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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5578438" data-attributes="member: 42582">MrMyth, I agree with most of your post. I just wanted to respond to one part of it:This isn't quite what I said.What I said was that 4e supports play decisions (ie decisions at the point of action resolution, not at the point of PC build) that would be suboptimal in the real world, but aren't necessarily suboptimal per the 4e rules. (Analogies would be bringing a knife to a gunfight - not viable in the real world, viable for some 4e PCs; or using archery against tanks - not viable in the real world, viable for Hawkeye, Green Arrow and some 4e PCs.)I also said that, in any given situation, the typical 4e PC has a range of viable options available. The game is not monistic in that sense (which contrasts with the teleport-ambush style play that Rolemaster, and I believe mid-to-high level 3E, tend strongly to encourage).The combination of these two factors means that, in my experience at least, 4e supports "theme through combat" play. (Non-RPG examples of "theme through combat", as I noted upthread, include 1970s Marvel Comics and the 1981 film Excalibur.) An example from the encounter I've talked about quite a bit upthread: the party ended up relieving pressure on the dwarf, who had been holding a good chunk of the NPC forces singlehandedly, by having the tiefling paladin charge to his rescue through the wall of a burning building. In the real world, almost any other way of relieving pressure on a comrade would be superior to this, and leaving it to the last minute like this would be disastrous. But 4e permits this sort of decision-making. It is in this way that I regard it as very forgiving.This is a different point from the idea that 4e supports suboptimal PCs built to express a theme rather than pursue tactical prowess. This further point is also true to at least some extent (the wizard in my group probably comes close to fitting this description, although a 20 starting INT does compensate for a multitude of other departures from tactical optimality). But it's not what I was saying.</blockquote>

Verification