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Message: <blockquote data-quote="urLordy" data-source="post: 6210995" data-attributes="member: 6747028">(emphases mine) So what do you guys think encourages and discourages narration avoidance or inconsistency across the different editions? And are there lessons to apply in D&D Next?My feeling is that outcome-based mechanics (which are readily embraced in 4E) either induce more narration avoidance or not any less so than in previous editions.Hit rolls, damage and hit points are common to all editions -- so I don't know that any one edition can discourage narration inconsistency in that respect. Cure spells, of course, too, which we all admit. There was always some narration avoidance in corner cases of sneak attack, evasion, fireballs that may or may not set things on fire -- and I would truly enjoy if the D&D Next continued to encourage the gaming table to consider fictional positioning in such cases.But in a standard combat with outcome-based powers, where players are in zoomed out 3rd person perspective, and a player uses a fiat ability, and it's not explicit why/what process occured, isn't that easily narration avoidance or inconsistency? Bob hits on a miss and imagines the greatsword clipping the pixie, but John imagines the pixie's exhaustion flitting aside, and Betty and Sally and Ebert don't imagine anything at all. But they can't come to a shared hallucination, because Bob and John have different visions, and Betty considers both ideas to be ludicrous so she ignores it, and Sally and Ebert simply don't care as it's not their roleplaying stance and why should they care because nothing in gameplay induces them to care otherwise.I don't have a real conclusion to any of this. If D&D is a confused animal that isn't quite self-aware of what its design goals are, then I'm equally confused if -- objectively, outside of my personal preferences -- designing mechanics like hit-on-miss is supposed to further those undeclared design goals or not, other than just some WoTC designer thinking that's a cool mechanic.</blockquote>

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