Your turn comes up in the initiative and the enemy has just teleported to the other side of the chasm. You’ve got all your dailies, your action point, a +3 great sword, no ranged powers, and 5 squares of chasmic doom between you and your foe.
You want to do something awesome on your turn, but you can’t get within range of your target. Suddenly, you have a burst of inspiration and ask if you can cut down a nearby tree, use it as a makeshift bridge, burn your action point, and attack the enemy – all in the same turn.
The GM quietly ponders your plan and tells you that you can make it across the ravine, but it will take a standard action to move across the tree bridge with an acrobatics check and you can only try that if you can knock the tree down in one blow.
Discouraged by the high probability of failure for such a stunt, you decide to hold your action until after another party member moves. A chorus of, “oh man, that would have been cool if it worked,” comes from the players and combat moves on.
I’ve seen a lot of great potential moments like this die out before they’re ever attempted. Looking through the rules for skills and skill challenges, it becomes rather obvious that the most efficient use of your turn is to use a power, instead of attempting an abstract stunt. It would almost appear as if the days of chandelier swinging, shield surfing, called shots, and cow tossing (a drunk dwarf was involved) are over. While I agree that 4e powers are cool, I feel that they have a tendency to outshine the countless other options available.
The advantage of a tabletop over a computer game is that your character can attempt any absurd strategy you can imagine. Why should you let the rules discourage players from achieving those memorable moments (like the cow toss)?
To encourage player creativity and give your game that cinematic action feel, consider implementing the awesome rule.
The AWESOME rule
When a player comes up with a particularly awesome plan or describes an action in a way that makes it sound awesome and advances the story, that player is rewarded. The player can choose to take a +2 to the roll, gain an extra action point, or make a skill check as a free action, just for being awesome.
It’s up to the GM’s discretion whether or not an action is awesome enough to warrant use of the awesome rule. In general, you should only use the rule once per session. Limiting the application keeps it rare (and thus that much more awesome) and prevents the players from just being absurd and over the top in an attempt to get awesome bonuses.
So, the next time a player tries to do something awesome, tell him or her that it sounds awesome and reward the attempt. You’ll find your encounters becoming steadily more colorful and memorable as the party is rewarded for finding creative solutions.
I started Dungeon Mastering with secondhand AD&D materials in 1996 and have run a vast number of D20 campaigns, from cliche' medieval adventures in a kingdom made of Lego bricks to fighting zombies and the mob in the mid 1930s. I try to make the gaming experience as enjoyable, fast-paced, and easy to play as humanly possible.
I definitly agree with this post. I always felt that powers took a little freedom away.
I also agree with your post, but I have to say cutting down a tree with one sword stroke is a bit much. I would definitely set that DC to hard.
obviously, Tom, you have never seen me wield a sword
With a regular sword, sure, but a +3 great sword? Much easier.
I recently ran my first game of 4E for a bunch of old friends, and I pretty much used this instinctively, although instead of +2 bonus I just set DCs a little bit lower than I maybe would normally for outlandish antics.
The final encounter was against a young black dragon. Too powerful for the level 1 party, but it was planning to fly away when it got bloodied.
When this happened, the party absolutely did not want it to escape. The druid tried to thorn-whip it back to earth, axes were thrown anything they could muster.
Then warden’s turn. Instead of joining in the last ditch attacks, he sheathed his weapons and knelt down, cupping his hands and turning to the ranger. The ranger stepped up, and the warden launched him into the sky, both weapons striking in an attempt to latch himself onto the dragon’s flank.
This took a few checks. A strength check from the warden, an athletics and acrobatics check from the ranger. But I made all the checks reasonable to achieve, and although the ranger’s actual attack failed (probably for his own good really) the whole thing was utterly awesome and the pair were well rewarded and praised.
On order to encourage “awesome” ideas I generally allow a PC to use any skill as a minor action on their turn. In many cases it should be a standard action, but by letting them do it as a minor action they still have that standard action available to attack or do something else they feel is more important than just using a skill. It’s made our games a lot more interesting.