The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[Skyscraper]

I can live with the notion that magical stuff behaves in an odd way, and I can accept magical abilities behaving in nearly any way. But if a non-magical fighter can only do a certain move once a day, I'm unsure how he perceives it.

Some manoeuvers are hard to pull off. Especially if you're not experienced. I've been playing soccer weekly for 10 years. I still can't deke opponents all the time. I don't even try all the time. It requires a setup that i'm not necessarily proficient enough to lay down. I.e. i need to move in such a way to position myself properly with repsect to my opponent to try my deke. Howewer, i do manage to do it more frequently now than 8 years ago. It's not that i don't want to, it's just that i can't.

Take a professional hockey player who's normally a goon (i.e. not a fancy player, never dekes during games) and get him to play with 10 year olds. He'll deke the hell out of everyone. Why does he not do that in actual professional NHL games? Because the situation doesn't lend itself to it. He's not good enough to try the move that often.

The same goes for fighters. Sure, the best of them can pull off cool stuff regularly (i.e. their 20-th level at-will powers are cool). However, the inexperienced (level-1) fighter is only good enough to set up combat to try a risky manoeuver (encounter, daily) every once in a while.

If you can accept that hit points are an abstraction of morale, stamina and actual wounds (in any edition), i don't see why you can't explain the fighter's encounter or daily powers as mundane in 4E. For me it's much simpler and it's actually a fairly good representation of how things work in sports and probably in combat (i have only little experience in the latter, namely foam weapon combat and karate).

Sky

 

[Andor]

Yes, he knows. Just as a caster knows he no longer has access to a spell.
He knows he can only pull the "Exploit" off once in a while => usually once a day, assuming combats every day.

Uh-huh. I've been studying various martial arts for kind of a while now. Yet to run into a 'once a day' limitation on any moves. "Once an opponent" is a pretty reasonable expectation. Once you've killed that guy and are fighting another guy who has never seen the move? Not so much.

"Weird" in what sense? In the sense of "How life is supposed to work in a Fantasy World"?

If it makes you feel better (and clearly, that's what you are looking for), pretend the Ftr has an internal, non-magical power source. Let's call it "Chi". He uses this source of internal non-magical power for his exploits. Encounter powers only use Chi temporarily, and after a few minutes the Chi returns. Daily powers use larger amounts of CHi, and it takes an extended rest for it to return.

This would fly better if we didn't know that "Ki" was a different power source reserved for future books. The 'martial' power source is explicitly nothing but muscle and skill. So yeah, the once a day thing does require a bit of explanation.

3e did not answer the spell casting rationale well. Put another way: Vancian magic does NOT model the spell casters in Fantasy Literature very well. This has been discussed countless times.

.... You ... do realize that it's called Vancian magic because it works in the same way as magic in Jack Vance's Dying Earth series of fantasy books. Which would conventionally count as Fantasy Literature.

 

[brehobit]

Some manoeuvers are hard to pull off. Especially if you're not experienced. I've been playing soccer weekly for 10 years. I still can't deke opponents all the time. I don't even try all the time. It requires a setup that i'm not necessarily proficient enough to lay down. I.e. i need to move in such a way to position myself properly with repsect to my opponent to try my deke. Howewer, i do manage to do it more frequently now than 8 years ago. It's not that i don't want to, it's just that i can't.

Take a professional hockey player who's normally a goon (i.e. not a fancy player, never dekes during games) and get him to play with 10 year olds. He'll deke the hell out of everyone. Why does he not do that in actual professional NHL games? Because the situation doesn't lend itself to it. He's not good enough to try the move that often.

The same goes for fighters. Sure, the best of them can pull off cool stuff regularly (i.e. their 20-th level at-will powers are cool). However, the inexperienced (level-1) fighter is only good enough to set up combat to try a risky manoeuver (encounter, daily) every once in a while.

If you can accept that hit points are an abstraction of morale, stamina and actual wounds (in any edition), i don't see why you can't explain the fighter's encounter or daily powers as mundane in 4E. For me it's much simpler and it's actually a fairly good representation of how things work in sports and probably in combat (i have only little experience in the latter, namely foam weapon combat and karate).

Sky

I'm going to drop this as it seems most don't have a problem with it. But I just don't see this kind of explanation as reasonable. Say you've managed some hot ball move in a real game. What is the explanation that not only can't you do it again until you rest for 6 hours, but you _know_ you can't do it again until you rest for 6 hours?

Ah well, I guess it's just me and a small handful of others who have an issue here....

Letting it go....

 

[Dausuul]

The same way a spell mysteriously disappears from a wizard's memory when he casts it. Or the same way a swordsage can't recover maneuvers without spending a couple minutes flourishing his weapons or whatever. Why are you calling out inconsistencies that have been always been present in one form or another?

Why should it matter whether it was present in previous editions? I call it out because I don't like it. I didn't like it in BECMI, I didn't like it in 2E, I didn't like it in 3.X, and I don't like it now.

I'll probably suck it up and deal with it, just like I did in all those previous editions, but I still don't like it.

But I just don't see this kind of explanation as reasonable. Say you've managed some hot ball move in a real game. What is the explanation that not only can't you do it again until you rest for 6 hours, but you _know_ you can't do it again until you rest for 6 hours?

And this is why I don't like it.

Ultimately, it's not a big deal; but I do find it irritating. Furthermore, it's much more pervasive than it used to be. In 3.X, only certain classes and feats had this sort of thing going on; you could quite easily play a game in which nobody had "prepared moves" of this type. (For example, a party of fighter, rogue, sorceror, and favored soul.) In 4E, every single character has them.

 

[ryryguy]

So, I think it's a fair point that the very gamey nature of the encounter and daily use limited powers may cause a few issues with immersion, character vs. player knowledge, and the story. Basically, there is a bit of a "seam" there... in terms of story, it may make sense for one hero to shout to another, "quick! do your [daily power] whirling blade dance of death, it's our only hope!" And with that daily power exhausted, the other hero responds, "I can't! Because, um, er... my, uh, inner energy reserves are still drained, you know..." A bit awkward.

On the other hand I feel doubtful that this will really be that big of an issue at the table. Sure there's a seam, but there always have been issues of player/rules knowledge vs. character/in-game knowledge. You just work around them. Eventually you'll find the flavor of "exhausted inner energy reserves" handwaving that feels right for your character and his powers. Perhaps more importantly, hero 1 just won't call for the blade dance of death when it's not available because player 1 understands, out of game, that it's not available.

 

[brehobit]

On the other hand I feel doubtful that this will really be that big of an issue at the table. Sure there's a seam, but there always have been issues of player/rules knowledge vs. character/in-game knowledge. You just work around them. Eventually you'll find the flavor of "exhausted inner energy reserves" handwaving that feels right for your character and his powers. Perhaps more importantly, hero 1 just won't call for the blade dance of death when it's not available because player 1 understands, out of game, that it's not available.

Well said.

Mark

 

[greatn]

I'm going to drop this as it seems most don't have a problem with it. But I just don't see this kind of explanation as reasonable. Say you've managed some hot ball move in a real game. What is the explanation that not only can't you do it again until you rest for 6 hours, but you _know_ you can't do it again until you rest for 6 hours?

Ah well, I guess it's just me and a small handful of others who have an issue here....

Letting it go....

How about something like he's trying to do it all the time, but most of the time it ends up being a normal attack or he can tell from the heft of the swing it isn't going to work so instead he goes for a leg sweep.

 

[JohnSnow]

I can live with the notion that magical stuff behaves in an odd way, and I can accept magical abilities behaving in nearly any way. But if a non-magical fighter can only do a certain move once a day, I'm unsure how he perceives it. My current inclination is to go with a Bo9S style answer (it's magic). But that kills off anyone wanting to play a non-magical class...

I'd prefer if the rogue and fighter didn't have daily or even encounter powers. But that hurts game balance...

Mark

Okay Mark, consider this.

I've played a game where almost all the classes were entirely non-magical (Iron Heroes, for the record). However, all those non-magical classes had special moves that they could build up to, or set up, by taking actions to do so. They'd acquire tokens every round. As the fight drug on, they'd be able to pull off a minor power every round, or save up their tokens to pull off bigger, more elaborate stunts.

It was cool. It represented all the motions the character had to go through in order to set up their best moves. But what was a lot cooler was when they actually got to do their best moves. In practice (and in-game), they were able to pull off a couple of their better moves about once every fight, and were able to set up their very best move about once every 4-6 fights.

To me, per-encounter powers and per-day powers are a way of modelling that without having to worry about all the bookkeeping. Sure, gathering tokens was, in a sense, fun, but mostly just because you knew you were setting up something cool. Building up points so you can pull off your good move is tedious. So, think about it this way.

When your fighter is using those at-wills, he's actually setting his foe up so the special move (represented by his per-encounter ability) will work. And ditto with the daily. It's a rare circumstance when it comes into play, but it's the PLAYER who gets to decide when that circumstance occurs.

Rather than playing a game of "Mother, may I?" with the DM for when his character can use his best moves, the player gets to make that call when he feels it's appropriate.

The player knows he can use the power once a day. But all Joe the Fighter knows is that the circumstances surrounding that exploit only occur rarely. He was lucky to set it up once today. Pulling it off again just isn't likely.

Yes, this requires you to separate player knowledge (Daily Exploits are available whenever you want, but only once a day) from character knowledge (you can't pull off a maneuver like that very often).

Basically, encounter and daily exploits are a way of abstracting luck, effort, and circumstance. Yes, there are other ways to model these things (like the Iron Heroes token system), but IMO, they add a lot of unnecessary bookkeeping and achieve essentially the same result (albeit sometimes a bit "swingier").

Maybe that helps. Maybe it doesn't.

 

[brehobit]

How about something like he's trying to do it all the time, but most of the time it ends up being a normal attack or he can tell from the heft of the swing it isn't going to work so instead he goes for a leg sweep.

Say there is a pit and you have a daily that would let you push the baddy into it. If you knew you didn't have access to that daily, you wouldn't take the AoO to get there to try. But if you didn't know, you would.

I don't think that quite works....

 

[Skyscraper]

I'm going to drop this as it seems most don't have a problem with it. But I just don't see this kind of explanation as reasonable. Say you've managed some hot ball move in a real game. What is the explanation that not only can't you do it again until you rest for 6 hours, but you _know_ you can't do it again until you rest for 6 hours?

Well, coming back to my hockey allegory, why does the "goon" only try a deke once every 10 games in the NHL? Why not once every game?

Because he's not good enough to get the conditions to try it that often.

Likewise, the daily powers could have been the "once-every-10-combats" powers instead, i guess it would have been more appropriate. For simplicity's sake, it's "daily", expecting that you'll be doing about 10 encounters per day. (I don't know how many you're expected to do, 10 being an example.) But the point is: the fighter would like nothing better than to get his daily power off every round. However, he's simply not good enough to do it. He's fighting for his life and moving around the battlefield and dodging swords and thinking about his next move, and at one point during one particular combat he gets things just right and BAM! he lets his daily power go. Super move! Why doesn't he do it always? For the same reason that all combattants and sportsmen are not able to use their better ability all the time in real life. The best of the pros have dazzling "at will" and "encounter" (or per-game) powers, while the ordinary (level 1) folk get the cool stuff out pretty rarely. At least, that's what it looks like in the amateur leagues that i've played in.

Sky