NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5620159" data-attributes="member: 55271">I would argue what you have there is an arguably odd abstraction. Let's momentarily simplify the situation by removing Power Attack for the equation. Imagine the feat doesn't exist. What you're left is a game system that doesn't include a mechanical model for trading precision for power. That doesn't mean that your character can't choose to do that; it just means that the choice isn't mechanically relevant (it's been lost in the abstraction of the system).If we add Power Attack back into this hypothetical system, does anything change? Nope. The system is basically saying, "The decision to trade precision for power is only mechanically relevant if you've had special training for it."I can see why that particular abstraction would potentially feel strange to some people. (And Justin would probably agree with them. We play with house rules which unify the mechanics for Power Attack and Combat Expertise by giving Combat Expertise the same BAB cap as Power Attack. They also offer a non-trained option of both abilities which basically builds on the rules for fighting defensively.)I'm not ruling out the possibility of a system being dissociated by the absence of some mechanic. But I wouldn't characterize this particular oddity as a dissociation. It's still a matter of game world information not being available in the mechanics; not mechanical information being unavailable to the game world.Quite possibly. As the original essay stated, all mechanics both abstracted and metagamed (emphasis added). The example given in the essay are players knowing that fireballs do (d6 x level) damage whereas characters have no idea what d6s are. The exact numerical representation of hit points or Strength or the DC of an Open Lock check would all be similar examples.I don't think I've ever seen anyone claim that dissociated mechanics were wholly absent from pre-4E versions of D&D. But differences in degree are not irrelevant. If someone says, "I don't really like eating salt-licks." Replying with, "Ah-ha! I saw you put salt on your mashed potatoes last night!" doesn't really have any relevance.Nope. Pretty much every single thing you wrote there was incorrect. You're still confusing abstraction and dissociation.Everything you say there is true.But the reason the mechanic is dissociated is because the player making the decision that "this is the moment where everything has lined up to make this happen" is the equivalent of Baptiste saying in the huddle, "Okay, on this play I'm going to leap backwards, catch the ball one-handed, and then do a reverse somersault." And begin right every single time he chooses to say that (but he can only say it once per day).</blockquote>

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