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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5573923" data-attributes="member: 42582">My contention - and it's based primarily in my own experience, which may well be atypical - is that 4e lends itself to building a PC, and then playing that PC, in such a way that being expressive of the character is not suboptimal.A simple example is the AC rules, that guarantee that ACs are in a pretty narrow range compared to earlier editions (where a starting MU might have AC 10 - 50%+ chance for NPCs/monsters to hit - while a starting fighter have AC as low as 2, meaning a 20% or less chance for monsters to hit). This means that choices by players as to the sorts of risks to which they expose their PCs are less constrained by considerations of "will this kill me" and more open to considerations of "what would it be like to try this?!".Page 42 damage expressions, which aim at keeping the damage from stunts on a par with encounter powers, are a similar example.So what I see in 4e is things like the drow sorcerer from time to time taking the front line (especially if the dwarf polearm fighter is in poor health or down) while muttering to himself about the unreliability of dwarves. Of course the sorcerer isn't a defender, and so can't do this for a whole combat, but he has sufficient resources (a range of defensive and aggressive close bursts) and the AC and hit points that mean this is not the death sentence that it would be in RM, RQ or classic D&D.My experience with issues like focus-fire vs failures of coordination, choices as to who to heal, and the like are similar - the system seems to me to be very tolerant of player choices, meaning that an interesting range of options is available without the mechanics pushing always in a single direction.I posted some <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5569670-post148.html" target="_blank">upthread - the conflict between the chaos sorcerer and the imp Twitch, the ranger taking control of the Behemoth, and the tiefling paladin charging through the wall of a burning house to rescue the dwarf fighter.</a><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5569670-post148.html" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5569670-post148.html" target="_blank">Another example that come out in the play of my game is the contrast between the dwarf fighter and the tiefling paladin - the first the party anchor, a polearm melee controller who can hold the frontline against a huge number of foes (about 7, at one stage, in the combat described in my earlier post), the second a servant of the Raven Queen and much more of a lone wolf in combat, moving about to lock down and potentially pick off indiviual foes that he regards as to great a threat for anyone else in the party to handle.</a><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5569670-post148.html" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5569670-post148.html" target="_blank">The chaos sorcerer and the tome wizard, despite both being multi-target arcane casters who use a range of damage types and exercise quite a degree of control, also play very differently in ways that are expressive of their personality - brash, quick, brutal vs cautious, deliberate, sometimes subtle.</a><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5569670-post148.html" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/5569670-post148.html" target="_blank">Very obviously this is not great literature (hence my reference to Marvel Comics above!). But it's not nothing, either. And it's supported by and expressed via the mechanics in a way that I find quite different from classic D&D, RM, RQ etc.</a></blockquote>

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