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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6583675" data-attributes="member: 996">Like the very similar 'fail forward' advice, that's something you can apply in almost any system.  It's a matter of DMing style.   Yes (no).  Rules as laws of physics are de-facto the case, in one sense, the sense of using them that way as a matter of DMing style, and the antithesis of the style you're describing, which puts story and character first.  No matter how lite the rules, if you approach them as 'laws of physics,' you're not approaching them as story-facilitating, 'say yes,' fail forward, or however you want to characterize that alternative style. It's nice to hear someone complain about D&D, in general, not meeting their quixotic standards of simulationism or versimilitude or immersion or whatever it is you're getting at, here, rather than pretending that there was some past version of D&D that was perfect at it.   That sounds like a reasonable enough approach.  System wouldn't have a lot of bearing on it, but player buy-in would, and players can get squirrelly and obsessive over systems.... You just finished explaining that 'process sim' had nothing to do with it, so I'll ignore that one...This second point is one I've seen 4e - and more heavily effects-based systems like Hero - deliver on a lot.  The mechanics are clear and balanced, so you can make concept-driven choices instead of system-mastery optimization-driven ones, and you can re-skin mechanics to get the vision you want of your character.  However, that's only "for D&D," class/level is still less organic than skill-based or genuinely effects-based, for instance. Though you didn't give this one a number, 4e delivers, here, too.  Resolution is clear and consistent, making the mechanical side of DMing very easy, and minimizing the need to substitute rulings for unclear, inadequate, dysfunctional, or absent rules (something you end up doing a lot of in 'rules lite' games).   So, when you said: you were speaking metaphorically?Because it sounds like you were drawing an analogy, then when told that it was a bad analogy, moved your  goal posts to a literal interpretation.  Then, when that was shown to be factually incorrect, moved your goalposts back to it being 'metaphorical.' Dailies often did, but no, the point isn't auto success, but merely that there's a defined effect.  You can declare an action you think should do something special, and the DM can resolve it as an ordinary attack, for instance (a perfectly reasonably ruling given how abstract attacks an hps are in D&D).  Any improvised action, yes, of course.  I mean, that's what you're resting this on, the idea that, even though you have no defined ability, you can try whatever you can think of.  Necessarily, so can anyone/everyone else, since no defined ability is required to make the attempt.   Sure, using a defined ability is a clear choice that you can more or less count on, while using an improvised action is uncertain, as it rests on the DM agreeing with you on how it should be resolved.  That doesn't mean having defined abilities is bad, far from it, it means that needing to rely on improvised ones is undesireable, and that having some classes with many defined abilities, and other with few, is innately imbalancing. Of course, codified lists of spells were a feature of D&D since the beginning, but never caused this issue.  I don't think it's so much powers or spells being codified in neat packages, as it is just clarity and quality of the rules in general.  If the players find their options in the rules unclear, limiting, or otherwise unfavorable or frustrating, it's natural to try to appeal to the DM for something better - you can call that 'getting creative,' it probably involves at least as much creativity as desperation.   That's the point.  Everything you could say about what 'creative' and 'improvised' actions could do to save other editions from being boring and optionless, is also true of 4e, on top of it providing martial characters with more codified options, up front. CaGi keeps CaGi from being an every-encounter trick.  It's only useful when you are facing multiple opponents who aren't all charging into melee, anyway.  Against skirmishers or minions, it's awesome.  Against a solo, probably pointless.  Of course, when it was of use, it was excellent support for the Defender roll, something the Fighter had always tried to be, but consistently failed to deliver on, mechanically.</blockquote>

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