Pedantic's page

Actually, I tried to run a game more or less without swords a while ago. The biggest conclusion I drew is that spears are so unfairly shafted. :(

I have a crazy thought. Don't like it? leave it alone. This game is not all about numbers you know. If you wan't to get bogged down in the number side of the game, go ahead. Just let people choose what they want. I mean it won't spoil your game will it?

I'll try to rephrase it less abrasively than the OP. What's actually being asked is, "why are there character options which provide no benefit, substantially less benefit than apparently equal options, or actively hurt your character?"

Not using them is elementary. What threads like this actually want is either an admission of failure by designers responsible for this sort of content, or some sort of justification for those options.

Neither of the two will be forthcoming.

Tacticslion wrote:

This is one big differences between the "feel" (to me) of 3.X against 4E. While third felt like it was a single, consistent world in which you could do things, and all creatures great and small worked the same way, fourth feels like a game: there's the player characters, and player characters function differently from NPCs, which function differently from monsters, despite the fact that monsters can be PCs, except when they can't, and NPCs are monsters, except when they aren't.

... and you have a game that looks and feels like a game first and story (not-nearly-as-distant) second to me, regardless of which side of the screen I'm on. The world is arbitrary and divided in ways that don't make sense. (Again, I'm fully aware that people will disagree with me, and that this is subjective, however, I'm getting to the point eventually, I promise).

I can't really disagree with how it feels, but I'm curious as to whether you can expand on that feeling as a player?

Personally, I dont have any 'feel' for how the NPCs are operating as a player in an RPG - I say what I want to do, do various mechanical things, then the DM tells me what happens. At various points he tells me what the NPCs do. I dont see any disconnect there (as a player) even if the two rules systems were to be totally disjoint and wonder where it comes from. Is it just that you know what's happening behind the screen and it prevents you from 'getting into it' or is there some actual break in the immersion stemming from the way the game plays?

I spent a long time arguing about this over on RPGnet, particularly about how it influences worldbuilding and GMing. I tend to call what Tacticslion is referring to as "story immersion" as "objective rules." If you want to hear my ramble on about it for 17 pages* and get yelled at a lot, take a look. :p

Basically, the rules function as a computer that underlies all actions and are entirely impartial to the source of data that comes through it. Even if the crafting rules don't produce any sane results, anyone using them gets the same end product. That matters to my sense of established world, and as a GM, I like to play around with extrapolating situations that can happen based on rules interactions. There's a few good well known examples of that sort of worldbuilding. On the extreme gonzo edge, you've got the K explorations of the "Wish-based economy" or on the less extreme side, you've got Eberron. The whole underlying concept of an economy built on spell-like abilities and the magecraft spell is exactly the sort of extrapolation from underlying rules to setting that I think is fascinating.

On the other hand, as that linked thread clearly demonstrates, the sort of objective, immersive rules that I and tacticslion enjoy do not universally appeal. Plus in many ways, they're unique to 3rd edition/PF; they weren't really a part of earlier versions of D&D. In the sense that you have to turn to your GM to figure out anything that isn't covered by the basic conflict resolution system, 4E is far closer to earlier editions than 3.5 ever was.

I've gotten in trouble for the phrase before, but the tendency I developed after coming into D&D at 3rd edition was a sense of the "rules as gameworld physics" and obviously there's all kinds of ways they break down and present crazy results, but the underlying concept of consistently applied objective rules is central to any sort of D&Desque fantasy game I'd want to play. Took me forever to figure out why the FATE systems and certain other narrative games felt so off to me as a result.

*Edit: Actually, we're up to 19 pages. :p

...I'm sorry, this thread is just like a perfect microcosm of the internet. The initial topic is rapidly upstaged by a semantic discussion defining the terms of the topic, which devolves into an argument about a hypothetical and entirely unrelated situation, which is really an analogy for subjective etiquette.

My mind is blown.

Here is the latest Legends & Lore article to fuel more speculation. "Live Together, Die Alone" is about party cooperation: http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20111011

Monty does better this time around, but I think he's misidentified the problem here:

They say that using an action to help someone else is a waste of that action. They'd rather use all of their own game time inflicting damage and being the star—and that's fine. There's certainly nothing wrong with wanting to be powerful and cool. That's a big part of the game. But what people who criticize "action wasting actions" don't realize is that there are people who actively enjoy helping others.

Healing is inefficient if it decreases your overall damage output, not because it's not interesting. The 3.5/PF cleric is nearly always better suited to thwacking a monster in the face than casting a healing spell, because if he can kill the monster, it stops dealing damage and he's thereby prevented more HP loss than his healing would have fixed. That criticism isn't a matter of game style, it's an entirely mechanical point. Unless healing outpaces incoming damage, or buys more actions from the biggest damage dealer, it's not the best use of your time.

Support character design needs to take the efficiency of the action economy under advisement to be meaningful.

I think we need a classic "thrown in a dungeon and stripped of all their gear" scene. They could all sit around together looking glum, pose on random pieces of stone dungeon furniture, watch Lem try to juggle rats and so on.

Yes. Excellent.