Healing Word

[keterys]

Why? They are not attacks. They are minor or move actions.

Why do these parts matter? All sorts of move actions provoke for movement. On attacks, a Disruptive Strike is an interrupt that provokes, a Snap Shot is a minor that provokes, Bloody Path is a move that _must_ provoke.

Why would these provoke opportunity attacks where you don't even do anything, you let someone else do something.

You did something - you said a prayer that healed someone, or shouted at someone to snap out of it. Is that so different from saying a prayer to scorch your enemy?

It's not obvious to me that these powers were designed with the _intent_ that they provoke. So what's obvious is pretty subjective (which is the point I was trying to make, though it seems I failed).

From your statement it seemed you were saying that it seemed obvious that they were not intended to provoke. If you're instead saying that it's almost the opposite of that and it's unknown whether they realized those would provoke. Well, sure, we don't know that, and I'm on board with you there. Another good example would probably be the central eye ray of a beholder which does not contain the 'this does not provoke' like the other eye rays. Every DM I've seen run one has been convinced that it can use the central eye without provoking...

But here's the interesting part. It _is_ a ranged attack in many cases. Though it does satisfy the 'minor action' tag you asked about earlier.

At which point arguing intent gets awfully murky. I do think it's easy to argue intent on Nimble Strike not provoking when you use it to shift back one and fire. But Knight's Move, Bastion of Health, and Shake It Off can continue to provoke, and I'm okay with that. Beholder central eyes too, if I'm running an official LFR game. Cause, whatever, really. Doesn't gain me enough to change things. If I design my own beholder? Probably address that.

 

[Mengu]

From your statement it seemed you were saying that it seemed obvious that they were not intended to provoke. If you're instead saying that it's almost the opposite of that and it's unknown whether they realized those would provoke. Well, sure, we don't know that, and I'm on board with you there.

Yes, the intent is unknown, and is not obvious to me. Ignore what I said in the previous post, I was countering Abdul's use of the word "obvious" with my use of the word "obvious", neither of which are obvious. Call it my convoluted sense of sarcasm.

If I was designing the powers in question, I would have designed them all in a way they would not provoke opportunity attacks. I just don't think they realized that by RAW these powers would provoke when they designed them, but that's just my subjective opinion (would be awesome to hear an official opinion).

And about running LFR, yeah, I'd certainly run them as written, ranged powers provoke whether they are attack powers or not (except powers like nimble strike, I'll break the rule there and I don't think any player will complain). If an LFR DM told me my Nimble Strike provokes when I try to shift away, I'd say fine, and just keep spamming Twin Strike (not that I'm ever likely to play a ranger).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I mean that it seems obvious to me that Nimble Strike was not intended to provoke just from initiating use of the power. How about Deft Strike? Oh, you are using a Ranged power! Thwack! Oh, you decided to move away from me, Thwack Again! Nah. I don't buy it. To be honest I don't think the designers had a clear idea of how to write the rules such that things worked the way they seem to have wanted. It SURE seems like they wanted an attack power like Deft Strike to provoke when you make an attack or when you move out of a threatened square. It also seems that they intended non-attacking ranged powers to draw an OA (or they would have made them Close Burst blah blah blah powers which they demonstrably know how to do).

Thus I think they really and truely did simply say to themselves "players will figure it out" and leave it at that. Perhaps the whole situation didn't become apparent to them right at the start of designing the game and by the time it did it was just too much of a disruption to wedge in some new mechanic just to fix it. A LOT of the rules seem to be written from a "one power use = one attack" point of view. Its like halfway through someone realized it wasn't that way all the time. Witness all the arguments about when you declare Twin Strike's targets, which is only confusing because the attack procedure rule block seems to have been written without a real understanding of the difference between an attack and power use.

Anyway, I think the actual written rules are pretty sloppy. The combat system is well enough conceived and all but its NOT that complicated by wargaming standards. Any random AH game ever published (even Tactics II) is more complex than Chapter 9, yet they're all bullet proof (yeah, except SL and ASL, but what a monstrosity that is, the rules are like 500 pages). The point is that RAW is just badly written. WotC obviously failed to hire someone that had wargaming experience to actually edit the rules and make them tight.

 

[Mengu]

WotC obviously failed to hire someone that had wargaming experience to actually edit the rules and make them tight.

Actually, by wargaming standards, what they have isn't too bad for a first edition (call it 4th edition 1.0). After use and abuse by the public, there are always issues that come up, and rules updates are pretty much expected.

 

[eamon]

In any case, I certainly hope they break their previous promise not to release a 4.5 and do indeed release a 4.5 fixing a bunch of these aggravating things. It's not like they'd be hard to fix, (most of em, anyhow), and it could really smooth out the rough edges that way.

I kinda wonder if an open beta could would work; would many people participate, I wonder?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In any case, I certainly hope they break their previous promise not to release a 4.5 and do indeed release a 4.5 fixing a bunch of these aggravating things. It's not like they'd be hard to fix, (most of em, anyhow), and it could really smooth out the rough edges that way.

I kinda wonder if an open beta could would work; would many people participate, I wonder?

I'll be perfectly happy if they release a 4.5, as long as they send me an updated copy of the 20 or so 4e books it will obsolete. There will never be a 4.5 because the rules are too interdependent. If you fix issue X it affects the balance of items A, B, and C which now have to be tweaked, etc. At best slight textual changes would be required to a significant number of things in most every book. If they're going to do that they might as well revamp the whole system and call it 5.0 at that point.

And no, I don't agree with you Mengu. I know wargaming is a bit of a dying art and maybe you haven't been exposed to the real thing. Go dig up a copy of something like "Third Reich" and take a look at it. The rules are around 20 pages of condensed 8 point 3 column text. If you were to typeset that like 4e is it would be easily over 100 pages. There are almost no ambiguities at all in the rules. The first thing they did was to define ALL terms at the start of the rules. etc. That process is exactly what 4e lacks. 4e is from wargamer standards amateur work. Its a GOOD design, but it is simply not a well written ruleset.

 

[Mengu]

And no, I don't agree with you Mengu. I know wargaming is a bit of a dying art and maybe you haven't been exposed to the real thing.

Maybe not. I've tried a number of games, though I'm certainly not the most experienced miniature gamer, my most recent foray is into Warmachine MK2, after a 1-2 year break from it. I just find that every game I've tried I run into mechanics that could either have been explained better, or are clear to begin with but become muddled as more and more models are released for the game. I think it's the same problem with D&D.

The designers are very proud of the balance they have struck between races, classes, powers, and levels. But when it comes down to it, just the PHB has such huge discrepancies even between powers of the same level for a class, that it's very easy for things to become obsolete, of course more so with every new release. It's not surprising rules can suffer from the same degradation.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Maybe not. I've tried a number of games, though I'm certainly not the most experienced miniature gamer, my most recent foray is into Warmachine MK2, after a 1-2 year break from it. I just find that every game I've tried I run into mechanics that could either have been explained better, or are clear to begin with but become muddled as more and more models are released for the game. I think it's the same problem with D&D.

The designers are very proud of the balance they have struck between races, classes, powers, and levels. But when it comes down to it, just the PHB has such huge discrepancies even between powers of the same level for a class, that it's very easy for things to become obsolete, of course more so with every new release. It's not surprising rules can suffer from the same degradation.

I'm less comparing to TT miniatures games, which do usually have pretty simple rules and leave a lot open to interpretation, than I am comparing to board games. 4e kind of set itself up for that comparison too. Older editions rules were pretty general and open-ended and read a lot like TT miniatures rules (which they were derived from to start with). 4e set out to codify everything and make a well-defined and fairly complete set of rules. They tried, but they failed. So yeah, if you compare 4e to Chainmail or even Warhammer! its actually more complete, though maybe not as consistent. But when you compare to say an AH or SPI boardgame, which have equally complex rules as 4e, there's no comparison. Those games were regularly issued with rules that typeset like 4e is would equal the size of the PHB and yet they were very rarely errated and the rules were totally clear about everything. 2 people could sit down and play and you'd no more argue about the rules than you would about chess.

Things can become obsolete I suppose. A feat might be supplanted by better feats, or a power or item supplanted by better ones, but if you're going to write a complete set of detailed rules, then basic things like "when am I using a power" and "what constitutes an attack" better be defined, and if they aren't you should fire the writers because they're no good at what they're doing.

 

[Eric888]

I was aware of the duality (that both wordings were used), but I'm not aware of any ranged or area attacks that aren't powers.

Educate me (not that I doubt you; I'm just curious)?

The one example I know of is the Arcane Riposte feature of Battle Mages. It is intuitively a melee attack, even though it does not say as much, so I don't know of any ranged or area attacks; but it is an example of an attack that is not a power. (A pretty terrible one.)