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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6245612" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think 4e is a little better at this than some other versions of D&D, but I agree with you that it is a big issue. (As I have agreed with your earlier posts along these lines!)Hopefully from the PBP you got a sense of why [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] and I compare 4e skills to the sorts of "free descriptors" you get in games like HeroWars/Quest or Fate (I think) or Marvel Heroic RP: it's much more about the player and GM working their way through the fictional framing and consequences of the scene, than a menu-list of DCs vs tasks.The closest that 4e comes to integrating encounter attack powers into this framework is in the DMG2, where it suggests that use of an appropriate encounter power can add +2 to a check, or give some other comparable advantage. But - just as you describe in your post - what counts as "appropriate" is left up to GM interpretation, and often the powers don't have the same sort of "free descriptor hooks" that the skills do (eg they're a lot more prescriptive and fiddly in their textual presentation), which I think feeds into your concern that using attack powers in this way "alters the power itself during play."I don't see how a game that wants to drive such a strong mechanical wedge between combat and non-combat resolution as D&D does can properly handle this issue, but that's probably the limits of my imagination rather than the technical limits of RPG design.I agree with you this is a preference as well as a structural system issue, but some systems can better support character development and conflict than others.My preference is different from yours, and there is a lot of character conflict in my 4e game that is emerging from latent or suppressed to full-fledged, but the game makes it hard to handle because of its default assumptions (on both player and GM sides) around party play.Once the 4e campaign is finished I am hoping my group will agree to let me run Burning Wheel, which both emphasises character development as the key focus of play, and which doesn't have the same mechanical assumptions about party play, and therefore should make it easier to handle character conflict without having the game's functionality break down.You're probably heard of the escalation die even without a copy of 13th Age. I am planning to use that soon in my 4e game so that level 25 PC can take on Torog (level 34 solo): my plan, assuming that the players carry through on their current intent of entering and disrupting Torog's Soul Abattoir, is for the collapse of the Abattoir and the consequent cutting off of a flow of psychic energy to Torog to manifest as a d8 escalation die.And (mixing 4e thinking with 13th Age thinking) I think there's a good chance that the invoker/wizard PC, rather than fighting Torog directly, will probably want to speed up the disruption so as to buff the rest of the party by escalating the escalation die.</blockquote>

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