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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5627177" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't agree with this at all.The rogue - a fictional being - has fencing skill. The player - a real being playing a game with rules - is entitled, by the rules of the game, to use a daily power. The player, by using that power, brings it about that in the fiction, the rogue's fencing skill is evinced.To repeat - it is not the rogue who uses the power. It is the player. The rogue is just fencing.And the rogue's fencing skill can be explored and explained and understood by the inhabitants of the fictional world.I posted about marks upthread, actually. Of two players in my group I talked to, one assumed that fighter marking is metagame, the other that it is ingame.I also suggested, upthread, that a war devil's Besieged Foe power may best be viewed as a metagame tool for bringing about the result that a foe of the war devil is "besieged" by the devil's allies.If you don't want to play a game with metagame mechanics, I don't think anyone is FORCING YOU TO. If you want to know why I don't mind the marking mechanics in 4e, it's because (i) they tend to produce a story which is about the fighter and the paladin holding off the slavering hordes, and (ii) the fighter mark produces immediate interrupt attacks, which keep the combat moving quickly.Why, in game, do the marks override? Well the player of one of those two PCs will generally check with the other before placing a mark. In game, I assume that when the fighter's mark overrides the paladin's this is because the paladin is dropping his challenge, and when the paladin's mark overrides the fighter's this is because the paladin is divinely challenging the foe (I focus on the paladin's marking mechanic rather than the fighter's, here, because I think it is more naturally interpreted as having an ingame as well as - perhaps even instead of - a metagame aspect).Well, the dwarf halbedeer PC in my game has the following powers and abilities:*+14 Athletics bonus; *Mighty Sprint: encounter move action, gain +4 speed, ignore difficult terrain, and gain a +5 bonus to any Athletics checks during the move; *Create Opening: encounter minor action, allow an adjacent ally threatened by an adjacent enemy to shift away, in return for suffering an attack from that enemy; *Opportunity Attacks that gain +3 to hit and on a hit force a moving enemy to stop; *Footwork lure: at will, on a hit shift and then slide the target into the vacated square; *Sweeping Blow, Battle Cry: both encounter, attack all surrounding enemies; *Come and Get It: encounter, pull nearby enemies adjacent and then attack all surrounding enemies; *Passing Attack: encounter, attack one enemy, and if hit shift, attack another enemy; *At least one daily that lets him attack and push surrounding enemies ("Own the Battlefield"?); *Polearm Momentum is a feat lets him knock prone targets whom he slides or pushes; *Deadly Draw is a feat that lets him gain combat advantage against targets he pulls (and maybe slides also?) at least 2 squares; *And he wears Rushing Cleats, which are magic footwear that enhance his pushes and slides by 1 square.This is a character who has no trouble moving into a group of enemies, drawing his enemies to him, pushing them away if necessary, keeping them locked down where he wants them and keeping his allies safe. If he is surrounded by mooks, he can definitely deal with them!One reason I've listed all these abilities is to help give a sense of how the mechanics support this aspect of the PC's persona. In the fiction, it's not as if the PC is once per encounter performing Come and Get It, and twice per encounter performing a close burst, etc. In the fiction, rather, there is a dwarf halbedeer who is constantly moving around the battlefield, using his finesse with his polearm to force his foes where he wants them and to keep them from his allies, etc. The suite of encounter powers, daily powers, feats etc are the player's tools for making it the case that this fictional character exists.It's not quite the same for the wizard PC, whose abilities represent discrete spells that he has learned. And the sorcerer is somewhere between the wizard and the fighter on this spectrum of degree of correlation between (i) powers as player tools, and (ii) what it is that the PC is actually doing in the fiction.This is a good example of how you might go about building a wizard who is moving along that spectrum, away from the position of the wizard in my game and towards the position of the fighter in my game.Just as the 4e mechanics don't require that every PC be located on the same place on that spectrum, so there is no need for every instance of a given class to be located on the same place on that spectrum.</blockquote>

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