Trip is an Encounter Power now

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You've got it backwards. I see it, it doesn't seem like it works, and here's why. Specifically, here's why: "Per Encounter" sounds like an arbitrary and unrealistic limit on the amount of times that someone can try to trip someone else.

"Per Encounter" mechanics are an abstraction. If you want, you can "fluff" every single of your ordinary attacks with a trip attempt and imagine your foe falling down and immediately jumping back. But they don't create the specific game mechanic effect. Only if you use the power, the trip attempt has more effect then merely dealing some damage.

Not everything that happens in the imagined world is modeled by the game system.

 

[Thyrwyn]

There is a disconnect between the impact of being tripped in the real world and the effect of being Tripped in D&D. What are the effects of being Tripped? What are the penalties for being Prone (which I am assuming is the at least one of the effects of being Tripped)? Are there any other effects? Until we have definitive answers to those questions, we can't really address whether or not everyone should be able to do it whenever they feel like it.

4e in general is moving away from "these specific conditions have to exist in order for. . ." to (as others have noted) giving the authorial or narrative power to the player. The Player decides when conditions are right for them to shine - it makes their successes more relevent. Rather than provide rules that allow you to attempt "special" maneuvers at a reduced chance of success; they limit how often you can attempt them. But they are giving the player the ability to choose when they are relevent.

Look at the the ranger daily "Split the Tree" - same chance to hit as one of his at-will exploits and double the base damage to two targets! Other games would severely penalize the ability and let you do it as often as you want: the net effect in terms of damage done, would probably be about the same. The net effect in terms of the Player's sense of participation and accomplishment is not, though. The 'penalty' model leads to "New round? I Split the Tree again . . ." with decreased return ("I would have at least done some damage with a normal attack"). The 4e model gives the player a greater sense of commitment ("I really need to take those guys down. . . .I Split the Tree!") without the downside.

I know this is a bad word around here, but i am going to say it anyway: Let the players do cool things - but make it cool when they do.

 

[Bagpuss]

You've got it backwards. I see it, it doesn't seem like it works, and here's why. Specifically, here's why: "Per Encounter" sounds like an arbitrary and unrealistic limit on the amount of times that someone can try to trip someone else.

It is arbitrary and unrealistic.

That is because D&D isn't trying to simulate reality, it is simulating the heroic fantasy genre. In heroic fantasy film and fiction, you don't see the hero trying to trip his opponent every few seconds or even every couple of minutes. He does it perhaps once or twice in the whole book, or film, and when he does it has a significant effect to the outcome of the battle.

That's why it's per encounter. It accurately simulates the genre conventions. I'd be happy if it was a daily it would be a more 'realistic' reflection of the genre.

If you want trip to reflect the effect it has in fiction and film, then the outcome of tripping someone has to be significant, and to reflect the genre you have to have a reasonable chance of it being successful. You don't see the hero trying and failing to trip the villain 5 times before he succeeds.

But in a game if you make it easy and powerful, then someone will do it all the time.... (like square, square, square in your favourite beat 'em up) and that doesn't realistically simulate the genre either. So you have to limit the number of occasions they can actually do it to be real reflection of heroic fantasy fiction and film.

It is arbitrary and unrealistic, because it has to be to realistically simulate a genre that is full of arbitrary and unrealistic events.

 

[Bishmon]

I don't need to make it realistic.

I need to make it believable.

And I'm starting with making it an option that can be done more than once every 5 minutes.

Because that's pretty unbelievable to me.

Heck, some people upthread have posted perfectly good rules as it is. Maybe I'll just use one of them. They may be believable enough.

Ok, more than once every five minutes. How much more? Once every six seconds? Because that's wildly ridiculous in a real fight. Once every minute? That's just as arbitrary as once every five minutes. Draw the line.

I don't mean to be snarky, but you're acting like the designers have made a rule saying that in 4E, one plus one now equals three, and you've got an easy fix to make that rule work like it obviously should. But there isn't an easy fix for this problem.

The 4E designers have given us something that is easily torn apart theoretically, but works very well practically, with the assumption that a DM or player will be willing to embrace that practicality and work it into the narrative in a way that makes sense.

If you've got a better solution, then let's hear it. If their design is so tremendously flawed, let's hear your proposed way to make it less so, and let's see if people can come up with crazy examples showing why your solution doesn't stick to the exact nature of the real-world mechanic.

 

[Bishmon]

It's still too hard of a limit for me. "Once In A While" is okay, "once per encounter," is artificial.

Brainflash:

I might use the recharge mechanic for a dragon's breath or something. At the beggining of their turn, roll 1d6, if it comes up a 5 or a 6, you can do it again. PC's who aren't fighters get to use the stunt system to do a lesser version of it, because it does take some training.

So trained fighters can now attempt a trip not based on any skill of their own, but because of unseen random factors?

Imagine the defender standing one very particular way, so the fighter attempts to trip him. The defender gets back up, the two get back into that very particular position, and now the fighter can't attempt another trip if a certain die roll hasn't happened?

Instead or arbitrary and unrealistic, you're content with random and unrealistic?

You see, it's easy to distort every proposed mechanic if you're unwilling to work it into a good narrative, which seems to be your primary complaint with the 4E trip mechanic.

 

[Lackhand]

So trained fighters can now attempt a trip not based on any skill of their own, but because of unseen random factors?

Imagine the defender standing one very particular way, so the fighter attempts to trip him. The defender gets back up, the two get back into that very particular position, and now the fighter can't attempt another trip if a certain die roll hasn't happened?

Instead or arbitrary and unrealistic, you're content with random and unrealistic?

You see, it's easy to distort every proposed mechanic if you're unwilling to work it into a good narrative, which seems to be your primary complaint with the 4E trip mechanic.

Eh. There's a fine line, but I actually like KM's proposed fix for the /encounter ability. It depends how bad being prone is, what happens when you try to get back up, &c&c, but for those who don't like a short breather recovering their tripping-muscles, it's pretty reasonable.

Me, I'm comfy with /encounter.

 

[Eldorian]

From what we were told in the D&D XP threads, there is no "grapple" option in 4th edition. There is only grab. And it doesn't let you wrestle--it just immobilizes the opponent until that opponent succees on an athletics or acrobatics check against some defense or other. We've been told that any way to take the grapple further than that--to twist someone's arm or neck or choke them or pin them would have to be a special power and cannot even be attempted by someone without that power. (Incidentally, makes one or the other of those a skill that everyone should take as "trained" and when combined with the armor check penalty rules we've seen makes it a lot easier to grab a fighter or paladin than an unarmored character--the fighter or paladin is probably wearing heavy armor that will negate all but one point of that +5 bonus for being trained in athletics so unless they spend a feat on skill focus, they're probably looking at much less than a 50/50 chance of escaping the grab--less chance, in fact, than a 10 strength wizard trained in athletics).

From what I understand, Juijutsu was invented by samurai as a means of fighting once disarmed, in battle. That meant wearing armor, and attacking armored foes. Hopefully, once we read the rules for grappling, they will capture this.

What I was told when I trained in kung fu is that something like 90% of real life fights end up grappling on the ground. That's probably not a scientific number, but a lot of them certainly do. But if your schoolyard bullies are using the 4th edition ruleset, they can't either grapple or push each other to the ground unless they select that as their special power.

90% of UNARMED fights end on the ground, sure. The UFC shows us this. 90% of ARMED fights end with people bleeding to death.

As for the whole trip as an encounter power, I see both sides. The thing about modern fighting is that modern fighters know how to trip and to defend against it. If you watch the first few UFCs, you'll see that this is a modern thing, and that unarmed fighters until very recently didn't know how to fight on the ground unless they specifically trained for it. This is why Royce Gracie kicked so much ass early on. I think DnD is closer to early UFC fights than modern ones. Modern mixed martial arts are very much a product of our cosmopolitan society. Hence the "mixed." What I'm saying is that I understand the desire to have trip be a at will, optimal attack for certain builds, just as it was an optimal tactic for Royce Gracie before people learned how to counter it as a result of modern cross training. I also understand it being a per encounter thing for fighters, an armored and armed class, and an at will thing only for some future grappling based class, perhaps monk (though I'd prefer a "grappler" or "brawler" name instead of monk, and all the baggage with that).

 

[Geron Raveneye]

The funniest part of this thread is realizing that there are plenty of people here who had problems with Vancian Magic "arbitrarily" limiting magic use on account of how powerful it was, and who find it a lot nicer (and some even more realistic) than it is turned into a mix of at will and per encounter powers, while at the same time defending the arbitrary limit of "per encounter" for something that everybody can attempt (with differing chances of success) at any time because otherwise it is either "too complicated", "unrealistic" or "impractical". Essentially, tipping has been turned into a kind of magical spell that only some classes can do, and only after "recharging" themselves...and it is perfectly okay. I think I read on page 1 that one poster even wouldn't mind it being a "per day" power, akin to more powerful magical spells.

And people wonder why we roleplayers are generally viewed as a weird bunch.

 

[ruleslawyer]

The funniest part of this thread is realizing that there are plenty of people here who had problems with Vancian Magic "arbitrarily" limiting magic use on account of how powerful it was, and who find it a lot nicer (and some even more realistic) than it is turned into a mix of at will and per encounter powers, while at the same time defending the arbitrary limit of "per encounter" for something that everybody can attempt (with differing chances of success) at any time because otherwise it is either "too complicated", "unrealistic" or "impractical". Essentially, tipping has been turned into a kind of magical spell that only some classes can do, and only after "recharging" themselves...and it is perfectly okay. I think I read on page 1 that one poster even wouldn't mind it being a "per day" power, akin to more powerful magical spells.

And people wonder why we roleplayers are generally viewed as a weird bunch.

The problem with Vancian magic isn't the arbitrary limitation, but rather the effect that has on game play. Besides, tripping is actually something people do in the real world, and as is evident from the numerous posts by practicing martial artists, the per-encounter model is in fact consonant with their experiences as the best way to practically model tripping.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The martial art expert explained very well why trying to trip someone is WORTH once per encounter. The black belt poster eventually knows that it's a bad tactic, but certainly that doesn't mean you cannot physically do it.

Oh I never suggested you cannot physically do it! Personally in a fight vs multiple opponents I would likely knock every opponent to the ground (once each) or I would lose. However, I also would likely count as a monk, and who knows what their power set will be like? I believe I mentioned that the art I practice is ALL ABOUT knocking the other person down, and taking advantage of that position.

I just think that making it an encounter power is reasonable, for all the reasons people have stated. Someone mentioned the table-kicking manouver, and I agree that it's essentially a trip. I'm pretty sure the core rules allow for knocking opponents prone, the same way they allow for Grabs. But taking advantage (getting OA's, doing damage while attempting it, etc) takes special training (powers) and that's fine by me.

Fitz