Yes 4E defiling is probably the worst dissociative mechanic out there, because that one, unlike a lot of the other ones, is a real immersion killer. Mostly because it's something you can actually see with a real effect.FrankTrollman wrote: It is possible for a mechanic to be both explanationless and dissociated. That happens whenever an ability runs contrary to its own fluff. That causes major apoplexy in fans. A good example is the 4e Dark Sun version of Defiling. There is no explanation for why it passes over people who refuse to be your super best friend, and in character it isn't supposed to. So the fact that you can use it and not hurt the princess because she is wary of trusting you is both incomprehensible to the character and incomprehensible to the player. And that's really bad, since no matter whether the player is more divorced from the experience by making choices that are based on out-of-character information or by being confronted with mechanics that defy out-of-character description - the situation is about as bad as it can be.
I don't consider Action points or other luck control mechanics to be all that damaging to the narrative. I don't really know if Han Solo navigated the asteroid field with an action point or if he just got a lucky pilot roll. And really, I don't particularly care. From a game standpoint, I want the story to go on, so I want him to succeed when he needs to, but the story still makes sense. Luck control isn't dissociative so much as it's invisible, but then so is the d20, so I don't see any big deal there.