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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4092001" data-attributes="member: 2067">That's slightly missing the point, but okay, let's make these one-legged blobs with inner-ear problems dangerous. They're now ax-wielding one-legged blobs with inner-ear problems I still can only knock one down unless I run away, hide for five minutes, and knock the next one down.Or I guess you could say that because there's no challenge involved in tripping them, they don't have to roll to trip them, but where is the line drawn as to the 'challenge of tripping something'?At least others have admitted that it's arbitrary! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Again, this misses the point. It would be more accurate to rephrase my statement to say "It's harder to grok that you can only stab someone through the heart once every five minutes. You could be surrounded by tied-up hostages begging to be murdered, but nope, you can only stab one through the heart, and then five minutes later you can stab another through the heart."And yeah, I'd still have a problem with that.If Trip worked off of some sort of "balance point" system, maybe I could grok it, too, but I think that would probably be needlessly complex.If 4e gives me rules that allow me to do something like a trip even if I don't have the Trip card in my hand, I don't have much of an issue. If 4e says I can't do something like a trip if I don't have the Trip card in my hand, I have an issue.If I don't loose the ability, no problem.But having a per encounter power means that when I use the ability, I loose it for the rest of the encounter. I cannot. No matter how much it would make sense to be able to do it, no matter how much the tactics would favor it, no matter how clever and creative I am as a player, I am forbidden unless the DM cheats for me or something.So per-encounter abilities is at the very least an exceedingly counter-intuitive way of reflecting an ability that you always can do.Well, no, they CAN'T. The rules say they can't. You use per-encounter abilities once per encounter, tripping is a per-encounter ability, you can't use tripping more than once per encounter. There is a disconnect because whether or not to excersize this option should be in the hands of the player, not the rules. They should have the ability, the rules should dictate that it's a niche ability. In-character, Jackie Chan and Legolas make a choice to do it or not, and only choose to do it once. The reasons they make that choice are both in-character choices (suboptimal abilities they don't get much of a chance to use optmially) and more meta choices (boring, repetetive).In character, my 4th level fighter doesn't get a choice. He can only do it once. The reason he can do it once is entirely a meta choice, and that's entirely backwards.Having the potential means it's my choice, even if it's not a choice that gets excersized, on a practical matter, more than once per encounter.It's a player psychology thing, which is actually the most important thing.It really didn't. Point 1: If the rules are easy to remember and flow from the rest of the rules, you don't have to look them up. 3e's rules were 'special case scenarios' that were complex. You can simplify 3e's rules without arbitrarily limiting your potential abilities. BETTER!Point 2: Choice should be in the hands of the player. We don't need to provide them with options that make it 'too good.' BETTER!Point 3: Ditto with a DM.Point 4: The randomness was to allude to the fact that the ability isn't 'used up,' while assuming that the 4e designers designed trip to be per-encounter for a very good reason. I'll see in June whether the reason was good enough, I guess.I didn't choose Legolas's actions.That's why movies aren't games.</blockquote>

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