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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6009391" data-attributes="member: 42582">That's nice of you to say so - thanks.I would agree that they are not unique to 4e. But I think 4e helps with both.In the paladin example, 4e helps because it has a clear damage curve, which makes it easier to adjudicate bonus damage that is meaningful but not game breaking. It also has a nice suite of conditions which interact with fairly predictable maths, which makes trade-offs (like bonus damage for swinging wildly and on fire, thereby also granting combat advantage) easier to adjudicate.In the wizard example, 4e helps because it has a DC-by-level chart. I don't have to try to come up with an &quot;objective&quot; DC that reflects the ingame difficulty of mind reading using a bodily possession spell.There are other ways to support creative play and improvisation. Burning Wheel, for example, posits more narrative power to players (so a PC can make a Perception check in combat to try to find a kettle on the stove, even if the GM hasn't described any such thing); and it also allows a player to scrounge for one advantage die, via creative engagement with the fiction, each time a check is made - but part of the control on this is that you don't always want to roll with the maximum number of dice, because advancing your PC requires making some checks that are hard relative to the number of dice you get to roll.I'm sure that improvisation in 3E would be possible, too. But from reading through the books I don't get a sense of how to do it, mostly because I am not given a clear sense of the action resolution framework and expectations. Whereas in 4e I am. To me, that is the difference. For others, though, perhaps 3E was intuitive. I can only speak to my own experience.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6009391, member: 42582"] That's nice of you to say so - thanks. I would agree that they are not unique to 4e. But I think 4e helps with both. In the paladin example, 4e helps because it has a clear damage curve, which makes it easier to adjudicate bonus damage that is meaningful but not game breaking. It also has a nice suite of conditions which interact with fairly predictable maths, which makes trade-offs (like bonus damage for swinging wildly and on fire, thereby also granting combat advantage) easier to adjudicate. In the wizard example, 4e helps because it has a DC-by-level chart. I don't have to try to come up with an "objective" DC that reflects the ingame difficulty of mind reading using a bodily possession spell. There are other ways to support creative play and improvisation. Burning Wheel, for example, posits more narrative power to players (so a PC can make a Perception check in combat to try to find a kettle on the stove, even if the GM hasn't described any such thing); and it also allows a player to scrounge for one advantage die, via creative engagement with the fiction, each time a check is made - but part of the control on this is that you don't always want to roll with the maximum number of dice, because advancing your PC requires making some checks that are hard relative to the number of dice you get to roll. I'm sure that improvisation in 3E would be possible, too. But from reading through the books I don't get a sense of how to do it, mostly because I am not given a clear sense of the action resolution framework and expectations. Whereas in 4e I am. To me, that is the difference. For others, though, perhaps 3E was intuitive. I can only speak to my own experience. [/QUOTE]

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