D&D 4E Flowery power names vs pragmatically descriptive.

[Garthanos]

Honestly I much prefer the use of the standardized conditions instead of random assortments of effectively just about the same thing, which results in 900 different ways to depict 'confused' or 'poisoned' or whatever.

meh... those nine hundred are all just a handful of effects combined however... name obcession is bad.... AND have you looked at the Pathfinder conditions methinks you exaggerate we have very few conditions in comparison.

N mechanical effects create N factorial combinations isnt it? you only have N mechanical names and they give you those hundreds of flavors of effects. Its still just remembering N. Which was why I said it was clearer saying combat advantage and no AoO

I'd point out that one could criticize flowery power names in a similar way, they could inhibit reflavoring the narrative explanation, but I think most players are capable of sorting that out, and it isn't like generic names are lacking in flaws either. Mostly I think the notion that you should have generic at-wills and more specific encounter/daily power names/flavors makes some sense.

Kind of as I said I can easily see a smashing disarm for a fighter... what are we gonna call it for the Barbarian a Bashing Disarm. Now if we go into dramatic system fidgeting we could collapse most of barbarian into the fighter and not have that particular issue or whole hog and pull Ranger and Paladin back to papa class but you are talking a whole different game.

 

[Garthanos]

Martial is the parent class anyway. And I do think having a bunch of Parent Class abilities perhaps with sub class modifiers could be a cool restructuring.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well that or dilute the class concept a bit and have a lot of them. Homl does that now. Class is not meaningless but you can access most things regardless

 

[Bohandas]

What do you guys think of the spell Proctiv's Move Mountain? That's a little bit of both.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I would say it is fairly hard to categorize, as it is pretty vague in terms of being a description "move mountain" could mean a lot of things. OTOH it isn't one of those completely abstract sort of names like "Proctiv's Mystical Process" or something...

I mean, presumably it has something to do with moving something, maybe a foe, maybe a large weight, etc. The addition of the inventor's name of course is just color, but that's cool. While most of the 'color names' in D&D refer back to EGG's early D&D campaigns they're generic enough to be used anywhere. Beyond that it is pretty trivial for a GM to rename a power like that.

 

[Arnwolf666]

I would say it is fairly hard to categorize, as it is pretty vague in terms of being a description "move mountain" could mean a lot of things. OTOH it isn't one of those completely abstract sort of names like "Proctiv's Mystical Process" or something...

I mean, presumably it has something to do with moving something, maybe a foe, maybe a large weight, etc. The addition of the inventor's name of course is just color, but that's cool. While most of the 'color names' in D&D refer back to EGG's early D&D campaigns they're generic enough to be used anywhere. Beyond that it is pretty trivial for a GM to rename a power like that.

I love new players that assumes a title of a spell means that is what it does. A whole generation of people that do not understand abstract thought or metaphors.

 

[Beleriphon]

Probably bad of me but even classic names like "fire ball" annoy me at how utilitarian many of them were.

I posted a Druidic daily disarm in another thread to sort of disarm the thread drift but.. the title was "Turning of War Spirits" - it sort of eats heat metal/warp wood and such.

I actually have quite a set of 4e disarm abilities... they are a vivid part of action adventure combat and I think they needed embraced and presented in the way 4e embraces action adventure tropes.

I think it depends. I mean a fireball is a ball of fire. Its straight forward and explains what it does. The more esoteric abilities, the Bigby's Hand line for example, work nicely for the weird things.

 

[Bohandas]

I would say it is fairly hard to categorize, as it is pretty vague in terms of being a description "move mountain" could mean a lot of things. OTOH it isn't one of those completely abstract sort of names like "Proctiv's Mystical Process" or something...

I mean, presumably it has something to do with moving something, maybe a foe, maybe a large weight, etc.

Its an epic spell that literally picks up a mountain telekinetically

 

[Garthanos]

Its an epic spell that literally picks up a mountain telekinetically

Sounds like one of the Engineering based practices that Herakles used like the redirecting of rivers one.... It is kind of funny the point of many of Greek Heroes were their minds and yet they get reduced to all muscle in modern takes of them.

 

[Garthanos]

I liked the "Turning of War Spirits" spell I made up because it was descriptive of how the spell was seen as working instead of a blunt descriptor of what the spell did.

A fireball cast by my warlock might be similarly be "Momentary Hell Aperture "