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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5892468" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's important to get the modal verbs right.The dragon can always get a clean hit. But, while the PC has hit points remaining, it never does. The PC dodges, the dragon get's distracted and only nips instead of crushing, etc.The fall can always kill. But, while the PC has hit points remaining, it never does. The PC slows his/her descent on ledges, branches, etc, their is a stream/pool at the bottom (as per the quote upthread from Moldvay Basic), or something similar.Now if a game consisted of nothing but falls, with convenient ponds and haystaks at the bottom, it might get absurd. But as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said, that goes to scenario design - D&D is not equally good at a full range of scenarios. It won't support a game full of chase or race scenarios, either, because it has no very satisfactory mechanics for that (although skill challenges come closest, they still aren't all that good for races, I don't think).Adding to [MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION]'s couple of posts on this (with which I entirely agree) - I've lost track of the number of times I've read posts along the lines of "If your players are pushing the rules hard, they're not really roleplaying", or "If you deliberately design encounters to respond to the flags of interest run up by your players in building and designing their PCs, you're railroading", or "If you deliberately design encounters to be interesting and relevant to the thematic concerns of the players and the campaing, you're just a narcisstic GM obsessing over "my precious encounter"", or "Because you leave the personalities of your NPCs flexible and underdefined before play, so you can develop them i play as part of the adjudication and resolution of encounters, you're railroading and/or you're not a real roleplayer and/or your game is just a hack&slash-fest" or, to bring it back to some of the issues in this thread, "If your players have their PCs charge the 12 archers because they know they can't be killed by a single volley of mortal archery, than your players aren't real roleplayers, they're just hack-and-slash min-maxers."It seems fairly clear to me that at least some of these people have preferences for play heavily shaped by the style of RPGing that was dominant from the mid-80s through to the  mid-90s, and is exemplified in various forms by the games of that era - White Wolf, 2nd ed AD&D, etc.One fairly common idea the comes through is that they don't want players to "metagame", that is, to make decisions based on the mechanical state of affairs. They want players to make judgements purely based on the fiction. And then they want the mechanics to validate those choices.The two games that I'm aware of that are most likely to actually work this way in play are Runequest and Classic Traveller. (Maybe also HERO and GURPS, but I don't know them so well.) Rolemaster will come close. Probably also Chivalry & Sorcery.D&D has never come close to this sort of play, though - that's why, from the late 70s, multiple generations of D&D-players "moved on" to those other games. From the earliest periods of D&D play, it's also been obvious why D&D won't come close to this sort of play - because of hit points and saving throws. (Also, to a lesser extent - and of the more simulationist RPGs I mentioned, Rolemaster is closest to D&D here - because of its gonzo magic.)3E "fixed" saving throws - turning them from a metagame mechanic to Fort, Ref and Will - and thereby giving rise to such odd questions as how Evasion works for a rogue who is pinned by a fire giant in the middle of a fireball. But it kept hit points. 4e keeps (and builds on) the 3E "solution" to saving throws, but is more overtly metagame-y about its hit points, relying on them to pick up the bulk of the metagame slack.Now I've got no objection to people who dislike 4e. Nor to those who enjoy 80s/90s style gaming ("story"-oriented, or "fiction/narative first" gaming, as some describe it - gaming without player metagaming). But when their preference seems to cloud their understanding of mechanics, or of the way that others might use mechanics - and their criticisms of those others are bundled in a package of "narrative" and "verisimilitude" and "roleplaying, not rollplaying" and "of course metagaming is bad", it is frustrating. And, as CJ said, sometimes nasty.If people want a game with hit points and with something like archery/falling grittiness, use hit points as a dodging mechanic. As I posted somewhere upthread, Roger Musson (as best I know) was the first to publish a version of this, in White Dwarf 30+ years ago. But - as Musson himself observed - it will require a wholesale rewriting of the saving throw, ambush etc rules. As others have pointed out in recent threads here (maybe including this one) it will also require changing the rules for delivering poison via attacks (ie no poison on "hits" that are really successful dodges).But I have some doubts that WotC will go very far in this direction. It's one thing to have modules that change the build of a PC, and some of the details of action resolution. It's another thing to have modules that change the balance of play in relation to game elements (eg archers, or dragons, or cliffs, suddenly become noticeably more dangerous than trolls and ogres, compared to the game's basline assumptions). Because the latter sort of variability will make it hard for WotC to write and sell adventures.On a final, sem-side note: 4e is the first version of the game, I think, to increase falling damage - from 1d6 per 10' to 1d10. It also tones down PC hit point escalation at higher levels compared to 3E (because there is no CON bonus per level). Should some of these 4e innovations be maintained?</blockquote>

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