Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[Imaro]

The cynical extreme would be to take "Flavor is Malleable" and transform it to "Flavor doesn't matter", or worse yet "No Flavor."

Then please expound... on the one hand you argue flavor can be anything you want it to be for a power... yet on the other hand you're saying flavor matters? So can you give an example or two where flavor is totally malleable but also matters?

Everything that I've said in my comments was done in D&D, and yes I have a lot of players that have used their "combat powers" in ways outside of combat.

Could you give a few examples of these as well?

Saying that the 4e Powers are simply a collection of rules is pretty much an exaggeration, as what we have been discussing is the Flavor Text of 4e Powers and that is obviously not a collection of rules.

This seems like a "I want my cake and I want to eat it too" type thing. If the 4e powers are more than a collection of finite rules bundles, then how can the flavor not matter and be malleable to whatever you want? I also don't think anyone argued the flavor was a collection of rules... only that it should matter when going for realism... but you seem to be saying it does in 4e... or are you saying something else? I'm honestly getting a little confused as to your position.

 

[Balesir]

My claim was that they don't have sentience... which they don't, as illustrated by the fact that the text makes a clear distinction between sentient undead and those that are not...

" Sentient undead have a stronger animus that might even have access to the memories of the deceased, but such monstrosities have few or none of the sympathies they had in life. A wight has a body and a feral awareness granted by the animus, but no soul. Even the dreaded wraith is simple a soulless animus, deeply corrupted and infused with strong necromantic energy."

So we are talking about undead who are neither conscious of or can sense any type of impressions and are not independently aware... yet they respond to mystically charged insults spoken to them...Yeah, ok... again you might as well insult a chair to death.

If they lack sentience to this degree, how come they can detect intruders? How come they can fight? By the definition you give, non-sentient means blind, deaf, anosmic and without a sense of touch. How could such a creature move around, never mind engage in combat with weapons? To do what the rules say they do, they must have some degree of sentience. Just how much is for the players in any specific game to decide.

So ok, I'm game... please show me in the PHB where a power is described or even hinted at as a "principle" as opposed to a rote formula type action? I mean I'd be willing to entertain this notion if the powers had ways to modify or change their effects slightly built into them... but they don't. In fact the mechanics that always require you to do A and upon completion give effect B moreso support them as rotes than anything else. Now if you want to look at them that way in order to justify certain things...then cool, but I don't think anything in the game points to this interpretation. Though I'm willing to entertain examples.

If you want hand-holding consultancy as to how to make use of a roleplaying game, I'll charge by the hour!

Read an actual Power block in 4E. Heck, read the rules text on "reading power descriptions" (PHB page 55 or so). The description comes as a name, some "fluff" and some actual rules for using the power. The rules are intended to be fixed (unless houseruled for the specific game). The "fluff", including the name of the power, is intended to be malleable according to the tastes of a gaming group, or even an individual player.

Now read the power "Vicious Mockery". It's an At Will, Arcane power, a Bard level 1 attack with keywords Charm, Implement and Psychic. It requires a Standard action to use, and targets one creature at up to Range 10. You roll a Charisma-based attack roll to have the power "hit", and if you succeed it inflicts psychic damage and gives the target a penalty to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.

Those are the rules for the power "Vicious Mockery". No mention of insults. No mention of minumum required levels of sentience (although the "psychic" keyword does imply that it will not work on "objects").

The rest is all flavour, or colour text. This, as stated on p.55 of the PHB, can be modified to suit how the player of the bard, the group at the table and/or whoever wish to envision the power's use on this particular occasion.

I don't see how it could be made much plainer.

 

[LurkAway]

If they lack sentience to this degree, how come they can detect intruders? How come they can fight? By the definition you give, non-sentient means blind, deaf, anosmic and without a sense of touch. How could such a creature move around, never mind engage in combat with weapons? To do what the rules say they do, they must have some degree of sentience. Just how much is for the players in any specific game to decide.

That's not true. Earthworms are surely not sentient, but they can move, sense, and exhibit all sorts of sophisticated behavior. AIs too. There's a good sci-fi novel about an alien species that turned out to be non-sentient yet exhibited extremely high intelligence, I forget the name. There's an entire branch of animal behavior studies determining which animals seem to have a sense of self (on the white list are dolphins, apes, etc.).

 

[D'karr]

Of course whatever you flavor the power it can still only do whatever it's particular effect is. This almost seems like a sort of hollow creativity.

I guess you can ask the GM to let you do other things, but then what's the limit of the power in your narrative description and who decides it? Especially taking into account that the flavor can be anything anyone wants it to be for a power.

This is the kind of thought process that I saw a lot with some players in my 3.x days. If a rule did not specifically exist, to cover a specific situation, then it couldn't even be attempted.

I honestly would not want to go back to that type of mentality.

D&D is a game of imagination. If you can imagine it, you can attempt it. It doesn't mean that you will be successful but you should be able to try. In D&D you are allowed to color outside of the lines.

It will be a very sad day when the game is reduced to "you can only do what the rules say you can do."

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Then please expound... on the one hand you argue flavor can be anything you want it to be for a power... yet on the other hand you're saying flavor matters? So can you give an example or two where flavor is totally malleable but also matters?

Not to steal anyone's thunder here, but maybe the answer to that is that there is more to this game than just the rules? The rules text determines how things operate, just like they do in every RPG. Flavour determines, informs, or supports the fiction that is created every time you play.

This has been true in every edition to some degree.

 

[Balesir]

No, its just the logical extention of "Flavor is mallable".
Why do you say that when the flavor and rules conflict to change the flavor?

Your answer to "Insulting a skeletton doesn't make sense" is "Well change the flavor then". Why not change the rules instead?
By refusing to do that, or even accept it as possible solution, you are saying that flavor are less important, matter less, than rules.

Maybe it would help to think of it in a similar way to the development of Science.

In science, you may have a theory. Let's call this analogous to the colour/flavour. Now, you do an experiment; let's say it doesn't agree with the theory. Here's a key point in science: it's not the result of the experiment that's wrong. It's the theory that's wrong.

But, this does not mean that there is no value in theory, or that "there really isn't any such thing as a theory". It just means we have to adjust the theory to fit the facts.

4E works similarly. The rules generate the facts. If we are to understand the game setting on a "human" level, however, we need to construct theories. Sometimes these theories will need to be tweaked - but that doesn't mean they don't enable us to form a model of the game world in our minds. Which is pretty much the point of roleplaying, I think.

 

[Derren]

D&D is a game of imagination. If you can imagine it, you can attempt it. It doesn't mean that you will be successful but you should be able to try. In D&D you are allowed to color outside of the lines.

And yet no matter what you do the result will be Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls

 

[Imaro]

If you want hand-holding consultancy as to how to make use of a roleplaying game, I'll charge by the hour!

Read an actual Power block in 4E. Heck, read the rules text on "reading power descriptions" (PHB page 55 or so). The description comes as a name, some "fluff" and some actual rules for using the power. The rules are intended to be fixed (unless houseruled for the specific game). The "fluff", including the name of the power, is intended to be malleable according to the tastes of a gaming group, or even an individual player.

Now read the power "Vicious Mockery". It's an At Will, Arcane power, a Bard level 1 attack with keywords Charm, Implement and Psychic. It requires a Standard action to use, and targets one creature at up to Range 10. You roll a Charisma-based attack roll to have the power "hit", and if you succeed it inflicts psychic damage and gives the target a penalty to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.

Those are the rules for the power "Vicious Mockery". No mention of insults. No mention of minumum required levels of sentience (although the "psychic" keyword does imply that it will not work on "objects").

The rest is all flavour, or colour text. This, as stated on p.55 of the PHB, can be modified to suit how the player of the bard, the group at the table and/or whoever wish to envision the power's use on this particular occasion.

I don't see how it could be made much plainer.

I don't see how you could obfuscate any harder. The above has noting to do with what I asked you about.

This doesn't prove anything about whether powers are rotes or principles. (Without house rules) Their effects never change, their procedures never changes... that sounds like a rote to me. All you did was write out a long paragraph that boiled down to... "a powers appearance is malleable in 4e" that speaks to nothing about whether the designers and developers viewed the powers as rotes or principles.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

And yet no matter what you do the result will be Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls

How is this different from ANY other edition?

Fireball - range 100 yards + 10 yards per level, AoE 20' radius, everything in radius takes 1d6 damage per level (max 10d6), save for half.

 

[Imaro]

This is the kind of thought process that I saw a lot with some players in my 3.x days. If a rule did not specifically exist, to cover a specific situation, then it couldn't even be attempted.

I honestly would not want to go back to that type of mentality.

D&D is a game of imagination. If you can imagine it, you can attempt it. It doesn't mean that you will be successful but you should be able to try. In D&D you are allowed to color outside of the lines.

It will be a very sad day when the game is reduced to "you can only do what the rules say you can do."

Strawman...