While I agree with the sentiment, we have to face facts. If you're going to face dozens of lethal encounters, you're either going to get really, really consistently lucky or die.What ever happened to sucking it up?
DM: "The Ogre hits you for a massive 52 points of damage and stuns you."
Player: "No he doesn't. I play my "You Dodge the Attack" card.
What's the point of playing the game?
I think immediate interrupts can add to the fun of the game, but I'm not impressed with the "all or nothing" type of "I teleport away" or "get out of jail free" ones. They're mini-cheats. But if they occur during the attack roll and the DM doesn't throw out too much information before rolling the dice, the player doesn't necessarily know everything what was going to happen to the PC, so he's not quite sure if he teleported away on the Ogre's wimpy attack, or his mega-attack. Meh, but not so egregious.
But, I really don't like the concept of some sort of "you find out all that happens to your PC, you negate it" type of system and/or having every PC have these types of abilities and having it be part of the standard rules. Talk about player entitlement. Maybe the DM should make sure that the player gets a comfy chair, some soda, and some pizza while he is at it. After all, the player is entitled to make this the best gaming experience ever and having his PC stunned takes away from that. snort
What ever happen to sucking it up?
D&D doesn't have "dodge an attack" chits, but it does have "it's just a flesh wound" chits.I think there are a number of things to be said for having a set of "dodge an attack" chits.
You make an excellent point that with 4E's powers a hit can trigger an effect that effectively bypasses hit points -- and those effects become more useful the higher the opponent's hit points.It really depends on what else you can do with a hit. Once you start factoring in any appreciable additional effects besides damage output things start to change rapidly. A 4e character that can hit 30% more often is a lot more than 1.15x more effective at attacking, its more like he's probably 1.5x more effective at low level and maybe up to as much as 2.5x more effective at high levels.
So we need a system that maintains the illusion of danger well above the actual threat of death.
A level-30 archer is presumably the greatest archer to have ever lived, putting Robin Hood and Legolas to shame. He shouldn't miss. Ever.I think that a +7 at first level vs a +13 at level 30 is enough to differentiate a inexperienced archer and the best one.