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Why have dissociated mechanics returned?
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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6006907" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>I'm going to comment only on some of your points because they are quite a lot.</p><p></p><p>Generally speaking I agree with your concerns: experienced gamers can generally find an in-game explanation for everything, but the books should help those who can't do so on their own easily.</p><p></p><p>Of course let's keep in mind that everything, especially the monsters descriptions, is largely unfinished at this stage, and that they are focusing on the mechanics more than the descriptive text. But this is not a good reason to ignore concerns.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I generally agree on all your examples being at the moment poorly described.</p><p></p><p>There could be a splitting argument here on where to put the explanations: some gamers want everything under each monster's entry, so that they don't need to look anywhere else; I prefer to have descriptions on monsters' abilities at the beginning of the MM, so that they aren't reprinted dozens of time, so my preference would be that if "Mob", "Disciplined" etc are properties used for many monsters (very probable) then they should be described once and for all in a single place, either at the beginning or at the end of the MM.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It's a confusing ability because it grants the Halfling the possibility of walking through the space occupied by a large monster but it doesn't prevent OA from it, so unless you have an ability or circumstance that lets you avoid OA, you're unlikely to use this at all.</p><p></p><p>I agree that there should be a note saying that it might not work with every monster... certainly not with a Gelatinous Cube for example! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think this ability is very "gamist" in the sense that it's totally built on game mechanics with no consideration on what it actually represents. What the designers want here, is that you lose your turn's action. But I'm with you thinking that it should say why or how it happens. Maybe something as simple as "you are focusing on your inner strength to shrug off the fear effect" is enough for me.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>IMHO it is still unclear what Rituals really represent. Rituals are at-will so presumably they don't "tire" the caster as much as regular spells. But they have a material cost which their regular version doesn't. In the Warlock description it is explained that rituals are actually <em>simpler</em> than spells, in fact the Warlock does rituals but not spells, and this matches the fact that daily spells are limited by your level, rituals are not.</p><p></p><p>OTOH the Sorcerer does spells but not rituals... but this could be because the Sorcerer doesn't really understand the nature of spells, he only casts them spontaneously, so his powers are rather give-or-take, he has no options to "break them down" to a simplified version. Or it could be said that rituals are partially "externalize" due to the fact that you provide expensive material components in place of your inner expertise. Sorcerer can't externalize spells because they have the inner power but not the understanding. Warlock cannot internalize them (cast as regular spells) because they lack any inner power. Wizards can do both, because some inner power comes anyway from intensive studies.</p><p></p><p>But this is quite a lengthy and clumsy explanation...</p><p></p><p>Anyway it might be possible (and simpler) to just allow any spell to be cast as ritual. The benefit would be that you don't need for each spell to repeat "This spell can be cast as a ritual bla bla", if the costs (time and gp) are the same for all rituals of the same level (currently they aren't, but there seems to be a standard time&cost followed by all spells).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Essentially those spells should be free actions to cast, but IMHO the designers are somewhat afraid to make that so, and are instead currently specifiying for each of those spells individually what you can do in addition during the same round, but more or less it's always 2 actions for the price of one.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Worth its own debate, we already have a separate thread or two...</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It's not going to be like that once we have the narrative combat module. Your Fighter (and everyone else) will always have an option for takedown since level 1, only not the more convenient options using CS.</p><p></p><p>It's also possible that there will be other fighting styles granting the CS takedown at 1st level, or perhaps even that your DM can allow a DIY fighting style.</p><p></p><p>It isn't possible however (and maybe this is your real concern) to get more than one of those special actions at 1st level. This is certainly intentional, just like a Wizard get only N spells to start from, but you could have argued that another 1st level Wizard might know many more but in weaker versions. From the in-game point of view there isn't much criticism against this possibility, but at some point opening up the rules to this idea would complicate the game quite a lot. So the designers have to make a choice when it comes to how many options you have at each level, and apparently at the moment they decided that 3 for a 1st level Fighter are a good number.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 6006907, member: 1465"] I'm going to comment only on some of your points because they are quite a lot. Generally speaking I agree with your concerns: experienced gamers can generally find an in-game explanation for everything, but the books should help those who can't do so on their own easily. Of course let's keep in mind that everything, especially the monsters descriptions, is largely unfinished at this stage, and that they are focusing on the mechanics more than the descriptive text. But this is not a good reason to ignore concerns. I generally agree on all your examples being at the moment poorly described. There could be a splitting argument here on where to put the explanations: some gamers want everything under each monster's entry, so that they don't need to look anywhere else; I prefer to have descriptions on monsters' abilities at the beginning of the MM, so that they aren't reprinted dozens of time, so my preference would be that if "Mob", "Disciplined" etc are properties used for many monsters (very probable) then they should be described once and for all in a single place, either at the beginning or at the end of the MM. It's a confusing ability because it grants the Halfling the possibility of walking through the space occupied by a large monster but it doesn't prevent OA from it, so unless you have an ability or circumstance that lets you avoid OA, you're unlikely to use this at all. I agree that there should be a note saying that it might not work with every monster... certainly not with a Gelatinous Cube for example! :D I think this ability is very "gamist" in the sense that it's totally built on game mechanics with no consideration on what it actually represents. What the designers want here, is that you lose your turn's action. But I'm with you thinking that it should say why or how it happens. Maybe something as simple as "you are focusing on your inner strength to shrug off the fear effect" is enough for me. IMHO it is still unclear what Rituals really represent. Rituals are at-will so presumably they don't "tire" the caster as much as regular spells. But they have a material cost which their regular version doesn't. In the Warlock description it is explained that rituals are actually [I]simpler[/I] than spells, in fact the Warlock does rituals but not spells, and this matches the fact that daily spells are limited by your level, rituals are not. OTOH the Sorcerer does spells but not rituals... but this could be because the Sorcerer doesn't really understand the nature of spells, he only casts them spontaneously, so his powers are rather give-or-take, he has no options to "break them down" to a simplified version. Or it could be said that rituals are partially "externalize" due to the fact that you provide expensive material components in place of your inner expertise. Sorcerer can't externalize spells because they have the inner power but not the understanding. Warlock cannot internalize them (cast as regular spells) because they lack any inner power. Wizards can do both, because some inner power comes anyway from intensive studies. But this is quite a lengthy and clumsy explanation... Anyway it might be possible (and simpler) to just allow any spell to be cast as ritual. The benefit would be that you don't need for each spell to repeat "This spell can be cast as a ritual bla bla", if the costs (time and gp) are the same for all rituals of the same level (currently they aren't, but there seems to be a standard time&cost followed by all spells). Essentially those spells should be free actions to cast, but IMHO the designers are somewhat afraid to make that so, and are instead currently specifiying for each of those spells individually what you can do in addition during the same round, but more or less it's always 2 actions for the price of one. Worth its own debate, we already have a separate thread or two... It's not going to be like that once we have the narrative combat module. Your Fighter (and everyone else) will always have an option for takedown since level 1, only not the more convenient options using CS. It's also possible that there will be other fighting styles granting the CS takedown at 1st level, or perhaps even that your DM can allow a DIY fighting style. It isn't possible however (and maybe this is your real concern) to get more than one of those special actions at 1st level. This is certainly intentional, just like a Wizard get only N spells to start from, but you could have argued that another 1st level Wizard might know many more but in weaker versions. From the in-game point of view there isn't much criticism against this possibility, but at some point opening up the rules to this idea would complicate the game quite a lot. So the designers have to make a choice when it comes to how many options you have at each level, and apparently at the moment they decided that 3 for a 1st level Fighter are a good number. [/QUOTE]
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