Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5629692" data-attributes="member: 42582">You seem to be focused mainly on the sorts of inferences and ramifications that matter in sim-heavy operational play (ie planning now to be more efficient in combat, and at exploration, tomorrow). I don't think 4e's design is oriented towards these sorts of ramifications.One way in which 4e is not oriented towards these sorts of inferences and ramifications, in my view, is that it is very obviously and expressly focused on the encounter/challenge/scene/situation (for current purposes, these can be treated as synonyms) as the focus of play. It does not prioritise exploration.So the game is not particularly interested in the players wondering how to deal with a war devil, going off to do a whole lot of exploration and hunting for clues, items etc, and then bringing those tools into the combat in order to make short work of their enemy.I'm not saying you can't do a little bit of this, some of the time. But too much of it and the system won't really deliver - for example, easy combats in 4e can tend to be boring ones.If you want to build situations that play to the strengths of 4e, then you do things like: locate the clues in the context of a skill challenge or an earlier combat encounter; build the counters to the war devil's power into the encounter with the war devil - whether as a skill challenge, or some particular widget that the PCs have to get hold of and deploy in the course of the combat, or whatever. My black dragon example upthread shows this at work - the player of the wizard, who is the only one able to evoke the magical power of the statue of the Summer Queen, has to decide whether to gamble his standard action on a chance to dispel the darkness, or whether to leave the darkness in place and try to contribute to the battle in some other way. This is the sort of play that 4e is designed to support.I'll give some more examples - actual and imagined - below in this post.This is one of the first monster descriptions I remember reading in the MM. And I remember thinking what a great power it was - I wanted to use this wight whose horrific visage made creatures recoil in fear.When I did get a chance to use it, the ranger (I think it was) recoiled in fear and fell down a pit! But the party had somehow worked out that there would be pits, and so had roped together - and the dwarf was able to pull the ranger back up while the sorcerer destroyed the wight with a crit on a Blazing Starfall (AOE radiant damage, for those who don't know it).Hussar responed to most of these, but I'll add a few thoughts.There are no facing rules in 4e (as I believe is also the case in 3E) but the power is a blast, which means that it generates an implication of facing (ie a blast occurs on only one side of an attacker, and the most likely explanation for why those on the other side of the wight are not affected by the power would be that they're not looking at the wight but rather behind it.)Silence, anti-magic etc don't exist. The scrying thing is a bit of a corner case - does a 3E dragon's frightful presence work through scrying magic? - but I'd be happy to apply a penalty to the scryer's skill check, or even deliver an attack, if the wight looked into the scrying sensor with its horrific visage.And if a PC closed his/her eyes in response I'd be happy to give a +2 bonus to Will in exchange for being blinded until the start of that PC's next turn.Well fear is a keyword, and so in the absence of a class ability or power that looks up that keyword, there is a limit on what you can narrate here. (I've actually posted quite extensively in the past on the importance, in 4e's action resolution mechanics, of keywords as an anchor to the fiction - for example, the reason a fireball spell sets things alight but a sword blow doesn't is because the former has the fire keyword and deals fire damage; the reason the push of a Thunderwave can blow people through timber-framed windows, whereas the push of horrific visage cannot, is that the former has the Thunder keyword; and the reason the wizard PC in my game was able to use the Twist of Space encounter power to free someone who had been trapped inside a mirror - via p 42 - is because that power has the teleport keyword.)The more general answer to your question, though, is that the player of the paladin should be using page 42. The first time the player of a paladin in my game confronted a wight (not a deathlock one) he cursed it in the name of the Raven Queen - mechanically, this was a Religion check as a minor action staking combat advantage for one attack (on a successful check) against some damage as the wight resisted the prayer (on a failed check - I can't remember whether I called it necrotic or psychic damage, but it didn't matter because the player succeeded at the check).Resisting undead fear through faith could be easily adjudicated in a similar fashion.I believe that, in AD&D, there is talk of the fireball pellet emanating from the mage's hand, or being thrown by the mage. How do AD&D GMs adjudicate fireballs by maimed mages? For me it's never come up, but however it's done, do the same with the wight!But anyway, what do you see as the point of your dialogue? Do you think that there are actually 4e tables around the world having experiences like that, even as we post and try to save them from themselves?I'm posting actual play examples. And explaining how they arise within the context of, and are supported by, 4e's mechanics. And showing not only the sort of consistency that is being used to drive the game forward by my creative players - consistency of theme, personae, etc - but also how the so-called "dissociated" mechanics in fact are central to allowing this sort of consistency to occur.LostSoul has whole threads of actual play examples of his first 4e campaign, and then his current 4e variant. You'll see plenty of consistency, and player creativity there, too. (Not that LostSouls' games are a cipher of mine, or vice versa. Each of us is doing our own thing with 4e.)Where is the actual discouragement of player creativity, at actual 4e tables? Of course, if your dialogues were representative of how you GMed games then I'm sure that creativity at your tables would be discouraged. But in fact I assume that you don't GM in that way. I'm not sure, then, why you are assuming that this is how anyone would run 4e.</blockquote>

Verification