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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5995118" data-attributes="member: 54877">I think this aspect of 4E is optional but poorly called out. I've said before that nothing stops a group from playng 4E exactly like Hero, in that powers are reskinned, but only at the time the character pick them--where upon the skin is locked and will now have an effect on the play. That would precisely be playing 4E as an effects-based game, removing any shred of player narrative ability. In such a game, if you define your CAGI as "taunts," then it won't work as well or even at all on creatures that would be resistant to such. If you define it as "appearing to drop your guard," then likewise. This is really no different than all the rulings and adjudications that some group accumulate in AD&D and then consider binding going forward.  Presumably, if you can't lock the skin of a given power, then your character can't take it. A lazy variation on this would be to not lock the skin until such time as the power was used, but consider it locked from then on. Obviously, that would be an irritant for a group deeply concerned with immersion, as they would need to stop to make such a ruling each time it arose. But presumably even this group, if they didn't change characters often, would be off and running in short order. Hero is odd this way, in that the "game framework" is often not process sim, as it is meant to say something about the world of the campaign by what options you allow and how you do so--i.e. it is focused on results, not process. But a given campaign, in play, is very process-sim, in most of it's applications. (To a lesser extent this is true of GURPS, as well, though I'd say it is less framework, and thus more process-sim, in the campaign construction phase.) I don't consider the timing of the association of the elements to be a basis for calling something inherently "disassociated," but rather simple acknowledgement that the timing can change. Something like "late association" and "early association" or "fixed association" and "variable association" would not only be more accurate, but would lose the backhanded slur of mental disfunction.  If the original "essay" had said that the default 4E encourages variable, late association, and thus can interfere with immersion, no one would have batted an eye.</blockquote>

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