D&D 4E The Zen Of 4e (Forked Thread: How to kill a blue dragon?)

[Lizard]

Forked from: How to kill a blue dragon?

In 3e? Hell no.
In 4e? Sure.

I've finally figured out the Zen Of 4e. The powers/exploits/etc aren't "real". Your character doesn't know Pinning Strike, or even Magic Missile. Rather, you, the player, have selected a set of Plot Powers. At various times, as defined by the rules, you can declare something has happened in the game world -- so-and-so takes 1d8 force damage, that creature suffers these game effects. Even the NAMES of the game effects don't matter -- a "trip" isn't a "trip", it's a set of specified conditions which are applied to the creature. How this "looks" and how these conditions got to be on the creature are entirely up in the air. In terms of what happens in-game, the character invoking the Plot Power might not even be the direct cause. For example, "Pinning Strike" on a flying creature with nothing nearby to "pin" it to. You invoke this Plot Power, and make the roll, and the creature suffers, say, a sudden pulled muscle, which deals the appropriate damage and makes it impossible for it to keep flying. "Magic Missile" could be a different "spell" every time, so long as it does the same type and quantity of damage. One time it might be a flying sword. The next round, you could cause a bubble of energy to explode and burst under someone's skin. The round after that, a small imp appears and bites at the target. Etc, etc, etc.

There is a complete and total disconnect between the rules of 4e, and the world in which the game occurs. Once you internalize that the rules make no sense, the rules start making sense. Hence, the Zen of 4e. You must accept the paradox.

 

[Wolf88]

excellent post. i agree with the sense of it (the pulled muscle example you provided was kinda extreme though, i wouldnt push it THAT far) but allowing powers to be "wildcards" looks like it would create headaches in trying to resolve non combat situations, expecially with magical characters, do you have any insight on this subject?

 

[Lizard]

excellent post. i agree with the sense of it (the pulled muscle example you provided was kinda extreme though, i wouldnt push it THAT far) but allowing powers to be "wildcards" looks like it would create headaches in trying to resolve non combat situations, expecially with magical characters, do you have any insight on this subject?

How often do 4e powers show up in non-combat situations?

Just about every power can be boiled down to "Apply a change in the statistics of an object or creature".[1] If such statistics exist, they're changed, and the DM figures out what impact that change has on the situation. If they don't exist, then, there's no effect.

There's only a few powers I can think of which have use outside of combat -- some of the rogue and ranger utilities -- and they're pretty straightforward. You gain X bonus to a skill, or an ally does. The walls between "combat" and "everything else" in 4e are pretty high. The Skill Challenge system more or less lives on its own demiplane.

(The instant you use a damaging power on someone, I'd say it BECOMES a combat situation. In a few cases, I can see using a power in a skill challenge... say, you're being chased, and you have a power which causes someone to become prone or slowed... I'd let the power be used, using the attack roll of the power against the DC of the skill challenge, and if it succeeds, you score a 'success'.)

[1]A few are metapowers, like "roll this again" or "regain use of a power", but that's not really crucial.

 

[Mort_Q]

Hear hear!

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Yeah, this is basically what I think about the 4e design as well. There are limitations to the chances you can make to a power, but as long as you stay within the mechanic listed the flavor text is almost infinitely mutable. For example, you can't make Magic Missile do fire damage, because it's a force power, but you can make it look or act however you want!

In our game, for example, I play a Dragonborn Fighter and we have a Kobold Rogue. Some people joked that we should do a "Fastball Special" like Collosus and Wolverine, and I was trying to figure out a way to do this. At first I found myself thinking of ways that I could make an Athletics check or something, but then I thought about how the flavor of powers can be whatever you want. I eventually figured that since Covering Attack allows an ally to shift 2 sqaures, we could use that as our "Fastball Special".

So instead of: "You launch a dizzying barrage of thrusts at your enemy,
compelling him to give you all his attention. Under the cover of
your ferocious attack, one of your allies can safely retreat from
that same foe."

It can be: "You launch a flurry of swings with your axe, pushing your opponent back and putting him on the defensive. While he is being harried you take the opportunity to pick up and throw the Rogue over him, setting him for a devastating attack on the enemy's backside."

The power still operates exactly the same, mechanically speaking, it's just that now the flavor text matches the "vision" of what we're trying to accomplish with it's use. It doesn't have to stay the same from use to use either. If I were using it to allow our Melee Cleric to retreat.

It would go like this: "Your foe attempts to attack your fleeing ally. You rush to their aid, knocking his sword arm out of the way and then delivering a devastating blow to their head. With your enemy off balance, you are able to cover your ally's escape."

 

[Obryn]

This is pretty much what I've been saying for months.

There's an intentional disconnect between the narrative level and the mechanical level, moreso than in previous editions. Using a power is asserting narrative control, much like an action point mechanic.

The same works with minions - there are no minions in the game world. There are only minions in a combat.

With that said, in the interest of narrative consistency, I like Wizards to be fairly consistent with their spells. That's acceptable, too.

-O

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Great stuff!

I'm going to be sending this out to my players immediately - this is a very good way of understanding 4e.

I noted in another thread that someone had applied the same idea to hp:

"A cloud of white runes that float around your Eladrin Wizard. The runes block and absorb attacks, but as his hp drops the runes start to turn black and fade away. At zero hps, the runes wink out as the Wizard drops to the floor."

I'll talk about this with my players, and my DM in the other game, and see what they say.

 

[Rechan]

Aye, pretty much. Good stuff, friend.

This is how I've viewed the way that various monsters are not immune to effects that don't make sense at face value. "How does one knock an ooze prone?" "Well, it splatters everywhere, losing its cohesive shape, and has to take a move action to pull itself back together." "Why are undead not immune to the Sleep spell?" "Because you temporarily cancel - or at least dull - the energy that is animating them."

The same constitutes summoning, at least for NPCs. It doesn't matter in the game whether before initiative is rolled, the diabolist summoned the devils, had them trapped in various items and released them, they were standing in the next room and reacted to the PCs entrance, or they were in the room to begin with: either way, the PCs have an encounter with some warlock and devils, and they're all there at the beginning of the fight (or appear in round 2).

There's one sticky wicket here: players react to the description in a logical fashion, rather than react in game terms. For instance, in a game I was playing, an enemy had an effect that caused fire damage, ongoing fire, and -2 to attacks (save ends). I described it as the PCs weapons becoming superheated and scorching their hands, continually burning. A PC replied, "I drop my weapon and pull out a new one." I felt compelled to let him shrug off the save effect because he reacted in such a legitimate narrative response to my description.

 

[malraux]

As a DM I'm really seeing this on the monster side. Last session my players fought some rips in the fabric of space that an evil far realm worshiping wizard was attempting to open. For attacking, the rips just tried to pass through their bodies, the light coming through the rips could make the rip hard to hit, and when it died, it exploded in a burst of light blinding everyone next to it. Of course the party had already fought a creature with almost identical stats in KotS, but with the description, it was an entirely different monster.

 

[Nail]

In 3e? Hell no.
In 4e? Sure.

I've finally figured out the Zen Of 4e. The powers/exploits/etc aren't "real". Your character doesn't know Pinning Strike, or even Magic Missile. Rather, you, the player, have selected a set of Plot Powers. At various times, as defined by the rules, you can declare something has happened in the game world -- so-and-so takes 1d8 force damage, that creature suffers these game effects. Even the NAMES of the game effects don't matter -- a "trip" isn't a "trip", it's a set of specified conditions which are applied to the creature. How this "looks" and how these conditions got to be on the creature are entirely up in the air. In terms of what happens in-game, the character invoking the Plot Power might not even be the direct cause. For example, "Pinning Strike" on a flying creature with nothing nearby to "pin" it to. You invoke this Plot Power, and make the roll, and the creature suffers, say, a sudden pulled muscle, which deals the appropriate damage and makes it impossible for it to keep flying. "Magic Missile" could be a different "spell" every time, so long as it does the same type and quantity of damage. One time it might be a flying sword. The next round, you could cause a bubble of energy to explode and burst under someone's skin. The round after that, a small imp appears and bites at the target. Etc, etc, etc.

There is a complete and total disconnect between the rules of 4e, and the world in which the game occurs. Once you internalize that the rules make no sense, the rules start making sense. Hence, the Zen of 4e. You must accept the paradox.

Well said, and a good point.

When introducing 4e to old grognards, the problem has always been envisioning what happens. How do you pin an ooze? How do you sneak attack an undead?

The solution is always: "Drink a little more of the Kool-aid. ..and forget about the power's flavor text."

Try the blue flavor. It's what I'm having this morning.