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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6069612" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yet Arcana Unearthed/Evolved uses them (Hero Points, I think they're called), and furthermore you can take a feat for your PC to get more of them - so they are not given in equal amounts to all players, and they are used - via that feat - as a balancing element in mechanical effectiveness across PCs. And Arcana Unearthed is not "off the reservation". It's a D&D variant that hews very closely to 3E in its mechanics.Huh? PCs don't have Fate Points - unless the PC is, in the ingame fiction, playing an RPG in which s/he has Fate Points to spend.In your wizard example, is it the player or the character who thinks "I really need this next attack to hit?" Or is it both?You seem to assume it will always be both, but that's not obvious. Let's say the attack is a melee attack to break a clay seal on a gate. The player knows, due to foreshadowing, or GM cliche-prediction, or whatever, that shattering the seal is crucial to achieving victory in the quest. Whereas the PC doesn't know those things - the inhabitants of a fiction don't experience foreshadowing, nor predict narrative cliches. Why, then, does the wizard cast True Strike? If the participants in the game want to know, some answer (eg a sudden burst of intuition) will have to be narrated.Likewise for the monk.The only thing that's nonsensical is assuming that the character knows anything about a purely metagame element. It is a player resource that the player knows about, and chooses to expend. (And to pre-empt a reptition of an earlier go around - it does not belong to the player independently of playing that particular PC. It is a resource that the player enjoys access to in virtue of being the player of this PC in this game. If the PC is handed to a different player, that new player gains control over and access to the metagame resource.)No. A martial daily or encounter power does not respresent learning and execution of physical skills - at least, not exclusively. It represents elements of that, but also such things as "the will of the universe" and "the need to have a fun game". In that respect it's much like a hit point, or a pre-3E saving throw.Yes. This is what happens when a player uses Come and Get It. The player enjoys the PC's success at wrongfooting the enemy. Why and how the enemy was wrongfooted is a separate matter - the use of Come and Get It triggers the possible need for filling in that part of the fiction, but doesn't actually fill it in.Balancing the world may be important to some players. It is not important to others. The world of LotR is not "balanced" - the hobbits have access to a plethora of metal goods, for example, despite having no apparent mining or industrial production. Where does it come from? And how is the inn at Bree economically viable, if travel is so dangerous (eg you'll get eaten by willows if Tom Bombadil doesn't rescue you).The point of LotR, however, isn't about economics. The entire social setting is a backdrop for a different narrative purpose.Why don't wizards rule everything in the typical D&D world? Most of the time, in my games, a hand wave will do: the gods have decreed otherwise; the traditions of wizardry are inherently conservative; there aren't very many wizards out there besides the PCs.For those where setting and world building are more important, then they can work out their own stories. Whatever those stories are, they don't show that metagame abilities are bad RPG design.Ignored by whom? Not by the designers of OGL Conan. Not by Monte Cook when he designed Arcana Unearthed (though it's not as low magic as Conan). Not by the designers of Burning Wheel. Not by the designers, back in the day, of Runequest.But if you're worried about Fate Points being too radical for D&D, I don't see how you can be so insouciant about removing high level spells and spellcasters.And if you're worried about the design of D&Dnext accommodating those who don't like metagame mechanics, why is it not equally important that it accommodate those who like high magic, gonzo fantasy?In any event, the fact that a low-magic RPG is viable doesn't show that metagame abilities for martial PCs isn't one way of "fixing the fighter" (to allude to the thread title).It's not the fighter who makes that choice, or is wondering what to do. It is the player, at the table. Deciding to spend a fate point to manipualte the dice rolls is a metagame decision. Deciding to use an encounter power to manipulate the action economy, or the tactical positioning of the NPCs, is likewise a metagame decision.If you think the action economy is not metagame, but some sort of ingame reality, then I can see why you might have trouble with this. But I don't see how anyone can think a turn-based action economy is not metagame. The gameworld is not stop-motion, is it?These are biographical facts about you (as you seem to recognise). They do not tell us anything about what is or is not a tenable game design. Nor do they tell us anything about how people who play 4e play their game (for example, I believe that no 4e player would play in the way suggested by your dialogues upthread).I don't understand any of this.First, my claim was that not every day has a fight in it, and that even on those days that do have fights, not every daily power will be used on every one of those days. I don't see what this has to do with clearing out dungeons in a single day, nor with resting, nor with multiday journeys. Except that I would have thought that a multiday journey might provide one instance of not every day having a fight, or not every day that has  fight being a day on which all daily powers are used.Second, even if it is the case that in your game every day has a fight in it, and every day in which a fight takes place every daily power is used, not everyone's game has to look like yours.Third, I don't use random encounters. I choose the encounters I run deliberately, for narrative and pacing effects.Fourth, I don't run a game with "dungeons" that the PCs "clear out". I find that sort of game to be lacking in verisimilitude.Fifth, I linked upthread to my actual play posts of my 4e campaign: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/299440-exploration-scenarios-my-experiment-last-sunday.html" target="_blank">Here</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/301282-actual-play-examples-balance-between-fiction-mechanics.html" target="_blank">are</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/308093-combatless-sessions.html" target="_blank">some</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/309950-actual-play-my-first-social-only-session.html" target="_blank">links</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/312367-actual-play-another-combat-free-session-intra-party-dyanmics.html" target="_blank">to</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/tabletop-gaming/313724-actual-play-pcs-successfully-negotiated-kas.html" target="_blank">some</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/319168-pcs-defeat-calastryx-get-up-some-other-hijinks.html" target="_blank">actual</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/319889-doppelganger-mayhem-long-lead-up.html" target="_blank">play</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/324018-wizard-pc-dies-returns-invoker.html" target="_blank">reports</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?324955-Whelm-reforged-as-Overwhelm- and-other-recent-skill-challenges" target="_blank">that</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/330383-underdark-adventure-demons-beholders-elementals-hydra.html" target="_blank">I</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/6039139-post73.html" target="_blank">have</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?332755-PCs-bring-destruction-down-upon-the-duergar" target="_blank">posted</a>. If you're going to start critiquing my scenario design and adjudication, I'd invite you to at least first have a read of some of them.</blockquote>

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