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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5501456" data-attributes="member: 42582">I didn't say this. In fact I said something closer to the opposite (and which you quoted), namely, "Every time an infernal warlock uses a power, for example, s/he is drawing on the power of the Nine Hells." Given that using a power is an event in the game that engages the action resolution mechanics of the game, this is a very high degree of mechanical support for the introduction of conflict.What I did say is that the Warlock is not mechanically tested. The testing of the warlock happens primarily in the fiction. That's not to say that the consequences of that testing don't play out mechanically - for example, they might inform a skill challenge, or in an episode of exploration that deploys the action resolution mechanics, or they might inform a combat encounter (either it's design or it's resolution).An actual example from play, although pertaining to a chaos sorcerer rather than a warlock. After returning from their travels to the past in a type of trance-state (as described in more detail <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/299440-exploration-scenarios-my-experiment-last-sunday.html" target="_blank">in this actual play post</a>), the PCs slept while the witches who had sent them into the past placed new enchantments on the PCs items.During their sleep, each of the PCs had a dream pertaining to various past and future events in the campaign. The chaos sorcerer (who is a renegade drow and a member of a secret cult of Corellon) dreamed of a powerful being appearing on a strange world and crushing Lolth like a spider beneath its foot. When he awoke, a strange rune was inscribed both on his demonskin (which he has been cutting from defeated demons as part of his preparation to become a Demonskin Adept) and also on the inside of his eyelids, so that he sees it whenever he blinks.Now the initial reasoning behind my deciding on the eyelids thing was that part of the Demonskin Adept paragon path is that a successful crit blinds both the PC and the target of the attack scoring the crit. So this was primarily anticipatory of how the PC will be developing. But in the very same session it came into play in ways that I hadn't thought about when I initially introduced it - for example, as relevant to resolving some social interactions with the witches, and then in a a combat encounter with a quasit.A system that takes a less simulationist approach both to the injection of complication into a situation, and to the fictional interpretation of mechanical resolutions of those complications, in my view makes it easier to incorporate this sort of material.Is the absence of mechanical alignment a mechanical feature of the game? I don't know - is there more at stake in that question than mere semantics?Upthread I talked about race design and description, and you criticised me for departing from a discussion about "rules". Now you're talking about "mechanics" as if it's a narrow and self-evident category. You're the one who introduced notions of rules and mechanics as pivotal notions in the discussion. (BryonD has also talked about "role playing "on top" of the system".)My claim was about 4e - and I've articulated that claim with reference to character build rules (including racial and class descriptive text), action resolution mechanics (including the way in which these affect and require engagement with the fiction, and also page 42), encounter building guidelines, the XP and treasure system, the GMing advice in Worlds and Monsters, the monster building rules (including minion as a metagame status), etc. I don't make any particular claim as to which of these is rules or mechanics or system and what is something else. But this is what was in the books I bought, and this is what I use to run my game.</blockquote>

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