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: 6600423" data-attributes="member: 42582">In relation to this, I thought I might cross-post something from the current <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?436003-Confirm-or-Deny-D-amp-D4e-would-be-going-strong-had-it-not-been-titled-D-amp-D/page24&p=6600422#post6600422" target="_blank">"Why 4e failed" thread</a>.In the context of that thread, it's part of a discussion about so-called "dissociated" mechanics. In the context of this thread, it's an attempt to elaborate on (my understanding of) Campbell's point, in relation to the limited-use abilities (hp, healing surges, encounter and daily powers, etc) that are found in 4e:There are some readings of hit points where they model skill, talent and knowledge - for instance, the more-or-less Gygaxian treatment, where they reflect accrued combat skill and expertise.On this picture, the character can block, dodge, get lucky etc (but not get significantly worn down, as shown by the lack of exhaustion and wound penalties) until s/he can't, as the last few hit points are taken away. There's a hard limit to luck and skill, which isn't systematically correlated to anything in the fiction. Rather, the fiction has to accommodate itself to the mechanics: suppose the defending character has 6 hp left, and the GM rolls a 17 to hit for the attacker (which is a good roll by any measure) and then the GM rolls the damage die (let's say it's 1d8+2): we don't know whether the PC got lucky/parried etc, or instead his/her luck ran out, until the result of that die is seen. Nothing in the fiction constrains or affects that answer.I think if you see hit points this way, then daily martial powers - mechanically hard limits where the fiction has to accommodate itself to the mechanics - are perhaps less counterintuitive, though the limit is reached as a result of player choice rather than random rolling.I have seen posters in the past (names escape me) who have expressed a preference for dice-rolled limits/refreshes rather than player-chosen limits/refreshes - if someone held that preference, then my hit point analogy would break down because hit points aren't a player-chosen/fiated limit but rather a randomly determined limit. I think this is probably part of why 13th Age goes for more random dice rationing rather than player-chosen rationing: it's catering to the preference I just described.Flipping it round the other way, though, if someone likes the idea of player-chosen rationing rather than random dice rolls determining the rationing, they might also like the healing surge tweak that 4e adds to the traditional hit point system, which reduces the importance of random dice rolls (without eliminating them altogether) by increasing the number of decision points a player has to regulate his/her PCs own hit point total (by choosing to spend surges, within the mechanical frameworks that permit doing so).From the point of view of "association"/"dissociation", for me the emphasis in 4e on player choice reinforces the connection between player and character because when the character really wants to pull out all the stops and try hard, the player can do the same thing (by choosing to spend these rationed resources), rather than simply have random dice rolls determine whether or not the character is really trying hard enough to win.And sometimes - if all the dailies have been spent, all the surges gone, etc - the player looks at his/her sheet, wanting to try hard again, and finds that there's nothing left in the tank. That's an experience I can relate to from running and cycling, trying to push myself harder, and finding that my body has nothing more to give. Simply being delivered that information about my PC by a random die roll ("Oh, look, the damage die was a 5, so that's 7 points of damage - I'm down" or "Oh, look, I needed a crit to take down that orc but rolled a 1, I guess my guy wasn't up to it") tends to disconnect me from my character - because instead of inhabiting my character and his/her efforts I'm learning about them via an external, random agency.</blockquote>

Verification