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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5619043" data-attributes="member: 42582">If a participant in an RPG is unable to draw a distinction between the reason for XYZ from the point of view of the players of the game, and the reason for XYZ from the (imaginary) point of view of the fictional inhabitants of the gameworld, then that person will probably not enjoy 4e.This is true. I don't think we need the label "dissociated mechanics" to describe it, though. It's no more or less an interesting fact than that a person who hates iron-spike-and-10'-pole-play (like me) probably won't enjoy the Tomb of Horrors.Anyway, returning to the rogue. The rogue hasn't forgotten how to do it. Or been rendered unable to do it. It's just that s/he doesn't do it. Why not (from her perspective)? Any number of reasons is possible - s/he gets unlucky, s/he doesn't bother because not enough is at stake, s/he has something else she'd rather be doing, etc, etc.A comparable degree of "dissociation" in (typical) classic D&D play - why do the wandering monsters never catch a PC pants down relieving him- or herself in a corner of the dungeon? Among the players at the table, we know the reason - because no one wants to explore that particular human activity in the context of the game. In the fiction, who knows? The PCs get lucky, I guess. Does anyone infer, though, that because it never comes up, PCs don't go the toilet? So they're not justified, except that they are justified by those at the table - so where's the problem? Correct. As you've already indicated, it's left as an exercise for the participants in the game.Some people call this process, of the participants at the table working out among themselves what is happening in the fiction, roleplaying.Relating this to the hit point example: Ziggy the Rogue: Wow, Joe, that was amazing! You took them all down and you haven't even broken a sweat! Joe the Hero: Uh, I'm practically dying here - one more hit, even a scrape from a rock or a knife, and I'll drop. Ziggy the Rogue: Gosh, I didn't notice. Do we need to call an ambulance? Get a stretcher? Joe the Hero: Not at all, I'm as spry as when I woke up this morning. It's just that . . . . (Complete dialogue to taste.)In other words, what Doug said:As it happens, [MENTION=18280]Raven Crowking[/MENTION] has a serious explanation for how we should make sense of this hit points thing - namely, that a player whose PC has 1 hp left will play his/her PC more cautiously, and this is how the exhaustion/depletion of divine favour shows itself. And the same thing will happen with the player of a martial 4e PC who has no dailies left - s/he will play the PC more cautiously, because having fewer good powers to deploy. That is how the depletion of reserves, or failure of luck, or whatever we want to think of it as, will manifest itself.What does it mean to say "I took 4 hp damage" or "I delivered 4 hp damage"? Or to say "I have 1 hp remaining"? We can't know in the abstract. It can only be resolved by the participants in the game in a given context. For example, 4 hp taken by a high level fighter with 80 hp is different from 4 hp taken by a giant slug with 80 hp (the slug's hp, unlike the fighter's, are mostly meat) is different from 4 hp taken by a 1st level MU. And 1 hp remaining for that MU or rogue who rolled a one on the die is obviusly very different from 1 hp remaining for that high level fighter, or the giant slug.Each to his or her own. Until 4e, I could never handle hit points (and so I played Rolemaster, in which hit points - earned by ranks in Body Development - are all meat). But slides have never caused me or my group any trouble.The Alexandrian essay records a potentially interseting biographical fact about Justin Alexander, but not much more than that as far as I can tell.LostSoul already replied to this in some detail. But to add some examples to his discussion of Power Attack - why does the avatar, in 3E play, not wait until the goblin leaves cover before running out and shooting an arrow? The mechanical explanation, from the player's point of view, is that (i) the rules don't permit readying both a move and a standard action, and (ii) there is no analogue to the charge for ranged attacks. In game which use simultaneous resolution - like some versions of Rolemaster, and some versions of classic D&D - the issue doesn't arise in the same way.But I've never seen or heard it suggested that the presence of turn-by-turn initiative rules in 3E makes it not a roleplaying game.In any event, the notion that "roleplaying" means assimilation of the player to the PC, not just as advocate and controller, but in terms of point-of-view, strikes me as too narrow to capture more than a small handful of paradigmatic roleplaying experiences. (For example, it would put such a strong constraint on metagaming that huge chunks of classic D&D play -which depend on the player having a sense, independent of his/her PC, of the conventions of the game, like pit traps and 10' poles and the like - would be excluded from the ambit of roleplaying.) In a recent thread, I and other posters pointed to the flavour text for kobolds - which talks about them being skulking ambushers, preferring to swarm foes and then run away if threatened, etc - as helpful for understanding what the Shifty power is about. We got the reply that because that text appears a few centimetres up the page, rather than in the very stat block next to Shifty, it is irrelevant to interpreting and GMing the Shifty power. Presumably, the same can be said in response to your reading of Besieged Foe.Personally, the way I read Besieged Foe is as primarily a metagame thing. It's as if the GM played an "Unluck" or "Anti-Fate" token on the player, saying "This war devil and it's allies are going to take you down!" The effect of the power is to produce the result that the foe is besieged, because it creates a mechanical incentive for the war devil's allies to attack the targeted PC.Those who don't like pure metagame abilities could intepret it as a curse instead: "You shall know the wrath of my legions!"How many rogue powers in PHB, MP and MP2 grant teleportation? One: a level 22 utility power called "Mountebank’s Flight" with the flavour text "You steal a bit of magic to stow away on another creature’s teleportation." (There is also a 20th level teleportation power for the paragon path Arcane Trickster.)Across those same three books, how many fighter powers grant telepotation? None. (Again, a fighter paragon path which requires warlock multi-classing grants a teleportation utility power at level 12.)So how exactly does this comment shed light on 4e's mechanics?</blockquote>

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