# Tell me about D&D 4th edition **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [January 15, 2011, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-d-d-4th-edition/567667 "2011-01-15T02:11:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Brainiac4](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brainiac4/32/3534_2.png) [@Brainiac4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brainiac4)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2011, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-d-d-4th-edition/567667/181 "2011-02-06T22:26:11Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > You gave an explanation. That doesn’t mean your explanation makes sense. > > In the scenario you describe, Cleric A gains the ability to hit Monster B if B looks away. And yet, when Fighter C _makes it look away_, your ability fails. It would make more sense for both Cleric A and Fighter C to have it Marked, giving Monster B a -2 to hit anyone and granting opportunity attacks to A if it attacks C, to C if it attacks A, and to both if it attacks anyone else. I think my explanation makes at least some sense; it offers a framework for explaining why combat techniques and magical spells are dealing with the same resulting effect. I think your approach would work, and might be interesting to try. It’s worth noting, I think, that I as gamemaster feel free to modify any and all rules to suit my preferences - in 4E or in any other game. For example, the default rules for flanking say that a creature is only flanked if it has two opponents on opposite sides, and that you only get the flanking benefit if you have someone on the opposite side from you. This is dippy; say you have a goblin with three players surrounding it, one in front, one behind and one to the side. Per the rules as written, the players in front and back get the benefit of flanking, the one to the side does not. So I decided that “flanked” is a condition that applies to a target when it has enemies surrounding it. This applies to both players and enemies. ---
**Author:** ![CandidGamera](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/candidgamera/32/2878_2.png) [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2011, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-d-d-4th-edition/567667/182 "2011-02-07T15:45:35Z")
> [@MilTan](#): > > I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I’m not at all clear what distinguishes a “basic attack” from a castable ability to you. It sounds like you want it to be a cool down issue, but if it is, you picked a bad example, because “basic attacks” in SCII do, effectively, have a cool down period – different units attack at different rates. Otherwise, the only distinction I can find is that in SCII, the default action is to attack. But by that definition, there are no basic attacks in D&D, since there are no default actions. If you don’t explicitly do something in a round, your fighter won’t swing his sword; he’ll sit on his hands. > > It really sounds to me like you basic beef is that you don’t think fighters should get encounter or daily abilities. The analogy just looks a little fuzzy because we’re flipping between a real-time environment and a turn based environment. I don’t think of the gaps between bursts of fire in SC2 as a cooldown, I would say that the attack action takes that much time to execute. Basically, SC2 units are constantly attacking - they just don’t actually fire if nothing’s in range, and the game only animates/calculates it every so often. I don’t equate basic attack with default action. Default _attack_, sure. But not default _action_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-d-d-4th-edition/567667.md?page=9)