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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5944256" data-attributes="member: 42582">But a pillow can't "actively remove things that can kill you" (by your standards, as I understand them, it offers damage reduction, but not healing).Whereas what I had in mind is that, when my toddler falls over, she could die (from hitting her head on the footpath). But happily she hasn't yet! - and she is up and going again once I "kiss her better". That is to say, to mitigate the consequences of this fall I don't have to be able to do things that would stop someone dying (you can't kiss a mortal wound better).When Aragorn dreams of Arwen (in the Peter Jackson version) and revives, he is not the beneficiary of a power that can prevent death. The point is that, while he might have been dying, he is not. And that is how warlord healing works in 4e (and second wind also, and in my view also all the "word" abilities).I don't think it's a problem - though of course it's a significant feature of the ruleset.AD&D had it too, with poison saves for example - you can't narrate the attack in full detail (did the stinger break the skin?) until the poison save is made. The Forge calls this "fortune in the middle", and characterises it as deferring the establishment of what is happening in the fiction until some furthter mechanical procedures are undertaken.There's no doubt that the deferral in 4e can be longer (both in terms of ingame time, and mechanical procedures to be undertaken at the table) than in AD&D. But the principle is the same (which is why I've taken to posting "Schroedinger's Wounds!" every time someone who is critical of 4e posts in favour of AD&D-style saving throws - 3E, of course, changed saving throws to be much more like a skill mechanic without this sort of metagame dimension).You don't have to make that assumption - for example, if the kobold hits and the PC stays up, you don't have to assume that the blow had the potential to kill at all. And if, as is often the case, the hit is not narrated in much detail, it won't per se harm the game to spell it out in more detail later if that becomes necessary ("You notice blood oozing out from under your armour - maybe that kobold hit you harder than you thought!").Obviously. But if it doesn't kill you, then there's no need to narrate it as even potentially fatal if you don't want to.And I reiterate that this is a non-sequitur. Because if it hasn't killed you, then narrating its mitigation or overcoming (which is what restoring hp would represent) need only establish something in the fiction sufficient for such mitigation or overcoming, which need not be something capable of undoing the threat of fatality. (And this is a good thing for recovering-hp-by-resting rules, because as a general rule rest is not capable of undoing things that can kill you.)I assume you don't treat the gameworld as a stop-motion one, even though this is how turn-based initiative presents it (especially in the playtest, with fewer out-of-turn actions than 4e or even 3E). So presumably you are deferring establishment of what actually happened in the fiction until every creatures has taken its turn - or something.In fact, not even as simulationist a game as Runequest or Rolemaster satisfies your description of the establishment of the details of the shared fiction, because you don't know where a combatant aimed until after a hit is achieved and hit location is determined (in RM's case, via the roll on the critical chart plus the shield breakage roll).Again, I'm not saying that 4e is not different. It is. But the difference is not one of radical kind. And therefore, saying that things can't be that way, or must be some other way, if the establishment of the shared fiction is going to proceed properly, is not true. (And that's putting to one side the many other RPGs besides 4e that have robust fortune-in-the-middle mechanics and are not known for being weak on story, like HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, etc.)This has nothing to do with whether or not designs can or can't work, and can or can't achieve GM-player-GM "call and response" play. It is just reiterating what is notorious, that a lot of people don't like 4e's fortune-in-the-middle mechanics.That's a legitimate point, but I think it's a mistake to frame it in terms of what the mechanics must be if a certain sort of traditional RPG procedure is to work, given that there are many games that use the same procedure but lack your mechanical desiderata. HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, Tunnels & Trolls and 4e all work on call-and-response, the same as AD&D and 3E. All have fortune-in-the-middle mechanics. And so do the latter two (saving throws and turn-by-turn initiative, respectively; and also hp, on the Gygaxian interpretation of them).I don't think this is necessarily true. My sense is that designing a game with good fortune in the middle mechanics is hard.</blockquote>

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