Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7007159" data-attributes="member: 42582">As I've already posted a few times upthread - 4e stat blocks are for combat resolution.So there is no resolution procedure that would "normally" apply to a black dragon corrupting water. If the PCs are trying to stop the black dragon doing that, then it is a skill challenge: all the GM has to do is narrate the unfolding situation, and all the action declarations and mechanics are on the player side.If the corruption of the water happens off-screen or unopposed by the PCs, then the GM just narrates it happening. There is no resolution procedure: any more than there is a resolution procedure for the GM saying "It rains" or "When you arrive at the village there is a festival going on."That might be what you're doing. I'm responding to [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION]'s complaint about 4e stat blocks that they are missing non-combat, "world building" mechanics like the "corrupt water" ability: and my response is to state that, in 4e, this sort of thing is not mechanised. Just like villagers and their festivals (which have never been mechanised in D&D), the off-screen magic of dragons, liches, etc is not mechanised in 4e - and if it is happening on screen and the PCs are opposing it (trying to stop the dragon corrupting the magic pond; trying to stop the lich turning the cemetry into an army of undead) then it is resolved as as skill challenge.Look, either all editions are the same - in which case why do we get so many posts from people explaining why they don't like 4e? - or they are not.I think they're not. 4e does not use rules (spell rules, spell-like abilities, etc) to mange the GM's process of worldbuilding via the magical deeds of monsters. When stuff happens off-screen, or on-screen and unopposed, the GM just narrates it. When it happens on-screen and opposed outside of combat, it is a skill challenge (where all the GM has to do is narrate the fictional situation, because all the mechanical stuff in player-side). When it happens on-screen and is within combat, then monster stat blocks come into play.In my experience, the main challenge in running 4e - given this suite of approaches to establishing the content of the shared fiction - is the interface between combat and non-combat. For instance, out of combat the lich's raising of an undead army is pure narration on the GM's part; in combat it is something like a minor action to bring a dead ally back to life as a minion, and has to be quantified in mechanical term. Sometimes the interface between the two approaches to resolution can feel clunky rather than smooth. This has been widely discussed among 4e GMs over the past 8 or so years, and various tweaks and techniques (whether general or one-off/ad hoc) have been suggested.</blockquote>

Verification