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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 5340028" data-attributes="member: 57112">I would have a lot to quote here, so I'm just going to address points individually.[MENTION=10021]kamikaze[/MENTION] Midgit:Most of your examples represent poor uses of the power, and all of them represent poor DMing. First off, I want to know who's trying to use this power to get out of combats. Seriously, trying it on the goblin boss is bad enough, but a black dragon? These are absurd hyperboles set up as straw arguments. Is the Wizard trying to get this spell in the few seconds before the DM gets to say "The goblins notice you and immediately draw their weapons!"? The DM is well within their rights to say "Sorry, that power does not work in this way." The only way the power would work in this situation is if the Goblin Boss and the PCs were in negotiations, and the only way the DM would allow such negotiations to take place is if they planned (or at the very least imagined and accepted) that there would be a way for players to get out of the fight in the first place.If the DM says "Well, I put all this work into this combat encounter, so anything you do to try to get out of it will meet with instant failure", then that is vindictive, and poor DMing. Saying that the power takes effect and thereby expending the daily use (as in your example) and then having the goblins attack anyway is even worse. If it was my first time playing with a DM I'd never met before and they pulled that garbage on us, I'm probably not coming back for a second session.So too is your second example. This political intrigue scenario is obviously something the power was designed to be useful for. Any DM who has to search for excuses for it not to be useful is being vindictive. If I'm designing this sort of scenario, and I've got a Wizard in the party who has the power, I am most definitely taking this into account; thinking about who the Wizard might try to use the power on, and what that power use would benefit. I'll probably design a few "targets" for whom using the power on will greatly aid the party (though leave open the use of skill checks if the Wizard saves the power.) If there are figures for whom using the power on will essentially break the scenario (such as the monarch or powerful duke at the center of the intrigue), then I am doing two things:1: Protect such NPCs with powerful magic antispies or other magical macguffins that make the power ineffective2: Provide this information to the PCs (either directly via allied NPCs or through multiple hints) before they get a chance to waste the spellIf the wizard uses the power on someone I hadn't anticipated (and I'd make sure I'm anticipating a lot) then I'll likely fall back on the DM's best friend. This is the kind of planning that should be second nature to DMs. In your example, the DM has decided the power has no use in a situation where it clearly should provide some benefit (even if it's minor), basically on a whim. Once again, this is poor, vindictive DMing. If you don't want to have to put this kind of work into your adventure planning, then just tell your wizard player they can't take the power and be done with it. Don't let the poor schmuck take the power and then constantly make them waste it because you can't be bothered to design encounters around your party's build or, perish the thought, improvise and adjudicate on the spot. Poor planning can still be salvaged by judicious use of the DM's best friend. Saying "Well I don't want it to work so it doesn't, sorry" is vindictive. This is the farthest thing from "rational DMing" and anyone who claims that it is has no clue what the term means.The only thing "old-school" about the power is that it brings back the open-endedness of magic from older editions. "Old-school arguments" over spells like Charm Person and its more powerful ilk only when poor DMs failed to plan around the fact that their players had access to these spells. I'm not saying we should bring back obvious intrigue-scenario-breakers like Know Alignment or other various mind-reading or mind-controlling stuff, but then Instant Friends is incredibly tame and reasonable in comparison to these.Good design is not pandering to the lowest common denominator. Any design, good or otherwise, that gets broken as the result of poor DMing is the squarely the fault of the DM. Poor DMing leads to poor games, period.[MENTION=5656]Someone[/MENTION] (and others)Your initial example of "rocks fall and maybe somebody dies perhaps" is another ludicrous strawman that is, at best, comparing apples to howitzers. Combat is resolved by a detailed and very clearly defined system based on precise mathematics and numbers, punctuated by tactical choices and dice rolls. Because 4e has a carefully balanced system it requires such precise mathematics, which is obviously why there is not nor will there ever be a "rocks fall and maybe somebody dies perhaps" power.Noncombat is (or at least should be) primarily resolved through roleplaying. These situations are sometimes aided by skills (and sometimes rituals, feats and powers) but they are, by their very nature, open-ended. They require imagination on the part of the player and improvisational adjudication on the part of the DM. I had assumed (I suppose incorrectly) that this was a given. Skill challenges (and especially social challenges) should not just be the players saying "I use [Skill]" and rolling a d20, followed by the DM feeding them the results. They should be acted out, both by player and DM, as descriptively as the individual in question is capable of mustering. I mean, I'm not wrong, am I? Most 4e games aren't just Battle, Battle, Skill Challenge, Battle, maybe some sparse conversation with an important NPC, Battle, Skill Challenge, Battle, are they?If I'm right (and I desperately hope, for the sake of the game, that I am), then there is simply no need to hem in every non-combat aspect of the game to anywhere close to same level as combat is. Even the DMG's skill challenges, the most structured non-combat scenario possible,  have in every iteration come with the caveat that players will attempt things you hadn't accounted for, and encourage DMs to award players for their creativity appropriately. Non-combat is open-ended by necessity, and thus they absolutely require careful and fair DMG adjudication. That giving players more tools in these scenarios causes more work for the DM is a positively poor reason against giving players more tools. And practically every reason I've seen levied against introducing powers like Instant Friends have been to this effect. The only other reason I could find was the even more absurd declaration that D&D, even in non-combat situations, should look and be played the exact same way at every table.</blockquote>

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