Once per day non-magical effects destroy suspension of disbelief

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Hey Wyrm,

I used to feel your pain...until I changed my thinking a bit. I still really don't like the way they did things, but at least I can accept that they did them a particular way and can enjoy playing the game. My background is in fairly heavy roleplaying/story-driven games...it's never been about the rules crunch for me, other than how I could crunch the rules to make my character fit my concept better. Here's what I've come to realize:

In 3.5e, DnD seemed to attempt to more closely simulate fantasy novels, worlds, and stories - I believe this is called simulationist. And I definitely fall firmly on this side of the fence. I know some of you will argue that 3.5e was not more realistic at all and could sight examples of why...but please read on anyway

- Hit Points, while not exactly, seemed to more of an attempt to simulate real life vitality (there will ALWAYS be SOME abstraction in a game). When the characters were gravely injured and the Cleric had exhausted the gifts of his god, they had to "lick their wounds" and be careful not to get into a fight until they had a chance to heal. They might even be forced to travel back to town and rest for several days to recover from a particularly hard fight. I think this can simulate fantasy novels, movies, and stories quite nicely. There are numerous examples in fantasy literature where our heroes must limp away and spend time to recover from some overwhelming defeat.

In 4e, they seem to have moved the bar. Instead of attemping to mimic fantasy novels, movies, stories, etc., they are using "cinematic" action hero logic to explain the characters powers, abilities and hit points as well as to achieve game balance. The game now seems to be mostly focused on "Kill the monsters, take their stuff" (I realize previous versions of the game also had this motto, but 4e, to me, seems to have taken bigger steps to enforce it) and anything that detracts from this goal is "bad" and must be "removed".

- Now we have Hit Points that represent how John Mclane in one scene is walking gingerly across a field of shattered window glass...eventually wrapping his feet in cloth, and still walking gingerly due to the deep cuts in his feet. Later in the movie he's running full tilt again, apparently his mind blocking the cuts in his feet or perhaps they weren't so deep after all, (ignore all the blood ) having used a healing surge and is now fully ready to fight again. So 4e is more about the party being "Action Heroes" and less about them being realistic characters in a fantasy novel. When Frodo gets sick due to the dark sword wound and has to return to the elves to be healed, it's a MAJOR event...I don't think this is the thinking in 4e. Effects, in general, don't last beyond combat...unless you call it a disease or hand wave it. You can certainly MAKE 4e work as a simulationist game...but you have to do more work to do so IMO. In 4e, they tried to design a good GAME as their FIRST priority and I think the side effect is that they ended up designing a game that is a good SIMULATION of fantasy as their SECOND priority. Nothing wrong with it, it's a fun game, but I think it is one of the things that is leading all of us to have these types of discussions.

So...with this in mind...my rationale for Encounter and Daily Exploits is as follows: Once per movie session (err...game session) the players have the opportunity to take over script control from the writer (GM) and say "my action hero" (err..."character") does something cool at this point. You rarely see a repeat of a "Really Cool Move" in a movie, and that's what 4e is simulating...it's just allowing the player to decide when "Conan one-punches the horse".

If you can accept how 4e deals with Hit Points, Healing Surges and healing in general....then I think the same "Action Hero logic" will help you see through to accept Encounter and Daily abilities as roots of the same tree - all these things stem from their shift in focus from "character in a fantasy story" to "Lead Action Hero in a movie"

Anyway...I hope that helps you enjoy the game more...it certainly has helped me enjoy myself while playing 4e. If you try to force the 4e rules to fit into a "fantasy story simulation mindset" I think you will have trouble making this make sense and will not enjoy 4e. I am currently playing in a heavy roleplaying 4e game and am having a blast - mostly because the GM and the other players are great roleplayers, and we've all agreed to "just accept" the way 4e does things and try to have fun anyway. .

T

Generally I can't see anything wrong here, except two points:
- Even fantasy stories have a lot of "action movie" logic in them. I am not really an expert on the fantasy genre, but a lot of combats seem to work more "scene-based". In 4E, the closest to combat fatigue over multiple encounters are the loss of healing surges..

- Frodos special injury/sickness could be modeled by the 4E disease mechanic (if anyone is considering to "stick" with 3E but wants to plunder something from 4E, this might be a good rule ). It is a unique event when the characters are hit by a disease, and it takes more then a random Cleric casting a no-chance-of-failure Remove Disease spell.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

Of course. People have been complaining about AC and hp for decades.
People have had plenty of problems with AC and hp, but they largely "got over it" because those mechanics work better than the alternatives presented so far.

And the problem isn't abstraction; it's bad abstraction. It's one thing to skip some details; it's another to explicitly provide the wrong details.

And yet, I don't recall seeing any threads here complaining about the bad abstractions that are HP and AC, although I don't come and view every day so I may have missed them. The point though is that this has always been a game with abstraction, and bad ones at that. HP is a terrible abstraction, but people live with it. Suddenly, however, it seems like it has become a big issue that people just can't live with anymore.

I don't know, maybe the changes in 4e are so dramatic that it just doesn't feel the same. But to me, the complaints that there isn't enough realism in their fantasy role-playing game seems more like a change of opinion then a change of the game. I'll admit that I don't like the notion of daily martial powers but I can't see how they would break the game for me coming from 3e either.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

You can rely upon your DM coming up with an excuse, 'The fellow you are fighting didn't just line up properly this time,' or you can let the player decide, 'my character thinks he is trying the same move again, but I will actually use a lesser one and apply damage as it is similar.' Either way, it is a big change from previous, and it isn't easy for people to just want to accept because it is the newest edition.

-wally

I think there are probably alot more abstractions that that they are already making "excuses" for beyond just rage and the other martial dailies. They already do this to a significant extent so doing it a bit more really isn't all that big of a change. But I do think that you touched on possibly the larger point. Its not that people can't accept the change, its that they don't want to accept the change for whatever reason.

 

[mmadsen]

But either way, the fact remains- every round you're going to spam this choice. We can make the decision tree as big as we want, with as many options as you want, but the only decision YOU make is whether to initiate the decision tree.

There are multiple facets to this issue.

If you have one clear super-attack that is always better than your next best attack, then, yes, you would always choose it. Maybe you won't successfully roll for an "opening" in the system I described, but, yes, you will always choose that one super-attack "tree" (in your parlance).

This leaves us with an uninteresting choice, from the player's perspective, but it does vary the outcome significantly, and that's worth something. You could think of this as a bit like an expanded critical hit system, where some attacks -- probably far more than 1-in-20 -- don't just do twice as much damage but hit every opponent nearby, or knock someone prone, etc.

The bigger issue is having super-attacks that dominate all other options. You can take the easy way out, which 4E's designers did, and give them once-per-day constraints, and that does give the player a resource constraint to consider, but I would much, much rather see exploits that can only be exploited under the right circumstances, and where strategies emerge from the combination of options available to everyone.

Then the player's challenge would be using the right exploits at the right time and maneuvering in combat to make the right time happen, not expending a meta-game resource at the right meta-time.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

There are multiple facets to this issue.

If you have one clear super-attack that is always better than your next best attack, then, yes, you would always choose it. Maybe you won't successfully roll for an "opening" in the system I described, but, yes, you will always choose that one super-attack "tree" (in your parlance).

This leaves us with an uninteresting choice, from the player's perspective, but it does vary the outcome significantly, and that's worth something. You could think of this as a bit like an expanded critical hit system, where some attacks -- probably far more than 1-in-20 -- don't just do twice as much damage but hit every opponent nearby, or knock someone prone, etc.

The bigger issue is having super-attacks that dominate all other options. You can take the easy way out, which 4E's designers did, and give them once-per-day constraints, and that does give the player a resource constraint to consider, but I would much, much rather see exploits that can only be exploited under the right circumstances, and where strategies emerge from the combination of options available to everyone.

Maybe I am a bit to optimistic, but I think D&D 4 has both.
The 4E dailies are unique powers that are "reliable" to pull off (within the constraints of rolling d20s and so on).
But using all those at-will, encounter and daily powers together does create "meta-powers" - tactics and strategies that will usually prove effective (provided a given set of constraints, like "a lot of enemies are minions" or "there is a choke point" or "we're surrounded"). The trick is finding them, because they are not neatly labeled (yet)...

 

[cangrejoide]

So if we were to change at will actions to at will minor actions and Encounter powers to standard at will actions and daily powers to encounter powers, would that help you make it more viable and more suspensiony of disbeliefy?

 

[GnomeWorks]

You change your position faster than the tide, and this really discredits any future argument you would do.

No, I really don't. Quit ignoring the context, and quit looking for excuses to make me into the troll you want to see.

I am telling you where not to troll.

Thanks for being a jerk! That's really awesome, thanks.

Because, clearly, I have no idea where I should be posting, or how, even though I've been here for almost seven years. Clearly, someone who's been here for - what, three, maybe almost four months? - knows how things work around here infinitely better than I do.

 

[outsider]

Allow me to vent this and then share your opinion if you wish.

I detest, I hate with the fiery fury of 1000 suns, 1/day non-magical powers because there is NO rationale whatsoever than can explain how a warrior, ranger or rogue wouldn't be able to use a certain ability more than one per day. I can see perhaps allowing for telling a player that a certain opening needed by his fighter would likely only happen once per encounter...and that is a bit of a stretch IMO depending upon the length of the encounter.

Has anybody mentioned the gogoplata choke yet? It's a jujitsu manuever that probably hundreds of mixed martial artists know, yet only 3 mma fights have ended by it(last I looked into it at least). People rarely try the manuever, because the required positioning for it comes up extremely rarely.

 

[Dinkeldog]

And yet, I don't recall seeing any threads here complaining about the bad abstractions that are HP and AC, although I don't come and view every day so I may have missed them. The point though is that this has always been a game with abstraction, and bad ones at that. HP is a terrible abstraction, but people live with it. Suddenly, however, it seems like it has become a big issue that people just can't live with anymore.

I don't know, maybe the changes in 4e are so dramatic that it just doesn't feel the same. But to me, the complaints that there isn't enough realism in their fantasy role-playing game seems more like a change of opinion then a change of the game. I'll admit that I don't like the notion of daily martial powers but I can't see how they would break the game for me coming from 3e either.

I can go with that, but here I think a better alternative is to provide a house-ruled combat action for tripping (couldn't find one in the PHB when I looked).

The real problem is that tripping in 3.x was way too powerful. Similar to "called shots" in 1 and 2E that were attacks with a minor penalty that allowed for super-powerful effects. With the HP abstraction, a concrete penalty like blinding a badguy in early editions was straight out more effective on every attack than a simple attack.

Tripping in 4E looks to remain extremely powerful--having an opponent prone provides combat advantage and a guaranteed free attack for everyone within melee reach unless the victim turtles and takes later beatings (standing up and crawling both provoke opportunity attacks). There has to be some limitation on overly powerful attacks or they would be the only actions ever taken. That may seem overly gamist to the simulationist crowd, but the best solution I've ever encountered is to turn the tables on the PCs and have them get swarmed by trip specialists that proceed to pound them into a pulp.

This may be a "break" to the game, but any game that attempts to portray tripping and some kind of "reasonable penalty" to a prone person in a combat melee will run into the same problem. The only other alternative is jettisoning role-playing games that have combat in any central role and returning to strategy boardgames that abstract out one more level. (For example, why can't my armies attempt to trip or use missile weapons in Risk?)

 

[cangrejoide]

No, I really don't. Quit ignoring the context, and quit looking for excuses to make me into the troll you want to see.



Thanks for being a jerk! That's really awesome, thanks.

Because, clearly, I have no idea where I should be posting, or how, even though I've been here for almost seven years. Clearly, someone who's been here for - what, three, maybe almost four months? - knows how things work around here infinitely better than I do.

Lol, yeah because postcount is a testimony of character.

Actually Trolls usually have a high post count. You know, because of trolling.

But you have made it obvious in earlier posts that you are not here to actually provide anything postive to the thread, in your own words:

As for what I'm still doing here... just stirring up trouble, I guess.
.

Also:

Thanks for being a jerk! That's really awesome, thanks.
.

And Thanks for calling me a Jerk, it is quite rare that a high post count poster would deign himself to talk to a petty low post count poster, even more to be called a jerk. It is quite an Honor.

And with that last bit, I bid my goodbyes to this thread.