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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4784458" data-attributes="member: 58197">As you read this, please keep in mind that I am thinking out a lot of these ideas as I type them...Crucial concept that I learned from designing user interfaces: More options can be, and often is, an actively bad thing.There are a number of reasons for this, but they all boil down to brain space. When a 4E player's turn comes around, that player looks down at a character sheet full of powers. It takes time and mental effort to evaluate each power and compare it to the rest. By the time the player is done with all that evaluating and comparing, there's not a lot left to say, "Hmm, is there anything clever I could do that isn't on this list?"This is especially true with players who aren't particularly good at abstract strategy games. For these players, it's a major effort to sort through all the "Well, if I do this, and that, and this happens..." questions. These are often the very same players who, before they get tangled up in the rules, are likely to come up with all kinds of exciting and crazy stunts. They're the guys who want to snag the dragon with a grappling hook as it flies past, climb up its back, and put a knife in its eye.Oh, I don't think any edition of D&D has offered much support for stunts. But previous editions - and I'm thinking more of 2E and earlier here - had less clutter getting in the way, at least for martial characters. (One of the things I liked about 4E was that it reined in spellcasters' tendency to override any attempt at cleverness with "Oh, I have a spell that'll take care of that.")Now, this was not in all ways a good thing. Fighters could be very boring to play when you just made a basic attack over and over. But it did encourage fighter players to look for cool fun stuff to do. Instead of providing them with a zillion variations on the basic attack, I'd like a system that helps them come up with cool fun stuff.It's certainly useful; but being as it's in the DMG, it does nothing to encourage players toward improvisation. It only helps the DM adjudicate results when they go that way of their own accord. (Which is quite helpful and needed to happen, no doubt about it, but it's not enough by itself.)I think what I want are mechanics that are only half defined. In other words, I want feats/powers that read like this:"Arsonist (Heroic-tier feat): You get a +2 bonus to the roll when performing a stunt to set something on fire."Then leave it up to the player to come up with something useful to set on fire; and let the DM use page 42, and some other pages like it, to translate the player's clever idea into mechanics on the fly.The main function of a feat like this is to provide a "hook" on the character sheet. When the player is poring over the list of options, s/he will come across the Arsonist feat and think, "Hey, I could set something on fire!" The "improvise a clever idea" option is thus pushed into the forefront of the player's mind, instead of languishing behind a list of rigidly defined abilities.Nope. As I said, earlier editions of D&D didn't provide active support, they just offered fewer distractions, at least for some characters. 4E actually has a few tools that older editions didn't, but they're too easily lost in the power shuffle, especially at higher levels when characters' power lists are getting ever longer.Heh. You'll note that my above rant was triggered by running a 4E game. My list of beefs with 3E is a mile long, and I certainly wouldn't go back. If I do end up abandoning standard 4E, it will probably be for some weird mutant 4E offspring that I end up hacking together, or a different system entirely.(Also, I agree with others that your comments regarding in-character knowledge of the game mechanics are very insightful and offer a lot of food for thought. XP!)</blockquote>

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