Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6856658" data-attributes="member: 42582">Agreed.One example: the way that Burning Wheel makes players feel the uncertainty of the "fog of war" in melee combat is to force blind declarations in circumstances of an uncertain distribution of actions (the typical combatant has 4 or 5 actions to allocate across 6 slots per "round", and a block or avoid only protects against a strike if scripted into the same slot).Another example: the 4e Chained Cambion (in MM3) is described in the flavour text as having a "tortured psyche", as "hat[ing] its life, its captors, and its enemies who roam free", and as "screaming its despair within the minds of nearby foes." And it has a mind shackles ability which causes two enemies to take ongoing damage unless they are adjacent to one another, with each victim having to make a separate saving throw. When I used this in game, I shackled the melee fighter to the archer ranger. As the two players had to coordinate their actions or else take damage, they started bickering and complaining. Once one had saved but the other hadn't, the bickering got worse, because the one who had saved nevertheless had to stay shackled because the other player couldn't roll a d20 high enough!In other words, I didn't have to tell the players to pretend to be filled with despair and hate towards one another; the mechanic ensured that this actually happened (in a light-hearted way, or course!).Agreed again.In play, there are only the outcomes of action resolution. If, in advance, you want your PC to turn out to be Sherlock Holmes, you're better off putting an 18 than a 5 into INT. But there is nothing that precludes a PC with a low INT turning out to be a genius in play (via a combination of good luck and, say, training in knowledge skills). Just the same as there is nothing that ;recludes a PC with a low STR nevertheless being the one who makes all the big jumps and opens all the stuck doors.</blockquote>

Verification