I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Mustrum_Ridcully said:"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.
Well, without a specific mechanic effect, it's lame.
And "Per Encounter" isn't actually an abstraction. It's very concrete. It means "Between the time swords are drawn to the time they are sheathed, and for 5 minutes after, I can do this once."
Knocking someone prone doesn't fit into that mold very nicely. It shouldn't be something that concrete.
Bagpuss said: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.
Right, but he doesn't loose the ability to do it when he does it once.
That's a crucial disconnect. He is ABLE to attempt it more than a D&D character is ABLE to attempt it. Jackie Chan doesn't loose the ability to trip someone until the next battle just because he did it once already. Maybe he doesn't do it more than once, but he's capable of it. Presumably, if he had to fight one-legged men with inner-ear problems, he could do it more than once. But a D&D character couldn't.
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.
The disconnect here is between potential and actual use. In the movies, this is scripted, so only actual uses matter. In D&D, it's not, so potential uses matter just as much, if not more. Presumably, they CAN trip more than once, they just choose not to for a variety of reasons. D&D should reflect this: a character should be ABLE to trip more than once, but perhaps it is only a useful tactic in specific circumstances.
That would be accurately simulating genre conventions.
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.
The thing is that D&D is a game where your potential matters as much as your actual ability, if not even more. So in simulating the heroic action, the game should allow for many potential uses, while encouraging uses that are actually in line with how heroic action is presented. Thus, rather than arbitrarily limit the amount of times you can trip, it should specifically make trip a good option only in a limited number of circumstances.
Loosing the capacity for an ability that I can't really logically loose the capacity for doesn't gel with my suspension of disbelief very well.
Bishmon said: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.
There's a better solution for me than the one they chose, of that I am confident.
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.
That's a pretty horrible assumption to make, I think.
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.
I'll tell you in June. Or you can give me $5,000 and I'll tell you sooner!
So trained fighters can now attempt a trip not based on any skill of their own, but because of unseen random factors?
Actually, both. Which reflects the idea of looking for an opportunity to use the tactic. Essentially, once the character uses the ability, the enemies are going to be watching for that trick again, but the chaos of combat doesn't let anyone keep anything straight, and, sooner or later, the fighter is going to see another opening (when it is recharged).
Perhaps Improved Trip makes it recharge on 3-6, making it more likely that the fighter can see an opening.
I'm still not totally happy with it being fighter-exclusive...though I suppose maybe a "Fighter Training" feat or something will let someone get it, so maybe it's not a big deal.
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?
Die roll represents how long it takes the enemies to drop their guard enough to get into that position again. Since the fighter rolls it on the beginning of their turn, it's easy to fluff as: "You see the bandit making that mis-step again, and you can try to trip them again."
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.
No, my primary complaint would be perhaps most accurately phrased like I did above:
There's a problem with me loosing the capacity to do something I logically wouldn't loose the capacity to do. That doesn't make sense. Throw in a probably-unnecessary silo, and I don't see how the world is made a better place by this rule.