The Gaming Den

I'll make you a deal Fectin and Plebian. If you read the following I will take your viewpoint seriously. It's one of the gentlest but most striking critiques of modern D&D design flaws I have ever read. Give it a try

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations ... anics.html

Plus there's pictures after the intro bit

Okay. I read it. Seems pretty straightforward. Which viewpoints of mine will you take seriously now? I'm curious.

deanruel87 wrote:I'll make you a deal Fectin and Plebian. If you read the following I will take your viewpoint seriously. It's one of the gentlest but most striking critiques of modern D&D design flaws I have ever read. Give it a try

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations ... anics.html

Plus there's pictures after the intro bit

I find a lot of the stuff in the article to be somewhat off-base. While there are some legitimate complaints, things like encounter/daily martial powers make sense to me when you look at it from a point of view that you're trying to simulate fantasy media and not real life.

Superman very well could use his super speed every single battle, and I can't figure out why he wouldn't, only that he doesn't. And yet I still want to simulate that. Fighters should have some limited abilities they can use when they want to pull out the stops.

There are other ways of trying to simulate it, like WoF, but those have similar dissociative elements like: "Why can't I use a flame arrow but not a rope arrow?"

deanruel87 wrote:I'll make you a deal Fectin and Plebian. If you read the following I will take your viewpoint seriously. It's one of the gentlest but most striking critiques of modern D&D design flaws I have ever read. Give it a try

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations ... anics.html

Plus there's pictures after the intro bit

the absolute funniest part about this is that he uses his own quotes as proof that he's right. here, I'm gonna try it.

Plebian wrote: 4e is the bestest game ever and you are dumb

4e is the bestest game ever and you are dumb, see what I quoted for proof.


also amusing are the facts that he acknowledges that all games have disassociated mechanics and then goes on to harp about how they're somehow worse in 4e because... well, just because. you'll have to take his word on it. he said so, after all, in a previous post!

and he even gives an example to ignore his opinion in:

Idiot wrote: If you're watching a football game, for example, and a player makes an amazing one-handed catch, you don't think to yourself: "Wow, they won't be able to do that again until tomorrow!"

if you ask that player why he made that catch, he'll say he was in the right place at the right time. if you ask him why he didn't make another one, or two, or three, well golly gee! he doesn't know! man he makes an argument for why martial dailies are believable. that's awesome.

he really seems to have an issue with using his imagination in a game where I always thought the entire point was to use your imagination. does 3e fall apart because they don't tell you exactly how a Bearded Devil is using his teleport? there's no description in the MM entry! he also has this idiotic tendency to ask if spells from 3e could block a 4e effect. what the fuck relevance does that even have? that's up there with COULD WOLVERINE BEAT UP BATMAN because they're from different goddamn dimensions who cares you're just going to assume your preferred one will win anyway.

and then he just straight up assumes that you have to make a house rule. to use your imagination. what the hell is wrong with this guy?

that entire page is just paragraph after paragraph of pure idiocy; either he's comparing one edition's rules to another and claiming that the edition he dislikes is obviously inferior or he's making really, really stupid assumptions like you have to houserule how a power works even though there's no reason to do so unless you're playing 4e and 3e at the same time in the same game. "well 3e spells might prevent 4e powers from working," is one of the dumbest imaginable statements I can even think of.

the only good point he has is about skill challenges, which really suck ass in the RAW. but then he also assumes that skill challenges are the only way to ever resolve any problem, which isn't the case at all and if he'd ever read the DMG he'd probably know this but he's probably just like Frank in that he maybe browsed it once but since he dislikes it so much he didn't pay attention to the content and just keeps harping on what he perceives as flaws.

edit: the funniest thing about the bitching about daily martial powers is that it's so incredibly metagamey. your character is in no way aware that he can only do this once per day ever; things that happen to work together for a spectacular move may happen in a day, they may not, they may even happen a couple times in a day in rare circumstances. but we, as players, know that they're limited and you guys seem intent on insisting that because we as players know that our characters would naturally know.

good job on being unable to separate player from character knowledge.

Unless you're going to forbid a Fighter from choosing to rest because he used up all his dailies, he knows.

Archmage wrote: You want to simulate the kludgy trope where authors make their protagonists do incredibly stupid and/or inefficient things without an explanation as to why--when anyone in the audience with two brain cells is asking things like "why doesn't he just use his super strength?" Because that's the kind of shit that makes me want to scream at my television. Like people splitting up in horror movies or building AI capable of turning against its creators.

I want to simulate scenarios where people use their special moves at dramatically appropriate times as opposed to just spamming the best one every battle.

I also accept that it's more than a simulation; it's also a game. For a game to be good you need to have choices, and setting up a resource management scheme is good for creating more diverse choices.

As far as flavor goes, I don't have too much trouble explaining it. For martial maneuvers, you require openings and timings and such. The fact that it's daily or encounter tells you how often those openings happen, and the game lets you control the narrative to create them X amount of times.

But I've always preferred things that are more gamist and less simulationist. Really, I find the problem to be more so the idea of linking gamist concepts to in-game time with daily powers more so than having them in the first place. I'd prefer gamist powers be linked to gamist concepts like "1/session" or "3/level". The real clash comes from the idea that for some reason when you sleep, you can then create a new opening for Crushing Smite.

Swordslinger wrote: The real clash comes from the idea that for some reason when you sleep, you can then create a new opening for Crushing Smite.

And that's the real issue with the 4e system, and not the pseudo-issue of 'dissassociated mechanics' that all games must have. The 4e system just never makes any sense and reinforces the senselessness with every grid.

Doom wrote: And that's the real issue with the 4e system, and not the pseudo-issue of 'dissassociated mechanics' that all games must have. The 4e system just never makes any sense and reinforces the senselessness with every grid.

Well dude, I don't see that stuff as a big deal. I've played enough CRPGs where martial powers use a pool of spell points, have a cooldown or whatever. It just doesn't bother me.

It offends my sense of realism more in 3E where a fighter does nothing but spam trip attacks the entire combat. I'm more worried about producing an interesting narrative than in directly correlating the rules themselves with real life. I can deal with 2E style basic attack spamming from a narrative point of view, but the guy who does nothing but spam disarms or trips is really boring. It feels way too videogamey to me.

Swordslinger wrote:Well dude, I don't see that stuff as a big deal. I've played enough CRPGs where martial powers use a pool of spell points, have a cooldown or whatever. It just doesn't bother me.

Table-top roleplaying games are not the same as electronic games or board games. Table-top roleplaying games take as input from the player fucking ideas. I can go, "hm, there's a statue over there? I think I could hide behind it, wait for the guard to pass by, and push it onto his head." And you can do that anywhere. The WORLD leads to decisions, and the mechanics model those decisions. And for that reason, we need the world and the mechanics to align.

Videogames are the reverse. The mechanics lead to the world. And that's really okay, because the amount of input we expect to be able to provide to a videogame is very limited. You don't expect to be able to jump through any window you see, because that's just not something videogames do.

If your position is that it's okay for table-top roleplaying games to be more like videogames, stop playing table-top roleplaying games and go play videogames. They can do the math quicker, and you'll have more fun. And 4e really should be a videogame. It only cares about combat and 'skill challenges,' and those (for 4e) are simple enough to be represented in code. 4e's mechanics dictate its world, not the other way around, and that's dumb. Simulationism IS the key advantage of RPG's - if it can't simulate me doing whatever random idea pops into my head at least vaguely well, I have trouble seeing why it should be a TTRPG in the first place. And 4e sacrificed simulationism for combat balance and simplicity.

MfA wrote:A bullshit explanation can be made up to support any mechanics, but some bullshit rubs people the wrong way more than others.

That's because some explanations are less bullshitty than others. Recharge mechanics actually begin to make sense - it's easy to imagine sword fighting as a trading of blows waiting for good opportunities, and when those opportunities arise "AH-HAH! Time to use a good move!" And WoF does that. Daily/encounter is more bullshit (daily, especially), because it suggests being 'good with a sword' is something you can only do 1/day. And that's just hilariously immersion breaking.

ToB also doesn't break immersion as badly, because it's all very eastern-influenced. We half expect that shit to be chi or magic in the first place, and we don't have rules/comparisons for that in the real world (it's the same reason vancian magic doesn't break immersion - it's not like you can say, "that's not how magic works!" because magic does not, in fact, exist).

There's also fatigue/tiring modelling. Using fancy maneuvers is physically tiring or requires exceptional concentration - you need a moment to catch your breath or focus your mind to get back 'in the zone.' And we mostly buy that, too. But daily martials... is just silly. That makes no sense.

DSMatticus wrote: Table-top roleplaying games are not the same as electronic games or board games. Table-top roleplaying games take as input from the player fucking ideas. I can go, "hm, there's a statue over there? I think I could hide behind it, wait for the guard to pass by, and push it onto his head." And you can do that anywhere. The WORLD leads to decisions, and the mechanics model those decisions. And for that reason, we need the world and the mechanics to align.

For things that happen out of combat maybe, but in combat you're basically playing a combat mini-game. It's just a board game, which might be represented on a computer screen or a battle map, it seriously doesn't matter. Yes, there's some DM adjudication here and there when you try something unexpected, but for the most part, you're playing a self-contained mini-game that you make decisions by.

That's because some explanations are less bullshitty than others. Recharge mechanics actually begin to make sense - it's easy to imagine sword fighting as a trading of blows waiting for good opportunities, and when those opportunities arise "AH-HAH! Time to use a good move!" And WoF does that. Daily/encounter is more bullshit (daily, especially), because it suggests being 'good with a sword' is something you can only do 1/day. And that's just hilariously immersion breaking.

There are plenty of things I find that make no sense in D&D given the rules set. The fantasy worlds in D&D (3E especially) make no damn sense. Why there hasn't been some grand war between all the high level wizards gating each other in and soul trapping each other has no active explanation. How magical item shops can exist without getting constantly raided and looted doesn't make sense either. Why spend tons of money building these castles and strongholds when they're so easily defeated by anyone with a fly spell? How you can have this supposedly human character who survives a fall of 200 ft without even falling down.

Now dude, you can either let this stuff get in the way of your fun or you can just ignore it and play the damn game.

If it bothers you that much, then just say it's a pool of Ki that has to recharge, similar to spell energy. And then whatever, get on with your life. The more you think about D&D, the less it makes sense. That's because it's not an economic simulation, it's not a game of massive world politics, it's not a fully fleshed out analysis of metaphysical forces, it's a game about adventurers beating up monsters and taking their stuff and that's it.

DSMatticus wrote:That's because some explanations are less bullshitty than others. Recharge mechanics actually begin to make sense - it's easy to imagine sword fighting as a trading of blows waiting for good opportunities

It still rubs me the wrong way ... no accounting for taste.

Plebian wrote:the absolute funniest part about this is that he uses his own quotes as proof that he's right. here, I'm gonna try it.

He provides examples from 4e's text, and then discusses them. He did not pull the quotes out of thin air, they are from either current text or prerelease sample text.

Plebian wrote:also amusing are the facts that he acknowledges that all games have disassociated mechanics and then goes on to harp about how they're somehow worse in 4e because... well, just because.

No, he explains what an abstract associated mechanic is and a dissociated mechanic is. The fact that you couldn't tell the difference tells me I'm probably wasting my time, but I'll try anyway.

Fireball is an abstract associated mechanic. It is abstract, because the power of a fireball is represented by d6's, and your characters don't know what the fuck a d6 is. It's associated, however, because characters know that more powerful casters can hurl more powerful fireballs. So characters can totally explain to you why they have more powerful fireballs (association), they just can't explain to you how that power is represented (abstraction).

Daily martial powers are a dissociated mechanic (and also abstract, but all mechanics are abstract). The character cannot explain to you why his trick only works once a day. Not only does it not make sense in terms of our understanding of reality, 4e does not provide ANY flavorful explanation why. They pretend you are a completely normal rogue who knows tricks with a weapon, and then says those tricks are usable 1/day, and never says why. At all.

If you were to ask a 3.5 sorcerer why he can only fling 3 fireballs a day and why they deal the sort of damage they do, he will say, "it's because that's all I can do before draining my magical power, and that is simply the extent to which I am able to generate magical flame." If you were to ask a 4e rogue why he has never, EVER, EVER managed to use daily strike twice a day, he will say, "well, it's because... umm... uhh... I guess it's just never happened." When you as a player, decide "wow! That trick I just did with my weapon was really effective. I should try it again," and the GM says, "you can't," and you say, "why?" the GM cannot answer you other than to say, "it's a daily, that's not how it works."

Plebian wrote: and then he just straight up assumes that you have to make a house rule. to use your imagination. what the hell is wrong with this guy?

Do you know how to fucking read? Do you not get the point of that, at all?

1) The war devil ability is mechanically-explained, but not explained in the terms of the game world.
2) It is therefore impossible to describe the effects the players' characters actually see when a war devil uses this ability.
3) If you want to provide a description to the players, that is a house rule because it was not a part of the game until you said it.
4) These descriptions/house rules can have effects on mechanics. If you decide the war devil ability is a guttural demonic shout, then the next time the players fight a war devil, the players should be able to expect that any ability that silences a war devil will prevent him from using his marking ability.

These 'fluff' descriptions have real fucking effects on how the players expect the world to work. 4e sacrificed fluff because it doesn't like creative interactions, because it discovered creative interactions are hard to model and balance. Fluff, in 4e, is NEVER supposed to affect the game world, EVER. But unfortunately, that massively breaks immersion the first time you silence a creature that uses a verbal power and the rules say it can still use that verbal power.

Plebian wrote:your character is in no way aware that he can only do this once per day ever

That's stupid. Like, majorly stupid. You're trying to argue that 4e's combat model represents 'opportunities,' but it doesn't. At the start of the day, all of your dailies are available, and you can CHOOSE when to use each and every single one of them. Opportunistic combat like the sort you're trying to pretend 4e has just isn't true. The rogue DECIDES when he uses trick strike, and then after that, he is 'magically, inexplicably' blocked from making that decision again until he has rested eight hours.

If 4e had a WoF matrix, you could make this argument. But it doesn't. You choose when to use powers, and as you do so you remove choices from your list, and that makes no sense.

Swordslinger wrote:Yes, there's some DM adjudication here and there when you try something unexpected, but for the most part, you're playing a self-contained mini-game that you make decisions by.

And that's the point. 3.5's self-contained minigame allows for a lot more DM adjudication and input. It is more flexible. It is more simulationist. 4e's breaks down when you ask it to simulate something and you want that simulation to make sense in the context of the game world. For god's sake, my dropping a statue example has damage that scales with the level of the person dropping the statue.

Swordslinger wrote:problems with settings

You realize the Tomes are posted and discussed frequently here, right? This is a place where people have literally tried to fix those exact problems you're pointing. Personally, I tend to play E8, and make level 7-8 characters exceeding rare, making wizard-conquering-sprees possible but more rare and Much Bigger Deals.

Swordslinger wrote: If it bothers you that much, then just say it's a pool of Ki that has to recharge, similar to spell energy.

Yes, you, as a DM, can say that, but the book never does. And when you do say that, that implies that everyone in 4e who is good with a sword draws their power from some sort of inner ki. There is no such thing as the grizzly, veteran, experienced soldier - there are just ways to hit things with swords that uses [insert your flavor of magic here, in this case ki]. And I think that sort of flavor's fairly shitty, for one.

Swordslinger wrote:it's a game about adventurers beating up monsters and taking their stuff and that's it.

I had never played that sort of D&D until the past few months. D&D does not have to be a dungeon crawl. Combat is a heavy part of it (and it should be), but that doesn't mean it's a generic "this week, you're fighting the [insert level-appropriate challenge] here for a goody bag of magic items." And even if it did, we are talking about combat simulationism. All of the 'features' of 4e I have pointed out are WITHIN the combat minigame.

D&D is cooperative storytelling, and it gives the players the ability to shape the story in completely unexpected ways. And 4e just... doesn't. You have a finite combat abilities, and you choose the order you use them in, and then you move on to the next combat, and it doesn't handle anything else well, at all. Including failure to create a flavorful, believable description of how combat happens or how it works the DM can relay to the players.

DSMatticus wrote: And that's the point. 3.5's self-contained minigame allows for a lot more DM adjudication and input. It is more flexible.

No it's not. In fact, it has way more rules than 4E. I recall an argument where people claimed 3E was better because it had rules for dropped rocks and such where 4E actually required adjudication.

4e's breaks down when you ask it to simulate something and you want that simulation to make sense in the context of the game world. For god's sake, my dropping a statue example has damage that scales with the level of the person dropping the statue.

That's not breaking down, that's just existing in cinematic reality. In a movie, an experienced bad guy dropping a rock on the hero is more dangerous than a bunch of peons doing the same thing. Hit points are about plot armor, not actual physical damage.

If you want something that has absolute realism, you should probably play another system like GURPS. D&D has never been about absolute realism. It's more important that the guy is level 11 than if he's wielding a dagger or a greatsword.

Yes, you, as a DM, can say that, but the book never does. And when you do say that, that implies that everyone in 4e who is good with a sword draws their power from some sort of inner ki. There is no such thing as the grizzly, veteran, experienced soldier - there are just ways to hit things with swords that uses [insert your flavor of magic here, in this case ki]. And I think that sort of flavor's fairly shitty, for one.

Then come up with a different one. I'm not forcing my reality on you, just go with something you like.

D&D is cooperative storytelling, and it gives the players the ability to shape the story in completely unexpected ways. And 4e just... doesn't. You have a finite combat abilities, and you choose the order you use them in, and then you move on to the next combat, and it doesn't handle anything else well, at all. Including failure to create a flavorful, believable description of how combat happens or how it works the DM can relay to the players.

Speaking in combat terms, there's a variety of outcomes, and I fail to see how 3E has more outcomes than 4E does. You can get people knocked out, killed, run away, etc.

If anything I've found 4E allows for more options in combat because it's a lot easier to take prisoners. I don't really see how 3E has more possible outcomes of a combat.

cinematic reality

jesus christ did not die on the cross so you could do things like this

Swordslinger wrote:No it's not. In fact, it has way more rules than 4E. I recall an argument where people claimed 3E was better because it had rules for dropped rocks and such where 4E actually required adjudication.

That is a non-sequitur. By adjucation, I mean the DM can allow and facillitate things off your character sheet. Sometimes there are rules to help and encourage him and show him how, and that's good. Consider this a communication breakdown, but I mean those rules in 3E make that possible and that is a strength. 4E took out those rules, making context-relevant decisions difficult or impossible without the DM "making shit up on the fly."

Swordslinger wrote:That's not breaking down, that's just existing in cinematic reality. In a movie, an experienced bad guy dropping a rock on the hero is more dangerous than a bunch of peons doing the same thing. Hit points are about plot armor, not actual physical damage.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred. A rock is a god damn rock, gravity is gravity, and I'm here to roleplay in a semi-believable, coherent world where when my character sees a rock coming at him he knows what to expect, not to have to wonder, "hm, I wonder what level the guy who pushed it was? Because that's really important about my decision whether to dodge it or shrug it off."

This is not an action movie. And no, D&D has never been an action movie. It has characters that do absolutely batshit insane shit, but the things the characters do that are absolutely batshit insane are COHERENT within the world's framework. Level 20 fighters can take rocks, pretty much any rock, without really carrying except about how to dig themself out from under it afterwards. And that's fine, because we expect level 20 fighters to NOT BE REALISTIC. However, the player and the character have to be able to make intelligent decisions based on the world, and that involves knowing what a rock will do when it hits things and those results being COHERENT.

And those are different things, realism and coherency. Fuck realism, we're playing a game with magic. We aren't looking for realism. But we are looking for coherency - the game has to make sense with itself. And it stops making sense when the same rock does no damage when pushed by a guy who's level 1 and is insta-kill when pushed by a guy who's level 10. The players and their characters become incapable of intelligent, situation-driven decisions, and that's bullshit and it's impossible to make an interesting story or context out of that without a shit ton of Mother May I?, and nobody wants that.

Swordslinger wrote:Then come up with a different one. I'm not forcing my reality on you, just go with something you like.

You're asking me to defend the mechanic I hate. The point is there isn't anything you come up with that is even vaguely justifiable unless you think your fighters are DBZ characters who only use their powers when it's plot relevant.

Swordslinger wrote:Speaking in combat terms, there's a variety of outcomes, and I fail to see how 3E has more outcomes than 4E does. You can get people knocked out, killed, run away, etc.

Edit: Just realized this was the wrong quote. Not that it matters anymore.

I wasn't speaking in combat terms there - a 4E fighter may have more options than a 3E fighter (though, most of those 4E's fighters options are ridiculously identical, in both flavor and mechanics). I was speaking in terms of what the rulesets allow. In 4E, players do not have tools for story shaping. The skill and utility system is underdeveloped and/or non-existent. The only meaningful abilities the players have, in relation to the game world, are combat abilities.

You can make up stories inbetween fights, of course, but that is also Mother May I? because the rules really do not meaningfully tell you what your character is capable of doing outside of combat. What does a demigod do, exactly, that makes him demigodly? Not much, apparently. And that makes 4e's cooperative storytelling a bunch of magical tea party.

DSMatticus wrote: He provides examples from 4e's text, and then discusses them. He did not pull the quotes out of thin air, they are from either current text or prerelease sample text.

yeah, sorry, his negative interpretations of 4e from prerelease stuff really doesn't count as a source.

DSMatticus wrote: No, he explains what an abstract associated mechanic is and a dissociated mechanic is. The fact that you couldn't tell the difference tells me I'm probably wasting my time, but I'll try anyway.

oh boy this should be downright hilarious

DSMatticus wrote: Fireball is an abstract associated mechanic. It is abstract, because the power of a fireball is represented by d6's, and your characters don't know what the fuck a d6 is. It's associated, however, because characters know that more powerful casters can hurl more powerful fireballs. So characters can totally explain to you why they have more powerful fireballs (association), they just can't explain to you how that power is represented (abstraction).

ohhh dear you seem to be using abstract for things you like and disassociated for things you don't like who could have guessed this was coming

(hint it was me)

DSMatticus wrote: Daily martial powers are a dissociated mechanic (and also abstract, but all mechanics are abstract). The character cannot explain to you why his trick only works once a day. Not only does it not make sense in terms of our understanding of reality, 4e does not provide ANY flavorful explanation why. They pretend you are a completely normal rogue who knows tricks with a weapon, and then says those tricks are usable 1/day, and never says why. At all.

can any professional sports guy of any variety tell you why he caught the hail mary/made the hat trick/got a grand slam? nope? wow you mean those things are exceptionally rare examples that happen much more often with exceptional athletes? and adventurers are considered to be the exceptional individuals in their respective groupings? hmmmm, it seems like these may be connected...

DSMatticus wrote: If you were to ask a 3.5 sorcerer why he can only fling 3 fireballs a day and why they deal the sort of damage they do, he will say, "it's because that's all I can do before draining my magical power, and that is simply the extent to which I am able to generate magical flame."

the funny thing is I specified martials and then you go and list someone who has a finite resource that they use up in their abilities as a counterexample of some sort. well done

DSMatticus wrote: If you were to ask a 4e rogue why he has never, EVER, EVER managed to use daily strike twice a day, he will say, "well, it's because... umm... uhh... I guess it's just never happened." When you as a player, decide "wow! That trick I just did with my weapon was really effective. I should try it again," and the GM says, "you can't," and you say, "why?" the GM cannot answer you other than to say, "it's a daily, that's not how it works."

but you can use dailies twice in a day; quite a few times due to plot reasons there have been incidents where (and this is completely legal in the system go ahead and bitch about it) you get the equivalent of an extended rest without sleeping. also, if the GM tells you as a player you can't use your daily again after using the power, guess what? he's not manifesting as an invisible voice telling your character that it will never happen again! due to narrative power being given to the player you get to decide when those circumstances come together to grant your martial character an exceptional moment. this doesn't mean your player knows with certainty that it will never happen again until they sleep. they can certainly try that trick again. but it won't work because the narrative doesn't support it.

this is roughly ten billion times better than martials only ever getting to say, "I full attack," or, "I trip," or, "I try to grapple," because the entire point is to give people fun things to do on a roughly equal basis.

DSMatticus wrote: Do you know how to fucking read? Do you not get the point of that, at all?

1) The war devil ability is mechanically-explained, but not explained in the terms of the game world.

oh dear the DM is assumed to have an imagination!?!? WHAT DEVILTRY IS THIS! DESIGN IS LAW!

DSMatticus wrote: 2) It is therefore impossible to describe the effects the players' characters actually see when a war devil uses this ability.

it certainly is impossible if you're a goddamn robot or devoid of all imagination and reliant on a benevolent overlord to tell you how to envision things. me, I usually find that systems that encourage imagination are better. try playing Gammaworld sometime, it's wonderfully encouraging of that sort of behavior

DSMatticus wrote: 3) If you want to provide a description to the players, that is a house rule because it was not a part of the game until you said it.

except it's not because it has absolutely no mechanical effect. is it a houserule when you describe a table? how about when you speak for an orc?

DSMatticus wrote: 4) These descriptions/house rules can have effects on mechanics. If you decide the war devil ability is a guttural demonic shout, then the next time the players fight a war devil, the players should be able to expect that any ability that silences a war devil will prevent him from using his marking ability.

and then they learn that the shout is only a learned habit the war devil has acquired and the actual effect is, in itself, an innate magical ability! oh fuck there I went using my imagination again I'm sorry I shouldn't flaunt this ability in front of the disabled, sorry man

DSMatticus wrote: These 'fluff' descriptions have real fucking effects on how the players expect the world to work. 4e sacrificed fluff because it doesn't like creative interactions, because it discovered creative interactions are hard to model and balance.

4e has far, far more ability for customization and encourages it more than any edition I've played so I really don't understand this unless you mean rules lawyering which has always been nothing more than an annoyance for everyone at the table but the smug fucker who decides that the DM is wrong and the game SHOULD be run THIS way only everyone else at the table is wondering why this asshole isn't running a game if he's so certain of how a game should be run

DSMatticus wrote: Fluff, in 4e, is NEVER supposed to affect the game world, EVER. But unfortunately, that massively breaks immersion the first time you silence a creature that uses a verbal power and the rules say it can still use that verbal power.

I can't think of any abilities that silence people in combat, though there's likely a ritual, and even then I can't think of many powers outside of bard/warlord that would ever require a verbal component. even then with bard you could inspire your friends with interpretive dance and with a warlord you could inspire them through example or hand signals.

DSMatticus wrote: That's stupid. Like, majorly stupid. You're trying to argue that 4e's combat model represents 'opportunities,' but it doesn't.

for martials it certainly can! it all depends on your imagination! you should get your ass to Epcot and watch Figment.

DSMatticus wrote: At the start of the day, all of your dailies are available, and you can CHOOSE when to use each and every single one of them.

oh dear are you confusing the character and the playe-

DSMatticus wrote: Opportunistic combat like the sort you're trying to pretend 4e has just isn't true. The rogue DECIDES when he uses trick strike, and then after that, he is 'magically, inexplicably' blocked from making that decision again until he has rested eight hours.

oh shit you are. man, it must suck to be completely unable to differentiate between player-dictated narrative and character experiences. how do you even roleplay at all? must be all rollplay for you. heh.

DSMatticus wrote: If 4e had a WoF matrix, you could make this argument. But it doesn't. You choose when to use powers, and as you do so you remove choices from your list, and that makes no sense.

you as a player choose when, your character (if they are a martial) does not choose when the roil of combat moves in their favor. a divine class uses their connection with a deity/all deities or an arcane uses their knowledge/innate power or a primal uses their connection with the land/ancestor's spirits. a martial, however, is (in my imagination) an exceptional example of their race that is extremely talented and lucky. can you explain exactly how Ovechkin or Crosby are great? remember that there are thousands of other players who play at a similar level in the same game. what sets them apart? and, even then, why don't these players score a hat trick every game? they've got the talent to do it! why don't they do it multiple times if they can do it once!

Psychic Robot wrote:

cinematic reality

jesus christ did not die on the cross so you could do things like this

aren't you adorable and theologically retarded

DSMatticus wrote: I wasn't speaking in combat terms there - a 4E fighter may have more options than a 3E fighter (though, most of those 4E's fighters options are ridiculously identical, in both flavor and mechanics).

there is no may involved there and the 4e Fighter's options are pretty different, but feel free to try and prove me wrong with your terrible knowledge of 4e that seems entirely based on hearsay and assumption

DSMatticus wrote: I was speaking in terms of what the rulesets allow. In 4E, players do not have tools for story shaping. The skill and utility system is underdeveloped and/or non-existent. The only meaningful abilities the players have, in relation to the game world, are combat abilities.

sorry, the skill system is every bit as developed as 3e's only with a great many skills merged together. they may have gone a bit too far in this but it's certainly preferable in my mind to the terrible 3e system where you specialized in relevant skills or made a retarded "BAD STATS ARE GOOD AR PEE" character who took ranks in escape artist or forgery or shit while the rest of the party took up your slack.

DSMatticus wrote: You can make up stories inbetween fights, of course, but that is also Mother May I? because the rules really do not meaningfully tell you what your character is capable of doing outside of combat. What does a demigod do, exactly, that makes him demigodly? Not much, apparently. And that makes 4e's cooperative storytelling a bunch of magical tea party.

except the rules do tell you what you can accomplish but it was (rightfully) decided that true static DCs only led to metagame bullshit like Bluffomancers/Diplomancers.

also every game of D&D is magical tea party, I just prefer mine to be a nice loose leaf Earl Grey (4e) to shitty Lipton baggies (3e)

Swordslinger, you seem like you could actually be reasonable, so I'm going to ask you to do something. Skim through After Sundown and note where Frank takes the time to explain why the game works the way it does because it's supposed to be replicating a horror movie. That is what simulation in games looks like.

Swordslinger wrote: That's not breaking down, that's just existing in cinematic reality. In a movie, an experienced bad guy dropping a rock on the hero is more dangerous than a bunch of peons doing the same thing. Hit points are about plot armor, not actual physical damage.

If you want something that has absolute realism, you should probably play another system like GURPS. D&D has never been about absolute realism. It's more important that the guy is level 11 than if he's wielding a dagger or a greatsword.

Do you understand that it is possible to build a world that consistently obeys realistic expectations even if you base it on one or several fantastic assuptions? In other words, that presence of the fantastic has fuck-all to do with being "cinematic" or "unrealistic", as evidenced by every hard sci-fi book that postulates FTL travel.

Now, a level 11 character in DnD is not more dangerous than a level 1 character because he's a plot-shielded action hero (let's forget for a second that "cinematic" actually means vastly different things depending on what movie you watch...). He is more dangerous because he's a superhuman. In measurable, often quantifiable ways. The fact that he can kill peons with his pinky has no bearing on damage of falling objects, because he doesn't enjoy any special laws of physics, he just has more power within them.

4E, however, decided to take a shit on that. That's one of the reasons why it failed.

Can you please take your stupid-ass derailment to another thread?

I get that you guys are too shit-for-brains retarded to realize you are DESTROYING ANOTHER THREAD WITH STUPID EDITION WAR BULLSHIT, but now that I've told you it should be obvious and you'll stop doing it.

Plebian wrote:and then they learn that the shout is only a learned habit the war devil has acquired and the actual effect is, in itself, an innate magical ability! oh fuck there I went using my imagination again I'm sorry I shouldn't flaunt this ability in front of the disabled, sorry man

Seriously? That's your fucking solution? "The PC's tried something creative, I should come up with a way to stop it from working so the rules keep making sense." Is that how you play? Because that seriously blows.

Plebian wrote:oh dear are you confusing the character and the playe-

Are you even realizing what you're saying? You just flat-out admitted, "well, yeah, you can't play 4e from an in-character perspective - when you do that, it doesn't make sense. You have to play it from a metagame narrative perspective." Remember that immersion thing we're talking about? This is the exact opposite of that. This is the very definition of dissociation - the way your character sees and interacts with the game world is completely different from the way you, as a player, see and interact with the game world.

And there's more shit you've said that is completely wrong and bullshit and inane (and most of it involves what is your apparent complete inability to actually understand simple arguments), but we're getting yelled at for derailing a thread (and they're probably right), so we should shut the fuck up.

Before Plebian came along, I didn't think you could get people so stupid they'd forget to do automatic things like breathing.

Koumei wrote:Before Plebian came along, I didn't think you could get people so stupid they'd forget to do automatic things like breathing.

Unfortunately you can't. Otherwise he wouldn't still be posting.