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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dungeonman" data-source="post: 6292249" data-attributes="member: 6775975">How does that work in 4E? Can the DM "minionize" the PC in their sleep? How does the metagame reflect the fear and the trope of a fighter scared by a dagger at his throat if it's not actually possible?Not to discourage your enjoyment of 4E, it's just that I see a conflict between prioritizing satisfying heroic fiction vs relating meaningfully to the characters, so I don't understand the above statement. A protaganist vulnerable to being killed in his sleep is a real and thus meaningful character to me. A character that cannot be killed in his sleep makes a satisfying hero but I can't relate to him. What does it mean that a guy in an uber-dangerous world goes to bed never afraid of someone slitting his throat? Now a fighter who is afraid, and goes to sleep with his sword under his pillow, and maybe one day, an assassin sneaks in, and I know that the PC *could* be killed, that's a meaningful character. A fighter with exceptional senses and sleeps lightly, or a wizard who knows an alarm spell and thus goes to sleep soundly are both characters I can relate to as well. But that relatability starts with fiction that suspends my disbelief, not with metagame constructs that forces some sort of story trope.Also, it's a very valid and satisfying fantasy trope to have your throat slit in your sleep in the modern world that enjoys fiction like Games of Thrones, etc. Whether that level of grittiness is appropriate to a D&D game is a different issue. There's also a difference to me between a system that doesn't allow for assassination of PCs in their sleep vs a social contract that discourages that (I appreciate the latter, but not the former.) And all of the above is meant to be edition-neutral, as I'm not sure that any edition of D&D encourages PC throat slitting. The point was really to ask you about "meaningfully relat[ing] to the characters as the human beings" when many fantasy tropes are not particularly about relatable human beings at all.Perhaps it's more fair to say that particular aesthetics induced by 4E are important to you. Obviously, previous editions offer certain aeshetics that are very satisfying to those who play them. I can imagine gamists who don't care about aeshetics are comparably prevalent in all editions of D&D, including 4E.</blockquote>

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