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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8500957" data-attributes="member: 42582">My group played 4e D&D today - for the first time in about 5 years, picking up our 30th level game.There was one episode of play that crisply illustrated the contrast between (i) boxes-to-boxes, perhaps with epiphenomenal leftward-pointing arrows, and (ii) rightward-pointing arrows.The PCs were fighting, among other foes, Miska the Wolfspider, in a great temple located in Carceri. The temple is large enough for great Colossi to easily stride around in it. On part of its floor is a plinth that a Colossus can stand on, and that a human can move beneath.The invoker/wizard was on one side of the plinth; Miska was on the other. Atop the plinth were two other PCs. The invoker/wizard wanted to blast Miska with a Gust of Wind. We looked at the map with the tokens laid out (cues/boxes). I observed that Gust of Wind targets all creatures in the burst, and that there were two PCs between the invoker/wizard and Miska. The invoker/wizard player thought about this for a moment, and then responded to the effect that They're standing on the plinth. I'm sending my wind gust under the plinth, so it won't hit them but will hit Miska on the other side.That's a rightward-pointing arrow. The plinth was not just colour/flavour. It affected resolution.(A parenthetical remark: for me, one strength of 4e as a version of D&D is that it encourages the use of rich fiction in combat which, due to the intricacy of the player resources suites and the resolution mechanics, can generate all these rightward pointing arrows which are easily incorporated into the overall resolution process. It doesn't depend upon leftward-pointing epiphenomenal arrows as AD&D can often tend to (I think AD&D struggles to handle a variety of rightward pointing arrows because its resolution processes are too fragile). I can't really comment on 5e in this respect, though my impression of it is that it is at least closer to AD&D than 4e is, and perhaps is closer to AD&D than it is to 4e.)</blockquote>

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