Put your hand down and play

A few weeks ago, I was playing in my bi-weekly 4e game.  (Wait, is bi-weekly every other week, or twice a week, I can never remember…let me try again.)

A few weeks ago, I was playing in my every-other-week 4e game, when one of the common complaints about 4th edition became clear to me.  It was when the party’s fighter/paladin started beating a large spider to death with a smaller minion spider as an improvised weapon.  For the second time that encounter.  I’ll wait while you get that image in your head.

Our group needed to go tame a few giant spiders in this cave for a sort-of carnival show, in exchange for VIP passes so we could talk to a few of the guild wizards back there.  It was a fairly typical 4e encounter with a twist (Something this DM specializes in), rather than kill the giant spiders, we had to grab, then collar them.   So no killing the large, vicious insects, but killing their smaller and swarmier cousins was totally fine.

So my warlord, the fighter/pally, and a druid made our way to the cave where the giant spiders were at, and we were doing good for a bit, but got into trouble.  Thinking on his feet, the fighter, flanked by two minion spiders and grabbed by one of the giant spiders, said, “Can I pick up one of the smaller spiders and use it to beat the large one back?”

Silence came over the Skype channel, as I can imagine the druid’s player and the GM’s face were mirrors of mine: WTF, that’s kinda cool, and WTF, in that order.  “Sure, give me a grab check against the spider, then an improvised weapon attack if that succeeds against the large one.”

It worked.  And it should have worked, because this player’s whacky plans generally seem to work.  This is, to my knowledge, the player’s only 4e game, spending more time on Star Wars and 3.5.   And his character is always, at least once a combat, doing zany things like this.  Jumping on a dragon and kicking it in the groin.  Leaping 50 feet onto another dragon’s back.

It used to bug me, to a point.  He wasn’t using his fighter or his pally powers a lot of the times.  He seemed to forgo a perfectly good encounter power only to do something zany to hog the spotlight.  But, as I watched him inflict massive archanoid on archanoid damage, my view shifted and realigned.

He wasn’t trying to hog the spotlight, just do something in character.  His selection of powers before him weren’t absolute choices, but rather guidelines for when he couldn’t think of something creative to do.

A lot of the detractors of 4th edition have said that the powers setup remove a lot of the creativity of the game.  Before, sure a warrior could just bash or trip someone, but the player had full control to describe it, to paint the scene with their actions.  In 4e, you get more options, but all the description is done for you.

I never agreed with that argument.  Each of our 4e powers give a mechanical effect, but you can rename it or describe it how ever you want.  My skirmishing warlord may be using staggering shot, which can knock an enemy prone.  But when I use it, since he’s using a lacrosse stick and a stone pellet, he’s trying to bank a shot off the tree behind the Wendigo to bean the abonination in the back of the head.

Yet even that is a limiting factor, or it has been for me.  I had plenty of choices before me, but they were the only options I thought available to me; anything outside the 10 or so powers did not exist.  The fighter/pally mentioned above  is the opposite: he tries new things, immerses himself into the scene and looks for things outside red, green or black powers to try.  And that’s not to say everything he tries is successful.  He’s fallen face first off of boulders trying to stab something in the air, or even when he lands on the back of a dragon 50 feet down successfully (ie he passed his check) he’s still taking half falling damage or facing the beast on his own.  With good creativity, a grasp on the given scene, and a flexible enough DM all sorts of options present themselves.

I guess the take away from this for players of 4th Editions is this: next game night, once per encounter, put your cards away, or close up iPlay4e, or cover up your character sheet.  Ask the GM if you can do something not on any of your cards or is a nominal action in the Player’s Handbook.  Swing from a chandelier, cut the rope so the sail falls on the bad guy, siphon some of the necromancer’s arcane power to weaken his zombies.  Do something iconic with your character that forces the GM to use page 42.  Even if you fail, I’m sure it will be much more interesting, tell a better story, then blindly using an at-will power.

And stories are, in the end, what this game is all about.

Mike Hasko .-._. PsychoPez

So, what ‘outside the box’ actions have your characters done, and how well were they received by players and GMs at the table?

15 thoughts on “Put your hand down and play

  1. Well okay, I am a total geek for the 4E powers, and love that my fighter isn’t limited to “roll to hit, roll damage, repeat x1000.” That said, I can’t help but think about the first and only game of Shadowrun I’ve ever played, where I had an enormous rock-headed troll who was about 90% metal and carried a large pistol, a large rifle, and something called a laser crescent axe, which sounded delightfully vicious.

    I didn’t know the rules and couldn’t begin to understand any sort of optimization, but when presented with a manned swivel machine gun bubble popping from a wall, my first action was to grab it and point it at our other enemies. Naturally, the operator inside stopped firing, so I said, “I’ll tear it out of the wall and throw it at them.”

    I’m pretty sure there’s no “Tear and Throw Machine Gun Bubble” power for trolls in Shadowrun, but the GM let me do it, and it was thrilling and exciting and wonderful.

    Maybe ignorance really is bliss when it comes to rules, as newbie players might be more inclined to simply DO instead of READ, INTERPRET, ANALYZE, APPLY, etc.

  2. Here, here! This has actually been one of my greatest complaints to my players about 4th edition too. Not because the new mechanic has somehow failed them, but rather they’ve failed themselves by surrendering their imaginations! Out-of-the-box thinking is highly rewarded at my game table, and yet my players are highly resistant to it. And then they complaing that 4th edition is a straight jacket!

    I’m very interested to see what other players have done to “DMG42” the pant soff of their Dungeon Master. Because my players have yet to do it. :-)

  3. Not surprisingly (considering my historical issues with 4E and my recent rant) I approve of this idea. Stop seeing the character sheet and the rules as a box within which you must conform and start seeing them as guidelines and a framework within which to build and expand.

  4. The situation was a good bit more convenient for me than Mike makes it sound. Thud (the Fighter|Pally) was actually using the BIG spider to hit the LITTLE spiders. I had him just grab an available leg and use it like a spear without a proficiency bonus against AC. (The big spiders had pointy chitinous ends to their legs that let them walk on their own webs). Luckily, the small spiders were minions, so I didn’t need to figure out damage dice. Had push come to shove, I’d have given him d6 + Str as if the leg was a javelin.

  5. When I DM’d for a short stint, my players rarely thought out side the box, if at all. It kind of sucked.

    I do remember this one time that I was playing a revenant whirling barbarian. We were fighting a vampire or something that decided to hover about 30-40 feet in the air. So I climbed the wall and leap over to the next wall, attacking it whilst in mid air. I did that several times till the bad guy decided “maybe I shouldnt be up here”. LOL

    Ialso try to do zanny things as well at least once per session.

  6. I don’t remember where I heard this idea, but one DM has made each Player add an additional encounter power card to their little pile of powers. The card simply says “Do Something Cool”.

    Using the tables on pg. 42 of the DMG, you can let the players do whatever they like, but they don’t always remember that they have that option. By giving them something that will remind them, and maybe giving an extra bonus for using it, and it’s very likely that these kind of things will come up far more often.

  7. You know, not just as a player but as a DM too, I found your article enlightening. Thanx! I think that the powers already having the descriptions in them do kind of wind up indirectly limiting the creativity of the players (and DM) and why a lot of people say that 4e doesn’t have that ‘old school’ feel. I’ve been playing D&D for 30+ years and I love 4e, but I think you hit the nail on the head here. (Now I just have to make sure I bring this to the table – on both sides of the screen). Thanx again.

  8. Thanks for the feedback guys!

    Re: Dixon – Heh, if I were DMing that, I would have asked if your I assume green skinned troll was wearing purple pants and liked to say ‘SMASH’ a lot.

    Re: Jason – The mental image of a revenant barb so enraged that he’s climbing a wall, muttering oaths under its breath, and leaping back and forth is a treat.

    Re: Dr. Confoundo – That is a great idea, and I may just have to steal it for my next campaign.

    Re: Rauthik – Good point, that DMs need to be aware of this as much as the players.

    And just as a follow up, my most recent game I had my warforged invoker of Ioun simply talk to a minion for a round of combat. Not too much outside the box, but Rune there got to learn the command word to close a teleportation circle the minion’s allies were coming in from and made a friend. Before blasting him with righteous fury.

  9. Awesome article. Evidently my game blog ping-back feature posts comments on your site when I reference the URL in the post. Sorry if the comment 2 above looked like spam. It is a house rule from my game aimed at addressing the challenges with 4e you mention.

  10. Am I the only one who noticed that this “page 42” has the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

    Now I just need to go find this page 42 and see what it contains….

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