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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8185286" data-attributes="member: 42582">My knowledge of 3E/PF is a bit like your knowledge of 4e - limited play experience + a lot of reputation.That knowledge base gives me an impression that 3E/PF has extremely complex PC build rules (rivalling Rolemaster, it would seem) which don't seem to deliver a lot of pay-off, in the sense that PCs can vary quite wildly in mechanical effectiveness for no reason that seems to make much sense from the point of view of game play or game design.There are also a lot of keywords whose function seems to be to generate a connection to the fiction that strikes me as rather superficial - eg dragons can have double-digit natural armour bonuses, but in the fiction I don't know what that is meant to mean given that the best forged armour bonus seems to be around +15 or so for +6 magic plate armour. What does it mean to say that a typical adult dragon has natural armour that is tougher than what a powerful archmage, or even Hephaestus, can forge?One of the things I like about 4e is that, while the rules don't always come out and expressly tell you, it's generally pretty easy to see what bits of the build mechanics, and the stat blocks they yield, are concerned with the fiction and what bits are about locating this particular game element within a metagame context. So the "power" keyword on a bonus is about the latter - it's part of a stacking rule. Likewise the +30 to attack on an epic tier character or creature - that's a system-based comparator used against an equally-metagame defence number, and the high defence number signals the story significance (ie epic rather than heroic) of the entity in question.But keywords like "fire" or "cold" or "arcane" or "teleportation" - while they can have mechanical significance - are also straightforwardly anchored to the fiction. To give an example that came fairly early in my 4e GMing experience: when a player wanted his PC to use the Icy Terrain power, which has the "cold" keyword, to freeze part of a stream or pond (I've forgotten the precise details) I had no trouble saying yes (again I can't remember the precise details of resolution, but I probably called for an Arcana check). This seems a natural application of, and extrapolation from, the DMG discussion of using powers to affect objects (the example given there is of gauzy curtains being particularly vulnerable to fire damage).That's not to say that the game is perfect. There are some published creatures that have levels and associated numbers (attacks, defences etc) that locate them in (say) the paragon or epic tiers while the associated fiction gives no explanation of what makes them any different, story-wise, from a typical Orc or giant ant. Some obvious keywords weren't initially included where they should have been.As an example of this last point, consider the Deathlock Wight's horrific visage:Horrific Visage (standard; recharge 4, 5, 6) * Fear Close blast 5; +7 vs. Will; 1d6 damage, and the target is pushed 3 squares.I remember loving this when I read it - the wight fixes its gaze on its enemies and they recoil in horror (it also demonstrates mechanical elegance in design - the "blast" keyword can do duty both for "cones" like burning hands and for facing-based attacks like gazes; and the push mechanic can work not just for a target being moved by its attacker, but for a target moving instinctively in response to something its attack does to it). When I used a deathlock wight in play of course I had a pit nearby, which one or maybe two PCs fell into as they fell back from the undead.But the damage should have the "psychic" keyword. I can't remember now if I fixed this at the time; but WotC picked it up and fixed it in a revised version of the creature published on their website.There's a school of thought that sees 3E/PF as very "rich" or "deep" and 4e as "shallow" or "superficial", but I don't get that at all. It seems to rest on a very different conception from my own as to what makes a RPG rich and what the relationship between mechanics and fiction should be.</blockquote>

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