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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6070452" data-attributes="member: 6696971">I don't think our tables differ actually (at least not in the way of handling standard, in-place, terrain features/hazards).  I think I probably didn't convey everything particularly well in the upthread posts.  I think the quote above shows how I handle a situation like you described; predetermined, in-place, hazards/terrain features.  In the above scenario, it just made the use of ToI better (much better actually) when using it for it normal effect and then the effect of springing the terrain power or hazard due to the trigger conditions being met.In the prior example that I was using, the player actually "narratively conjured" the potential hazard/terrain feature on the spot.  I had initially regarded the hanging stewpot on the spit over the firepit as a relatively benign terrain feature;  Primarily blocking terrain and color.  However, that is not how this player saw it (which happens aplenty) within the fiction...nor is that what he wanted to use it for.  He made the p42 proposition to me of sliding the enemy he was facing down into the stewpot/spit/firepit (he was 2 squares or 10 ft away) and the whole thing coming down on him and scalding him with boiling water and making a mess of the area.  He wanted to spend his lvl 7 Encounter Power to create this effect.  I thought that was awesome and deferred to his interpretation (as I almost universally do).  It didn't provide any enormous tactical benefit but was dynamic, "swashbucklingly" thematic and certainly did provide very cool tactical effect/control. In these scenarios, I don't like to ad-hoc a hazard that I didn't convey as usable at the beginning of the encounter (or I would have been using it myself and other players may have!), so we just folded it into the attack and created the 1 square zone (difficult terrain, fire damage) after the resolution. All told, the player actually ended up with a damage upgrade over what he would have spent his encounter for but he didn't get the shift and stealth rider of his encounter power (which wouldn't have been thematic or tactically relevant to the fight).  He ended up getting:- Tactical positioning (slide 2 into a 1 square zone of difficult terrain with a fire damage)- Fire damage that was about 75 % of his encounter power.- Ongoing damage for one round that bumped it up to about 85 %- Static fire damage from the ruined spit/stewpot/burning firepit that put it right near 95 %- An OA (successful) when the enemy spent a move action to get out of the difficult terrain to avoid the fire aura on his next turn which put it at about 110 % of the damage of the original Encounter Power's mean damage.I was just trying to illustrate a standard usage of p42 at my table.  I then addressed what would happen (above quote of mine) if I put a hazard/terrain feature in play and the PCs wanted to use it.  If I put a hazard/terrain feature that I expect to be interacted with in play, I narrate the looming nature of it/prominence and what it may portend.  I make its place in the encounter quite clear at the metagame level.  In those scenarios, it is just a straight augment to the initial attack (as in the ToI example above).  I didn't include all of that in the initial post because I was mainly just dealing with the "improvised attacks don't happen" point rather than the "here is precisely how each of these compartmentalized rules systems (p42 improvised attacks, hazard system, single-use terrain power system) interface within the overarching combat system" as my prose tends to run long enough as is <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  And I didn't want to obfuscate the initial point about p42 proliferation with extraneous rules handling...but I guess I did anyway!</blockquote>

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