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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5635373" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree that page 42 is key here.I haven't had the Hypnotism issue come up, but I have had to decide - Can Thunderwave (which deals Thunder damage and a push effect) blow its target through an open window? can Twist of Space (which deals untyped damage and teleports its target) be used to rescue a person trapped inside a mirror, or inside an extra-dimensional space with transluscent walls? Will using Fireshroud (which deals fire damage to enemies) in a library set fire to the books? What about making a close burst with a polearm - will that knock over the scroll racks? And can a close burst with a polearm be used, while standing in a pond, to wedge stone blocks at the bottom of the pond into the spring that feeds it, so as to stop the flow of water?In each case the answer has been to require a skill check at an appropriate DC - Arcana with the spells, Acrobatics (in the library) and Athletics (in the pond) for the polearm - and in the case of the Thunderwave, when the check was failed but the attack was a crit, the table decided to let the target be blown through the window in any event!I don't think it's particularly an issue of balance. As I see it, it's about sleekness and ease of design. 4e's approach, for better or worse, is that some core features of a power will be spelled out in detail, and the more contextually variable stuff - or the stuff where the GM might want to set stakes based on context (eg you can daze with your hypnotism, but if you fail your Arcana check you'll be granting combat advantage yourself as you get caught up in your own sophisticated gestures) - is left to the GM to adjudicate via page 42.It's a halfway house between the detail of 3E's spell descriptions (which appear to incorproate all the sage advice and other contextually-governed modifications that've been identified over the years) and the completely open-ended descriptors of a game like HeroWars/Quest or Maelstrom Storytelling, where every use of a descriptor requires adjudication by the participants as to exactly what it will and won't permit to be achieved in the fiction.Whether such a halfway house is fun to play is, no doubt, a matter of taste. Whether Hypnotism is a particularly well-designed power within that overall design paradigm is another question again - it might be better if it had text closer to that for the Prestidigitation cantrip. But the logic of the design seems fairly clear to me.I expect that they're not the norm at Encounters or similar playing-with-strangers events, for the sorts of reasons Crazy Jerome has flagged - there aren't the shared expectations, social contract etc to support them. I don't think HeroWars would play very well in that sort of context either.Whether they are common or not in other more serious 4e games I have no idea. My players - who came into 4e from steady diets of 3E and/or Rolemaster - haven't had any trouble. They just look down their character sheets, see the sorts of things their PCs are obviously capable of doing, and say "OK, can I do this?" I've given some examples above, and other examples less immediately related to powers (like using oil to enhance a slide effect, and using Religion to get combat advantage against a wight) upthread.Just out of curiosity - what is your evidence for this (outside of the context of Encounters and convention games, where I take it for granted that it is obviously true).Unless I missed something, the example of Baleful Polymorph was introduced into this thread by me, explaining that - in an actual session that I ran - when the duration ended (as per the mechanical specficiation for the NPC's power), the player of the PC who had been polymorphed narrated this as his god - the Raven Queen - turning him back.The question of how long a Baleful Polymorph might last if nothing intervened to bring it to an end - whether the Raven Queen or something else - has not come up in my game. Nor has the question of how long a Baleful Polymorph might last if cast not in combat (as a standard action ability) but when performed as some sort of ritual (as far as I know there is no such ritual, but I imagine that it could be a Paragon effect taking 10 minutes or an hour to cast that affects only a helpless target). Just to add to what Neonchameleon, Crazy Jerome and wrecan have said upthread - the contrast is between a system that starts out from a clear and (hopefully) unproblematic base, and then allows self-conscious tweaking and improvisation, and a system that starts out laden with potential problems, and draws attention to the need for tweaking and improvisation only once those problems become manifest. I think that that is a fair description of 4e, and it seems to me to be fair of 3E - but I don't have the same degree of experience with 3E as I do with 4e, so my impression is based as much on reading as on experience, and is based also on my experience with games that are similar in this respect, like AD&D and Rolemaster.</blockquote>

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