Remember those Stephen King movies from the 80s that didn't suck?

[ministerg24]

I awoke this morning to discover what appeared to be bloody paw-prints strewn about the kitchen and bathroom floors. Obviously this means that last night Oswald dealt with the miniature troll-like creature that was intent on stealing my breath in my sleep and scampered about in its blood as a victory dance. And people say cats are good for

Comments

[luinied]

Your second paragraph definitely captures some of my worries about 4th edition, and it does so without making you sound like a crotchety old man, which is better than I've managed.

If I were DMing 4e, I would hope to make it clear that the rules as written for powers, special actions, and so on only describe how things work in large-scale combat encounters (as in, large-scale enough to require putting things on the map) and in the absence of out-of-the-ordinary circumstances. This would require that I get good at thinking on my feet and coming up with ad-hoc solutions that don't annoy players, but it's better than DMing a board game.

[ministerg24]

That situation is ironic, because I recall a section of the new DMG that went on about how DMs should let players do what they want and basically reward them for being creative and using the environment to help them. It described a player that wanted to push an orc or something into a brazier full of burning hot coals, and then referenced the "ideal damage chart" or something to allow the DM to assign ad hoc damage that should be dealt based on the tier that was being played. It would be interesting to see how many aspiring DMs actually read that section and allow for improvisation like that in their games.