Forked Thread: Once per day non-magical effects destroy suspension of disbelief

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually there is a reason: stupidity.

Fair enough...

He's still limited to using 3[W] + _______ daily abilities while having 4[W]+ ________ per encounter abilities.

This IS a closer call, no question, and one I admit I can't fully address without running a high level warrior PC in combat to see if the 19th level dailies are powerful enough to still warrant limitation to 1/day in the context of higher level per encounter exploits.

(Meaning you've taken Ridcully's title of "Best Justifier" from him.)

Still, that would be, at best, anecdotal evidence, and I'm not going to take the time to do an actual statistical study (500-1000 combats or so) to ascertain the facts.

 

[Intense_Interest]

I am of the opinion that something that is described in entirely mundane terms is mundane, and for something to be beyond that, there should be some indicator of its supernatural nature in the fluff...which should also match the actual mechanics of the power. Several martial dailies fail this.

Why? Because you have to have Healing Surges and Dragon's breath explained?

Again, not all martial daily powers work every time. Reliable ones can be attempted many times and work only once. Non reliable ones may or may not work, depending upon description.

When they work, no matter who the target or the source, it always happens according to the mechanics. Because even if sometimes you fail to do something that is exceptional, you are still using an exceptional power.

Brute Strike's fluff oversells its mechanic. There is no damage to armor, just to the PC.

But it still describes the effect, rather than the process that it led to, doesn't it?

That would be fine if it matched the exploit's effect, but all too often, they don't.

HPs aren't an explicit measurement, so who are you to presume what "matches" taking an 18 damage? Ternary health scores (Healthy, Bloody, Dead) means that a 1HP's worth of damage can be lethal, or marginal; so when does it fails to match that doesn't fall under "because I say so"?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Why? Because you have to have Healing Surges and Dragon's breath explained?

Ummmm.....no.

Dragon's breath is a magical effect, long described in fiction and myth.

Healing surges are an arcade fighting game mechanic, and I don't like them, regardless of rationale.

When they work, no matter who the target or the source, it always happens according to the mechanics. Because even if sometimes you fail to do something that is exceptional, you are still using an exceptional power.

But it still describes the effect, rather than the process that it led to, doesn't it?

No. There is no breaking of bone and armor as mentioned in the fluff. Hence, it oversells what it does.

HPs aren't an explicit measurement,

Right.

so who are you to presume what "matches" taking an 18 damage?

I never said that a power's description had to match a particular output of damage.

I'm talking about fluff that describes breaking bones & armor when the exploit has no such effect. Ditto powers that say they affect AoOs and don't, and powers that describe perfectly normal tactics (strikes to the head, hemming an opponent into your allies' weapons) that are inexplicably limited to single uses.

And so forth.

 

[Intense_Interest]

Dragon's breath is a magical effect, long described in fiction and myth.

Really? Does that mean that Dragons qualify for Arcane Power feats, because they have magical powers? Why can't they open up their magic breath elsewhere? Could they produce their breath in an anti-magic field? Would the fire breath stop at the edge of an effect? If you killed all the dragons, would dragonborn be able to use their own ability, since it mentions using the "breath of their dragon kin"?

Or is this line of questioning just an unreasonable Burden of Proof and therefore be dropped?

[quoteHealing surges are an arcade fighting game mechanic, and I don't like them, regardless of rationale.[/quote]

Ignoring it doesn't help your argument- just because you don't like it for whatever subjective reasons you have, the mechanic still proves that the world of the game is in no way "mundane".

I'm talking about fluff that describes breaking bones & armor when the exploit has no such effect. Ditto powers that say they affect AoOs and don't, and powers that describe perfectly normal tactics (strikes to the head, hemming an opponent into your allies' weapons) that are inexplicably limited to single uses.

And so forth.

HPs 18 through 20 involve broken femurs. Thankfully Healing Surges when used in the Beta configuration knits bones every time. Those powers that you think are basic tactics are actually done at speeds and power levels that would kill an unprepared warrior if he attempted them twice. Standard actions that do things that aren't bog-standard Basic attacks are amazing feats that occur in less than a blink of an eye*.

What you think is normal or over-sold, isn't. You simply aren't taking the steps necessary.

*I still haven't found a heading in 4E that implies the timing of a round- if found, please inform!

 

[Ginnel]

Because its not an interpretation supported by the mechanics. Its a maneuver you've learned. You've done it before. Its not the goofed up version of the superior per encounter maneuver.

If it were, it should be a part of the "Missed" line of the superior power and/or you should still be able to use the lesser power.

You can have a mechanics supported version of the move and use a daily

then you can also use a narrative version of the move while using a different, daily/encounter/at-will.

You can even narate your character trying his 360 degree spinning slice against all enemies but missing/slipping on some part of the battlefield and going with an at-will attack instead.

There is nothing preventing any of these in game.

Same as if you miss if you miss when you've used your daily power and it creates an effect wham! you land a jarring blow on a creatures arm, if you miss with your description of the power you can say you missed/had it deflected completely.

Handing this aspect of narative control to the players is in my opinion very desirable, and will yet again in my opinion get them into roleplaying their characters more, describing their maneouvers and blows, maybe even adding in warcrys and oaths sworn in battle which they can carry on to their out of combat character and roleplay.

 

[lutecius]

1. Descriptions are useful as a starting point.
2. Colourful names are cooler and easier to remember that "Power 9".
3. Power sources are fluff describing how your powers work. Change it if you don't like it - it's only fluff.
4. Classes have different abilities and do different things, even within the same role.

None of which I care for if in the end there is little correlation between the fluff and the crunch. Magic cards have fancy names and flavour text too (and often better art). I expect a little more from an rpg.

1. The group uses its own guidelines based on personal taste.
2. The DM doesn't have to adjudicate description because it doesn't have a mechanical effect.
3. Your "real" dailies do cool things - in mechanical terms.

1 - Re-fluffing powers according to the order in which they are used is confusing and detracts from the game.
2 - I was addressing Mustrum’s notion of "reasonable". Of course someone has to adjudicate improvised descriptions. They have an impact on the adventure’s tone and consistency.
3 - I don’t find rpg mechanics "cool". Only what they represent and how they represent it. Otherwise I’d be playing some board game with much cooler mechanics.

Yep, that's exactly right. They didnt' play up the "sim" aspect in the rules; if you want to map things into the shared imaginary fantasy world in you and your friends' heads, you and your friends have to do that part yourself.

Although really, the split of opinion seems to be that the folks who view it as "you get to do that part yourself" love it, and the folks who view it as "you have to do that part yourself, what a hassle" hate it.

So they decided some powers could be used basically once per day. Yes, they could have come up with some fatigue/stress system, used action points, yadda yadda... to have some way that daily powers were effectively one use per day. Instead, they wrote "One use per day". If some mechanical justification for that is really important to you, you're welcome to invent one. They just didn't see a need

I completely understand that others don't care about the in-game implications of encounter/dailies. Filling the blanks is ok too.
But I don't think the in-game inconsistencies are a feature, or that having to justify and work around them is particularly fun. I’d rather use the time and effort for more creative things like adventure prep and world building.

It is certainly true that the simulationist aspect has become less interesting for the designers. But I don't trust that "simulationist" ever achieves balance without heavily constraining what world is described - When you use the strained "muscle-group" concept to explain what daily powers represent, you have one such incidence. Vancian magic in D&D assumes a specific type of magic that puts serious constraints on how the game world magic can work. It is incompatible with a lot of fantasy worlds. It seems far more flexible to create a system focused on balance and use some lenience in player and DM narration of game mechanics to achieve whatever world you want.

This is why I hate Vancian magic and wish it was actually gone, but I hate "Vancian fighting" even more. And it’s not just "one such incidence", it’s a core mechanic for every ing class. Even 3e spellcasting had more flexibility with Sorcerer and Psion.

And I don’t buy that this so-called balance couldn’t be achieved without encounters/dailies either. That was just the lazi…simplest way.

I’d rather have slightly more complex but more intuitive rules than resort to convolutions like "this power means that, except when it doesn’t but other ones do, unless you want them to mean something else".

I don’t see flexibility in having to come up with farfetched justifications for something as basic as martial attacks. And I don’t see why it would be harder to change some fluff if the system made sense in the first place.

 

[lutecius]

No, you want Legolas to have perfect hair even after being hit by an axe. That's what being bishi entails. If you didn't want to be bishi, you wouldn't play Legolas.

Which just means that you, personally, would be using the abstract hit point framework to narrate blood and guts everywhere. Your point being...?

1- to refute your earlier bold assertion? It is possible to like a particular playstyle or character type and still want a minimum consistency.
2 - The HP issue you brought up is a bit off topic, but I believe that an axe dealing actual damages still leaves plenty of room for a variety of descriptions, flavour or bishounen fetishes.
3 - Again, I don’t see why it would be harder to change some fluff to fit your tastes if the rules made sense in the first place.

Surely the idea of someone catching their breath between fights is not so hard to grasp.

What about being too tired to use a low level daily or encounter exploit before resting but still being able to use a high level one in the same fight?

You are thinking of the wrong kind of simulation. 4E does not simulate 3E's version of reality. It simulates action movies, where finishing moves are used to, you know, finish a fight.

So now 4e is supposed to simulate a fiction with a scripted scenario? That’s really poor design, then. What’s with all the dice and the possibility that the heroes die before the end? The DMG should also encourage strong railroading and letting the PCs read modules beforehand. You wouldn’t want them to ruin that action movie’s perfect timing and narration with their impromptu choices.

Seriously, I don’t like this approach. But I am glad you admit that the encounter/daily mechanic doesn’t simulate a reality. What you described isn’t cinematic action. It’s cinematic narration.

I am the one saying you can stop peeing on your own leg by simply not thinking too hard about fantasy.

Again you keep saying this like it's witty or something.
1- Isn't the point of these boards an this thread in particular mostly thinking too hard about fantasy?
2- you cannot try to convince people that something makes sense and get away with this line every time your arguments fail.

This is exactly as I see it too. If you were watching an action movie would you think it "unrealistic" if the hero used exactly the same spinning sweep move three times on the same opponents and got the same result each time? That would certainly blow my suspension of disbelief.

What blows my suspension of disbelief in a movie is precisely the "why didn’t he do that before?" or "why can’t he do it again?" moments. I expect a better explanation than "otherwise the movie would be over". That would be lazy writing.

As for not "getting the same result each time" this is what dice rolls are for. A penalty when you use the same attack twice against an opponent or group would make sense too.

I see daily and encounter powers as a special move which makes the hero unique and instantly identifiable. But it is also something that the hero should only be able to pull off rarely. The "daily" and the "encounter" limits are there to keep those moves special, and to stop the action movie becoming a boring loop of the same shot played over and over again. They make the game more cinematic. And I think it is the better for them.

Like players won’t end up using their powers almost always in the same order anyway, precisely because they get to use them only once per encounter/day.

If you want varied combat, make more varied encounters and less powers that work equally on every opponent regardless of its size or type.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

None of which I care for if in the end there is little correlation between the fluff and the crunch. Magic cards have fancy names and flavour text too (and often better art). I expect a little more from an rpg.

1 - Re-fluffing powers according to the order in which they are used is confusing and detracts from the game.
2 - I was addressing Mustrum’s notion of "reasonable". Of course someone has to adjudicate improvised descriptions. They have an impact on the adventure’s tone and consistency.
3 - I don’t find rpg mechanics "cool". Only what they represent and how they represent it. Otherwise I’d be playing some board game with much cooler mechanics.

I completely understand that others don't care about the in-game implications of encounter/dailies. Filling the blanks is ok too.
But I don't think the in-game inconsistencies are a feature, or that having to justify and work around them is particularly fun. I’d rather use the time and effort for more creative things like adventure prep and world building.

This is why I hate Vancian magic and wish it was actually gone, but I hate "Vancian fighting" even more. And it’s not just "one such incidence", it’s a core mechanic for every ing class. Even 3e spellcasting had more flexibility with Sorcerer and Psion.

And I don’t buy that this so-called balance couldn’t be achieved without encounters/dailies either. That was just the lazi…simplest way.

There are many ways to implement a game system without using daily or encounter powers.
The question is not if it's lazy or simple design, but if it's actually better gameplay to use the "Vancian" combat model? I don't want a game system that bogs me down with too many details. But I still want to have a complex game system with many ways to "style" a character or to run a combat. I want complexity without complicated.
The at-will/encounter/daily power scheme is considerably easier to handle then using Iron Heroes token system, or something akin to 3E tactical feats or Book of Iron Might. Yet, despite the simplicity in grasping the core concepts and using them, it still has a lot of complexity.
Do you know any systems that are similar uncomplicated yet still provide a lot of emergent complexity? If you look into all the material that the OGL and the d20 System has to offer, do you see anything that achieves that? Or do you just believe there must be something better, but haven't any ideas on how that would like? Or do you don't agree with the goals itself - complexity yes, complicated no? Would two yes or two nos be okay for you, too?


Off-Topic: luteciusm, when I try to quote your posts, each sentence or line is encapsulated by color (white) and font tags (verdana)? Do you know why? Because I can't really see a visual difference between "normal" posts and your posts. It makes it harder to quote you.

 

[Fenes]

Do you know any systems that are similar uncomplicated yet still provide a lot of emergent complexity? If you look into all the material that the OGL and the d20 System has to offer, do you see anything that achieves that? Or do you just believe there must be something better, but haven't any ideas on how that would like? Or do you don't agree with the goals itself - complexity yes, complicated no? Would two yes or two nos be okay for you, too?

Book of 9 Swords? Works rather well I think for melee.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Book of 9 Swords? Works rather well I think for melee.

A good example. But these are still encounter powers. Just the dailies are missing.

I haven't used the Bo9S, but I've used the Warlock, which is a class that is entirely at-will based. He is a bit boring to play, to be honest, and adding encounter powers would make him more interesting. But there is one flaw I discovered that had nothing to with him being only at-will based, but with him lacking daily resources.

There was no way to be "decisive". If an encounter was a little harder (due to bad luck, or simply being a high EL), I really would have needed one of those Wizards 1d6/level damage spells, or even a save or die spell. I needed some "desperate" measure resource that I could use if I really got into trouble.

If the game system manages to avoid the bad-luck and more importantly the "very challenging" encounter part, you can probably avoid daily (or act/adventure/session) resources all-together. But you will curtail the variety in allowed encounters. There is less distinction between easy and hard encounters. And I think that was ultimately the reason why the 4E design team went for daily resources (in addition to the Healing Surges).

If you wanted, you could introduce a different meta-game resource, a "Action Point Deluxe" type resource (Drama Points? Hero Points? Possibilities?), that would not trigger daily powers, but instead allow you to use an encounter power again. (Maybe 2 such points per daily you would normally get).

There is still the "recharge" aspect of Bo9S powers. If you make it too easy to recharge, you run into the problem of people always repeating the same moves in the same combat, making it easier to abuse exploitable combos.

There are always trade-offs.