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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4784863" data-attributes="member: 80487">When it comes to verisimilitude, different people notice different things.The basic combat round structure in 4E make so much so bizarre, that to consider it is such a headache ... that weirdness with the powers system is by comparison at least graspable. I have not seen anyone even try to "rationalize with a narrative" the sequence of events, and for good reason.If the round represents 6 seconds, and your figure is the 11th to act, then a full minute's worth of activity has passed. ("Oh, but one-minute rounds were sooo unrealistic ... !") Things setting out at the same time, at the same speed, don't meet halfway.Try to imagine it all happening simultaneously, and you end up with stuff literally "hitting him where he ain't". This is all a lot easier for me to accept in an operational or strategic game, in which the real events being modeled display a sequence of moves and counter-moves.PAGE 42 displays vividly the philosophy that came to the fore in 3E and thoroughly permeates 4E. It's all about enforcing the abstract mathematics of the design, the Wonderland logic of an amorphously "level appropriate" world. It is utterly useless for assessing phenomena in other terms. A simple statement that "the DM sets a reasonable probability" would be no more directly useful in that regard, but it would at least not get in the way by presenting a "proper and official" way at odds with the enterprise.The rules for specific skills in the PHB are generally much more helpful, although in the long run one never really gets any better at opening locks or disabling traps.The combination of the paucity of guidance along the semi-realistic line and the overwhelming mass of not merely non- but anti-realistic rules creates a built-in inertia.That so many powers are just variations on the same routine is what makes their alleged "coolness" obscure to me. As well, most of the design is to the end of reducing the significance of choices. It comes so close to ensuring that it really does not matter what players do while "along for the ride" that I suspect that would be the designers' ideal -- if only they could figure out how to foist that off as "offering more options".I've seen the psychological effect in play. Come up with a tactic other than using a power listed on the character sheet, and the DM's first response (in my experience) is to prohibit it. If one can get past that, then the next response is to make sure that it's at least as ineffective as an at-will power. It does not matter how obvious and sensible it is; things that would have been routine in the old (pre-3E) days are actively discouraged.Heck, a character nowadays can scarcely find his own buttocks without a Perception roll.</blockquote>

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