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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6648039" data-attributes="member: 82106">Interesting. So lets see what the 4e DMG1 has to say. It says "Cast the Action as a Check", if its an attack, then make the DC one of the target's defenses. If its opposed, make it an opposed check. If its not an attack make it a skill or ability check. If damage is required then use a normal damage expression for something that could be repeated, or a limited damage expression if its one-time only, or if the effect would cause 'massive damage'.  Within each of these 2 categories there is Low, Medium, and High dice expressions. Later editions and revisions simplified damage expressions and adjusted the low level DCs down a bit and the higher level ones up a bunch (experience showed that the original "+1/2 levels" rate was MUCH too slow, PCs gained skill bonuses are more like +1/level in reality). And that's it. Page 42 doesn't explicitly touch on non-damage effects, but anyone who's even casually familiar with the terrain/hazard rules, the general run of powers (both PC and monster), etc has plenty of 'juice' to adjudicate that from. Most powers have SOME kind of effect, so even a highly repeatable stunt can be justified as doing low normal damage plus some minor effect (slow, grant CA, minor attack penalty, etc, all shortest duration). More significant effects would by examples include half damage on a miss, save ends minor effects, shortest duration significant effects (daze, immobilize, knock prone, pushed, etc). 'Super effects' (you really pulled off a whammy, something equal to a daily, hard DC, etc) and you can get into the stunned, save ends, etc. Power analogies also suggest a damage trade-off, with daily level effects getting a step down on damage expression if they have both a really good effect and a miss effect. Sly Flourish's writeup on all this is pretty good, but he's not really inventing anything new. He's just taken page 42, the errata to DC/damage expression, and the common understanding of power vis-a-vis trading of damage vs effect and put it on a page. It would have been nice if the RC would have done that.Now, if you compare that to the 5e DMG, the real beef I have is that 5e lacks anything like a common understanding of damage expressions and their relation to effects. The best place to achieve that might be monster attacks, but most specialized monster effects emulate spells or just plain lack significant effects. Spells aren't a good source, they're all over the map and 5e's damage scaling is really steep too, making it trickier. They do have a damage expression table, so its not 'all is lost' by any means. Still its neither quite as clean, nor really all wrapped up in one page of rules like it is in 4e. Honestly, I think 5e INTENDS to present the same thing in essence, but the 5e rules presentation IMHO is scattered and erratic, hard to reference, and not worded in a way that draws out a firm ruling, let alone presents a hard rule. I think both of them leave a bit to be desired, but the 4e version is still pretty solid.</blockquote>

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