Are metagame abilities good?

[fectin]

Eberron had action points, FantasyCraft has action dice, I'm sure there are others I can't come up with at the moment (WEG Star Wars' force points!).

Some of them let you add to rolls, FantasyCraft even lets you push a pile of them over and say "bugger this, get to the good part" and skip to the next scene.

I tend to think it's situational, but that all three of the ones I mentioned work well. I know a bunch of folks here are more sensitive than I am about verisimilitude though, so what's everyone else's opinion?

[Swordslinger]

I don't consider them metagame so much as luck modifying. In a game, you generally want the PCs to survive. Offering mechanics that let them avert a few bad rolls is kind of nice.

[CCarter]

I don't consider them metagame so much as luck modifying. In a game, you generally want the PCs to survive. Offering mechanics that let them avert a few bad rolls is kind of nice.

Characters generally aren't aware of having luck, so that would be metagame. Storyteller "Willpower" might be is probably something that exists in character in some fashion, and at least one game I can think of, TORG, the points are definitely something the characters understand and can talk about ("possibility energy").

Oh on the actual question, I generally don't mind them.

[tzor]

But by that argument, Hit Points are metagame as well.

[CCarter]

It sort of depends on how you imagine hit points working.

I normally imagine any hit point injury as being physical damage, but with "luck" or "dodging ability" letting characters turn a major wound into a minor one. As long as characters can be aware they're injured and that being hit by some things is worse than being hit by other things, the system works.

The only problem with this is that healing spells are inconsistent with that, which has actually always annoyed me. I wrote a rant on the subject in Regdar's Repository, years ago as "Degobah".

If however you move to a system where HPs are just plot points (4E) then yeah they're basically a metagame resource, and it requires extra explanations as to why characters who took 40 damage after being missed completely by the dragon are now chugging healing potions.

[shadzar]

opinion? all that stuff is crap. it breaks the 4th wall and shows internally that it is a game.

breaking 4th wall = bad.

[OgreBattle]

I tend to think it's situational, but that all three of the ones I mentioned work well. I know a bunch of folks here are more sensitive than I am about verisimilitude though, so what's everyone else's opinion?

I like them and they've contributed to memorable moments in games.

Narratively, it's having that paragraph dedicated to your characters actions, it's the build up as the music gets more intense, it's your time in the spotlight.
Gameplay wise, it breaks up monotony and lets you do something with pre-existing options.

Every time I use an action point in 4e it's usually to do something cool like sending a blast of thunder to shove a bunch of orcs together so they're all sent down to hell together when shadowy claws erupt from the ground.

and it requires extra explanations as to why characters who took 40 damage after being missed completely by the dragon are now chugging healing potions

Fighting a dragon, like playing in a football game, is exhausting even if you didn't get stabbed in the gut.
It's magic Gatorade.

[Vebyast]

Player-choice luck modification is, in my opinion, probably a good thing, because it helps chop off bad bits of the players' probability curve. It's exactly the same reason critical tables are bad for players, but in reverse - giving PCs a reroll lets them survive that triple critical failure that they're statistically guaranteed to make at some point in their adventure.

I recognize that most players don't use them like this, and that in fact this method is just a kluge to fix a bad resolution mechanic, but whatever.

[tzor]

It sort of depends on how you imagine hit points working.

Your original quote was, "Characters generally aren't aware of having luck, so that would be metagame." Ignoring how hit points work, there is no real mechanism for characters being "aware" of exactly what their hit point max is, or how many they have "remaining." Especially in pre 4E D&D where there was only a single state with hit points above zero as far as attributes that can be personally measured by the character.

Now characters can be aware of wounds, but assuming you do hit points that way, there is really no easy mechanism for mapping wounds to hit points, because of that problem where they are totally at 100% until they are at 0%. It's an annoying problem because the mechanics are at odds with each other, each demending a different observable result.

With 4E there is a second state, so the characters can physically know they have deem damaged to a certain level. But that really doesn't exist in the rules prior to 4E.

[Foxwarrior]

You can in fact determine your hit points in D&D. Simply count how many cat-claw scratches it takes to knock you unconscious.

[BearsAreBrown]

There are feats in 3.5e which allow you to know HP. Don't remember where though. Anyways, calling Action Points metagame abilities is like calling Weapon Supremacy(or [tome] Combat School) metagame abilities for their "You may add +5 to any attack roll 1/round." Or any reroll abilities.

When I hear metagame abilities I think things like, "Spend 1 plot point for reinforcements to show up," not "+d6 to the next whatever"

[fectin]

Take FantasyCraft for a more blatant example then. You have some number of starting action dice. You can take feats that give you more, either directly (additional d4 starting action dice equal to the number of luck feats you have) or through gameplay (whenever the GM activates one of your fumbles, gain an additional d4 action die). You can spend them to add to rolls of all kinds, to activate fumbles, to activate critical hits, to heal, or to restore spellpoints. You can also use them to get hints, to skip scenes, to add features to the scene ("I swing from the chandeliers!" "Are there Chandeliers?" "There are now!"), and probably a bunch of other things I'm forgetting.

As far as I've seen, it works out well. It gets very meta though, because you're a player tracking player resources instead of a character tracking character resources.

[CCarter]

It sort of depends on how you imagine hit points working.

Your original quote was, "Characters generally aren't aware of having luck, so that would be metagame." Ignoring how hit points work, there is no real mechanism for characters being "aware" of exactly what their hit point max is, or how many they have "remaining." Especially in pre 4E D&D where there was only a single state with hit points above zero as far as attributes that can be personally measured by the character.

Now characters can be aware of wounds, but assuming you do hit points that way, there is really no easy mechanism for mapping wounds to hit points, because of that problem where they are totally at 100% until they are at 0%. It's an annoying problem because the mechanics are at odds with each other, each demending a different observable result.

With 4E there is a second state, so the characters can physically know they have deem damaged to a certain level. But that really doesn't exist in the rules prior to 4E.

I think a character should be able to feel roughly how injured they are, based off the HP figure. They could feel the pain or blood loss or whatever despite their being no other mechanics to represent loss of function.

I'd concede that potentially using the exact total HPs to make a decision could be metagaming because its using information too exact for the character to know, but I normally wouldn't care. Usually not a problem IMHO because the player typically doesn't know exactly how much damage an attack will deal anyway, due to damage bonuses and whatever.

Comparatively I find luck points worse because their existence isn't noticeable by the character at all i.e. the player knows the character can win the next 4 rounds of blackjack by editing rolls, the character doesn't.

[Omegonthesane]

It sort of depends on how you imagine hit points working.

Your original quote was, "Characters generally aren't aware of having luck, so that would be metagame." Ignoring how hit points work, there is no real mechanism for characters being "aware" of exactly what their hit point max is, or how many they have "remaining." Especially in pre 4E D&D where there was only a single state with hit points above zero as far as attributes that can be personally measured by the character.

Now characters can be aware of wounds, but assuming you do hit points that way, there is really no easy mechanism for mapping wounds to hit points, because of that problem where they are totally at 100% until they are at 0%. It's an annoying problem because the mechanics are at odds with each other, each demending a different observable result.

With 4E there is a second state, so the characters can physically know they have deem damaged to a certain level. But that really doesn't exist in the rules prior to 4E.

I think a character should be able to feel roughly how injured they are, based off the HP figure. They could feel the pain or blood loss or whatever despite their being no other mechanics to represent loss of function.

I'd concede that potentially using the exact total HPs to make a decision could be metagaming because its using information too exact for the character to know, but I normally wouldn't care. Usually not a problem IMHO because the player typically doesn't know exactly how much damage an attack will deal anyway, due to damage bonuses and whatever.

Comparatively I find luck points worse because their existence isn't noticeable by the character at all i.e. the player knows the character can win the next 4 rounds of blackjack by editing rolls, the character doesn't.

The existence of luck points as such isn't noticeable by the character, but their effects most certainly are over repeated instances of noticing that "fortune" smiles on them whenever they need it to. Not even as precise as measuring hit points IC, but still somewhat noticeable - like the problem raised in the Doubt threads, where repeated observation could make you reasonably sure that you did indeed have reality manipulation powers and were not insane.

[OgreBattle]

Well, isn't being a level X adventurer and knowing an orc will only do 1dY+Z damage already meta gaming?

Are we assuming AD&D is meta-gaming free?

[fectin]

I don't follow your point on AD&D. Was it AD&D specifically, or any old game nominally without meta effects?

[shadzar]

You can in fact determine your hit points in D&D. Simply count how many cat-claw scratches it takes to knock you unconscious.

that gives you 1~2 per, you mean how many a house cat BITE you can take, as they are 1 HP loss each successful one.

but, that is breaking the 4th wall.