action, young dwarves will be forced into brutal tests and their ability to recover timed -- the ones who recover fast will be marked as potential clan heroes and given further training.

Hmm.....I can buy your other examples but I have a hard time with the dwarf one. First off it would be extremely difficult for the dwarves to even prove that there was a correlation between the time it takes to recover a bit of energy in combat and heroic potential. As a student of science myself I know that even with modern techniques and advanced statistical modeling that would be extremely hard to figure out, it's even harder to imagine pre-scientific method dwarves figuring this out. Given the tendency for "heroic" dwarves to die and "non heroic" dwarves to still do great things, you'd probably need a sample size of somewhere around 1,000 dwarves each one tracked from life to death with careful recording of their time spent to take a second wind (assuming anyone could even agree about what tihis means) to have any clue, and even then people wouldn't completely agree on it.

And even if they did somehow all come to agreement about this theory enough to base their entire culture around it (which if you know anything about scientific discussions you know is incredibly unlikely) it would still be almost impossible to determine in the heat of combat exactly what kind of an action somebody is spending to heal themselves (particularly given that they presumably do not know what actions are in the first place).

 

[The_Gneech]

....

Well, crud.

Bwaahahaha!

This made my day.

-The Gneech

 

[HeinorNY]

And future game designers -- WOTC or third party -- should consider the impact on the game from more than the perspective of 'a bunch of adventurers having an encounter'.

Why should they? D&D IS about a bunch of adventures having encounters!

They should always consider that this is the most important part of the game and create the game around it so it's also the most enjoyable part of the game.

The game is not about creating simulacra worlds inside the DMs heads that exist and are even if the adventures aren't there. The game is about a bunch of adventures having encounters.

NPCs don't know the rules because the rules, as we see them, are just how WE perceive the gameworld, not how the NPCs understand the "world" they live in. NPCs can't "study" and "define" the rules because the rules are not the physics of the gameworld, they don't exist in the gameworld, they only exist for us players.

The rules aren't the physics of the gameworld.

 

[D'karr]

The rules aren't the physics of the gameworld.

You had to do it, didn't you? LOL

Oh and by the way, your Dictionary of Terminology should have the abbreviation for the Bag-o-Rats Fighter (BoRF)

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Young dwarves tortured to prove their mettle. Film at 11.

Of course my thinking would quite simply be that young dwarves are not yet PCs, therefore they don't have the ability to heal and you just have a whole bunch of wounded young dwarves and angry mothers.

When there is a sudden attack by orcs on the stronghold and one young dwarf survives where others certainly would have died, is that dwarf destined for greatness because he had an ability that helped him survive, or did he develop that ability because he is destined for greatness? Either way, at that point the matter is no longer in the hands of dwarven society because that young dwarf has been freed from the mass possession by the entity known as only as "The DM" and instead has been taken over by one known as "A Player."

 

[D'karr]

Young dwarves tortured to prove their mettle. Film at 11.

Good one, this one made me laugh out loud.

It is funny that the ones complaining about verisimilitude are the ones coming up with the most unverisimilitudinous cases to support their arguments.