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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 5755324" data-attributes="member: 58416">I'm not saying anything does get in the way.  It was simply an easy example for me to pick out; also, it has the added bonus of being a combo which is very good and often used to great effect by people optimizing multiclassing and/or hybrid options.There are other parts of 4E which bother me far more (unless -as stated in a previous post- I "shut off certain parts of my brain") such as Grab being virtually useless.  When I first learned 4th Edition, it seemed strange to me that I could grapple someone using a longbow, and they could still fire without any difficulty.  Likewise, it was strange to me at the time that -short of dimensional shackles- there was no way to really pin somebody down or physically restrain them with the intent being to take them prisoner or pacify them.  Instead, while I was using my actions to attempt to do so, they were free to attack me; eventually I simply stopped trying and realized that I was better off with the intent of simply killing all enemies.I'm drifting away from my Pelor example and what it was meant to show though.  My point for bringing it up was to showcase that -IMO- the crunchy parts of 4th Edition and the fluffy parts do not always have a very good relationship; that can at times make it difficult for me to have the rpg experience I want.  I am somebody who believes that there is indeed a connection between fluff and crunch and that changing one can (and often does) have an impact on the other.A better example would be for me to cite the math which the game and game world is built around.  I fully understand the reasons for PCs and monsters being built differently.  I really do not even have a problem with the concept that they are built differently, and I will go so far as to say I think that is often a good design choice because there are details you need to know for a PC which may not be relevant to a monster (or NPC.)  However, there are times when those differences and the different branches of game math which are born from those differences creates odd situations.I remember one of the first games in which I went from 1-30.  Part of the campaign took the party into The Nine Hells.  I forget exactly which level it was (I've played a lot of D&D since then, so the details are fuzzy,) but there was a giant black gate which was the barrier between the level of hell we were on and the next one.  Our goal was to seek an audience with Asmodeus, so we need to walk to his layer.  Supposedly the gate was this super material we could not break -based on fluff; a few at-wills later, and the party was on the other side.Likewise, even the fact that we could casually stroll through The Nine Hells and physically walk to where we needed to go without really having any serious problems seemed odd.  It wasn't for a lack of the DM trying to challenge the party; we simply just crushed anything which tried to impede us.  It was jarring because all of the uber-devils and lords and creatures which were supposedly terrors to behold were just steamrolled over.  It was difficult to understand why anyone in the game world would fear them if the powers available to heroes were so much better than what the villains had.  At the conclusion of that campaign, my character ended up intimidated Orcus into submission; he became my warlord's butler (no, I'm not making that up.)  Killing him seemed too easy, so I challenge myself to see if I could subdue and intimidate him.  The GM allowed it because 'realistically' (based on in-game events and such) he felt that Orcus probably would have been terrified after the encounter with the party.Granted, back then a lot of powers were not yet given errata, and the monster math was weaker than it is now; I do not deny that was part of the issue.  Still, the most recent game just wrapped up, and -even with using the new material- the same result was achieved: the PCs easily crushed most things in their way.I suppose a good fiction example would be to say that I would find it equally as jarring if Frodo had not needed any help at all in LoTR.  Imagine if he had simply just walked to Mt. Doom -slaying any orc which had gotten in his path with barely an effort- and destroyed the ring.  Likewise, imagine if he had been capable of simply just breaking the ring after everyone had said how impossible it was to destroy it.  It wouldn't make any sense, and I feel it would have made it difficult for me to enjoy the story.  Though, that's simply my opinion, and I have no doubt that such a sequence of events would not be jarring at all for others.There have been times too when (to touch on the Orcus battle again) an enemy who was said to be a scourge of the world and feared throughout the land could barely break through a door or a wall.  Meanwhile, the PCs barely sneeze and blow the hinges off the thing.  The discrepancies between what is stated and how things work out in actual play often made enjoying the game difficult for me before I took a step back and started playing D&D 4E with a different state of mind.</blockquote>

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