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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5758716" data-attributes="member: 42582">As I've often posted, elements of the mechanics - especially skill challenges - remind me of both HeroWars/Quest, and Maelstrom Storytelling.Yes. It is about balance.The general principle is that a skill that is broader in its application, like Diplomacy, should be less powerful when used for some specific effect, like restoring morale, than a narrower skill that has the same mechanical efect, like Healing.This principle occurs in a range of games, including narrative ones like HeroQuest revised, though not in all games. In classic Traveller, for example, some skills are supersets of others, but there are other mechanics to handle this, such as random rather than chosen acquisition of skills.Only because the 2nd ed PHB did the same thing.Which powers are you talking about? The effects of some powers sometimes change. So while I'm not entirely sure what's at stake in this rote/principle discussion, but the premises on which you're basing your argument for "rote" are mistaken.For example, Come and Get It can have different effects in the fiction (sometimes skilled weaonplay, sometimes lulling enemies into a false sense of confidence, sometimes goading them, etc) althought mechanically these are all resolved as a pull. If the same PC sometimes used Come and Get It with a dagger, sometimes with a pike, I would think the procuedure and effects are very different.The effects of Twist of Space can also differ - it can be used, for example, to rescue a NPC magically trapped in a mirror (I know this, because it happened - via p 42 - in my game). I've not seen the effects of Bigby's Icy Hand vary - yet.That's not true.Here's one counter-example: my child's name could be anything before I name her. It doesn't follow that, once I name her, it doesn't matter. Calling her "Beatrice" will create a different impression from calling her "Madison". Calling her Kiende (a Meru name) in a predominantly English-speaking, non-African community will also create a diffrent impression.In my experience, the "flavour" in 4e also matters, because it creates a fictional reality with other implications for the fiction. Because of the way the action resolution rules are structured, those consequences tend to play out at a higher level of detail than "did I strike him with the flat or the point of my blade?" But that gritty level of detail is not the only level that matters.I already dealt with this upthread - the Moldvay Basic Rules for fireball mention only damage to creatures. The original D&D booklet (for which G1 was written) talks only about d6s of damage but says nothing about creatures, nor objects, nor fire (other than in the name of the spell). It's not until the AD&D PHB that we get the text about combustibles, melting metals etc.Yet plenty of pre-AD&D GMs worked out that a fireball might set fire to flammable things. Likewise 4e GMs - for an actual play example, see <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/299440-exploration-scenarios-my-experiment-last-sunday.html" target="_blank">here</a> - in that scenario, the PC magic-user was trying to fight off a swarm of necrotic spiders in a library without destroying the scrolls - he therefore chose to use an "enemies only" fire power, but things still went a bit haywire when burning spiders crawled onto the shelves.The same as what happend before AD&D when a GM made inconsistent calls about fireball and objects - the table worked it out, put up with it, or changed GMs.Can we please all get on the same page here! The text about igniting comubstibles is from the AD&D PHB. As I have quoted upthread, it is absent from Moldvay Basic. It is also absent from Book 1: Men & Magic. It is absent from the Mentzer-era Rules Compendium (which many in this thread have nominated as an ideal baseline for simplicity/versatility). I assume it is absent from Holmes Basic.The key point is that no one has ever maintained that, by RAW in those versions of classic D&D, fireballs did not ignite objects. It just requires some adjudication.It's about 30 years, I think, between the AD&D PHB and the 4e PHB. And about 20 years between the Rules Compendium and the 4e PHB. I don't think the change in fireball wording introduced by the AD&D PHB radically changed the way the spell is adjudicated. I bet that, even back in the day when the spell description didn't mention objects, or in Basic or RC games where the rules didn't mention objects, the odd library or piece of furniture was still ignited by a fireball. As to why 4e would drop the AD&D wording and return to the more classic wording, I think this was for ease of formatting. Targets are specified as allies, enemies, or creatures to facilitate adjudication in relation to who is hurt by an attack. Objects, in this technical parlance, are a species of creature.A further consideration is this - fireball does far less damage to a serious combatant in 4e then it does in earlier editions. The only creatures it is likely to kill, if dropped on them at the start of a combat, are minions. Whereas in earlier editions of D&D it is likely to be fatal to all ordinary soldiers, whether human or humanoid. This suggests that a 4e fireball is less destructive - whether for narrative or physical reasons would be up to a given group to adjudicate. This change in destructiveness also suggests that the adjudication of damage to furniture might be changed to be more context-sensitive (eg it would be odd for the spell to reduce a table and charis to cinders, yet leave the 5 gnolls sitting around the table unbloodied).I can't imagine many groups wanting to adjudicate fireball in the way you describe, but if they do, what's your objection to them doing so?Have you heard of page 42?My experience is that you don't need the game text to settle the flavour text in order for the fiction to be given weight in action resolution (although I don't think 4e, as written in the rules text, will support the sort of fine-grained fiction you seem to be looking for, like it mattering whether an attacker strikes high or low). I don't think anyone is disagreeing with this:In my view, the key element of the game rules that interacts with ficitonal positioning is the keyword. Because there is no keyword for a high or a low or a frontal or a rear attack, these don't matter in the default rules. (Although whether a PC attacks from the front or the rear could be relevant to future matters like whether others treat him/her as honourable or not, either in combat or in a skill challenge).But because there is a keyword for fire attacks, a fireball can set objects aflame.There are a few things to say here.One, the dead can be mocked.Two, I have no objection to a bard mocking a dead or absent creator, and this so weakening the magic of his/her creator that the skeletons, in their tiny minds, feel a sensation of weakness/dispiritedness/enfeeblement/ennui (take your pick!) and are less resolved to fight on. It reminds me a bit of Gandalf confronting the Balrog by mocking his dark powers as a Flame of Udun.Third, you can't use vicious mockery against a fire, because objects are immune to psychic damage and to attacks vs will. I'd have no trouble with a bard confronting a fire elemental and mocking the fire as feeble or incapable in the scheme of things.If the game involves bards as PCs, it is presupposing the magical power of words - as is evident in much myth. Vicious mockery - affecting things by the use of words that mock them, or relevant aspects of their history or creation - doesn't threaten my sense of (fantasy) verisimilitude.Chairs, being objects, are immune to psychic damage and to attacks vs Will.What have you got in mind? Both the page 42 and skill challenge guidelines make it clear that fictional positioning is central to adjudication.With my group, we assume that this is about concealing the glow of fire, or the sound of thunder - things that otherwise wouldn't be "reskinnable" because they track keywords.I've frequently posted that the game needs better guidelines, including guidelines that draw clearer links between keywords and ficitonal positioning - at present this is discussed only in the (somewhat auxiliary) rules about attacking objects, whereas the rules on keywords themselves only talk about mechanics-to-mechanics interactions.The 4e designers wouldn't be the first ever RPG designers to write crappy guidelines to go with their rules, although they probably have less excuse, given (i) how well resourced they are, and (ii) all the other better examples they had to draw on.</blockquote>

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