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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 5157895" data-attributes="member: 60075">That's part of why this is a problem, though. We have a game which doesn't quite effectively communicate its design to its customers at this point. Contrast the card-dominated boardgame Dominion, which lets you know from the get go that the players compete against each other in terms of 3 resources - gold, victory points, and actions. A lot of cards give you an extra action on your turn, you know, just like an action point in 4E. It's clear from the get go that to win this game (Dominion) you ought not blindly focus on obtaining cards which will increase your gold - so as to buy victory points - but also on cards which let you have more actions on your turn. The more actions you have, the better chances of winning. The more you can deprive your opponents of having (as many) actions (as possible) the better.Basically, 4E is a game which runs on exactly the same "economy of actions" (except that players compete against the DM's monsters, not each other), but utterly fails to communicate that in its rule book.Sure, 4E system masters understand how making a power an interrupt or making its action cost a minor action (as opposed to a "stanard action") is a huge factor. But outside that, it's a hazy area of the game played by people who feel entitled to have their stock actions each round - move, standard, minor - and then feel tricked when the game denies them this stock.The fact that they (the players) compete against monsters not just in terms of hp attrition but also in terms of "can I ensure I have my stock actions this turn? can I ensure the monster doesn't get his?" is lost to them. But in 4E PCs and monsters ALSO compete against each other in terms of how many attacks you can even launch. Look at the game that way, and accept conditions which steal actions as part of that game. The fact that I need to write this reminded me of another root problem of 4E. Softening up a lot of the classical condition spells ("save or ...") pushed the game hard to a grind of PCs vs. monsters locked in a contest of pure hp attrition and nothing else. So, naturally people will look at 4E as nothing BUT hp attrition, and then the economy of actions and the contest at that level will pass them by. I have literally no other way to understand the OP. Yes, it's not nice to say that some players haven't understood a root element of the game's design, but as I go out of my way of saying, I think that's as much (if not more) the game's fault as it is the players'.In closing, Andy Collins is on record for saying that 4E's design was heavily inspired by Eurogames. So I strongly recommend you to play one of those if you've never done so - Dominion may easily provide such a benchmark experience - and then return to 4E with a greater comprehension of its intended design.</blockquote>

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