Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink

[Jester David]

Having a warlord be able to grant buffs, or manipulate the action economy, doesn't change what anyone can do in the fiction. It doesn't make people fight who couldn't, for instance. These are various mechanical devices that D&D makes available for expressing the rather simple idea in the fiction that the presence of this person inspires his/her fellows.

This particular subset of the conversation was unrelated to the warlord, but instead focusing on the necessity of defining what martial characters are capable of:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...drink/page58&p=6851893&viewfull=1#post6851893

 

[Tony Vargas]

One very evident design feature of D&D - but one that often seems to be overlooked in discussions about its design - is that a huge amount of variation between individual PCs, and between classes, feats etc - is not variation in the fiction but simply variation in the mechanics.

For instance, the difference between a bonus to damage, a bonus to hit and a bonus attack is not (or certainly need not) be any difference in the fiction, given that the attack mechanic is an abstraction, the relationship between hitting and damage is an abstraction (damage on a miss/successful save, anyone?), etc.

You're right, that's often overlooked. In fact, I think it's often denied. It's natural to assume that a damage bonus means 'hit harder' (or in the case of SA, hit a vulnerable spot every time), an attack bonus means hit more often, and an extra attack means swing more often. That last is probably the most absurd, since there's no way characters in melee are swinging once per six seconds (let alone once per minute in the olden days) - OTOH, ammunition is counted at 1 arrow/whatever per attacks.

Having a warlord be able to grant buffs, or manipulate the action economy, doesn't change what anyone can do in the fiction. It doesn't make people fight who couldn't, for instance. These are various mechanical devices that D&D makes available for expressing the rather simple idea in the fiction that the presence of this person inspires his/her fellows.

A good point. Many of the misgivings about the warlord, and about martial viability in general, have been over 'what anyone can do in the fiction.' The fear is that giving martial characters any versatility or agency necessarily requires they do things in the fiction that would be unrealistic. Under the forgone double-standard that without magic, everything in D&D must meet a very high bar for IRL-realism, of course.

 

[Hussar]

OTOH, ammunition is counted at 1 arrow/whatever per attacks.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...re-Nor-any-drop-to-drink/page60#ixzz44G4OXEzs

And, despite everyone knowing this and all this being true on the face of it, people still freaked out that 4e stopped tracking ammo. It's such a bizarre thing to me to see people reacting to stuff like this that is just commonly understood throughout the history of the game. Even going back to 1e and Basic/Expert, the "combat round" was always acknowledged as an abstraction where all sorts of other stuff was going on in that period of time.

Yet, if we follow the logic that combat is abstract, thus ammo can be considered part of that abstraction, people collectively lost their cool. How could a character possibly throw that many knives in a round or shoot that many arrows? Oh my god!!! It's so ((Insert whatever negative phrase you feel fits best here)). It's like people read the game, but then ignore what they're reading and insert their own interpretation, which is actually not supported in any way by the text of the game, and then insisting that their interpretation is somehow the right one.

We see this all over the place. Whether it's the HP=Meat "discussion" or tracking ammo, or being able to "inspire" allies. It's so frustrating to try to have these discussions when people keep substituting definitions that aren't supported by the game itself.

 

[monaliza23]

many thanks for this info

 

[MoonSong]

4e stopped tracking ammo.

4e stopped tracking ammo? I've been playing it wrong then...

 

[Hussar]

4e stopped tracking ammo? I've been playing it wrong then...

That is a rule in 4e. You don't track ammo in 4e. You can, obviously, but, you don't have to. Thing is, how do you do it with so many burst effects? How many arrows did you actually shoot when targeting six targets with a burst effect? In any case, yes, 4e doesn't require tracking ammo, and specifically says so.

 

[Fable23]

Pathfinder initially tied 4e in the summer of 2010, prior to the release of any Essentials products save the Red Box, with the majority of Essentials coming out in the fall when D&D pulled back ahead. Pathfinder beat 4e following Essentials.
4e was losing sales and Pathfinder was catching prior to Essentials. Essentials was (very likely) a response to the dropping sales rather than a cause.