What 4E did was make FitM as an encounter. In the past, each action was a set piece so reverse engineering was not needed. 4E intertwined every action so retcon is often needed.
FitM extended over an encounter means either the fiction is postponed until it is finally resolved (and that feels sort of board-gamey to me) or is retconned (which I don't really like to do if I can avoid it).
Pre-note: The OP used the "Quantum Mathematician," argument, and the above quoted posters mention "retconning," and (in one case) 4e, so I am addressing the most commonly attacked bit of retconning leveled at 4e play, that being wounds and healing. Later on, I'll try to address the other points.
I've played a lot of 4e pretty much exactly like the OP's description of "Often, in D&D...." I've done this with Warlord healing, too, and never once had to retcon a thing. I've even described wounds as real cuts and whatnot. What I don't do, though, is make assumptions that a (wound) hit point is the same as a (morale) hit point. Narration of the short rest is how I handle it. (Though anymore, that is rarely needed. My group now understands how I interpret hit point loss and regaining from various sources; they all seem to agree with me on it.)
[sblock="Ex1: With a cleric healing."]
- The fighter is hit by an attack: The hobgoblin's sword leaves a gash in your arm, and you feel the blood running down, making the grip of your sword slick. (Some of the damage is morale/pain, and some is "meat" damage.)
- The cleric uses healing word: The magic of your companion's faith knits flesh together. The flow of blood stops, but the newly healed flesh is tender and sore. (The meat damage is healed, plus a little fighting spirit/vigor.)
- During the short rest: You work out the kinks in the divinely regrown flesh until it feels comfortable, well-stretched, and ready to go.
[/sblock]Here, the cleric heals by removing the "meat" wound, but I add in the complication that cleric (or other magic) healing results in muscle tissue that is "newborn," and needs to be stretched out and warmed up.
[sblock="Ex2: With a warlord healing."]
- The fighter is hit by an attack: The hobgoblin's sword leaves a gash in your arm, and you feel the blood running down, making the grip of your sword slick. (Same as above.)
- The warlord uses inspiring word: Bolstered by your companion's zeal, you ignore the pain and tighten your grip. (The meat damage is still there, but the fighting spirit is bolstered to make it irrelevant to the performance during the battle. Essentially, some "meat" hit points have been replaced by "morale" hit points.)
- During the short rest: You clean and stitch the wound in your arm, applying a healing poultice and a bandage, making sure it restricts your movement as little as possible. (This is where the meat damage is "removed" from the character, though I might mention it later -- like on the next extended rest -- if I am driving home the wear and tear of the day.)
[/sblock]Here, the warlord heals by restoring fighting spirit, and any lost "meat" hit points restored by a warlord become "morale" hit points. The "complication" here is that the wounds are tended during the short rest.
That can apply even to wounds that knock out a character, too. The whole "Inigo Montoya vs. Count Rugen" scene works for morale hit points replacing meat hit points. That, however, was likely a 20+ on a death save thing, though, as opposed to an external morale booster like a warlord.
The complication thing is really just narrative fodder; I have yet to experience one of my players saying something like, "I have full hit points, why should I dress my wounds/stretch out? I'm perfectly healthy!" It's something of an unwritten table rule that during short rests, characters are doing things to restore their resources -- encounter powers and such -- as well as "cementing" the restoration of their lost hit points.
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[sblock="Kamikaze Midget's opening remarks"]Often, in D&D, you'll describe your actions like this:
A: I attack! *roll dice* I hit! *roll dice* I do X damage!
Fortune-In-The-Middle (as far as I can decipher) means you instead describe your actions like this:
B: *roll dice* I attacked, hit, and did X damage.
The first situation is cause-and-effect: your character does something, you roll dice to determine what happens as an effect of that action. In the first example, each event happens and has an effect.
The second situation is effect-then-figure-out-the-cause. You roll dice to see what happens, then you figure out how you want to describe it. In the second example, you figure out the effects that happen, and then work backwards to explain why those effects happened.
You'd think this wouldn't matter too much, but I think a lot of 4e's most controversial decisions are controversial
because of the use of Fortune-In-The-Middle.
Like, knocking an ooze prone. Cause-and-effect it wouldn't happen: you can't cause that effect. Oozes can't be knocked over.
Reverse the chronology, and it's not a problem: the ooze has the mechanical effect of not being able to move until it spends a move action. Maybe it is squished under your boot? Maybe it is pinned by your sword? Maybe it is scared? Whatever.[/sblock]We don't, in our 4e play, ever do this. If I (as the DM) or the player can't come up with a reasonable way to refluff the power to apply in this situation to this foe, we don't attempt it. Our sequence is still something like, "I attack the ooze with Spinning Sweep, trying to slice as low as I can so that its 'grip' on the ground is messed up" *roll dice* "I hit!" *roll dice* "I do X damage, and the ooze is considered 'prone!'"
I still feel like this would be unsatisfying to the OP, though, as the only difference in this and the one that is mentioned as troublesome is when the description for the how {effect} applies to {enemy} (in this case, applying prone to ooze). All that assumes that the character has an appropriate power. If they don't, they can still try to improvise. It's just that they will be using something like p42.
In this case, what the OP actually seems to be disagreeing with is not fortune's location, but whether certain immunities should be widespread. (Oozes and prone, perhaps others.) Perhaps I am mistaken, though.
[sblock="Kamikaze Midget's '1: I Am Not A Quantum Mathematician'"]FitM makes me do that backwards, and I hate it. FitM tells me the goblin got hit for X damage, and leaves it up to me to figure out how or why. FitM tells me I have this burn on my hand, but doesn't tell me how it got there. It says "The ooze is prone!" without telling me how or why my "Leg Sweep" ability did that to it. DMs can always justify it, but it always feels like a hollow justification. During the combat, the goblin is both alive and dead and only when we open the box and see the result do we know what happened to it.[/sblock]I suppose fortune-in-the-middle might make you do that, but I am not seeing how that applies to 4e (apologies if you weren't directing this at 4e). The goblin is alive if it hasn't been reduced to zero hit points or if the person that reduced it to zero said they wanted to incapacitate the goblin instead of killing it. The goblin is dead if it has zero hit points and the person who made that happen wanted it to be a kill shot. (Though, in general, I don't let ongoing damage leave stuff alive, nor do I much go for area-effects being very choosy.) If you have a burn on your hand, it is because you were hit with a fire, lightning, or acid power or touched something that hurts in that manner. (Would cold work, too? Freezer burn?)
Figuring out the how and why of attacking is something that applies to all RPGs to some extent. Unless all the narration is repetition of, "I attack! *roll dice* I hit! *roll dice* I do X damage," there is some point where someone is thinking about how the attacker is attacking and the defender is dealing with the hit (or miss).
The closest thing to non-linear time is when immediate interrupts or powers like Elven Accuracy are in play. Those do require a bit of rewinding, depending on how you are narrating things. They only require milliseconds of rewinding, though, and the narration of things like, "Seeing that the guard was about to cut your rogue down, my artificer fires off a quick Shocking Feedback bolt. *rolls* I hit! *rolls* I do X damage and I redirect some of the magic from the bolt to your rogue, making a shield that gives you Resist 5 all until the end of my turn."
2: I Am Not Credulous
3: I Appreciate the Unknown
I, too, love the improvisational nature of playing RPGs, and I think 4e, in particular, handles this extremely well. I've run extensive combat encounters with no prepared monsters (just my notes of the current level's averages from "MM3 on a Business Card" and scratch paper), party-set-up of ambushes as an impromptu skill challenge, and in-combat actions like using Influence of Acamar (I think) to pull a book-case over onto a Slaughterstone Slicer to both knock it off balance and briefly shut down its aura. I agree with a lot of the assertions about verisimilitude and how that can be damaged by what you have described as fortune-in-the-middle. I am still not sure what that has to do with any edition of D&D thus far.
In all my playing and DMing, I riff off the other players, we improvise tactics and actions, and we have a blast with it. When I DM, I can anticipate the general outcome of an encounter (whether it "should" be a challenge or not), but I still get surprised by the vagaries of fortune when the invoker is killed by the just-over-level encounter (a couple strong hits, one on an AoE after he fell, will do that), and I do love those surprises. (It gave me the opportunity to drop a big clue as to some of the secret background of the character and campaign world.) I also agree that the given description for fortune-in-the-middle would lead to me having some dissatisfaction in play. I'm just not sure how this description of fortune-in-the-middle applies to any sort of D&D.
This is Skill Challenges. You don't don't roleplay the end result until a miniature game is finished. Certain action might be retconned or left incomplete to in order to have the roleplay make sense.
That's not how I've seen Skill Challenges play. Each discreet check has a cause/declaration of intent and an effect/rp of result. You don't know the overall outcome until the last success or failure, but each check has its own effect. Whether that is meaningful is less certain. If the challenge was to interfere with an advancing army, and one of the checks by the rogue was to lay traps in the intervening terrain, then (on a success) those traps were lain and did have an effect on the army. If the whole challenge failed, though, the army still got through, just with some casualties or delays. If the challenge was the set-up of an ambush for a gang, the Streetwise success by the Warlock still meant that the party got to draw their own map for the site of the ambush instead of using one that I (as DM) provided. Overall success in that challenge meant that things went pretty much as planned. Overall failure would have meant that the PCs would have faced the gang more on the gang's terms.
