@doppelgreener Stop making me feel old! I saw all except the first in the cinema (well, I did see the Special Edition version in the cinema, but that doesn't really count)
@Shalvenay Except it's 4e, so extrapolating mechanics into physics doesn't work. The tarrasque's "gravity" only applies to characters, and only while they're airborne.
There's also no mechanic for falling damage which would make extreme ranges useful.
D&D 4e just isn't a game where that kind of thinking gets supported, much less rewarded. It's a tactical strategy game designed to reward mastery of the ruleset.
@BESW well, if the game designers care to provide a complete system of physical interactions, they can go right ahead and do that :) but , otherwise, at some point, you'll run into things that are outside the scope of the mechanics. (how would my inadvertently-exploding-well plot work in 4e, for instance?)
There is no implication that anything happens except airborne folks X squares away get pulled Y squares closer.
@Shalvenay It would work exactly however the mechanics the GM chooses to give it say it works, and the GM is encouraged to express those mechanics within the closed but versatile set of existing tools the system provides.
on another note...I do know someone who once played a Tarrasque with a Ring of Size Alteration at a monstrous table...I suspect that'd probably break even 4e.
So, for example, you could have a Tarrasque character that hangs around at medium size most of the time just fine. Mechanically, he's a Druid or a Barbarian or something. He just happens to look like a Tarrasque.
4e is built specifically to disallow the kind of combat-as-war shenanigans that 1e-3.5e were built around.
@BESW just because it says "NPC" on the tin doesn't mean it has to be handled by the GM. :P (a monstrous 4e table would probably have everyone operate on the NPC mechanics -- it sounds like the simplest way to implement such a thing within the system)
4e NPC mechanics aren't just different from 4e PC mechanics. They're designed according to a totally different set of goals which are often actively incompatible with the basic player experience.
Also, the idea of "he has a few class levels" doesn't make mechanical sense in 4e. In 4e, everything is modeled as a character within a few CR of the party's level.
So a shopkeeper who used to be a Wizard might be a level 5 Normal, but when the party hits 15, he's a level 14 Minion.
@DuckTapeAl something closer to a MUD or multiplayer CRPG in its interactions than a traditional campaign-driven table. (i.e. without a unifying storyline, and with potential for interplayer conflict)
In 4e, power is narrative importance to the story, usually reflected in how long the creature lasts in a fight, and is determined by whether they're a minion, standard, elite, or solo NPC.
@BESW 4elite, born from much the same thoughts you've covered just now. Which you have probably seen...
I've actually played that variant a couple of times in games that were meant to be epic tier, but weren't worth the effort of everyone making an epic-tier character. They worked well enough.
