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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5620041" data-attributes="member: 42582">I have a view on this. I also have a view on which system - AD&D, 3E or 4e - is more likely to produce an experience at my table that resembles the movies I prefer.Part of the idea is that most tables won't play through those million instances. It's a narrative conceit - like Boromir having only the odd occasion to sound his horn (making it dramatic rather than mundane).FIrst, "Harvest the Lightning Blade" is a great power - it would suit a certain sort of barbarian, or even a Stormwarden-style ranger!Second, the PC doesn't know in advance that lightning will strike. The PC looks up, and - lo! - storm clouds are gathering overhead! It is the player who uses the 1x/day mechanic, not the PC.And even the player doesn't know it will happen 1x/day. The player knows it won't happen more than 1x/day. But it may not happen at all.I don't think it has to have been in D&D to be a legitimate roleplaying thing. But D&D has always had some fortune-in-the-middle mechanics (eg saving throws in the 1st ed DMG), which makes it odd when D&D players decry those mechanics.Like I said upthread - this is to be worked out in play.You play HeroQuest, right? What happens when I use my "love for Esmerelda" attribute to augment an attack against Esmerelda's kidnapper? What happens when I use the same attribute to augment my song sung at Esmerelda's window under the moonlight? It's up to the player and the other participants at the table to work this out on each occasion! That's part of what it is to play a game of HeroQuest.Gygax, in his DMG, states that a successful save vs dragon breath, by a fighter chained to a rock, can mean that the chain breaks (this is luck - I'll take others' words for it that it's also simulation - I would have thought a STR check is what would simulate this, but anyway) or that the fighter discovers a small cleft in the rock and shrinks back into it at just the right moment. So now the saving throw die roll simulates what? Past geological processes? This is an explicitly fortune-in-the-middle mechanic that is not radically different in character from the unerrata-ed Come and Get It.Just to add to Crazy Jerome's response, here is my take: if 4e had given all PCs Hero Points, which could be spent 1x/day to either (i) make an attack roll into an automatic critical, or (ii) make a damage roll deliver maximum damage, then almost no one would have complained (because plenty of d20 games already had these mechanics).If one of these Hero Points could also be spent to make an opponent automatically fail a saving throw, maybe it would be a bit more controversial, but probably not all that much.If only fighters and rouges got Hero Points, that would be more controversial, but because of the metagaming aspect of the mechanic? I'm not sure. But this is, in effect, what martial daily powers are - daily Hero Points that only martial PCs get. They're just formatted and described slightly differently.Tha would be one way of going, definitely. My preferred approach, though, is to see using Brute Strike as analogous to spending a Hero Point, in the way I've described above.But they do stop feeling like Conan or the Grey Mouser because they just happen to get a lucky opening of their own choosing?Rolemaster doesn't use hit points that resemble D&D's. It uses a system of penalties (some cumulative, some overlapping) accrued via crit rolls and concussion hit attrition.But boxers get fatigued. Their performances suffer. That is one way in which boxing matches are won.</blockquote>

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