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="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5621824" data-attributes="member: 87792">Indeed.  But winds between 5 and 6 mph are such a corner case scenario that they really aren't that relevant.  And if the article can't be extrapolated beyond that then even if it's correct its conclusions may be worse than useless.  (If for instance it claimed that Toppers are faster than Lasers because Toppers start planing at 4.9mph and lasers at 6.1mph it would be entirely correct - but given that the laser is faster at all other wind speeds the article would be so misleading as to be worse than useless).And to me this underlines beautifully the brilliance of 4e's design structure that they drew back on at the last minute to give more to the traditionalists.  From my reading of Lord of the Rings, everything fits beautifully if you assume that an extended rest was taken only at a very few points in the story.  There was, for example, no extended rest between Rivendell and Lorien.  Which is why you don't have Aragorn continually feeding people Athelas although in a "trad simulationist"* game he should be using it at every possible opportunity.As for a condition such as "Only if anyone is around to hear it", that's an epic fail.  What it means is that the smart thing is always to blow the Horn of Gondor when facing something big (like the Balrog).  Because it can't do any harm - it just won't do any good.  But mysteriously Boromir didn't do this.  Instead he waited until his back was completely against the wall, hoarding the daily to use against completely impossible odds because he didn't know when the next extended rest was coming and would prefer to have something in reserve in case the next obstacle was even worse than the current one.  This is the emergent play you get in 4e when rests are uncertain.  It is also what happens in most stories (hell, even Power Rangers where the smart thing would be to break out the super-mega-giga-zord's Ultimate! Attack! the second you see the monster) - the biggest abilities only come out against the biggest enemies.But getting it right involves tossing one more sacred cow onto the barbeque and either renaming At Will/Encounter/Daily powers to At Will/Scene/Episode or moving Extended Rests to long lazy weekends somewhere safe and slotting in a third type of rest that just gives back a surge or two  for an 8 hour sleep.* Trad simulationist games try to simulate the real world - and it's the sort of simulationist that GURPS is and is normally claimed for AD&D.  4e on the other hand tries to simulate the genre.  It makes no claims to be real-world realistic, instead running under Holywood Physics and therefore does a much better job of simulating mythological or pulp stories including The Illiad, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or (once the extended rests are fixed) Lord of the Rings.</blockquote>

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