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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6004153" data-attributes="member: 42582">I must confess that my non-understanding of what exactly counts as "dissociation" is becoming even more non-.But here's the "dissociation" that I see (somewhat contra LostSoul, therefore, and in agreement with   [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]): if I, playing a fighter with CS dice, want my PC to knock down his/her foe, I must decide to shift a die from (say) damage (Deadly Attack) to Knock Down. Thus, in choosing to have my PC knock someone down, I am choosing to do less damage than I otherwise would. How is that associated? As a player, I have to make the choice after I hit? How is that associated? What choice by my PC does it correspond to - it is a retcon of my intentions in launching the attack? I, as a player, know that my most damaging attack will never knock someone down. Does my PC know that? If so, how? If not, where is the association? - because my decisions are now influenced by knowledge of something that my PC does not know.LostSoul is correct that this fiction is nonsensical if the mechanic is treated as a process simulation rather than metagame - because how can my hardest attack not be my best chance to knock someone down?But I think LostSoul is wrong that it using the CS dice to knock down a foe is "associated", for the reasons I've given.I raised multiple attacks upthread. I don't see how "no more than one effective hit per 6 seconds (or 10 seconds in B/X, or 60 seconds in AD&D)" is any more or less associated than "no more than one Rain of Blows per 5 minutes". They are both parcelling out of success chances over an ingame time period.I think Hussar's point is that you can't try it multiple times in a round. And hence that, just as encounter and daily powers are limited in the frequency with which they can be deployed, so is everything else in D&D combat: it has a very strict action economy. (This is not true of all mainstream fantasy RPGs. Rolemaster and HARP both approach this differently, for example - Rolemaster has many options for continuous initiative and some options for giving up attack bonus to get multiple attacks, and HARP has a range of options for giving up attack bonus to get multiple attacks.)The principal difference that I can see between the 1x/round ability and the 1x/enc ability is that the game rules don't require you to consider what your PC is doing more than once per round, whereas they do require you to consider what your PC is doing more than once per encounter. But while that is a difference, I'm not at all sure how it factors into any issues of "dissociation".</blockquote>

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