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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5727385" data-attributes="member: 42582">Interesting topic.I don't think I've got a lot to add on the maths front, but I do have some views on how modifiers contribute to play.From experience, I think that fiddly modifiers arising from manipulating the fiction don't necessarily add a great deal directly to the play experience. For example, when a player declares that his/her PC is going to walk a tightrope, I'm not sure that it adds a great deal to play to have the player announce "I change out of my boots into my special slippers" in order to get a +2 bonus (or eliminate a -2 penalty) or whatever. (Of course, these fiddly adjustments can matter to the maths, but I'd probably rather get those mathematical elements from somewhere else.)On the other hand, I find in 4e that daily utilities that grant significant modifiers (eg the paladin's Wrath of the Gods (? I think that's it) utility that grants everyone +CHA to damage) are interesting, because (unlike changing your footwear, or pulling out your special piton hammer) they have a resource management dimension to them (in the case of Wrath of the Gods, for example, it is a daily, and it affects only allies in a limited area, and used during a combat that suddenly turns out to be harder than anyone thought it woudl be, it sucks a minor action).What I have found, in running 4e, is that multiple checks embedded in the fictional situation go a long way to making play engaging, and smoothing out issues of big bonuses vs small bonuses. For example, if winning a social skill challenge requires 4 successes on Diplomacy, then even the PC whose Diplomacy bonus is (or is close to) an autosuccess still has to engage with the fiction 4 times in order to win, and that creates the possibility for interesting things to happen (eg in order to motivate the second or third check, perhaps the PC offers a concession).I find that fictional positioning of this sort can also be more fun than fiddly modifiers for dealing with things like slippers and pitons. Instead of encouraging scrounging for bonuses, which can quickly become tedious, use the fiction to help shape the unfolding consequences of failure and success. This means that climbing barehanded rather than with rope and line doesn't necessarily become more likely to fail, but has different (but not necessarily worse, in some absolute sense) consequences for failure.Does any of that make sense?</blockquote>

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