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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4761226" data-attributes="member: 5143">This is the key to the entire discussion and it is pretty much what it boils down to when I have this discussion with people I know in real life who don't like 4e.&nbsp; They always say, &quot;You can't role play in 4e.&quot;&nbsp; But when we really drill down to the root of the problem, it isn't about role playing.&nbsp; It is that people associate &quot;cool noncombat powers&quot; with role playing.It is that the stories people tell about their games are about the time when they charmed the bartender in order to get information and then made him dance a jig while pretending to be a monkey in order to humiliate him.&nbsp; Or the time they cast a grease spell on the enemy as he was running towards them and he slipped and smashed face first into the ground and then they used sovereign glue to stick him to the ground and left him there.Unfortunately, this is a double edged sword.&nbsp; For each time that something like this works out great there is another time where it ruins the fun of someone.For each time you have a &quot;charm the innkeeper to do a jig because it is funny&quot; you have a &quot;charm the king to hand over his entire kingdom to us&quot;.&nbsp; For every &quot;We make him slip and glue him to the ground&quot; you get a &quot;We make the archmage we've been hunting for the last 3 years slip and then glue him to the ground so he is unable to fight back.&quot;One is funny and can be an interesting story.&nbsp; The other can possibly be funny and an interesting story as well.&nbsp; But it sucks to be the DM in those cases.&nbsp; Especially when your goal was to have an even more interesting story without the funny.As soon as you give extensive non-combat abilities to your PCs, you need to deal with the fallout when they use those in a manner other than you expect they will.&nbsp; The same thing happens when you allow combat only abilities to have extensive non-combat powers as well.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 4761226, member: 5143"] This is the key to the entire discussion and it is pretty much what it boils down to when I have this discussion with people I know in real life who don't like 4e. They always say, "You can't role play in 4e." But when we really drill down to the root of the problem, it isn't about role playing. It is that people associate "cool noncombat powers" with role playing. It is that the stories people tell about their games are about the time when they charmed the bartender in order to get information and then made him dance a jig while pretending to be a monkey in order to humiliate him. Or the time they cast a grease spell on the enemy as he was running towards them and he slipped and smashed face first into the ground and then they used sovereign glue to stick him to the ground and left him there. Unfortunately, this is a double edged sword. For each time that something like this works out great there is another time where it ruins the fun of someone. For each time you have a "charm the innkeeper to do a jig because it is funny" you have a "charm the king to hand over his entire kingdom to us". For every "We make him slip and glue him to the ground" you get a "We make the archmage we've been hunting for the last 3 years slip and then glue him to the ground so he is unable to fight back." One is funny and can be an interesting story. The other can possibly be funny and an interesting story as well. But it sucks to be the DM in those cases. Especially when your goal was to have an even more interesting story without the funny. As soon as you give extensive non-combat abilities to your PCs, you need to deal with the fallout when they use those in a manner other than you expect they will. The same thing happens when you allow combat only abilities to have extensive non-combat powers as well. [/QUOTE]

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