Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5633013" data-attributes="member: 42582">In my experience playing 4e, it's rarely the case that there is an optimal mechanical choice, in combat, which creates pressure to disregard theme and narrative. The combat mechanics are, in this sense, very forgiving. (And, as GM, I can influence this to an extent in the way that I build encounters and make choices for the NPCs/monsters in the course of resolving them.)And even when there is an optimal choice, very often it doesn't detract from theme and narrative because the nature of 4e's PC build rules mean that playing your PC in a mechanicall optimal way tends to reinforce rather than "dissociate" from theme and narrative.I think this feature of 4e's build is quite deliberate, and is part of what is hinted at when people talk about it being hard to build a sub-optimal PC in 4e. For me, it is a major attraction of the system.I think the sourcebooks don't do all that good a job of trying to explain how to put together a PC with a certain thematic feel - although they're not completely silent on the matter. The rulebooks do a worse job, in my view, of telling the GM how to put together an encounter and/or scenario with a certain thematic feel (Worlds and Monsters tackled this latter issue well, though).I don't subscribe to DDI, but of other material I know, I can say that the adventures are on the whole not good at this (although P2 - the drow one - is better than some others), and of the free online stuff Chris Perkins commentary on his GMing can be good sometimes. At least he talks honestly about the metagame, thematic/narrative concerns that influence his scenario design, instead of just focusing on the ingame reasons that things happen as they do!As far as the Wall of Fire issue goes, there is a Wall of Fire caster in my party, and a lot of forced movement, and it's never come up (in part because every square of movement through a Wall of Fire costs 3). Maybe it's a higher-level thing, when forced movement over longer distances becomes available?On the jumping issue, I did have a PC jump over the cliff in G2 - I can't remember why or what he was escaping - because the player knew that with -2 damage per die (from UA magical full plate), damage from any fall was capped at 80 hp, and the PC had more than 80 hp remaining.Did it ruin the game? Not at all. Do I want to see it every session? Probably not!When I used to GM Rolemaster, both these techniques were used, although often by conensus among the GM and the "lead" players rather than just by GM authority alone.If my group like everything about 4e except Wall of Fire ping pong, and the latter reallly was an issue at our table, we'd deal with it pretty handily.</blockquote>

Verification