I suppose the fundamental disconnect here is that I see the former as an example of "the dice make me awesome" and the latter as an example of "my choices make me awesome".
The problem with the former is that nineteen out of twenty times (or so) the fighter doesn't kill the dragon, and next round, there's a 50-50 chance of a TPK. Yes, it's great when it happens, but these days, I don't play D&D often enough that I'm willing to suffer through hours of banal for that 5% chance of great. Dare I say that it's ... videogamey? It's essentially the same as the basic philosophy behind the "rare drop" that keeps you fighting the same monster again and again until the miniscule chance that the payoff happens comes up.
I think I would like the rules to allow me to choose when to be awesome, thank you. Perhaps the daily power mechanic might not be the best way to go about it, but at least it meant that player choice had more impact than before.
To cite an example from 3e, I was playing a cleric and during one fight in which we had agreed to a series of one-on-one duels with the BBEG, the BBEG defeated the party fighter handily and my character was the next to face him. Due to a series of power boosting feats, I managed to defeat him in my very first action with a single spell. Now, luck did play some part (I rolled quite well for one boosting check and the BBEG failed his saving throw), but I felt very good about the victory because it seemed that a lot of it was due to my having made good choices.
I think it would be great if, in 5e, any character (not just spellcasters) in a tight situation could choose to draw on extraordinary resources and not just roll dice and hope that the 5% chance of a critical comes up.
Yes, when you look at that red-scaled demon in the eye, grab your frost sword, and charge at him, you're looking at a good chance of death. The smart move is to escape, nurse your wounds, resurrect your party members, and try again. But the awesome move is to grit, bear it, and take that chance, because the price of awesome is the chance of failure.
Let me repeat in another way: the price of awesome is a challenge. If you eliminate the challenge, you're left with only success, and guaranteed success it not awesome. It is not awesome for Superman to catch an airplane. It is not awesome for Spider-Man to punch out a mugger. It is not awesome for the Hulk to throw a tank. Why? Because there's no risk of failure. It's not a feat for them to do something. It's nothing. It's like someone walking down the street.
Something that's awesome:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujAhQCUxTVQ"]figure skating[/ame]
(Yes, I picked something girly to prove my point.) The reason figure skating is awesome is because it's hard. It requires intense training, and there's a chance that Ksenia Makarova is going to fall while she's on the ice. If we learned that Makarova were cheating and had special ice skating boots that let her do all her tricks, she would go from awesome to not-awesome. (Though the boots themselves would be pretty awesome for different reasons.) Likewise, if Makarova entered an amateur ice skating competition, it would not be awesome if she took first place.
The principle behind letting you choose when to be awesome is the same. Once you get to decide "I'm going to be awesome this turn," (rather than "I'm going to
try something awesome") you've gone from awesome to
AWESOME. Let's go back to your cleric example where you one-rounded the BBEG. Suppose that we removed your chance of failure. Suppose clerics of a certain level automatically learned the spell
Carnagecast Splattergore. When you cast that spell, your target explodes into a fine red mist, no save. So you cast it on the BBEG, and he dies. Is your character awesome? Well, he's really powerful, that's for sure. But is it really
awesome? No. The BBEG had no chance against you. He couldn't win. You're like Superman punching out a hobo.
(We're still not at
AWESOME yet, though. Keep reading.)
Let's go one step further. Let's say the DM lets you play a high-level wizard in a newbie campaign. Everyone goes to raid a kobold nest. You cast
meteor swarm and burn it to the ground. Is that awesome? It's
cool, but it's not awesome, especially when you summon a demon to clear out the next batch of kobolds and turn a third group to stone. That wizard is powerful, but he's not doing anything awesome. I am highly skeptical you'll go to your friends and say, "Oh, man, I was playing this D&D game and my level 20 wizard wasted these kobolds!" You're going to say, "Man, I played in this really stupid game where I was a high-level wizard and I killed some kobolds."
Why? Because there was no chance of failure. There was no challenge. There was no price attached to it.
But here's the key to all of this: you weren't
AWESOME just yet. There's one final ingredient to fully transform "lame and predictable" into
AWESOME. You need to add the "rule of cool," which is where this tirade initially started so many words ago. Rule of cool says, "It's awesome, I don't gotta 'splain
." Something needs to seriously strain willing suspension of disbelief to qualify as
AWESOME. It has to defy in-character justifications for how it might function and exist solely to make the players feel big in the pants.
Before I go any further, let me be clear: that doesn't mean that you can't have decision points and options to help you be awesome. It doesn't mean that the fighter can't decide to use Brute Strike or Harrying Assault or Into the Fray to help him succeed. All of those can be explained from an in-character perspective without ridiculous rationalizations. Examples of
AWESOME powers in 4e are Bloody Path, Own the Battlefield, and Come and Get It, but I'm going to pass over those because there is one particular mechanic in 4e that drives me up the wall more than any other.
Minions.
I
hate minions. They're the epitome of
AWESOME. They are a metagame construct designed to make the players feel awesome. You're mowing down hordes of enemies! The wizard's fireball incinerated five of them! The fighter just slaughtered three at once! You're
awesome! But when you think about it, you're not awesome. You're fighting monsters that die in a single hit that do a marginal amount of damage...and you're supposed to feel
awesome about killing them? You're supposed to feel like a badass for taking them down?
Congratulations! You killed a creature with 1 HP. You are
AWESOME. (Bonus
AWESOME if you killed that creature with an attack that always hits.)
That's not awesome. That's lame. That's pathetic. The game handed you victory and you're supposed to feel
awesome about it? No. You can feel awesome when you've adventured and risked your life and earned enough levels to kill orcs in one hit. And even then, your character isn't going to be awesome if he sticks to killing 1 HD orcs all day.
So that's my tirade on the issue.
