Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4784399" data-attributes="member: 58197">Agree with the OP.&nbsp; I like an awful lot of stuff about 4E, but... my suspension of disbelief crashed out suddenly and severely at some point during the game I was running last night.It might have been around the time the fighter ran up to three cult necromancers - ruthless and intelligent combatants who are deadly at range but suck in hand-to-hand, who have no reason to voluntarily step into melee ever - and said, &quot;Come And Get It!&quot;&nbsp; And they all crowded around him so he could beat them down.Or it might have been when the bard yelled insults at a guy and he fell over dead.Maybe it was when one of the players said, &quot;Oh, that's so cute, you're still trying to narrate 4th Edition combat.&quot;Here's the thing about 4th Edition combat and 3rd Edition combat. They both contain bizarre rules artifacts, places where the simulation breaks down and makes no sense. But in 3E, when stuff makes no sense, the DM generally steps in and says, &quot;Dude, you can't make a trip attack against an ooze. It's already as prone as it can physically be. Doesn't matter if it's technically rules-legal. It makes no sense and you can't do it.&quot;In 4E, the DM is expected to shrug and let the ooze be tripped. &quot;Trip&quot; and &quot;prone&quot; are no longer defined concepts with a concrete meaning in the game world. They're just abstract mechanical terms, subject to redefinition on the fly. And the DM trying to figure out and narrate what the hell just happened? Shut up and play the board game, pal....Sorry. I'm ranting. I think I hit some kind of threshold or breaking point or something.It's one of the reasons that narrating &quot;the monster hits for 10 points&quot; as &quot;he swings and just barely misses you&quot; doesn't work for a lot of players. When you attack with a poisoned weapon, if you hit, the target is poisoned. That makes no sense if your attack just barely missed; a poisoned weapon can only deliver its poison with an actual physical hit.(Although that is not, for me, the primary reason. My primary reason is much simpler, and is at the heart of a lot of my problems with 4E: I have no patience for RPG systems that play Humpty Dumpty with the English language. A word's meaning in-game should be a reasonable approximation of its meaning in real life. If I make an &quot;attack&quot; with a &quot;sword&quot; and it &quot;hits&quot; resulting in &quot;damage,&quot; then the guy I &quot;hit&quot; damn well ought to be bleeding. If that isn't what you mean by &quot;hit,&quot; call it something else.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 4784399, member: 58197"] Agree with the OP. I like an awful lot of stuff about 4E, but... my suspension of disbelief crashed out suddenly and severely at some point during the game I was running last night. It might have been around the time the fighter ran up to three cult necromancers - ruthless and intelligent combatants who are deadly at range but suck in hand-to-hand, who have no reason to voluntarily step into melee ever - and said, "Come And Get It!" And they all crowded around him so he could beat them down. Or it might have been when the bard yelled insults at a guy and he fell over dead. Maybe it was when one of the players said, "Oh, that's so cute, you're still trying to narrate 4th Edition combat." Here's the thing about 4th Edition combat and 3rd Edition combat. They both contain bizarre rules artifacts, places where the simulation breaks down and makes no sense. But in 3E, when stuff makes no sense, the DM generally steps in and says, "Dude, you can't make a trip attack against an ooze. It's already as prone as it can physically be. Doesn't matter if it's technically rules-legal. It makes no sense and you can't do it." In 4E, the DM is expected to shrug and let the ooze be tripped. "Trip" and "prone" are no longer defined concepts with a concrete meaning in the game world. They're just abstract mechanical terms, subject to redefinition on the fly. And the DM trying to figure out and narrate what the hell just happened? Shut up and play the board game, pal. ...Sorry. I'm ranting. I think I hit some kind of threshold or breaking point or something. It's one of the reasons that narrating "the monster hits for 10 points" as "he swings and just barely misses you" doesn't work for a lot of players. When you attack with a poisoned weapon, if you hit, the target is poisoned. That makes no sense if your attack just barely missed; a poisoned weapon can only deliver its poison with an actual physical hit. (Although that is not, for me, the primary reason. My primary reason is much simpler, and is at the heart of a lot of my problems with 4E: I have no patience for RPG systems that play Humpty Dumpty with the English language. A word's meaning in-game should be a reasonable approximation of its meaning in real life. If I make an "attack" with a "sword" and it "hits" resulting in "damage," then the guy I "hit" damn well ought to be bleeding. If that isn't what you mean by "hit," call it something else.) [/QUOTE]

Verification