NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6007890" data-attributes="member: 87792">For the record this is absoutely correct.If my character concept is a Paladin in shining armour who charges into the midst of the foe, challenging them all and powers are associated then my Paladin is, to put it bluntly, much much more stupid than his mount - and I need to play stupidly.  His only reward for this, despite it being a mythic archetype, is going to be a Darwin Award.  And trying to play my Paladin is an unpleasant experience because the game is (arguably justifiably) penalising me for playing the archetype I want to.If my character concept is a Paladin in shining armour who charges into  the midst of the foe, challenging them all and powers are disassociated 4e style, then my Paladin may still be much more stupid than his mount.  But I'm playing the mythic archetype - and the game rewards me for doing so.  Now charging into the midst of enemies is still a high risk maneuver - I'm surrounded and likely to be gang-shanked.  But it's only a risky maneuver, not a completely stupid one because I get a benefit for behaving in character.  So this becomes a positive play experience - the game rewards me for playing to the archetype.To pick another illustration, there are two ways of modelling alcoholic characters.  I'm going to call them GURPS and FATE just for the sake of argument.  In GURPS an alcoholic character in the presence of alcohol needs to make a roll not to drink.  A perfectly associated mechanic.  In FATE, the DM offers a fate point to have someone's alcoholism become a problem.  Completely disassociated.What are the results of this?In GURPS, getting an alcoholic character into a bar is normally incredibly difficult.  They almost all behave like recovering alcholics who won't let liquor in the house.  It's a simple risk-reward matrix; drinking is all risk and no reward for a GURPS alcoholic character.  The rules even explicitely say that it's an addiction and the character drinks in the evening but this normally has no effect on the game unless they are in the presence of alcohol.In FATE, an alcoholic character really is an alcoholic.  You'll normally find them in their down time round a bar - and always tempted to take those extra drinks at just the wrong moment.  After all, the FATE points feel good, and they can handle it (or so they think).  And going cold turkey is actually hard.One is process mapped to alcohol addiction.  The other encourages you to behave as someone with a drinking problem.  I'll leave it to the reader to guess which I consider leads to the more immersive character.That isn't idiosyncratic.  At least if it is I share it.  The process as opposed to the emotional mapping just gets in the way IME.This.  A thousand times this.And I think that familiarity and mindset also comes in the other way.  You and I look at that Deathlock Wight you quoted above and almost instantly see what's going on.  My thought processes as DM are something like <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Horrific Visage"?  Ah.  It's showing its face.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Fear"?, "Psychic"?, "vs Will"?  It's terrifying them by projecting its true face into their minds.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">"Close Blast 5?  Push?"  It's only affecting people on one side of itself.  And everyone recoils.</li> </ul>Therefore from just those few lines I construct something functionally identical to :Horrific Visage (Su) As a standard action, once every 1d3 rounds, the Wight can project a reflection of the dark horror that it in fact is into the mind of all those in front of it.  Every enemy not immune to fear in a twenty five foot cone starting at its face must make a DC18 Will save or recoil in fear, retreating fifteen feet, stopping at the nearest wall, and taking 1d6 psychic damage. Would those four lines of text be considered an associated ability?  Because those are more or less what I (and I think @pmerton and others) see when I read the Deathlock Wight's Horrific Visage power.</blockquote>

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