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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6006891" data-attributes="member: 42582">That is a red herring. No one is saying that fighter should be able to teleport or view distant places through crystal balls without the use of magic.But it doesn't take magic to perform a lightning-fast attack against several nearby opponents. However, the details of D&D's action resolution mechanics require that this be handled carefully in the action economy. Note the contrast, for example, with Tunnels & Trolls, where there is no mechanical difference between attacking one enemy and attacking a group of them.Of course, D&D's action resolution system - with a turn-based action economy - is itself a metagame mechanic, which then benefits, from the mechanical balance point of view, by layering on other metagame mechanics like martial dailies.There is no difference, in the fiction, between a 4e fighter and a T&T fighter carving their way through a horde of orcs - but only D&D has the mechanical system (turn-based combat with an action economy) to make martial dailies a mechanically apposite feature of the system.I know I'm not your target audience for that question, but (for what it's worth) my concerns would be that the potential for spamtasticality (i) makes balance more difficult to achieve, and (ii) makes it more likely that gameplay will be boring. Also, there is the fact that a fighter can be low on fatigue/stamina/adrenaline yet fight, run and jump at full capacity. What are we measuring again? It looks to me like an arbitrary metagame pool. So let's just have encounter powers and avoid the problems of spamtasticality.1st ed AD&D is upfront of this. So is B/X, though to a somewhat lesser extent I think. But I don't think that 3E says this, nor did 2nd ed as best I recall (but it's been a long time since I've looked at a 2nd ed PHB). And obviously 4e does not take this approach at all.Just as I think it can be a mistake to project 3E's approach onto all editions, I think it can be a mistake to project the classic D&D approach onto later editions.I'm not sure what you mean by "encounter imbalance". In 4e, if the players all deploy a good chunk of their PCs' daily powers, the encounter will be a bit easier than it otherwise would be, but in my general experience this doesn't have too big an effect on combat pacing and excitement. And hurting pacing is the only way I can make sense, at the moment, of the "balance" of an individual encounter being mucked up.I think the issue here is GM force. The sort of effort that 3E requires from a GM, once play is at (say) 9th level and above, is a high degree of GM force over many aspects of the game. Whereas 4e is designed to deliver balance (both mechanical effectiveness balance and spotlight balance) without significant exercise of GM force over any but one part of the game - namely, scene-framing.I think that part of the dislike of 4e from some RPGers is there dislike of this model of GMing (again, something that 4e takes up from well-known modern indie RPGs). And D&Dnext is turning back to a model of GMing that has been more traditional for D&D, and that I think reached its peak with 2nd ed and a certain sort of 2nd-ed-ish approach to 3E. The slogan for this is "DM empowerment".Sure. That's why many people can't take hit points seriously: either because they dislike them as a metagame mechanic, or becaus they burst into laughter at the idea of hit points as "meat", as if human bodies were planks of wood that might gradually get whittled away by goblin sword blows.I was once such a person. Then 4e showed me a game built around taking hit point seriously as a metagame mechanic.What excatly does this prove about hit points?But you can do it again. Brutal Strike reduces the hit points of the victim by X. There are other ways to reduce the hit points of a victim by X - especially if X is defined in fictional rather than mechancial terms (given that any of a range of changes in hit point status can have the same fictional meaning, and vice versa).Did no one ever tell you that Heironeous moves in mysterious ways!I actually posted, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/6004164-post235.html" target="_blank">upthread</a>, an argument that so-called "dissociative mechanics" provide a better support for immerisvely playing a PC of faith, because they prevent just the sort of thing you describe from happening, by permitting the player to narrate victories as divine assistance and failures as divine punishment. [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] has not yet responded to it.All the way back in the 1970s, as the quote from Gygax's DMG shows!Which is to say, you depart from published assumptions for play that date back at least to 1979. Yet you continue to post as if you have some special or inherent grasp on the "essence" of D&D!Just as you think your "no PC is special" approach best captures the spirit of D&D, so you might recognise that others of us think (for example) that our 4e games capture, in a more than merely adequate way, the spirit of D&D.But you insist on telling other who also love D&D that they hate it. If you want your love for the game to be acknowledged, you might do others the courtesy of reciprocation.</blockquote>

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