Quote from: BenoistThat just doesn't compute with me.

They can try and explain it away, but it's there for the gameplay, nothing else.

I prefer an in-game analogue myself (fatigue score, action points to spend per round a la Fallout/RQ that's related to Dex, etc.), but nothing much I can do to change the way 4e is.

The good news is that everything I've read about their revisions/future format for powers seems that they've caught onto the fact that a lot of people enjoy having an in-game explanation for why their character can/can't do something.

Quote from: J Arcane;402019I don't recognize the validity of the "dissociative" language.  It's a bunch of pretentious bollocks that means nothing more than "I don't like/understand it".

Look, the thing is, metagame mechanics are absolutely nothing new.  All you people have done in this thread is drawn some arbitrary lines in the sand on where they're allowed to exist, and tarted it up in pretentious language and whiny white Wolf era story gaming nonsense.

If anything, it is the at-will powers that are at the root of 4e's problems, not encounter or daily powers, those are nothing particularly new at all, and yes, there were martial classes and prestige classes in 3e that had "per day" abilities.  The Monk, for starters.  

And the excuse used to lambaste them is straight out of the most pretentious of narrative nonsense.  You've decided you can't come up with a story excuse for their existence, so that makes them bad.

That's retarded.  

The rhetoric that has been built around D&D criticism, here and in other threads now countless in number, is inherently contradictory, and silently cleaves to the very things it claims so often to repudiate.

Amazing.
No reason to even post for you, then.  If you don't recognize the existence of the terminology used, stop trying to speak the language.  
Daily abilities have existed for longer than that.  But the Monks abilities were normally explained to use us a certain amount of chi, and that explained why there were a certain amount of daily uses.
And it is the fact that they were explained that makes the mechanic work logically.   There is no disconnect as to why the monk can use that skill a certain amount of times in a given period.

Quote from: J Arcane;402019I don't recognize the validity of the "dissociative" language.  It's a bunch of pretentious bollocks that means nothing more than "I don't like/understand it".

If you examine a skill,spell,power,mechanic and ask why it works the way it does and the answer is rooted within the reality of the game setting, it is associative.

If you examine a skill,spell,power,mechanic and ask why it works the way it does and the answer is NOT rooted within the reality of the game setting, it is dissociative.

That's it.  It's simple.
At-Will powers for Martial Characters, they are moves you know, so you can try them whenever.

Encounter Powers are harder maneuvers to try, so they should have a penalty to try them or come with fatigue or something.  4e passes the smell test with this one because you could rationalize that once I do that move, the opponent knows what to look for, so I'll never surprise him with it during that combat.

Daily Powers for non-magical characters make no sense.  They represent trying something very hard, that is very fatiguing, whatever.  Instead of having a rationale rooted in the game setting, they use two dissociative rationales
1. It's just there for game balance
2. It takes the excitement and punch of firing off a very hard stunt and puts the dramatic reins in the hands of the player.  He gets to choose when to be awesome.

All the "metagaming" elements you are talking about in prior editions mostly have to do with some sort of power source, Magic, Divine , Chi, what have you.  Also most of those "per days" since they were rooted in supernatural power sources weren't metagame at all.

Quote from: J Arcane;402019You've decided you can't come up with a story excuse for their existence, so that makes them bad.

Dude, dailies already have a story excuse, that's WHY I don't like them.  What they don't have is a setting excuse.

I have absolutely no clue where you're getting the idea that I'm coming at this from the Narrative point of view(Benoist or Vreeg either).  Most of the time, narrative elements in RPGs make my teeth itch.

Instances where the power structure in the 4E core books could make sense in game world terms to me:

   - The characters are robots (or clones, or pre-human experiments etc) with specific combat moves programmed into them. Their memories reboot after an encounter partially, whereas some more complex routines need to be rebooted after an extended rest (dailies). This would explain why some complex combat moves could only be performed once. This is a limitation inherent to the character's nature.

- The universe itself limits the capabilities of the characters. It could be an edict of the Gods, or some universal Law of the Cosmos. Maybe the game is all about a competition taking place in some artificial universe. Or the whole game world in fact is a virtual reality generated by computers. Or something similar that implies that the laws of nature themselves force these limitations onto the characters.

Applications could include a universe where PCs are pre-human heroes trying to break free from the rules of the Gods, the Architects, whatever forces controls them, or a d20 Modern game where characters may enter a virtual reality that is in effect a 4E game within the boundaries of the virtual world/matrix, and so on, so forth.

Quote from: Benoist;402045The universe itself limits the capabilities of the characters. It could be an edict of the Gods, or some universal Law of the Cosmos. Maybe the game is all about a competition taking place in some artificial universe. Or the whole game world in fact is a virtual reality generated by computers. Or something similar that implies that the laws of nature themselves force these limitations onto the characters.

The game setting is actually an MMO. Genius.

They're totally ripping off of .hack.

Quote from: Benoist;402023So you can still move the same way, not be fatigued or have any other side effects take place once you've used an Encounter or Daily Exploit, use as many At-Wills as you want, etc, but somehow, there is some mental and physical barrier that takes effect and prevents you from performing this specific move again. I can't crack my enemies armor to pieces again (Crack the Shell, Level 5 Daily exploit), but I can still "sting and hinder nearby foes with a savage fury of strikes aimed at their legs" (Thicket of Blades, Level 9 Daily exploit).

That just doesn't compute with me.

Not sure what else there is to discuss on-topic, but may I suggest that if you don't like this, a possibly way out is to apply a "spell-point" system to physical powers, just like people did who didn't care for "Vancian" magic.

Basically as I described here.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;402050Not sure what else there is to discuss on-topic, but may I suggest that if you don't like this, a possibly way out is to apply a "spell-point" system to physical powers, just like people did who didn't care for "Vancian" magic.

Basically as I described here.

I didn't know anybody did something like this with 4E. It's a neat idea.

Maybe this would require implementing a Mana pool and a Divine Favor pool in the game for Arcana and Divine power sources respectively to keep things equal between classes?

Quote from: LordVreeg;402030Amazing.
No reason to even post for you, then.  If you don't recognize the existence of the terminology used, stop trying to speak the language.  

I'm not.  I'm not interested in using the RPGsite's pet jargonated bullshit anymore than I am in using the jargonated bullshit of the Forge.

"Dissociative mechanics" is just the latest in a long line of meaningless bollocks that means "I don't like this, but I want to say it whilst sounding smart."

Speak fucking English, or shut the fuck up.  If you can't explain your point without resorting to invented language, then you don't know what the fuck you're talking about anyway.

QuoteDaily abilities have existed for longer than that.  But the Monks abilities were normally explained to use us a certain amount of chi, and that explained why there were a certain amount of daily uses.
And it is the fact that they were explained that makes the mechanic work logically.   There is no disconnect as to why the monk can use that skill a certain amount of times in a given period.

More arbitrary line drawing, and nothing more.  It fails to address the core point that D&D is, and has always been, rife with metagame mechanics, from hit points, to levels, to turns per day, to spells, to Weapon Master attacks, it's turtles all the way down.

All you've done is declared arbitrarily what "makes sense" to you, and used that as the basis to make value judgements, while hiding behind a lot of pretentious gibberish.  

It doesn't take more than an ounce of intelligent thought to realize why that's as useless a metric as they come.

QuoteDude, dailies already have a story excuse, that's WHY I don't like them.  What they don't have is a setting excuse.

I have absolutely no clue where you're getting the idea that I'm coming at this from the Narrative point of view(Benoist or Vreeg either).  Most of the time, narrative elements in RPGs make my teeth itch.

You're attacking them solely because you can't personally fit them within the story and setting of your game.

That's a stupid thing to judge them on, while ignoring so many similar occurrences.

Quote from: Benoist;402023That just doesn't compute with me.

Isn't the topic "Is D&D Becoming a Storygame?"

Because when you first posted, it just seemed like another anti-4e troll to me. Then you indicated that no, you actually interested in hearing the answer. So folks discussed why D&D and 4e were or were . But now we're right back to why you don't like 4e and why it's Bad Wrong Fun.

Is the problem, in regard to becoming a storygame, with the division of Powers in 4e that they seem narrativistic to you? If so, how do you respond to D&D always having had abilities which characters could use in various increments of time?

Seanchai

It's not the RPG sites pet terminology, it was used on the Alexandrian website before that.  And has been well proven, it defines a certain circumstance of rule design.  Like all terms, it saves the writer the effort of writing out the whole description.  That is what terms are for.  The words are english, the definition is english, and is very clear to everyone except those who have decided they don't want to understand.

Willfully misunderstanding that the issue in question is what rules are congruent with the logic of the internal setting logic and which are not, and perjuring these as arbitrary, and then claiming it as gibberish because you don't want to agree, puts you back in bed with the logic bottom-dwellers of this site.
No one is saying there are not a lot of metagame rules in D&D, that's one of the reasons I don't play it.  Or that all rules are abstracted.  But the very simple fact of it is that some rules have no association with the game world.
Hit points describe how much damage a person takes.  AS a person becomes more skilled, it in-game logic is that they become harder to kill, due to luck, providence, skill, and a little bit more toughness.  So it's not metagamed, as the rule defines part of the internal setting logic.

Your batting average in the above post is very low.

The only thing I'll agree to is that it does not take more than an ounce of intelligent thought to understand the metric in question.

Quote from: Seanchai;402058Isn't the topic "Is D&D Becoming a Storygame?"

Because when you first posted, it just seemed like another anti-4e troll to me.

Well it isn't, since the thread is about whether D&D is becoming a storygame, and included examples from both 4E and Pathfinder. Therefore, it is not stating that either 4E nor Pathfinder are storygames at this point (it's a question), and it is not specific to 4E. If you understand this as an anti-4E troll, this is due to your own bias entering the conversation, not my choices in writing the OP.

The whole tangent on whether daily/encounter powers make sense to me is a tangent that came from an example of how these powers make sense either from a pure rules in a vacuum, theoretical balance, standpoint, or a narrative, "this is what heroes do once a scene/episode", standpoint. Example which spawned further questioning from Sigmund, specifically.

Quote from: J Arcane;402055You're attacking them solely because you can't personally fit them within the story and setting of your game.

Then enlighten us on how you'd fit them in your own game, instead of bitching endlessly at the words people choose to talk about them.

 :rolleyes:

Quote from: MonkeyWrench;402048The game setting is actually an MMO. Genius.

If I was to run core Heinsoo 4E, it's something like this I'd do. I was thinking of a -literally- dark setting, with people cowering in Citadels (the "points of light" thing makes me think of Citadels in the night, with torches burning, keeping the darkness at bay), and Heroes somehow touched by the night and allowing them to perform feats beyond human capabilities. A bit like Corum with his hand and eye, some alien touch that could both allow them to be super-heroic, but also would at times limit or control their actions (which would explain the rules, and maybe could involve some other mechanics like Sanity, switching personalities when the alien thing takes control of the character, or whatever else). Just an idea.

Quote from: Benoist;402064Then enlighten us on how you'd fit them in your own game, instead of bitching endlessly at the words people choose to talk about them.

 :rolleyes:

Why would my personal interpretation of a mechanic be any more meaningful than yours?

It is exactly that pointless subjectivity masquerading as an intelligent point that I'm attacking here.