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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6575529" data-attributes="member: 82106">So, no extemporizing at all, nothing like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s narrative of near-godlike PCs blasting through the demonweb in their tower or killing Lolth at the last instant with what amounts to plot? It just all seems very stultified and formulaic, and TO ME that's the opposite of what Pemerton's story is about. I've had similar experiences myself, the mechanics just can't hold sway over the plot at level 30. If you try to do that you have some very dull epic play, which in fact is something that was reported by quite a few people who said that "epic was broken." Actually, I think the 4e skills are quite precisely defined. If you go back and read them now you will see what I mean. Read my last post, 5e doesn't even come close to the same level of precision. 3.x didn't come close either, but for different reasons. I'd be happy to talk about my theories of skill systems, but its probably a long post...I just find it hard to imagine how you 'codify' those things. My players are incredibly creative. They blow past anything I anticipate or consider at the drop of a hat, usually in the first 5 minutes of a session. I could squelch them, but I can hardly believe that would be in the interests of 'empowerment'. It would certainly be predictable! Well, I'm not talking about that either, I'm talking about what 4e captures at Epic, particularly high Epic. The PCs mechanically have some crazy abilities, but they're still quite bounded in what they can do. Narratively however the game should be quite open at this point. I know many people don't manage that though.Yeah, for actual divinities doing fully divine things I'd expect some sort of mechanical framework to exist like that. It certainly hasn't been covered in any mainstream D&D product, maybe Birthright? I've sadly never read Birthright, but if I had a hankering for 'Mythic Tier' play in 4e I'd maybe take a look at that and the Immortals rules, maybe some other games as well. Honestly though, I'm very happy that 4e doesn't codify all that kind of stuff, or most lesser stuff either that isn't action-related. It makes for a system that is both very complete in one sense, but very open in another.</blockquote>

Verification