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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5889265" data-attributes="member: 42582">Come over to the Falling Damage thread or the April 3rd thread (which is another hp/surge discussion) and I think you'll see that those essays leave room for a lot of variation in interpretation of hp!This is where I believe the crux lies.I simply don't agree that martial dailies represent special techniques that are distinctive in the gameworld.Take Stop Thrust again. That is a shift then attack (as a reaction) then immobilise. Contrast it to the following sequence of at-will manoeuvres - the fighter moves on his/her turn, to a square where s/he thinks an enemy might try to move past. The enemy moves past. The fighter takes an opportunity attack, hits and therefore stops the enemy's motion. Mechanically, these are different things. In the fiction, I contend that they are indistinguishable. Because in the fiction there is no such thing as an opportunity attack, an immediate reaction, etc. The fiction is not a world of turn-based attacks and movement.What the daily does, in the case of Stop Thrust, is not to change the fiction, but to give the player an opportunity to exploit aspects of the metagame resolution methods (action economy, turns, movement rules etc) to produce a more desirable outcome, of his/her fighter hitting a moving target and pinning it down. But it doesn't change the fiction, any more than using a fate point to change a die roll changes the fiction.Now if the retort is "It's still noticable that, 1x/day, the fighter gets lucky with his/her manoevring and pinning of foes", I would say that (i) the same pattern of daily luck would be visible in a system in which players got one fate point per game day, or even per adventure ("Every time we go on an expedition, there's always a haystack at the bottom of the first cliff you fall over!"), but (ii) just as random patterns of dice rolls would even that out in the fate point mechanic, so the random patterns of hitting and missing and NPCs drawing or not drawing oppy's and the like will even it out in the case of the fighter with Stop Thrust.Furthermore, (iii) 4e has numerous mechanical features (it's feats, for examle, and it's item and class build rules too) which push in favour of specialisation. So a fighter built with one forced movement power probably has others, to maximise synergy. And then it's no longer the case that (for example) the fighter can only push and follow 3 times per day. Because somtimes the fighter pushes and follows using Footwork Lure. Sometimes the fighter pushes using an encounter power, and then follows using an ordinary move action. (And the difference between these is not discernible in the fiction, unless we assume that the fiction is about a stop motion world.) And it's not even observable in the fiction that only once per day is it a push 3, because sometimes the fighter uses Mountain Breaking Blow in a small room, and the maximum push is 1 or 2. Or sometime the fighter uses some other power in combination with an enhancer of some sort, and the push is greater than it normally would be, and now s/he is pushing 3 more than once per day.Maybe the fighter in my game is unusually coherent in his build, but he uses Footwork Lure, 3 close burst attacks (Come and Get It, the 3rd level Sweep that adds STR to hit, and Battle Cry from the Warrior Priest paragon path), and one or two daily powers that give forced movement against multiple targets (Brazen Assault perhaps?). He gets out-of turn attacks via oppys, combat challenge, Jackal Strike, Strikebacks, and maybe one or two other things I'm forgetting.And his weapon of choice is a polearm (with all the usual stuff: Rushing Cleats, Polearm Momentum, Polearm Gamble etc). The fiction for this character is pretty simple: if an enemy gets even a little bit close, the fighter drags that enemy in with deft polearm work, and the enemy is not getting out again. He attacks fast, he attacks long, the 10' or 15' around him is basically a ring of polearm steel that he utterly controls.Now I've got not doubt that it's possible to build a PC where the relationship between power choice, power usage and fiction maximises every possible point of strangeness, and minimimises the smoothness of the story. If people are building fighters whose fiction on every occasion is as corner case as (pre-errata) Come and Get It with a dagger against a group of pike wielders, then I can see where problems might arise. I don't know how many people are building such fighters, although I would think (like [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] says) there are plenty of other options available.I think rangers are pretty close to fighters in this respect, as far as the amenability of their dailies to being incorporated into a consistent fiction. I don't know rogues as well, and maybe they have more distinctively tricky things for their dailies? I've never heard rogues called out as a special case, though.And as far as warlords are concerned, I would think it's obvious that heaps of their abilities - their healing, their granting of extra movement and attacks, etc - are working at the metagame level. Even more than Stop Thrust, these are powers that manipulate the mechancis, but in the fiction don't exist as distinct manoeuvres, but just reflect the extra "oomph" and coordination of a fighting team guided by a tactical genius.I don't think there is any ingame rationale for martial daily powers. I think they're entirely a metagame device. The martial PC only knows that s/he is pretty hot at what s/he does, and every now and then it all comes together!If you mean, assumptions about the desirability of metagame mechanics? Sure.If you mean, assumptions about the desirability of metagame mechanics that are quite different in play from fate points? Sure.But if you mean an assumption that martial dailies are metagame in nature, then I'm not sure I agree. I mean, if someone could tolerate or even enjoy martial dailies were they metagame, but is put off only because they've become persuaded that they are process simulation, then I would deny that I'm making a different assumption: rather, I'm telling that person that they can have what they want. That's there's no reason to read martial dailies as process simulation, and every reason to treat them as metagame.In particular, as I've emphasised, the first step is to remember that the world of the fiction is not a stop motion one - the turn structure is just a mechanical device for adjudicating play.(I would add - it's striking to me how quickly and easily the turn structure has been incorporated into the unstated assumptions many players make about the nature of the D&D world. Like hp as meat. Whereas earlier editions of D&D, even with their initiative roles, all had variations on continuous action in a round. As soon as you realise that the turn structure does not correspond to anything in the gameworld, it becomes obvious that a power like Stop Thrust can't easily represent any distinctive technique within the fiction - because in the fiction there is no such category of action as "immediate reaction", which makes sense only relative to the mechanical turn structure.)</blockquote>

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