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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6727712" data-attributes="member: 37579">Originally posted by wrecan:Hey, [redacted], good to hear form you again!I had a similar problem to you in my early 4e sessions. I have termed this problem "Combat Investment"Players invest a lot of time in 4e getting their characters properly equipped for combat. Feats, Equipment and especiallty Powers are all combat-oriented. This investment psychologically encourages players to want a return on their investment. I.e., they spent time making a kick-ass combatant, so they want the pay-off. If you spend an hour making a combatant and then spend the whole session never rolling a die, you feel a bit cheated. You feel like you want that hour of your life back.In contrast, role-playing takes very little investment. You pick your Abilities, Backrounds and Trained Skills at the beginning of character creation and then you never touch it again (unless you retrain or pick up a Linguist Feat). So even if you enjoy roleplaying, there's no "buy-in". You don't feel as cheated if you don't roleplay because you don't feel like you "wasted" any time prepping your character for roleplaying.Compunding the error is the DM's own Combat Threshold. Roleplay takes comparatively little prep time. You don't need minis, maps, or even stat blocks to roleplay as an NPC. You need a few lines of personality, a physical description, six Abilities, a few Skills and some general character goals. That all happens well before the session. Combat on the other hand, usually requires a battle map or tiles, minis, character stat blocks to be created, terrain or obstacles, and some general NPC strategies. There is also tiem require din game to set all this up. And it can weigh on a DM's mind that he needs to budget some setup time. This encourages a DM to get the Threshold out of the way and get to the combat. This is particularly true if combat takes a lot of time to run (as many 4e DMs complain it does), and since many DMs like to end a session with a big climactic battle.Combined, the Combat Investment and Threshold encourage players and DMs to skip or rush the roleplay and get right to the headbanging.This doesn't mean 4e is bad for roleplaying. It works just fine in my games. What you need to do is overcome the hurdle of Combat Investment.First, you need to be conscious of the Combat Investment and Threshold. Usually, once you realize what you've been doing, the Investment and Threshold are easier to resist. Second, if you can, don't put the minis and maps on the table when there's no combat. Also, encourage your players to keep their sheets face down when they aren't looking at equipment lists during roleplay. This minimizes the temptation to get to the combat. Is this a new phenomenon in 4e? It sort of is. Except for spellcasters and optimizers, most players didn't require a lot of prep time for characters. And most people who played non-spellcasters were, almost by definition, not optimizing. So martial characters generally had very little Combat Investment to overcome. And in prior editions you had more spells that had use outside combat (often in the form of divinations and enchantments that could obviate roleplay altogether, but still), so the players' investment in spell memorization wasn't entirely Combat Investment in prior editions.For DMs, however, I think the Combat Threshold has actually lessened. Creating encounters is a lot easier compared to 3e, so I can spend time preparing more roleplay. But it's still not as easy as it was in 2e (and likely won't ever be). However, 4e, more than other editions, now requires me to devise interesting combat fields and hazards and obstacles, which I find can be a time drain that increases the Combat Threshold.So, I understand your complaint, Hocus. I've found ways to compensate for the problem, and I really do enjoy 4e more than prior editions. If you find your way back to 4e, I hope you take some of my advice.As an aside, Combat Investment is the facet of 4e I am most hopeful 5e can fix (when it eventually comes out hopefully many years from now). If they could reduce the time players spend getting their characters combat-ready, it would reduce the Combat Investment.Originally posted by wrecan:I respectfully disagree. Hocus and I have been DMing for more than a half-century combined and have not had this problem with other systems (even 3e). The problem is not lack of experience. Nor do I think the problem is an inability to see the game's subtleties.As I said, I had the problem and was able to fix it without changing systems. I did not fix the problem by "looking past the large adverts" or seeing "the subtle ... hints as to what this game can be about." I already knew what the game could be about and never saw the adverts.For my group -- and I suspect for many groups -- combat investment is real phenomenon. It's not a new one either. I see it as analogous to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy" target="_blank">Sunk Cost Fallacy</a> in economics and game theory. Once a player has spent time building a character for combat, he focuses on that aspect of the character in order to get a return on his investment of time, even if might enjoy the roleplay. It's a psychological phenomenon, and it can be addressed simply by recognizing that's what you're doing.I do understand that people with no prior history in RPGs may be misled by the marketing. But Hocus-Smokus and I are not those people. We didn't buy 4e ignorant of the role-playing possibilities in herent in the game. We just fell afoul of a pretty basic psychological fallacy, and one that can be (and for my group was) easily remedied. </blockquote>

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