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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7098490" data-attributes="member: 42582">The example of "reskinning" in the 4e PHB - from memory, Magic Missile as howling skulls - is relatively uninteresting. It's just colour.Using the stats of Black Star entities (from the E1 module) as Torog's shrivers - which I did - would count as an instance of reskinning as well. But that wasn't mere colour. The fact that these were shrivers mattered to the resolution - eg when they were defeated, Torog lost control of the flow of souls in his Soul Abattoir.In general, colour becomes interesting when it goes beyond being mere colour and actually establishes fictional positioning. As I said, I'm not very excited by the idea that, because a player narrated a wound, everyone else is bound by that narration, but nothing in the actual resolution of any action reflects the occurence or existence of that wound. (No medical supplies consumed, no disease/infection checks, no wound penalties, etc.)The player of the paladin in my Raven Queen established, from the beginning of the campaign, that his character sleeps standing up (he'll lie on his back when he's dead). That's not mere colour - one time when the PCs were ambushed while sleeping, that character didn't need to spend an action standing from prone.When the PCs fought a Chained Cambion (p 25), it "radiate[d] pain, rage, and frustration" and "scream[ed] its despair within the minds ofnearby foes" (MM3 p 25). The casual reader might mistake this for mere colour, but it's not. The Chained Cambion has the following ability:Mind Shackles (psychic) Recharge when first bloodied Effect: Two enemies adjacent to each other in a close burst 5 are psychically shackled (save ends; each enemy makes a separate saving throw against this effect). While psychically shackled, an enemy takes 10 psychic damage at the start and the end of its turn if it isn't adjacent to the other creature that was affected by this power. Aftereffect: The effect persists, and the damage decreases to 5 (save ends).This ability causes rage and frustration in the players: first because their PCs have to stay adjacent to avoid the ongoing damage; and then because, when one has saved, the other is still afflicted and so the one who saved doesn't get the benefit of that!That's way beyond just colour: it's one of the most impressive bits of RPG design I've encountered.</blockquote>

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