# Do YOU nod to "realism"?



## LurkAway (Dec 23, 2011)

Inspired by this thread,  I thought it would be interesting to find out -- have you ever  *refrained* from using a 4E power (even though it was perfectly  valid action according to the rules) because you thought the effect wouldn't be "realistic" in  the fiction?

For example, you decided not to use Come and Get It because it didn't make sense to you, or you decided not to use Vicious Mockery on a skeleton because it didn't make sense to you.

It doesn't matter what is your definition of "realistic" (plausible, believable, verisimilitudinous, etc.) and it doesn't matter if it seemed "realistic" or not according to real-life, medieval history, myths, fantasy movies, fantasy books, etc. and it doesn't matter if anyone else agrees with your interpretation or not.

The question is only: Do you avoid using 4E powers if the effect doesn't make sense to you in that moment in the fiction?

Edit: I just realized a flaw in the poll -- it doesn't account for players who always feel the effect is "realistic". Too late to change it?


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## Rechan (Dec 23, 2011)

Why would someone be on the 4e forum if they don't play 4e?


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## LurkAway (Dec 23, 2011)

Rechan said:


> Why would someone be on the 4e forum if they don't play 4e?



To make the results more useful, I wanted to sort out those who play 4E from those who don't, instead of making assumptions one way or another.


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## OnlineDM (Dec 23, 2011)

I make the powers fit the situation. I have no problem believing that the vicious words of a skilled bard can even inflict psychic damage on the undead. A fighter is intimidating enough to taunt all sorts of enemies into rushing toward him. If it seems counter-intuitive, I find a way to make it make sense.


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## LurkAway (Dec 23, 2011)

OnlineDM said:


> I make the powers fit the situation. I have no problem believing that the vicious words of a skilled bard can even inflict psychic damage on the undead. A fighter is intimidating enough to taunt all sorts of enemies into rushing toward him. If it seems counter-intuitive, I find a way to make it make sense.



I know, I wish I could edit the poll. I would have added:
I play 4E and, n/a, powers are always "realistic" to me
I do NOT play 4E, and n/a,  powers are always "realistic" to me


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## Rechan (Dec 23, 2011)

OnlineDM said:


> I make the powers fit the situation. I have no problem believing that the vicious words of a skilled bard can even inflict psychic damage on the undead. A fighter is intimidating enough to taunt all sorts of enemies into rushing toward him. If it seems counter-intuitive, I find a way to make it make sense.



Pretty much this.

Besides, I don't hold very rigidly to the power's title/etc. I just look at the actual mechanical effect and derive meaning from that. Vicious Mockery is simply psychic damage that puts a -2 to attacks - there can be multiple rationals for that, not limited to insults. The famous example is knocking an ooze prone. Prone does not _have_ to mean 'laying on the ground'. It simply means that the target must use a move action to recover from being at a disadvantage (-2 to atk, grant combat advantage). Hence the ooze has lost its consistency, requiring it to spend a move action pulling itself back together.

I mean if we can ration away Hit points not representing physical meat being hacked but abstract it to something else then we can ration away powers.


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## was (Dec 23, 2011)

I don't worry over whether or not the power seems realistic given the current situation.  I'm usually too busy trying not to die.


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## Droogie128 (Dec 24, 2011)

You need to add "Keep your realism out of my fantasy".


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## Argyle King (Dec 24, 2011)

I'm not sure how to answer the poll.


Yes, I do nod to realism.  However, as I am aware that D&D 4th has a much different idea about 'realism' than I do, I do not gimp myself when playing D&D by refusing to "use powers unrealistically."  I accept the way that powers and abilities work as being part of what's par for the course for 4th Edition.  As such, when playing 4th, I take a step back and change my mindset to better suit the system.  


When I'm not playing D&D?  I prefer a much closer relationship between fluff and crunch, and I prefer more of a nod toward realism.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Dec 24, 2011)

I think I've only run into this situation maybe twice in 100's of games. Between just refluffing or reinterpreting things and realizing that turn-based resolution and abstract mechanics give you a lot of leeway to explain or retcon something in small ways it just isn't much of a problem.


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## Dice4Hire (Dec 24, 2011)

Considering I play a fantasy RPG, realism is not a huge part of the game for me. 4E is no different. It is a game that models interaction well enough for me and my table to enjoy it. That is all I need. I really do not read the power's fluff and especially the name very closely. That is not important. 

Frankly, the most unrealistic parts of 4E power are the names and fluff in any case. Frankly, if the fluff is to be believed, powers (fromo level 1 on up) would cause most enemies from Orcus on down would die instantly, or have something else bad happen to them.


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## Matt James (Dec 24, 2011)

I don't go by a power's name or fluff. I usually make my players describe their actions. They have learned to adjust accordingly and to not get hung up on a Power's title. Now, LFR? That doesn't count for 4e. LFR is a tactical combat simulation.


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## Tony Vargas (Dec 24, 2011)

I've never let 'realism' get in the way of using a good power at the right moment - but I can and will radically re-flavor a power to better fit the narrative (which is 'RAW,' btw, PH1, p55).  The result is the same as declining to use the power or changing it's mechanics to fit the imagined 'realistic' effect:  the narrative remains consistent.  The difference is that re-flavoring doesn't screw with class balance or ruin the character's effectiveness or the player's fun.


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## GameOgre (Dec 24, 2011)

Keep your realism out of my fantasy +1


Really,if i want realism I will go run around my backyard. 

The game lacks any sort of realism,its a game!

 I find it no harder to imagine a 4 foot midget knocking a 12 ton scaled beast on its back than I do some skinny kid conjuring up a ball of fire or that Elves don't make cookies.


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## Hussar (Dec 24, 2011)

I generally nod to realism, possibly pat it on the back while it's sobbing in the corner, maybe offer a tissue or two.  

But, seriously, I really don't experience the huge disconnect that people talk about.  I understand where it's coming from, but, about the only time it bugged me was bards.  Bards annoy the crap out of me.

But, the guy playing the bard was having a blast and the character was a lot of fun.  I found I could just mostly ignore it and get on with things.

If it really bugged me, I suppose I could just nix bards. Meh.  Not that big of a deal.


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## Rechan (Dec 24, 2011)

Aside from what I said above, I like a "loose" idea of realism. While I know, intellectually, that it's impossible to stand near lava - it's _cool_ to have a fight in the middle of a volcano on the verge of erupting. That lava is too dense to sink into, and yet a dragon swimming through it is cool _and_ genre established in various paintings/novels/etc. 

You could probably dismantle most ideas in fantasy (like a fighter slaying an enormous dragon with a sword) with simple physics, but that's not fun. I mean it's impossible for insects to get too large but yet giant bugs is a genre staple. Hell, D&D does not reflect that you can die by just falling off your horse. 

To some that's a bug. To me, that's a feature. I want heroic action, not "oops you failed a breath check".


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## S'mon (Dec 24, 2011)

IMO it's the player's job to explain what happens so it makes some sort of sense in-world; it's the GM's job to require them to do so.  I don't think the player should be refraining from using powers unrealistically though, that would nerf their PC & hurt the party.  If they are incapable of coming up with a rationalisation for a particular's class's power then they should play a different class.

Unless undead are immune to psychic attacks I see no issue with using vicious mockery on their dead souls.  Now that Come & Get It is an attack vs Will it's fine by me too, the Fighter is luring his foes forward, whether from anger or panic.


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## S'mon (Dec 24, 2011)

Rechan said:


> I mean it's impossible for insects to get too large...




You get some big crabs (arthropods) though, and back when there was more oxygen in the atmosphere there were giant 8' long milipedes crawling around.  Giant insects are not a huge stretch of Physics.


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## DEFCON 1 (Dec 24, 2011)

Rechan said:


> Hell, D&D does not reflect that you can die by just falling off your horse.




This is why we had Rolemaster.  I'm pretty sure they had a d100 "Fell off your mount" injury chart, didn't they?


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## Mengu (Dec 24, 2011)

I see the rules as abstract, a skeleton if you will. I take the rule, look at what it does, then dress it up to imagine what my character is actually doing to produce that effect. I don't mind high fantasy, so if a power lets me "unrealistically" make a 30 foot standing jump, I have no problem with it. Basically, if I can imagine it, it's realistic enough for me. If the rule disrupts space time continuum in a paradoxical way, then I might avoid it, but I think that would be pretty rare.


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## D'karr (Dec 24, 2011)

I nod to it, much in the same manner that Captain Jack Sparrow loves to wave at the opportunity of doing the right thing, as it passes by.


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## Hussar (Dec 25, 2011)

S'mon said:


> You get some big crabs (arthropods) though, and back when there was more oxygen in the atmosphere there were giant 8' long milipedes crawling around.  Giant insects are not a huge stretch of Physics.




The problem being, of course, in an atmosphere which would allow for 8 foot millepedes, we'd die in short order.


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## S'mon (Dec 25, 2011)

Hussar said:


> The problem being, of course, in an atmosphere which would allow for 8 foot millepedes, we'd die in short order.




Maybe our lungs would be smaller?


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## AbdulAlhazred (Dec 25, 2011)

Meh, you can breath 100% pure oxygen with no ill effects. At worst really minor physiological adjustments would take care of it. Of course there would be real differences in say a Mississipian type 40% oxygen world. Bugs would be bigger (though still not man sized, an 8' millipede still wouldn't be THAT impressive, dragonflies hit 2' wingspan or so, still not big enough to hurt a human). 

OTOH fire would be FAR more dangerous and easier to start. At that pressure of oxygen you'd also have more endurance. So would everything else. 

Clearly that level of realism starts to become more effort than it is worth. D&D fantasy worlds simply don't fundamentally work on the basis of physics as we understand it, even by default. EVERYTHING is driven by some sort of 'magical' forces.


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## Lum The Mad (Dec 25, 2011)

GameOgre said:


> Keep your realism out of my fantasy +1
> 
> 
> Really,if i want realism I will go run around my backyard.
> ...



Really?

So if someone in your game needs to break down a door, why don't you check his Wisdom score? Checking for Strength would be too realistic, right?

And if a dwarf with 3 Charisma and no social skills whatsoever wants to seduce the elven princess - more power to him! Who cares about "realism"? It's just a fantasy game, right?


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## UngeheuerLich (Dec 25, 2011)

I would assume, 100% pure oxygen would be impossible as it heavyly reacts with most elements... and i guess, that a fire would start VERY easily, consumes everything very fast, would be burning very hot, and be nearly unxtinguishable...


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## Tallifer (Dec 26, 2011)

I have no problem with using my imagination to justify the effects of a exploit or spell in combat.

However, I prefer realism when it comes to social situations in fantasy roleplaying. Pre-modern technology goes hand in hand with pre-modern society: slavery and serfdom are lawful, aristocracy has its privileges (even republics are based on wealth not democracy), gender roles are traditional, witchcraft is considered wicked, demonic and divine activity explain the inexplicable or unusual phenomena of life, entertainers are considered dangerous gypsies or whores and panders.


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## Dice4Hire (Dec 26, 2011)

Lum The Mad said:


> Really?
> 
> So if someone in your game needs to break down a door, why don't you check his Wisdom score? Checking for Strength would be too realistic, right?
> 
> And if a dwarf with 3 Charisma and no social skills whatsoever wants to seduce the elven princess - more power to him! Who cares about "realism"? It's just a fantasy game, right?




When one wants to try to use realism to beat the fantasy out of fantasy, that is the problem.


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## Hussar (Dec 26, 2011)

Tallifer said:


> I have no problem with using my imagination to justify the effects of a exploit or spell in combat.
> 
> However, I prefer realism when it comes to social situations in fantasy roleplaying. Pre-modern technology goes hand in hand with pre-modern society: slavery and serfdom are lawful, aristocracy has its privileges (even republics are based on wealth not democracy), gender roles are traditional, witchcraft is considered wicked, demonic and divine activity explain the inexplicable or unusual phenomena of life, entertainers are considered dangerous gypsies or whores and panders.




See, this I really don't want in my fantasy settings.  For one, your "pre-modern society" is limited to feudal Europe.  After all, not every feudal society had serfs/slaves.  Gender roles throughout history have been dicey things to pin down as well.  Sure, the higher end of the society has its privileges, but, even then, it sometimes came with some pretty hefty prices as well.

I mean, there's no specific reason for gender roles to be the same in a fantasy setting.  I loved the fact that Steven Erikson, in his Malazan books, completely ejected all gender roles by and large and made sexual equality pretty standard.  

After all, why would an elven society, where you have citizens with lifespans lasting centuries (pre-4e anyway) even remotely look like human ones?  Why should dwarven societies practice slavery?  Slavery was practiced, by and large again, for economic reasons.  Is it economical to keep slaves in a subterranean nation?  I don't know.

The whole faux-Europe thing really needs to die a nasty death in fantasy.  It's so bloody cliche.


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## Dice4Hire (Dec 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> The whole faux-Europe thing really needs to die a nasty death in fantasy.  It's so bloody cliche.




I agree. I really try to avoid the whole Europe thing, or indeed historical settings in general. Too much trouble and room for trouble for me.


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## Dragon Sin-Camealot (Dec 26, 2011)

*Note: *I had a discussion about this here too I think.  Nevertheless, these points should help shed light on what you want out of 4E if not fiction in general.

May I ask why you play DnD?

*Fiction's Upper Limit* 
Overall, what are the general limitations to fiction? There are certain situations that don't normally happen in stories. I'm trying to get a quick list of things that don't happen.

Note: I've posted this question elsewhere but I know I at least want one other source. A FF source.

-The hero/ine usually loses in the end.
-The secondary character's finishes off the main villian. Lives longer than the main hero.
-Any other characters have one greater trait than either the main character or villian that's used once.
-When traveling they actually die along the way or everyone makes it to the destination.
-A victor is determined early and a descisive action is prompt.
-The way things might happen as compared to real time.
-Having to justify plot holes in fiction compared to reality.
-Satisfying a fan base.
-Avoiding your common set-up.
-Finding an unpredictable ending.
-You are expected to believe what the author tells you. (new) 

----

The ultimate question is why you believe the author's idea is relevant.  

What's relevant to a rollplaying game such as DnD imo is that a victor isn't determined early.  You have to fight a few skill challenges and monsters in our experience.

Satisfying a fan base always applies unless you play alone.  I know people who won't transfer between other versions of this game and many others.


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## LurkAway (Dec 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I mean, there's no specific reason for gender roles to be the same in a fantasy setting.



I agree... at least one argument to reboot expectations is that magic and sorcery evens the playing field against those who are physically stronger and larger.



> The whole faux-Europe thing really needs to die a nasty death in fantasy.  It's so bloody cliche.



If "faux-Europe" also means a fantasy world with analogs to historical cultures, I actually think it can be done well. At least one advantage is that you have easy reference points (ie., if a fantasy realm sounds a lot like celtic Britain and that one sounds like pre-Islamic Arabia, so I don't have to write 5 chapters explaining the cultures and society). The more "realistic" the fantasy, the more reference points, and the more everyone's on the same page. The more high fantasy you go, the more uncertainty what is the internal consistency, and the more work you have to do to put the readers or gaming group in sync if you want a cohesive vision. Neither is right or wrong, just different pros and cons.


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## KarinsDad (Dec 26, 2011)

Lum The Mad said:


> So if someone in your game needs to break down a door, why don't you check his Wisdom score? Checking for Strength would be too realistic, right?
> 
> And if a dwarf with 3 Charisma and no social skills whatsoever wants to seduce the elven princess - more power to him! Who cares about "realism"? It's just a fantasy game, right?




This is mostly where I am coming from.

I want plausibility in my fantasy games and I don't want a bunch of stupid feats and powers and such, just because the game designers didn't actually sit down and design the core math of the framework correctly.

For example, the Melee Training feat only exists because some character concepts cannot do something as simple as a Melee Basic Attack (read OA). At first level, the strongest PC is +6 to hit and +6 damage compared to the weakest, but at level 30, it's +10 to hit and +10 damage (without other stuff added in).

On a D20, these numbers are just too far apart, so the math has to be fixed with a feat.

I also have problems with PCs swinging melee weapons with Con or Cha. Int and Wis are quasi-ok, but Con and Cha just bug the heck out of me.

I have stamina, so I hit you easier and harder. WT???

I also have issue with the fact that the scaling of some powers tends to be based merely on the damage or number of foes attacked and not necessarily on the strength of the effect or condition riders.

6 square Teleport, for example, should be ranked: 6 square Move, 6 square Shift, 6 square Fly, 6 square Teleport in order of utility. Instead, Teleport gets handed out at very low level with Encounter powers and even quasi-At Will abilities. Shifting is better than normal movement because it does not provoke OAs. Flying is better than Shifting because although it provokes, it allows the PC to go to hard or even impossible locations, and Teleport is better than either Shift or Fly because it has the benefits of both other effects.


I personally think that 4E is too much of a smorgasbord of conditions and effects. I would prefer it to be more plausible with very well defined meta-rules as to which levels each power source can acquire which effects and conditions along with a detailed ranking system for all effects and conditions.

If a set of metarules like this existed, there would be very little in the way of "these 3 powers are great at level 7 for a Fighter, but these 4 are only ok, and these 3 totally suck and you should never take them". I do not see real balance between the best and worst powers at each level because there are no metarules about how to balance powers.

Powers are designed based on what some designer thinks is cool, not based on what some designer thinks is cool within a rigid framework of options at a given level/power source/role.


I also think that power source should be more important and role should be less important. For example, the Martial power source should do a lot of actual damage (and take less damage), regardless of role within the class. Martial Defenders should often do as much damage as Strikers do in other power sources (strikers in other power sources should do decent damage, but should also throw out more effects/conditions). But, Martial PCs should not be able to heal, go invisible, or do many of the other cool effects until Epic level and they shouldn't be able to fly or teleport at all. There should be metarules that do not get broken.

If a Martial PC wants to heal, he should require magic items, especially at Heroic and Paragon level. Healing should mostly be the realm of the Divine and Primal power sources, not the Martial, Arcane, or Psionic power sources.


My definition of plausibility is not one of whether PCs can shoot fire out of their hands. My definition of plausibility is one of whether certain PC concepts (read classes) can shoot fire out of their hands (or heal, or teleport, or fly, or go invisible, or hide). The distinction between classes in D&D is often blurred where it should be more sharply defined.

If your PC is a mental PC that uses Charisma to shoot psychic damage at foes, you shouldn't be able to use Charisma to swing a weapon. Instead, you should use Str or Dex and the difference between your ability to swing a weapon should be less than someone else's and your damage should be seriously less, but the delta on the math shouldn't be so huge. Part of this huge math delta is the fact that ability scores can change. There is no need for that to occur. It's just a rule and even a rule that didn't exist in many earlier versions of the game.


And the entire concept of elemental magic weapons combining with certain elemental magic feats to gain uber damage is lame. The elemental feats should only work with elemental powers and PCs from a different power source that do not have elemental powers should be left out in the cold for these types of combinations.


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## Hussar (Dec 26, 2011)

LurkAway said:


> I agree... at least one argument to reboot expectations is that magic and sorcery evens the playing field against those who are physically stronger and larger.
> 
> If "faux-Europe" also means a fantasy world with analogs to historical cultures, I actually think it can be done well. At least one advantage is that you have easy reference points (ie., if a fantasy realm sounds a lot like celtic Britain and that one sounds like pre-Islamic Arabia, so I don't have to write 5 chapters explaining the cultures and society). The more "realistic" the fantasy, the more reference points, and the more everyone's on the same page. The more high fantasy you go, the more uncertainty what is the internal consistency, and the more work you have to do to put the readers or gaming group in sync if you want a cohesive vision. Neither is right or wrong, just different pros and cons.




I largely agree, but, for my own tastes the cons outweigh the pros.  There's no particular reason why a fantasy world which is so different from our own (if nothing else - the prevalence of sentient species all over the place) would develop anything like ours.

Yeah, sure, I can buy a lot of things, particularly the technology end of things since that kinda needs to be there for genre conceits (realistically, why would an elven empire that's been around for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, still be at the same technological level as the humans next door?) so, I'm not totally without a sense of willing suspension of disbelief.

But, the whole, "It's 10th century England with ELVES!" trope that I see permeating so much of fantasy literature and whatnot just bugs the heck out of me.


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## LurkAway (Dec 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I largely agree, but, for my own tastes the cons outweigh the pros.  There's no particular reason why a fantasy world which is so different from our own (if nothing else - the prevalence of sentient species all over the place) would develop anything like ours.



One solution is to have elves, dragons, etc exist mostly as superstition until one decade they actually immigrating to the human world (thru gates from the feywild, shadowfell, and beyond). Until that point, human civilization could have evolved "normally" without the interference of non-humans. As is, this wouldn't work in D&D (because they are so many ancient dungeons of non-human origin) _unless_ the world used to be full of elves, dragons, etc. and then a cataclysm destroyed almost everything, the dwarves hiding under their mountains, the elves withdrawing into the feywild, and the human civilization destroyed (like the Roman empire) and a Dark Ages begins. (In that sense, the original Dragonlance is pretty "realistic".) I would love to see this scenario as a PoL setting for D&D. Unfortunately, it kinda rules out exotic PC choices like tieflings and dragonborn (unless the player is prepated to deal with prejudice, suspicion and hostility) -- and personally, I would be OK with that.


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## Droogie128 (Dec 26, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> This is mostly where I am coming from.
> 
> I want plausibility in my fantasy games and I don't want a bunch of stupid feats and powers and such, just because the game designers didn't actually sit down and design the core math of the framework correctly.
> 
> ...




I have no problem with using charisma. It represents the ability to feint and psych your opponent out.

Con just represents the toll the magic is taking on your body. As anyone who is using con as a primary attack stat is going to be a magical class.



Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk


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## Tallifer (Dec 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> See, this I really don't want in my fantasy settings.  For one, your "pre-modern society" is limited to feudal Europe.  After all, not every feudal society had serfs/slaves.  Gender roles throughout history have been dicey things to pin down as well.  Sure, the higher end of the society has its privileges, but, even then, it sometimes came with some pretty hefty prices as well.
> 
> I mean, there's no specific reason for gender roles to be the same in a fantasy setting.  I loved the fact that Steven Erikson, in his Malazan books, completely ejected all gender roles by and large and made sexual equality pretty standard.
> 
> ...




You have a point. But on the other hand, I have only ever seen sincere ONE attempt at faux Europe: Chaosium's Pendragon. Certainly D&D has always been anachronistic with gender equality, slavery as evil, standing armies and police forces, universal translators (not to mention the anachronistic dialogue in its novels).

As for exotic cultures, of course I believe they should be different and exotic. Why would I expect the Goliaths and Dragonborn to have the same culture?


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## Iosue (Dec 26, 2011)

Ironically, a to-hit bonus provided by Strength strikes me at first glance as unrealistic -- a bonus to damage, yes, but how does Str help you hit?  But, actually I think all the abilities can be worked to provide a bonus:

Str - swings a heavy weapon more easily, faster "sword speed", as it were.
Dex - Full body movement that helps evade defenses.
Con - Using one's own body for the attack, say a head-butt or forearm that's followed up with the main weapon attack.  Or alternatively, their better conditioning allows them a slight edge over their opponent after the circling, feinting, and jockeying for position that occurs in any fight (but is not typically narrated in a D&D game).
Int - See the first Sherlock Holmes movie: knowing just where to hit for best effect.
Wis - Similar to Int, but perhaps based more on personal experience and observation rather than theory and explicit instruction.
Cha - I think anyone who's done a martial art or combat sport has seen examples of people who have a presence that makes them tough opponents.  This is an ultimate goal in kendo, for example: rather than beating the opponent with one's superior speed and agility, you want to project your presence so that they are mentally pressured, and then take a tentative posture, or else find themselves induced to attack, leaving them open for swift counters.

Similar justifications can be found for breaking down a door.

Str - Raw strength, naturally.
Dex - Could be contorting to get one's hand through an opening, or perhaps being able to use one's whole body (maybe bracing both feet against a wall while pulling on the handle?).
Con - Rather than an explosive use of strength, a matter of being able to maintain what strength one has for a longer sustained period.
Int - Knowledge of wood, metal, door construction, and weak points in design.
Wis - Same idea as Int.
Cha - This one, you're stuck.  Unless one interprets Cha as a kind of "fortune" stat (a la ta'veren in Jordan's Wheel of Time.)


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## AbdulAlhazred (Dec 26, 2011)

Hussar said:


> I largely agree, but, for my own tastes the cons outweigh the pros.  There's no particular reason why a fantasy world which is so different from our own (if nothing else - the prevalence of sentient species all over the place) would develop anything like ours.
> 
> Yeah, sure, I can buy a lot of things, particularly the technology end of things since that kinda needs to be there for genre conceits (realistically, why would an elven empire that's been around for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, still be at the same technological level as the humans next door?) so, I'm not totally without a sense of willing suspension of disbelief.
> 
> But, the whole, "It's 10th century England with ELVES!" trope that I see permeating so much of fantasy literature and whatnot just bugs the heck out of me.




Here's the thing though. People want referents. Why are PC races all (generally speaking) pretty similar to humans? Because it is pretty hard for people to relate to a genuinely alien character. Consider what races seem to be popular in 4e for instance. They are pretty much the more human-like races. Not too many people play shardminds, wilden, etc. Even minotaurs, githzerai, and changelings are not really the most overall popular races. You'll have people try them out, but the less easy it is to relate the character to what the player knows and understands the less easy it is to play except in a 'human with a funny forehead' type way. 

Likewise with cultures. Why do most settings hew pretty close to the model of a sort of modernized faux fantasy Europe? Because players draw their concepts about society and their basic world view, dramatic repertoire, etc from that tradition. They understand it. Heck, often your average player isn't really enough aware of the way any society but the one they live in works to really even know what actual realistic medieval Europe would be like.

Beyond that there's just a limit to what any given setting designer can deal with. Nobody knows how entirely alien societies might possibly work. Nobody knows what other possible social organizations even COULD be. Even if there are plenty of examples of various societies in history few people know enough about them to easily build them into a setting. Players won't understand them well enough to easily play in them, etc. Again, to consider trying to imagine a completely novel society, let alone evolved in a magical world who's ultimate rules are at best fuzzy, is just asking more than is possible. At best what you would imagine as 'realistic' or at least interesting is likely to seem ridiculous and obtuse to other people.

Now and then you will find someone with the world-building chops and sensibilities necessary to at least make a stab at it that is interesting and playable enough to attempt. Thus you may have worlds like Tekumel, Jorune, etc. Notice though that the VAST majority of games end up set in something like FR vs something like Jorune. It is just vastly easier to run a game in the former vs the later, and even if you do use such an original setting it is pretty hard for DMs to live up to the task of making it work.


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## LurkAway (Dec 26, 2011)

Iosue said:


> Str - swings a heavy weapon more easily, faster "sword speed", as it were.
> 
> Dex - Full body movement that helps evade defenses.



I think it also depends on the weapon. I'd say the best knife fighters use Dex to strike fast (makes them very deadly against unarmed opponents because it's difficult to react in time before you're stabbed). A stronger knife fighter will find it easier to ram a dagger past your arm block and thru light armor and flesh, so high Str + high Dex > high Dex or high Str



> Con - Using one's own body for the attack, say a head-butt or forearm that's followed up with the main weapon attack.



But the most effective head-butts and elbow strikes depend on some combination of size, strength, and speed. A thick skull may be part of Con, but runners and other endurance athletes have high Con as stamina without any correlation to thick skulls for head butting. And I think part of Con is fluffed as resolve and grit to live, which I see as mostly defensive. Arguably, resolve can be directed offensively, but if so, it would add a universal bonus to attacks, and then isn't it being conflated with Will?



> Or alternatively, their better conditioning allows them a slight edge over their opponent after the circling, feinting, and jockeying for position that occurs in any fight (but is not typically narrated in a D&D game).



If so, it should always apply universally as a bonus to attacks. And then add in Dex too because of the agility providing an extra edge.



> Int - See the first Sherlock Holmes movie: knowing just where to hit for best effect.
> 
> Wis - Similar to Int, but perhaps based more on personal experience and observation rather than theory and explicit instruction.



That assumes that all PCs' intelligence/wisdom is reflected as fast thinking. PCs with high intelligence based on 'library' knowledge are not going to be able to apply Intelligence very effectively. And you can be 'street smart' at analyzing your opponent's behavior and adapting strategies, but otherwise be considered to have low intelligence/wisdom in other fields, and vice versa.



> Cha - I think anyone who's done a martial art or combat sport has seen examples of people who have a presence that makes them tough opponents.



Are they tough because they have presence, or do they have presence because they know they're tough expert fighters?



> This is an ultimate goal in kendo, for example: rather than beating the opponent with one's superior speed and agility, you want to project your presence so that they are mentally pressured, and then take a tentative posture, or else find themselves induced to attack, leaving them open for swift counters.



Since Cha is conflated with persuasiveness, personal magnetism, leadership, etc. is it possible to have a kendo fighter with presence who is not a good leader and not persuasive (outside of sword fighting)? Is part of that 'presence' abstracted as any combination of Will, Int, and even character level?

I think applying any one attribute to any attack is unrealistic, because "to hit" uses a combination of attributes at any one time. But if you had to distill it down to one attribute, I  think some are better abstractions than others (Con and Cha not being  one of them IMO).

Edit: This topic always reminds me how much I'd like to see attributes removed entirely from attack bonuses, and just merge it into class and attack types.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Dec 26, 2011)

I certainly agree that interpretations of stats mapping to combat bonuses (and other types as well) are always murky. The thing is if you decide "well, all we can do is just ignore all the stats" pretty soon they are meaningless numbers that don't do anything. Now, you could certainly make a game without stats. I think it would inhibit the ability to realize your character though. In the end the 4e approach is almost inevitable. There may be certain improvements that could be made, but they wouldn't end the debate. For instance you could move the selection of the governing stat to your weapon choice, Flails rely on CON as you need endurance to constantly keep the weapon in motion, and light blades might rely on DEX to reflect their reliance on speed and accuracy, etc. There are probably issues with that too, and certainly likely other approaches that some people would prefer.


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## KarinsDad (Dec 26, 2011)

Iosue said:


> Similar justifications can be found for breaking down a door.
> 
> Str - Raw strength, naturally.
> Dex - Could be contorting to get one's hand through an opening, or perhaps being able to use one's whole body (maybe bracing both feet against a wall while pulling on the handle?).
> ...




Rationalizations, not justifications. It's not that they make sense, it's that they can be stretched and convoluted into an explanation that makes a tiny bit more sense than the face value of normal common sense.

It would be better if the system used the most reasonable stat per attack type, just like it uses the most reasonable stat per skill type. If that leaves some ability scores with few or no attacks associated with them, so be it. I don't understand the need to balance out roles per power source and balance out attacks per ability score.


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## Mallus (Dec 27, 2011)

LurkAway said:


> The question is only: Do you avoid using 4E powers if the effect doesn't make sense to you in that moment in the fiction?



I voted no... and I played/ran 4e for 2.5 years... until my group moved on to Savage Worlds and AD&D.

My group cares about the game fiction. A lot. But most of us think it's fun trying to fit the powers (mechanics) into the game's fiction --call it description, rationalization, justification, apology, the opportunity to show how clever you are, whatever. 

The thing is: any system is going to generate unrealistic results (older edition of D&D certainly did). Reconciling these results with the in-game reality (ie, fiction) is a central component to RPG play. 



OnlineDM said:


> If it seems counter-intuitive, I find a way to make it make sense.



Exactly! 



Lum The Mad said:


> So if someone in your game needs to break down a door, why don't you check his Wisdom score? Checking for Strength would be too realistic, right?



A Strength check makes sense to resolve _battering down_ a door.

A Wisdom or Int check would make sense to resolve opening a door by removing its hinges, or some other non-brute-force method. 

It all depends on how you frame --pun unintended-- the question, and to what extent you use ability checks to overcome various obstacles. 

Note the same logic applies to using different ability scores in combat: a STR fighter uses raw strength, an INT fighter fights well, _smarter_, while a WIS fighter relies on determination and/or faith. It's all in how you abstract things. 



> And if a dwarf with 3 Charisma and no social skills whatsoever wants to seduce the elven princess - more power to him! Who cares about "realism"? It's just a fantasy game, right?



I'll admit love at first sight is probably out of the question for a CHA 3 dwarf with no social skill training -- unless the elven princess has a scarred, surly, midget fetish .

However... what if it isn't love at first sight? What if the dwarf just rescued the princess from orcs, or saved her father from assassins? What if the dwarfs CHA of 3 represented his complete _honesty_? That would also explain his lack of Bluff/Diplomacy ranks...

Plausible, no? 

I've got a simple rule when it comes to RPGs. You can either spend your time and energy figuring out why thing work, or why they don't. Which is more fun, and more appropriate, in a game about pretending to be an elf? 



KarinsDad said:


> I also have problems with PCs swinging melee weapons with Con or Cha.



It works for paladins. CHA represents a measure of their god's grace, which strengthens their arms as they swing their weapons. It's seems appropriate to me.

I mean, CHA has traditionally been the "paladins stat". An AD&D paladin needed a 17+. It affected how much a 3 pally could heal *and* it determined their to-hit bonus on a Smite, which is exactly analogous to 4e having CHA-based melee attacks.

Hmmm... come to think of it, I did *nod* at realism when creating my 4e paladin. I gave him a decently high STR to justify his use of plate armor. It seemed wrong to gad about in so much ironmongery with a STR of 10. However, his CHA-based melee talents didn't bother me in the slightest. Nor did his melee power that attacked WILL instead of AC. In fact, that one led to a long-running joke at our table: "I stab him in the _faith_!


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## D'karr (Dec 27, 2011)

Mallus said:


> "I stab him in the _faith_!"




Somebody please XP Mallus for me.  Now I have to go clean out my keyboard.


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## RHGreen (Dec 28, 2011)

Hussar said:


> (realistically, why would an elven empire that's been around for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years, still be at the same technological level as the humans next door?)




Why would China invent virtually everything in the pre-industrial world and then stay at that level for hundreds of years?

Well in China's case they created non-glass ceramics that did what they needed them to do so they had no need to invent glass. The fact they did not have glass meant they stayed still as most of the inventions after that required glass as an intergral part of the invention itself, but most often it is needed for the scientific experimentation, research and development that was needed to come up with the idea in the first place.

Another place - the arab world was very mathematically and scientifically developed, hungrily gobbling up anything they could get their hands on from China and India, among other places and developing stuff themselves. They were very into knowledge and education. Religious attitudes put the mockers on that and they became stuck in time.

Another place - The Roman Empire was top of the food chain so they felt very little need to develop anything new. They mostly just sat around for years feeling big and clever (and constantly looking back at the Greeks)until they had their backsides handed to them on a plate and then everything fell apart.


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## RHGreen (Dec 28, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> I also have problems with PCs swinging melee weapons with Con or Cha. Int and Wis are quasi-ok, but Con and Cha just bug the heck out of me.
> 
> I have stamina, so I hit you easier and harder. WT???




I agree totally with Charisma (but I do think it could be used to feint or distract an enemy) but I think Constitution could work in particular circumstances.

I would be happy if Constitution was used for axes and hammers. I know strength makes sense, obviously, but I can imagine a high Con dwarf huffing and puffing swinging around a 2-handed sledgehammer.

Perhaps all weapons could have certain governing attributes that a player could use as he wishes.

Examples:

Dagger : Dex
ShortSword : Str, Dex
Longsword : Str
Warhammer : Str, Con
Rapier : Dex
etc

Also I would personally like:
Shortbow : Dex (multi-fire and movement)
Longbow : Str (Range and damage - fighters mainly)

Crossbows : Maybe this is a stretch Dex, Int, Wis - excellent peasant weapon, easy to shoot from battlements(easy to learn easy to shoot) - keep those nasty monsters out of town.

Elves would not get bonuses to longbows - they would be a very human weapon (along with large ships, horses, lances, crossbows and full field plate armour). Elves haven't got the physical build to pull a longbow. Pulling a longbow takes at least 7 years to become proficient because it is like holding a young adult up on one arm every time you shoot it.

I know the last part goes into "How many times have I been to the toilet today - I must mark it on my character sheet" territory, but if you want a good reason why humans would be dominant in a fantasy setting I think the above suggestions (war and commerce technology) would ensure it. Basically I would like that fluff rather than 'Humans are just humans (that just happen to breed a lot, but aren't as good as anything else even though, in reality, we did actually invent all this stuff)' usual fluff.


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## FireLance (Dec 28, 2011)

Mallus said:


> It works for paladins. CHA represents a measure of their god's grace, which strengthens their arms as they swing their weapons. It's seems appropriate to me.



I think the problem is with Melee Training (Charisma) rather than a divinely-powered melee attack that happens to be based on Charisma. I can accept either in my games, but I would prefer the latter as it has more thematic resonance for me.


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## Rechan (Dec 28, 2011)

This is one of those discussions that really drives home how much people care about _different_ stuff than me. Wow, it's _that_ stuff that bothers you guys?

The "using stat to attack" argument is just one reason why I like my houserule of taking ability scores out of the to-hit equation.

Btw,  @Hussar  as far as "non-European Cultures", there have been "other culture" settings and they generally do not sell well. See Nyambe, for instance. And Oriental Adventures apparently upsets a lot of people. But ultimately, everything is Euro-Fantasy with Kitchen Sink because that's what most gamers are _comfortable_ with. Just look at how many people complained when the Monk was included in 3e, and how it didn't fit in their Eurofantasy.


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## LurkAway (Dec 28, 2011)

But does it really, truly matter to have Cha or Con or whatever be used to apply a bonus to something?

Because if you rationalize that any of the 6 attributes can be used "to hit", then ALL of the attributes can be used to attack.

And "realistically" the ability "to hit" is some combination of multiple attributes at any one time (as I suggested upthread) and if everyone uses the same point buy system, then every PC has approx the same baseline bonus to attacks (ie., every player sums up the bonuses for all 6 stats and gets roughly the same number).

So why not just 'buy' attack bonuses like you select a feat or skill? So if you're a paladin, you can buy a paladin's Crusade Training feat and get +1 to attacks with appropriate weapons (or merge it into level progression). Who cares what stat(s) the paladin uses to attack -- just flavor it how you like (like most 4E mechanics).



Rechan said:


> The "using stat to attack" argument is just one reason why I like my houserule of taking ability scores out of the to-hit equation.



Sounds great, how exactly do you houserule that? Does it address AbdulAlhazred's concerns that ability scores would become meaningless? (I personally think ability scores have been over-represented in the game for long enough, and I wonder if they cause more trouble than they're worth as per all those 'player advantage' threads)


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## Rechan (Dec 28, 2011)

LurkAway said:


> Sounds great, how exactly do you houserule that? Does it address AbdulAlhazred's concerns that ability scores would become meaningless?



Mine is a less elegant version of this (and I'm considering just flat out using the linked houserule) Stats would effect _initial_ defenses, and _continually_ effect HP/Surges, initiative and skills. 

But I doubt that will satisfy @AbdulAlhazred because I want stats to be less pivotal. I dislike how crucial stats are in terms of class, I'm doing the above to discourage the race to get the highest primary score to the detriment of other scores, to encourage multi-classing even when the classes don't have matching primary scores, and encourage non min-maxed race/class choices. That, and I just want to smooth out the to-hit formula. That's how I want it at my table.


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## UngainlyTitan (Dec 28, 2011)

LurkAway said:


> But does it really, truly matter to have Cha or Con or whatever be used to apply a bonus to something?



Not really in my view.



LurkAway said:


> ...
> And "realistically" the ability "to hit" is some combination of multiple attributes at any one time



This I completely agree with, in my view the feat Melee Training: Stat represents the effort taken to keep up a skill in an area not associated with ones primary focus. Sort of like the physics professor that does martial ats or fencing.


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## D'karr (Dec 28, 2011)

Rechan said:


> That, and I just want to smooth out the to-hit formula. That's how I want it at my table.




I've noticed that which ability is used really doesn't matter much. I've run and played Dark Sun extensively and I noticed that the themes were mechanically viable for ANY class, because they did not rely on fixed abilities for their mechanical support.

I could play an Athasian Minstrel (theme) as a rogue (dex based), a warlord(cha based), a fighter (str based) or a psion (int based) as the base class, and the enjoyment of using the mechanics of that theme was not hampered by my primary attribute.  I thought that was a great way of working the idea of the theme and letting the mechanics support it.

IMO multiclassing would be much better served if something similar was used for multiclassing.  That way the multiclass would remain mechanically viable even if the multiclassed into class was originally using a different primary attribute than the original. There are still other issues (imo) about multiclassing but mechanically I think that is the biggest one.

Multiclassing is one of the few things that I still don't particularly enjoy about 4e in a mechanical sense.  The pendulum swung too far as it relates to multiclassing IMO.


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## keterys (Dec 28, 2011)

Making ability scores not matter for to-hit (but still matter for damage, skills, etc) helps the game a lot as far as I can tell.


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## El Mahdi (Dec 28, 2011)

Rechan said:


> Why would someone be on the 4e forum if they don't play 4e?




Because "I don't play 4E" does not automatically equal "I hate 4E".

I have the core books, though I don't actually play the game...but I would if I was invited to play with a good group.

I do however like many of the concepts of 4E, and freely steal them for my own games.  Including a rudimentary "powers" system.

I doubt I'm the only one for whom this is applicable.


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## Mallus (Dec 28, 2011)

FireLance said:


> I think the problem is with Melee Training (Charisma) rather than a divinely-powered melee attack that happens to be based on Charisma. I can accept either in my games, but I would prefer the latter as it has more thematic resonance for me.



Me too. Melee Training is a kludge, no doubt about it. But CHA-based axe swings for my paladin, or INT-based swordplay for a Swordmage work nicely in terms of informing the in-game fiction. 



LurkAway said:


> So why not just 'buy' attack bonuses like you select a feat or skill?



This would work. Well, I think. It's basically how Mutants and Masterminds 2e handles it.


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## DEFCON 1 (Dec 28, 2011)

KarinsDad said:


> I don't understand the need to balance out roles per power source and balance out attacks per ability score.




Because some people always got tired of Charisma being a dump stat.  Does it "make sense" to use Charisma?  Depends entirely on where your "realism" dial is set... and we've seen in multiple threads, KarinsDad, that your dial is set much closer to earlier editions of the game.  Realistic _enough_ in certain rules and places that matter most to you for whatever reason... despite the fact that they still aren't actually "realistic" as an absolute.

For many people, though... the ones who like the 4E game... the dial is set in a wildly different direction, where the usability of interesting game rules matter more than trying to recreate a "realism" that the game itself already has baked in (rather than being willing to create their own realism by justification as you put it.)

But you know what's the best part of D&D (in all editions)?  It's all fudgeable.  In every game, you could (if you were so inclined) houserule the game to remove any offending parts you didn't like, and the game still works.  So if you didn't like using CHA as an attack stat... you could easily change a Bard's attack stat to INT or DEX and cause no real problems.  Would entail a little bit of work?  Sure.  But if the game is otherwise fun to play... running D&D entails a little bit of work anyway, so why not houserule?

After all... if (in another example) you like the 4E game but just can't get past the use of the word "Bloodied"... it's no big deal to change it to something more palatable.  And it won't effect the game at all.


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## Rechan (Dec 28, 2011)

El Mahdi said:


> Because "I don't play 4E" does not automatically equal "I hate 4E".



Ah. When I read "Play", I wasn't thinking "at this current time", but "I play it if/when I can".


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## Rechan (Dec 28, 2011)

D'karr said:


> IMO multiclassing would be much better served if something similar was used for multiclassing.  That way the multiclass would remain mechanically viable even if the multiclassed into class was originally using a different primary attribute than the original. There are still other issues (imo) about multiclassing but mechanically I think that is the biggest one.



Indeed - the 'doesn't match primary scores' is one of my bugaboos. The to-hit formula also is nice because it means you don't need a golf bag of implements/items to use multi-class powers. I take a really loosey-goosey approach to implement usage. 

I don't like the dependency on the novice/adept/bla feats for multi-classiing. I dislke one or two things about hybrid classes, but the general effect seems ok.


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## talok55 (Dec 28, 2011)

Quite frankly, I don't see how you can avoid using a 4E power unrealistically.  Some are rather neutral and others like the fighter's come and get it or the paladin's divine challenge kick realism (or whatever similar word you want to use for it) to the curb.  I think the best you can do is pick powers that aren't as silly, and avoid classes with stupid (unrealistic) class features (the paladin).


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## talok55 (Dec 28, 2011)

Droogie128 said:


> You need to add "Keep your realism out of my fantasy".




I think 4E already has that covered.


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## keterys (Dec 28, 2011)

talok55 said:


> Quite frankly, I don't see how you can avoid using a 4E power unrealistically.  Some are rather neutral and others like the fighter's come and get it or the paladin's divine challenge kick realism (or whatever similar word you want to use for it) to the curb.  I think the best you can do is pick powers that aren't as silly, and avoid classes with stupid (unrealistic) class features (the paladin).



So, Come and Get It is the poster child for unrealism... but what's with the paladin hate? They're usually the example of a way to do the wacky thing (damage on breaking mark) in a way that fits the narrative.

Like people are usually okay with Knight's Defiance or similar over Come and Get It. "Magic" is the great excuse and divine magic extra so.


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## talok55 (Dec 28, 2011)

I don't have anything against paladin's.  What I dislike is that 4E paladins have a class ability that is so gamist and absurd that it clearly exists only to make the paladin fit into the defender role.  I have no problem with paladin's challenging someone or smiting foes with holy power.   What I have a problem with is the he only smites something with his divine laser beams if it attacks someone besides him.  That makes no sense.  Smite things with your holy power all the time!  This, I'll hit you with divine power only if you attack someone besides me nonsense, is taking the gamist dial to 11.  I'll pass on things like that


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## OpsKT (Dec 29, 2011)

There are Dragons, Magic, and a very possible end of your life is becoming a God. 

Where the ever loving frak does 'realism' come into that kind of game?


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## FireLance (Dec 29, 2011)

talok55 said:


> Quite frankly, I don't see how you can avoid using a 4E power unrealistically.



I take it that the punchline is something along the lines of, "Because none of it is actually real?"



> "Some are rather neutral and others like the fighter's come and get it or the paladin's divine challenge kick realism (or whatever similar word you want to use for it) to the curb.  I think the best you can do is pick powers that aren't as silly, and avoid classes with stupid (unrealistic) class features (the paladin).



I think a more accurate statement would be, the vast majority of 4e powers are rather neutral, but there are some people who have trouble with a handful of them. Feel free to fill in whatever powers you care to name, but bear in mind that your issues may not be objective or universal.


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## talok55 (Dec 29, 2011)

OpsKT said:


> There are Dragons, Magic, and a very possible end of your life is becoming a God.
> 
> Where the ever loving frak does 'realism' come into that kind of game?




You don't have to get hung up on the word "realism".  You can use internally consistent, versimilitude, believable, logical, etc.  As has been seen before in these types of discussions, whatever synonym I use for this, someone will have a different definition of it than I do.  Whatever you want to call it, there are many mechanical aspects of 4E that have a complete absence of this.  4e, for the most part, does not bother to even nod at realism.  It shoves  metagamey mechanics in your face, so that it is really hard to get immersed in the game.  Some people don't have a problem with this. For others, it's a big issue.  I'm not asking for the game to realistically simulate everything, but I would like for a characters abilities to not be so absurd (such as come and get it) that they leave you shaking your head saying, "That makes absolutely no sense.  How is that supposed to work?"  It seems from this discussion, that there are many others that feel the same way.  It's hard for me to believe that PC's and villains having abilities that make sense within the context of the way the fictional D&D world (and, even though there is magic and dragons, this does include some of what may be termed "realism") works hurts the game.  I also fail to see how having nonsensical abilities that clearly exist only for some metagame reason such as, to make x class a better fit for the defender role, helps the game.


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## Phaezen (Dec 29, 2011)

talok55 said:


> Quite frankly, I don't see how you can avoid using a 4E power unrealistically.  Some are rather neutral and others like the fighter's come and get it or the paladin's divine challenge kick realism (or whatever similar word you want to use for it) to the curb.  I think the best you can do is pick powers that aren't as silly, and avoid classes with stupid (unrealistic) class features (the paladin).




Come and Get It can be described fairly realistically:

*Come and Get it*

"Rogar, we need the orcs to bunch up so my spell may be most effective" Sindel called out.

Rogar nodded and flexed calling out to the creatures in their language "Come at me you runts none of you are worthy of calling yourselves warriors"

Unable to resist the challenge several of the orcs closes to Rogar ran screaming at him, slicing at each other in their haste to avenge the insult.

- covers pulling creatures, the creatures being damaged and using strength vs will.


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## GameOgre (Dec 29, 2011)

Seems to me some of you guys saying Realism really mean (not stupid).

Like someone grabing green slim or useing burning hands while in a room stuffed with gunpowder.

I don't use hardly any realism in my games but I do try and not be stupid. Just because there isn't a rule for drowning in lamp oil doesn't mean you can't drown in it.

 But every DM will have a differant take on whats stupid.

 Just because I think you can't grab green slim with your hands doesn't mean every DM  needs to make green slim ungrabable. We all do our best for our games but almost never agree one what best means.

Thats cool.Whatever works for you!

In my game I do try and make it fun first and maybe give a nod towards some strange inner versimilitude but it isn't much more than a nod.

 I do try and not let things get to the point where I feel we are being stupid. Just because the power says you can move strait ahead 4 squares doesnt mean you can move through that wall or stand on water! 

 But at the same time I am not sweating it if you somehow flip a monster on its back even though he is four times bigger than you.

See my *Stupid* point is differant than yours!


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## Arctic Wolf (Dec 29, 2011)

OpsKT said:


> There are Dragons, Magic, and a very possible end of your life is becoming a God.
> 
> Where the ever loving frak does 'realism' come into that kind of game?




Before I quote this, I would just like to say that I basically consider D&D to be another dimension and somehow everything got exactly right for all this to happen ( I don't know the % but I know it is extremely nonexistent lol).  This explains the dragons part I guess heh.

Ok back to the quote. Magic to me is bascially using your mind to convert the matter around you into the type of damage you are trying to do. And a God in D&D is just having enough of this mind power to not die from aging. There might be some loopholes left open in there but I'm too tired to think about it more deeply.


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## talok55 (Dec 29, 2011)

That's fine for aggressive humanoids like orcs or gnolls, where it makes some sense for them to charge up to someone taunting them.  It breaks down when the enemy is mindless skeletons, an ooze, or a enemy spellcaster that knows it's a bad idea to come and stand next to the fighter.  If the power only worked on things that it made some sense for it to work on, that's acceptable, but I really don't see how the fighter is going to taunt an ooze, or convince that wizard with no melee skills that he should waltz right up to the fighter.


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## talok55 (Dec 29, 2011)

GameOgre said:


> Seems to me some of you guys saying Realism really mean (not stupid).
> 
> Like someone grabing green slim or useing burning hands while in a room stuffed with gunpowder.
> 
> ...




That's a good way to put it.  Maybe saying not stupid, not silly, or not nonsensical is a more succinct way to explain it.


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## D'karr (Dec 29, 2011)

talok55 said:


> That's a good way to put it.  Maybe saying not stupid, not silly, or not nonsensical is a more succinct way to explain it.




What might be stupid to person A, might not be so for person B.  So calling it "realism" is actually counterproductive because it obviously has nothing at all to do with such.  

Since it's all a matter of preference, then I prefer for the game to keep that portion of the "realism" in the hands of the people that are best at defining it.  The people at the table playing the game.  I don't want the designers version of "realism" to be the part that hampers the "realism" at my game.

So many people have provided reasonable explanations for these "corner case" powers that supposedly break the "realism" meter for some people that I tend to conclude that those still having a problem are simply spending more of their time looking for ways for things not work.  If I spend any time at all on it, I spend my time looking for ways for things to work, and it's considerably less straining.

Just because the "rules" don't spell something out, does not mean that I can't spell it myself for my game table when needed and wanted.


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## Phaezen (Dec 29, 2011)

talok55 said:


> That's fine for aggressive humanoids like orcs or gnolls, where it makes some sense for them to charge up to someone taunting them.  It breaks down when the enemy is mindless skeletons, an ooze, or a enemy spellcaster that knows it's a bad idea to come and stand next to the fighter.  If the power only worked on things that it made some sense for it to work on, that's acceptable, but I really don't see how the fighter is going to taunt an ooze, or convince that wizard with no melee skills that he should waltz right up to the fighter.




Ooze, possibly the fighter flexing heats him up, making himself a more inviting target to heat sensing ooze.

As for any intellagent creature like a spell caster, the fighter scoring a hit against their Will Defence indicates his ability to overcome their natural instincts and attempt to rush and overwhelm the fighter, could be by taunting their lineage or abilities or threatening them in some other way if they don't close the gap rapidly.

Skeletons or other mindless creatures will still posses some kind of animal instinct unless they are being directly controlled, so the fighter could be feigning a weakness in his defences inviting them to overwhelm him, relying on his strength to bring his weapon back up at the last moment.


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## Mallus (Dec 29, 2011)

talok55 said:


> What I have a problem with is the he only smites something with his divine laser beams if it attacks someone besides him.  That makes no sense.



Think about it this way: paladin's challenge isn't just smack talk, it's a divinely-empowered _curse_. 

The paladin challenges a foe to single combat. If his foe doesn't honor it, a god punishes said foe. If the _paladin_ doesn't honor it, by attacking something else, then the curse magic goes away. 

If you can accept a priest throwing around curses which have tangible effects, why not a paladin? It's not hard to reconcile this particular mechanical effect with the in-game fiction.  



GameOgre said:


> See my *Stupid* point is differant than yours!



This is a good point... but I'll add this. D&D combat is, traditionally, full of stupid things. Which provides a certain context for evaluating D&D believability. 

How does one fight a Gelatinous Cube with a sword or mace? It's a large block of acidic, paralytic protoplasm, lacking any form of internal support structure or organ systems. How does nicking or bashing a small part of it's volume kill it? There isn't even a _nucleus_ to strike at...

How does a human armed with a sword survive going toe-to-toe with a 15ft tall giant? Given it's mass, any solid hit should bat the human away like a rag-doll. How about fighting a dinosaur with melee weapons? 

Sure, it's possible to describe these engagements in semi-plausible ways --using a loose definition of plausible-- but it requires adding a lot of user-supplied fiction to the base mechanical results. Which is fine, doing so is a central activity to role-playing gaming. 

The question that interests me is this: why is easy to rationalize a sword fight between a man and a giant or a woman and a Gelatinous Cube but difficult to rationalize a paladin's mark or, dare I say, Come and Get It? 

In both cases, you're reconciling mechanical results with the in-game fiction.


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## keterys (Dec 29, 2011)

It's totally okay to not defend Come and Get It.

The funny part is, all of the hubbub about it wouldn't be there if it were an Arcane / Divine / Primal / Psionic power. People just don't really like Martial getting those kinds of toys, cause it breaks their belief.

Which can be okay - for example, I think an interesting martial variant would be a close burst 1, shift 3, another close burst 1 targeting enemies not included in the first burst. (Sweep and Smash, or whatever) Suddenly it's very martial, and less people would complain about it - but still pretty darn awesome.

I'm pretty staggered by the inability to justify divine challenge. That one seems like dead simple fitting the narrative.


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## talok55 (Dec 29, 2011)

D'karr said:


> What might be stupid to person A, might not be so for person B.  So calling it "realism" is actually counterproductive because it obviously has nothing at all to do with such.
> 
> Since it's all a matter of preference, then I prefer for the game to keep that portion of the "realism" in the hands of the people that are best at defining it.  The people at the table playing the game.  I don't want the designers version of "realism" to be the part that hampers the "realism" at my game.
> 
> ...




How about putting it this way?  I think that having abilities that are so unrealistic (or whatever synonym you want to use) that they seem to be stupid, silly, or nonsensical compared with what we know about how reality functions in the game world (some of which overlaps with the reality of our world) pushes a game that is supposed to be an RPG too far into the realm of tactical miniatures skirmish game for my tastes.  Some don't mind those miniature game aspects in their RPG, but a lot of people would prefer less of these metagamey mechanics in their RPG of choice, especially if it is the main RPG out there, D&D.  In short, I think D&D is served well by having at least a nod to realism in it's mechanics, rather than completely abandoning realism.


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## keterys (Dec 29, 2011)

Everyone's got some mighty different standards, though.

I mean, divine challenge is stupid / silly / nonsensical, but flying dragons, going toe to toe with gargantuan enemies of any kind, and _hit points_ are?


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## UngainlyTitan (Dec 29, 2011)

keterys said:


> Everyone's got some mighty different standards, though.
> 
> I mean, divine challenge is stupid / silly / nonsensical, but flying dragons, going toe to toe with gargantuan enemies of any kind, and _hit points_ are?



the former is new but hte latter have been internalised as normal through 30 pluss years of usage.


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## Wormwood (Dec 30, 2011)

talok55 said:


> That's fine for aggressive humanoids like orcs or gnolls, where it makes some sense for them to charge up to someone taunting them.  It breaks down when the enemy is mindless skeletons, an ooze, or a enemy spellcaster that knows it's a bad idea to come and stand next to the fighter.  If the power only worked on things that it made some sense for it to work on, that's acceptable, but I really don't see how the fighter is going to taunt an ooze, or convince that wizard with no melee skills that he should waltz right up to the fighter.



I agree---but I've long since reconciled powers like "Come and Get It" as a granting a tiny bit of narrative control to the player using it.

Rather than 'taunting' oozes and zombies, perhaps the fighter is _predicting_ a group of opponents will move into such a way that he can punish them for their mistake?

No magic involved, just a really canny warrior capitalizing on the mistakes of his opponents. The fact that the _player_ forced the situation instead of the DM doesn't matter to the narrative at all.


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## Hussar (Dec 31, 2011)

AnonGemini said:


> Why would China invent virtually everything in the pre-industrial world and then stay at that level for hundreds of years?
> 
> Well in China's case they created non-glass ceramics that did what they needed them to do so they had no need to invent glass. The fact they did not have glass meant they stayed still as most of the inventions after that required glass as an intergral part of the invention itself, but most often it is needed for the scientific experimentation, research and development that was needed to come up with the idea in the first place.
> 
> ...




Years, yup.  Thousands of years?  Really?  And what happened in every single example you gave when the inwards looking empire bumped an outward looking group?  Their borders collapsed and they got over run.  China in the 18th century, the Romans in the 5th.  

Yet, in fantasy settings, we have these nation states with thousands of years of civilization, and constant trade and contact with neighbours, that stay stagnant for millenia.  

Just bugs the heck out of me.


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## Hussar (Dec 31, 2011)

GameOgre said:


> Seems to me some of you guys saying Realism really mean (not stupid).
> 
> Like someone grabing green slim or useing burning hands while in a room stuffed with gunpowder.
> 
> ...




This I totally agree with.  John Scalzi has a great article about flying snowmen in which he relates a story about his wife reading a book to his daughter in which a snowman comes to life, eats soup, dances around and then takes off and flies.  The daughter became rather upset because the idea of flying snowmen are just stupid.

Scalzi's comment: 



> “So, yeah: In a film with impossibly large spiders, talking trees, rings freighted with corrupting evil, Uruks birthed from mud (not to mention legions of ghost warriors and battle elephants larger than tanks), are we really going to complain about insufficiently dense lava? Because if you’re going to demand that be accurate in a physical sense, I want to know why you’re giving the rest of that stuff a pass. If you’re going to complain that the snowman flies, you should also be able to explain why it’s okay to have it eat hot soup.”




Which speaks to this rather strongly.  Everyone's line is different.  

From the designer's point of view, who should draw that line?  The group or the designer?


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## pemerton (Dec 31, 2011)

Hussar said:


> in fantasy settings, we have these nation states with thousands of years of civilization, and constant trade and contact with neighbours, that stay stagnant for millenia.
> 
> Just bugs the heck out of me.



The sociology, economics, politics etc of fantasy settings - even Tolkien's - don't really bear close scrutiny.


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## Dice4Hire (Dec 31, 2011)

pemerton said:


> The sociology, economics, politics etc of fantasy settings - even Tolkien's - don't really bear close scrutiny.




It is very hard to model the effects of magic on those kinds of things. This is a heavily unexplored area of fantasy, in my opinion.


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## Rechan (Dec 31, 2011)

Dice4Hire said:


> It is very hard to model the effects of magic on those kinds of things. This is a heavily unexplored area of fantasy, in my opinion.



Not _just_ magic, but monsters too. The simple fact that humans are not at the top of the foodchain would have serious effect on evolutionary biology and behavior. 

How would a society respond when there are things that can literally take your appearance? Human cultures are xenophobic - when a stranger (let alone your neighbor) can potentially do _anything_, paranoia would go into the atmosphere. The existence of undead would also have some serious changes for society. How about races? Look how human beings have treated one another throughout history - if there was a race that was certifiably _not human_, created by a non-Human deity... how could any peace be _possible_? Humans would have wiped them out. 

It would also reverse many of the tropes we associate. A castle or keep with a fortified wall and courtyard _would not work_ because so many monsters (and spellcasters) can just fly right over the defenses and plop down in the courtyard.

But no one takes into consideration the sheer _amount_ of _food_ that monsters would need in order to exist, let alone in large numbers. 

It's just easier to handwave all this stuff because most people 1) want their tropes, and 2) aren't economists/sociologists/biologists, 3) aren't really interested in it, and 4) the end result of a world that takes those considerations in may very well _not_ be fun, even if it's realistic.


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## pemerton (Dec 31, 2011)

Dice4Hire said:


> It is very hard to model the effects of magic on those kinds of things.



I think there are issues even without magic. For example, Tolkien's Shire has a material standard of living comparable to early industrial England - which was a centre of world trade and production - although the Shire is a pre-industrial autarky.

The moral outlook of most RPG fantasy worlds is also very modern in comparison to their historical analogues. In one episode of Chretien de Troyes (sp?) Arthur stories, Lancelot kills a number of his friends (from memory, he is helping Guinevere escape). No one suggests that this is a murderous act - the relevant evaluative categories (for the author, and presumably his audience) seem to be honour and loyalty, not killing those with a right to life.


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## Argyle King (Dec 31, 2011)

Rechan said:


> Not _just_ magic, but monsters too. The simple fact that humans are not at the top of the foodchain would have serious effect on evolutionary biology and behavior.
> 
> How would a society respond when there are things that can literally take your appearance? Human cultures are xenophobic - when a stranger (let alone your neighbor) can potentially do _anything_, paranoia would go into the atmosphere. The existence of undead would also have some serious changes for society. How about races? Look how human beings have treated one another throughout history - if there was a race that was certifiably _not human_, created by a non-Human deity... how could any peace be _possible_? Humans would have wiped them out.
> 
> ...




Some of the ideas here are exactly why I've started running my current 4E game more like a sci-fi game than a fantasy game.  Because of how many ways the game turns away from realism, too many things (tropes) didn't make sense to me to have in the game.  

In my current campaign, instead of castles, and knights, and horses, I have bunkers, special forces style elite squads doing battle, and Battle Toads style hovering speeder bikes powered by magic.  Trying to reconcile the idea I have in my head about what fantasy should be like and what (I feel) 4E's mechanics actually support bummed me out.  So, instead, I decided to completely embrace the 4E direction while running/playing it.  

(at least until I finish some of the rewrites to rules I'm working on)


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## Gort (Dec 31, 2011)

Johnny3D3D said:


> Some of the ideas here are exactly why I've started running my current 4E game more like a sci-fi game than a fantasy game.  Because of how many ways the game turns away from realism, too many things (tropes) didn't make sense to me to have in the game.
> 
> In my current campaign, instead of castles, and knights, and horses, I have bunkers, special forces style elite squads doing battle, and Battle Toads style hovering speeder bikes powered by magic.  Trying to reconcile the idea I have in my head about what fantasy should be like and what (I feel) 4E's mechanics actually support bummed me out.  So, instead, I decided to completely embrace the 4E direction while running/playing it.
> 
> (at least until I finish some of the rewrites to rules I'm working on)




Eberron is a 3rd ed setting and has pretty much all of what you said and more. I think 4th ed actually moves _away_ from magic affecting the world outside of combat. You can't just cast fly or teleport in six seconds, or replace an entire countries economy with creation magic any more. Heck, I actually think flight magic was more commonly used in second ed than in fourth, simply because you could pull it out at will, while in fourth ed you actually need to plan ahead a bit.


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## Dragonblade (Dec 31, 2011)

I nodded to realism. Then I killed it and took its stuff.


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## Rechan (Dec 31, 2011)

I'm a writer. And the thing about realism you have to understand is that it is mutable.

Take the TV show CSI. Real life crime scene techs collect evidence, and that's it; they don't interact with suspects, don't follow through, they just inform the police and the police do everything. DNA takes _at least_ a week to get back, and you have to send it off to a lab in some other state to get it done. 

*But* that is not interesting TV. AT least, not interesting for a police procedural about crime techs. So the writers of the show changed the way it works for the sake of entertainment and enjoyability of the audience. 

Writers do this all the time.


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## Argyle King (Dec 31, 2011)

Gort said:


> Eberron is a 3rd ed setting and has pretty much all of what you said and more. I think 4th ed actually moves _away_ from magic affecting the world outside of combat. You can't just cast fly or teleport in six seconds, or replace an entire countries economy with creation magic any more. Heck, I actually think flight magic was more commonly used in second ed than in fourth, simply because you could pull it out at will, while in fourth ed you actually need to plan ahead a bit.




I'm aware of Eberron.  The way I'm running the current campaign goes beyond that though.  

To give an example: the most recent session, I had the PCs fighting enemies who were using magic laser blasters.  'Shadow Bolt' (the actual power the enemies were using by RAW) became a black tube with two pistol grips (one at the back and one at the front) so as to be used like a storm trooper's assault rifle.

It's been a lot more satisfying running the game like this than trying to run my idea of fantasy.  For me, the problem isn't often the big things (some of the 3rd Edition spells you alluded to,) it's some of the little details.  I'm not suggesting 3rd Edition is my ideal though; for fantasy, I've come to embrace a system which isn't D&D at all.  (Not Pathfinder either... just to clarify.)

Some of the bigger reasons why have already been discussed in a different thread.


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## ForeverSlayer (Dec 31, 2011)

Rechan said:


> I'm a writer. And the thing about realism you have to understand is that it is mutable.
> 
> Take the TV show CSI. Real life crime scene techs collect evidence, and that's it; they don't interact with suspects, don't follow through, they just inform the police and the police do everything. DNA takes _at least_ a week to get back, and you have to send it off to a lab in some other state to get it done.
> 
> ...




Why are you trying to compare TV to D&D? The reason time speeds up in shows such as CSI is because of show time. D&D is not an hour long TV episode but while CSI isn't real it is still believable. There is nothing that causes you to sit back and scratch your head at the craziness of it. 

Depends on the topic that writers are writing about. Some writers such as Jim Butcher can take something that is pure fantasy and implement it in a realistic fashion that allows you to imagine it.  

Writing is where realistic fantasy is the most important. When a reader can read a sentence and not picture it in their mind then the writer has failed in a sense. Describing something so that the imagination can give that image is something that a great writer can do. Same goes with D&D. It is a narrative game that player's use their imaginations to imagine what is going on. 

If D&D wants to continue the board game route then they need to drop the role playing title and stop hiding behind it.


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## KarinsDad (Dec 31, 2011)

Wormwood said:


> I agree---but I've long since reconciled powers like "Come and Get It" as a granting a tiny bit of narrative control to the player using it.
> 
> Rather than 'taunting' oozes and zombies, perhaps the fighter is _predicting_ a group of opponents will move into such a way that he can punish them for their mistake?
> 
> No magic involved, just a really canny warrior capitalizing on the mistakes of his opponents. The fact that the _player_ forced the situation instead of the DM doesn't matter to the narrative at all.




Well, the fact that the game is played on a grid with concepts of foes being 5 or 10 or 15 feet away breaks this down narratively.

It's all nice and well to have the player write the story the way he wants, but it's better if he writes it in a way that makes sense to everyone sitting at the table and some of those people there don't just have to accept the incongruity with a scowl on their faces because that's the way some designer illogically wrote the power.

Moving Orcus closer to you when Orcus doesn't want to get closer to you reeks of non-saveable magic, not narrative control of the warrior getting closer to Orcus.

And a Warrior capitalizing on Orcus' mistakes with something he learned 20 some levels earlier? Yeah, that's an extremely big stretch.


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## Argyle King (Jan 1, 2012)

Rechan said:


> I'm a writer. And the thing about realism you have to understand is that it is mutable.
> 
> Take the TV show CSI. Real life crime scene techs collect evidence, and that's it; they don't interact with suspects, don't follow through, they just inform the police and the police do everything. DNA takes _at least_ a week to get back, and you have to send it off to a lab in some other state to get it done.
> 
> ...





However, there's still an acceptable ballpark of 'reality.'  That ballpark may be different depending upon your target audience and your genre, but there still is a ballpark.

If there were a CSI episode in which one of the agents were shot in the face, but -then he's in next week's episode looking perfectly fine- it's going to raise some questions about 'reality.'

Visual mediums also have limitations imposed upon them by their structure and time limit which books and print do not.  Likewise, books and print have limitations which rpgs (as an interactive activity) do not.  This is one of the reasons why I often am of the opinion that R. Howard's Conan stories were grim and gritty in spite of Conan being such an over-the-top character and surviving impossible odds in a regular basis.  The character is needed for the series to continue.  

Still, Howard writes in a way that makes the reader believe it; he doesn't just handwave and expect the reader to not notice.  Conan still has limits.  He might be the greatest warrior, but his personal skill still fails when faced with an enemy army.  He may well kill 5 or 10 men, but he does not often do so without some sort of wound -unless he had a clear advantage.  There's also the world around him which is painted in a way which passes as making sense most of the time.  You don't see massive monsters roaming around everywhere; they are often unique creatures.  Magic is capable of great things, but bartering with devils still comes with a price.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 1, 2012)

keterys said:


> Everyone's got some mighty different standards, though.
> 
> I mean, divine challenge is stupid / silly / nonsensical, but flying dragons, going toe to toe with gargantuan enemies of any kind, and _hit points_ are?




You've got it.

Divine challenge is stupid / silly / nonsensical and the only reason it was written in the first place was to attempt to turn a D&D Paladin into a video game aggro character which a Paladin never really was.

A D&D Paladin was a Holy melee Smiter who was resistant to many things and punished his enemies with his sword, not one that focused his enemies attacks on himself artificially. The class concept has changed pretty drastically. It's not the same feel, just because the Paladin still wears plate armor and uses a weapon. I know of two players who mostly played Paladins in D&D for years (decades in one case) who played a 4E Paladin for a while and then moved on.

A 4E Paladin doesn't play much differently than a 4E Fighter. Yeah, the penalties on their marks are mechanically different, but it's pretty much still damage for attacking someone else. The entire dropping of "good vs. evil" in 4E (i.e. no detect evil, no aura of good, no divine grace, no divine health, no code of conduct, etc.) has made a Paladin into a Fighter with a small ability to heal. No amount of "well, you could narratively decide to play the Paladin the old way" is going to change that. And Paladin's never had magical ranged damage spells. Most of their spells were healing, buffs, and debuffs. It was never about blasting foes at a distance with divine magic. It's a pretty different beast than before.

The biggest threat to the D&D Paladin was never an NPC. It was 4E.


Flying dragons, going toe to toe with gargantuan enemies of any kind, and _hit points_ are normal expectations of the game system and have been for over 30 years.


I think that the issue is one of expectations. Some people who have played the game for years had expectations that certain concepts would be the same or similar and those concepts were thrown out or totally changed. The same happened with 3E. When the designers change the mechanics and the class concepts so radically, there will be players who don't like it.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 1, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> However, there's still an acceptable ballpark of 'reality.'  That ballpark may be different depending upon your target audience and your genre, but there still is a ballpark.




I think this might be the crux of the issue.

In previous edition changes, the ballpark of the reality change was reasonably similar. Things changed, but the imagery of the game stayed similar. The realities of the game stayed similar.

With 4E, the game suddenly "jumped the shark" with respect to its reality.

There are few good aligned monsters anymore and PCs are allowed to be monsters.

Fireballs are firecubes.

Wizards cannot dispel magic (and anecdotally, I've seen the Dispel Magic used exactly twice in the game system in 3 years and the roll failed both times, even in it's extremely limited capacity, it's next to worthless).

Flying typically lasts for about 6 seconds.

Teleport can be done by more than half of the classes (even some Fighters as an At Will) and it can often be done at very low level.

The realities of the game were turned on their head.


One of my favorites (IIRC), 1E Invisibility lasted until one attacked, 2E Invisibility lasted until one attacked or 24 hours, 3E invisibility lasted until one attacked or for 10 minutes per level, 3.5 invisibility lasted until one attacked or for 1 minute per level, 4E invisibility lasted until one attacked or for 6 seconds (but can be sustained for another 6 seconds as a standard action).

Is Invisibility really that game changing and threatening considering that the recipient really cannot stay invisible if he attacks? Is a +5 to defenses (but not area effects) REALLY that powerful of an effect?

This is, quite frankly, game design lunacy. The 2E Invisibility would be totally fine in 4E because the spell is already limited to one target as a Daily power. The designers are smoking crack here.


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## Rechan (Jan 1, 2012)

Comment edited out. I just shouldn't participate in these discussions. My disbelief is suspended with bungee cords, and I can let slide a hell of a lot more than some people, be it game ormovie. Hence why these things always frustrate me - I cannot relate at all, and nothing I say matters.

Reality is far less important to me than internal consistency.


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## Incenjucar (Jan 1, 2012)

Invisibility allows you to use non-attack powers, take a variety of actions such as disarming traps or activating magic items, gives you total concealment, and immunity to opportunity attacks. It is indeed very powerful. Remember, wizards are not the primary focus of the game anymore. 

Something to keep in mind: A lot of the old favorites were old favorites because they were absurdly powerful, like Time Stop.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 1, 2012)

Incenjucar said:


> Invisibility allows you to use non-attack powers, take a variety of actions such as disarming traps or activating magic items, gives you total concealment, and immunity to opportunity attacks. It is indeed very powerful. Remember, wizards are not the primary focus of the game anymore.
> 
> Something to keep in mind: A lot of the old favorites were old favorites because they were absurdly powerful, like Time Stop.




While I agree that Time Stop was ridiculous, Invisibility is not "very powerful" if the user cannot attack and keep it going. It's not even close to powerful. On the optimization sites, it's rated a 2 out of 6 (as is Dimension Door) and rightfully so (course, most of that is due to the fact that it's a standard action to use and to sustain).

Yes, a PC could sit there in his little invisible bubble and do the things you say, but so what? If a foe had a 50% chance to hit him, it dropped to 25% for 2 out of the 4 types of different attacks (ranged and melee, it doesn't help against close or area). So, the equivalent of maybe +3 or +4 (encounter dependent) to defenses. He's still not really that safe. Plus, invisibility does not prevent everyone from knowing exactly which square a PC is in. That requires a successful Stealth roll which Int Wizards rarely have an abundance of.

And is immunity to OAs that impressive? Not really. OAs very rarely happen in the game as is. Once players figured out how to avoid them manually two plus years ago, they have become an infrequent occurrence. I cannot remember the last time someone in one of our games provoked an OA unless it was done on purpose for some reason.

Teleport gives one immunity to OAs, but it's handed out at first level to most of the classes. Why isn't teleport considered potent if it has immunity to OAs?

And the Invisibility power is a Daily power. A DAILY. Let me repeat that. A DAILY. It should have some umph to it, but it is a sad sad power that very few players ever take (just like Dispel Magic).

Invisibility is the D&D equivalent of taking your shoes off at the airport. A knew jerk overreaction of mega proportions that was never well thought out, just implemented.


Face it. Everyone has a different opinion of what is overpowered and what is underpowered. But one thing that we should be able to agree upon is that just because a power is written in the books doesn't mean that it is balanced. There are a plethora of optimization guides on the WotC site where there are a ton of powers that are illustrated as seriously underpowered or overpowered for their level and many of the overpowered ones have been erratta-ed by WotC.

What this illustrates is that the 4E game designers, for all of their good intentions, are just people like the rest of us. People who make serious mistakes. I think in their effort to water down Wizard, Clerics, and Druids (i.e. CoDzilla), they made a lot of serious overreactions when nerfing spells (similar to taking your shoes off at the airport) to the point that for the most part, many canonical spells for these classes are now a bit of a joke.

Teleport is handed out like candy, but Flying and Invisibility are fairly non-existent (at least flying was until the Sorcerer came out, then Sorcerer only one round flying made a bit of a comeback).

Dispel Magic is a perfect example. It doesn't do anything now. Most monsters don't have zones, they have auras instead. And how often do monsters throw out conjurations? WotC's answer to how worthless it is was to change it from a Daily power to an Encounter power. Granted, that at least allowed the Wizard to almost always have it available, but it doesn't change the fact that zones and conjurations just don't show up in the game that often.

300 creatures out of 3800 of level 6 to 30+ have either a zone or a conjuration (350 out of 4800 total, but 6th level PCs rarely run into lower level monsters). As written, it's a Standard action spell (i.e. it uses up precious action economy) that is useful against less than 8% of all foes, and there's a 40% chance (or more against the really tough foes when you really need it) that it doesn't help. That means that it helps less than 5% of encounters or about once per two gaming levels.

So from level 6 to 30 (2.5 years of gaming for some groups), the spell helps maybe 12 times or once every 2.5 months. Very few people are going to take a spell that helps out that infrequently and takes a standard action, but doesn't do damage, if they actually know how infrequent it helps. Usually, they find it out via trial and error by having the spell for 9 levels and realizing in the last year, it only helped them a handful of times and they replace it.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 1, 2012)

Thinking about it, there is something that does bug me in the 3.5 to 4E shift.

In their attempt to nerf CoDzilla and other casters, WotC didn't just do it at the Heroic and Paragon levels.

They did it at the Epic levels for powers that were originally heroic level earlier edition powers and not all that game breaking.

How many casters can fly around the battlefield at Epic levels for the entire encounter? It's possible, especially with specific magic items, but its still fairly rare. This could be done at level 5 in the earlier versions of the game, but is somewhat rare for Demigods in 4E.

I can see a group of 3E Demigods and 4E PC Demigods getting together for drinks, and the 3E Demigods are laughing their asses off because most of the 4E Demigod and Liches and other mega ultra powerful PCs cannot even fly.

3E Demigod 1: "Even my butler can fly on his own. My dog can fly on his own. I wish the damn cat couldn't fly on his own."

3E Demigod 2 whispers: "Should we tell them that Orcus took over WotC with the master plan to make every PC a superhero, everyone can be super. And when everyone's super, no-one will be."

3E Demigod 1 whispers: "No, no. If they find that out, they'll demand that WotC fire Orcus as CEO and put it back the way it was. It's better if the masses of players out there are totally unaware that his master plan worked. They cannot even fly. snort."


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## Incenjucar (Jan 1, 2012)

That an individual has not experienced the full abuse of a power does not mean a power is not excessively powerful. Considering the array of tactical and out-of-combat uses, I can only imagine a very forgiving or casual game is involved. In the games I run and play in, OAs happen quite often, wizards with stealth powers are prone to seek access to the Stealth skill, monsters don't all have fantastic perception scores, players use non-combat utilities, and I've yet to see a character who can teleport at-will at level 1, or level 6 for that matter, because it IS quite potent.

Dispel Magic is a variable-use ability, true. I personally use a fair number of zone-based controllers, but it is certainly campaign-dependent. This is also an issue with a number of different abilities. Turn Undead is rather useless if the DM never uses undead. This issue has existed at least since 2E, and I wager earlier editions as well.


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## Hussar (Jan 1, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> I'm aware of Eberron.  The way I'm running the current campaign goes beyond that though.
> 
> To give an example: the most recent session, I had the PCs fighting enemies who were using magic laser blasters.  'Shadow Bolt' (the actual power the enemies were using by RAW) became a black tube with two pistol grips (one at the back and one at the front) so as to be used like a storm trooper's assault rifle.
> 
> ...




Just happened to watch Krull the movie a week or two ago.  Fantasy movie that has EXACTLY the weapons you are talking about, produced twenty or thirty years ago.

The idea of Pew Pew lazer guns in fantasy is hardly a new one.



			
				Karins Dad said:
			
		

> While I agree that Time Stop was ridiculous, Invisibility is not "very powerful" if the user cannot attack and keep it going. It's not even close to powerful. On the optimization sites, it's rated a 2 out of 6 (as is Dimension Door) and rightfully so (course, most of that is due to the fact that it's a standard action to use and to sustain).




Are you kidding me?  You obviously didn't play summoners very much did you?  Because an invisible summoner, standing back about fifty feet so that whole 50% miss chance never comes up, obliterates most opposition if played well.  Give me an invisibility spell and a wand of Summon Monster 4 and I can trash monsters well above my pay grade all on my own.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 1, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Are you kidding me?  You obviously didn't play summoners very much did you?  Because an invisible summoner, standing back about fifty feet so that whole 50% miss chance never comes up, obliterates most opposition if played well.  Give me an invisibility spell and a wand of Summon Monster 4 and I can trash monsters well above my pay grade all on my own.




And as a DM, I could easily crush such a PC.

Why?

First off, there is no Wand of Summon Monster 4 in 4E. You must be thinking of 3E. There isn't a single wand in 4E that can summon a creature TMK.

So, let's make an assumption here. The summoner has to use a move action to sustain the Invisibility (as opposed to the Standard action that the Invisibility spell requires today). In other words, a lot stronger than the current 4E Invisibility, but slightly weaker than the 4E Greater Invisibility.

Most encounters don't have 80+ by 80+ foot rooms where the summoner can hang back 50 feet most of the encounter and still attack. Most encounters are in 50 by 50 or smaller areas that fit somewhat easy on a gaming table. So yes, sometimes there is a large enough area to stay out of charge range, but often, there isn't.

The monsters ignore the summoned creatures and attack the summoning PC. Move and charge if possible, or worse case shift and charge. +1 to hit. The monsters know exactly where the PC is, so the Invisibility doesn't prevent attacks in any way.

If the monsters have area or close attacks, invisibility doesn't help the PC versus those attacks at all.

Summoners are typically squishy with lower defenses, and an invisible summoner is shouting that he is a threat, hence, destroy the threat. Normally, a Leader is the biggest threat (once found) and a Striker is the next biggest threat (the biggest until the Leader reveals himself, typically by healing). But an invisible summoning PC just puts himself near the top of the list.

Granted, a PC could use Stealth to up his protection level a bit, but that runs into its own problems. As an example, Dex is usually not a high priority Wizard ability score. So, maybe +2 Dex, +1 race, +5 trained, and +2 misc results in a +10 at most (+8 more reasonably) whereas the monsters will either be in the +0 to +2 range, or in the +6 or +7 range. Other summoner classes might have a higher Dex, but most other summoners like Druids do not have access to Invisibility too often.

And if the PC is putting ability point scores into Dex, he's not putting as much into other ability scores. That means that some melee and ranged attacks will be against a low NAD.

Plus, Hiding requires not talking above a whisper. As a DM, if the summoner cannot talk and is hiding, then the party Leader doesn't know when the summoner is bloodied or seriously hurt or has an effect on him. That means that as DM, I wouldn't allow a player of a Leader PC to heal a hiding summoner or give him a save because the Leader wouldn't know that the summoner needs it. If the summoner asks for healing, fine. Then the Leader knows to heal and the monsters know where the summoner is.

I'd also require that the player of the Hiding Invisible PC take his miniature off the board and tell me as DM where his PC is after each move. That way, none of the other players know where that PC is unless that player makes an active perception check.

Quid Pro Quo.

PC Sorcerer: "Sorry dude. I didn't know you were in that area when I blasted the monsters." 

Course, I might do this for any hiding PC depending on circumstances because hiding shouldn't give out of character clues to the other players. But, hiding almost never comes up in combat, so it's usually a bit of a moot point.

And if the monsters are focusing on the summoner and the PC Leader is trying to help that summoner, that means that the PC Leader is typically having to stay within 5 squares of that summoner. That puts the PC Leader (another high value target) in amongst the monsters. He cannot both hang back and try to help the summoner.

Invisibility and hiding is a two edged sword. The monsters are hindered a bit, but so should the other PCs (and hence players) if the DM plays by the rules and/or by not giving other players info they shouldn't have.

If the hiding PC moves more than 2 squares during an action, he must make a new Stealth check with a –5 penalty to remain hidden. So, once the monsters are on top of the summoner, he has to stay in their vicinity, or he usually gives up his Hide advantage. And the summoner only makes a single Stealth check to hide, the monsters each can use a minor action to do an active perception to find him. The odds of a summoner staying hidden are not that high. And, only one monster needs to find the summoner. The rest just go attack the square that the first one did.

Granted, the summoner doesn't even need to Hide. He could just summon a creature on round one, go invisible on round two, and then move (or for some summoners double move) around the battlefield, always trying to keep multiple other PCs between himself and any foes. This tactic might even work in some scenarios, but it's probably wishful thinking in many scenarios because the monsters can often still get to him (with the exception of a few monsters that might be locked down by a defender or controller).

Finally, most summon spells are Dailies. So this "uber tactic"  here requires that the summoner throw at least 2 Dailies into the Encounter. The vast majority of his other Encounter and At Will attack powers are mostly worthless during this encounter which for summoners like Druids, halve their effectiveness.

Sure, if the DM is a noob, or unaware of how the rules work, or not willing to take off the gloves, those tactics might work on a consistent basis. But, because Invisibility is a Daily (assuming it was a Move to maintain and not a Standard), it also means that the summoner only gets to do this trick once per day, twice per day once he acquires Greater Invisibility.

I'm not impressed and don't see where this is any more uber than a dozen other tactical options in the game that are even stronger. A simple one is "My Eladrin teleports up to an inaccessible or hard to reach place, and then rains down attacks over the entire battlefield". This tactic negates nearly all melee attacks, the majority of attacks in the game system. It cannot be used every encounter, but neither can invisible summoning. Course, if your DM does a lot of two dimensional encounters with little in the way of 3D directions, then this isn't something that one could do a lot. But, all tactics have pros and cons.

Special note: when the Invisibility spell was first written, there were no summoners in the game system. To assume that the designers knew that summoned creatures combined with invisibility might be potent and how summoned creatures would work is disingenuous. Once they brought them in, summoned creatures changed each time because the designers over-nerfed them the first time out.


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## keterys (Jan 1, 2012)

The effectiveness of invisibility is _way_ off topic from whether you make a nod to realism or not.

A laundry list of complaints about 4E has nothing to do with the topic, and is not appropriate in this thread.


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## Aenghus (Jan 1, 2012)

"Realism" is subjective, and people often disagree about reality even in the real world, which has a lot more bandwidth.

One reason I like 4e is specifically because it tries to provide some separation between the mechanics and subjective impressions of the game reality. I can't remember how many times in previous editions (and other RPGs for that matter) that I was wrongfooted as a player because my conception of the game reality was different to that of the GM and the other players, so actions that looked reasonable to me didn't to them.

By spelling out the mechanics of powers, communication is improved and its easier for players to understand what is happening in the gameworld and act on it effectively without constant "gotchas" coming out of left field. 

For me some simplifications are a small price to pay for increased engagement in the game and lowering some of the walls to participation. Requiring group telepathy to play the game is too elitist for me.


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## Argyle King (Jan 1, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Just happened to watch Krull the movie a week or two ago.  Fantasy movie that has EXACTLY the weapons you are talking about, produced twenty or thirty years ago.
> 
> The idea of Pew Pew lazer guns in fantasy is hardly a new one.
> .




I've seen Krull.  Good movie.

Though what I'm trying to say is that -for me- to enjoy 4th Edition more easily, I've found that it's easier for me to change my vision and change the style I want to portray than it is for me to bend the game to the vision and style I would normally want otherwise.  


@ KarinsDad

I have to somewhat disagree with a few of your posts.  

While 4th Edition epic PCs may not have some of the tricks of their 3rd Edition counterparts, I believe that 4th Edition PCs in general are more powerful when compared to the 4th Edition world around them versus the power level of a 3rd Edition PC versus the world around them.  It only gets more exaggerated as the levels increase.  In a different thread a few weeks ago, I talked about how the most recent game in which I was a player concluded with the group of PCs at level 30 completely obliterating what the GM designed to be a level 37 encounter; it wasn't even close.  In fact, the battle was so lopsided, that the GM of that game has said he doesn't want to GM anymore for a while.  This surprised me because he's by far the most pro-4th Edition member of the Saturday group.

He bumped it up to what the encounter guidelines said was a lvl 37 encounter based on XP budget because -after seeing what we had done to pretty much every other battle during the campaign- he wanted the end fight of epic tier to be... well... epic.  He did not want it to be a cakewalk.  After upping it to 37, he also then doubled the HP of the (level 34) BBEG to ensure that the BBEG might survive for more than a round.  He also had a set of Gauntlet style monster minion generators which required a skill challenge to shut down.  He also made interesting use of terrain.  He did what the book says you should do for an interesting and challenging encounter (and then boosted it in hopes of it lasting more than a round or two.)

I think the whole combat took 4-5 rounds.  This was with not all of the PCs even trying.  As a player, I felt kind of bad about what my character was capable of doing.  I did not want to ruin the encounter for the GM>  So, being that my character was also the skill monkey of the group, I spent my time doing the skill challenge.  I did not use anything I had available to help boost the group's output.  (My character was a bard; while I did not say so in other threads, my character is the same bard who counted as all races -epic destiny from Primal Power- and virtually* all classes.)

* I did a lot of multiclassing.  As a metagame goal to challenge myself, I wanted to see how many races and classes I could collect.

Oh, I also forgot to mention that the GM houseruled that the BBEG would get multiple initiatives during the combat.

Result?  It was a slaughter; not even close.  I think there was a moment in the first round when one of the PCs got in trouble due to a string of lucky rolls by the GM, but that was it.  With only about half (another character, the party sorcerer helped me with the skill challenge for the same reason) of the party engaging a fight which was (by the book) 7 levels higher than we were, the PCs squashed the other side.

To bring this back on topic, that's one of the issues I have with 4th Edition's 'realism.'  After seeing the PCs' abilities compared to the abilities of what the fiction says are some of the most horrid and feared creatures throughout the land, it's difficult for me to take that fiction seriously.  What was going on with the game mechanics and what the fiction & 'reality' of the game world were saying was going on didn't match up.  That's a portion of the reason why I chose to change the fiction and paint it differently in my game.

I've also done some work to rewrite XP charts, skill challenge DCs, how Elites work, and how Solos work as well.  I'm also somewhat liberal about giving out benefits based on back stories; for example, the party fighter in the game I'm running said he was part of the military leadership where he was from, so I granted him a few warlord features.  So far, the changes I've made in how I view the game as well as the overhaul I've given to some areas of the game itself have allowed me to have a better experience with 4th Edition.


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## UngeheuerLich (Jan 2, 2012)

[MENTION=12759]Kari[/MENTION]n´s dad:

the paladin of 4e is so much nicer than the 3rd edition one... playing a paladin of 3rd edition was even more depressing than playing a fighter...

both a fighter and the paladin are now fun to play.
Even though i believe, the defender aura is mechanically better than divine challenge/marking mechanism, but actually both are great additions to the game.
And IMHO aggro mechanics work differently... but thats IMHO and so on.

The only problem I see, and you identified it, are "psychic", nonmagical powers that don´t allow saves. If you accept a feint granting CA, a bluff tricking someone into attacking you is not so different.
It is just, that some creatures need to be immune to such things.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jan 2, 2012)

Yeah, I don't J3D. Certainly OOTB epic stuff is hard to challenge well-designed PCs with (though I've seen players that really weren't tactical or savvy enough to do well). It boggles my mind though that well-designed modern solos overleveled by 7 levels are trivial. Something seems a bit eschew there. 

I think its true that the PoL world concept is going to lead to epic PCs being relatively exceedingly powerful compared to what you'd likely find in that kind of world (IE high level NPCs and whatnot), but the conceit there is you don't  generally match up against WORLDLY opponents. In other settings like say FR that also wouldn't likely be true, as there are some REALLY powerful NPCs. 

Even so, in terms of pure capability to do any old arbitrary thing epic 3.x characters are on a whole other level. That is at least they are given tools by default (if you're a caster) that are beyond anything any 4e character can do by the book. Of course you're probably going to want to give 4e epics some of those kinds of abilities as well now and then, but the nice part is they are resources the DM controls access to. The worst you can say is 4e epic can be made to work. 3.5 epic just doesn't and never really will. 

Of course by the time you get into high epic play 'realism' should be pretty much irrelevant.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 2, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> To bring this back on topic, that's one of the issues I have with 4th Edition's 'realism.'  After seeing the PCs' abilities compared to the abilities of what the fiction says are some of the most horrid and feared creatures throughout the land, it's difficult for me to take that fiction seriously.  What was going on with the game mechanics and what the fiction & 'reality' of the game world were saying was going on didn't match up.  That's a portion of the reason why I chose to change the fiction and paint it differently in my game.
> 
> I've also done some work to rewrite XP charts, skill challenge DCs, how Elites work, and how Solos work as well.  I'm also somewhat liberal about giving out benefits based on back stories; for example, the party fighter in the game I'm running said he was part of the military leadership where he was from, so I granted him a few warlord features.  So far, the changes I've made in how I view the game as well as the overhaul I've given to some areas of the game itself have allowed me to have a better experience with 4th Edition.




Yes, but this isn't necessarily a probably with the reality per se, it's a problem with two areas:

1) The plethora of splat books where each one has to be just a tiny bit more bigger, better, and badder where balance slowly bends in favor of the PCs. It gets to the point that very few players have PCs that are not heavily optimized.

2) A general problem with there being no design metarules to control powers, items, and feats at given levels due to the power of the synergy of effects and conditions. In other words, combining immobilized/slowed with prone is a fairly potent ability for monsters with no ranged attacks, almost equal to sending the NPC offstage for a round (e.g. sending it to the Feywild, turning it into a frog, etc.). At the levels that immobilized/slowed and prone are readily available, the monsters need to start acquiring abilities to overcome the tactic. Even by having most every high level monster with a ranged attack or with resistance to getting knocked prone or immobilized, this tactic becomes less viable.

These are game mechanic design flaws that result in the PCs being a lot stronger than the monsters as they get higher in level, not necessarily reality problems for most players. When at Epic, I want to be playing a DemiGod that feels epic. I just also want my challenges to be epic as well and that cannot happen with the original epic monster design.

Btw, if you restrict the books (and specifically items) available to the players, some of this disappears because many of the cool tricks and synergies disappear. Players don't have the absolute best powers and feats and combinations anymore.

I think it is important for the higher level monsters to challenge the players so that battles FEEL epic and hence, support the reality of the game world. As DM, it's a DM's responsibility (like you are doing) to alter the monsters of the game world as the PCs get higher level so that they are challenging to the players in order to reintroduce the fiction that he wants for his campaign. Too many DMs tend to play monsters how they are written in the books and because of the vast plethora of options to players, that's a mistake for the fiction.

It's also a mistake to hand out the absolutely best perfect items for given PCs as part of treasure parcels. PCs should, for the most part, get relatively typical type items that help the PCs, but are not perfect matches. All perfect matches should be instigated by the players and found via quests or serious effort. That allows the higher level fiction to be a bit closer because the PCs cannot do every uber thing that the optimization boards suggest.


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## UngeheuerLich (Jan 2, 2012)

[MENTION=6667620]poi[/MENTION]nt 2:

I don´t think you should always alter monsters, but try to work with what you have... sometimes a magic item can be used to give the monster a power it needs and the player is rewarded, both by a better challenge and the item he has really earned...
but not giving players everything they want is the most important thing.. maybe they will be not very amused at first, but in the end they are rewarded by a much better play experience...


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## KarinsDad (Jan 2, 2012)

UngeheuerLich said:


> [MENTION=12759]Kari[/MENTION]n´s dad:
> 
> the paladin of 4e is so much nicer than the 3rd edition one... playing a paladin of 3rd edition was even more depressing than playing a fighter...




Not for all players.



UngeheuerLich said:


> both a fighter and the paladin are now fun to play.




Again, not for all players.



UngeheuerLich said:


> Even though i believe, the defender aura is mechanically better than divine challenge/marking mechanism, but actually both are great additions to the game.
> And IMHO aggro mechanics work differently... but thats IMHO and so on.




Of course. It's mostly opinion. The issue is one of flavor. There was no real concept of "aggro" a decade or two decades ago. The realism, fiction, flavor, verisimilitude, or whatever you want to call it has changed for Paladins. Although they were often in the front line, they didn't have an official job of gaining aggro.

In fact, aggro was at the determination of the DM. If the Fighter was the biggest threat, the enemies often attacked him. If the Wizard was the biggest threat, the enemies often attacked him. If the Druid was the biggest threat, the enemies often attacked him.

Aggro is a totally unrealistic and artificial concept shoved down the DM's and player's throats in 4E and one of the reason some people fled to Pathfinder or other versions of the game.

If I'm fighting you and you are pressing me, there should be combat techniques for me to sidestep you and go fight the main threat behind you. Locking down a foe completely with no types of defenses or counters to that is totally artificial and that's a problem with the aggro mechanisms. There are no game mechanics counters to them shy of teleporting and even teleporting doesn't work against the Paladin's aggro mechanism.

It gets worse realism-wise when the Defender has an aura or a multi-target market. How exactly is the Fighter or Warden pressing the guy in front of him and the guy behind him at the exact same time??? That's not plausible (and yes, someone is bound to through a stretch rationale out about it).

Every mechanism in the game should have some way to effectively counter it and there is no way TMK to 'dispel magic" a defender mark shy of knocking him unconscious.



UngeheuerLich said:


> The only problem I see, and you identified it, are "psychic", nonmagical powers that don´t allow saves. If you accept a feint granting CA, a bluff tricking someone into attacking you is not so different.
> It is just, that some creatures need to be immune to such things.




Well, they seem pretty different to me. For one thing, the former doesn't result in forced movement of the recipient. For another, CA is a positional advantage which can be granted by mundane things like flanking or total concealment. It's not quite in the same ballpark of effectiveness or rarity or even magical-ness.

I do agree that some creatures need to be immune. In Revenge of the Giants, some of the Giants are immune to Come and Get It. It's just a few creatures out of many thousands with the immunity isn't enough.

My flavor beef with 4E is that magic doesn't feel like magic anymore. The game became a game of super heroes with everyone throwing out little conditions and effects all over the board (which is the number one problem with 4E, too many effects and conditions with differing types of durations on the board that have to be tracked).

It's not just a balance issue of spells versus melee, it's that melee PCs can do supernatural type things that should be relegated to other power sources (e.g. Warlords healing). The balance in previous editions was that spell casters were squishy and melee PCs were tougher with better defenses in most cases. Now, spell casters are still squishy, melee PCs are still tougher with better defenses in most cases, but they both have similarly balanced super powers. For example, the spell caster can targets with a D6+4 close burst and the melee PC can target targets in a wpn+4 close burst (and the melee PC has more feats and better damage with the weapon, so his bursts tend to hurt more).

I have a picture in my head of what D&D is and my "reality" of it was only nudged with 3E, it was absolutely shattered with 4E. Course, the reality of how we view D&D and the reality of game effects within D&D are two different things.

My daughter never played 3.5 or earlier versions. For her, D&D means 4E and she'll might go through the same transitional pains that some of us went going to 4E when she goes to 5E.


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## technoextreme (Jan 2, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> It gets worse realism-wise when the Defender has an aura or a multi-target market. How exactly is the Fighter or Warden pressing the guy in front of him and the guy behind him at the exact same time??? That's not plausible (and yes, someone is bound to through a stretch rationale out about it).
> 
> Every mechanism in the game should have some way to effectively counter it and there is no way TMK to 'dispel magic" a defender mark shy of knocking him unconscious.



The Warden is incredibly easy to explain that when its mark enforcement utilizes the roots and plants to shift players around.    And you would be hard pressed to find any decent martial artist that isn't able to to press multiple guys at once.   Also, mark voiding powers are common place.  Once again the "Have you ever actually played the game" issue starts to crop up when non existent complaints start appearing.


Johnny3D3D said:


> If there were a CSI episode in which one of the agents were shot in the  face, but -then he's in next week's episode looking perfectly fine- it's  going to raise some questions about 'reality.'



Pretty much how the show operates.


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## UngeheuerLich (Jan 2, 2012)

again: defender aura is much more elegant.
aggro in older editions indeed worked as you described. And did so well enough. As a DM i just didn´t step outside the fighters range usually, as he was standing in between. I still don´t see why 4e haters call it aggro mechanic. It is just a little armor buff. The fighter mark rubs my sense of plausibility a lot more than divine magical challenge.
The knight aura should not be a problem for most players.

You could instead give the knight an ability that gives +2 AC to adjacent allies... that would be the way 3rd edition handled it. But i still guess if the fighters mark had always been the aura, noone would have bothered.

Come and get it is another thing. It needs to have something like "psychic" keyword. Also it needs to attack the will or the passive insight or something. So a) you can give oozes and mindless undead the immune psychic feature per default, and b) creatures with good awareness would not fall for such a trick.

My edition i learnt to play was ADnD 2nd edition. 3rd edition was my long time favourite as DM. 4e is now. Not that 4e is perfect. By all means no. Many problems you make out are indeed problems or at least based on minor shortcomings. Especially before essentials (which would have been a great success, if it had come first to be sure).

For 5e i have a smal list of things:

1) Monsters and PC based on the same assumptions about hp during a fight and damage to be done.

2) Conditions gone as they are now.
instead: return to iconic spells and abilities and acces to it via class

3) Feats and ability bumps gone as they are now.

4)  the magic item "balance"

5) Speaking of magic: I want my magic back. How stupid is it to tell the PC wizard, that the spellbooks of the oponents are just flavour and they can´t learn spells...


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## UngeheuerLich (Jan 2, 2012)

technoextreme said:


> The Warden is incredibly easy to explain that when its mark enforcement utilizes the roots and plants to shift players around.    And you would be hard pressed to find any decent martial artist that isn't able to to press multiple guys at once.   Also, mark voiding powers are common place.  Once again the "Have you ever actually played the game" issue starts to crop up when non existent complaints start appearing.
> 
> Pretty much how the show operates.



The warden mark stops beeing logical, when you are not fighting anywhere near roots... this is the actual problem: mechanics before story.

If your warden could only use his marking mechanism while standing on earthy ground, most combats would start with roleplaying (how can we get the dragon on the ground etc.)

fighter not beeing able to defend well while beeing flanked:
add: the defender aura is suspended if you are flanked.
This is actually a good idead. This way, you could get a friend out of the fighter´s aura if he is short on hp.
Such easy additions would make the game more plausible for me and i guess for many others. (Not that this exact point is a deal breaker)


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## technoextreme (Jan 2, 2012)

UngeheuerLich said:


> The warden mark stops beeing logical, when you are not fighting anywhere near roots... this is the actual problem: mechanics before story.



No not really.  The Warden is a primal spellcaster.


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## UngeheuerLich (Jan 2, 2012)

hmmh... this is also my interpretation, but some people think otherwise...


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## technoextreme (Jan 2, 2012)

UngeheuerLich said:


> hmmh... this is also my interpretation, but some people think otherwise...



If a wizard or even a druid can summon a wall of fire at will in Pathfinder a bunch of roots is kind piddly in comparison.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 2, 2012)

technoextreme said:


> And you would be hard pressed to find any decent martial artist that isn't able to to press multiple guys at once.




This is blatantly false. Having been a martial artist myself for years taught me this. Not only that, a surrounded martial artist is in trouble. He's not able to press multiple targets. He's too busy trying to defend himself and still counterattack. I suspect that you watch too much Kung Fu Theater. The only semi-safe way to attack multiple foes as a martial artist is to move around or grab a foe, keep him between yourself and the other foes, defeat him, hopefully with an incapacitating blow such as a kneecap, and then moving to the next foe.

If a surrounded martial fighter presses a foe on one side of him, the foe on the other side is free to move away. There is no super glue there. Multi-target defender auras allow for that, but real life doesn't. They are total nonsense from a plausibility POV. They are merely a game mechanic used to allow for other game mechanics to work as the designers desire. Multi-target aggro has to real life example in actual melee combat.



technoextreme said:


> Also, mark voiding powers are common place.




Saying it doesn't make it true. Examples?



technoextreme said:


> Once again the "Have you ever actually played the game" issue starts to crop up when non existent complaints start appearing.




This type of statement isn't allowed here on the boards. Just FYI.


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## Argyle King (Jan 2, 2012)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, I don't J3D. Certainly OOTB epic stuff is hard to challenge well-designed PCs with (though I've seen players that really weren't tactical or savvy enough to do well). It boggles my mind though that well-designed modern solos overleveled by 7 levels are trivial. Something seems a bit eschew there.
> 
> I think its true that the PoL world concept is going to lead to epic PCs being relatively exceedingly powerful compared to what you'd likely find in that kind of world (IE high level NPCs and whatnot), but the conceit there is you don't  generally match up against WORLDLY opponents. In other settings like say FR that also wouldn't likely be true, as there are some REALLY powerful NPCs.
> 
> ...




Your point about PoL is a good one.  I've often said that the PoL concept doesn't match the 4E mechanics very well.  Usually, when I say that, people tell me that mechanics don't change fluff.  I personally believe that crunch and fluff does have a relationship, and that changing one usually has an impact on the other, but it often seems as though that point of view is in the minority when I'm having a conversation about it.

...that ties into my issue with 'realism' in 4th Edition.  The story being told does not seem to match what is going on when dice are being rolled.  

The campaign went pretty much how I described from about level 8; onward.  There were a few hiccups around 11 when monsters had Paragon Tier abilities, but the players didn't yet.  We also struggled against a sand dragon because of horrible luck for the players combined with ridiculously lucky rolling on the part of the GM, but that's it.  For the most part, the PCs from this campaign dominated the enemy.

The bard character I was playing wasn't my original character.  I switched to the bard after my first PC because problematic, and I realized that it was annoying the GM.  I wasn't trying to build an uber PC; I just picked the options which seemed good and things fell into place the way they did on their own.  

The GM started to use extra monsters and such after seeing how these earlier battles went.   He wasn't playing with a GM versus player mentality; he just wanted fights to have some tension and drama rather then being a foregone conclusion.

@ KarinsDad

I think the most powerful member of the group from that campaign was a charisma Warlord built straight out of the PHB1.  I believe he may have had 2 feats which were not PHB1 feats.  One allowed him to use inspiring word on two people at a time; the other was one of the newer weapon expertise feats.  There were times in which he could buff the party enough that we virtually could never miss hitting the enemy.  That combined well with my Bard because I had Mantle of Unity - an encounter power which allowed the PCs to share their best defenses with each other.  This meant that for at least a round, the enemy had no hope of hitting us (short of a critical,) and we barely needed to try to hit them.  



As I've said, I play and enjoy 4th Edition.  I'm currently running a game now, and I'm enjoying it immensely.  However, part of getting to where I could enjoy the game involved me changing my expectations.  The kind of game I expected when first going into a session of D&D and the 'realism' involved is not what I got out of my earlier 4E experiences.  For a time, I would say I was bordering on 'h4ter.'  Eventually I realized that I had to change because trying to bend the game to what I wanted was making me more bitter than I felt I should be when playing a game that was supposed to be fun.  

I am working on things to modify the game, but I still believe there's a point past which I'm better off playing a different game if I want a certain type of experience or a certain sense of 'realism.'


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## KarinsDad (Jan 2, 2012)

technoextreme said:


> No not really.  The Warden is a primal spellcaster.




That's a bit of a stretch.

The Warden is from the primal power source and uses evocations. So does the Barbarian.

Neither of them would be considered primal spell casters. For example, I don't know of anyone who thinks that a Barbarian casts spells.

You seem to be confusing spell caster with someone who has supernatural powers. These classes don't use implements, they use melee weapons. They are able to access forces and spirits of nature, but it's nowhere near what one would normally and traditionally consider spell casting. With that type of definition, everyone would be a spell caster who isn't in the Martial Power Source and even classes in the Martial Power Source could be considered spell casters.

Druids and Shamans? Yes, people could consider them primal spellcasters because they can or do use implements.

Barbarians, Seekers, and Wardens are not what one would consider spell casters, even though they augment normal abilities with primal power.

This lack of "the same language" used is a bit of an issue for the flavor of 4E. In 1E to 3.5, Druids and Clerics did "cast spells". In 4E, the traditional spell caster is now more or less relegated to someone using an implement and the traditional melee character is now relegated to someone using a weapon. There really is no other definitions in 4E because the power source definitions are somewhat nebulous and murky (as is the smorgasbord of what is allowed within those power sources).

Granted, there are always the exceptions like the Swordmage who is considered using an implement when fighting with a weapon. He too is not often considered to be casting spells per se, but some of his powers are spell-like. The same applies to Paladins who have the ability to fire off divine energy at range.

Wardens have some close burst and clost blast type of effects, then again so do Barbarians.

This is the issue that I brought up earlier. Every class feels a bit like a spell caster in some ways. But there aren't definitions of Non-spell Caster, Partial Spell Caster, Spell Caster in 4E.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 2, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> @ KarinsDad
> 
> I think the most powerful member of the group from that campaign was a charisma Warlord built straight out of the PHB1.  I believe he may have had 2 feats which were not PHB1 feats.  One allowed him to use inspiring word on two people at a time; the other was one of the newer weapon expertise feats.  There were times in which he could buff the party enough that we virtually could never miss hitting the enemy.  That combined well with my Bard because I had Mantle of Unity - an encounter power which allowed the PCs to share their best defenses with each other.  This meant that for at least a round, the enemy had no hope of hitting us (short of a critical,) and we barely needed to try to hit them.




The Bard himself isn't PHB1.

I suspect that most PCs had powers and items from many different sources, even if they didn't have feats. Surely the players pulled stuff from at least ten different books if not more.

As for the Warlord, the game designers never understood the concept that buffs should be +1 for an encounter, or +2 or +3 for a single attack. Instead, they are often +4 or even +stat and it becomes totally nonsensical from a game mechanics POV. They did errata some of the powers, but even adding +4 to hit in a D20 system is grossly unbalanced. WotC hands that out as an encounter racial power. Sigh.

The problem isn't with the idea of the system, it's often with the implementation of the idea. You ran into this issue at level 30 for many many game design reasons.


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## UngeheuerLich (Jan 2, 2012)

Total disagree here:

of course, +4 to one attack is "unbalanced"
but the system should be able to handle such things. Why? because turning a miss into a hit is fun. Especially on an important power.

+1 to hit on all attacks is a lot less impressive to be honest... you will notice its effect less often, as the important powers only miss once in 20 attacks by exactly that single point.

actually i would not bother with +1 bonuses at all, as it is statistically too unreliable. Dailies or encounters should add +4 for a single attack.

Maybe the next edition needs a different idea on how much you should hit in general. In 3.5 it does not really matter if you hit or hit one round later... (except when it is the killing blow)
In 4e, not hitting is indeed very unfun. Especially on dailies or encounter powers.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jan 2, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> This is blatantly false. Having been a martial artist myself for years taught me this. Not only that, a surrounded martial artist is in trouble. He's not able to press multiple targets. He's too busy trying to defend himself and still counterattack. I suspect that you watch too much Kung Fu Theater. The only semi-safe way to attack multiple foes as a martial artist is to move around or grab a foe, keep him between yourself and the other foes, defeat him, hopefully with an incapacitating blow such as a kneecap, and then moving to the next foe.
> 
> If a surrounded martial fighter presses a foe on one side of him, the foe on the other side is free to move away. There is no super glue there. Multi-target defender auras allow for that, but real life doesn't. They are total nonsense from a plausibility POV. They are merely a game mechanic used to allow for other game mechanics to work as the designers desire. Multi-target aggro has to real life example in actual melee combat.




Agreed, but lets consider this. In what edition of the game has the fighter (etc) ever been even faintly realistic? You really seriously think that a fighter could even stand in front of 25 tons of scaly raging dragon for 3 seconds flat? Even slow it down? The very concept is utterly absurd. In fact FAR more absurd than a fighter threatening 2 targets enough to slow them down.

The problem with the concept that in earlier editions the fighter could 'do his job' of defending the 'squishies' was thin at best. It TOTALLY relied on the DM to run the monsters in an almost completely absurd way. I mean, sure, fighters are kinda dangerous, but they're dangerous sort of on a ratio of a rocket propelled grenade is dangerous, and the wizard is dangerous like an H-Bomb is dangerous. Any monster that isn't completely stupid wouldn't even look twice at the fighter on its way to gnaw on the guy behind him. At least now you don't need the DM's permission to do your job. 

There have been any number of proposals of 'more realistic' ways to handle this, but IMHO all of them are rather convolved and awkward to actually use at the table. Marking gets the idea across, it works well enough mechanically, and gives the player some control. And honestly, given how unrealistic the whole situation is anyway, can we just play and have fun? Why is it that 4e in particular has to be nit-picked to death and every other edition of the game gets a pass? I don't get it. I've played all of them. They have all been highly enjoyable and I've never had major issues with any of them as long as people were willing to just get on with it and play instead of crawling up the systems tailpipe and get all finicky about it. Really, its a question, WHY do people feel so compelled to get all on 4e's case? There's some sort of bad attitude that was somehow released by 4e changing some things. I'm absolutely at a loss to even begin to understand it.

[MENTION=58416]Johnny3D3D[/MENTION]

I don't know man. I think you play with a group of people that, as much as they may not be raving jerks about it, are extreme optimizing players. There's just no way in heck level 8 characters are crazy overpowered. I'd just have to say that your DM is not super tactical, creates scenarios that heavily favor the PCs, and the players are using really optimum tactics, items, etc. 

My experience is I'm reasonably tactical and while I've always had some tactically adept players there were always the other half of the players who varied from tactically daft to routine common-sensical people that took advantage of obvious openings but weren't brilliant. I also don't tend to hand out whole kits of optimum items. Everyone will likely get an item or two that are really good for their builds, but they aren't just going to get handed the best stuff. I play the monsters to win too, within the limits of what I figure monsters would do at least. I figure most monsters are pretty used to fighting and have fairly well rehearsed tactics, and they fight in situations where they can get the tactical advantage. Even at high paragon/low epic I've found that under that set of assumptions and with that sort of group of players the monsters do fine. 

I think the thing is that with a game where tactics and teamwork are so much a part of the game that its VERY hard to create a combat system where you can simply challenge every sort of possible group at different skill levels with the same sort of monsters. As much as 4e has set up a very structured framework of math around fights so that the challenge level is consistent there's still a variance of about 2-300% that is accountable to the side of the players. I don't know that there's really any way around it. Maybe just playing a more 'fourthcore' like type of game where everything is just deadly as all hell and the focus gets heavily shifted to the players needing to out think the DM, prepare carefully ahead of time, etc. You can definitely play 4e in that kind of mode. It becomes much less focused on tactical skirmishing as the centerpiece type of challenge. When the PCs DO fight in that sort of game they're usually already in deep doo-doo and the fights are preposterously brutal. Read through that 'Crucible of the Gods' module. I guarantee, there's no group of players that ever lived and breathed that won't find that challenging (honestly I expect the 1st time through success rate for parties in that thing is basically zero and I wouldn't consider it a usable adventure except as a bit of a fun diversion from normal play).


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## Kalontas (Jan 2, 2012)

I don't know where's the discussion moving now, but on the original question: yes, I do try to maintain a sense of realism, in a "logic" meaning. It doesn't have to follow the rules of physics as we know it, but everything has to have a reason and result.

Now the horrifying part: I'm the DM, so I sometimes overrule that a player's ability can't work, like aforementioned Vicious Mockery on a skeleton. My players learnt to live with it and just don't try to taunt mindless stuff, etc.


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## Hussar (Jan 2, 2012)

Kalontas said:


> I don't know where's the discussion moving now, but on the original question: yes, I do try to maintain a sense of realism, in a "logic" meaning. It doesn't have to follow the rules of physics as we know it, but everything has to have a reason and result.
> 
> Now the horrifying part: I'm the DM, so I sometimes overrule that a player's ability can't work, like aforementioned Vicious Mockery on a skeleton. My players learnt to live with it and just don't try to taunt mindless stuff, etc.




And really, if your players are groovy with that, everyone wins.  

I've often wondered why it's such a bad thing that the baseline is set one way instead of another.  In 3e, the baseline was set that that something like Vicious Mockery wouldn't effect skellies, but the DM could change to taste.  Unfortunately, this lead to all sorts of issues, like sidelining the poor rogue in an undead adventure or making the bard suck even worse than he normally does.  

Why is it whenever we criticise a system, we must absolutely adhere to the rules, but when its a system we like, suddenly anything goes?  4e's baseline is that everything always works.  It's right there in the rules that this is the baseline.  Changing that, so long as the group is happy with the changes isn't exactly earth shakingly difficult.


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## Dice4Hire (Jan 2, 2012)

Kalontas said:


> I don't know where's the discussion moving now, but on the original question: yes, I do try to maintain a sense of realism, in a "logic" meaning. It doesn't have to follow the rules of physics as we know it, but everything has to have a reason and result.
> 
> Now the horrifying part: I'm the DM, so I sometimes overrule that a player's ability can't work, like aforementioned Vicious Mockery on a skeleton. My players learnt to live with it and just don't try to taunt mindless stuff, etc.




That is too far for me to go. 

Plus stuff like that is just too hard to remember session to session.


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## pemerton (Jan 2, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> Aggro is a totally unrealistic and artificial concept shoved down the DM's and player's throats in 4E and one of the reason some people fled to Pathfinder or other versions of the game.
> 
> If I'm fighting you and you are pressing me, there should be combat techniques for me to sidestep you and go fight the main threat behind you. Locking down a foe completely with no types of defenses or counters to that is totally artificial and that's a problem with the aggro mechanisms.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> At least now you don't need the DM's permission to do your job.
> 
> There have been any number of proposals of 'more realistic' ways to handle this, but IMHO all of them are rather convolved and awkward to actually use at the table. Marking gets the idea across, it works well enough mechanically, and gives the player some control.



I'm with AbdulAlhazred on this one. Marking is, at least to some extent, a metagame state of affairs - it gives the GM a mechanical incentive to focus his/her monsters' attacks on the defender. There may be questions to ask about whether particular marking mechanics are balanced or not, but the basic idea of the mechanic seems just one aspect of 4e's metagame-heavy approach.

Given this, criticising the mechanic for ailing to correspond to anything in the gameworld seems to miss the point - if it's a metagame mechanic, it _doesn't_ correspond to anything in the gameworld.


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## technoextreme (Jan 2, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> That's a bit of a stretch.
> 
> The Warden is from the primal power source and uses evocations. So does the Barbarian.
> 
> Neither of them would be considered primal spell casters. For example, I don't know of anyone who thinks that a Barbarian casts spells.



The Barbarian only makes sense in the context I present it.  In fact so does the warden. I can't believe the fact that they don't use implements broke your mind.


> As for the Warlord, the game designers never understood the concept that  buffs should be +1 for an encounter, or +2 or +3 for a single attack.  Instead, they are often +4 or even +stat and it becomes totally  nonsensical from a game mechanics POV. They did errata some of the  powers, but even adding +4 to hit in a D20 system is grossly unbalanced.  WotC hands that out as an encounter racial power. Sigh.



They added that in as an at-will power also and its not really all that imbalanced.


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## LurkAway (Jan 2, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Why is it whenever we criticise a system, we must absolutely adhere to the rules, but when its a system we like, suddenly anything goes?  4e's baseline is that everything always works.  It's right there in the rules that this is the baseline.  Changing that, so long as the group is happy with the changes isn't exactly earth shakingly difficult.



Theoretically, what you say should be true. In practice, I think it is difficult when players are trying to "win" against the DM and when anyone views the rules as enforcing "this is how it _always_ works" instead of "this is how it _usually_ works" and when the presentation and wording implies to some people (fairly or not) that the baseline is inflexible (or cannot be bent without significantly 'breaking' gameplay).


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## LurkAway (Jan 2, 2012)

Dice4Hire said:


> That is too far for me to go.
> 
> Plus stuff like that is just too hard to remember session to session.



Seriously?


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## LurkAway (Jan 2, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Given this, criticising the mechanic for ailing to correspond to anything in the gameworld seems to miss the point - if it's a metagame mechanic, it _doesn't_ correspond to anything in the gameworld.



Conversely, I think that criticizing someone for criticizing a metagame mechanic that isn't used in a way that nods to realism is missing the point (in context of this thread anyway).


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## Gort (Jan 2, 2012)

Kalontas said:


> Now the horrifying part: I'm the DM, so I sometimes overrule that a player's ability can't work, like aforementioned Vicious Mockery on a skeleton. My players learnt to live with it and just don't try to taunt mindless stuff, etc.




This kinda reminds me of when rogues couldn't backstab vampires and the like. It might "make sense" from a "fantasy realism" point of view, but it's pretty lame when your main bit of combat utility is taken away from you.

(although whoever thought making vampires - you know, the guys who are extremely vulnerable to decapitation and being struck through the heart - should be immune to sneak attacks and critical hits was bloody stupid)


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## pemerton (Jan 2, 2012)

LurkAway said:


> Conversely, I think that criticizing someone for criticizing a metagame mechanic that isn't used in a way that nods to realism is missing the point (in context of this thread anyway).



But how is giving enemies a -2 to hit as a metagame mechanic failing to nod to realism? The enemies are marginally more unlucky than they otherwise would be. It's (approximately) as if the player has given the GM a d18 to roll with, rather than a d20.

To put it another way: what is the point of criticising a game whose action resolution mechanics are obviously and notoriously heavily metagme for having such mechanics? Criticise the balance of the mechanics, sure. Or their (lack of) elegance. Or explain how it is hard to build sensible narratives and colour around them (preferably with some nods to actual play experience). But to complain that they exist strikes me as pointless.


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## Kalontas (Jan 2, 2012)

Dice4Hire said:


> That is too far for me to go.
> 
> Plus stuff like that is just too hard to remember session to session.




I try to just follow logic - so mindless undead are not afraid of anything, or don't understand taunts - or animals can't be bluffed. So I think it's not too hard to remember.


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## LurkAway (Jan 2, 2012)

pemerton said:


> But how is giving enemies a -2 to hit as a metagame mechanic failing to nod to realism? The enemies are marginally more unlucky than they otherwise would be. It's (approximately) as if the player has given the GM a d18 to roll with, rather than a d20.



Ya, you're right that it's not probabilistically significant. Perception wise, though, why is that one element being singled out? That makes it feel like that modifier or action resolution (and the corresponding narrative) is more significant somehow than other potential narrative elements.



> To put it another way: what is the point of criticising a game whose action resolution mechanics are obviously and notoriously heavily metagme for having such mechanics? Criticise the balance of the mechanics, sure. Or their (lack of) elegance. Or explain how it is hard to build sensible narratives and colour around them (preferably with some nods to actual play experience). But to complain that they exist strikes me as pointless.



I agree with this. Sorry, I must have misunderstood your original statement. I'm not against metagame mechanics on principle, only when they are wielded (or not wielded) in the ways you mentioned.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 2, 2012)

technoextreme said:


> They added that in as an at-will power also and its not really all that imbalanced.




I beg to disagree because there is often not just a single bonus in play.

As an example, I had an NPC attack with combat advantage in my PBP just this weekend. He rolled a 19 on the die for an effective add of 21 to his normal add. Because of all of the other bonus defensive effects at the time, he hit a slightly above average AC by 3. If the PC attacked had had a +4 AC bonus from the previous round in that round, the foe would have missed with a 19 and combat advantage.

It's not just the +4 bonus that's the problem. It's the +4 combined with the the plethora's of +1 here, +5 there, +2 over here.

A single +4 in an encounter, yeah I agree with you.

But, it's rarely just a single bonus, especially at high Paragon and Epic levels. The example of the 30th level PCs wiping through the 37th level encounter in 4 to 5 rounds is a prime example.

If the group does not have a lot of buffing powers and PCs, it's not so bad. But it can easily get way out of hand and WotC doesn't control what type of classes and powers that players at a given table take.

Hence, if the designers limited it to +2 or +3 for the vast majority of buffs, the odds of multiple buffs getting to a +8 or +10 total are greatly decrease. One has to look at the entire situation and not just look solely at a single +4 bonus to be mathematically objective about this.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 2, 2012)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Marking gets the idea across, it works well enough mechanically, and gives the player some control.




I really don't have a problem with marking other than the fact that the counters to it are almost non-existent. Most effects in the game have obvious and semi-frequent counters of some sort. Stunned and Weakness are exceptions. Marking is as well. Yes, there are a tiny number of monsters that can shake off a mark and one can always knock the defender unconscious, but it is pretty much few and far between.

I do have a bit of a problem with multi-target marking. I totally understand that the bookkeeping is easier with aura marking, but it's just one more step away from plausibility. I do think that there are probably better mechanisms and I also think that there should be a mundane way to get rid of a mark (e.g. some sort of Move Action skill check, possibly Athletics or Acrobatics to get past the marker). It shouldn't be fire and forget and it auto-affects foes with no recourse. Most other effects in the game system require that one hit the foe in order for the effect to take place.

It seems logical to me that if a foe has to use up a Move Action and a die roll to get rid of a mark, that would be balanced since it's using up action resources of the foe.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jan 2, 2012)

Gort said:


> This kinda reminds me of when rogues couldn't backstab vampires and the like. It might "make sense" from a "fantasy realism" point of view, but it's pretty lame when your main bit of combat utility is taken away from you.
> 
> (although whoever thought making vampires - you know, the guys who are extremely vulnerable to decapitation and being struck through the heart - should be immune to sneak attacks and critical hits was bloody stupid)




Well there were ways around this with the right gear. Sometimes classes had to rely on certain types of gear for certain situations. Now there were rules for using a stake on a vampire but i can see the argument for not being able to sneak attack a vampire. They don't have functioning organs so stabbing one in a vulnerable spot which it did not have made sense.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jan 2, 2012)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There have been any number of proposals of 'more realistic' ways to handle this, but IMHO all of them are rather convolved and awkward to actually use at the table. Marking gets the idea across, it works well enough mechanically, and gives the player some control. And honestly, given how unrealistic the whole situation is anyway, can we just play and have fun? Why is it that 4e in particular has to be nit-picked to death and every other edition of the game gets a pass? I don't get it. I've played all of them. They have all been highly enjoyable and I've never had major issues with any of them as long as people were willing to just get on with it and play instead of crawling up the systems tailpipe and get all finicky about it. Really, its a question, WHY do people feel so compelled to get all on 4e's case? There's some sort of bad attitude that was somehow released by 4e changing some things. I'm absolutely at a loss to even begin to understand it.




I think it is limited awareness of the range *and* depth of a lot of subjective feelings, across gamers. Look, nothing against Karin's Dad or me, but I bet if we tried to play *any* game together, we'd be at each others' throats within 2 hours. I've read enough of these posts to understand that his idea of what is "realistic" and mine simply aren't compatible at the same table. But I think there is a tendency to conflate the overall drift and focus of a game with some its particulars. And in fairness, with feelings, you can't always completely control that.

For example, do I think that there are serious problems with the 3E skill system, that interfere with my ability to accept the game world as somehow consistent or sensible? Why, yes, I do. However, as a first cut for 3E, it really isn't *that* bad. I made it work and had a lot of fun with it for a 3 year campaign. Sure, sometimes that was in spite of the skill system, but it wasn't so awful that we couldn't live with it and move on. I wasted some time trying to tweak it to my tastes, but that was my own fault, and didn't damage play at the table one whit. So I have criticisms of the system, but I'm not emotionally invested in being an "anti 3E skill system" guy.

OTOH, take things like double-bladed swords, weapon weights in general, and the 3E crafting system. My objections to them are two part. I have thoughtful reasons for disliking them, and those can be discussed and argued. But I also have an emotional reaction against them which I can explain, and you might understand, but you can't talk me out of. 

Every system has things that provoke those kind of dual reactions, and people aren't always aware that the reactions are dual. And a lot of times, it doesn't really matter. You don't like something, whether critically or emotionally. So you don't use it, and that's that.

Where 4E was different was that it is really in your face on the changes. That makes it harder for people to ignore elements that they dislike. This is more than merely the 4E "bad marketing" of telling people that a lot of stuff would be "fixed"--though that is part of it. Dropping all pretense of simulation, including some deliberate and central metagaming mechanics, reining in magic while expanding mundane means--all of these combine to make it suddenly hard to ignore. *It was brutally honest about what it was doing.*

It doesn't bother me, and I get along better with 4E than 3E/3.5/PF, in part because I like brutal honesty in my game materials. Some people don't like that kind of brutal honesty at all. And others don't mind it, but the changes are just to big to ignore. And still others really have no concept whatsoever how D&D is played at other tables, and this narrows the range of their acceptance. They can't possibly imagine how feature X or rule Y could be catering to anything involving "good roleplaying". When it was just hit points or Armor making you harder to hit, they could survive on the occasional drive by slam, and then go back to ignoring it. 

"Come and Get It" to them is like you suddenly saw a pair of monkeys in tuxedos. There probably is a good reason (or chain of reasons) for it, and it probably involves someone's idea of "fun", but chances are you aren't going to understand it, possibly not even after an explanation.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jan 2, 2012)

To answer the original question, I've seen a few theoretical problems in 4E that might induce me to adjust results for realism, but none of them have ever come up in actual play.  The closest is the "daily limit" on magic item usage at the start of 4E, but my objections were more on the goofiness of the mechanics, the lack of a need for it, and the handling time. That is, too little reward for bothering with it.  I understand that Essentials took that out.  I suppose there might have been a twing of "lack of realism" in the fantasy world in my original objection.

I had far more things in previous versions that bothered me.  Some of them I even went to a lot of trouble to change completely.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jan 2, 2012)

I think another way that 4th edition walked away from the realism aspect is how the game is designed around the players and not vice versa. 

It used to be that the players would need to prepare for what could come their way. Now the players really don't have to worry about that because they are essentially going to be able to handle anything. 

For example if you were a rogue back in 3rd then you knew that you couldn't sneak attack undead, oozes and constructs. Well it was your job as the rogue to find the tools or the means around that, makes sense from a realistic point of view. 4th edition eliminated a lot of niche elements. Your Pyromancer doesn't really have to worry about those Fire Elementals or that Lava Dragon. Your rogue doesn't have to worry about those pesky undead because his sneak attack will affect them. 

I actually like the older way because if my usual tactics didn't work i had to sometimes think outside the power.


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## Phaezen (Jan 2, 2012)

ForeverSlayer said:


> For example if you were a rogue back in 3rd then you knew that you couldn't sneak attack undead, oozes and constructs. Well it was your job as the rogue to find the tools or the means around that, makes sense from a realistic point of view. 4th edition eliminated a lot of niche elements. Your Pyromancer doesn't really have to worry about those Fire Elementals or that Lava Dragon. Your rogue doesn't have to worry about those pesky undead because his sneak attack will affect them.
> 
> I actually like the older way because if my usual tactics didn't work i had to sometimes think outside the power.




This comes back to what is realistic for one person may not be for another.  I am perfectly fine with the idea that undead and constructs have weak points which a precision warrior such as the rogue can exploit.  Even oozes may have weak areas where they may have over extended or bunched up and the rogue is taking advantage.

As for the pyromancer, depends on how you see fire based creatures, he may be directing his attacks to cuts the melee combatants have inflicted on the dragon, using them to penetrate its normally heat resistant skin.  Focused bursts of magical flame may disrupt the essence of fire elementals weakening them.

Your Miles May Vary, but this is acceptably plausible to me.


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## UngainlyTitan (Jan 2, 2012)

I think i would echo Crazy jerome, people have a lot of different ideas of what is realistic. Some of the ones floated in this threads make me go "What!"
However, i realised this many years ago before 3e and I decided the sensible approach was, would the after battke report sound ok in an action movie.
If so go with it. I have not played any rpg that sounded realistic to me in the action resolution mechanics but some of them are ok to retro-fit the narrative.
The thing about realism is that it brings to mind Napoleon's comment about how he prefered lucky generals to good ones.

For every William Marshall or Egill Skallagrimsson there were a 100 more equally gifted that died of a random arrow or bout of dysentry. It is no fun playing those guys.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 3, 2012)

ForeverSlayer said:


> I think another way that 4th edition walked away from the realism aspect is how the game is designed around the players and not vice versa.
> 
> It used to be that the players would need to prepare for what could come their way. Now the players really don't have to worry about that because they are essentially going to be able to handle anything.
> 
> ...




This is a direct result of there not being many good utility spells in combat anymore. A player cannot throw up an illusion that will hold the monsters off for a few rounds as the players retreat. He might be able to throw up a wall, but even that often isn't quite the same.

Although the situation sometimes allows for mundane ways to overcome a combat challenge (such as knocking the crates down onto the group of bad guys), the very thing you mention here (always having a power that is applicable) has trained 4E players to not think outside the box. They have an unlimited supply of damaging powers, so there is no need to ever knock the crates down on the bad guys like in earlier versions. Yes, there is the once in a blue moon player that tries something like that, but it rarely happens anymore IME. Players just spam their damaging powers for the most part like pushing the buttons on an X-box controller. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I do think that an earlier D&D feel (specifically where thieves could set area traps and spell casters could control the battlefield with darkness spells and other non-damaging but effective effects) was seriously minimized in 4E.


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## Hussar (Jan 3, 2012)

Wow, KarinsDad, I have to say that you have some really, really crappy players.  You are just so jaded about 4e mechanics.

We've been playing 4e pretty consistently for about a year and a half now and virtually every single fight there have been "Drop crates on the baddies" situations.  Whether it's pushing the Calzone Demon into the oven, using terrain effects or whatnot, I'd say that virtually every single encounter we've had has featured "out of the box" non power mechanics.

I have no idea why your group has fallen into this trap.  We certainly haven't.


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## Unwise (Jan 3, 2012)

I actually really like coming up with ways in which my characters powers do make sense. I pretty much only play martial characters. Magical characters really don't have any issues here.

I mostly play an Eladrin who has all sorts of odd abilities. Things like Blinding Barrage, I picture as her stepping between realms, firing the Xbow in the real world, reloading in the feywild, then firing again in the real world etc. The time does not flow exactly the same in each realm. The end result is that it looks like she blurs out and fires a Xbow like a machine gun. Matrix style fighting.

She has lots of abilities that make her invisible, or close to. These are visualized as stepping between realms too, she is only slightly in the real world, enough to interact with it, but not enough to be seen properly.

The Hunter is an interesting one, as they use arrows to slide people. Trying to picture the Hunter hitting a prone person and sliding them a few squares requires a little imagination. I always picture it as either shooting the guy in the knee as he tries to stand back up, or shooting a trail of arrows like you see machines guns do in movies; forcing the bad guy to move in a certain direction or die.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jan 3, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> This is a direct result of there not being many good utility spells in combat anymore. A player cannot throw up an illusion that will hold the monsters off for a few rounds as the players retreat. He might be able to throw up a wall, but even that often isn't quite the same.
> 
> Although the situation sometimes allows for mundane ways to overcome a combat challenge (such as knocking the crates down onto the group of bad guys), the very thing you mention here (always having a power that is applicable) has trained 4E players to not think outside the box. They have an unlimited supply of damaging powers, so there is no need to ever knock the crates down on the bad guys like in earlier versions. Yes, there is the once in a blue moon player that tries something like that, but it rarely happens anymore IME. Players just spam their damaging powers for the most part like pushing the buttons on an X-box controller. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I do think that an earlier D&D feel (specifically where thieves could set area traps and spell casters could control the battlefield with darkness spells and other non-damaging but effective effects) was seriously minimized in 4E.




Well, I agree that 4e's sort of default mode is that you can muddle through with your inherent resources. Any given encounter is likely to be balanced such that at worst you can go full out and you should win, and the DM isn't encouraged to go beyond that point. The DMG really should have talked about this (amongst other things, gosh that thing should be 1000 pages, eh). My solution is that you often run into encounters that simply aren't beatable by whacking things on the skull harder. You've got to get across the chasm of fire before the endless droves of skeleton minions from the black cauldron overwhelm the party, or you have to rescue the princess and the only way to do it is to cut the rope, slide down the ramp, and jump in the boat, or whatever. Now, players will find ways to use powers or (if you get them to gather some intel ahead of time) rituals, etc to get around those things, but that's fine too. 

The funny thing is that while combat works brilliantly in 4e, all the best fun is still had when killing stuff isn't really the main aspect of the situation. THAT IMHO is where good old AD&D was at. You really didn't want to solve problems with your sword. It wasn't that you couldn't. It just wasn't efficient. It was a fallback plan or at most one element of something more elaborate. 

The rules could be tweaked to make this more the case in 4e, but at the same time, it is not really necessary to do that. The DM just has to understand what to focus on. There is just very little real guidance there, and frankly it is a lot easier to put together 5 encounters of melee combat and call it a day than to make a really good action adventure.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 3, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Wow, KarinsDad, I have to say that you have some really, really crappy players.  You are just so jaded about 4e mechanics.
> 
> We've been playing 4e pretty consistently for about a year and a half now and virtually every single fight there have been "Drop crates on the baddies" situations.  Whether it's pushing the Calzone Demon into the oven, using terrain effects or whatnot, I'd say that virtually every single encounter we've had has featured "out of the box" non power mechanics.
> 
> I have no idea why your group has fallen into this trap.  We certainly haven't.




Yes, because your group is special and my group is crappy. snort

I rarely see this type of thing. It does happen, but I've never heard of a group that does it nearly every encounter and I expect that many posters here haven't either. I've heard these types of fantastic claims from time to time of how wonderful someone's players repeatedly do these types of things, but I've gamed a lot (both PBP and table games), and read quite a few story hours and PBPs, and I've come to the conclusion that people who make these types of claims are either exaggerating a lot, or must be purposely setting up the situation as DM and leading their players to the proper in game conclusion. IMO.

Weren't you just claiming yesterday that invisibility combined with summoning would allow you to crush opponents all on your own without the aid of your party? So far, I consider your claims to be a bit suspect.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jan 3, 2012)

Whereas I have found, over many years, with at least 4 different groups of players, that if you challenge them firmly and strongly, but do *not* push every encounter and situation to the maximum challenge, the players will respond with hunting for interesting things to do, and usually do them.

The exceptions are when they are tired or burned out from real-world responsibilities, where upon the mode changes to "kill stuff". 

This has been true in 4E, and it was also true in other systems. With 4E, it is simply less work to set up the situation so that this is the default.



> ...must be purposely setting up the situation as DM and leading their players to the proper in game conclusion




Setting up the situation where it is possible, yes.  Leading, not very much, if at all.  But your skepticism does not surprise me.


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## Incenjucar (Jan 3, 2012)

KarinsDad, while nobody has numbers on this sort of thing, there really are very very many groups who use creative methods in their games on a regular basis. It happens at least once in every single normal game I play in. It happens moderately often at the Encounters games I play in (and would happen more often if the they weren't so hard-coded). They happen very often in the games I run.

Your group is not unique, but they are not representative. I am sorry that you and your group do not share the same play preferences. If you ever visit Seattle on a day I'm running a game, or when my FLGS runs Encounters, you're more than welcome to join us and see for yourself that what you find myth, others find normal.


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## Argyle King (Jan 3, 2012)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> @Johnny3D3D
> 
> I don't know man. I think you play with a group of people that, as much as they may not be raving jerks about it, are extreme optimizing players. .





To be fair to 4th Edition, I would say that the Saturday group tends to have a much better grasp of working together and unit tactics than other groups I play with.  However, with the being said, the sessions we have today do not seem to be much different from the sessions we had at the beginning of 4E.  In fact, with the old monster math, it was far worse.  During the first campaign to 30, I was playing a warlord character.  I remember challenging myself to see how many encounters I could go without using a daily and without really using any of my good healing abilities; eventually I started to use dailies simply because it was boring watching the party beat on a bag of hitpoints after the fight turned into a foregone conclusion.   

I think the most recent campaign was our 3rd or 4th time going from 1-30.  

I will openly admit that particular group tends to optimize more than I would prefer.  I've had to learn to optimize a little to keep up.  Not because I try to make crap characters, but because I went into playing 4E with the group with the ideals I had about making characters from elsewhere.  I prefer to make choices because they are the choices I want to make rather than make choices due to needing to keep up with the math of the system.

All of that being taken into consideration, my experience has not been very different elsewhere.  I do notice that for some reason the players seem to have a tough time when I'm running a game.  I'm still somewhat baffled as to what I am doing differently; I'm not trying to be overly harsh on them.  It just seems as though something (I'm unsure what exactly) about how I'm running things seems to make the game turn out differently.  I have a few theories, but that's not very relevant to the thread.  

While that group might be the most extreme example, my experience with the default RAW version of the game is that the players tend to stomp the monsters most of the time.  I went to synDCon last year.  I was excited to go to a con both because I had never been at one and because I was hoping to be exposed to different playstyles.  The results of the games I had the priviledge to sit through were not much different.  Personally, I did struggle a little, but I chalk that up more to the pregen character I was given being built very poorly.  (Even as someone who does not place a priority on optimization, it was still obvious that there were some rather questionable choices made.)

Getting back to the idea of choices...  I think part of the problem is that there are too many 'no-brainer' choices in 4th Edition.  Even as someone who does not try to CharOp very much, there are still levels at which I feel as though I'd be an idiot to not take certain choices.  When the expertise feats came out, I did not need them, but I would have been a fool to not take them.  Even thinking from my character's point of view, it did not make sense to learn something else.  If I can learn a sword technique which gives me a better chance to hit my enemy with every swing, why would I bother learning a technique which gives me a better chance to hit my enemy, but only on a Tuesday, when I have a rubber boot on my left foot, and I am using a sword enchanted with frost magic?  +1 all the time versus +1 only during a very specific set of circumstances is a no-brainer choice; even if you don't need the +1.  Realistically, if living in a world where those are the choices, why would anyone ever choose the latter choice?  

That leads me to another point...  I understand why the concept of encounters is the central focus of 4E, and in many cases I agree with putting more time into making the combat system better.  However, I think the structure of 4E -at times- puts so much emphasis on the idea of the encounter that choices which enhance what a character can do during an encounter virtually always trump other choices.  It's a style choice; I have no ill will toward the style which (I feel) 4th Edition chose to embrace.  I simply feel that other choices would be more valid if other methods of task & conflict resolution were brought more on par with the encounter & combat.  

I believe I would have a better ability to accept other actions as being believable if they were made more believable by virtue of being supported better.  If my choices are to participate in a convoluted set of skill checks which might possibly lead to victory versus swing my sword and win, the latter seems like a more believable and 'realistic' choice (most of the time) for somebody living in that world.  

Yes, I love action; I love adventure, and I even enjoy a good hackfest from time to time, but what I miss from other games when I sit and play 4th edition is the sense of 'realism' and the sense that I'm living a world that makes sense.  I miss the times when I am capable of being a hero not because I hacked my way through 1000 orcs with ease, but because I had to choose between eating my last ration or giving it someone else; because I had to give an inspiring speech to rally my troops in the face of overwhelming odds; because -while I might have been scared to lose life or limb- I chose to risk myself to rescue the damsel in distress who was the love of my character's life; because I had to make the hard decision between the oath I swore to my family and my code of honor .  Yes, I can do those things and act those things out in 4E; I can, but I often don't feel the tension which makes it real for me.   I wouldn't say it's a fault with the system, but maybe a fault with me.  I'm not sure.  

All I can say is that I find myself having an inability to buy into it the same way because of how the game world is presented.  Maybe my mindset has been brainwashed a little bit because of the people I game with as well as the experiences I've had with how 4E was presented to me elsewhere; I just can't seem to look at the game the same way.  I think making a more 'real' connection between what the story says is happening and what the game mechanics say is happening would help me get back to where I'd like to be with D&D.  Likewise, I would like to see encounters grow out of a world which is supported; not a world grow out of an encounters based playstyle.  

Part of the 'realism' I would personally want which would help me feel a better connection to the game would be to re-evaluate the concept of levels.  I am starting to dislike the idea that going up in levels means we have to continue to inflate the numbers involved with the game.  I'm not sure if this statement will make any sense, but why can't an increase in level mean a little more horizontal growth and involve broader play, and less of the vertical growth which leads to the same linear play with simply bigger numbers?  How I feel that would enhance realism is to create characters and creatures which grow as part of the game world rather than characters and creatures who evolve in a way which defies the baseline assumptions of the world so much.


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## D'karr (Jan 3, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> Although the situation sometimes allows for mundane ways to overcome a combat challenge (such as knocking the crates down onto the group of bad guys), the very thing you mention here (always having a power that is applicable) has trained 4E players to not think outside the box.




I don't think it's a matter of training as much as a matter of visibility.  A power is something a player has written on his character sheet in one form or another.  The improvised actions/effects are not something they think about much, because they are not clearly visible to the player.

I ran into this issue with my normally creative players when I noticed that they were simply overlooking the stuff that did not appear in their character sheet.  I solved this issue by making the solution visible to the players.  It radically changed the dynamic of the game when I did that.  My players went back to using creative solutions to problems.

I have written about this before, and I even provide my solution here.  Feel free to use it and tell me how it works for your group.


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## Balesir (Jan 3, 2012)

[MENTION=58416]Johnny3D3D[/MENTION] It sounds like you are jonesing for a bit of Sim play. My suggestion would be to pick a system that does that well (Call of Cthulhu, HârnMaster, Bushido, Pendragon) and play it for a while. No need to abandon D&D while you do so - the systems I listed are simple once you grok them and so is 4E.


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## Balesir (Jan 3, 2012)

D'karr said:


> I don't think it's a matter of training as much as a matter of visibility.  A power is something a player has written on his character sheet in one form or another.  The improvised actions/effects are not something they think about much, because they are not clearly visible to the player.
> 
> I ran into this issue with my normally creative players when I noticed that they were simply overlooking the stuff that did not appear in their character sheet.  I solved this issue by making the solution visible to the players.  It radically changed the dynamic of the game when I did that.  My players went back to using creative solutions to problems.



I need to spread xps, but I think this is an excellent point. I would go further and say that Powers are things tha players have both visibility and *control* over - they don't need to risk DM nerfscorn or ask a slew or questions to be assured that their idea (a) might actually work and (b) might be worthwhile to do. Making terrain options and such like visible and explicit places these possibilities on an equal footing with Powers instead of them being awkward and uncertain "poor man's options".


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## talok55 (Jan 3, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Wow, KarinsDad, I have to say that you have some really, really crappy players.  You are just so jaded about 4e mechanics.
> 
> We've been playing 4e pretty consistently for about a year and a half now and virtually every single fight there have been "Drop crates on the baddies" situations.  Whether it's pushing the Calzone Demon into the oven, using terrain effects or whatnot, I'd say that virtually every single encounter we've had has featured "out of the box" non power mechanics.
> 
> I have no idea why your group has fallen into this trap.  We certainly haven't.




You don't have to have "crappy" players to not drop crates on people's heads in 4E.  4E's powers make it really easy to not think about using off the wall things when you can just spam your at-will powers.


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## Gort (Jan 3, 2012)

Yeah, I must say that the powers system does kinda pigeonhole people. It's hard enough for most players to keep their at-wills, choice of a half-dozen encounter powers and a half-dozen daily powers AND their magic item powers straight in their heads before they even start thinking about what they can get out of the environment.

Back in earlier editions when a fighter had a choice of "full attack" or "something else" this was a bit easier. Not saying this was a _good thing_ per se, but it was the case.

The best solution I've found is to make environmental effects extremely powerful so that they become the first thing players think about when considering their options rather than the last thing.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jan 3, 2012)

To encourage any kind of play, any reward that the players value, or method that gets results by their lights, will work just fine.

One of the reasons that we've had no issue with players being imaginative is that, since before 3E came out, I've had it as standard practice to give out bonus awards for clever or amusing play. If you make another player (or me) roll on the floor or prompt an involuntary, "Wow, that was slick!"--the award is automatic. For 4E, we use Action Points for the rewards, because that fits into the way we play it.

That doesn't mean that every stunt using p. 42 qualifies. Far from it. But a player is more likely to need p. 42 to be clever or amusing, and thus have a shot at such a reward. However, if they can use a power  or skill in a clever or amusing way, we don't want to stop that either. And sometimes the player is tired and wants to forgo such efforts without being completely ineffective. That's fine, too. The whole thing almost is self-regulating. 

The group should always reward the kind of behavior that they want in some way. The trick is determining the scope of what it is that you really want, not getting hyper-focused on some narrow examples of it. "I wish they would use p. 42 more" isn't often a prime desire, but rather an expression of a larger one. Determine the prime thing, and reward that. P. 42 will take care of itself.


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## sakashi (Jan 3, 2012)

I've never done that (played creatively or realistically) , but I would love to. I'm a first time player, and our campaigns are pretty straightforward, not a lot of room for character development or anything besides "fightfightfight". And none of us have really started thinking about off the wall and creative manners of fighting. 

We have had one player who consistently tries to overload his powers, and it gets rather annoying when there were other plausible actions that the entire party could have been a part of.


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## technoextreme (Jan 3, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> I do have a bit of a problem with multi-target marking. I totally understand that the bookkeeping is easier with aura marking, but it's just one more step away from plausibility. I do think that there are probably better mechanisms and I also think that there should be a mundane way to get rid of a mark (e.g. some sort of Move Action skill check, possibly Athletics or Acrobatics to get past the marker). It shouldn't be fire and forget and it auto-affects foes with no recourse. Most other effects in the game system require that one hit the foe in order for the effect to take place.




  I all ready told you there is an at-will power which nullifies marks.  


> This is a direct result of there not being many good utility spells in  combat anymore. A player cannot throw up an illusion that will hold the  monsters off for a few rounds as the players retreat. He might be able  to throw up a wall, but even that often isn't quite the same.



How the hell is it that you lament the state of D&D complaining about a tactic that I saw used three weeks ago?


talok55 said:


> You don't have to have "crappy" players to not  drop crates on people's heads in 4E.  4E's powers make it really easy to  not think about using off the wall things when you can just spam your  at-will powers.



  Certain controllers major source of damage output is to drop crates on people's heads and to utilize terrain to your advantage.  Its kind of hardboiled into those classes.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 4, 2012)

technoextreme said:


> I all ready told you there is an at-will power which nullifies marks.




First off, I cannot find a post where you said that.

Secondly, what does that have to do with monsters? Monsters cannot use this one power and the vast majority of PCs cannot as well.

You mentioned earlier that there were lots of ways past marks and the best you came up with was a single power (presumably Shed the Mark) that no monster can use, hence no DM can use.

So far, I'm not seeing where your POV that it's easy to bypass marks ("Also, mark voiding powers are common place") is supported here.

Again, I'll ask you for these common place examples.



technoextreme said:


> How the hell is it that you lament the state of D&D complaining about a tactic that I saw used three weeks ago?




Again, your example here is real thin. Care to explain?


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## KarinsDad (Jan 4, 2012)

sakashi said:


> We have had one player who consistently tries to overload his powers, and it gets rather annoying when there were other plausible actions that the entire party could have been a part of.




I've seen a player similar to this, but not quite in the same vein. He took a lot of rituals and created a lot of consumables and then tried to constantly throw them out to the party when the party really didn't need them. He was a real nice guy, but just didn't seem to understand that the options he was trying to hand out were rarely optimal and I don't think anyone had the heart to tell him. Real life intruded (he got deployed) and he had to leave the group.

I do think that consumables are an area where 4E fell on its face.


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## technoextreme (Jan 4, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> Again, your example here is real thin. Care to explain?



My one friend used a conjuration to go fight off the monsters while he effectively retreated.  


> You mentioned earlier that there were lots of ways past marks and the best you came up with was a single power (presumably Shed the Mark) that no monster can use, hence no DM can use.



Have you actually played this game?  Its kind of clear that you don't even know the baseline mechanics.

Have you actually used ENworld much? Its kind of clear that you don't even know the rules about being offensive to other posters. I'm booting you from this thread to give you a chance to think about it. Plane Sailing, Enworld Admin


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## Tony Vargas (Jan 4, 2012)

Recently, a wizard in a game I was guest-DMing for used an illusion power to hold off several monsters, making a modestly tough combat a lot easier.  One of the monsters never even made it past the illusionary wall, she just kept hitting his WILL every time he tried.  That'd be an example of a player "...throwing up an illusion that will hold the monsters off for a few rounds."


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## KarinsDad (Jan 4, 2012)

D'karr said:


> I ran into this issue with my normally creative players when I noticed that they were simply overlooking the stuff that did not appear in their character sheet.  I solved this issue by making the solution visible to the players.  It radically changed the dynamic of the game when I did that.  My players went back to using creative solutions to problems.
> 
> I have written about this before, and I even provide my solution here.  Feel free to use it and tell me how it works for your group.




I definitely understand where you are coming from, but if 5E adapts this concept, I won't play 5E.

I want there to be rules about modifying the story and not a "get out of jail free" set of cards for players with real good imaginations where the DM feels obligated to give the players a free pass.

I might be willing to allow this type if thing if it were a Weekly ability (as opposed to At Will and Encounter) and had good rules to show the DM how to adjudicate it, but wow. Talk about player entitlement support. Yikes! 

To tell you the truth, I absolutely dispise the card system that 4E designers came up with and that's hundreds of miles away from the abusability of your concept.


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## D'karr (Jan 4, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> I definitely understand where you are coming from, but if 5E adapts this concept, I won't play 5E.
> 
> I want there to be rules about modifying the story and not a "get out of jail free" set of cards for players with real good imaginations where the DM feels obligated to give the players a free pass.
> 
> ...




That's a very "interesting" take on it.  I really don't get how anyone would even jump to the conclusion that what I'm providing my players is even remotely a "get out of jail free" card, but if that's what you see I really have no reason to try to disillusion you.

Good luck with your players.


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## technoextreme (Jan 4, 2012)

Tony Vargas said:


> Recently, a wizard in a game I was guest-DMing for used an illusion power to hold off several monsters, making a modestly tough combat a lot easier.  One of the monsters never even made it past the illusionary wall, she just kept hitting his WILL every time he tried.  That'd be an example of a player "...throwing up an illusion that will hold the monsters off for a few rounds."



Yeah I'm really quite interested with how much 4E KarrinsDad claims to have played with all these non examples and poor understanding of mechanics.  Just as a side note there is nothing stopping a monster from stealing player powers.  In fact it was something they actively encouraged within reason and well dropping marks is well within reason.  So much so that a bunch of the monsters have that power by default.


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## talok55 (Jan 4, 2012)

technoextreme said:


> My one friend used a conjuration to go fight off the monsters while he effectively retreated.
> 
> Have you actually played this game?  Its kind of clear that you don't even know the baseline mechanics.




I find it hard to understand where you are coming from.  Conjurations are generally so sub-optimal (mainly because they end up using your actions to use them) that most players will pass on them. They can be useful sometimes, but mostly they are not worth it.  I have yet to encounter any monster that can shed marks.  I'm sure some can, but it is not even remotely a common ability.  You keep asking if he's even played the game.  We could ask you the same question.  Making statements claiming that lots of monsters can shed mark when that is most definitely not the case makes the rest of your comments highly suspect.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 4, 2012)

Tony Vargas said:


> Recently, a wizard in a game I was guest-DMing for used an illusion power to hold off several monsters, making a modestly tough combat a lot easier.  One of the monsters never even made it past the illusionary wall, she just kept hitting his WILL every time he tried.  That'd be an example of a player "...throwing up an illusion that will hold the monsters off for a few rounds."




True, but it's not an example of the player using his imagination which was the topic we were discussing. Illusions used to be used to create effects that the player imagined, not just set in stone illusions of specific items.

Although Illusory Wall is an illusion, the player's imagination is not really part of it. It cannot be a treasure chest or webs hanging down.

There are 6 illusion utility spells that create quasi-fake creatures (out of over 2800 utility powers total):

Distracting Illusion
Spectral Image
Spectral Hound
Shadow Ally
Clever Escape
Raven's Glamor

Most of these powers are weaker versions of summoning powers and really don't help the party significantly as per the discussion of creating an illusion to allow the party to escape.

There are 2 illusion utility spells that create objects:

Illusory Wall
Phantom Legion

And there is one illusion utility power that allow one to affect the terrain to the point that they could fool someone, for example, have someone step into water:

Spectral Vision

The vast majority of the other illusion utility spells are concealment, invisibility, or PC disguise. There is one that hands out temporary hit points.

None of these powers allow the player to significantly use his or her imagination to affect the illusion. There are a handful of Daily attack illusion spells that have one effect or another, but it's really few and far between.

This is not a large set of powers to choose from. The designers have mostly wiped the concept of creating cool illusions out of the game system.


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## technoextreme (Jan 4, 2012)

talok55 said:


> I find it hard to understand where you are coming from.  Conjurations are generally so sub-optimal (mainly because they end up using your actions to use them) that most players will pass on them. They can be useful sometimes, but mostly they are not worth it.  I have yet to encounter any monster that can shed marks.  I'm sure some can, but it is not even remotely a common ability.  You keep asking if he's even played the game.  We could ask you the same question.  Making statements claiming that lots of monsters can shed mark when that is most definitely not the case makes the rest of your comments highly suspect.



When you are in a game where you are effectively encouraged and allowed to utilize any power whether it be PC or Monster when designing a monster it kind of makes you look like you have no idea what you are talking about.  By the rules of the game any monster can wipe marks.  


> Distracting Illusion
> Spectral Image
> Spectral Hound
> Shadow Ally
> ...



There are more powers than that.


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## Crazy Jerome (Jan 4, 2012)

If you play the game as a tactical skirmish game, it will be a tactical skimish game.  This is true of any edition, though perhaps not equally fun in all editions when played that way.


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## Wormwood (Jan 4, 2012)

Crazy Jerome said:


> If you play the game as a tactical skirmish game, it will be a tactical skimish game.  This is true of any edition, though perhaps not equally fun in all editions when played that way.



1980

DM used a tape measure, meticulously tracking every inch. Also noted the arc of protection of every shield.

Plus ça change.


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## Balesir (Jan 4, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> The designers have mostly wiped the concept of creating cool illusions out of the game system.



You found them cool? I found them an undefined mess that were either grossly overpowerful or utterly useless depending on how well the player was able to persuade/bamboozle/seduce the DM. As a DM they were simply a mass of questions to which I had to invent or randomly determine answers (Assuming the enemy believe the illusion, how do they react? What did they expect to see? How well do they know what the illusion _should_ look like? Do the players deserve a break, here? What do the players think should happen, and is that a reasonable expectation? If the illusion works as intended, does that set up any problematic precedents for future play?). Blegh - thank the gods I don't have to deal with that kind of crap any more.


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## Hussar (Jan 4, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> Yes, because your group is special and my group is crappy. snort
> 
> I rarely see this type of thing. It does happen, but I've never heard of a group that does it nearly every encounter and I expect that many posters here haven't either. I've heard these types of fantastic claims from time to time of how wonderful someone's players repeatedly do these types of things, but I've gamed a lot (both PBP and table games), and read quite a few story hours and PBPs, and I've come to the conclusion that people who make these types of claims are either exaggerating a lot, or must be purposely setting up the situation as DM and leading their players to the proper in game conclusion. IMO.
> 
> Weren't you just claiming yesterday that invisibility combined with summoning would allow you to crush opponents all on your own without the aid of your party? So far, I consider your claims to be a bit suspect.




Well, maybe you have your Posrep turned off, so, you didn't see that I was referring to 3e and not 4e and that was my mistake.

But, OTOH, unlike many people who make claims around here, I actually have transcripts of my sessions:   The Games We Play - Home  So, I'm more than willing to put my money where my mouth is.  The evidence is right there.


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## Hussar (Jan 4, 2012)

talok55 said:


> I find it hard to understand where you are coming from.  Conjurations are generally so sub-optimal (mainly because they end up using your actions to use them) that most players will pass on them. They can be useful sometimes, but mostly they are not worth it. /snip




Funny enough.  I take all this flack for making claims about the game, yet, "most players" apparently don't use conjurations, and that gets a pass because, apparently, it jives with some people's experience.

Again, this is no my experience.  Our current Dark Sun campaign has a character that pops out a conjuration that he can see through (I honestly don't know what it's called) and can possibly cast through as well.

We had another character in an earlier campaign that constantly popped out a conjuration just about every combat.  

Personally, I haven't done any because, up until my current character, I've been a strictly PHB only player.  But, again, I've certainly seen conjurations being used quite frequently.

Look, I appreciate that you're not having this experience.  That's fine.  But, all I can say is that we are.  So, since we're both playing the same game, I have to wonder why we're having such different experiences.  By and large, I'd point to playstyle and the possible reason.  People don't "think outside the box" because the DM doesn't reward it.  People don't use conjurations because they've decided they are sub-par or cannot think of good uses for them.

However, just because YOU don't play with these, doesn't necessarily mean that the mechanics are flawed.  My group does play with them and plays with them quite frequently.  It works for us.

As I said before, if your group is constantly spamming at-wills, there's something wrong.  They shouldn't be.  But, you have to actualy REWARD thinking outside the box before people will do it.  If dropping a box on someone's head is less effective than a straight up power, then of course no one will do it.  

So, dropping a box on someone's head has to be more rewarding than a straight forward action if you want the players to do anything other than straight forward actions.


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## Argyle King (Jan 4, 2012)

@ Hussar


How do you reward players who want to invest into the game world?  By invest I mean purchasing land or a castle or something of that nature.  I'm the type of player who gets into that sort of thing, but I've found that it's difficult for me to get the same level of depth I want out of the experience of doing those things while playing D&D.  I also find it difficult to invest in the game world without hampering myself by not having the items and/or resources which my level says I should have.

I've seen some advice which advocates sneakily giving the player back some cash so as to keep them on par, but (from the player's side of the table) I'm not a fan of that because it makes me feel as though my choice to invest in the game world was an illusion rather than being meaningful.


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## Hussar (Jan 4, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> @ Hussar
> 
> 
> How do you reward players who want to invest into the game world?  By invest I mean purchasing land or a castle or something of that nature.  I'm the type of player who gets into that sort of thing, but I've found that it's difficult for me to get the same level of depth I want out of the experience of doing those things while playing D&D.  I also find it difficult to invest in the game world without hampering myself by not having the items and/or resources which my level says I should have.
> ...




Cool idea.  Not sure what it has to do with nodding to realism, but still cool.

Personally there's a couple of takes on it.  For one, I'm playing 4e right now, so we use Inherent bonuses - magic items aren't required anymore.  Once you do that, you're basically in the same boat as you were back in 1e D&D where cash really didn't matter all that much.

So, go ahead and buy that castle.  It's fun and interesting.  It's not like the cash is really needed for anything else.  

I also really like the rules in the 3e PHB 2 for associations.  That, right there, I think should be ported into 4e wholesale.  You gain certain perks as you advance up the association - possibly getting stuff done for cheaper, information, mooks sometimes, that sort of thing.  So, why not do the same thing for land owning.

Your character buys an inn (for example).  That's a pretty minor thing so, he maybe gets some free information checks once in a while.  Maybe a Daily power - You heard it in the bar from some guy - that lets you succeed on a knowledge check or something like that.  Something in keeping with a 3rd level daily.

As the character goes up level, presuming he continues to invest in his land, he gains more powers, similar to what you would gain from a magic item.  Maybe later on you get the - People have stayed in your inn so they like you more - power that gives you a daily bump on a diplomacy check.  That sort of thing.

So long as you keep the rewards in keeping with what's being invested in and in keeping with the power of the campaign, I don't see too much difficulty.


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## ForeverSlayer (Jan 4, 2012)

I find 4th edition to play like Super Mario Brothers. I start at level one and I kill things, find items that help me along the way, defeat a boss at certain times, and move on to the final boss. 

I don't think about setting up a base in level 2-2. It's all about killing things until I win. 

In previous editions I felt like I was winning battles, not winning the game.


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## Argyle King (Jan 4, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Cool idea.  Not sure what it has to do with nodding to realism, but still cool.





Thanks.

As for realism, I asked because I've mostly seen two schools of thought on the subject.  The first I alluded to with the idea of the illusion of choice.  I'm well aware that illusion of choice is a DM tool, but it's not one I often like as a player.  Especially when I'm trying to buy into the game world because it makes me feel as though I'm being told I should just worry about encounters and not make an effort to connect myself to the world.  To me, a lot of plots make more sense or seem 'real' if I have reason to care.  

The second is something of a spin off from the first.  I've seen a lot of conversations about how to prevent a player gaining a benefit from investing in the world.  By this I mean I've seen advice to "just tell the player that any profits/benefits are used up in trying to keep the place maintained."  I understand the idea of keeping the wealth by level idea going, but it somewhat makes me feel (as a player) that I'm being hosed for trying to connect to the game world.  

How I see that tying into realism is that a lot of campaigns I've played in take an extremely gamey position when it comes to that sort of thing.  So much so that -even as a player who (I assume) gets into that aspect of rpgs more than most- it didn't interest me.  

I haven't completely done away with magic item bonuses in the game I'm running, but I have houseruled that certain bonuses (the expertise feats for example) are automatic.  I wanted players to make choices based upon what they wanted to pick rather than being so concerned with the numbers of the system.  I'm also somewhat liberal about bending the rules to give out rewards based on back story.  An example of that would be that the party's fighter (in the game I'm running) said he had spent some time in the military before becoming an adventurer; gaining a small amount of rank and becoming a squad leader.  As such, I granted his character the Combat Leader feature from Warlord.


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## Phaezen (Jan 4, 2012)

ForeverSlayer said:


> I find 4th edition to play like Super Mario Brothers. I start at level one and I kill things, find items that help me along the way, defeat a boss at certain times, and move on to the final boss.
> 
> I don't think about setting up a base in level 2-2. It's all about killing things until I win.
> 
> In previous editions I felt like I was winning battles, not winning the game.




And what would you consider "winning the game"?


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jan 4, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> @ Hussar
> 
> 
> How do you reward players who want to invest into the game world?  By invest I mean purchasing land or a castle or something of that nature.  I'm the type of player who gets into that sort of thing, but I've found that it's difficult for me to get the same level of depth I want out of the experience of doing those things while playing D&D.  I also find it difficult to invest in the game world without hampering myself by not having the items and/or resources which my level says I should have.
> ...




There are a bunch of ways that these things work. It is just that they are all part of the game world, not hard-coded mechanics I'm expected to follow, which I actually like much better. 

Land, and all the other possible social perks you can get in my world, are largely either intangible or non-fungible. You can get a house, but the world isn't a cash economy. It involves being able to get the rights to a house. You COULD do that with money, true, but you probably cannot sell that house. You have it because you established rights to it, got a deed from the local head honcho, convinced the community the house is in that it is a good idea for you to have it, etc. I'm also not too worried about money. It is VERY hard for PCs to have enough of it to even bend the game. With rarity in place maybe with a large pile of gold they can get some items that are almost as good as what they're likely to find tomorrow in some monster lair.

The other thing is that organizations and social connections are IMPORTANT. When the secretly evil priest of the local town accuses the PCs of devil worship to pin his deeds on them and get them run out of town they better have the credentials to avoid a mob with pitchforks and torches. If they want to learn the secret technique of the Rangers of Otillis they'll have to join and do the deeds that make them worthy of being Knights who are allowed to learn that technique. On the flip side if they ARE Knights of Otillis then there's going to be some adventure where having 10 Rangers come in the backside of the orc lair and draw off most of the guards is the only way they're going to successfully pull off an assault. 

Buy in really requires world depth. IMHO it always did. A world that is a thin backdrop to a bunch of series of encounters isn't going to do that. This is one reason why I mostly just continue to use the setting that I invented way back when I was 15 years old. There's just a vast depth of that kind of thing. A character can become friends with some old PC from the 1980's, join organizations, discover lore piled on top of lore, and just generally be part of what is as close as anyone can get to a living world. I'm sure using really well-established commercial settings can do a lot of that too. You just have to chase down a lot of material from many sources with say FR that has been put out over the years. I'd use that kind of setting, but I just don't need to because I happen to have it already. 

Of course I have had groups that could care less about all that and just hack their way through combat-heavy adventures too. Even then you can do things to encourage all kinds of OOTB thinking. The fighter takes the choke point, but there's another way around. Can the players figure out a way to block it up? Maybe destroying a pillar will cause a collapse, or whatever. Make things TOUGH too, so it isn't a matter of 'winning easier', but a matter of you need some edge to survive, or need to be clever to accomplish some valuable goal. Complex and interesting situations breed more crazy solutions to problems.

Once I had a guy standing on a platform resting on a giant ball of rock and he could roll it around squishing characters and pushing them around. So the rogue whipped out a grappling hook, snagged him and pulled him off it. That's a small example, but what I find is that fairly plain cut-and-dried situations usually get straightforward solutions. It makes sense, the PCs standard abilities are well suited to generic situations. They aren't well suited to a lot of the "real world" where odd problems and strange situations come up often.


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## Argyle King (Jan 4, 2012)

@ abdul

What you describe is how I would much prefer to play.  I've just found that for some reason it doesn't seem to come out of D&D 4E.  I'm not saying this as an opportunity to bash the system.  I'm simply say that -for whatever reason- the playstyle I've seen the most doesn't seem to be what you described.  For some reason, I've noticed that there seems to be a certain expectation of a more straight forward playstyle when I show up to play D&D.

For the game I'm running, I've done some work to change this expectation.  I've catered to the audience, but I've also made an effort to make things such as taking the Linguist feat actually have merit.  Recently, there was an encounter which turned out easier because one of the PCs was capable of understanding what the orcs on the other side of the door were planning.  

However, I've also found that I need to change some of the mechanical structure of the game if I want to have more of the experience that I want.  In that regard, I think I might argue that there were/are some ideals which 4E is built upon which are at odds with my idea of realism and my idea of playstyle.  

I will say that one area in which I feel 4th does much better at what you describe than 3rd did is making the power curve between levels less extreme.  I remember taking the leadership feat in 3rd edition only to find that the difference of a few levels often meant my followers were completely worthless in any situation where my character was facing a level appropriate threat.  I highly prefer the less extreme curve between levels.  If there is a 5E in the works, I hope that's something the game takes further.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 5, 2012)

Balesir said:


> You found them cool? I found them an undefined mess that were either grossly overpowerful or utterly useless depending on how well the player was able to persuade/bamboozle/seduce the DM. As a DM they were simply a mass of questions to which I had to invent or randomly determine answers (Assuming the enemy believe the illusion, how do they react? What did they expect to see? How well do they know what the illusion should look like? Do the players deserve a break, here? What do the players think should happen, and is that a reasonable expectation? If the illusion works as intended, does that set up any problematic precedents for future play?). Blegh - thank the gods I don't have to deal with that kind of crap any more.




Seriously, this is how I view your At Will "something cool" power as well.


The cool thing about illusions was that although they could be a bit nebulous, there were some rules for how a DM should handle them and how NPCs could react with them, so regardless of whether the DM was heavily persuaded or not, he at least had adjudication rules to guide him. And the bottom line was that something cool could come out of it in game.

I don't see that with your "you can do anything you want as long as the DM agrees" something cool powers.

The very thing that you are complaining about here, you created your own house rules to mimic, just not with illusions.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 5, 2012)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Once I had a guy standing on a platform resting on a giant ball of rock and he could roll it around squishing characters and pushing them around. So the rogue whipped out a grappling hook, snagged him and pulled him off it. That's a small example, but what I find is that fairly plain cut-and-dried situations usually get straightforward solutions.




Not so much a straightforward solution, but I did something similar once. My PC threw a rope with a grappling hook around a BBEG standing near a cliff. It whipped around him back to my PC where I proceeded to jump off the cliff, dragging him with me. I then Feather Falled and watched him fall to his death. The DM actually made the DCs for this real high, but I got lucky and made the rolls. IIRC, I don't think the DM expected my PC to survive because I think he had forgotten that my PC had Feather Fall. He might not have allowed me to try if he had remembered.

I don't quite see these types of solutions often proposed in 4E. I'll have to go check out Hussar's web site.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jan 5, 2012)

Yeah, I just try to factor it in. Mostly I just make crazy stuff like this rolling ball. There were a couple guys on top that could immobilize from range, and the guy that ran the thing could pull people around, or move the ball, etc. If they didn't do SOMETHING it would have been a mess. There were also these 'anti-gravity' zones that you could use to jump up, or try to climb I suppose, but that was slower and you risked getting crushed. So tactically it was advantageous to come up with something. 

The trickier part is doing it so that say a 30th level character has to really do something out of the way. But then high epic stuff really should be totally gonzo, and really more story focused anyway, so players will be thinking about how to do the crazy thing that is the only way to turn off the mountain sized behemoth or something.


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## Hussar (Jan 5, 2012)

Well, KarinsDad, I'll have to go by memory here and I'm getting old, so that's a bit dodgy.  

Examples I can remember from the past year and a half:

1.  My eccentric rogue, who believes he's a chosen of Kord, tapping a lock with his holy spoon to open it.  (Actually failed the check, so, it's still up in the air if he actually IS a chosen of Kord)

2.  The aforementioned Calzone Demon incident.

3.  Eladrin warlord teleporting to the back of the siege bullette, pushing the driver off and then trying to control it.  

4.  When horde of rats sieged the barn we had taken refuge in, we blocked the holes up with large boards, pushing the rats back out.

5.  Various "push the guy off something to watch him splat" events.

6.  Several instances of defenestration.

7.  Continuously shoving the Githyanki bad guy back inside the creature that swallowed him to both kill the Githyanki and stop the creature from eating us.

8.  Current scenario features a bar fight with the PC's grabbing whatever is at hand to beat up the Far Realms beasties intent on eating their faces.  No one has tried setting anything on fire yet, much to my chagrin.  That one is available at Neuroglyph games.  Fun adventure.

So, yeah, Karins Dad.  If your players are not engaging in any out of the box thinking, perhaps it isn't the system that's at fault.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jan 5, 2012)

I see lots of little stuff all the time. People jumping on a table and kicking an enemy, leaping over stuff, flipping furniture, sliding on a rope, knocking down boxes, rolling barrels, etc. 

There's also a category of improvising. Lots of times that happens with rituals. There have been too many uses of Tenser's to even list, but the wizard in one of my games pretty much just cast that at dawn and used it to do every silly thing all day, including ramming an enemy off a cliff and of course all sorts of bypassing inconvenient terrain. Lots of trap building goes on. PCs using a ritual to remake the terrain in an area to create an advantage before a fight, that sort of thing.

The in-combat stuff really often boils down to forced movement tricks in a lot of cases, shoving people off things or down stairs, or into a trap. 

Now and then something more off the wall like modifying the way a power works (Stinking Cloud was made to pour down a vent shaft once). lots of fun stuff. 

There are definitely a good percentage of times when the players just use their powers too. This all starts to get kinda fuzzy at a certain point. Where's the divide between 'clever tactics' and 'out of the box thinking'?


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## Garthanos (Jan 5, 2012)

I use powers according to raw (except when we dont use them at all or we decide to use some page 42 and extend off of the power as a base) and use imagination so that they are portrayed in ways that seem plausible.

Not on the list.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 5, 2012)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Where's the divide between 'clever tactics' and 'out of the box thinking'?




To me, if you are using a power to force move someone somewhere into a hazard, for the most part this is an example of standard tactics. It's not even up to the level of 'clever tactics'. Half of the ones in Hussar's list are just 'force move the guy somewhere hazardous'.

To me, there are probably in order of cleverness: 'standard tactics', 'clever tactics' and 'out of the box thinking', and pushing foes into hazards almost always falls into the first category. It's 4E 101.

From Hussar's list:

#1 shouldn't be on the list. It's just a player doing something that the DM may or may not have found amusing enough to do something with, but a tactic that shouldn't necessary work at all or result in any change in the scenario at all. A DM could also just look at the player with a raised eyebrow, wondering what that player was smoking that morning.

#2 is standard force movement tactic.

#3 was probably somewhere between 'clever tactics' and 'out of the box thinking' and is the best of the lot, but still something that I have seen done quite a few times in the past.

#4 is probably at the 'standard atypical but fairly obvious tactics' level. Maybe at the level of 'clever tactics', but not really.

#5 is standard force movement tactic.

#6 is standard force movement tactic.

#7 is standard force movement tactic.

#8 I cannot tell. Why not just pull out weapons and smack the nonlethal crap out of the foes and not limit yourself to lesser weapons? If weapons were not available or shouldn't be used, then these are 'standard not using weapons tactics'.

Overall, I wasn't overly impressed with his list and didn't really see much 'out of the box' thinking that hadn't been done in lots of 4E encounters that I've seen.

And this might be where he and I differ. I consider 'out of the box' thinking to be things like in 2E where a Gnome PC cast Darkness 3 feet off the ground and then went around attacking his foes with no vision penalties. The medium sized monsters couldn't see and didn't know that below them, vision was just fine until real late in the encounter and then they got a different penalty for crouching down below the darkness once they figured it out. The PC was able to hold off an entire room of monsters while the rest of the party was fighting nearby.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jan 5, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> To me, if you are using a power to force move someone somewhere into a hazard, for the most part this is an example of standard tactics. It's not even up to the level of 'clever tactics'. Half of the ones in Hussar's list are just 'force move the guy somewhere hazardous'.
> 
> To me, there are probably in order of cleverness: 'standard tactics', 'clever tactics' and 'out of the box thinking', and pushing foes into hazards almost always falls into the first category. It's 4E 101.
> 
> ...




The problem is once you start into pre-4e spells you can't categorize at all because every spell is so fuzzily defined that NO way of using it HAS to be categorized as just "doing the normal thing" and not creative play. Even all the hackneyed ways of using a spell like casting Silence on a pebble and all that stuff was creative thinking ONCE. I'd call the gnome thing 'clever tactics' myself, on a par with using a push in a clever way or something like that. 

I think a lot of it has to do with the way you think about rules. If you think about rules as a way of just resolving things, so that when a player says "I want to do X" then you find a rule and apply it (and maybe X is using a power and maybe it isn't, it doesn't matter) then whatever is clever is clever. Pushing someone off a cliff is clever. Maybe it is pretty easy to accomplish, but if it was done with page 42, some DM decided way of doing something in some previous edition, some arcane subsystem, or whatever it is equally just executing a plan with whatever is at hand and using whatever rule is there to figure it out. If you look at the rules as describing in-game reality then maybe only cunning gaming of the rules is clever and everything else looks like just pushing pieces around the board. If you play OD&D then almost EVERYTHING looks clever because the rules hardly give you any help at all. In 4e you will just see the exact same actions taken by the PCs and brush it off as "just playing". Frankly I think the rules are just tools and clever is clever.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 5, 2012)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Pushing someone off a cliff is clever.
> 
> ...
> 
> ...




I think pushing someone over a cliff when you have few or no push mechanics is clever.

I think pushing someone over a cliff when you have been given a plethora of push mechanics and this particular tactic has been around for 3 years and talked about for 3 years and done in games right, left, and upside down for 3 years is "just playing".


No different than having a gun and killing someone is "just a simple attack" whereas not having any weapons and killing someone is "more clever".


If the game system says "here is a forced movement mechanic" and "here is a hazard", it's not exactly clever to figure out that you can force push someone into the hazard. It is especially not clever when the player has done it for the 50th time.


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## Hussar (Jan 6, 2012)

Well, KarinsDad, this does shed a fair bit of light on your opinion though.  Your definition of "do something clever" is really, "Do something that is not specifically allowed by the rules" and thus anything that is provided for in the ruleset is not clever play.

I defined it differently, and thus got different results.  One wonders though, since you earlier complained that all your players ever did was spam at-will powers, how often do they even do things that are allowed in the mechanics, but, not specifically part of their powers?  Since your example of the grappling hook character would not be clever play in 4e (since it's specifically allowed for with the forced movement rules), can you give an example of 4e play showing creative play?


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jan 6, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> I think pushing someone over a cliff when you have few or no push mechanics is clever.
> 
> I think pushing someone over a cliff when you have been given a plethora of push mechanics and this particular tactic has been around for 3 years and talked about for 3 years and done in games right, left, and upside down for 3 years is "just playing".
> 
> ...




It was clever in AD&D to push someone over a cliff more so than it is now in 4e? I'm a little dubious. It was just as obvious a tactic then as it is now. Nor do you need a power to do it in 4e any more than you needed one to do it in AD&D. The point is it is equally 'obvious' or 'clever' and the rules system has little, if anything, to do with that. 

Nor, again, do I think the VAST majority of cases of people using spells in AD&D were particularly clever. They were quite effective, massively so by comparison to not having spells, but clever? Certainly there WERE clever uses, now and then. I see clever uses of powers today too. In both cases the vast majority of the time the power/spell gets used either for whatever it was designed to do, or it gets used for one of a few well-established off-label uses. And I don't really agree with people that say that 4e powers aren't as easily usable in clever ways as any spell ever was. Some aren't, but some are, and you have more of them so it doesn't take as high a percentage to fill the need.


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## Wormwood (Jan 6, 2012)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It was clever in AD&D to push someone over a cliff more so than it is now in 4e? .




It's been a looong time, but I can't even remember what rule one would use to push someone over a cliff in 1e. Was it as codified as (to use 4e as an example) "use power to push/slide _n_ squares" or "see page 42 for examples"?


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## Hussar (Jan 6, 2012)

AFAIK Wormwood, 1e contained no forced movement mechanics.  For this, you're going to be entirely in DM fiat territory.


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## Argyle King (Jan 6, 2012)

Out of curiosity, why would I improvise to push someone off a cliff rather than using thunderwave, tide of iron, or other such powers which accomplish the same thing while also doing other things?


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## Aenghus (Jan 6, 2012)

As regards marking, I often have monsters ignore the defenders and attack squishier PCs, suffering the -2 from being marked and probably the defender punishment attack as well. (This is a judgement call based on how fanatical, disciplined or cowardly the monsters are). 

However it often isn't worth ignoring the mark. I think if defender mark could be reliably shaken off, they would be worthless.

I'm happy with most of the defender mechanic because they are not coercive, there is a choice involved for marked monsters.

Now as for thinking outside the box, I don't see a lot of it, but to be honest I never saw a lot of it in previous editions either. A goodly proportion of such requests in previous editions were looking for a one shot kill and disallowed. A bunch of other requests got lumbered with such high attack penalties they were generally a waste of time, though they seemed to keep players ignorant of probablility happy. Much of the remainder was use of spells in non-standard ways.


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## Wormwood (Jan 6, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> Out of curiosity, why would I improvise to push someone off a cliff rather than using thunderwave, tide of iron, or other such powers which accomplish the same thing while also doing other things?



Assuming you had such a power available, not much. But not everyone has a forced movement power available when they need it.


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## Wormwood (Jan 6, 2012)

Aenghus said:


> A goodly proportion of such requests in previous editions were looking for a one shot kill and disallowed.




I remember many a time when the DM said something along the lines of ,"That is a very creative exploit you have discovered---for the sake of the game please forget you ever thought of it."

(and now I am going to have very troubled nightmares about some of the horrors I saw on rec.games.frp.dnd)


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## KarinsDad (Jan 6, 2012)

Johnny3D3D said:


> Out of curiosity, why would I improvise to push someone off a cliff rather than using thunderwave, tide of iron, or other such powers which accomplish the same thing while also doing other things?




Because you're doing something clever? 

At least according to people who think that forced movement into a hazard is a clever tactic. Compared to flanking or shifting or a lot of other fairly pedestrian and typical tactics. Kind of like saying that anyone who writes a sentence is being clever because monkeys cannot do it.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 6, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Well, KarinsDad, this does shed a fair bit of light on your opinion though.  Your definition of "do something clever" is really, "Do something that is not specifically allowed by the rules" and thus anything that is provided for in the ruleset is not clever play.




No. My definition of "do something clever" is "do something clever".

Something that is not done at your gaming table on a fairly consistent basis and that other players at the table would probably not think of.

In other words, clever,  unprecedented, exceptional, unusual, atypical, ingenious, cunning, and/or canny.

Not normal, average, typical, pedestrian, or ordinary.

If one considers using forced movement into some type of hazard or disadvantageous position via power or bull rush to be a clever tactic, I cannot say that the person is wrong. Such a tactic might be extraordinary for that person. It seems like this type of tactic is extraordinary for you since you've written so glowingly of it and 4 of your 8 examples used it (although you claimed that your players do these extraordinary types of things a lot, so it would seem that they would be ordinary instead because they are done a lot, but I digress).

I just happen to consider using forced movement into some type of hazard or disadvantageous position via power or bull rush to be a fairly typical and ordinary tactic, one that I have literally seen hundreds of times in 4E.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 6, 2012)

Wormwood said:


> I remember many a time when the DM said something along the lines of ,"That is a very creative exploit you have discovered---for the sake of the game please forget you ever thought of it."




I remember a player playing a Druid PC who moved past a giant in 3.5 (walking right past his fallen ally in the process), provoked the OA, and then after the giant hit him, continued his walk to his fallen ally and cast a Cure spell on him. Since the giant had already used his OA for that PC, he could not do it for casting a spell, even though the spell casting would normally be what provoked in this situation. It was a convoluted movement, but one to exploit the rules.

I consider this to be a creative exploit the first time or two it is used. If it is used a lot in a campaign, it is a typical tactic (and also one that as DM, I would ask the player to forget he has ever thought of because it reeks of metagaming).


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## Argyle King (Jan 6, 2012)

I think using terrain to your advantage is a good tactic.

With some of my questions, I've been trying to get some more insight into how others play the game.


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## Wormwood (Jan 6, 2012)

karinsdad said:


> kind of like saying that anyone who writes a sentence is being clever because monkeys cannot do it.




ಠ_ಠ


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## Hussar (Jan 6, 2012)

KarinsDad - therefore, by your definition, if I push someone off a cliff in AD&D, I'm being clever because the mechanics are not in place to handle this.  But, if I do the exact same thing in 4e, I'm not being clever, because the mechanics are in place to handle this.

So, basically, the more comprehensive a ruleset is, the more difficult it is to be clever.  Pushing someone off a cliff in 3e isn't clever because we have bull rush mechanics.  Flanking and tactical movement in 3e or 4e isn't clever because we have mechanics tied to position.  Flanking in AD&D wouldn't be clever because there are mechanics there for that.  But it would be in 2e because flanking doesn't have any mechanics tied to it?

So, in your opinion, what would count as doing something clever in 4e?  

Or, hey, let's move away from D&D for a second.  In Savage Worlds, we have the Rule of 4.  Any result of 4 or better is a success.  How does one be clever in a system that has universal resolution mechanics using your definition of "clever".

Since use of terrain isn't clever.  And use of powers isn't clever.  Nor is using any existing mechanics, what exactly do we have left?


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## KarinsDad (Jan 6, 2012)

Hussar said:


> So, in your opinion, what would count as doing something clever in 4e?




I'll read through your story hours and let you know if I see one. Be patient though, it might take a while.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 6, 2012)

Hussar said:


> So, in your opinion, what would count as doing something clever in 4e?




Actually, I'll give you an example.

Say that a given player has a melee PC and he intends to go into flank and attack a foe. When his turn comes up, he realizes that if he moves into the flank square, his PC will be open to a large number of attacks by the enemies. Instead of flanking the foe, he instead moves to a non-flank square and attacks, thereby forcing the enemies to spread their attacks amongst the PCs instead of getting focused fire on a single PC.

I consider this clever because many players would never see this and would with very little real thought on it, take the flank and have their PC get crushed, and because it forces the NPCs to not have access for one round to one of the best tactics of the game, focused fire.


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## Balesir (Jan 6, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> Seriously, this is how I view your At Will "something cool" power as well.
> 
> The cool thing about illusions was that although they could be a bit nebulous, there were some rules for how a DM should handle them and how NPCs could react with them, so regardless of whether the DM was heavily persuaded or not, he at least had adjudication rules to guide him. And the bottom line was that something cool could come out of it in game.
> 
> ...



Um, I think you have me confused with [MENTION=336]D'karr[/MENTION], who provided the "Do Something Cool" and "Do Something Cooler" cards. I was just expressing my relief that the open-ended and patently-abusable-with-DM-connivance spells from older editions are no longer a "feature" that I have to deal with.



KarinsDad said:


> I consider 'out of the box' thinking to be things like in 2E where a Gnome PC cast Darkness 3 feet off the ground and then went around attacking his foes with no vision penalties. The medium sized monsters couldn't see and didn't know that below them, vision was just fine until real late in the encounter and then they got a different penalty for crouching down below the darkness once they figured it out. The PC was able to hold off an entire room of monsters while the rest of the party was fighting nearby.



Completely aside from the fact that this seems to have worked far more effectively that I would personally consider to be "realistic", I have seen similar tactics in 4E when fighting large monsters (which are actually sufficiently taller than the PCs to make for significant scope to have poison clouds, darkness and so on affect the large creatures but not the party) and larger. But I suppose that doesn't count, as 4E has specific "spaces" occupied by both creatures and spell effects, so such things, "clever" in earlier rulesets, become merely "playing the system" in 4E, hmm?

The idea that "clever" play is possible only if the rules do not cover as many possibilities as needed for players to easily find areas to be "clever" in is... intriguing. I think I'll stick to valuing creative and intelligent play _within_ the rules as a priority, thanks.


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## Balesir (Jan 6, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> Actually, I'll give you an example.
> 
> Say that a given player has a melee PC and he intends to go into flank and attack a foe. When his turn comes up, he realizes that if he moves into the flank square, his PC will be open to a large number of attacks by the enemies. Instead of flanking the foe, he instead moves to a non-flank square and attacks, thereby forcing the enemies to spread their attacks amongst the PCs instead of getting focused fire on a single PC.
> 
> I consider this clever because many players would never see this and would with very little real thought on it, take the flank and have their PC get crushed, and because it forces the NPCs to not have access for one round to one of the best tactics of the game, focused fire.



LOL! Such a high bar set for "clever" heretofore, but now it's just "avoiding being utterly dumb"!

It's entertaining, I suppose.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 6, 2012)

Balesir said:


> The idea that "clever" play is possible only if the rules do not cover as many possibilities as needed for players to easily find areas to be "clever" in is... intriguing. I think I'll stick to valuing creative and intelligent play _within_ the rules as a priority, thanks.




I never once said that. That's your (and some other people's) spin on what I said. If you go back and read what I wrote, I said that there are tactics such as using forced movement to push a foe into a hazard which are not especially clever, rather they are standard tactics. No different than moving into flank is a standard tactic.

If a player playing 1E managed to convince his DM that his PC was flanking a foe because of some reason and the DM gave that player a bonus because of that, it might be considered clever because the player doesn't normally have that tool in this toolkit. In 4E, flanking is not a clever tactic. Finding an unusual way to move in order to get flanking might be clever. But flanking is 4E 101, just like forced movement into a hazard is 4E 101.

Considering forced movement into a hazard creative and intelligent play? It's not stupid play, but it's not especially unprecedented or ingenious play. It's just typical play. For those of you who consider it special, I probably cannot convince you that it's just a normal tactic that the game designers handed players on a plate. It can lead to some special moments where the entire table erupts in cheers and laughter, but the tactic itself is not special or unique. Just one more tool in the player's toolbox and one that is heavily wellworn at some tables.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 6, 2012)

Balesir said:


> LOL! Such a high bar set for "clever" heretofore, but now it's just "avoiding being utterly dumb"!
> 
> It's entertaining, I suppose.




I wonder how many times as a player or DM that you had a character do something that wasn't a good tactical move and only saw the reason it wasn't after the fact? Or are you one of those perfect people who never make tactical mistakes? It's clever when someone sees it coming ahead of time, regardless of your inability to see it, and regardless of your armchair assessment that someone doing something truly clever like anticipating the future actions of the monsters and preventing them as just avoiding being dumb. You must be an awesome tactical player if something that most players can rarely do is mundane for you.


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## Balesir (Jan 6, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> I wonder how many times as a player or DM that you had a character do something that wasn't a good tactical move and only saw the reason it wasn't after the fact? Or are you one of those perfect people who never make tactical mistakes? It's clever when someone sees it coming ahead of time, regardless of your inability to see it, and regardless of your armchair assessment that someone doing something truly clever like anticipating the future actions of the monsters and preventing them as just avoiding being dumb. You must be an awesome tactical player if something that most players can rarely do is mundane for you.



Oh, I can make mistakes with the best in that business, but the whole area of threats and counter-threats of flanking is just a work-a-day part of the tactical tapestry in our games. Considering what flanks you can get or threaten, and what flanks could be got or threatened against you, is all part and parcel of play, so making a really big hash of it is relatively rare.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 6, 2012)

Balesir said:


> Oh, I can make mistakes with the best in that business, but the whole area of threats and counter-threats of flanking is just a work-a-day part of the tactical tapestry in our games. Considering what flanks you can get or threaten, and what flanks could be got or threatened against you, is all part and parcel of play, so making a really big hash of it is relatively rare.




I only made a big hash of a player anticipating the tactics of the monsters and avoiding them by doing what would normally be considered a subpar tactic. That's what I find clever. In the vast majority of circumstances, it doesn't matter too much which square a PC is in. As a DM, if I wanted to unload on that PC, I typically can and there's not much the players can do to stop it (with the exception of any marked monsters or monsters that someone has put some level of control over). But if a player can position his PC (and/or other PCs in the case of a Leader who can move fellow PCs) in such a way as to limit my options as a DM, I consider that player to be doing something clever.

Granted, if the player uses the same tactic over and over again, then it starts going from the realm of being a clever tactic to a standard tactic for that player and that group. But in the case of the "does not go into flank" example, truly preventing the monsters from unloading on any single PC is something that is fairly rare as an option. So when a player sees and uses that option, he's being clever because it is something that rarely is possible in an encounter, but he was heads up enough to take advantage of it.

Forty years ago, it was clever for mankind to go to the moon. Four hundreds years from now, it might be considered as clever as getting on a bus is today. Just like pushing a foe off a cliff in 1E was clever, but pushing a foe off a cliff in 4E isn't.


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## talok55 (Jan 6, 2012)

technoextreme said:


> When you are in a game where you are effectively encouraged and allowed to utilize any power whether it be PC or Monster when designing a monster it kind of makes you look like you have no idea what you are talking about.  By the rules of the game any monster can wipe marks.
> 
> So either I missed the eratta that says "monsters can now ignore marks", or you are specifically giving monsters PC powers or powers from the few monsters that can avoid marks.  That is falling into houserule territory.  Sure, you can do that, but that isn't using RAW.  You are having to alter the monsters to make wiping marks a common thing.  That is the only way that removing marks is common.  You have to specifically alter the game to make it that way.


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## Balesir (Jan 9, 2012)

KarinsDad said:


> I only made a big hash of a player anticipating the tactics of the monsters and avoiding them by doing what would normally be considered a subpar tactic. That's what I find clever. In the vast majority of circumstances, it doesn't matter too much which square a PC is in. As a DM, if I wanted to unload on that PC, I typically can and there's not much the players can do to stop it (with the exception of any marked monsters or monsters that someone has put some level of control over). But if a player can position his PC (and/or other PCs in the case of a Leader who can move fellow PCs) in such a way as to limit my options as a DM, I consider that player to be doing something clever.



It looks like we are far closer that might have been assumed; this is exactly the sort of 'clever and creative' play that I love seeing when I play (DM, generally) 4E. And I see it all the time. It's not the "going beyond the rules" that I see many folks rave over, but I find it very much preferable to have clever stuff going on inside the rules _first_, and then the occasional "outside the rules" moment to add spice.

To quote the great Terry Pratchett, "I'll be a lot happier about thinking 'outside the box' when I'm convinced there's any thinking going on *inside* the box!"


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## Hussar (Jan 10, 2012)

KarinsDad - again, I think you're applying a double standard.

If doing X is clever, it's always clever, whether or not the rules support it.  If moving to an advantageous position is clever, it's not suddenly not clever just because the rules give specific mechanics governing that movement.

Like you said, it's clever to push someone off a cliff in AD&D, but not in 4e.  Thus, the fact that you see less "clever" play in 4e is simply the result of more comprehensive mechanics, not any lack in the players.  What was once considered clever has become "4e 101".  

So, again, the fact that you see less "clever" play actually has more to do with the fact that you are setting the bar continuously higher than anything else.

Or, to put it another way, of course you only see players using the powers on their sheets.  That sheet gives them so many more options than it ever did in any other edition other than casters possibly.  A 10th level PC in 4e has about a dozen viable options right there on his character sheet in any given round.  

It's not that people think less outside the box, it's that the box has gotten a hell of a lot bigger.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 10, 2012)

Hussar said:


> KarinsDad - again, I think you're applying a double standard.
> 
> If doing X is clever, it's always clever, whether or not the rules support it.




This argument is illogical.

When you were 3 years old, adding 2 plus 2 was clever.

Is that still clever for you?

Clever is relative based on the scenario and options available at the time. Clever is doing something that you rarely do and something that is exceptional, not doing something that you do all of the time (like your players repeatedly using forced movement to push a foe into a hazard).



Hussar said:


> It's not that people think less outside the box, it's that the box has gotten a hell of a lot bigger.




Given the proper tools and a wider selection of them, people can be a lot more effective. That doesn't mean that they use those options in a clever way. In fact, the opposite occurs. Necessity is the mother of all invention. When the necessity is no longer there, the invention, inspiration, and ingenuity peters out. When all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. When you have an entire toolkit, you no longer have to use the hammer in innovative ways.

I've come to the conclusion based on your examples that you appear to be confusing clever with awesome. In one of the first 4E encounters that I ever played in, I managed to save a fellow PC by using Thunderwave to push 3 foes towards a pit. These 3 foes were previously stomping the crap out of my fellow player's PC and he was in single digit hit points quickly and about to drop. It was an awesome event because my Wizard hit all 3 monsters, knocked 2 into the pit, and knocked the 3rd monster prone. But mostly it was awesome because I saved the PC of someone else at the table. There was a lot of cheering. It was a cool moment in the game and some players still remember it 3 years later.

But, it wasn't especially clever. The entire purpose of Thunderwave is to push foes either merely away, or into disadvantageous positions. There wasn't a damn thing clever about it at all.

Just probably like your players, my forced movement was awesome at the time to the people playing. Players laughed and cheered over it. But also like your players, the concept of pushing foes into a hazard wasn't clever. Not even a little bit. Even playing the game for practically the first time, it was 4E 101 and obvious.


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## Hussar (Jan 10, 2012)

Yeah, y'know what?  Playing silly buggers semantics games gets tired really fast.  

Ok, fine.  You don't think that it's clever to use tools that you have.  That clever only happens when you hammer in a screw because you don't have a driver.  Fine.  To me, that's not clever, that's just overcoming the failings of a system.  If the system was properly designed in the first place, I would have that screwdriver.

But, since I have a tool kit, I can no longer be clever.  :/  Kinda screwed either way aren't I?  If I use a very narrow rule set, then I can be clever all the time, but, only if my DM lets me.  If I use a comprehensive ruleset, I'm never clever, but, I get to be awesome all the time

Well, fair enough I suppose.  I'll take awesome all the time over occasionally clever any day of the week.


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## pemerton (Jan 10, 2012)

One time, the PCs in my game were fighting a group of foes in a courtyard, being attacked by an enemy spellcaster who had cover behind an upstairs window. The wizard PC in my game teleported up there and used Thunderwave to blast out the wall and push the spellcaster through (what had been) the window, so that the PCs below could finish her off. I don't particularly care whether this is classified as clever or awesome, but it was the sort of thing I would like to see more of in my game, and 4e produces more of it than any earlier ruleset (D&D or otherwise), mostly because the adjudication of that sort of stuff is so straightforward.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 10, 2012)

Hussar said:


> Yeah, y'know what? Playing silly buggers semantics games gets tired really fast.
> 
> ...
> 
> You don't think that it's clever to use tools that you have.




Wrong, that's not what I think.

It's isn't clever to use the tools that you have in repetitive and normal ways (as per your examples).

It's clever to use the tools in innovative ways.

I'm not quite sure why you don't understand the difference and call it semantics. Clever is clever, but awesome may or may not be clever and in 4E, typically isn't.

Your examples were extremely typical for the game system, hence, not clever.

In the "Cool stunts that you have seen" thread, there are 19 replies in 5.5 days. That's not many. I suspect that the real reason for this is that people just don't see that many cool stunts in 4E since 99% of most players actions are spamming powers (the idea in this thread that got us down this rabbit hole) or spamming skills (type of encounter depending). Nothing wrong with spamming powers, that's what they are there for. But with so many options, that's the easiest solution the vast majority of the time.

My memory isn't what it used to be, but I can remember about a dozen unique and clever things that I or a fellow player pulled off in the 30 years that I played d&d pre-4E. The fact that I can remember any of them is actually pretty amazing.

In the 4E days within the last 3 years, I cannot think of a single one. That doesn't mean that they never happened, it's just that they tend to be more rare (and less memorable because many cool awesome things happen without being especially clever) because the game system is designed to give each player more options. The case of "I can do A or B, but both of them suck, I wonder what C I can come up with" rarely occurs because the player has options of "A through D" at first level and "A through M" at epic levels. Thinking beyond these many options is a bit harder because the options handle most things that need to be accomplished in some fashion or other.

A DM can introduce challenges which are hard to overcome via spamming powers or spamming skills, but then the DM runs the risk that nobody at his table comes up with a good idea and the PCs are stuck.


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## KarinsDad (Jan 10, 2012)

pemerton said:


> One time, the PCs in my game were fighting a group of foes in a courtyard, being attacked by an enemy spellcaster who had cover behind an upstairs window. The wizard PC in my game teleported up there and used Thunderwave to blast out the wall and push the spellcaster through (what had been) the window, so that the PCs below could finish her off. I don't particularly care whether this is classified as clever or awesome, but it was the sort of thing I would like to see more of in my game, and 4e produces more of it than any earlier ruleset (D&D or otherwise), mostly because the adjudication of that sort of stuff is so straightforward.




Agreed. More awesome in 4E because there are more options per player and hence more opportunities for something cool to occur.

This, of course, leads to the downside of 4E which is that there are more options (and hence, conditions and effects to keep track of) than in earlier rulesets.


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## Dragon Sin-Camealot (Jan 15, 2012)

-Avoiding your common set-up.

While I won't get into a huge debate about philosophy and/or overstate the idea.  How many times have you used the power?  How long has it been around?

All these topics attempt to justify certain styles and ideas over others.  Some people are also bias towards them.

Most of the powers in games I've come across make sense for what they are.  The game itself is good as long as you don't again, god mod.

Then there's the different/originality issue.  Can you see a movie about Robert De-Niro not handle a weapon and/or play the diplomat.

I myself haven't seen all the movies he's in so I wouldn't know for sure.  But you do know what I mean.


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