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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5995643" data-attributes="member: 42582">I know I'm starting to sound like a rude person (the relevant expletive is against board rules), and I don't mean to, but what you say here isn't really true. I mean it's true in some cases, but not all. For example, to narrate your bard PC's Vicious Mockery against an ooze or a zombie as mocking the demon lord that is the ultimate source of the monster's power doesn't require author or director stance. You can do it all from 1st person, actor stance: "I want to defeat this ooze. It's powered by Juiblex. Juiblex, curse you and ally your slimy works - you're scum and dregs and nothing more!" And as a result the ooze's hold on its existence becomes more tenous (ie you roll X amount of psychic damage).Well, they both seem cases of the mechanics, interpreted in a certain way, don't yield the desired fiction.I don't get what's special about the "ray of truth", applied in a simulationist fashion, not mechanically yielding the desired result. Heaps of mechanics have that property. (In the case of "ray of truth", this is itself a result of a house rule. There is no "ray of truth" power in 4e as published. Is it such a surprise that when LostSoul rewrites a power, he also has to change the way it operates in the game?)Maybe I'm not clear enough.I get that someone can enjoy, or be used to, or able to tolerate, hit points. But not like something new that pushes metagame in a new direction (eg active rather than passive abilities).  [MENTION=44243]Shadeydm[/MENTION] says something like that a few posts upthread.But the "dissociated mechanics" thing is meant to be grounding this in some sort of analysis of design, not just of player preferences.That's why I keep mentioning my play experience with the paladin and the polymorph. My point is that there is at least one player in the world who wasn't "dissociated" by the so-called dissociative mechanics. Which suggests to me that their relationship to immersion is about personal preferences, and not some deep design flaw.I believe you that hit points don't bother you. But I'm missing how that's an issue about the design of hit points as a mechanic - that they have some special "immersion preserving" feature that encounter powers lack. I mean, if losing hit points is feeling fatigued and your luck ebbing away, than spending encounter powers can be feeling fatigued too, and your luck ebbing away - like  [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION] posted upthread.</blockquote>

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