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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5630567" data-attributes="member: 22779">In game reason for once a day - the alien's sensors are not that good and don't always pick up every example of the trigger.  By and large, it's usually not that hard to come up with plausible reasons.Something I do want to tangent on for a second is the idea that dissociative mechanics make world building more difficult.  I really cannot agree with this.In earlier editions, the fact that many mechanics were indelibly linked to the world meant that the world was almost always defined in some way by the mechancs.  You could break that link by changing the rules, but, that had to be a conscious decision.Take Dragonlance for a second.  In DL, you don't have gold pieces, you have steel pieces.  Now, why?  Why change the basic monetary unit, while preserving the exchange rates?The answer is fairly simple.  This is a campaign where you're going to kill dragons.  Lots of dragons.  And dragons have tons and tons of gold and treasure for which you gain XP every time you collect it.  If you actually used a GP standard in DL, your characters would be fantastically wealthy in only a couple of levels and would gain those levels very, very quickly.So, they change to a Steel standard.  Dragons still have mountains of gold, but, now, that gold is simply window dressing and without value.  We preserve the base mechanics - XP for treasure, advancement rates, etc - without having to reinvent the wheel.Or, ask yourself this.  Why is one of the very first encounters in the DL saga meeting the one person in the WHOLE world that can cast cleric spells?  Is it to drive the story forward or is it a recognition that without a cleric and clerical healing, the game becomes extremely difficult to play?  I'd argue the latter.  The justification is added later, but, the reason Goldmoon is the first NPC that joins your merry band is no accident.Now, turn this over to a 4e system.  Wealth isn't particularly tied to anything.  Because treasure gained is meant to be parcelled out by level, rather than by whatever critter you happen to kill, there's no need to change gp standards.  You can if you like and it makes no difference.  The choice isn't mandated by the mechanics.Goldmoon can still be the only cleric in the world.  But, now you can move her to any point in the adventure and not have game play go kerblooie because the characters have no healing.  Her placement is solely dependent on the needs of the narrative and not the mechanics.IMO and this is just my opinion, the fact that the mechanics are by and large not tied to any specific in game reason, means that you gain so much freedom when designing settings and campaigns.</blockquote>

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