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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5731764" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Is that how you set up situations when you GM games? Presumably not - so why would you assume that an 4e GM would set up such a situation?</p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't think it particularly affects how the players approach the game - they play their PCs, using whatever mechanical resources their character sheet, plus their PC's position in the fiction, throws their way.</p><p></p><p>I think it does seem to have affected design, and in a good way. Designers seem to be thinking harder about (i) how various sorts of capabilities can be interesting distributed across a range of PCs, and relative to the game's action economy, and (ii) what range of mechanical features the game needs if it is to produce a range of fictional situations that are interesting in a game of heroic fantasy.</p><p></p><p>A simple example is the marked condition. Putting to one side what, if anything, marking means as a story element, its metagame effect is fairly clear: a PC who can mark enemies is more likely to be attacked by those enemies (because of the incentive created by the -2 penalty to attack other targets). Thus, a PC who can regularly mark enemies is likely to regularly be the focus of enemy hostility. Which then creates the space for the designers to ask "What sort of character ought to be the regular focus of enemy hostility?", and to think about both story elements, and other mechanical elements, that suit such a character. And thus a defender is born.</p><p></p><p>Another example is the paladin power Valiant Strike, which grants a +1 to hit for every adjacent enemy. This power more-or-less guarantees that the PC who has it will be valiant, because the player of that PC has a mechanical incentive to hurl the PC into throngs of enemies, in order to boost his/her to hit chance. Again, combine this with broader thinking about what sort of PC (mechanically and story-wise) such a power would suit, and we get the image of the knightly defender emerging.</p><p></p><p>For me, this is one of the important design differences between 4e and classic D&D, and one which the idea of roles seems to have contributed. Of course in classic D&D it was possible to build a valiant knight, or a skirmisher, or whatever other sort of fighter one was interested in. But there was not a coherent package of mechanics that one could select for ones PC that would - at the metagame/mechanical level - tend to push the resolution of the game in the story direction that would reflect one's choices about one's PC. It was much more either a matter of colour/free roleplay, or perhaps depended upon the GM's interpretation of non-mechanically-mediated elements of the fiction.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5731764, member: 42582"] Is that how you set up situations when you GM games? Presumably not - so why would you assume that an 4e GM would set up such a situation? I don't think it particularly affects how the players approach the game - they play their PCs, using whatever mechanical resources their character sheet, plus their PC's position in the fiction, throws their way. I think it does seem to have affected design, and in a good way. Designers seem to be thinking harder about (i) how various sorts of capabilities can be interesting distributed across a range of PCs, and relative to the game's action economy, and (ii) what range of mechanical features the game needs if it is to produce a range of fictional situations that are interesting in a game of heroic fantasy. A simple example is the marked condition. Putting to one side what, if anything, marking means as a story element, its metagame effect is fairly clear: a PC who can mark enemies is more likely to be attacked by those enemies (because of the incentive created by the -2 penalty to attack other targets). Thus, a PC who can regularly mark enemies is likely to regularly be the focus of enemy hostility. Which then creates the space for the designers to ask "What sort of character ought to be the regular focus of enemy hostility?", and to think about both story elements, and other mechanical elements, that suit such a character. And thus a defender is born. Another example is the paladin power Valiant Strike, which grants a +1 to hit for every adjacent enemy. This power more-or-less guarantees that the PC who has it will be valiant, because the player of that PC has a mechanical incentive to hurl the PC into throngs of enemies, in order to boost his/her to hit chance. Again, combine this with broader thinking about what sort of PC (mechanically and story-wise) such a power would suit, and we get the image of the knightly defender emerging. For me, this is one of the important design differences between 4e and classic D&D, and one which the idea of roles seems to have contributed. Of course in classic D&D it was possible to build a valiant knight, or a skirmisher, or whatever other sort of fighter one was interested in. But there was not a coherent package of mechanics that one could select for ones PC that would - at the metagame/mechanical level - tend to push the resolution of the game in the story direction that would reflect one's choices about one's PC. It was much more either a matter of colour/free roleplay, or perhaps depended upon the GM's interpretation of non-mechanically-mediated elements of the fiction. [/QUOTE]
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