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

[Shadeydm]

Google and/or Wikipedia is your friend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishi

Yikes

 

[Holy Bovine]

3) By way of contrast, 4Ed non-reliable daily exploits have a hard cap of 1/day. The martial skill of the PC is irrelevant. The lack of skill of the target is irrelevant.

But don't Pcs get more dailies as they level? Could they, in theory, take repeated uses of the same daily? Not by RAW probably but they are still getting more than 1/day.

Really this seems to be an arguement without a basis.

 

[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.

I've played my share of froofy elves and insisted on having a high charisma even back when it was a useless stat.

I still wanted an axe to deal actual injuries, even if that meant blood in my mullet.

Also, I'm sure I could find some twisted bishi art involving lots of blood, bondage and nasty wounds.

 

[Sir Sebastian Hardin]

I was asking what you thought of using fatigue or overstraining to explain why you need to have an extended rest in between using certain maneuvers. Or, as I said in post #6:

I personally think that the most important assumption that has to break down is that if it's martial, it must be repeatable. For example, one of the standard explanations for why a low-level barbarian is unable to rage more than once per day is that he somehow fatigues himself after his first rage, and is unable to reach the same state until he rests. He might get angry, but the emotion of anger is quite different from the mental and physical state of rage.

So similarly, in 4e, what if martial daily abilities represent such a supreme effort on the part of the character that he needs to rest before he can do it again? Perhaps certain muscles are overstrained, or he is fatigued in some way after he pulls off an exploit, so much so that he can't do exactly the same thing again until he has had some rest. He might attempt it, but his concentration, timing or balance will always be a little off, and in game terms, this could be represented by a lesser at-will or encounter ability (if he has an appropriate one available).

There is a problem with what some of you understand of what's in-game in 4th edition.
Even if YOU, The Player are the tactician who decides which power to use during combat, it does NOT mean that your Characyer, the PC, actually knows what exploits he is allowed to use. In combat, the rules assume a "narrative" style, where everyone tells what his PC is doing. The character is always trying to deliver a killing blow, when it does happen, it means you just did your daily 3(W) damage power... One of your blows was so strong that you also hit the guy next to your target -that means you just used cleave, and so on... We decide what powers to use, but what the PCs (and other characters) know about the battle is only the outcomes, the effects that we see (for martial powers at least). The players now have a "narrative power" borrowed from the DM to "decde" when the conditions are met for the "lucky" blow to happen. In 3rd edition instead, the "daily abilities" were always concious choices, and were more plausible in-game.

It is not that I like that... it is not my style

 

[Fenes]

But don't Pcs get more dailies as they level? Could they, in theory, take repeated uses of the same daily? Not by RAW probably but they are still getting more than 1/day.

That sounds like a very good house rule, and would probably make dailies (and encounter powers) more acceptable for a lot of people.

 

[DandD]

Might whack with the game balance, however. Superabilities that can be used more than once per day are encounter abilties, and you also do get more of them.

 

[Fenes]

I doubt that it would mess with game balance. If all abilities are roughly equally powerful in their "class" (at will, encounter, daily) so to avoid the accidental ineffective build, then it should not matter if you use 3 different daylies or three times the same daily.

 

[FireLance]

I doubt that it would mess with game balance. If all abilities are roughly equally powerful in their "class" (at will, encounter, daily) so to avoid the accidental ineffective build, then it should not matter if you use 3 different daylies or three times the same daily.

To be exact, it shouldn't be overpowered if you use your 5th-level daily three times instead of one 15th, one 9th and one 5th-level daily.

 

[Fenes]

That sounds good - the sorcerer's spell slot system, in other words.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

This is your idea of a non-magical power?

No, someone said that there is something going on in martial dailies that is supernatural, even though there is nothing supernatural even implied in the fluff.

So I quickly provided an example of how one could imply the supernatural given a few minutes, much less the months the 4Ed design team had.

Really this seems to be an arguement without a basis.

First, the original question was whether the martial dailies affect suspension of disbelief. Clearly, for some at least, it does.

So yes, there is a basis for the argument. What we're kicking about now is details.

So similarly, in 4e, what if martial daily abilities represent such a supreme effort on the part of the character that he needs to rest before he can do it again? Perhaps certain muscles are overstrained, or he is fatigued in some way after he pulls off an exploit, so much so that he can't do exactly the same thing again until he has had some rest.

There are several problems with this enumerated above, not the least of which is that the martial daily mechanic doesn't conform to reality at all. Don't just look at the ones the Fighter has- check out the martial dailies in the other classes.

But the problems don't end there.

There is a 1st level daily power that gives 3[W]- pretty valuable, and one might see how that might be worthy of limiting it in a 1st level PC.

There is a higher level encounter exploit that gives 3[W] + a 3 square shift. Its the lesser exploit+.

Both have fluff describing them simply as tremendously powerful blows.

I have no problem with that higher level exploit. But now we have a higher level encounter exploit that gives a better benefit than a 1st level daily exploit...

The ability that is sooooo dificult to perform, sooooo exhausting has a more powerful cousin that is a per encounter exploit for the more powerful PC.

But he can still only perform the lesser maneuver 1 per day.

Does that seem logical? To me, that's sloppy. It also puts a hole in the "exhaustion" model.

That 4Ed daily, had the designers thought about it, should have been a daily for low-level PCs only. They could have added a single line of text- "This exploit becomes an encounter exploit at 15th level, and adds + 3 shift when used."

Its not like they weren't familiar with that kind of design*- daily powers becoming encounter powers was a design element in some 3.X classes.

*It was used at least once, in the ToM Shadowcaster, which was worked on by Ari Marmell, who is one of the 4Ed designers.

Ask youself- are the daily exploits really so powerful that they should be limited to one use/day even for paragon and epic characters?