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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6152295" data-attributes="member: 1165">I don't think WotC (or TSR) have come out with "good" narrative-driven mechanics, and you will often have to steal such mechanics from other games.FATE, for instance, has some very good mechanics, but you need a very good DM for that. In the last FATE sci-fi session I was in, our PCs were in a spaceship and were chased out of a star system by ... well, we didn't know who, other than they were hostile.We escaped, thinking that ended the encounter, but nope. They didn't follow us, not exactly. Instead, they started a public relations campaign against us, making us out to be criminals. We engaged in a skill challenge (it's called "dramatic conflict" or something like that in FATE) where the enemy essentially attacked our pooled social stress pool. Their goal was to discredit us, while our goal was only to protect ourselves, but also to find out who they were and why they were attacking us. We did lots of computer hacking, looking at their finances, cutting them off from supporters, and so forth, and during the battle their tactics changed. (Sometimes they were hitting us hard with a tactic until we finally cut it off, other times their attacks "bounced" so they quickly shifted to trying something else.) Every PC was able to suggest and use their varying skills to help out. That to me is an example of a great narrative conflict, but it's not something covered in D&D.To a lesser extent (IME) Vampire the Masquerade allowed for similar conflicts. 4e's skill challenge system supports (to some extent) the same thing, although in a social skill challenge, there's a good chance that only half the PCs can provide significant contributions. Unfortunately, in Shadowrun, this is the kind of thing that a hacker might do completely by themselves (one issue with Shadowrun, it's entirely possible for some PCs to not be physically present for much of the game, in in-universe terms). Hopefully D&DN's "downtime" system can do something similar.Yes, wizards have more options. Whatever non-combat options a fighter has, so does the wizard. A fighter with low Charisma and no training in Diplomacy and Intimidate can attempt to influence a potential patron, and so can a wizard who also has low Charisma and no training in Diplomacy and Intimidate. (Both will likely fail, but that's how it works, right?) And then the wizard can cast Charm Monster. And if the patron has a priest on standby, making sure no one casts spells, the wizard can that night polymorph into something small and sneak into the patron's room, unmorph, Charm Monster them, then leave, and the next day try again, only now the patron is bowing and scraping...Need to slip into a city undetected? The rogue can use his contacts to arrange for smugglers to slip the PCs into the city, or the wizard can Teleport you into the slums. The former involves trusting a group of crooks not to betray you and possible discovery by the guards, the latter involves a chance of the wizard flubbing a percentage roll and that's about it. The former can take days, the latter a minute. I have to wonder if one reason for 4e's unpopularity among wizard fans were the removal of potentially narrative abilities from the wizard's toolkit. (The wizard could do the same thing one level earlier in 4e, but can only teleport to an existing teleportation circle, which will likely be in a well-guarded mage tower or temple, and that's assuming the wizard knows the code for that circle, which will take work. At that point, using the rogue's street contacts is just as smart, taking longer but with fewer risks. At higher levels you could make your own teleportation circle, but you'd need to get into the city first! At 28th-level you can finally teleport where you want, if you don't mind 10 minutes of chanting.)</blockquote>

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