Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5759794" data-attributes="member: 22779">I'm not sure you actually are characterizing your tastes correctly.  What you want is the game designers to tell you how the simulation works.  The designers say that when Action A occurs, it will be resolved in this manner every single time.  When you try to pick a lock, for example, in 3.5, you will use some sort of tool (taking penalties if the tools are jury rigged), it will take a certain amount of time, and you can retry as long as you want (thus taking 20, presuming you have time).And this is how Open Locks works every single time.  Now, how about a puzzle lock, like a Chinese Puzzle Box?  What skill do I roll to open that?  Open Lock or Disable Device?  I can see an argument for either way.  Now, in 4e, it's left up to the DM's discretion.  You can open a lock in any manner that the DM accepts.  If you Fonzie Bump the lock, and the DM is happy, then groovy, you're just opened the lock.  The rules expect you to make some effort towards doing just that.  There's no compelling reason why you even have to use Thievery to open a lock, although that would be the baseline assumption.  I could easily see a Wizard using Cantrip in conjunction with Arcana to open a lock as well. Other DM's might not.  And that's groovy.  There's nothing saying that the DM must always say yes, although, again, that tends to be the baseline advice.  But, there's certainly nothing stopping the DM from saying no.  I could see a Martial Only campaign, doing a nice Sword and Sorcery 4e game, where that sort of thing just would not fly at all.In other words, because the mechanics are not lockstep tied to the flavor, you can apply different mechanics to an action without having to start jumping through all sorts of hoops.  Yes, you could do the same thing in 3e, but, it was never encouraged to the degree that it is in 4e.  If you want to do X, in 3e, you have to do Y.  That's the formula.  Departing from the formula is certainly not verbotten, of course, but, it's also not encouraged very much either.</blockquote>

Verification