Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5622864" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think 4e makes what you did more legitimate within the rules, because 4e is much more upfront that the action resolution mechanics aren't a total model of the gameworld's causal processes, but rather a device for resolving the particular conflicts in which the players, via their PCs, are invested.Not only does this make it clearer (in my view) that there can be a wound that can't be healed simply by restoring hit points (it's just that no PC ever suffers such wounds when they fight, for narrative/plot-protection type reasons). I think it also makes it easier for the GM to engage in more obvious scene-framing - whereas in a mechanics-as-physics model, there is more pressure to extrapolate each new scene from the previous one by an applicaiton (actual, or hypothetical) of the mechanics, which makes introducing options for which the mechanics don't allow more tricky.One reason why I prefer GMing 4e to RM despite my near-20-year love affair with the latter is precisely this issue to do with scene transition. RM can so easily bog down because there is no way for the GM to "switch off" the action resolution mechanics without creating the risk of deprotagonising the players - because the consequences of the mechanics are all-pervading and total, rather than confined to PC-focused conflicts in the manner of 4e's mechanics.On this issue, I tend towards the stricter view - namely, that once the PCs are engaging a scene then the action resolution mechanics should apply, because this is what the players have signed up for. That would mean, for example, that even an NPC would take only hit point damage from attacks.Of course, once a NPC is at 0 hp all bets are off, because there are no death saves or negative hp by default for NPCs. So, in practice, there would still be scope in 4e for a NPC to suffer an injury, in the course of a combat in which the PCs were involved, that dealt unhealable damage - but only if a monster dropped that NPC to zero hit points. But, because I also permit  page 42 manoeuvres to minionise NPCs in certain circumstances, assuming they didn't start that way, then this may not be too hard - eg if a monster crashes a brick wall down on an ordinary person, then on a hit vs Reflex I'd be happy to call that ordinary person dead (this minionisation thing is another aspect of a flexible and narratively constrained action resolution mechanics, that contrasts with a mechanics-as-physics approach).To me, the preference for that sort of approach seems to follow from a mechanics-as-physics orientation, which then makes it hard (without "cheating") to introduce a wound that can't be inflicted on a PC via the action resolution mechanics.When playing Rolemaster, I would share this orientation, but the problem wouldn't come up, because Rolemaster doesn't use hit points in the D&D sense for damage - concussion hits are only one (and typically the least important) element of damage, and different sorts of injuries (categorised both by severity and by type) require their own dedicated healing magic. So it is trivial in RM for a GM to introduce a dying NPC that the PC's are incapable of healing, at least until the PCs are 15th or higher level and start to get access to the best healing spells.I haven't played much 3E, in part because (i) it seems to support the mechanics-as-physics approach, but (ii) it uses a hit point mechanic that I think can't be reconciled with that approach (for the reasons I've given upthread) and therefore (iii) tends towards incoherence in its approach to damage. Given that fighting and damage are such big parts of mainstream fantasy RPGing, this tendency towards incoherence is a deal-breaker for me.I think this description isn't really true of 4e - or not completely (yes, it is a massive system). I don't think 4e rewards killing monsters. It rewards creation of story (ie overcoming challenges, completing quests, and the so-called "roleplaying XP rewards" from DMG2). It's just that the sort of challenges 4e supports both the design and the resolution of include combat challenges, such that if you don't include quite a few of them in your game then you're probably not getting the best gaming-per-word from your rulebooks.</blockquote>

Verification