Most Ridiculous Rules in RPGS

[Max_Killjoy]

Really? What's their retort?

Paraphrasing... "L5R is about social intrigue! How can you have social intrigue without a social intrigue class and social intrigue powers?"

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Really? What's their retort?

I suppose it would probably be that, on closer inspection, the kind of damage said ability does results in 'incapacitation', which means the victim 'likely unconscious, or may just be so dazed and staggered that he's completely unaware of his surroundings and unable to interact with them'. So sufficiently advanced whining may result in simply causing someone to basically BSOD mid-combat rather than actually rendering them unconscious, technically speaking. Which is still silly, especially given that this may be more effective for taking down formidable opponents than actually shooting them (as, although the damage done by the ability is fairly low, most of their defences don't apply to it).

Skill granularity can also result in some fairly stupid stuff. For example, in Exalted 3e, a character can be a legendary master at using unarmed attacks and knives in combination with a particular martial arts style, yet utterly unskilled in using them outside of that style. In D&D 5e, one can be both the best acrobat in the world and the worst athlete. In FFG Star Wars, one's skill in shooting a heavy repeating blaster is no more related to one's skill in shooting a light repeating blaster than it is to one's skill in piloting a spacecraft, one's discipline is utterly irrelevant to one's ability to remain cool under pressure, and 'Perception' has nothing to do with 'Vigilance'.


Paraphrasing... "L5R is about social intrigue! How can you have social intrigue without a social intrigue class and social intrigue powers?"

Umm, L5R? I was talking about Edge of the Empire. Though I really wouldn't be surprised by something like that in L5R either, from what I've heard.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is a pretty common criticism, but it's notable that it only ever seems to come from primary D&D players. For those who's primary game isn't D&D, 4e looks a lot more D&D like. The points of similarity that get glossed over by D&D players because they're so ingrained as to be near invisible background material stand out a bit more when they aren't there in whatever game you're playing. Being a class and level system alone is a pretty big D&D marker, and then there's the attributes, the saves, the ascending HP, the plethora of monsters, so on and so forth.

I stopped using or playing D&D right before the big "points and powers" push, but I've read through the player's guide at least for every edition since (have not had a chance to borrow a copy of 5e yet).

From the outside, 4e looks like D&D, but through a very peculiar lens -- it really did look like an attempt to make the pen-and-paper version of a computer MMORPG.

[Max_Killjoy]

I suppose it would probably be that, on closer inspection, the kind of damage said ability does results in 'incapacitation', which means the victim 'likely unconscious, or may just be so dazed and staggered that he's completely unaware of his surroundings and unable to interact with them'. So sufficiently advanced whining may result in simply causing someone to basically BSOD mid-combat rather than actually rendering them unconscious, technically speaking. Which is still silly, especially given that this may be more effective for taking down formidable opponents than actually shooting them (as, although the damage done by the ability is fairly low, most of their defences don't apply to it).

Skill granularity can also result in some fairly stupid stuff. For example, in Exalted 3e, a character can be a legendary master at using unarmed attacks and knives in combination with a particular martial arts style, yet utterly unskilled in using them outside of that style. In D&D 5e, one can be both the best acrobat in the world and the worst athlete. In FFG Star Wars, one's skill in shooting a heavy repeating blaster is no more related to one's skill in shooting a light repeating blaster than it is to one's skill in piloting a spacecraft, one's discipline is utterly irrelevant to one's ability to remain cool under pressure, and 'Perception' has nothing to do with 'Vigilance'.



Umm, L5R? I was talking about Edge of the Empire. Though I really wouldn't be surprised by something like that in L5R either, from what I've heard.


I lost the thread of the conversation overnight, sorry. FFG bought L5R from AEG, so the FFG forums have an L5R section, and I flipped the two (maybe perhaps also because L5R has an "empire" central to the setting as well).


The FFG Star Wars "narrative system" shares some of the same problems, such as the attempt to put talking on par with actual combat even when in the thick of combat. It adds to this the issues with it's "narrative system" that still manages to be complex, cumbersome, etc.

[Talakeal]

"Disassociated mechanics" is a phrase coined for the express purpose of edition warring, recall.

Right. A dog whistle is something dubtle that most people wont notice. Dissaciociated mechanics is a pretty straightforward complaint about how 4e handles certain aspects of the game.

In my mind it is more like a straight up slur than a dog whistle term.

[Segev]

Dissaciociated mechanics is a pretty straightforward complaint about how 4e handles certain aspects of the game.

In my mind it is more like a straight up slur than a dog whistle term.

"A straightforward complaint" is only a "slur" if it is untrue or designed expressly to be insulting/cruel.

People disliking an aspect of something can say so without it being a slur. They can even express that dissatisfaction strongly without it being a slur.

[Max_Killjoy]

"A straightforward complaint" is only a "slur" if it is untrue or designed expressly to be insulting/cruel.

People disliking an aspect of something can say so without it being a slur. They can even express that dissatisfaction strongly without it being a slur.

Agreed.

Furthermore, I find it odd that there might be concern for "slurring" or hurting the feelings of an abstract concept such as a set of RPG rules... :confused:

[NoldorForce]

It's intellectually dishonest in that it presents abstractions outside the prior edition's rules-as-physics structure as inherently bad, without really arguing why or to examine the hypocrisy in decrying new abstractions but quietly accepting old abstractions.

If you want to say that you like to monkey around with the rules-as-physics aspects of 3.x (and specifically 3.x, because no other edition got so close to that strain of gaming), that's fine. Just don't go throwing in smoke and mirrors about how stuff that doesn't fit that preference is inherently bad.

[Segev]

Maybe it's just that I don't see "dissociated rules" as a bad thing. So I don't see the supposed insult or obfuscation.

My problems with 4e really center around the way they made every class play like a martial adept.

It had some really good ideas in it. I liked the use of "defenses" putting all the rolling on the attacker side. Their mechanics for making front-line fighters able to command attention by making it tactically disadvantageous to ignore them in favor of glass cannons were well thought-out. (And I know people decry those as "MMO-like," but they really aren't; they are, however, an excellent effort at fixing a problem that plagued earlier editions where the best way to deal with the fighter-types was to ignore and go around them.)

"Dissociated mechanics" aren't a problem.

[Talakeal]

It's intellectually dishonest in that it presents abstractions outside the prior edition's rules-as-physics structure as inherently bad, without really arguing why or to examine the hypocrisy in decrying new abstractions but quietly accepting old abstractions.

If you want to say that you like to monkey around with the rules-as-physics aspects of 3.x (and specifically 3.x, because no other edition got so close to that strain of gaming), that's fine. Just don't go throwing in smoke and mirrors about how stuff that doesn't fit that preference is inherently bad.


So it sounds like you are saying that people arent allowed to express oppinions?

As far as I can tell you're statement could be boiled down to:

Person A: I dont want to eat chili, its too spicy.
Person B: Dont use a dog whistle term like "spicy" to badmouth chili!
Person A: How is spicy a dog whistle term?
Person B: Because it is dishonest to dislike spicy food when you eat tons of icecream and don't complain that it is sweet!

Please correct me if I am missing something, but it really does seem like that is the structure of your argument.

[NoldorForce]

So it sounds like you are saying that people arent allowed to express oppinions?

As far as I can tell you're statement could be boiled down to:

Person A: I dont want to eat chili, its too spicy.
Person B: Dont use a dog whistle term like "spicy" to badmouth chili!
Person A: How is spicy a dog whistle term?
Person B: Because it is dishonest to dislike spicy food when you eat tons of icecream and don't complain that it is sweet!

Please correct me if I am missing something, but it really does seem like that is the structure of your argument.No, this wasn't what I was referring to at all. My argument was roughly:
Person A: I don't want to eat chili, it's too spicy.
Person B: But you were fine with the aji last week, so what's so different this time?

There's a difference between saying "I don't like this" and saying "this is inherently bad"; that distinction is the very essence of opinion. But "dissociated mechanics" was a term coined to express the latter about 4E, and shows up almost nowhere else besides such discussions. It's a phrase intended to demonstrate opinion disguised as fact. Obviously some folks have employed it in a neutral and generalized manner to refer to (potentially unwanted) gameplay abstractions, but the dog-whistle nature is that the phrase was code for "4E is bad for not being 3.x" to people who've read the essay it originally came from.

You can dislike 4E. You can say so, and say why. But you don't need to trot out uncandid terminology to do so. :smallsmile:

Edit: Anyway, to move this back to the original topic, I'd like to posit the advanced crafting rules from L5R Fourth Edition. See, if you want to make an Excellent weapon with some spiffy bonuses on it, you have to throw some Raises on the crafting roll (basically, each is +5 to the TN declared ahead of time) and triple its value for various purposes such as materials. Except...there's a flaw with that.

Weapons are generally priced in the range of 5 to 20 koku (skewed towards the latter), and thus making a weapon with the basic crafting rules requires you to succeed at a crafting roll of TN 5 + Cost, rounded up to the nearest multiple of five. (A katana costs 30 koku for the purposes of crafting, though they're rarely sold for cultural reasons and generally aren't the paragon of damage that L5R's society believes them to be.) Because L5R uses the roll-and-keep system, you're never going to get more than 10k10 (roll 10 d10s, and keep 10 of those) on any given roll, and even then hitting 10k10 requires serious investment. Thus, trying to make an Excellent weapon will generally incur you a stiff TN 5 + 3x Cost before even checking for Raises. If you're a Kaiu Engineer and wanted to make a cool tetsubo with +1k0 to attack (nice but not great, kept dice are where it's at)...that'd require you to make a TN 80 check. When your average dice result is 60.

Yeah, that wrinkle of tripling costs even for the purposes of crafting TNs wasn't well thought-out.

[Max_Killjoy]

No, this wasn't what I was referring to at all. My argument was roughly:
Person A: I don't want to eat chili, it's too spicy.
Person B: But you were fine with the aji last week, so what's so different this time?

There's a difference between saying "I don't like this" and saying "this is inherently bad"; that distinction is the very essence of opinion. But "dissociated mechanics" was a term coined to express the latter about 4E, and shows up almost nowhere else besides such discussions. It's a phrase intended to demonstrate opinion disguised as fact. Obviously some folks have employed it in a neutral and generalized manner to refer to (potentially unwanted) gameplay abstractions, but the dog-whistle nature is that the phrase was code for "4E is bad for not being 3.x" to people who've read the essay it originally came from.

You can dislike 4E. You can say so, and say why. But you don't need to trot out uncandid terminology to do so. :smallsmile:


Really?

Because I'm not really a fan of 3.5 or any other edition of D&D, and I find the term very fitting for 4E, along with some other systems.

[Kurald Galain]

There's a difference between saying "I don't like this" and saying "this is inherently bad"; that distinction is the very essence of opinion. But "dissociated mechanics" was a term coined to express the latter about 4E,
No, it wasn't. Disassociated mechanics are not inherently bad, they're simply disliked by a lot of people. The term shows up almost nowhere else because 4E is the only common RPG that has a lot of disassociated mechanics in it (basically because most RPG designers go out of their way to avoid them).

Come to think of it, the majority of complaints about 4E boil down to "I don't like disassociated mechanics", just as how most complaints about 3E are "I don't like character imbalance", and most issues with 5E are ultimately "I don't like bounded accuracy". That doesn't make any of these systems inherently bad, of course; you might as well argue that strawberry ice cream is inherently bad because you prefer chocolate ice cream.

And for the purpose of this thread, disassociated mechanics commonly give "ridiculous" results. Not in the sense of "WTH were the developers smoking", but in the sense of making gameplay silly. For example, the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed.

[NoldorForce]

No, it wasn't. Disassociated mechanics are not inherently bad, they're simply disliked by a lot of people. The term shows up almost nowhere else because 4E is the only common RPG that has a lot of disassociated mechanics in it (basically because most RPG designers go out of their way to avoid them).[Citation needed]

But seriously, I doubt that gameplay abstractions presented in large quantity are either -disliked by a lot of people or -actively avoided by most RPG designers. Most games out there, in fact, use more metagame abstractions than D&D by virtue of not being nearly so rules-heavy. (Fate points, luck points, void points, willpower points, or whatever else you want to call them fit right into such a mold.) People may still invest a lot of playtime into rules-heavy games like D&D, but that's less due to particular mechanical interests and more due to things like setting preferences and what your friends are playing. If Gygax and Arneson had published the current edition of Fate Core back in 1974 instead of the original set of D&D, we'd probably be having an inverse discussion.

And like I said, the term was coined for the express purpose of edition warring. The term shows up almost nowhere else not because 4E uses a lot of them (which it doesn't, compared to most others that haven't ended up in the pile of forgotten heartbreakers). Instead, it was created in May 2008 (one month before 4E's release) by a 2E and 3E aficionado who didn't prefer the direction that 4E was heading when he playtested it. Here's the original essay (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1545/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanic), with some further commentary that walks it back but at the same time still claims that the use of dissociated mechanics isn't roleplaying (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer). This is understandable considering that the author has built a small career on subscribing to method acting (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer), but is nonetheless funny considering that tabletop roleplay is to a fair degree improv theater (http://lookrobot.co.uk/2013/06/23/stanislavski-vs-brecht-in-tabletop-roleplaying/). (That last link is mildly NWS.)

Come to think of it, the majority of complaints about 4E boil down to "I don't like disassociated mechanics", just as how most complaints about 3E are "I don't like character imbalance", and most issues with 5E are ultimately "I don't like bounded accuracy". That doesn't make any of these systems inherently bad, of course; you might as well argue that strawberry ice cream is inherently bad because you prefer chocolate ice cream.

And for the purpose of this thread, disassociated mechanics commonly give "ridiculous" results. Not in the sense of "WTH were the developers smoking", but in the sense of making gameplay silly. For example, the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed.This is what happens when you take an excessively mechanistic view of the rules. Rules-as-physics can work within the rules of a game, but isn't required. If the rules followed to the letter produce weird results, you should back up and consider:
Am I rolling when I don't need to because at least one outcome of success/failure isn't useful to the story? AKA Should I be evaluating this result in the first place?
Can I reflavor or embellish these results to something that makes more sense? AKA Am I evaluating this result properly?
Am I wandering into an edge case? AKA Am I evaluating a result outside the scope of the rules?
Here's an in-depth example of dealing with the second from Strike!:

Alex describes her character doing a sweep kick and tripping all the enemies around her in a Close 1, but she has a bird-man adjacent that has already been described as being above the ground, though not high enough to have the Flying Status. Kwame points out that this doesn’t make sense. Even though the mechanics of her power say that the bird-man takes damage, that cannot happen unless Alex elaborates on her description. Jamar suggest that following her sweep kick, Alex’s Martial Artist could snatch a goat-man’s axe and hurl it at the bird-man. That description fits perfectly with the mechanics and works with their game’s gritty tone.

[Max_Killjoy]

And for the purpose of this thread, disassociated mechanics commonly give "ridiculous" results. Not in the sense of "WTH were the developers smoking", but in the sense of making gameplay silly. For example, the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed.



Exactly the sort of video-gamey, what-the-hell rules that make 4E so wonky.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is what happens when you take an excessively mechanistic view of the rules. Rules-as-physics can work within the rules of a game, but isn't required. If the rules followed to the letter produce weird results, you should back up and consider:

Am I rolling when I don't need to because at least one outcome of success/failure isn't useful to the story? AKA Should I be evaluating this result in the first place?
Can I reflavor or embellish these results to something that makes more sense? AKA Am I evaluating this result properly?
Am I wandering into an edge case? AKA Am I evaluating a result outside the scope of the rules?

Here's an in-depth example of dealing with the second from Strike!:



The rules of an RPG are supposed to be a mechanical model of the events occurring in the game, that work well enough that they don't produce "what the hell?" moments. If the setting and characters and events of the game are the actual territory, then the rules are supposed to be the map, and not one drawn in crayon on a napkin.

This is why I find rules sets such as FFG's Star Wars so terrible -- there's this whole build up of the rolls based on this back and forth of modifiers, and then this result comes out, and it represents a whole glob of events that need to further cooperatively narrated. The whole thing is about 1 step removed from "let's play make believe!"

See also, some other newish systems that grossly abstract everything and anything that might be attempted, into a handful of possible rolls, which might be parodied as an entire rule set consisting of "hit stuff!", "know stuff!", and "talk to stuff!" rolls.

[NoldorForce]

What sorts of games do you play, anyway? It sounds as if, at the least, your preference is for more complex and concrete rulesets.

[Milo v3]

See also, some other newish systems that grossly abstract everything and anything that might be attempted, into a handful of possible rolls, which might be parodied as an entire rule set consisting of "hit stuff!", "know stuff!", and "talk to stuff!" rolls.

I have seen an RPG with the only stats being "Killing", "Avoiding Being Killed", "Knowing ****", and "Talking Your Way Out Of Anything".

[georgie_leech]

So now I'm totally imaging 4e Druids as horrid shapeshifting abominations constantly sprouting whatever animal bits they happen to need onto an arbitrary chassis, and I love it.:smallbiggrin:



Erm, actually, that's more or less what Druids do. See, 4e Druid Wildshape isn't 'turn into whatever animal you want,' it's 'assume an aspect of the Primal Beast.' The Primal Beast was 'the first spirit of the world's noble predators. A formless thing of Shadows, fur, feathers and claws...' So when you used Wild Shape, you got some of those and you took on either an indistinct shape or into a form of your size that resembled a natural or fey beast. Maybe you turned into a tiger form; you didn't literally become a tiger, but you would have 4 legs, probably striped, had claws and such. You wouldn't be able to use said claws or teeth effectively as weapons, unless you channeled that Primal Beast by using one of your Powers, whether At-will, Encounter, or Daily. Taking that chaotic, primal power and using it to turn into something specific was hard, and meant you needed to take certain Powers or Feats to do so.

In other words, it's less that turning into a bird doesn't let you fly, and more like people not realising you can't turn into a bird by default. Like if people complained about 3.X Druids not being able to breathe fire when they turned into a Dragon, without realising that you need a feat to let you turn into the dragon in the first place.

[Max_Killjoy]

What sorts of games do you play, anyway? It sounds as if, at the least, your preference is for more complex and concrete rulesets.

Right now? It's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to play anything.


Of the systems I have played, it's more a matter of "which system's flaws do I find the least distracting from my enjoyment and immersion..."

OWOD as a system has some serious warts, but it's not bad, especially if the ST isn't being a pretentious poof and understands that the point of gaming is to have fun, and is willing to tweak the rules a little here and there.

HERO 4th or 5th was good, but that was with a group who cared more about the end result than mechanical pedantry -- it goes bad fast when people get focused on HERO as a system instead of using the HERO system to map a territory and then set all the scaffolding aside and PLAY THE GAME.

Some homebrew stuff, though it had its flaws too.


I like the game to be about the characters (as characters, not the mechanical constructs) and the story that emerges from their interactions with each other and the setting... but I find it very aggravating when the rules are set up to get mechanically involved in "creating narrative" as a design objective.

[Telok]

I'd seen the whole disassociated mechanics before D&D 4e, in respect to the Hero system where you built superpowers by describing what they did and then choosing which power fit then modifying the base power to do what you described. In that system "turn into a beam of light to zip to the other side of the room and reform" was a teleport power with some additional limitations. I'd never seen it applied to D&D before 4e since most of the previous editions were pretty sorta-simulationist.

That said I did get to see 'Come And Get It', a 4e fighter power, drag a levitating wizard out of the sky, a stunned and prone beholder across poison spikes without harm, and a hyena out of a pit. Pull 3 squares can be a versatile power.

Although Hero can get pretty silly too if you ignore the advice to put limits on the number of points you can out into a power.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'd seen the whole disassociated mechanics before D&D 4e, in respect to the Hero system where you built superpowers by describing what they did and then choosing which power fit then modifying the base power to do what you described. In that system "turn into a beam of light to zip to the other side of the room and reform" was a teleport power with some additional limitations. I'd never seen it applied to D&D before 4e since most of the previous editions were pretty sorta-simulationist.

That said I did get to see 'Come And Get It', a 4e fighter power, drag a levitating wizard out of the sky, a stunned and prone beholder across poison spikes without harm, and a hyena out of a pit. Pull 3 squares can be a versatile power.

Although Hero can get pretty silly too if you ignore the advice to put limits on the number of points you can out into a power.


For a certain meaning of "disassociated mechanics", it does apply to HERO, but then that's kinda the point. HERO isn't built for one setting or one campaign. If one takes the view that the rules are supposed to be the map of the actual character/setting/atmosphere territory of the game, then HERO is in theory a universal mapping tool, rather than one actual map.

This gets into an argument I repeatedly had with two big factions of HERO fans. One faction argued that the construction used was meaningless, and one should be as point-efficient as possible to get to the end result wanted. The other argued that to be "balanced", if two constructions were both viable, one should always take the MORE expensive way of building something.

My counter to both of them is that the construction used should be the one that does the best job "modelling" the actual power wanted, of capturing the SFX and evoking the feel of the thing.


Of course, there's another meaning of "disassociated mechanics" that I think hits closer to the target on D&D 4E -- that the rules appear to be divorced from the reality that they're supposed to be mapping. For example, as someone noted earlier, "the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed". 4E often appears to be about the rules, full stop, with no association at all to what's happening "on the ground" from the perspective of the characters.

[Telok]

For a certain meaning of "disassociated mechanics", it does apply to HERO, but then that's kinda the point.

I quite agree with you. I really enjoy HERO and don't have any problems with it (my groups have always played honestly and with GM approval of all characters). I've also met people who can memorize and use the D&D grappling rules (all editions) and all the Prismatic Wall/Sphere effects while they counters balk at figuring out how to roll skill checks in HERO. That's cognitive dissonance for me, right there.


See, 4e Druid Wildshape isn't 'turn into whatever animal you want,' it's 'assume an aspect of the Primal Beast.'You know, I played a 4e druid for six months and never got that vibe from the book. Heck nobody in our group thought it was anything but turning into an animal and they read the books too. Of course I ran around saying 'bark' and 'woof' in (dog shape) character and nobody caught on for the first few months either. It ended up being a very Discworld effect.

I also made a mage who was just a fighter with all the special effects rewritten as spells. The game crashed before I got to play him though. I never did get very far on the opposite character, a wizard with all the powers rewritten as mundane face stabber abilities. And of course the urinary lazy-lord was vetoed right out of the gate.

[goto124]

Of course, there's another meaning of "disassociated mechanics" that I think hits closer to the target on D&D 4E -- that the rules appear to be divorced from the reality that they're supposed to be mapping. For example, as someone noted earlier, "the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed". 4E often appears to be about the rules, full stop, with no association at all to what's happening "on the ground" from the perspective of the characters.

Those seem to be examples of the rules not literally stating every instance of a power or skill or spell not working the way it's intended to be (which sounds much like a 3.5e attitude - that rules have to cover every inch of the in-game reality).

Magic can easily be refluffed or justified in many ways. Maybe the swordmage powers require reality to tear in this very specific manner, which involves getting your ally stabbed.

[georgie_leech]

You know, I played a 4e druid for six months and never got that vibe from the book. Heck nobody in our group thought it was anything but turning into an animal and they read the books too. Of course I ran around saying 'bark' and 'woof' in (dog shape) character and nobody caught on for the first few months either. It ended up being a very Discworld effect.

I also made a mage who was just a fighter with all the special effects rewritten as spells. The game crashed before I got to play him though. I never did get very far on the opposite character, a wizard with all the powers rewritten as mundane face stabber abilities. And of course the urinary lazy-lord was vetoed right out of the gate.

So did I at first. :smalltongue: But the 'fact' that you could turn into a dolphin but not swim well made me double check a while back and I realised I had skimmed over the class feature that pointed me at the Power, since those usually just say 'you have a Power,' and little else. In this case though it supplied some rather interesting fluff bits. Specifically, when it refers to what forms you take it only ever says that you resemble a natural or fey beast. In other words, you don't become a wolf, you get some of the aspects of a wolf. So even if you're taking a specific form, it's not actually close enough to whatever animal you're resembling to get any of their statistics.

At least, that's what I get out of it. As The Giant pointed out, making assumptions and then complaining the text doesn't match them makes less sense than choosing assumptions that fit with the text. It's not perfect, and it's not quite what I wanted out of the power, but it has its own charm for me. After all, there is a certain style to there still being the suggestion of the Dwarf Druid being present while what looks mostly like a bear is mauling somethings face off.

[Kurald Galain]

[Citation needed]
Feel free to name other games with a large amount of disassociated mechanics. HERO appears to be one, but I've never seen it played myself.



But seriously, I doubt that gameplay abstractions presented in large quantity are either -disliked by a lot of people or -actively avoided by most RPG designers.
Ah, here's your problem. You think that "disassociated mechanic" is another term for "abstraction". That's completely not what the term means.

"Abstraction" is a tautology in that all mechanics and rules are, by definition, abstract. It's extremely rare (and frankly, pretty meaningless) to complain that a rule is abstract.


Those seem to be examples of the rules not literally stating every instance of a power or skill or spell not working the way it's intended to be
Nope. These powers are all working exactly as intended, but numerous players don't like the intent.


Erm, actually, that's more or less what Druids do. See, 4e Druid Wildshape isn't 'turn into whatever animal you want,' it's 'assume an aspect of the Primal Beast.'
Then I'd say the problems are that (1) the class description doesn't make this clear, and (2) turning into animals is a common thing in fiction that players want to emulate, whereas "assuming an aspect" isn't really.

[NoldorForce]

Feel free to name other games with disassociated mechanics. HERO appears to be one, but I've never seen it played myself.

Ah, here's your problem. You think that "disassociated mechanic" is another term for "abstraction". That's completely not what the term means.

"Abstraction" is a tautology in that all mechanics and rules are, by definition, abstract. It's extremely rare (and frankly, pretty meaningless) to complain that a rule is abstract.I corrected myself later in the post, that "dissociated mechanics" is a dysphemism referring to metagame abstractions. And I also offered an example that many, many games use. Hell, the Storyteller system (D&D's single biggest competitor in all its variants) employed it since day one.

But seriously, I doubt that gameplay abstractions presented in large quantity are either -disliked by a lot of people or -actively avoided by most RPG designers. Most games out there, in fact, use more metagame abstractions than D&D by virtue of not being nearly so rules-heavy. (Fate points, luck points, void points, willpower points, or whatever else you want to call them fit right into such a mold.) People may still invest a lot of playtime into rules-heavy games like D&D, but that's less due to particular mechanical interests and more due to things like setting preferences and what your friends are playing. If Gygax and Arneson had published the current edition of Fate Core back in 1974 instead of the original set of D&D, we'd probably be having an inverse discussion.
This one is discussed in the comments on that second essay, and it's comical to see the contortions Mr. Alexandrian went through to say that it was still alright despite generally being entirely out of the hands of the character. It's a huge exception to his point, but he let it slide because he's so used to it. Anyway, other examples include a lot of abilities (not all of them, but certainly enough to notice) that are limited by either some in-game length of time (X times/day) or some metagame duration (once per session).
Take the Barbarian's Rage from 3E, for instance. It's one of the first abilities on the first class in the PHB...that works some number of times per day. Why, in-character, is the limitation so awkward? Dunno; the book certainly doesn't say. (The real reason is that it's a metagame abstraction for the sake of 3E tenuously clinging to its resource-management roots.)
If you're playing any of the Chronicles of Darkness (formerly nWoD) games from White Wolf/Onyx Path, Beats (the smallest unit of XP) are generated by among other things either having Conditions affect the PCs or by downgrading Failures to Dramatic Failures. (Most Conditions are bad, but some are instead good for you.) Your character wouldn't want to be screwed by such circumstances, but by putting that character through adversity you're rewarded as a player.
Similarly, if you're playing Fate and receive a compel, then you as the player are receiving metagame currency in exchange for something bad happening to your character.
All characters in Iron Kingdoms have various stat caps that increase based on your tier, which is thresholded by your XP gained. Why is it that a caster can't push above ARC 4 at 49 XP, but is just fine with going to 6 ARC at 50+ XP? Metagame abstractions for the sake of balance, that's why.
Edit: I'm not just asserting that metagame currency and X uses per Y units of time are metagame abstractions/"dissociated mechanics" by trying to read into Mr. Alexandrian's method-acting terminology and pulling some guesswork out of my posterior. Rather, both of these are explicitly acknowledged by him as fitting into this category.

[Kurald Galain]

I corrected myself later in the post, that "dissociated mechanics" is a dysphemism referring to metagame abstractions.
Nope, that's not it either. First, it's not a dysphemism. Second, "metagame abstraction" is another tautology. Third, it is simply not true that every mechanic that relates to experience, leveling, and limited-use abilities is a disassociation.

More importantly, there's a big difference between an RPGs that contains a few disassociations if you look hard enough (which would be almost every RPG ever), and an RPG that has many clear and obvious disassociations all over the place (which is 4E, and maybe HERO).

[NoldorForce]

Nope, that's not it either.Well then, what's your definition that's not just rephrasing Mr. Alexandrian?

First, it's not a dysphemism.
Right. Right. (All formatting below is from the source.)

To look at it from the opposite side, I’m going to make a provocative statement: When you are using dissociated mechanics you are not roleplaying. Which is not to say that you can’t roleplay while playing a game featuring dissociated mechanics, but simply to say that in the moment when you are using those mechanics you are not roleplaying.
If he's asserting that using such things isn't roleplaying, I believe that fits the definition of a dysphemism by virtue of presenting negative connotations about a presumably neutral concept (to paraphrase you).

Second, "metagame abstraction" is another tautology.Explain how, then. People don't place negative connotations on "metagaming" for nothing.

Third, it is simply not true that every mechanic that relates to experience, leveling, and limited-use abilities is a disassociation.I never said that, but I did note (as Mr. Alexandrian described) that many of them by his own assertion are "dissociated".

More importantly, there's a big difference between an RPGs that contains a few disassociations if you look hard enough (which would be almost every RPG ever), and an RPG that has many clear and obvious disassociations all over the place (which is 4E, and maybe HERO).And I've got a bridge to sell you, because all the "dissociated mechanics" that axe-grinders will bring up from 4E are small and nitpicky things. Fate points in Fate, on the other hand, are such a central mechanic that people will talk about the "Fate point economy" when discussing how to run it. (Also check the example from Strike!, because all the stuff from 4E that fits this silly mold is a case of "am I evaluating this result properly?") In general, metagame currency is fast to evaluate but extremely useful to the players, so while it might be one thing it still casts a long shadow.

[Kurald Galain]

And I've got a bridge to sell you, because all the "dissociated mechanics" that axe-grinders will bring up from 4E are small and nitpicky things.
Frankly, if you're just going to attack people that prefer Chocolate Ice Cream while you prefer Strawberry Ice Cream, then I see no point in continuing this line of discussion.

So let's get back to some ridiculous rules!
In 2E D&D, if you attempt to punch or wrestle someone, you have to roll on an arbitrary table that shows whether you end up doing a hook, uppercut, jab, or something else; or a bear hug, throw, or kick when wrestling. Each of these has different results. If you have a certain kind of proficiency, you can move one line up or down on the arbitrary table, but you cannot actually decide to throw somebody.

[Max_Killjoy]

On the subject of "disassociated mechanics", perhaps this will help, perhaps not.

To me, it comes down to the difference between whether the reality* determines the rules, or the rules determine the reality*.

If a game has a set of "attack feats" that include:
* Legsweep -- "If you succeed, your target falls prone."
* Eyestrike -- "If you succeed, your target is blinded for X rounds."
* Headslap -- "If you succeed, your target is dazed for X rounds."

Now, in a situation where characters with those "attack feats" are fighting a levitating, featureless orb -- no legs, no eyes, no head -- where do you go with it?

"Rules determine reality" says "the power states that a successful attack has this effect, so that's that".

"Reality determines rules" says "how are you going to legsweep, eyepoke, and headslap a creature with no legs, no eyes, and no head?"


To me, 4E read like "rules determine reality".



* "the reality" referring to the in-setting, in-game "alternate reality", not "realism" or "the real world", so let's not derail into a "realism" discussion.

[goto124]

Normally, the levitating featureless orb will have its own set of special features that say "immune to legsweep, eyestrike, and handslap".

[Kurald Galain]

"Rules determine reality" says "the power states that a successful attack has this effect, so that's that".

"Reality determines rules" says "how are you going to legsweep, eyepoke, and headslap a creature with no legs, no eyes, and no head?"
Yes, that's a good way to put it.


Normally, the levitating featureless orb will have its own set of special features that say "immune to legsweep, eyestrike, and handslap".
Yes, but only in a "reality determines rules" game. Bear in mind that almost every RPG printed follows this mindset, so in that sense, it is indeed "normal". In a "rules determines reality" game, such as 4E, these features are intentionally absent.

[georgie_leech]

Then I'd say the problems are that (1) the class description doesn't make this clear, and (2) turning into animals is a common thing in fiction that players want to emulate, whereas "assuming an aspect" isn't really.

And that's fair. I just want people who don't like 4e to do it for what the game actually does instead of a misunderstanding. :smallbiggrin:

[Arbane]

Feel free to name other games with disassociated mechanics. HERO appears to be one, but I've never seen it played myself.



"So... you've gotten better at lockpicking because we killed a bunch of orcs?"

[Max_Killjoy]

"So... you've gotten better at lockpicking because we killed a bunch of orcs?"


"No, I spent a little while in camp every night messing around with these 3 little locks I carry, until I figured out what I'd been doing wrong.'


XP or its equivalent is hardly the place to focus a discussion of "disassociated mechanics". Characters need some way to advance, and explicit or implicit practice is just as legitimate as forced "in the line of fire" failures

[Telok]

"No, I spent a little while in camp every night messing around with these 3 little locks I carry, until I figured out what I'd been doing wrong.'


XP or its equivalent is hardly the place to focus a discussion of "disassociated mechanics". Characters need some way to advance, and explicit or implicit practice is just as legitimate as forced "in the line of fire" failures

Well originally there were requirements to spend time training to increase levels, you didn't need post hoc explanations to cover a "WTF was that?" result from leveling up. Contrast that to low level 5e D&D where you zip through three or four levels in your first week of adventuring, maybe multiclass, get subclass abilities, and learn new spells and feats by sleeping after you kill enough kobolds.

Training? Don't need it. Whack a dozen critters and level up overnight.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well originally there were requirements to spend time training to increase levels, you didn't need post hoc explanations to cover a "WTF was that?" result from leveling up. Contrast that to low level 5e D&D where you zip through three or four levels in your first week of adventuring, maybe multiclass, get subclass abilities, and learn new spells and feats by sleeping after you kill enough kobolds.

Training? Don't need it. Whack a dozen critters and level up overnight.


Ouch...

Not sure where to even begin untangling that mess.

[Kurald Galain]

Training? Don't need it. Whack a dozen critters and level up overnight.

So what's your point, exactly? You don't like level-based systems? While that's a fine opinion and an interesting topic of debate, I fail to see how it relates to the discussion at hand.

[Milo v3]

So what's your point, exactly? You don't like level-based systems? While that's a fine opinion and an interesting topic of debate, I fail to see how it relates to the discussion at hand.
That even happens in systems that aren't level-based. It happens in nearly all systems were you can advance your character.

[Max_Killjoy]

That even happens in systems that aren't level-based. It happens in nearly all systems were you can advance your character.

Which part? The rapid inexplicable advance for the first few sessions, or the supposed disconnect between activity and particular abilities advance?

The rapid advance of new characters does not seem to take place in HERO or oWoD.

[Milo v3]

Which part? The rapid inexplicable advance for the first few sessions, or the supposed disconnect between activity and particular abilities advance?

The rapid advance of new characters does not seem to take place in HERO or oWoD.
That you can do one activity and gain skills and proficiency in unrelated things (some games that have this do suggest retconing), and that you do generally advance much faster than you would in real life (not overnight, but still ridiculously faster than real life so that the game runs smoothly rather than requiring year long timeskips between adventures).

There are exceptions of course, Call of Cthulhu is the first to come to my mind, where you can only improve skills you've used. And I think Pendragon had pretty long periods of play.

[Max_Killjoy]

That you can do one activity and gain skills and proficiency in unrelated things (some games that have this do suggest retconing), and that you do generally advance much faster than you would in real life (not overnight, but still ridiculously faster than real life so that the game runs smoothly rather than requiring year long timeskips between adventures).

There are exceptions of course, Call of Cthulhu is the first to come to my mind, where you can only improve skills you've used. And I think Pendragon had pretty long periods of play.


Unmentioned mundane activities aren't "retconning"... unless it's one of those GMs who says that player equipment starts to fall apart if they don't specifically mention maintaining it every single night.

[Jormengand]

That even happens in systems that aren't level-based. It happens in nearly all systems were you can advance your character.

I will admit to wanting to find a way to implement the system used in Skyrim and Runescape (among probably many others; those are just the two I know of) where you have levels in each thing you might want to do, and actually get better by doing it, into a TTRPG. Sure, it leads to some odd conclusions like how in Runescape, you can chop down trees and get better at making canoes or how the home teleport spell doesn't advance you towards casting any other teleporation spells (or doing anything else) but spells which enchant jewellery, destroy monsters, or turn items into gold do. But then, that's because if you're cutting down a tree, you're learning to cut up things made of wood into something you can use, and if you're casting spells you're learning how to do magic (with the exception that home teleport is such a trivial spell to cast that it gives no experience) and it gives you experience in all magic in general.

But of course, the main problem is going to be grinding - if you get better at something by doing it, players are going to take days off adventuring to practice that thing. Is it realistic that someone who wants to build something should take time off adventuring to practice? Yes. Is it going to be really bloody annoying? Hells to the yes. Grinding is already actually a problem in Skyrim, where it's possible to stand your character in front of a trap that automatically resets, doesn't push your character back, and doesn't deal enough damage to kill them, before going off and making a cup of tea and waiting for your defence to level, or in Runescape where because quests have arbitrary requirements (Why do I need ninety freaking firemaking to do this quest?) you sit around chucking maple logs into a portable brazier, which - as Jagex themselves openly admit - is just a way to trade time and GP for XP. Of course, the obvious way to discourage that is to keep up the threat (no, you don't have time to punch random walls to level up your unarmed strike, now hurry on and unarmed strike the villain in the face) but this only really works in a certain type of game.

But this is why the level-up system is almost always a little bit dissociated. A little bit. But you could easily make it so you got XP for every challenge you faced, and on level-up, you have to have used a skill to put ranks in it, can't have used a sorcerer spell to swap it out, must have used a feat to take the feat it's a prerequisite for, and so on. This can easily also get annoying fast, for many of the same reasons ("Damn, I'm about to level up and I haven't lied to anyone yet!") and I have never had an actual player complain about how their skill point acquisition didn't make sense, so YMMV.

[Hytheter]

So, there was a bit of a thing about dissociated mechanics on the last page and it kind of had me at a loss because it seemed like nobody was quite using dissociated mechanics to mean what I thought it meant.

As far as I understand, dissociated mechanics are ones that don't have a meaningful connection to the game world. If you can't describe in the world's terms what is actually happening or the characters couldn't possibly have any explanation for the mechanic then its probably dissociated.

NoldorForce seems to be operating under the assumption that a dissociated mechanic is just a word for abstractions we don't like, but if anything I'd say that dissociated mechanics and abstractions are practically antonyms. Abstractions are rules that represent things happening in the game world. HP is an abstraction of how much of a beating you can take, AC is an abstraction of how armour protects you from injury, rolling a dice to determine results is an abstraction for the inherent uncertainty in a given situation, etc. But the daily limit on a Barbarians rage isn't really an abstraction of anything in the game world, it's an arbitrary limitation in the rules for the sake of game balance. And that's why the Alexandrian states that dissociated mechanics aren't roleplaying - when the player decides to cast fireball, that is also the character deciding to cast fireball. But when the player agonises over whether or not he should use Rage now or save it for later that has no relevance to the character, because the barbarian doesn't understand his Rage to be something he can only do once per day.

But then other people are putting out examples like making an ooze prone or delivering an inspiring speech to empower someone who can't possibly hear it. I don't think mechanics like that are dissociated so much as they are incomplete. In most situations there's nothing dissociated about the mechanics - making enemies prone or inspiring your allies are things that can be explained in the game's terms - its just that there's few corner cases that the rules don't account for that make things get a little silly. So the problem isn't with dissociated mechanics but with insufficient rules. Maybe the ooze should have a trait that makes it immune to being prone. Maybe the ability itself should specify that it only works on enemies that can logically be knocked over, subject to the DM's discretion. Or maybe the rulebook just needs to stress that the DM has the authority to make judgement calls on whether an ability should work in a particular situation.

[Friv]

As far as I understand, dissociated mechanics are ones that don't have a meaningful connection to the game world. If you can't describe in the world's terms what is actually happening or the characters couldn't possibly have any explanation for the mechanic then its probably dissociated.

This is pretty much accurate, yeah. The problem is that people draw the line in all sorts of different places.

If you have 100 HP, and someone swings a sword at you for 1d8+4 damage, you aren't getting hurt. Someone people consider that to be a disassociated mechanic, because in the world fiction if you take a sword to the teeth that should maim or kill you. Your characters should feel that a sword to the teeth is dangerous. But a sword to the teeth is clearly not actually dangerous.

Other people consider that to be an HP abstraction; a sword to the face isn't dangerous until it is. They have a different image of the game.

A lot of people consider the 1/encounter or 1/day limits on non-magical abilities to be disassociated, because they can't explain why the fighter can reliably use that one combat technique once per day, and not use it again. Other people say the fiction just lines up so that the opening appears once per day, because this is a narrative fiction, so it's not disassociated.

It's sort of a bad term, because of that. "Disassociated mechanics" mostly means "the exact point where my own suspension of disbelief can't hold up", and that point is very different for different people. Some people would find Dungeon World's "you only get hurt when you fail an action" to be wildly disassociated, while others consider it a smooth-flowing part of the system.

[Kurald Galain]

As far as I understand, dissociated mechanics are ones that don't have a meaningful connection to the game world. If you can't describe in the world's terms what is actually happening or the characters couldn't possibly have any explanation for the mechanic then its probably dissociated.
Yes, that is correct.


But the daily limit on a Barbarians rage isn't really an abstraction of anything in the game world, it's an arbitrary limitation in the rules for the sake of game balance.
That depends. It would not be disassociated for a character to have a limited amount of stamina / primal energy / mana that replenishes by sleeping / meditating / prayer at sunrise.


But then other people are putting out examples like making an ooze prone or delivering an inspiring speech to empower someone who can't possibly hear it. I don't think mechanics like that are dissociated so much as they are incomplete.
The key is that they are intentionally so. The GM explicitly cannot make judgement calls on whether an ability should work; the ability works as written regardless of circumstances (and you either adjust the flavor accordingly or ignore the flavor because "relax, it's just a game" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra)). For example, the official take on proning an ooze in 4E is that you don't actually throw it prone because that's not possible, but your character does something unspecified which results in the ooze getting the exact same penalties as for being prone, even though it's not technically prone.

That's the disassociation.


Other people say the fiction just lines up so that the opening appears once per day, because this is a narrative fiction, so it's not disassociated.
Then those people misunderstand what "disassociated" means. Check Hytheter's explanation again. Your character doesn't know what an "encounter" is or that he's in "narrative fiction", hence these are disassociations.

[Hytheter]

If you have 100 HP, and someone swings a sword at you for 1d8+4 damage, you aren't getting hurt. Someone people consider that to be a disassociated mechanic, because in the world fiction if you take a sword to the teeth that should maim or kill you. Your characters should feel that a sword to the teeth is dangerous. But a sword to the teeth is clearly not actually dangerous.

Other people consider that to be an HP abstraction; a sword to the face isn't dangerous until it is. They have a different image of the game.

The only problem here is that for some reason you're assuming this whole time that the sword is hitting them straight in the face when nothing in the mechanics says that this is the case. You have 100 HP which means you can take a beating. You get hit for 8 damage, which means you are hurt but not killed. These aren't even close to dissociated, it's readily apparent what's going on. Admittedly, the abstraction is a little eyebrow raising considering that our hero can take a good ten or so sword chops without going down, but it's still definitely an abstraction.


A lot of people consider the 1/encounter or 1/day limits on non-magical abilities to be disassociated, because they can't explain why the fighter can reliably use that one combat technique once per day, and not use it again. Other people say the fiction just lines up so that the opening appears once per day, because this is a narrative fiction, so it's not disassociated.

It's dissociated because it's entirely arbitrary. It would be a different story if restrictions on the move made it legitimately unlikely to be usable more than once. But that then also includes the possibility that the ability could actually be used more than once per day, or alternately that there won't be a chance to use it at all! The point about it being fiction is irrelevant to whether the mechanic is dissociated. The mechanic is dissociated because it gives control of the narrative to the player that the character doesn't have.

But there's a point to be made there too - dissociated mechanics can be useful for giving players control of the narrative, so if that is desirable then so are the mechanics. Fate has a few dissociated mechanics that give players control of the narrative, which is desirable because creating a narrative is the point of Fate.


It's sort of a bad term, because of that. "Disassociated mechanics" mostly means "the exact point where my own suspension of disbelief can't hold up", and that point is very different for different people. Some people would find Dungeon World's "you only get hurt when you fail an action" to be wildly disassociated, while others consider it a smooth-flowing part of the system.

I don't think suspension of disbelief has anything to do with it. The aforementioned 100HP hero taking still fighting after 10 sword hits breaks my suspension of disbelief a little, but as I already stated I don't think that makes the mechanic dissociated. It doesn't break my suspension of disbelief because of a disconnect between mechanics and game world - it's more like when I'm watching an anime and find myself thinking "There's no goddamn way he could be standing after that!"


That depends. It would not be disassociated for a character to have a limited amount of stamina / primal energy / mana that replenishes by sleeping / meditating / prayer at sunrise.

Oh, I'm not saying that all x/period abilities are dissociated but some of them definitely are; I'm under the impression that this is especially true for 4e, which is one of the main things that prompted Alexandrian's dissociated mechanics essay in the first place.


The key is that they are intentionally so. The GM explicitly cannot make judgement calls on whether an ability should work; the ability works as written regardless of circumstances (and you either adjust the flavor accordingly or ignore the flavor because "relax, it's just a game" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra)). For example, the official take on proning an ooze in 4E is that you don't actually throw it prone because that's not possible, but your character does something unspecified which results in the ooze getting the exact same penalties as for being prone, even though it's not technically prone.

That's the disassociation.

Right, I haven't actually played 4e so I didn't realise that they forced the matter to such a degree. That is a bit iffy.

[Kurald Galain]

The only problem here is that for some reason you're assuming this whole time that the sword is hitting them straight in the face when nothing in the mechanics says that this is the case. You have 100 HP which means you can take a beating. You get hit for 8 damage, which means you are hurt but not killed. These aren't even close to dissociated, it's readily apparent what's going on. Admittedly, the abstraction is a little eyebrow raising considering that our hero can take a good ten or so sword chops without going down, but it's still definitely an abstraction.
Well, we get a thread about every week on whether HP represent health or plot armor. According to the former camp, as you say, if you have 92 out of 100 HP then you are scratched or bruised, and your character can simply take a lot of punishment (like characters in action movies, really). This is associated.

According to the latter camp, if you have 92 out of 100 HP then, your character is less capable of dodging and less lucky, but the attack missed and you're not actually wounded. Except when the attack was a poison needle, then you were wounded after all. And except that people can restore your dodging and luck by putting a bandage on you. And that spells like Resist Fire don't actually make you resist fire, but instead make you more likely to dodge fire and more lucky against fire. This is (very much) disassociated.

As Snips, Snails & Dragon Tales puts it, "that move was so inspiring that it turns out that retroactively, I wasn't wounded in the first place".



Oh, I'm not saying that all x/period abilities are dissociated but some of them definitely are; I'm under the impression that this is especially true for 4e, which is one of the main things that prompted Alexandrian's dissociated mechanics essay in the first place.
Indeed. For instance, in 4E, a combat encounter will take less than a minute in-game, whereas a skill encounter can take hours. In the former case, your "encounter powers" refresh after you rest for five minutes, in the latter case they don't.


Right, I haven't actually played 4e so I didn't realise that they forced the matter to such a degree. That is a bit iffy.
Yeah, it's probably the main criticism of that game (as soon as you realize that people who say "it plays like a computer game" are actually complaining about disassociations). It's not that all disassociations are bad, but it is true that having too many of them will turn people away.

[NoldorForce]

The key is that they are intentionally so. The GM explicitly cannot make judgement calls on whether an ability should work; the ability works as written regardless of circumstances (and you either adjust the flavor accordingly or ignore the flavor because "relax, it's just a game" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra)). For example, the official take on proning an ooze in 4E is that you don't actually throw it prone because that's not possible, but your character does something unspecified which results in the ooze getting the exact same penalties as for being prone, even though it's not technically prone.

That's the disassociation.What prevents the GM from making a judgement call, though, that's not present in other editions? Or conversely, what's the issue with using a bit of imagination to bring the fiction with what the underlying rules say? (Also, what prevents you from tripping an ooze in 3.x?)

Stuff like this that centers around interpreting tight rules always seemed artificial, since you're never married to one particular interpretation of those rules in the fiction.

It's sort of a bad term, because of that. "Disassociated mechanics" mostly means "the exact point where my own suspension of disbelief can't hold up", and that point is very different for different people. Some people would find Dungeon World's "you only get hurt when you fail an action" to be wildly disassociated, while others consider it a smooth-flowing part of the system.This seems to be the implicit definition, considering how experimental a number of RPGs have gotten in the past decade or so if they aren't following in D&D's footsteps. Compare things like Dogs in the Vinyard, Fiasco, and Microscope; all of those are rather weird compared to the original versions of D&D.

In particular, the "plays like a computer game" trope is a reaction to newfangled changes like keywording and clearly delineating rules, which 3E didn't do nearly so much of. (Recall the weirdness of Strongheart Vest interacting with Hellfire Warlock, after all.) Back when 3E was released, people were complaining about it being Diablo in TRPG form, so complaints about an edition being too much like a computer game are really just people complaining about changes they don't like, pure and simple.

[BayardSPSR]

Here's an in-depth example of dealing with the second from Strike!:

I'm used to games that flow from "I do/try to do this" to "roll that and we'll evaluate what happens," rather than "I do this" to "wait, never mind, the rules for that don't make sense, so I do come up with a way for them to make sense," so the example rubs me the wrong way. I'm aware that people can rightly like some of the other results of such a system, just... Rules exist to tell me what the results of what I try to do are; rules telling me what I may (or must) try to do in the first place are just bad improv.


Characters need some way to advance

Well... Not really. While I run homebrewed systems exclusively, I have found that it's possible to cut character advancement entirely and have no one mind at all.


That depends. It would not be disassociated for a character to have a limited amount of stamina / primal energy / mana that replenishes by sleeping / meditating / prayer at sunrise.

You also have the weird disconnect (I think that's what I want to call disassociated mechanics, "weird disconnects") regarding the fact that "rage" need not correlate with the character's emotional state.


In particular, the "plays like a computer game" trope is a reaction to newfangled changes like keywording and clearly delineating rules, which 3E didn't do nearly so much of. (Recall the weirdness of Strongheart Vest interacting with Hellfire Warlock, after all.) Back when 3E was released, people were complaining about it being Diablo in TRPG form, so complaints about an edition being too much like a computer game are really just people complaining about changes they don't like, pure and simple.

No they aren't. As I've said in a different thread, tabletop RPGs and many computer games do actually resemble each other, and it's possible for tabletop RPGs to resemble certain computer games in ways that people consider to be inappropriate. Both hobbies evolved over the same period of time and influenced each other (see pedit5 (http://armchairarcade.com/neo/node/1948)).

Criticizing a TTRPG for resembling a MOBA more than games more directly inspired by TTRPGs is valid. I personally find that any relationship with video games feels video-gamey, which covers the whole D&D franchise. That doesn't mean they're bad or that people shouldn't like them; it just means that I recognize their two-way relationship with video-game implementations and find that it feels different from games developed more independently, like those ones you think are weird.

Weird being a word that describes my impressions of the assumptions behind the whole D&D family, by the way.

[Max_Killjoy]

so complaints about an edition being too much like a computer game are really just people complaining about changes they don't like, pure and simple.



I really wish these discussions could dispense entirely and permanently with the attempts at telling other people why they think what they think. :smallyuk:


Personally, I have no loyalty to any prior edition of D&D, I dislike D&D of all editions intensely for several reasons... and within five minutes of reading through a borrowed copy of 4E, I was thinking "this is an attempt at bringing in MMO elements". No prompting, no one else's opinion, no prior influence.


But somehow, despite not liking D&D's rules anyway, this was just a "bad reaction" to changes I didn't like?

[Kurald Galain]

that "rage" need not correlate with the character's emotional state.
That's because the word "rage" has multiple meanings. The one appropriate to the barbarian is not "anger", but "to move with great violence or intensity".


Criticizing a TTRPG for resembling a MOBA more than games more directly inspired by TTRPGs is valid.
Yes. It's also worth noting that disassociated mechanics are normal and expected in many genres of video games (as well as board games).

[BayardSPSR]

That's because the word "rage" has multiple meanings. The one appropriate to the barbarian is not "anger", but "to move with great violence or intensity".

Which I understand to be a metaphorical anthropomorphism , comparing, say, a stormy sea to emotional tumult.

[Max_Killjoy]

That's because the word "rage" has multiple meanings. The one appropriate to the barbarian is not "anger", but "to move with great violence or intensity".


In this context of the rule or ability in question, is "rage" a noun or a verb?





Yes. It's also worth noting that disassociated mechanics are normal and expected in many genres of video games (as well as board games).


To a point. There's the long-standing debate about how tolerable gameplay vs story segregation is (personally, I loath it), for example.

[Kurald Galain]

Which I understand to be a metaphorical anthropomorphism , comparing, say, a stormy sea to emotional tumult.
But it works both ways, in that a barbarian can be compared to a stormy sea.


In this context of the rule or ability in question, is "rage" a noun or a verb?
Both.


To a point. There's the long-standing debate about how tolerable gameplay vs story segregation is (personally, I loath it), for example.
Yes. Disassociated Mechanics are directly a kind of Gameplay And Story Segregation. In computer games, it is rather more accepted in certain genres (e.g. shmups, platformers, MOBA) than in others (CRPGs, sandboxes). As WOTC found out, turns out that in tabletop games it is also rather more accepted in certain genres (e.g. chess, Settlers of Catan) than in others (TRPGs, obviously).

[Mightymosy]

But it works both ways, in that a barbarian can be compared to a stormy sea.


Both.


Yes. Disassociated Mechanics are directly a kind of Gameplay And Story Segregation. In computer games, it is rather more accepted in certain genres (e.g. shmups, platformers, MOBA) than in others (CRPGs, sandboxes). As WOTC found out, turns out that in tabletop games it is also rather more accepted in certain genres (e.g. chess, Settlers of Catan) than in others (TRPGs, obviously).

One quick note from someone who really loves Settlers of Catan: My opinion why it has grown to so much popularity is that the game mechanics are very much non-dissociated (as I understand the term), at least for a board game, compared to other board games.
The basic premise is you build roads and settlements. For this, you need resources. These resources you get from different kind of fields next to the settlements you have. Some fields give resources more often than others. The dice determine when which field gives resources.

When you look closer, a lot of the actual details don't really work realistically. For example: Even though resource fields have different production rates, in RL it would likely not result in the bell curves given by the two D6 that are thrown in Settlers.

But the point is that the main premise as outlined above is easily understandable. Nothing difficult about it, really.
It's easy to grasp because most people intuitively understand the concept of gathering resources to build settlements to gather more resources, and some fields are more productive than others.

As a side note: Think about the "distance rule": You may not build settlements next to any other settlement (including your own). There must always be at least two "road spaces" distance to any exsisting settlement when you place a new one.

That rule doesn't resemble anything in real life. I imagine it is there for balance reasons.
And you know what? Of all the basic rules, that rule is the one new players constantly forget - again and again.


The human mind works with what it knows. Great game designers take that into account. We can work with some dissociated game mechanics, but overloading a game with too much pushes people away from games.

I believe a lot of games that might be great fail because too many basic game rules/mechanics feel weird because they run against human expectation.
Maybe a lot of games could have been saved and become blockbusters if they are refluffed in a way so that game mechanics appear more intuitive? Hmm, maybe there's a market out there......gotta go :smallbiggrin:

[Max_Killjoy]

A couple of interesting articles in the subject of disassociated mechanics.

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games

[Knaight]

As a side note: Think about the "distance rule": You may not build settlements next to any other settlement (including your own). There must always be at least two "road spaces" distance to any exsisting settlement when you place a new one.

I'd disagree with your entire thesis, and argue that the popularity of Catan is primarily based on it being an actual good board game that came out to compete against a field full of junk, a luxury future games haven't had. With that said, I do think they carefully fit the theme and mechanics, and I'd argue that that also applies to the distance rule - actual centers of population take rural support, and they have to be somewhat distant from another. In an age of extensive trucking that matters a whole lot less, but there's a reason towns tended to be placed some distance apart historically.

[veti]

With that said, I do think they carefully fit the theme and mechanics, and I'd argue that that also applies to the distance rule - actual centers of population take rural support, and they have to be somewhat distant from another. In an age of extensive trucking that matters a whole lot less, but there's a reason towns tended to be placed some distance apart historically.

I haven't played the game, but - how do you understand "settlement"? And approximately how much distance does each "road piece" represent?

If a "settlement" can mean "anything from a sprawling metropolis to a tiny village", and a road piece is like "20 miles or more", then settlements on every single piece should be perfectly feasible. But if a settlement means, by default, "market town", and you read road pieces as "something indeterminate, but probably less than five miles", then the spacing rule makes sense.

I bring this up because - my guess is, the rules don't actually specify either of these things. So some players are probably imagining the map they play on to be the size of, let's say, Texas, while others are thinking more like Barbados, while looking at exactly the same map. And that would cause these two players to have quite a different mental picture.

[BayardSPSR]

I bring this up because - my guess is, the rules don't actually specify either of these things. So some players are probably imagining the map they play on to be the size of, let's say, Texas, while others are thinking more like Barbados, while looking at exactly the same map. And that would cause these two players to have quite a different mental picture.

That's it. German-style boardgames...

The game also has a "robber" that doesn't really represent a robber, as far as I can tell.

[Kurald Galain]

That's it. German-style boardgames...

The game also has a "robber" that doesn't really represent a robber, as far as I can tell.

It does represent a robber. Whether it acts like one is up for debate.

Anyway, Knaight is correct in that Catan is popular because it is very well written, not because its mechanics are associated (note to Mightymosy, association is unrelated to whether a rule is intuitive or easy to learn). Disassociations are normal and expected in board games; nobody is going to complain about a board game that it "plays like a board game".

[BayardSPSR]

It does represent a robber. Whether it acts like one is up for debate.

Yeah... There's something a bit off-putting about the fact that the piece acts in a way that resembles a semi-nomadic native population inadvertently interfering with the resource-collection efforts of the colonists is called a "robber," for me.

[Murk]

I always assumed the rule about spacing between villages was because it makes it impossible for more than three villages to be on the same resource - which makes sense: one area of grain or woods just can't sustain six full villages (with the game implying this resource is at least half of the income of the entire village). No matter the size, that made sense to me.

Also, in Dutch the robber is just a "bandit", which I'm guessing is closer to the original? (It would be very weird if it wasn't). It sounds better than "robber", to me.

[Segev]

Yeah... There's something a bit off-putting about the fact that the piece acts in a way that resembles a semi-nomadic native population inadvertently interfering with the resource-collection efforts of the colonists is called a "robber," for me.

If it makes you feel better, think of it instead as a wealthy man who claims the entire region as his own, squanders its resources to maintain his wasteful lifestyle, and sics his minions on anybody who would dare harvest resources to use for the betterment of their whole community.

[BRC]

If it makes you feel better, think of it instead as a wealthy man who claims the entire region as his own, squanders its resources to maintain his wasteful lifestyle, and sics his minions on anybody who would dare harvest resources to use for the betterment of their whole community.

Perhaps some sort of Robber-Baron.

[BayardSPSR]

If it makes you feel better, think of it instead as a wealthy man who claims the entire region as his own, squanders its resources to maintain his wasteful lifestyle, and sics his minions on anybody who would dare harvest resources to use for the betterment of their whole community.

Yeah, I think I'll do that. Fits with German history, as well.

[The Glyphstone]

Peasants! Build me a manor house by stacking sheep on top of each other!

[2D8HP]

Peasants! Build me a manor house by stacking sheep on top of each other!

In reading A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th-Century (https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571), I learned the Jacquerie (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquerie) said, "scratch a Noble, find a Bandit".
So under ever 10th level D&D "Lord" is a "murder-hobo".
:wink:

[Honest Tiefling]

In reading A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th-Century (https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirror-Calamitous-14th-Century/dp/0345349571), I learned the Jacquerie (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquerie) said, "scratch a Noble, find a Bandit".
So under ever 10th level D&D "Lord" is a "murder-hobo".


That's pretty impressive that the character can still be a hobo despite having a home with servants. I certainly don't put that past DnD PCs, but someone tell me if there is any way to justify this with German History, please.

[BayardSPSR]

That's pretty impressive that the character can still be a hobo despite having a home with servants. I certainly don't put that past DnD PCs, but someone tell me if there is any way to justify this with German History, please.

Ostsiedlung = squatting?

[Dimers]

Ridiculous rule from D&D 4e: A fast character can improve the initiative score of a larger, slower ally by jumping onto and off of her shoulders. It costs the "mount" one round of actions but lasts for the duration of the encounter.

Ridiculous rule from D&D 5e: Trying to see into a typical bush prevents you from seeing anything at all, anywhere.

[Sith_Happens]

Here's one I just remembered: at least most Powered by the Apocalypse games have no rules for opposed rolls. Which is fine most of the time but means (together with certain other aspects of how rolling works) that the entire system completely breaks down as soon as two PCs start throwing punches at each other.

[Lorsa]

Did someone mention the swedish game Viking?

According to hearsay (I haven't actually read the rules myself), the encumbrance rules are quite silly. Carrying too much stuff reduces your movement velocity by a certain value (which increases by the weight of the carried stuff). Since this is calculated as [Current movement velocity = Unencumbered movement velocity - Movement velocity penalty], it means that if you carry enough stuff, you will MOVE BACKWARDS, possibly at a higher speed than your Unencumbered movement could bring your forward. So, the quickest way to move about is to lift up something very heavy, to find yourself propelled backwards at a great speed. Hurray!

[digiman619]

Did someone mention the swedish game Viking?

According to hearsay (I haven't actually read the rules myself), the encumbrance rules are quite silly. Carrying too much stuff reduces your movement velocity by a certain value (which increases by the weight of the carried stuff). Since this is calculated as [Current movement velocity = Unencumbered movement velocity - Movement velocity penalty], it means that if you carry enough stuff, you will MOVE BACKWARDS, possibly at a higher speed than your Unencumbered movement could bring your forward. So, the quickest way to move about is to lift up something very heavy, to find yourself propelled backwards at a great speed. Hurray!

That explains Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing...

[Segev]

Ridiculous rule from D&D 4e: A fast character can improve the initiative score of a larger, slower ally by jumping onto and off of her shoulders. It costs the "mount" one round of actions but lasts for the duration of the encounter.Eh... If you think of it as the mounting and dismounting costing "part of" a round, it makes more sense. The "mount" loses a whole round of actions from this. It's effectively an initiative penalty shoving him into the NEXT round before he gets to act again.


Ridiculous rule from D&D 5e: Trying to see into a typical bush prevents you from seeing anything at all, anywhere.
Where do you find this? The rules on heavy obscurement blind you wrt anything in the heavily obscured region; they don't blind you wrt things outside the heavy obscurement.

[Belac93]

It eventually got changed, but by the 5e PHB, if you are in darkness without darkvision, you can't see the adventurer with the torch who is literally 45 feet away from you and walking around with a flaming stick.

[Arbane]

Sneak Attack in Pathfinder (and D&D 3.5): a Rogue can't Sneak Attack someone who has Concealment. Dim light causes Concealment.

It isn't possible for a Rogue to shank someone in a dark alley.

[Milo v3]

Sneak Attack in Pathfinder (and D&D 3.5): a Rogue can't Sneak Attack someone who has Concealment. Dim light causes Concealment.

It isn't possible for a Rogue to shank someone in a dark alley.

Thankfully that's been changed in Pathfinder with Pathfinder Unchained.

[Dimers]

Where do you find this? The rules on heavy obscurement blind you wrt anything in the heavily obscured region; they don't blind you wrt things outside the heavy obscurement.

PHB 183 sez, "A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in [a heavily obscure] area." You try to look into heavy obscurement, you're blind. Seems pretty straightforward ... if certainly unintended. A better phrasing would be "You are treated as blinded regarding anything which heavy obscurement entirely prevents you from seeing."

Here's another set from 4e. You only get an AC bonus from a stat if you wear light armor -- not if you're in normal clothing or naked. Sorry, you forgot how to dodge because you're in civvies! And the encumbrance penalty of a shield also depends on you wearing it, which is not possible within the meaning of the game term "wear". You "use" a shield. Warforged make things weirder by being able to attach armor as firmware or wear it externally like most people. A warforged who attaches armor doesn't gain any benefit by RAW, because the rules for attaching specifically say it's not the same as wearing, and you have to wear armor to benefit. Good thing they also don't have any encumbrance penalty, for the same reason.

That's how things stand after errata. Using the game's original wording, a warforged could attach heavy armor and wear light armor for AC so high only natural 20s would hit.

[georgie_leech]

PHB 183 sez, "A creature effectively suffers from the blinded condition when trying to see something in [a heavily obscure] area." You try to look into heavy obscurement, you're blind. Seems pretty straightforward ... if certainly unintended. A better phrasing would be "You are treated as blinded regarding anything which heavy obscurement entirely prevents you from seeing."

Here's another set from 4e. You only get an AC bonus from a stat if you wear light armor -- not if you're in normal clothing or naked. Sorry, you forgot how to dodge because you're in civvies! And the encumbrance penalty of a shield also depends on you wearing it, which is not possible within the meaning of the game term "wear". You "use" a shield. Warforged make things weirder by being able to attach armor as firmware or wear it externally like most people. A warforged who attaches armor doesn't gain any benefit by RAW, because the rules for attaching specifically say it's not the same as wearing, and you have to wear armor to benefit. Good thing they also don't have any encumbrance penalty, for the same reason.

That's how things stand after errata. Using the game's original wording, a warforged could attach heavy armor and wear light armor for AC so high only natural 20s would hit.

Quibble, Cloth Armor explicitly included regular clothing as an example. Presumably Naked people are too busy yelling about being invisible to dodge anything.

[Bohandas]

Ridiculous rule from D&D 4e: A fast character can improve the initiative score of a larger, slower ally by jumping onto and off of her shoulders. It costs the "mount" one round of actions but lasts for the duration of the encounter.

"Who runs Barter Town?"

[Chauncymancer]

Here's one I just remembered: at least most Powered by the Apocalypse games have no rules for opposed rolls. Which is fine most of the time but means (together with certain other aspects of how rolling works) that the entire system completely breaks down as soon as two PCs start throwing punches at each other.
The reason for the helping move to include the option for a -2 "bonus" (in the games that include it) is to model the acting player as making a move, and the target "helping" them with a -2 penalty. Some games remove this text, likely to suggest PVP should be against the rules, but of the games which remove it I don't know if they address it.

[BRC]

Did someone mention the swedish game Viking?

According to hearsay (I haven't actually read the rules myself), the encumbrance rules are quite silly. Carrying too much stuff reduces your movement velocity by a certain value (which increases by the weight of the carried stuff). Since this is calculated as [Current movement velocity = Unencumbered movement velocity - Movement velocity penalty], it means that if you carry enough stuff, you will MOVE BACKWARDS, possibly at a higher speed than your Unencumbered movement could bring your forward. So, the quickest way to move about is to lift up something very heavy, to find yourself propelled backwards at a great speed. Hurray!

This sounds like something from a video game speedrun.

"So, to reach the next town, I turn around, pick up this cow, and run backwards"

[ImNotTrevor]

The reason for the helping move to include the option for a -2 "bonus" (in the games that include it) is to model the acting player as making a move, and the target "helping" them with a -2 penalty. Some games remove this text, likely to suggest PVP should be against the rules, but of the games which remove it I don't know if they address it.

That move is even called Help Or Interfere.
Seduce/Manipulate also applies differently against PCs.

Of course, there are no opposed rolls still, but PVP is very much allowed in Apocalypse World, at least. But it certainly assumes that NPCs will be almost exclusively playing the role of "target" for PC moves.

[Sith_Happens]

The reason for the helping move to include the option for a -2 "bonus" (in the games that include it) is to model the acting player as making a move, and the target "helping" them with a -2 penalty. Some games remove this text, likely to suggest PVP should be against the rules, but of the games which remove it I don't know if they address it.

That helps precisely not at all to fix the actual problem, which is how to resolve contradictory outcomes. What happens if Player A rolls a 10+ to attack Player B but Player B rolls a 10+ to defend against Player A's attack? Who knows. Oh, and good luck deciding who rolls what first if it's not immediately obvious, since PbtA has no concept of initiative or turn order.

[NNescio]

5e, combined with Unearthed Arcana material (basically nonplaytested additional character options released online for free): Be a Minotaur Monk. Martial Arts (the monk class feature letting giving them an extra attack, plus scaling damage dice) requires the monk to be either unarmed or wielding a monk weapon. Minotaurs are never considered unarmed ("you are never unarmed"), and horns are not monk weapons.

Bingo, anti-optimization, your bull-headed luchador can't benefit from one of his signature class features.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

5e, combined with Unearthed Arcana material (basically nonplaytested additional character options released online for free): Be a Minotaur Monk. Martial Arts (the monk class feature letting giving them an extra attack, plus scaling damage dice) requires the monk to be either unarmed or wielding a monk weapon. Minotaurs are never considered unarmed ("you are never unarmed"), and horns are not monk weapons.

Bingo, anti-optimization, your bull-headed luchador can't benefit from one of his signature class features.

Wield means to hold and use, not merely possess. A Minotaur Monk who is doing nothing with his horns is not wielding them, any more than he is wielding the shortbow strapped to his back.By an extremely hostile reading, one could argue that a Minotaur Monk could only use martial arts when wielding a monk weapon (rather than with his fists alone), but by the same token, one would have to conclude that any Monk even carrying a non-Monk weapon would be in the same boat. And this requires twisting a slight ambiguity in wording in the most hostile manner possible ('unarmed' can be taken either to mean 'not carrying a weapon' or 'not using a weapon'. Clearly the Horns description is using the former, and the Martial Arts description is using the latter, but since 5e never strictly defines a rules definition of 'unarmed' both are acceptable).

[Spore]

One my DM found. A giant can throw a boulder further than he can shoot an arrow from a (composite) longbow in Pathfinder.

[Telok]

One my DM found. A giant can throw a boulder further than he can shoot an arrow from a (composite) longbow in Pathfinder.

Hilariously no WotC version of D&D addresses size adjustment for thrown and missile weapons. Ergo, by the rules, in 5e a creature with 15' reach can only throw a net as far as his arms reach and does so at disadvantage if the target is not directly adjacent to his body. The bows wielded by 3" tall fairys have the same range as bows wielded by giants.

[ComaVision]

Hilariously no WotC version of D&D addresses size adjustment for thrown and missile weapons. Ergo, by the rules, in 5e a creature with 15' reach can only throw a net as far as his arms reach and does so at disadvantage if the target is not directly adjacent to his body. The bows wielded by 3" tall fairys have the same range as bows wielded by giants.

Whips have a fixed 15' reach (in 3.5 at least), so wielding one could actually give you a lesser reach than you normally have.

[soldersbushwack]

"So... you've gotten better at lockpicking because we killed a bunch of orcs?"

But fixing that is hard.

I'm actually working on how to fix that for my own Mutants & Masterminds hack and it involves a lot of complicated work.

In Mutants & Masterminds creating a character who dips in their knife in filth in order to cause disease requires extra character points despite the fact that every human being ****s excrement for free.

Likewise having the ability to throw sand out of your pocket into eyes or garrote people with shoe laces costs character points.

Also, it is trivial to create mustard gas out of very easily obtainable ethylene, sulfur and chlorine but that still costs character points.

So, one of the things that I want to implement is that Challenge Rating is completely distinct from Character Level, XP, Character Points or similar.

So, a Character Level 1 peasant farmer could be boosted up to a much higher Challenge Rating by very clever strategy.

[Milo v3]

In Mutants & Masterminds creating a character who dips in their knife in filth in order to cause disease requires extra character points despite the fact that every human being ****s excrement for free.
Well you could do it as a stunt. Things you don't do often can generally be done as a stunt.

[soldersbushwack]

Power stunts are a horribly artificial mechanic which is one of the things that was being complained about.

[vegetalss4]

One my DM found. A giant can throw a boulder further than he can shoot an arrow from a (composite) longbow in Pathfinder.

No they cannot.
A thrown rock can be thrown out to five range increments while a bow allow you to shoot out to 10.
So even the type of giant able to throw rocks the fartest (stone giants) can throw those a maximum of 5*180ft = 900 ft, and shoot an arrow from a composite longbow 10*110 ft =1100 ft.
However the giant is far more accurate with stones at long distances than with bows, what with those 900 ft giving the rock thrower a -10 penalty
while the archer would get a -16 penalty at the same distance.

[Chauncymancer]

That helps precisely not at all to fix the actual problem, which is how to resolve contradictory outcomes. What happens if Player A rolls a 10+ to attack Player B but Player B rolls a 10+ to defend against Player A's attack?
Player B's defend roll inflicts a -2 on the value of Player A's attack roll (Because that is how you roll to defend, you roll to Interfere, which inflicts a -2 to the roll). A 10 or 11 will be reduced to a partial success, a 7 or 8 will be reduced to a miss, and all other values the penalty does nothing, he just rolled too well for you to change what happened/ so poorly he didn't need your help to fail.

Who knows. Oh, and good luck deciding who rolls what first if it's not immediately obvious, since PbtA has no concept of initiative or turn order.
The MC asks a player what they do, that player says "I attack [another player]." The MC asks "[Another player] what do you do about it?]. If [another player] says something that might stop them from being attacked, you have them roll their Interfere move first, then the first player, the one who started the mess, rolls with a penalty or not based on the first roll. That's how you determine who is the attacker.

[soldersbushwack]

In Call of Cthulu 7th edition a player gains 2d6 sanity points when they reach 90% in their Cthulhu Mythos skill.

[Chauncymancer]

Power stunts are a horribly artificial mechanic which is one of the things that was being complained about.
In specifically 2nd edition M&M, in the supplement for pulp characters, "Stunts" were published as a different thing from "Power Stunts". They allowed you to trade off one value of an attack for another. I think the example was hitting someone with an utility pole, trading off accuracy for damage. These "Stunts" didn't cost PP, anyone could do them at any time.

[Telok]

In Call of Cthulu 7th edition a player gains 2d6 sanity points when they reach 90% in their Cthulhu Mythos skill.

WTF? Shouldn't the character have a maximum SAN of 10 at that point anyways? Or did they drop the max SAN = 100 - mythos skill rule?

[Khedrac]

WTF? Shouldn't the character have a maximum SAN of 10 at that point anyways? Or did they drop the max SAN = 100 - mythos skill rule?

One gains SAN (I think the amount varies by edition) for any skill reachign 90% hence this ridiculous concept.
That said, you are correct that at best they can gain 9 SAN from it (SAN of 1 and Cthulhu Mythos exactly reaching 90).

The character should have long since retired.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

One gains SAN (I think the amount varies by edition) for any skill reachign 90% hence this ridiculous concept.
That said, you are correct that at best they can gain 9 SAN from it (SAN of 1 and Cthulhu Mythos exactly reaching 90).

The character should have long since retired.

Maybe that's the point at which you realise you can stop the big C, at least for now, with a steamboat.

[Seto]

It was pointed out today in the 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder forum that Assassins, a profession normally associated with stealth, technically has to sing or be otherwise heard when casting spells because of lazy editing. I really just want to find an example of a singing assassin in some musical right about now.

The Phantom of the Opera, arguably?

[georgie_leech]

The Phantom of the Opera, arguably?

I suspect they were referencing this, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdJg6Duzzf4) myself.

[soldersbushwack]

Under Mutants & Masterminds rules if you pick up the Infinity Gauntlet you lose it at the end of the scene or adventure.


In other cases, characters may make temporary use of a device. Most devices are usable by anyone able to operate them, in which case characters may loan devices to each other, or may pick up and use someone else’s device (or even steal a device away from someone in order to use it against them). The key concept here is the use of the device is temporary, something that happens during a single scene or, at most, a single adventure. If the character wants to continue using the device beyond that, he must pay Character points to make the device part of his regular abilities. Otherwise the GM can simply rule that the device is lost, reclaimed by its owner, runs out of power, breaks down, or whatever, and is therefore no longer accessible.

This explains why Thanos always loses the Infinity Gauntlet. He simply doesn't have the character points for it.

[LudicSavant]

Multiclassing XP penalty in D&D 3.5e

Is there anyone who thinks that it was a good idea?

[Max_Killjoy]

Under Mutants & Masterminds rules if you pick up the Infinity Gauntlet you lose it at the end of the scene or adventure.



In other cases, characters may make temporary use of a device. Most devices are usable by anyone able to operate them, in which case characters may loan devices to each other, or may pick up and use someone else’s device (or even steal a device away from someone in order to use it against them). The key concept here is the use of the device is temporary, something that happens during a single scene or, at most, a single adventure. If the character wants to continue using the device beyond that, he must pay Character points to make the device part of his regular abilities. Otherwise the GM can simply rule that the device is lost, reclaimed by its owner, runs out of power, breaks down, or whatever, and is therefore no longer accessible.


This explains why Thanos always loses the Infinity Gauntlet. He simply doesn't have the character points for it.



That's not new to M&M -- HERO has long had that as standard rule for games in which weapons, armor, gear, etc, are all purchased with character points (that is, Superheroic).

[Thrudd]

Multiclassing XP penalty in D&D 3.5e

Is there anyone who thinks that it was a good idea?

Yes. It discourages "dipping". Of course, favored classes make it very easy to avoid any penalty. I dislike the whole style of multiclassing in 3e/5e anyway.

[JAL_1138]

Back in my day, dagnabbit, if you wanted to multiclass, you had to be a demihuman and split the XP between them equally! Dadgum whippersnappers!

(Humans could dual-class, which is a lot closer to current multiclassing, but you had to be a little careful on the timing, since you couldn't use your old class' features again until you passed it in level with your new class, couldn't go back to your old class again, and you still had restrictions on things like casting in armor).

[Quertus]

Back in my day, dagnabbit, if you wanted to multiclass, you had to be a demihuman and split the XP between them equally! Dadgum whippersnappers!

(Humans could dual-class, which is a lot closer to current multiclassing, but you had to be a little careful on the timing, since you couldn't use your old class' features again until you passed it in level with your new class, couldn't go back to your old class again, and you still had restrictions on things like casting in armor).

Well, you technically could use your old abilities - you just didn't earn any XP for that... session? adventure?... if you did.

[Enixon]

Well, you technically could use your old abilities - you just didn't earn any XP for that... session? adventure?... if you did.

which might even be worse, say you're a high level theif that later dual classes to fighter, you strap on your new plate mail, take up your new greatsword and meet the local orc raiders in glorious battle. You fight for hours trading blows and hacking through the horde, fighting tooth and nail but finally, miraculously even, the orc cheiftain falls dead at your feet. You pause, reflecting on the long and epic battle, and the lessions you've learned of swordplay from the grueling experience.....

annnnd then realize you havn't learned a thing, becasue you caught that first orc by suprise and backstabed him so no exp for you. :smallbiggrin:

[Jay R]

which might even be worse, say you're a high level theif that later dual classes to fighter, you strap on your new plate mail, take up your new greatsword and meet the local orc raiders in glorious battle. You fight for hours trading blows and hacking through the horde, fighting tooth and nail but finally, miraculously even, the orc cheiftain falls dead at your feet. You pause, reflecting on the long and epic battle, and the lessions you've learned of swordplay from the grueling experience.....

annnnd then realize you havn't learned a thing, becasue you caught that first orc by suprise and backstabed him so no exp for you. :smallbiggrin:

That's actually the point. You went in there thinking like a Thief, not a Fighter. The theory is that, despite the way you described it, you have shown that you were ready to drop the Fighter stuff when convenient, so you weren't really learning what was new by being utterly committed to being a Fighter, but using the Fighter skills you already had with a readiness to drop into the Thief skills that you really think about instead. Even if you only decided to drop out of it once, that indicates that you weren't focused on developing new Fighter abilities, but depending on the Thief skills you had in reserve.

Yes, it's an overly simplistic model, but modelling the complex, multi-faceted and continuous process of gaining experience in discrete levels is automatically an overly simplistic model.

[Knaight]

That's actually the point. You went in there thinking like a Thief, not a Fighter. The theory is that, despite the way you described it, you have shown that you were ready to drop the Fighter stuff when convenient, so you weren't really learning what was new by being utterly committed to being a Fighter, but using the Fighter skills you already had with a readiness to drop into the Thief skills that you really think about instead. Even if you only decided to drop out of it once, that indicates that you weren't focused on developing new Fighter abilities, but depending on the Thief skills you had in reserve.

Yes, it's an overly simplistic model, but modelling the complex, multi-faceted and continuous process of gaining experience in discrete levels is automatically an overly simplistic model.

Overly simplistic is a generous way to describe it. Even putting aside that fighters can totally attack people from behind, they went in and did a lot of fighting. Yet somehow they learned nothing about that fighting, because in the course of that fighting they attacked someone from behind once. If you bring the fact that fighters can attack people from behind, it instead turns into them not learning anything from the battle because they were more effective attacking someone from behind than most when they did basically the same thing any fighter would have done. It's taking an already oversimplified model and then making it more complicated while also making it even less sensible.

[JAL_1138]

Well, you technically could use your old abilities - you just didn't earn any XP for that... session? adventure?... if you did.

I stand corrected. Haven't read that section in a long while and misremembered.

[Jay R]

Overly simplistic is a generous way to describe it. Even putting aside that fighters can totally attack people from behind, they went in and did a lot of fighting. Yet somehow they learned nothing about that fighting, because in the course of that fighting they attacked someone from behind once. If you bring the fact that fighters can attack people from behind, it instead turns into them not learning anything from the battle because they were more effective attacking someone from behind than most when they did basically the same thing any fighter would have done. It's taking an already oversimplified model and then making it more complicated while also making it even less sensible.

You're right - Fighters can attack from behind. If he did it like a Fighter, without taking extra damage for a sneak attack, then he can get experience points. But if, as soon as he saw the exposed back, he immediately dropped into Thief thinking, and performed a sneak attack, then he's not completely focused on his Fighter skills.

It's not because he "attacked someone from behind once". That single occurence is the evidence that he wasn't trying to focus on thinking like a Fighter for that entire episode. For one thing, a Thief usually can't do it in melee except for the initial attack anyway.

I have a fencing student right now who likes to charge in too much. He's never going to get better at parries until he stands back and practices his parries - even when a charging attack would work. If he's standing back, and only charges in one time, when the best opportunity appears, that still means he's focused on using his old technique, and not the new technique I'm trying to teach.

When I went from fencing to learning sword-and shield techniques, I kept trying to use thrusts whenever I could, because I was good at them. And I didn't get any better with sword and shield. Only when I stopped thrusting at all for a year or two did I really start learning sword & board technique.

Similarly, if a trained pickpocket walks through a crowd and only picks one pocket, that doesn't mean that he only considered it once. It's much more likely that he was checking out the entire crowd, and only saw only one exposed pocket that looked tempting enough.

Will that always be the case? Probably not. But the point of the rule was to get the Thief 5 / Fighter 2 to focus on his Fighting skills as much as any other Fighter 2 does. A dual class isn't a multi-classed character. It's somebody who is dropping an old class to learn a new one. He needs to focus on the new skills. Like all D&D simulation, it was an overly simplistic rule, but it succeeded in driving the behavior it was intended to drive.

[Knaight]

You're right - Fighters can attack from behind. If he did it like a Fighter, without taking extra damage for a sneak attack, then he can get experience points. But if, as soon as he saw the exposed back, he immediately dropped into Thief thinking, and performed a sneak attack, then he's not completely focused on his Fighter skills.

This makes zero sense. The guy is fighting like a Fighter throughout, and he does the same thing a fighter would do. It just happens to be that he's better at it, and somehow this completely nullifies the rest of the learning.


I have a fencing student right now who likes to charge in too much. He's never going to get better at parries until he stands back and practices his parries - even when a charging attack would work. If he's standing back, and only charges in one time, when the best opportunity appears, that still means he's focused on using his old technique, and not the new technique I'm trying to teach.

When I went from fencing to learning sword-and shield techniques, I kept trying to use thrusts whenever I could, because I was good at them. And I didn't get any better with sword and shield. Only when I stopped thrusting at all for a year or two did I really start learning sword & board technique.

If we're citing anecdotes here, I can easily provide counter examples. I mostly do spear, and as a result my sword and shield techniques also tend to be a bit thrust heavy. Somehow, I picked up plenty of sword and shield fighting regardless, with these thrusts never getting in the way. Similarly, I know several people who have tended to be a bit overly reckless with charges, and have seen them get better at parrying while still taking good opportunities to rush. It's also worth noting that these examples don't even map well, as the example provided involves doing the same thing other people on the same learning path are doing, but happening to be better at it because of a bit of practice. It's more like a situation where someone would charge an archer regardless, but because someone with a particularly fast running speed didn't slow down when charging said archer they suddenly learn nothing about the fight where they're fighting in melee against the archer's buddies the exact same way anyone would. It's ludicrous.


Will that always be the case? Probably not. But the point of the rule was to get the Thief 5 / Fighter 2 to focus on his Fighting skills as much as any other Fighter 2 does. A dual class isn't a multi-classed character. It's somebody who is dropping an old class to learn a new one. He needs to focus on the new skills. Like all D&D simulation, it was an overly simplistic rule, but it succeeded in driving the behavior it was intended to drive.
It drove the behavior fine, the problem is that driving said behavior comes at the cost of being a worse simulation while taking more rules to simulate things. Suddenly we have people not noticing secret doors, because if they notice them they won't learn any fighting from all the fighting they're doing. Totally separate skill sets that have no bearing on each other somehow manage to interfere with each other. This would be analogous to your knowledge of physics somehow getting in the way of your fencing skills.

[Jay R]

This makes zero sense. The guy is fighting like a Fighter throughout, and he does the same thing a fighter would do. It just happens to be that he's better at it, and somehow this completely nullifies the rest of the learning./QUOTE]

It's not the same thing. The Thief is sneaking up with a goal toward slipping a blade carefully where it will do a different kind of damage. A Fighter is doing the same attack he would normally do from the front, just that the opponent can't dodge it.

[QUOTE=Knaight;21175536]It's more like a situation where someone would charge an archer regardless, but because someone with a particularly fast running speed didn't slow down when charging said archer they suddenly learn nothing about the fight where they're fighting in melee against the archer's buddies the exact same way anyone would. It's ludicrous.

The fighter is charging while blocking or dodging. The track star is trying to get there before the shot gets off. They are different techniques, and the archer did not practice blocking and dodging.


It drove the behavior fine, the problem is that driving said behavior comes at the cost of being a worse simulation while taking more rules to simulate things. Suddenly we have people not noticing secret doors, because if they notice them they won't learn any fighting from all the fighting they're doing.

I'd say that he was not noticing doors because he's busy thinking about his swings, and his blocks, and staying prepared for a fight. It's not that seeing a secret door is anti-fighting. It's that learning new skills requires focusing on the new skills.


Totally separate skill sets that have no bearing on each other somehow manage to interfere with each other. This would be analogous to your knowledge of physics somehow getting in the way of your fencing skills.

No, it's analogous to the idea that thinking about fencing when I'm supposed to be studying for my physics exam gets in the way of me learning physics as fast or as well as somebody who studies physics consistently.

Also, you are acting like it's an exact description, rather than a cumulative thing. If it normally takes 3-4 sessions to go up a level, and you use your former skills in about half the levels, then it will take about 6-8 sessions instead. That doesn't mean you learned nothing in half the sessions and everything in the other half; it's a discrete model of a continuous function, neither more nor less unreasonable than assuming you learn all your new skills the exact moment you get that many experience points.

[Max_Killjoy]

What we're seeing here is another example of how contrived and incoherent the whole notion of "character class" really is.

[jindra34]

What we're seeing here is another example of how contrived and incoherent the whole notion of "character class" really is.

And why most rules regarding them are ridiculous. Putting people into small regular boxes as descriptions just doesn't WORK.

[AMFV]

And why most rules regarding them are ridiculous. Putting people into small regular boxes as descriptions just doesn't WORK.

That depends on what your goals are. If you're simulating something where that level of precision is useful, then that's what you do. For example real world combat tends to involve people being split into very delimited specific roles, because there are certain things that need to be done. In a small fireteam level, you'd have the Gunner, the A-Gunner, the Rifleman, and the Team Leader. Certainly if you start paying attention to anything more than their rough roles in combat, everything gets a lot more complex. But if I'm basing a game around combat, I might go for those classes, because they really define what a person should be doing.

Of course, that's not necessarily true of all games, but certainly some games can work that way.

[Thrudd]

And why most rules regarding them are ridiculous. Putting people into small regular boxes as descriptions just doesn't WORK.

Not in real life. In a game, abstractions are necessary. Classes and archetypes are a way of defining a character's role in a game, and they work great. It helps to realize that such a game isn't trying to simulate every personality nuance and bit of knowledge a person could have. It is simulating an already formed profession or skill set, meant to give a player a specific strategic role in the game. The players are meant to combine the different roles in a party to overcome challenges. By choosing a class, you are deciding at the beginning the career trajectory of that character. Switching or combining roles should either be disallowed or an extreme outlier, because at the level of abstraction that classes belong in it does not make sense, you chose your character's life path already in the beginning.

[Grod_The_Giant]

That's actually the point. You went in there thinking like a Thief, not a Fighter. The theory is that, despite the way you described it, you have shown that you were ready to drop the Fighter stuff when convenient, so you weren't really learning what was new by being utterly committed to being a Fighter, but using the Fighter skills you already had with a readiness to drop into the Thief skills that you really think about instead. Even if you only decided to drop out of it once, that indicates that you weren't focused on developing new Fighter abilities, but depending on the Thief skills you had in reserve.

Yes, it's an overly simplistic model, but modelling the complex, multi-faceted and continuous process of gaining experience in discrete levels is automatically an overly simplistic model.
It's like how if I go to history class after math, I forget everything I just learned about integrals. Learning, you see, is an exceptionally delicate process, where the slightest disruption can send your entire mind careening off a cliff!

[AMFV]

It's like how if I go to history class after math, I forget everything I just learned about integrals. Learning, you see, is an exceptionally delicate process, where the slightest disruption can send your entire mind careening off a cliff!

I think a better comparison would be this: You work for several years doing complex technical work. Let's say you're an generator mechanic. Then you change career fields and work as a welder. If somebody asked you to repair a generator, you wouldn't necessarily be competent at it anymore because the skills would have substantively atrophied. I think that's the model they were going for. That you were so busy learning and maintaining a new skillset that the old one atrophies as many skills actually do. Of course there are approximations (the speed it atrophies is unrealistic, and returning to the same skill level at both skills is slightly unrealistic).

Most of the sort of complaints I've seen about this come from students, who don't really have the real world experience with having had a technical skill and then trying to do it years or even months later after having not done it. Many technical skills are extremely perishable, and learning new technical skills takes up enough of your time that it's very difficult to maintain parity in all of them. This is a big problem that the military and many technical institutions have run into many times. Say you train somebody in basic combat and rifle techniques in MCT or Basic Training. Unless they train regularly with these skills, they'll lose them, almost completely.

[Max_Killjoy]

Not in real life. In a game, abstractions are necessary. Classes and archetypes are a way of defining a character's role in a game, and they work great. It helps to realize that such a game isn't trying to simulate every personality nuance and bit of knowledge a person could have. It is simulating an already formed profession or skill set, meant to give a player a specific strategic role in the game. The players are meant to combine the different roles in a party to overcome challenges. By choosing a class, you are deciding at the beginning the career trajectory of that character. Switching or combining roles should either be disallowed or an extreme outlier, because at the level of abstraction that classes belong in it does not make sense, you chose your character's life path already in the beginning.

Meh. If cared any less about "archetypes" or "roles" or defining characters by a "career path", it would be measured using negative numbers.

What I do care about is each character built as "a person", rather a collection of tactical abilities or based on some silly notion of a "life path" that can't be diverted from.

[AMFV]

Meh. If cared any less about "archetypes" or "roles" or defining characters by a "career path", it would be measured using negative numbers.

What I do care about is each character built as "a person", rather a collection of tactical abilities or based on some silly notion of a "life path" that can't be diverted from.

Well that depends entirely on what you're doing with that person. If I'm hanging out with LCpl Schmuckatelli after work at a bar, then I care about him as a person. If we're in combat, then I don't give a crap if he's a good person, or a totally awful person, I care about his ability to perform in his specific role. The same holds true for other types of technical things. If I'm hanging out with Bob the Plumber, then I care about his personality, about what he's like "as a person", but if I'm doing plumbing work with him, that doesn't really matter to me, it's not relevant to what's going on.

So if I'm playing in an RPG that's built around socializing then the "as a person" matters more to me. To be fair honestly, even games like D&D, care a lot more about the "as a person" then I might if I were working on some sort of technical position.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well that depends entirely on what you're doing with that person. If I'm hanging out with LCpl Schmuckatelli after work at a bar, then I care about him as a person. If we're in combat, then I don't give a crap if he's a good person, or a totally awful person, I care about his ability to perform in his specific role. The same holds true for other types of technical things. If I'm hanging out with Bob the Plumber, then I care about his personality, about what he's like "as a person", but if I'm doing plumbing work with him, that doesn't really matter to me, it's not relevant to what's going on.

So if I'm playing in an RPG that's built around socializing then the "as a person" matters more to me. To be fair honestly, even games like D&D, care a lot more about the "as a person" then I might if I were working on some sort of technical position.



The character's combat skills, technical skills, social skills, personality, background, history, etc, so on, and so forth -- that's all part of that character as an individual, as a person, as a "human being" (or whatever, depending on the game setting). For some reason "as a person" is giving the impression of some sort of combat vs social split, so maybe those other terms will get the point across.

The character is supposed to be an individual specific person, not "human, fighter, level 5, # 21796" or whatever. If a character grew up in a village learning to hunt and shoot a bow, and then that village was destroyed by orcs so he had to scrounge for a living in the big city, and then he discovered a hidden talent for magic, the his build should reflect that, not be "well, choose one -- fighter, or rogue, or mage".

Frankly, I don't give a tinker's damn if he fulfills someone's cookie-cutter notion of a predefined "combat role" or sits at some perfect pinnacle of optimization.


Edit -- and yeah, I know I come across as a bit of jerk here... this whole idea of "what role does the character fill?" as the defining, core element of the character has been a constant problem in both RPGs and fiction for as long as I've been paying attention, and I have less patience for it every year.

[Knaight]

I think a better comparison would be this: You work for several years doing complex technical work. Let's say you're an generator mechanic. Then you change career fields and work as a welder. If somebody asked you to repair a generator, you wouldn't necessarily be competent at it anymore because the skills would have substantively atrophied. I think that's the model they were going for. That you were so busy learning and maintaining a new skillset that the old one atrophies as many skills actually do. Of course there are approximations (the speed it atrophies is unrealistic, and returning to the same skill level at both skills is slightly unrealistic).

It's more like you come home after a day of welding, fix a leaky pipe, and suddenly you learn nothing from the welding you did literally earlier that day because your role as an amateur plumber is suddenly getting in the way. I have no issue with skill atrophy mechanics, but that's not at all what's modeled here. What's modeled here is that actively using your skills makes them better, and you can also do other things, unless those other things are pre-labeled as skills belonging to some other class, in which case they will get in the way of learning your skills with no attention paid whatsoever to whether that actually makes any sense.

[AMFV]

The character's combat skills, technical skills, social skills, personality, background, history, etc, so on, and so forth -- that's all part of that character as an individual, as a person, as a "human being" (or whatever, depending on the game setting). For some reason "as a person" is giving the impression of some sort of combat vs social split, so maybe those other terms will get the point across.


It's not about a "combat vs. social" split the issue is that for modelling certain scenarios, a person's combat skills might be the only relevant aspect. For modelling certain technical skills the same would be true. There'd be only a slight tangential relationship between their other skillsets. That's what I was discussing.



The character is supposed to be an individual specific person, not "human, fighter, level 5, # 21796" or whatever. If a character grew up in a village learning to hunt and shoot a bow, and then that village was destroyed by orcs so he had to scrounge for a living in the big city, and then he discovered a hidden talent for magic, the his build should reflect that, not be "well, choose one -- fighter, or rogue, or mage".


That's incredibly difficult to do effectively in a point buy or classeless system though. 90% of those that I have played reward EXTREME overspecialization. Because you tend to get the most advantages out of doing that, out of focusing your points in one area. Typically those are the systems that have fewer capacities to handle unrelated skills.



Frankly, I don't give a tinker's damn if he fulfills someone's cookie-cutter notion of a predefined "combat role" or sits at some perfect pinnacle of optimization.


But the truth is that in combat, roles matter, that's why people use them. That's why in ancient fighting, people fought in specific formations that tended to crop up even in unrelated environments. That's why there's similarities in weapon design even when people weren't influenced. Combat is all about being optimal in real life, because unoptimized is equivalent to being dead.

So a game about combat roles, would have to be about heavy optimization of those roles as well. Now if your game has combat as a tertiary aspect. Or is focused on a cinematic style of combat, that may not necessarily be true.



Edit -- and yeah, I know I come across as a bit of jerk here... this whole idea of "what role does the character fill?" as the defining, core element of the character has been a constant problem in both RPGs and fiction for as long as I've been paying attention, and I have less patience for it every year.

I've never really seen the problem explicitly in fiction. Generally when you see in RPGs it's to make balance easier. To allow for greater complexity of encounters without needing to think about a lot of unrelated details. To cut down on the drag of character creation. And lastly to ensure in a combat or single focused game, that all of the characters have at least some usefulness and utility.

Say, that I have a social class based game. Then my Soldier character is going to be able to intimidate, or possible swash some buckles and impress people that way. Even if he has some combat utility. In a point-based social game, it would be possible for me to make a character that was completely inappropriate for that setting and only focused on combat abilities.


It's more like you come home after a day of welding, fix a leaky pipe, and suddenly you learn nothing from the welding you did literally earlier that day because your role as an amateur plumber is suddenly getting in the way. I have no issue with skill atrophy mechanics, but that's not at all what's modeled here. What's modeled here is that actively using your skills makes them better, and you can also do other things, unless those other things are pre-labeled as skills belonging to some other class, in which case they will get in the way of learning your skills with no attention paid whatsoever to whether that actually makes any sense.

True, but I think that if we look at the intentions behind it, the dual classing mechanic was supposed to be modelling skill atrophy. Of course the "using related skills" tag is kind of a bit out there and not the best model. But the system itself makes sense, which is the criticism I was addressing, not that specific problem. I was addressing the complaint that using unrelated knowledge can cause skills to atrophy.

To be fair, one could treat the whole thing as modelling as when you're using skillsets you already knew, basically you're being lazy. You're not learning anything because those are just you using other abilities you had. A fighter who switches over to rogue, and then fights like a fighter, is never going to improve. I believe that's what they were trying to model.

[Max_Killjoy]

True, but I think that if we look at the intentions behind it, the dual classing mechanic was supposed to be modelling skill atrophy. Of course the "using related skills" tag is kind of a bit out there and not the best model. But the system itself makes sense, which is the criticism I was addressing, not that specific problem. I was addressing the complaint that using unrelated knowledge can cause skills to atrophy.

To be fair, one could treat the whole thing as modelling as when you're using skillsets you already knew, basically you're being lazy. You're not learning anything because those are just you using other abilities you had. A fighter who switches over to rogue, and then fights like a fighter, is never going to improve. I believe that's what they were trying to model.


The dualclassing and multiclassing rules, limits, and penalties were never meant to model anything, they were always pure-gamist "balance" mechanisms that had nothing to do with mapping any territory at all, and everything to do with trying to dissuade broadening of character capabilities or characters "leaving their lane".

[AMFV]

The dualclassing and multiclassing rules, limits, and penalties were never meant to model anything, they were always pure-gamist "balance" mechanisms that had nothing to do with mapping any territory at all, and everything to do with trying to dissuade broadening of character capabilities or characters "leaving their lane".

I disagree, and I've described things that they could certainly model. Now unless you can provide designer statements backing your claim, then it's just vacuous. Now from what I've read of what Gygax and other early designers wrote, their principle focus was on simulationism, not gamism. So they were trying to model stuff, now as to how well they were modelling stuff, that's questionable.

Certainly dual-classing is meant to model somebody who changes careers late in life. Multi-classing is meant to model how non-humans with longer lifespans and more diverse knowledge often have a larger breadth of skills. And looking at the allowed combinations it's clear that some of that is reflecting things that most of their species learn.

[Max_Killjoy]

I disagree, and I've described things that they could certainly model. Now unless you can provide designer statements backing your claim, then it's just vacuous. Now from what I've read of what Gygax and other early designers wrote, their principle focus was on simulationism, not gamism. So they were trying to model stuff, now as to how well they were modelling stuff, that's questionable.

Certainly dual-classing is meant to model somebody who changes careers late in life. Multi-classing is meant to model how non-humans with longer lifespans and more diverse knowledge often have a larger breadth of skills. And looking at the allowed combinations it's clear that some of that is reflecting things that most of their species learn.


Any claim that they ever did or were ever intended to model anything real is arguing backwards from the conclusion (which probably sounds harsher than I intend it, but it's late and I can't think of a better way to phrase it right now, point being that just because a thing can be through effort explained a certain way, doesn't mean it was ever intended that way) -- and never mind that they'd do a rotten job of actually modelling a damn thing.

[AMFV]

Any claim that they ever did or were ever intended to model anything real is arguing backwards from the conclusion (which probably sounds harsher than I intend it, but it's late and I can't think of a better way to phrase it right now, point being that just because a thing can be through effort explained a certain way, doesn't mean it was ever intended that way) -- and never mind that they'd do a rotten job of actually modelling a damn thing.

I'm basing my claims on what I've read from their actual discussions of the mechanics. I'm sure you could find the relevant articles in Dragon Magazine. Additionally, reading anything Gygax or his fellows wrote would demonstrate pretty clearly their aims regarding mechanics. I'm not arguing backwards from the conclusion. I'm pointing out that based on what I know of that era of game designers, the mechanics are not entirely unintuitive. And if you read what people who designed and wrote those games have to say regarding the mechanics, you'll see that they were clearly intending to model stuff.

The kind of gaming philosophy you're complaining about didn't come about till much later. Edit: Most of it came from MMORPGs from what I can tell. in AD&D and OD&D and BD&D there wasn't a strict a conservation of roles as there were in some other games. Certainly there was some (wargame influence), but there wasn't nearly so much as you're claiming, and there were some pretty strong indications that they were going for verisimilitude over gamist concerns.

[Segev]

From a rules perspective. Mr. Thief Fighterman could attack somebody from behind without using his "backstab" power. Heck, in 2e and earlier editions, this would have been trivial if he made sure to use a big weapon, as it took special class features to use things bigger than knives for backstabbling. (The Assassin subclass had such features.)

[Arachnion]

Less silly ridiculous and more "hardcore", but one of my favorites.

The "Holding a Foe At Bay" sidebar, from GURPS Martial Arts, includes the specific rules relevant to the situation where you (armed with a thrusting, impaling weapon) stop a charging foe - they end up with the weapon inside them.

This does not prevent them from moving closer to attack on their next turn. That is to say, if they pass a few difficult rolls and their back armor doesn't stop it, they can run themselves through, dragging themselves closer and making your weapon stuck.

So if you're someone with Injury Tolerance: Unliving or better (which help resist impaling damage) or just a boatload of HP, this can become a good idea.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm basing my claims on what I've read from their actual discussions of the mechanics. I'm sure you could find the relevant articles in Dragon Magazine. Additionally, reading anything Gygax or his fellows wrote would demonstrate pretty clearly their aims regarding mechanics. I'm not arguing backwards from the conclusion. I'm pointing out that based on what I know of that era of game designers, the mechanics are not entirely unintuitive. And if you read what people who designed and wrote those games have to say regarding the mechanics, you'll see that they were clearly intending to model stuff.

The kind of gaming philosophy you're complaining about didn't come about till much later. Edit: Most of it came from MMORPGs from what I can tell. in AD&D and OD&D and BD&D there wasn't a strict a conservation of roles as there were in some other games. Certainly there was some (wargame influence), but there wasn't nearly so much as you're claiming, and there were some pretty strong indications that they were going for verisimilitude over gamist concerns.


Given the utter failure of the dual and multiclass rules to model/map anything, I suppose the alternative is assume that the original creators of those rules were TRYING to simulate something and simply weren't competent enough to pull it off.


I have no idea when you started gaming, however, let me assure you that while the "GNS" theory wasn't formalized until much later, the concerns and preferences that would later be categorized as "gamist" had already existed for a while when got into RPGs ~30 years ago (in middle school at the time).

[Max_Killjoy]

Less silly ridiculous and more "hardcore", but one of my favorites.

The "Holding a Foe At Bay" sidebar, from GURPS Martial Arts, includes the specific rules relevant to the situation where you (armed with a thrusting, impaling weapon) stop a charging foe - they end up with the weapon inside them.

This does not prevent them from moving closer to attack on their next turn. That is to say, if they pass a few difficult rolls and their back armor doesn't stop it, they can run themselves through, dragging themselves closer and making your weapon stuck.

So if you're someone with Injury Tolerance: Unliving or better (which help resist impaling damage) or just a boatload of HP, this can become a good idea.


This is why, in a "standard fantasy RPG setting", all spear-like weapons need crossbars or side-blades of some sort, similar to a boar-spear.

[georgie_leech]

Less silly ridiculous and more "hardcore", but one of my favorites.

The "Holding a Foe At Bay" sidebar, from GURPS Martial Arts, includes the specific rules relevant to the situation where you (armed with a thrusting, impaling weapon) stop a charging foe - they end up with the weapon inside them.

This does not prevent them from moving closer to attack on their next turn. That is to say, if they pass a few difficult rolls and their back armor doesn't stop it, they can run themselves through, dragging themselves closer and making your weapon stuck.

So if you're someone with Injury Tolerance: Unliving or better (which help resist impaling damage) or just a boatload of HP, this can become a good idea.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/AZComics/comic299.png

[AMFV]

Given the utter failure of the dual and multiclass rules to model/map anything, I suppose the alternative is assume that the original creators of those rules were TRYING to simulate something and simply weren't competent enough to pull it off.

They do model stuff, as I explained, when I pointed out EXACTLY what they model. So I don't think that's a very solid argument. But I'll repeat it:

The Dual Class rules represent somebody who changes careers late in life. It's kind of a crash course feel because they need to learn those skills much more rapidly. The reason why using your past skills prevents you from learning things is because they basically represent falling back on skills you're already familiar with. Once you've achieved a certain level of competency and are just maintaining your abilities, then you can use anything from the entire breadth of knowledge you have.

The Multi-Class rules are trying to simulate the breadth and depth that Demi-Humans have. Elves often learn magic in their long lifetimes in addition to whatever other skills they have. Dwarves often learn to fight in addition to their other skills, because of their race's bent towards warfare and soldiering. So that's why they often have a wider and more broad skillset than humans.



I have no idea when you started gaming, however, let me assure you that while the "GNS" theory wasn't formalized until much later, the concerns and preferences that would later be categorized as "gamist" had already existed for a while when got into RPGs ~30 years ago (in middle school at the time).

Right, but the general consensus at that time was that the way you could get the best "gamist" type elements was to focus entirely on providing an experience that was as realistic as possible. Also notably there was less of a focus on tightly organized roles and a lot more focus on players using innovative solutions and being paranoid. That set of assumptions doesn't need as tight a class system as you're envisioning.

[calam]

Several fantasy flight 40k ones

The fear chart in most games meant that seeing a mutilated body can kill you if you roll badly enough on shock

Vehicle tires/tracks were described as more vulturable locations to shoot for but gave no idea how much weaker it could be

Pre-erata dark heresy techpriest abilities always took a level of fatigue to use which would only make them suboptimal except that one gave you +10 to a check ( fatigue gives you -10 to all actions until its removed)

Some aspects like weapon health and hardness had only implied rules like a weapon upgrade would say that it doubled the weapon's health or gave it 20 armor but there was not base health or armor for weapons. Generally the system felt 3-4 info tables short despite having far too many other times.

Carrying capacity was based on a chart going from 1-20 that was used by combining your strength and toughness bonuses but there was no equation if you went over 20 nor was there any indication that you could go over 20 besides this. This would be fine if there weren't ways to easily exceed the chart. A space marine with average stats scored 16 points, 18 with basic armor and 20 with terminator. You could also get a cybernetic that gives you 15 points through strength alone which means an average marine gets 25 points on a 20 point scale with this.

I will probably post more problems with the rules when I get to my books

[Max_Killjoy]

They do model stuff, as I explained, when I pointed out EXACTLY what they model. So I don't think that's a very solid argument. But I'll repeat it:

The Dual Class rules represent somebody who changes careers late in life. It's kind of a crash course feel because they need to learn those skills much more rapidly. The reason why using your past skills prevents you from learning things is because they basically represent falling back on skills you're already familiar with. Once you've achieved a certain level of competency and are just maintaining your abilities, then you can use anything from the entire breadth of knowledge you have.

The Multi-Class rules are trying to simulate the breadth and depth that Demi-Humans have. Elves often learn magic in their long lifetimes in addition to whatever other skills they have. Dwarves often learn to fight in addition to their other skills, because of their race's bent towards warfare and soldiering. So that's why they often have a wider and more broad skillset than humans.


Yes, that's the general concept, and beside the point. The details of each, however -- the actual rules about XP and training and who can use what ability when without penalties -- are either just attempts at game balance, or utterly failed models.

The dual-classing rules are, in particular, utter nonsense -- complete, unmitigated tripe -- if taken as a "model" of anything real or quasi-real. The very idea that using an old skill prevents any learning of the new skills is contrived and ridiculous, to say the least. If I've got 10 years of experience in computer repair and maintenance, and keep doing that as my day job, but start reading up on how to fix my own plumbing, I don't have to take 3 weeks off work and avoid touching my computer each day in order to "allow" myself to learn about plumbing as I read, replace the pipes under the sink, etc -- I can in fact do both, and work on computers during the day, and fix my plumbing at night. Replace with taking fencing or kickboxing lessons at night, or practicing the piano, or whatever you like.




Right, but the general consensus at that time was that the way you could get the best "gamist" type elements was to focus entirely on providing an experience that was as realistic as possible. Also notably there was less of a focus on tightly organized roles and a lot more focus on players using innovative solutions and being paranoid. That set of assumptions doesn't need as tight a class system as you're envisioning.


And yet that tight class system existed in the boxed sets and in AD&D at least as far back as when I started playing.

In my experience, the concerns that I heard most often from those most concerned with the GAME part of "RPG" were not "how do I make this realistic?", they were "this isn't balanced and makes the game unfair as a game".

[Thrudd]

Yes, that's the general concept, and beside the point. The details of each, however -- the actual rules about XP and training and who can use what ability when without penalties -- are either just attempts at game balance, or utterly failed models.

The dual-classing rules are, in particular, utter nonsense -- complete, unmitigated tripe -- if taken as a "model" of anything real or quasi-real. The very idea that using an old skill prevents any learning of the new skills is contrived and ridiculous, to say the least. If I've got 10 years of experience in computer repair and maintenance, and keep doing that as my day job, but start reading up on how to fix my own plumbing, I don't have to take 3 weeks off work and avoid touching my computer each day in order to "allow" myself to learn about plumbing as I read, replace the pipes under the sink, etc -- I can in fact do both, and work on computers during the day, and fix my plumbing at night. Replace with taking fencing or kickboxing lessons at night, or practicing the piano, or whatever you like.




And yet that tight class system existed in the boxed sets and in AD&D at least as far back as when I started playing.

In my experience, the concerns that I heard most often from those most concerned with the GAME part of "RPG" were not "how do I make this realistic?", they were "this isn't balanced and makes the game unfair as a game".

Yes. D&D is a game with a capital G. Yes, dual classing rules aren't an accurate simulation of how people learn skills. But D&D never modeled people learning skills, originally. When it started to, the class system became much more fluid, as well (3e).

AD&D's rules were the first attempt. As predicted by the author of that game, people in later years came up with different and better solutions to various concerns. As people had different desires, the role playing industry diversified into many sorts of games. What works for one sort of game doesn't necessarily work for others. A lot of this "ridiculous rules" thing is just people expressing their gaming preferences and calling other sorts of games stupid.

There is no objection, of course, to people expressing their opinions and preferences. It just seems that many have a mistaken belief that role playing games are "supposed to" be and do a single thing, and judge that any game which doesn't meet their preferences to be objectively inadequate as a role playing game. Classes are great for D&D-like games. Classes are not great as a detailed model of a realistic person. Not all games need or want to mechanically model realistic details of a person's personality and experience.

[Gilda]

Less silly ridiculous and more "hardcore", but one of my favorites.

The "Holding a Foe At Bay" sidebar, from GURPS Martial Arts, includes the specific rules relevant to the situation where you (armed with a thrusting, impaling weapon) stop a charging foe - they end up with the weapon inside them.

This does not prevent them from moving closer to attack on their next turn. That is to say, if they pass a few difficult rolls and their back armor doesn't stop it, they can run themselves through, dragging themselves closer and making your weapon stuck.

So if you're someone with Injury Tolerance: Unliving or better (which help resist impaling damage) or just a boatload of HP, this can become a good idea.

Since that's what bears and boars do in real life, I approve.

[Quertus]

Meh. If cared any less about "archetypes" or "roles" or defining characters by a "career path", it would be measured using negative numbers.

What I do care about is each character built as "a person", rather a collection of tactical abilities or based on some silly notion of a "life path" that can't be diverted from.


The character's combat skills, technical skills, social skills, personality, background, history, etc, so on, and so forth -- that's all part of that character as an individual, as a person, as a "human being" (or whatever, depending on the game setting). For some reason "as a person" is giving the impression of some sort of combat vs social split, so maybe those other terms will get the point across.

The character is supposed to be an individual specific person, not "human, fighter, level 5, # 21796" or whatever. If a character grew up in a village learning to hunt and shoot a bow, and then that village was destroyed by orcs so he had to scrounge for a living in the big city, and then he discovered a hidden talent for magic, the his build should reflect that, not be "well, choose one -- fighter, or rogue, or mage".

Frankly, I don't give a tinker's damn if he fulfills someone's cookie-cutter notion of a predefined "combat role" or sits at some perfect pinnacle of optimization.


Edit -- and yeah, I know I come across as a bit of jerk here... this whole idea of "what role does the character fill?" as the defining, core element of the character has been a constant problem in both RPGs and fictionl for as long as I've been paying attention, and I have less patience for it every year.

Coming at this out of left field, when all your stats say about you is, "generic fighting man #2853", you are much more free to determine your own personality. Some of my best characters originated in games with minimal system interference to RP.

Early editions of D&D made character creation easy (both quick, and easy for new players to learn) by limiting you to a few basic archetypes, and left the rest to your imagination. 3.x threw that out the window in favor of the thousand flavors of triple-dip ice cream model.

Now, if we're about to go into dangerous situations (the focus of early D&D), and I ask your capabilities, and you say you're "a fighter", I'll figure you're new, ask if you have a bow, and tell you to stand next to the guy in the bathrobe and try not to let him get himself killed. If you respond that you're an archer, or a sword and board tank, or something else that explains your capabilities and intended role beyond your class, I'll figure you've got more experience, and let you deploy yourself accordingly. But if you respond that you're a plumber who likes Italian food and long walks on the beach, I'll give you your rainbow stripes and use you as a meat shield. Because, in battle, I don't care about that.

So, since D&D is focused on combat, the classes give you a basic idea of a character's combat capabilities. Which is why my signature character is quick to clarify that he is an academia mage, not a combat mage, lest people incorrectly assume a certain level of combat competence, which he lacks.

If you were to use the D&D model to create a social-based game, your classes might look more like... hmmm... Debater, Social Butterfly, Social Chameleon, and Subject Matter Expert. Of course, because they really want to set the focus of the social interaction they give you two axis of concern: Mac vs PC, and Cat vs Dog. And, of course, all PCs are expected to be PC. But, otherwise, you are free to imagine your character however you like.

Point is, to try to make the bulk of the game as accessible to noobs as possible. Classes do that. Pick one, start playing.

Now, if we made an actually realistic RPG, where the first step in character creation was to pick out every strand of DNA that defines the character... I don't think it would be nearly as accessible to most people. And wouldn't be conducive to allowing noobs to give simple answers to the Vorlon's question, "who are you?"


Well that depends entirely on what you're doing with that person. If I'm hanging out with LCpl Schmuckatelli after work at a bar, then I care about him as a person. If we're in combat, then I don't give a crap if he's a good person, or a totally awful person, I care about his ability to perform in his specific role. The same holds true for other types of technical things. If I'm hanging out with Bob the Plumber, then I care about his personality, about what he's like "as a person", but if I'm doing plumbing work with him, that doesn't really matter to me, it's not relevant to what's going on.

So if I'm playing in an RPG that's built around socializing then the "as a person" matters more to me. To be fair honestly, even games like D&D, care a lot more about the "as a person" then I might if I were working on some sort of technical position.

Yeah, but that Mario is something else. Sure, his plumbing skills are great, but every time he sees a bug, he has to jump up in the air, often hitting his head in the process, to squish it for maximum carnage, instead of just stepping on it like a regular fella. And his sinuses - man, that guy can blow some serious snot. And with decent accuracy, too - watched him drown a spider in his own mucus once. Found some odd mushrooms in his truck, though - I think he's trippin' on the job as often as not. Would explain why he keeps looking down the pipes, saying that there's whole worlds down there.

[2D8HP]

But if you respond that you're a plumber who likes Italian food and long walks on the beach, I'll give you your rainbow stripes and use you as a meat shield. Because, in battle, I don't care about that.
Yeah, but that Mario is something else. Sure, his plumbing skills are great, but every time he sees a bug, he has to jump up in the air, often hitting his head in the process, to squish it for maximum carnage, instead of just stepping on it like a regular fella. And his sinuses - man, that guy can blow some serious snot. And with decent accuracy, too - watched him drown a spider in his own mucus once. Found some odd mushrooms in his truck, though - I think he's trippin' on the job as often as not. Would explain why he keeps looking down the pipes, saying that there's whole worlds down there.Well I am a plumber who does indeed like Italian food, and long walks, but the beach? Nope I don't like sand in my boots.
I usually pick Fighters, Thieves/Rogues or Scouts/Rangers as my PC"s( and while I've known a Marcus, a Mark, and a Marvin, I've never met a plumber named Mario.
On topic: Yes class and level systems are a bit silly but none of the RPG's that didn't use them (Villians & Vigilantes, Traveller, and Runequest were the first three I've tried) have been as fun for me to play as any version of D&D.

[Telok]

On topic: Yes class and level systems are a bit silly but none of the RPG's that didn't use them (Villians & Vigilantes, Traveller, and Runequest were the first three I've tried) have been as fun for me to play as any version of D&D.

That's really down more to the GM and the players having fun than the system being better or worse at anything. It's true that really terrible systems can hamper fun but there is no system that can make a game fun on it's own.

[AMFV]

That's really down more to the GM and the players having fun than the system being better or worse at anything. It's true that really terrible systems can hamper fun but there is no system that can make a game fun on it's own.

True, but there are enough stories of people enjoying class and level systems, even to the point that many folks here are ardently defending them conceptually, to suggest that the systems are not universally thought of as completely ridiculous, or as an inappropriate degree of simplification.

[Knaight]

True, but I think that if we look at the intentions behind it, the dual classing mechanic was supposed to be modelling skill atrophy. Of course the "using related skills" tag is kind of a bit out there and not the best model. But the system itself makes sense, which is the criticism I was addressing, not that specific problem. I was addressing the complaint that using unrelated knowledge can cause skills to atrophy.

Sure, and the intention behind most skateboard related ER visits is to do some sort of sweet trick. It doesn't mean that what actually happened didn't look ridiculous.

[Arachnion]

The pricing of spells in GURPS: Sorcery is not necessarily indicative of their usefulness. For example, Geas, which forces someone to make a single command their highest priority in life, costs 54 points. No-Smell, which completely obscures your scent, costs 63 points.

So you can give an opponent an inviolable command, or you can go a couple extra days without bathing.

[AMFV]

Sure, and the intention behind most skateboard related ER visits is to do some sort of sweet trick. It doesn't mean that what actually happened didn't look ridiculous.

Well, you and I clearly have different opinions as to how SWEET that looked. Which is a fair thing. Not every sort of application is going to have equal appeal to everybody. People who work in the ER tend to have dim views of "sweet skateboarding tricks", people who are into skateboarding tend to have a different viewpoint.

Now it's possible that it could have been modeled better, but I don't really see that the model is that bad or even that far inaccurate. Of course, my different life experiences and different way of looking at things colors that. I've went from doing technical skills to not using those skills for months and the atrophy that I experienced was shocking. I've had to learn different sets of technical skills without relying on skills that I had before. So I have had that sort of experience in real life, whereas I don't think most folks have that same experience, so possibly in your case, since you don't have that same set of experiences (or if you do, perhaps perceived them differently), you're not going to have the same enjoyment of the mechanic that I do.

[Knaight]

Well, you and I clearly have different opinions as to how SWEET that looked. Which is a fair thing. Not every sort of application is going to have equal appeal to everybody. People who work in the ER tend to have dim views of "sweet skateboarding tricks", people who are into skateboarding tend to have a different viewpoint.

That even a successful attempt probably wouldn't have actually met the goal to a disinterested observer (a category I definitely fit in) doesn't mean that the failed attempt doesn't manage to look absurd in the process. Injuring yourself doesn't tend to look dignified at the best of times, and failed stunts are generally not the best of times.

[AMFV]

That even a successful attempt probably wouldn't have actually met the goal to a disinterested observer (a category I definitely fit in) doesn't mean that the failed attempt doesn't manage to look absurd in the process. Injuring yourself doesn't tend to look dignified at the best of times, and failed stunts are generally not the best of times.

Certainly true. Which is why I was contrasting myself (a person who has experiences that are reflected by the Dual Class system) and would therefore be the equivalent of an interested and avid observer who has knowledge of the tricks with a your status as either a potential disinterested observer (because you haven't got the same experience) or as an expert with a different opinion (if you do have the same experience).

Point being, if it was a total wreck, then it seem unlikely that somebody such as myself (who again has had experiences that the system seems to model), would think it was a good model for that. I certainly don't think it's the perfect model, and I'm not very fond of it from a game perspective. But I think that what they were going for is pretty clear there, at least given my own set of personal experiences. But I can easily see why it might not appeal to somebody with a different set.

[Telok]

In several versions of D&D many magic spells specify that you can cast them at creatures that the caster can see. Often this is just fine and makes sense, untill you get to 5e warlock's eldrich blast. This spell shoots blasts of force at the target to damage them. Unless the target holds up a large blanket or sheet of paper. Since the warlock can't see the person any more he can't target them, and because the eldrich blast can't be aimed at anything buy a creature it can't harm even a sheet of paper.

So a high level warlock who can knock around giants and dragons with blasts of force is helpless to use his power to harm someone with a flannel blanket.

[georgie_leech]

In several versions of D&D many magic spells specify that you can cast them at creatures that the caster can see. Often this is just fine and makes sense, untill you get to 5e warlock's eldrich blast. This spell shoots blasts of force at the target to damage them. Unless the target holds up a large blanket or sheet of paper. Since the warlock can't see the person any more he can't target them, and because the eldrich blast can't be aimed at anything buy a creature it can't harm even a sheet of paper.

So a high level warlock who can knock around giants and dragons with blasts of force is helpless to use his power to harm someone with a flannel blanket.

It suddenly makes sense why so many ghosts are wearing bedsheets :smallbiggrin:

[baticeer]

In several versions of D&D many magic spells specify that you can cast them at creatures that the caster can see. Often this is just fine and makes sense, untill you get to 5e warlock's eldrich blast. This spell shoots blasts of force at the target to damage them. Unless the target holds up a large blanket or sheet of paper. Since the warlock can't see the person any more he can't target them, and because the eldrich blast can't be aimed at anything buy a creature it can't harm even a sheet of paper.

So a high level warlock who can knock around giants and dragons with blasts of force is helpless to use his power to harm someone with a flannel blanket.

I don't see where you're getting that from, at all. I can still see someone who holds a sheet of paper up over their face. I just can't directly see their face. That would be like saying I can't target an enemy who is (say) wearing a mask. And, if the sheet of paper is big enough that I can't get a perfect idea of where my target is, then it provides cover.

But that's all beside the point, because eldritch blast doesn't require you to see a target in the first place. It just requires an attack roll. Attacking a creature you can't see imposes disadvantage.

[Telok]

But that's all beside the point, because eldritch blast doesn't require you to see a target in the first place. It just requires an attack roll.

By the rules it's only castable at a creature that you can see and has no effect on anything that isn't a creature. One nice big blanket later and they can't see you. Thems tha rules.

[baticeer]

By the rules it's only castable at a creature that you can see and has no effect on anything that isn't a creature. One nice big blanket later and they can't see you. Thems tha rules.

Can you quote any rules section that supports this? Because I don't see one.

From the section on spellcasting: "To target something, you must have a clear path to the target, so it can't be behind total cover."

The definitions of cover says: "A target with total cover can’t be targeted directly by an attack or a spell, although some spells can reach such a target by including it in an area of effect. A target has total cover if it is completely concealed by an obstacle."

"Completely concealed by an obstacle" is different from "able to be seen." It means that I can't, for instance, eldritch blast someone if there's a wall in between us. That's not because I can't see them, it's because they're entirely blocked. I'm not perceiving their location with any of my senses.

If I can't see something, the penalty is that attacks against it have disadvantage. (This isn't stated in the rules in so many words, but you can deduce it as a general principle based on the rules for invisibility and for the blinded condition.) If a creature's invisible, you can imagine that I'd still be able to make a good guess of its location because of sounds it's making, etc.

Eldritch blast's spell description says the target is "a creature within range." Not one you can see. There are other spell descriptions which specifically state the target must be "a creature you can see," so there's no reason to think I can't eldritch blast someone who's invisible but that I know is there.... or who's behind a big blanket but that I know is there.

I mean, if the blanket is set up in such a way that it provides total cover, that's another story, but I don't think that it's ridiculous in that case? It'd basically be the same as trying to target someone who is behind a wall. If someone holds up a blanket in front of their face I wouldn't say there's total cover there.

[Lacuna Caster]

If I've got 10 years of experience in computer repair and maintenance, and keep doing that as my day job, but start reading up on how to fix my own plumbing, I don't have to take 3 weeks off work and avoid touching my computer each day in order to "allow" myself to learn about plumbing as I read, replace the pipes under the sink, etc -- I can in fact do both, and work on computers during the day, and fix my plumbing at night. Replace with taking fencing or kickboxing lessons at night, or practicing the piano, or whatever you like.

There is no objection, of course, to people expressing their opinions and preferences. It just seems that many have a mistaken belief that role playing games are "supposed to" be and do a single thing, and judge that any game which doesn't meet their preferences to be objectively inadequate as a role playing game. Classes are great for D&D-like games. Classes are not great as a detailed model of a realistic person. Not all games need or want to mechanically model realistic details of a person's personality and experience.
Class systems are intended to do a number of things. For purposes of this discussion, I will define 'class' as 'profession-descriptor that categorically constrains a character's ability-development during both generation and subsequent play.'

Their first function is to appeal to nostalgia for specific fantasy archetypes (simulation/ease of buy-in), and/or model the experience of growing up within certain social classes in the setting (simulation). My take is that elective lifepath systems (though superficially similar to highly-convoluted multiclassing), do the simulation part better, particularly since they impose no intrinsic constraints on what skills may subsequently be learnt in play.

Their second function is to provide well-defined tactical/strategic niches that simplify complexity-analysis for designers, and make it difficult for minmaxed PCs to consistently hog the spotlight. This is essentially a balance-oriented defence against powergaming, and can be justified on those grounds. (Unfortunately, arbitrary 3E-style multiclassing defeats the purpose entirely, since it means players are no longer limited to those niches. And to be frank, it's not like 3E class balance was great to begin with.)

So... I have a dim view of most multiclassing systems. I think that if you want that kind of in-depth flexibility, consequences be damned, then you don't want a class system to begin with.

[soldersbushwack]

The facilities required to build a prototype cost $50,000 if the invention is Simple, $100,000 if Average, $250,000 if Complex, or $500,000 if Amazing.

GURPS Basic P.474

Just a nit that this is mostly reasonable but inapplicable for thing such as computer programs and magic spells. There could definitely be development costs but for these cases they should be much lower although it depends.

For much computer software development one just needs an internet connection and a crappy laptop PC for $300. One can obtain internet access from ones public library for free. One can download software development programs and a large selection of software libraries from places like the FSF for free.

Next up in price are research journals. Typically a software developer already has access through his public library, his university or his company. Many journals are open access and completely free. But he may not and he may have to pay small fees at the most for $200 for subscriptions to various journals and selected articles.

Next up in price is computing hardware. If one wants an ordinary research desktop computer a $2000 desktop with a nice GPU is fine. If he wants a more powerful computer he may be better off renting computer time. Actually building a super-computer for oneself is probably a pointless waste of money. Renting heavy computer access is ridiculously cheap nowadays. You might also be able to get access from your university and government connections for free. Many services offer free trials which are sufficient for research purposes.

Next up in price is probably networking stuff. If for your research you need a fiber-optic connection between arbitrary points A and B you're probably ****ed and you should move somewhere else. Still a simple LAN using ethernet cables and a cheap router is probably sufficient for most research.

Next up in price is licensing software costs. You probably don't need to license software and you can probably just rely on free software. Most software is dirt cheap.

Next up in price is certifying software, licensing certified software and source code access for software. Can you formally prove that your software is correct and does not make any errors? The vast majority of software is horribly, sanity-destroyingly ****ty and is totally and completely incomprehensible to the human mind. If you want to pay for software that does not **** up in a crucial moment than you'll have to pay through the nose.

I guess in game terms your software will have 1d/2 extra unfixable bugs unless you pay for source code access or certified code. If you pay for source code access to unverified code and want to fix the bugs you'll also have to roll for a Fright Check.

[Thrudd]

Class systems are intended to do a number of things. For purposes of this discussion, I will define 'class' as 'profession-descriptor that categorically constrains a character's ability-development during both generation and subsequent play.'

Their first function is to appeal to nostalgia for specific fantasy archetypes (simulation/ease of buy-in), and/or model the experience of growing up within certain social classes in the setting (simulation). My take is that elective lifepath systems (though superficially similar to highly-convoluted multiclassing), do the simulation part better, particularly since they impose no intrinsic constraints on what skills may subsequently be learnt in play.

Their second function is to provide well-defined tactical/strategic niches that simplify complexity-analysis for designers, and make it difficult for minmaxed PCs to consistently hog the spotlight. This is essentially a balance-oriented defence against powergaming, and can be justified on those grounds. (Unfortunately, arbitrary 3E-style multiclassing defeats the purpose entirely, since it means players are no longer limited to those niches. And to be frank, it's not like 3E class balance was great to begin with.)

So... I have a dim view of most multiclassing systems. I think that if you want that kind of in-depth flexibility, consequences be damned, then you don't want a class system to begin with.

I agree. 3e and 5e style multiclassing defeats the whole purpose of having classes. It is nice that 5e has explicitly called it an optional rule so I can more easily justify my banning of it if I ever run that system (not that the DM should have to justify such rule decisions.)

[Chauncymancer]

"A target with total cover can’t be targeted directly by an attack or a spell, although some spells can reach such a target by including it in an area of effect. A target has total cover if it is completely concealed by an obstacle."


The problem is that if I am six feet tall and two feet wide, an object six feet one inches tall and two feet one inches wide can completely conceal me, because you can't see any part of me, and all the word conceal means is "to prevent from being seen". So you have to be able to see some part of me to target me with a spell.
The counter nit is that equipment you are holding doesn't count as an obstacle, it counts as part of you
(thermody-magically speaking). So holding up a large blanket wouldn't protect you, but standing behind a shower curtain would.

[Spore]

You could purchase a Thor's Hammer orbital cannon on Shadowrun given the printed costs.

You can shoot at ANY distance in Degenesis with a hefty penalty as you can shoot into the "first distance" of a firearm with no penalty, shoot into the printed second penalty with a penalty of -4 dice and into things beyond that with -8. Even if you do not cheese that, you could make an argument that a good sniper with a clear sky could kill you from a town over.

[Lacuna Caster]

You can shoot at ANY distance in Degenesis with a hefty penalty as you can shoot into the "first distance" of a firearm with no penalty, shoot into the printed second penalty with a penalty of -4 dice and into things beyond that with -8. Even if you do not cheese that, you could make an argument that a good sniper with a clear sky could kill you from a town over.
Is that really so unrealistic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_recorded_sniper_kills#Confirmed_kills_1.2C 250.C2.A0m_.281.2C367.C2.A0yd.29_or_greater), though? Good snipers are scary monsters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-pg_L-T74k).

[Spore]

Is that really so unrealistic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_recorded_sniper_kills#Confirmed_kills_1.2C 250.C2.A0m_.281.2C367.C2.A0yd.29_or_greater), though? Good snipers are scary monsters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-pg_L-T74k).

Well, the rule creates a debate between players and DM. And technically you could shoot a guy in Moscow from Paris, a LoS granted.

[Telok]

The counter nit is that equipment you are holding doesn't count as an obstacle, it counts as part of you
(thermody-magically speaking). So holding up a large blanket wouldn't protect you, but standing behind a shower curtain would.

Yes, crouching behind a huge overturned table works and the table is immune to eldrich blast. Holding up a huge slab of wood like a table top makes it equipment and the eldrich blast goes right through it and hits the character.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, crouching behind a huge overturned table works and the table is immune to eldrich blast. Holding up a huge slab of wood like a table top makes it equipment and the eldrich blast goes right through it and hits the character.


So as long as the character that the caster wants to target isn't touching the table, they're immune?

At exactly what point does the table become "equipment"? Does a single gloved pinky count? Does letting the table "accidentally" lean on their armored butt count?

This is pretty much a classic example of a silly rule.

[ideasmith]

So as long as the character that the caster wants to target isn't touching the table, they're immune?

At exactly what point does the table become "equipment"? Does a single gloved pinky count? Does letting the table "accidentally" lean on their armored butt count?

This is pretty much a classic example of a silly rule.

It becomes "equipment" when you pick it up.

If it counts towards your encumbrance, it is part of your equipment, and effectively part of you for various magical effects. If the reason it doesn't count towards your encumbrance is negligible weight or magic, it still counts as your equipment.

Not unusually silly as D&D magic goes. No sillier than magic working in the first place.

[Max_Killjoy]

No sillier than magic working in the first place.


Why does this assertion keep coming up... "As soon as there's even a hint of the fantastic or mystical, then any criticism or analysis of the setting is nullified, because magic. A single prophetic dream or legendary sword or healing miracle, and any attempt at coherence or consistency is pointless."


:smallfurious:

[JAL_1138]

Why does this assertion keep coming up... "As soon as there's even a hint of the fantastic or mystical, then any criticism or analysis of the setting is nullified, because magic. A single prophetic dream or legendary sword or healing miracle, and any attempt at coherence or consistency is pointless."


:smallfurious:

This is one of my pet peeves. Your sig encapsulates my feelings on the matter perfectly.

[ideasmith]

Why does this assertion keep coming up... "As soon as there's even a hint of the fantastic or mystical, then any criticism or analysis of the setting is nullified, because magic. A single prophetic dream or legendary sword or healing miracle, and any attempt at coherence or consistency is pointless."


:smallfurious:

Fortunately, I haven't the slightest intention of making any such assertion.

To clarify:

There are things that are sillier than magic working.

There are also things that are not sillier than magic working.

Magic often treating a character's equipment as part if his/her/its body is in the latter category.

[Max_Killjoy]

Fortunately, I haven't the slightest intention of making any such assertion.

To clarify:

There are things that are sillier than magic working.

There are also things that are not sillier than magic working.

Magic often treating a character's equipment as part if his/her/its body is in the latter category.


And my initial point (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21189536&postcount=664), quite clearly, was the rule as described leads to some very silly discussions about where to draw the line -- far more silly than any discussion of whether magic works in the first place.


"Magic works" is not, in fact, "silly" -- it's one of the fictional conceits of the setting. That you're even drawing the line "Is this sillier or not sillier than magic working?" is you falling into the exact analytical fallacy that I just described (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21190170&postcount=666).

HOW magic works can be to whatever degree silly or not silly. THAT magic works is a given aspect of the fictional setting in which the game or story is taking place.

[ideasmith]

And my initial point (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21189536&postcount=664), quite clearly, was the rule as described leads to some very silly discussions about where to draw the line -- far more silly than any discussion of whether magic works in the first place.

The post you linked to did not carry that meaning to me. Looking at it knowing your intent, your choice of wording still does not seem to have that meaning.


"Magic works" is not, in fact, "silly" –

Fortunately, I have no intention of calling magic ‘silly’.


it's one of the fictional conceits of the setting.

“Magic often treats a character's equipment as part if his/her/its body” and “magic works” are both fictional conceits of D&D. If that determines whether something is silly (I don’t know why it would, but that is what you seem to be assuming here), then they are either both silly or both not silly. (When you wrote “this setting” did you intend to imply that D&D only had one setting? It has plenty.)


That you're even drawing the line "Is this sillier or not sillier than magic working?" is you falling into the exact analytical fallacy that I just described (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21190170&postcount=666).

I’m not seeing how that is even vaguely true. Do you wish to present some reasoning to support this statement?


HOW magic works can be to whatever degree silly or not silly. THAT magic works is a given aspect of the fictional setting in which the game or story is taking place.

HOW magic often treats a character's equipment as part if his/her/its body can be to whatever degree silly or not silly. THAT magic often treats a character's equipment as part if his/her/its body is a given aspect of the fictional setting in which the game or story is taking place.

[Max_Killjoy]

I've zero interest today in "arguments" based on evasive and conflating wordplay, and the most deliberate unfavorable and diverted reading possible.

"It's no more or less silly than magic working" is a failure to understand the basics of speculative fiction, a false argument of the worst kind, and no amount of trying to move words around and match the ends up like game tiles is going to change that.

Any further response from you along those lines will just result in the ignore function being used.

[Lacuna Caster]

I agree. 3e and 5e style multiclassing defeats the whole purpose of having classes. It is nice that 5e has explicitly called it an optional rule so I can more easily justify my banning of it if I ever run that system (not that the DM should have to justify such rule decisions.)
Yeah, I was going to mention 4E as the example of 'multiclassing that works', precisely because it was so limited, but either my recollection is so addled as to be useless or they've added a lot of rules (http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Multiclassing) since then. Maybe you could fill me in?

(As for the justification bit- well... no they don't, any more than players have to 'justify' not playing. I'm not sure that's a discussion which goes anywhere though. Speaking of...)


If it counts towards your encumbrance, it is part of your equipment, and effectively part of you for various magical effects. If the reason it doesn't count towards your encumbrance is negligible weight or magic, it still counts as your equipment.

Not unusually silly as D&D magic goes...
As it happens, I have no problem calling large chunks of D&D magic silly, though whether that applies to magic in fantasy settings in general is a different conversation. The real question is whether this kind of reductionist-physics-extrapolation is going to elicit irritation from players or a subdued smatter of applause, given they might otherwise, e.g, have expected some tactical payoff for canny use of local terrain features (moveable furniture.) Is "golly, look how consistently we've applied D&D physics" really the outcome you forsee? Think hard.

[Thrudd]

Yeah, I was going to mention 4E as the example of 'multiclassing that works', precisely because it was so limited, but either my recollection is so addled as to be useless or they've added a lot of rules (http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Multiclassing) since then. Maybe you could fill me in?

(As for the justification bit- well... no they don't, any more than players have to 'justify' not playing. I'm not sure that's a discussion which goes anywhere though. Speaking of...)


As it happens, I have no problem calling large chunks of D&D magic silly, though whether that applies to magic in fantasy settings in general is a different conversation. The real question is whether this kind of reductionist-physics-extrapolation is going to elicit irritation from players or a subdued smatter of applause, given they might otherwise, e.g, have expected some tactical payoff for canny use of local terrain features (moveable furniture.) Is "golly, look how consistently we've applied D&D physics" really the outcome you forsee? Think hard.

4e is gone, replaced by 5e. It is a totally new game now, a blend of new things and elements from 4e, 3e, and even earlier. 5e multiclassing is basically identical to 3e, gain a level and you can choose a new class and continue advancing whichever class you want at each level. Except there are now ability score prerequisites for taking a new class similar to AD&D dual classing rules (but not as stringent). And also it is explicitly presented in the PHB as an optional rule that the DM might not use. This is a design strategy 5e has adopted - it presents many things as optional rules and variants that can be included, or not, at DM discretion.


I agree, trying to interpret rules-as-physics gets silly. It should be the other way around - the rules are designed to simulate physics, at some degree of abstraction. When questions arise, refer to the physics the rules are trying to simulate and make a common-sense ruling. In the eldritch blast situation, we need to know what it is an eldritch blast is supposed to be. Is it concussive force? Is it a mystical energy which hurts living beings but doesn't damage other things? Like many things, the game doesn't go into detail, so it is up to the DM to decide - and to do so carefully - because their decision will have repercussions for the rest of the game.

[Kurald Galain]

Why does this assertion keep coming up... "As soon as there's even a hint of the fantastic or mystical, then any criticism or analysis of the setting is nullified, because magic. A single prophetic dream or legendary sword or healing miracle, and any attempt at coherence or consistency is pointless."

Because some people don't know the difference between the words "realism" and "verisimilitude".

[Bohandas]

so addled as to be useless or they've added a lot of rules (http://dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Multiclassing) since then.

That's it. That's the one. That's the worst rule. It's even worse and stupider than the first 3 editions' multiclass restrictiond

[Bohandas]

Is that really so unrealistic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_recorded_sniper_kills#Confirmed_kills_1.2C 250.C2.A0m_.281.2C367.C2.A0yd.29_or_greater), though? Good snipers are scary monsters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-pg_L-T74k).

Plus, before the original Gulf War, Saddam's regime was working on building an artillery piece powerful enough that the operator could shoot themself in the back if they weren't careful (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon)

[RazorChain]

I've always felt that sneak attacks were ridiculous, in most form and shape.

[Batou1976]

I've got two:

1. Demihuman level caps in AD&D 2E. You seriously expect me to believe a being who potentially will live for centuries can reach a certain level of experience in their class, perhaps as early as young adulthood, then their progress halts and they spend the rest of their looooong life continuing to practice that profession without improving one iota? :smallconfused: Talk about hanging your suspension of disbelief by the neck... :smallmad:

2. Granted, I'm juuust barely too young to have played 1E, but I have looked in its PHB a few times, so- the 1E paladin's restrictions on who they can associate with. From what I remember, not only could they not join a party with any evil characters, if even one PC was not LG, the paladin could only join that group for a single adventure. What's the point of including a class, available to PCs, that is not only insanely rare and difficult to qualify for (using the old edition's chargen method), but also cannot stay long-term with 99.99999...% of all D&D groups ever? :miko:

[NNescio]

Well, the rule creates a debate between players and DM. And technically you could shoot a guy in Moscow from Paris, a LoS granted.

Earth is not flat though. Curvature will get in the way of both LoS and LoE.

True, you can adjust for curvature and use indirect fire with the help of spotting, but by that point it's artillery (with both orbital mechanics and the Coriolis effect involved), not sniping.

[Logosloki]

I've always felt that sneak attacks were ridiculous, in most form and shape.

The problem is that there is already a mechanic in place for simulating striking a vulnerable place (health as meat) or pushing your opponent into an unfavourable position which causes them to be less effective (health as an abstract (whatever that term is)), It's called Critical Hit. Sneak attacks mechanically exist so that Rogues/Rogue-likes can deal extra damage without 1) Giving them more attacks and 2) just playing around with critical hit chance.

In other games in their myriad forms Rogues or Roguish archetypes usually have higher critical hit chance and critical damage in exchange for weaker normal attacks.

The other problem is semantics. Sneak Attack does sound Roguey for a skill but doesn't really convey the mechanics itself. Cheap Shot is a lot closer but has negative connotations (Some choose the rogue life for the not quite heroishness, some choose it to be the dashing masked swashbuckler, etc.).

[Quertus]

2. Granted, I'm juuust barely too young to have played 1E, but I have looked in its PHB a few times, so- the 1E paladin's restrictions on who they can associate with. From what I remember, not only could they not join a party with any evil characters, if even one PC was not LG, the paladin could only join that group for a single adventure. What's the point of including a class, available to PCs, that is not only insanely rare and difficult to qualify for (using the old edition's chargen method), but also cannot stay long-term with 99.99999...% of all D&D groups ever? :miko:

For the drop-in style game that dominated early D&D, this wasn't much of a limitation.

[Max_Killjoy]

I agree, trying to interpret rules-as-physics gets silly. It should be the other way around - the rules are designed to simulate physics, at some degree of abstraction. When questions arise, refer to the physics the rules are trying to simulate and make a common-sense ruling. In the eldritch blast situation, we need to know what it is an eldritch blast is supposed to be. Is it concussive force? Is it a mystical energy which hurts living beings but doesn't damage other things? Like many things, the game doesn't go into detail, so it is up to the DM to decide - and to do so carefully - because their decision will have repercussions for the rest of the game.


Exactly, on all counts.

This is why I say "the rules are the map, the setting and characters are the actual territory".

[RazorChain]

Well, the rule creates a debate between players and DM. And technically you could shoot a guy in Moscow from Paris, a LoS granted.

So you could should yourself in the back!!!!!

[RazorChain]

The problem is that there is already a mechanic in place for simulating striking a vulnerable place (health as meat) or pushing your opponent into an unfavourable position which causes them to be less effective (health as an abstract (whatever that term is)), It's called Critical Hit. Sneak attacks mechanically exist so that Rogues/Rogue-likes can deal extra damage without 1) Giving them more attacks and 2) just playing around with critical hit chance.

In other games in their myriad forms Rogues or Roguish archetypes usually have higher critical hit chance and critical damage in exchange for weaker normal attacks.

The other problem is semantics. Sneak Attack does sound Roguey for a skill but doesn't really convey the mechanics itself. Cheap Shot is a lot closer but has negative connotations (Some choose the rogue life for the not quite heroishness, some choose it to be the dashing masked swashbuckler, etc.).

Lot of systems include Hit Locations where you can strike at a vulnerable place. I understand the mechanic is to give rogue/assassins extra damage and is niche protected in some systems.

So the rogue shoots somebody with his crossbow in the face and it hurts, but if that somebody was unprepared then he gets hit in the eye.

[Keltest]

I've got two:

1. Demihuman level caps in AD&D 2E. You seriously expect me to believe a being who potentially will live for centuries can reach a certain level of experience in their class, perhaps as early as young adulthood, then their progress halts and they spend the rest of their looooong life continuing to practice that profession without improving one iota? :smallconfused: Talk about hanging your suspension of disbelief by the neck... :smallmad:

I believe the intention in the earlier editions is that humans were the solo class experts, and the demihumans were running around with two or three classes simultaneously. So your human is a wizard while the elf is a wizard/fighter/thief. By the time the elf reached their level cap for all three classes, they were substantially more powerful than your human wizard even if he did have a couple more levels of wizard than the elf did.

[Lacuna Caster]

The other problem is semantics. Sneak Attack does sound Roguey for a skill but doesn't really convey the mechanics itself. Cheap Shot is a lot closer but has negative connotations (Some choose the rogue life for the not quite heroishness, some choose it to be the dashing masked swashbuckler, etc.).
The dashing swashbuckler isn't going around stabbing folks from behind though. (Which is what the 2E rogue literally had to do- the equivalent skill was called Backstab.) The underlying problem there is that the cutlass-and-pistol-wielding skill-monkey doesn't fit within the range of stereotypical adventuring archetypes for the middle ages.


2. Granted, I'm juuust barely too young to have played 1E, but I have looked in its PHB a few times, so- the 1E paladin's restrictions on who they can associate with. From what I remember, not only could they not join a party with any evil characters, if even one PC was not LG, the paladin could only join that group for a single adventure. What's the point of including a class, available to PCs, that is not only insanely rare and difficult to qualify for (using the old edition's chargen method), but also cannot stay long-term with 99.99999...% of all D&D groups ever? :miko:
Never played 1E, but didn't it originally boil down the alignment system to just Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic? When did the paladin class get chucked in?

[Keltest]

Never played 1E, but didn't it originally boil down the alignment system to just Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic? When did the paladin class get chucked in?

He's misremembering. The paladin is unable to willingly and knowingly adventure with people of evil alignment, and will only work with neutral characters on an adventure-by-adventure basis (ie they wont seek out these people for more than one adventure unless there is some circumstance that forces these particular people to be involved.)

[RazorChain]

He's misremembering. The paladin is unable to willingly and knowingly adventure with people of evil alignment, and will only work with neutral characters on an adventure-by-adventure basis (ie they wont seek out these people for more than one adventure unless there is some circumstance that forces these particular people to be involved.)

Makes complete sense to me....I wouldn't trust evil people and I'm no Paladin

[ideasmith]

I've zero interest today in "arguments" based on evasive and conflating wordplay, and the most deliberate unfavorable and diverted reading possible.

If I am not responding to your actual objections, that’s because I don’t know what they are.


"It's no more or less silly than magic working" is a failure to understand the basics of speculative fiction,

I’m not seeing what would make this aspect of spell targeting that big a deal.


"a false argument of the worst kind,

Since the statement in question is not an argument (according to the dictionaries I checked), I fail to see how it can be a false one. (Unless you meant ”c. Archaic A reason or matter for dispute or contention: (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/arguement) "sheath'd their swords for lack of argument" (Shakespeare).”, in which case, why are you calling it “false”?)

(If you persist in calling it an argument in the sense I think you intended, I am going to start quoting Monty Python at you.)


"and no amount of trying to move words around and match the ends up like game tiles is going to change that.

If you want me to respond to your actual meaning, you will have to give me enough information about it that I can tell what it is.




As it happens, I have no problem calling large chunks of D&D magic silly, though whether that applies to magic in fantasy settings in general is a different conversation. The real question is whether this kind of reductionist-physics-extrapolation is going to elicit irritation from players or a subdued smatter of applause, given they might otherwise, e.g, have expected some tactical payoff for canny use of local terrain features (moveable furniture.) Is "golly, look how consistently we've applied D&D physics" really the outcome you forsee? Think hard.

No, it isn’t and wasn’t. But my interpretation is easy to understand, easy to apply, and easy to communicate to players. This means less time making the rules work, and more time playing by them. I think player will like having more time in actual play, even if they don’t care about the cause. (Though I don’t know what alternative you are suggesting – since you haven’t said – so I am unavoidably making assumptions here. If you have a better idea, by all means suggest it.)

The options for moving furniture are only slightly reduced. Don’t forget that furniture can be moved without picking it up, though it might damage the floor. And that furniture that has been picked up and carried can be put down somewhere else.

By the way, I don’t know what “reductionist physics extrapolation” is supposed to be or why I was supposedly applying it. I was giving a simple answer to a simple question. (The person who asked the question seems not to have wanted an answer, but I didn’t know that at the time.)

[baticeer]

Eh, for what it's worth, as a DM I let warlocks Eldritch Blast objects anyways, and I believe most DMs do so as well (at least I definitely remember it happening in a couple of games where I was a player). Restricting damage-dealing spells to creatures only has always seemed silly to me, in terms of the logic of the game world (with the exception of spells that deal psychic damage or something along those lines). If the fighter can reasonably hit it with a sword, I think the warlock should be able to hit it with a blast. The DMG includes rules for object armor class and hit points, after all.

[Spore]

Earth is not flat though. Curvature will get in the way of both LoS and LoE.

True, you can adjust for curvature and use indirect fire with the help of spotting, but by that point it's artillery (with both orbital mechanics and the Coriolis effect involved), not sniping.

That's a rather elegant way of limiting it. Curvature prevents LoE from extending indefinetely so it is capped on 3 miles or whatever.

[Lacuna Caster]

By the way, I don’t know what “reductionist physics extrapolation” is supposed to be or why I was supposedly applying it. I was giving a simple answer to a simple question. (The person who asked the question seems not to have wanted an answer, but I didn’t know that at the time.)
You're breaking down the world's material laws (as presented in the rules, physics) into constituent parts (reductionism) and extrapolating from those to derive this (outlandish) outcome. For details, see below.


Eh, for what it's worth, as a DM I let warlocks Eldritch Blast objects anyways, and I believe most DMs do so as well (at least I definitely remember it happening in a couple of games where I was a player). Restricting damage-dealing spells to creatures only has always seemed silly to me, in terms of the logic of the game world (with the exception of spells that deal psychic damage or something along those lines). If the fighter can reasonably hit it with a sword, I think the warlock should be able to hit it with a blast. The DMG includes rules for object armor class and hit points, after all.
Blasting the table?- sure, absolutely. But in that case the table would get damaged. What's utterly counter-intuitive- i.e, the direct opposite of 'easy to understand'- is that picking up the table and carrying it in front means you soak damage instead, such that you are now protecting it.

There's no reason why this would apply solely to Eldritch Blast, by the way. If anything you carry is equipment, and therefore boils down to an extension of your person (plus or minus a certain AC bonus), then javelins and beer mugs and poisoned darts or anything else thrown at the table... can only ever hit you. (The ballistic trajectories required for this behaviour are left as an exercise to the reader.)

@ideasmith: This is what we normally call 'a reductio ad absurdum'.

[Keltest]

Blasting the table?- sure, absolutely. But in that case the table would get damaged. What's utterly counter-intuitive- i.e, the direct opposite of 'easy to understand'- is that picking up the table and carrying it in front means you soak damage instead, such that you are now protecting it.

There's no reason why this would apply solely to Eldritch Blast, by the way. If anything you carry is equipment, and therefore boils down to an extension of your person (plus or minus a certain AC bonus), then javelins and beer mugs and poisoned darts or anything else thrown at the table... can only ever hit you. (The ballistic trajectories required for this behaviour are left as an exercise to the reader.)

@ideasmith: This is what we normally call 'a reductio ad absurdum'.

No more counter intuitive than someone using a tower shield to protect themselves and still getting hit, whether by a sword or an eldritch blast. I think theres a reasonable argument to be made that the act of bracing a shield/table/some other object to interpose it between yourself and the projectile exposes you to a different effect on connection than just hiding behind it. As for the beer mug, that would be an armor class bonus. If youre getting hit, its because the mug went around/over the table to hit you anyway, not that it smacked into the table and concussed you.

[Kish]

Never played 1E, but didn't it originally boil down the alignment system to just Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic? When did the paladin class get chucked in?
1ed AD&D had the nine alignments, had the paladin class (though you had to roll a natural 17 for your Charisma to play one...and you weren't allowed to arrange stats, so that meant for the sixth stat you rolled...), and they would explicitly only employ Lawful Good henchmen.

Basic D&D gave mid-level fighters a choice. They could become knights, which had this list of buffs and requirements (that was the only one available to Neutral fighters, and was what every fighter did by default). They could become paladins if they were Lawful, which had another list of buffs and requirements (including some obligations to an abstracted Lawful church). They could become avengers if they were Chaotic, which had another list of buffs and requirements (explicitly not including an obligation, as such, to anyone, because screw everyone but me; they lost the ability to employ standard henchmen entirely, but gained the ability to try and persuade random enemy monsters to become temporary henchmen).

[Quertus]

You're breaking down the world's material laws (as presented in the rules, physics) into constituent parts (reductionism) and extrapolating from those to derive this (outlandish) outcome. For details, see below.


Blasting the table?- sure, absolutely. But in that case the table would get damaged. What's utterly counter-intuitive- i.e, the direct opposite of 'easy to understand'- is that picking up the table and carrying it in front means you soak damage instead, such that you are now protecting it.

There's no reason why this would apply solely to Eldritch Blast, by the way. If anything you carry is equipment, and therefore boils down to an extension of your person (plus or minus a certain AC bonus), then javelins and beer mugs and poisoned darts or anything else thrown at the table... can only ever hit you. (The ballistic trajectories required for this behaviour are left as an exercise to the reader.)

@ideasmith: This is what we normally call 'a reductio ad absurdum'.

So, more importantly, so long as I count as someone's equipment, I can never be damaged by such effects?

[Max_Killjoy]

So, more importantly, so long as I count as someone's equipment, I can never be damaged by such effects?

Well, I guess if someone were to pick you up and use you to shield themselves from the spell, neither of you could be hurt by it.

[LooseCannoneer]

Well, I guess if someone were to pick you up and use you to shield themselves from the spell, neither of you could be hurt by it.

So one persuade check and some Martyr-type effect and your BSF is now tanking divine retribution. I wonder if it works on all of those falling rocks.

[RazorChain]

So, more importantly, so long as I count as someone's equipment, I can never be damaged by such effects?

You have to understand that DnD has a very ridiculous notion of how combat works, so I'm just going to throw it out there that the combat rules in DnD are ridiculous.

In DnD armor makes you harder to hit. Now everyone and their grandmothers that has done any fighting or combat sports at all will understand that this is ridiculous. Armor makes you harder to hurt when you get hit. Armor is to mitigate damage when you get hurt not make you harder to hit.

Of course if you are using something as a shield or even a real shield it can get hacked apart and often does in combat especially light shields like the viking shield. Shield on the other hand makes you harder to hit as you can block with it, heck even a sword makes you harder to hit as now you can parry or threaten your foe and keep distance.

So when that mage goes and makes a touch attack against your zwei hander wielding barbarian then I suggest you get yourself a sharp greatsword put it between you and your DM and dare him to touch you

Now HP are often explained as you are better at not getting hurt in combat as they increase but then again when you look at falling damage then a character at 1st level can die if he falls 10-20 feet but a high level might just pick himself up after falling 200 feet, so in reality more HP essentially make you a superhero. Now I'm going to refrain discussing how the impact from falling damage doesn't really scale with damage/height as it is the speed you are travelling at when you hit the ground that counts and you don't reach terminal velocity until after 15 seconds.

[chaoschronicler]

You have to understand that DnD has a very ridiculous notion of how combat works, so I'm just going to throw it out there that the combat rules in DnD are ridiculous.

In DnD armor makes you harder to hit. Now everyone and their grandmothers that has done any fighting or combat sports at all will understand that this is ridiculous. Armor makes you harder to hurt when you get hit. Armor is to mitigate damage when you get hurt not make you harder to hit.

Of course if you are using something as a shield or even a real shield it can get hacked apart and often does in combat especially light shields like the viking shield. Shield on the other hand makes you harder to hit as you can block with it, heck even a sword makes you harder to hit as now you can parry or threaten your foe and keep distance.

So when that mage goes and makes a touch attack against your zwei hander wielding barbarian then I suggest you get yourself a sharp greatsword put it between you and your DM and dare him to touch you

Now HP are often explained as you are better at not getting hurt in combat as they increase but then again when you look at falling damage then a character at 1st level can die if he falls 10-20 feet but a high level might just pick himself up after falling 200 feet, so in reality more HP essentially make you a superhero. Now I'm going to refrain discussing how the impact from falling damage doesn't really scale with damage/height as it is the speed you are travelling at when you hit the ground that counts and you don't reach terminal velocity until after 15 seconds.

I forget where I heard this but when it comes to AC it's not just dodging but also how the armor reflects hits (i.e you "hit" but didn't penetrate armor).
Thing is this is more of a GM's call or how they like to describe combat. For instance I had a goblin archer fire his bow at a rogue but missed; I know that said rogue is relying more on his Dex than armor and simply say that he got out of the way in time.

For an armored character I had a goblin try to hit a paladin in full-plate with a short sword. I as the GM botched the roll to hit, but seeing as how I was close to actually hitting (was three short) I described it as "The Goblin swings at you only to come to a sudden stop as his weapon ricochets off of your armor".

As for HP and fall damage I agree with you on that.

[Amaril]

You have to understand that DnD has a very ridiculous notion of how combat works, so I'm just going to throw it out there that the combat rules in DnD are ridiculous.

In DnD armor makes you harder to hit. Now everyone and their grandmothers that has done any fighting or combat sports at all will understand that this is ridiculous. Armor makes you harder to hurt when you get hit. Armor is to mitigate damage when you get hurt not make you harder to hit.

Of course if you are using something as a shield or even a real shield it can get hacked apart and often does in combat especially light shields like the viking shield. Shield on the other hand makes you harder to hit as you can block with it, heck even a sword makes you harder to hit as now you can parry or threaten your foe and keep distance.

So when that mage goes and makes a touch attack against your zwei hander wielding barbarian then I suggest you get yourself a sharp greatsword put it between you and your DM and dare him to touch you

Now HP are often explained as you are better at not getting hurt in combat as they increase but then again when you look at falling damage then a character at 1st level can die if he falls 10-20 feet but a high level might just pick himself up after falling 200 feet, so in reality more HP essentially make you a superhero. Now I'm going to refrain discussing how the impact from falling damage doesn't really scale with damage/height as it is the speed you are travelling at when you hit the ground that counts and you don't reach terminal velocity until after 15 seconds.

Armor making you harder to hit makes sense if you define a "hit" as "an attack that actually gets past all your defenses to inflict some injury". By that logic, an arrow that bounces off your breastplate hasn't "hit" you, because it hasn't hurt you, even if it did physically impact against your body. Of course, it's not a perfect simulation, since, for example, a mace impacting a mail hauberk will still hurt even though it hit armor, but I'd call that an acceptable simplification for game purposes (if we wanted to observe reality, we'd observe reality, and all that). The problem comes from the fact that D&D's combat rules can't decide whether a "hit" means an actual injury, or just a weakening of your defenses. Some rules imply the one, others the opposite. In the former case, armor making you harder to hit is fine; in the latter, it should just mitigate damage.

As for a weapon being used to hold someone at bay, like in the case of that touch spell, the rules have a system for that too: it's called attacks of opportunity. Not to say it's a good system, or one that does a good job of modeling all the times that should happen, but that's what it's in there to simulate. The particular example of a touch attack using a spell is one where it breaks down, but only because attacking with a touch spell automatically counts as an "armed" attack, so it doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity. If one wanted to make that situation more realistic, one could rule that spellcasters need unarmed combat training to avoid provoking an AoO when they cast touch spells on enemies. As for characters with unarmed combat training not provoking AoOs on touch attacks, I personally have no problem with it--after all, the whole point of said training is to make up for that disadvantage.

[georgie_leech]

Armor making you harder to hit makes sense if you define a "hit" as "an attack that actually gets past all your defenses to inflict some injury". By that logic, an arrow that bounces off your breastplate hasn't "hit" you, because it hasn't hurt you, even if it did physically impact against your body. Of course, it's not a perfect simulation, since, for example, a mace impacting a mail hauberk will still hurt even though it hit armor, but I'd call that an acceptable simplification for game purposes (if we wanted to observe reality, we'd observe reality, and all that). The problem comes from the fact that D&D's combat rules can't decide whether a "hit" means an actual injury, or just a weakening of your defenses. Some rules imply the one, others the opposite. In the former case, armor making you harder to hit is fine; in the latter, it should just mitigate damage.

As for a weapon being used to hold someone at bay, like in the case of that touch spell, the rules have a system for that too: it's called attacks of opportunity. Not to say it's a good system, or one that does a good job of modeling all the times that should happen, but that's what it's in there to simulate. The particular example of a touch attack using a spell is one where it breaks down, but only because attacking with a touch spell automatically counts as an "armed" attack, so it doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity. If one wanted to make that situation more realistic, one could rule that spellcasters need unarmed combat training to avoid provoking an AoO when they cast touch spells on enemies. As for characters with unarmed combat training not provoking AoOs on touch attacks, I personally have no problem with it--after all, the whole point of said training is to make up for that disadvantage.

Mind you, older editions of D&D did actually have different armors protect more or less against different damage types, and blunt tended to work better against most armors than slashing. It was just super fiddly and involved multiple tables for one of the most common types of interactions in the game (attacking), so most either got sick of those rules or didn't use them.

[Cazero]

The interactions of HP, AC and DR, three different mechanical abstractions of the same set of things, are completely nonsensical? Who would have guessed?

[Kurald Galain]

The problem comes from the fact that D&D's combat rules can't decide whether a "hit" means an actual injury, or just a weakening of your defenses. Some rules imply the one, others the opposite. In the former case, armor making you harder to hit is fine; in the latter, it should just mitigate damage.
Interestingly, the rules are pretty well consistent with the former (that "hit" means injury; the only weird thing at this point is that characters can take Bruce Willis levels of punishments, like they do in movies), and do get rather ridiculous if you assume the latter.

So this quote is fitting,


But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?

[Quertus]

Now HP are often explained as you are better at not getting hurt in combat as they increase but then again when you look at falling damage then a character at 1st level can die if he falls 10-20 feet but a high level might just pick himself up after falling 200 feet, so in reality more HP essentially make you a superhero. Now I'm going to refrain discussing how the impact from falling damage doesn't really scale with damage/height as it is the speed you are travelling at when you hit the ground that counts and you don't reach terminal velocity until after 15 seconds.

I've played in games where we tried to house rule in property gravity. This works for falling speed, but not for damage. What is the tallest fall that a human has ever survived? I suspect D&D HP are actually inadequate to survive an uncapped fall of that magnitude.

A proper scientist would choose a variety of heights, and drop 1000 puppies from each height, testing how many falls it took to kill each puppy. And repeat with various creatures and objects, then calculate falling damage according to their observations.

[RazorChain]

I've played in games where we tried to house rule in property gravity. This works for falling speed, but not for damage. What is the tallest fall that a human has ever survived? I suspect D&D HP are actually inadequate to survive an uncapped fall of that magnitude.

A proper scientist would choose a variety of heights, and drop 1000 puppies from each height, testing how many falls it took to kill each puppy. And repeat with various creatures and objects, then calculate falling damage according to their observations.

Bought a truckload of puppies, I'm on it! I'll post the results soon.

[Amaril]

Interestingly, the rules are pretty well consistent with the former (that "hit" means injury; the only weird thing at this point is that characters can take Bruce Willis levels of punishments, like they do in movies), and do get rather ridiculous if you assume the latter.

I'd agree, if Bruce Willis levels of punishment were the worst thing that happens to high-level D&D characters. But when you can get hit square in the face with the equivalent of a rocket-propelled grenade and shrug it off with absolutely no ill effects, ostensibly without being protected by any kind of magic, you have officially exhausted my suspension of disbelief.

[icefractal]

I'd agree, if Bruce Willis levels of punishment were the worst thing that happens to high-level D&D characters. But when you can get hit square in the face with the equivalent of a rocket-propelled grenade and shrug it off with absolutely no ill effects, ostensibly without being protected by any kind of magic, you have officially exhausted my suspension of disbelief.I guess it depends on whether you see D&D humans as being identical to RL ones, in the absence of specific magic, and class levels as only representing increased skill. Drop those, and there's no SoD issue - it's simply a world with different rules than our own.

[Amaril]

I guess it depends on whether you see D&D humans as being identical to RL ones, in the absence of specific magic, and class levels as only representing increased skill. Drop those, and there's no SoD issue - it's simply a world with different rules than our own.

True, true. It does make more sense if high-level D&D characters are mythic heroes, rather than just highly skilled humans. Whether or not I'm in the mood for a game like that, though, I still find the problem crops up too early in the game to fully support that assumption. I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that people generally agree on 6th level still being within skilled human capabilities, magic being excepted--yet, even at 6th level, many characters can still get hit in the face with fireballs and not so much as flinch. You could say that leveling up at all represents becoming superhuman, even at just 2nd level, but that's an assumption I'm not fond of. I want a game that allows characters some room to grow while still staying human. And from all the fluff I've read for D&D, it's never seemed to me that the designers wanted low-level PCs to necessarily be superhuman, either.

[Quertus]

I'd agree, if Bruce Willis levels of punishment were the worst thing that happens to high-level D&D characters. But when you can get hit square in the face with the equivalent of a rocket-propelled grenade and shrug it off with absolutely no ill effects, ostensibly without being protected by any kind of magic, you have officially exhausted my suspension of disbelief.

Given that D&D generally doesn't have the concept of "hit square in the face", I'd say this particular issue is at least in part caused by one's envisioning of events not matching the mechanics.

Kinda like the opposite of the captain hobo problem. Like video games where your special attack drops a planet on your enemy... for 25 damage.

[Arbane]

I've played in games where we tried to house rule in property gravity. This works for falling speed, but not for damage. What is the tallest fall that a human has ever survived? I suspect D&D HP are actually inadequate to survive an uncapped fall of that magnitude.

"Vesna Vulovic (Yugoslavia) was 23 working as a Jugoslavenski Aerotransport hostess when she survived a fall from 10,160 m (33,333 ft) over Srbsk, Kamenice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), on 26 January 1972 after the DC-9 she was working aboard, blew up. She fell inside a section of tail unit. She was in hospital for 16 months after emerging from a 27 day coma and having many bones broken. " (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/highest-fall-survived-without-parachute/)


A proper scientist would choose a variety of heights, and drop 1000 puppies from each height, testing how many falls it took to kill each puppy. And repeat with various creatures and objects, then calculate falling damage according to their observations.

That's terrible.

You're not taking air resistance into account! These results will be useless for falling-humanoid predictive models!


And from all the fluff I've read for D&D, it's never seemed to me that the designers wanted low-level PCs to necessarily be superhuman, either.

Someone needs to tell that to the guy who's flying around throwing fireballs.

[Khedrac]

As for acceleration due to gravity - well AD&D actually did manage to cover that!

I cannot remember which book they introduced it in, but fallign damage went from 1d6/10' fallen to 1d6/10'/10' fallen.
I,e, 10' = 1d6
20' = 1+2 = 3d6
30' = 1+2+3 = 6d6
40' = 10d6
etc.
Unfortunately they left the cap at 20d6 which is 60' (should be 21d6).

I am not sure at what point humans should reach terminal velocity, but there you go.

[georgie_leech]

As for acceleration due to gravity - well AD&D actually did manage to cover that!

I cannot remember which book they introduced it in, but fallign damage went from 1d6/10' fallen to 1d6/10'/10' fallen.
I,e, 10' = 1d6
20' = 1+2 = 3d6
30' = 1+2+3 = 6d6
40' = 10d6
etc.
Unfortunately they left the cap at 20d6 which is 60' (should be 21d6).

I am not sure at what point humans should reach terminal velocity, but there you go.

A quick Google says that human terminal velocity is about 53 m/s for a skydiver. And that since acceleration slows as you approach terminal velocity, after about 10 seconds you're at about 94% of that. Which, incidentally, means that you won't reach terminal velocity until well after 1000 feet.

[Lacuna Caster]

In DnD armor makes you harder to hit. Now everyone and their grandmothers that has done any fighting or combat sports at all will understand that this is ridiculous. Armor makes you harder to hurt when you get hit. Armor is to mitigate damage when you get hurt not make you harder to hit.
Eh... theoretically, you can hand-wave this as meaning 'the metal plates tend to deflect most blows', and there is (was?) a separate 'Touch AC' statistic meant to represent how dodgy you are (which was, for some reason, separate again from reflex saves.)

There are many many aspects of D&D combat that are unrealistic, but it's hardly the most unrealistic, and even that wouldn't necessarily translate to 'ridiculous' if there were some other justification for including the mechanic (like simplicity, or 'balance', or opportunities for improvised description, or genre convention or whatevs.)

Dumping all over D&D in general isn't especially what I was aiming for, but I will say the problem with older editions has been that attempts at verisimilitude get tangled up with attempts to curb powergaming and appease thespians in the audience and generally be all things unto all people, which results in a lot of tacked-on complexity and tripping over it's own feet. The multiclassing rules were a good example.

[Kurald Galain]

I'd agree, if Bruce Willis levels of punishment were the worst thing that happens to high-level D&D characters. But when you can get hit square in the face with the equivalent of a rocket-propelled grenade and shrug it off with absolutely no ill effects, ostensibly without being protected by any kind of magic, you have officially exhausted my suspension of disbelief.

No, you've got it precisely backwards. You got hit by the grenade and you got hurt, as indicated by the fact that you lost hit points. It's very straightforward.

[Max_Killjoy]

No, you've got it precisely backwards. You got hit by the grenade and you got hurt, as indicated by the fact that you lost hit points. It's very straightforward.

Other than the temporary loss of abstract hit points, which at a certain point in D&D character progression become legion, and are easily recovered by that point, what exactly happened to the character?

Nothing.

At all.

[Keltest]

Other than the temporary loss of abstract hit points, which at a certain point in D&D character progression become legion, and are easily recovered by that point, what exactly happened to the character?

Nothing.

At all.

Well sure, if you totally discount the representation of such negative effects as would be acquired by getting blasted with an RPG (assuming the chunky salsa rule isn't invoked) then sure, nothing will happen. At best you can make an argument that in D&D, getting hurt is cheap.

[BRC]

Other than the temporary loss of abstract hit points, which at a certain point in D&D character progression become legion, and are easily recovered by that point, what exactly happened to the character?

Nothing.

At all.
Which, yeah, is unrealistic, but I wouldn't call it Ridiculous.

D&D is about Heroic Fantasy. Abstracted Hit Points that have no consequences until you hit 0 streamlines gameplay and helps players feel like their characters are unstoppable badasses, while providing enough feedback to make the threat of defeat very real, without PC's necessarily picking up a collection of severed limbs, missing eyes, and nerve damage over their careers of getting professionally stabbed.

Were this a "Realistic" Medieval Combat Simulator, or designed to simulate high-stakes courtly intrigue, then having high-level characters be able to shrug off your standard Greatsword would with no lasting consequences would be ridiculous.

[lesser_minion]

How about 3e full attack (also WFRP2e, for the same reason)?

You moved, so you don't have time to attack as many times this round. Yet everyone else gets their full allotment of attacks against you, even though you were out of reach for half the round? Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.


In DnD armor makes you harder to hit. Now everyone and their grandmothers that has done any fighting or combat sports at all will understand that this is ridiculous. Armor makes you harder to hurt when you get hit. Armor is to mitigate damage when you get hurt not make you harder to hit.

The attack roll in D&D does not determine whether or not you hit a target, it determines whether or not you succeed in inflicting sufficient harm to be worth noting. It is thus entirely reasonable for armour to make that dice roll less likely to succeed.

As long as you recognise a few fundamental principles of hitpoints, I don't find those too weird either.

I'm reasonably sure that the fundamental principles in question include:

If an attack or event depletes even one hitpoint, that attack or event should always be understood to be something that might have killed the character, regardless of how many hitpoints they had. Don't think of characters as being somehow unkillable until they've already been wounded several times.
Hitpoint damage is a means to determine the final outcome of an attack, not the final outcome itself. Don't ascribe meaning to the amount of damage done until after the damage is applied and any additional results assessed.


One of the fundamental axioms of RPG design is that if using dice or similar is considered problematic for whatever reason, a random occurrence may instead be modelled by letting players declare whether or not it happens, with limits on how often they can choose a favourable result. Hitpoints, and even things like 4e encounter powers, are not examples of dissociated mechanics, because this axiom serves to connect the out-of-character model to the in-character meaning.


I'd agree, if Bruce Willis levels of punishment were the worst thing that happens to high-level D&D characters. But when you can get hit square in the face with the equivalent of a rocket-propelled grenade and shrug it off with absolutely no ill effects, ostensibly without being protected by any kind of magic, you have officially exhausted my suspension of disbelief.

In-character specifics like "struck square in the face by an exploding RPG round" are precisely what the hitpoint system helps to determine. At the point you're assessing hitpoints, all you should have established is that the character in question was non-specifically wounded by an RPG round. You might portray them as having been struck square in the face, but only after you've determined that the wound had effects consistent with that.

You wouldn't look at someone's diplomacy check result of -4 and declare that they made a beautiful, impassioned, and moving speech that moves the entire audience to tears and now the entire government supports them unconditionally forever (although in some very limited cases, perhaps you might say that they do somehow manage to make a beautiful, impassioned, and moving speech, but that it manages to end up being in support of a position diametrically opposed to what they were supposed to be arguing for).


Other than the temporary loss of abstract hit points, which at a certain point in D&D character progression become legion, and are easily recovered by that point, what exactly happened to the character?

If the risk of wounding someone but only superficially is not something you're prepared to accept, perhaps you should use a better grenade?

That goes for out-of-character as well. If you don't believe that an event is capable of failing to injure someone in more than a superficial way, it shouldn't be modelled as pure hitpoint damage. And of course, as I've already hinted, if you went off and determined a bunch of specifics like "struck square in the face" by some means other than the hitpoint system, you should just be applying consequences consistent with that, rather than then faffing around trying to determine how many hitpoints they lose.

[Kurald Galain]

Well sure, if you totally discount the representation of such negative effects as would be acquired by getting blasted with an RPG (assuming the chunky salsa rule isn't invoked) then sure, nothing will happen. At best you can make an argument that in D&D, getting hurt is cheap.
So the "ridiculous" part is not the fact that hit point loss represents actual wounds, but the absence of wound penalties. Again, this is just like in action movies and fantasy novels. Which, as BRC points out, is unrealistic but not ridiculous.


D&D is about Heroic Fantasy. Abstracted Hit Points that have no consequences until you hit 0 streamlines gameplay and helps players feel like their characters are unstoppable badasses, while providing enough feedback to make the threat of defeat very real, without PC's necessarily picking up a collection of severed limbs, missing eyes, and nerve damage over their careers of getting professionally stabbed.
Indeed.



One of the fundamental axioms of RPG design is that if using dice or similar is considered problematic for whatever reason, a random occurrence may instead be modelled by letting players declare whether or not it happens, with limits on how often they can choose a favourable result. Hitpoints, and even things like 4e encounter powers, are not examples of dissociated mechanics, because this axiom serves to connect the out-of-character model to the in-character meaning.
Hit points as wounds are not disassociated. Hit points as "plot armor or dodging ability" are very much disassociated.

Likewise, "encounter powers" that recharge after the character rests are not disassociated. "Encounter powers" that recharge when the DM decides that it counts as a new scene now are disassociated. It's a subtle difference but an important one.

[Jay R]

In DnD armor makes you harder to hit. Now everyone and their grandmothers that has done any fighting or combat sports at all will understand that this is ridiculous. Armor makes you harder to hurt when you get hit. Armor is to mitigate damage when you get hurt not make you harder to hit.

This makes perfect sense when you realize that being hit doesn't mean sword contact, but actual damage. The rules treat a hit for no damage as a miss - which is functionally the same thing. The armor does mitigate damage when you get hit. Calculate the damage you would take over ten rounds without armor, and compare it to the damage you took because of your armor.

I've occasionally had a DM say, "It hits you, but thanks to your armor, does no damage," when the attack roll would have hit an unarmored person, but was stopped due to my PC's AC. It's just easier to say, "He missed you" than "He hit you for zero damage."

A rule that is merely over-simplified language doesn't qualify in my mind as a ridiculous rule. I'm more interested in the rules that make an unreasonable thing happen. Taking less damage over time because you're wearing armor doesn't qualify as ridiculous, even if the rule is phrased badly.

[Maybe we could use a "stupidly phrased rules" thread.]

[Lacuna Caster]

In-character specifics like "struck square in the face by an exploding RPG round" are precisely what the hitpoint system helps to determine. At the point you're assessing hitpoints, all you should have established is that the character in question was non-specifically wounded by an RPG round. You might portray them as having been struck square in the face, but only after you've determined that the wound had effects consistent with that... ...If you don't believe that an event is capable of failing to injure someone in more than a superficial way, it shouldn't be modelled as pure hitpoint damage.
Look... it's all very romantic to think of how Hit Points might be squinted at juuust right in order to arrive at this interpretation, but I don't think there's any particular consistency on this point in the rules (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Environment). Sure, drowning, suffocation and the coup-de-grace potentially amount to 'instant KO', but immersion in lava or acid, being on fire, falling damage and the like- all of which would be catastrophic injuries or certain death in reality- can be more-or-less shrugged off by high level PCs. These are events way past the horizon of creative re-fluffing. And of course, by default, a high-level fighter with 60/80 HP (i.e, 'mostly cuts and bruises') takes more 'cure light wounds' to heal than a low-level wizard with 1/8 HP (i.e, 'guts nearly hanging out'.)

I'm afraid Hit Points in D&D don't really translate into anything besides... Hit Points.


D&D is about Heroic Fantasy. Abstracted Hit Points that have no consequences until you hit 0 streamlines gameplay and helps players feel like their characters are unstoppable badasses, while providing enough feedback to make the threat of defeat very real, without PC's necessarily picking up a collection of severed limbs, missing eyes, and nerve damage over their careers of getting professionally stabbed.
I would severely question whether this is especially characteristic of 'heroic fantasy'. I won't claim to have an encyclopaedic command of the literature, but from what I remember of Tolkien and Le Guin there is a prevailing sense that getting stabbed is a major impediment to concentration and can easily leave lasting scars. Even in the episodic pulps, like the Conan and the Fafhrd/Grey Mouser stories, protracted fight scenes usually emphasise the strain of accumulated fatigue, rather than 'death by a thousand cuts'. (And I clearly remember a scene where Fafhrd says that fighting off more than two opponents at once is almost impossible if they're remotely competent.)

Now, I will agree that there are plenty of players who do want exactly what you're describing, and I will cautiously agree that a Hit Points system can deliver on that. (I'm not sure older D&D editions actually do so- PCs tend to be squishy starting out and in no real danger of defeat by mid-levels, once they get resurrection magic and enough dice for the law of averages to prevail- but in principle they could. That's probably why E6 is a thing (http://www.myth-weavers.com/wiki/index.php/Epic_6).)

[Max_Killjoy]

Hit points as wounds are not disassociated. Hit points as "plot armor or dodging ability" are very much disassociated.


And never mind that the exact same 20 hp wound that kills any unleveled and most low-level characters, is going to be laughed off by a higher-level character.




Likewise, "encounter powers" that recharge after the character rests are not disassociated. "Encounter powers" that recharge when the DM decides that it counts as a new scene now are disassociated. It's a subtle difference but an important one.

They're absolutely disassociated -- most of the "rest reset" powers have absolutely no in-setting reason to be limited to once before resting. It's purely a "game balance" mechanic, and NOTHING more.

[ideasmith]

You're breaking down the world's material laws (as presented in the rules, physics) into constituent parts (reductionism) and extrapolating from those to derive this (outlandish) outcome. For details, see below.


Blasting the table?- sure, absolutely. But in that case the table would get damaged. What's utterly counter-intuitive- i.e, the direct opposite of 'easy to understand'- is that picking up the table and carrying it in front means you soak damage instead, such that you are now protecting it.

There's no reason why this would apply solely to Eldritch Blast, by the way. If anything you carry is equipment, and therefore boils down to an extension of your person (plus or minus a certain AC bonus), then javelins and beer mugs and poisoned darts or anything else thrown at the table... can only ever hit you. (The ballistic trajectories required for this behaviour are left as an exercise to the reader.)

@ideasmith: This is what we normally call 'a reductio ad absurdum'.

It turns out that I misread the context of the question I was answering. For whatever reason, I thought that Max_Killjoy was asking about an effect which required line of effect. On double-checking, it turns out he was asking about something called 'Eldritch Blast', which apparently doesn't require line of effect.

My apologies for the error.

(By the way, I was not "breaking down the world's material laws (as presented in the rules, physics) into constituent parts (reductionism) and extrapolating from those". I was simply confused as to what rule was under discussion.)

Again, my apologies for the error.

[Kish]

(By the way, I was not "breaking down the world's material laws (as presented in the rules, physics) into constituent parts (reductionism) and extrapolating from those". I was simply confused as to what rule was under discussion.)
No no no. When they ask you, "Are you breaking down the world's material laws into constituent parts?" you say yes!

[2D8HP]

OK, A series of quotes that cracks me up in total, but make no sense out of context. What to do with them?

I'A proper scientist would choose a variety of heights, and drop 1000 puppies from each height, testing how many falls it took to kill each puppy. And repeat with various creatures and objects, then calculate falling damage according to their observations.
Bought a truckload of puppies, I'm on it! I'll post the results soon.

That's terrible.

You're not taking air resistance into account! These results will be useless for falling-humanoid predictive models!So no puppy based science?

[Telok]

OK, A series of quotes that cracks me up in total, but make no sense out of context. What to do with them?

So no puppy based science?

No. We need catgirls.

[Quertus]

OK, A series of quotes that cracks me up in total, but make no sense out of context. What to do with them?

So no puppy based science?


No. We need catgirls.

I am pleased I could participate in engineering greater happiness through mass puppy death.

For the record, I did postulate that repeated experimentation with various creatures and items would be required - in part to take into account effects of shape, mass, etc., on our falling damage model

I fear, however, that catgirls, always landing on their feet, may provide some rather anomalous data.

[Telok]

I fear, however, that catgirls, always landing on their feet, may provide some rather anomalous data.

Well they'll be good for data on nimble types who tend to land on their feet. Or we could cut the feet off, but not all of them because we need a control group.

[Jay R]

I'm afraid Hit Points in D&D don't really translate into anything besides... Hit Points.

Actually, I finally found the fighting style that they accurately simulate.

Hit points are a simulation of old, bad, B-movie Western fist fights. The good guy (in the white hat) and that bad guy (in the black hat) keep hitting each other until one or the other falls down and doesn't get up.

[The purpose of the white hat on the hero? So you can identify him throughout the fistfight, despite the poor film quality.]

[lesser_minion]

Look... it's all very romantic to think of how Hit Points might be squinted at juuust right in order to arrive at this interpretation, but I don't think there's any particular consistency on this point in the rules (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Environment). Sure, drowning, suffocation and the coup-de-grace potentially amount to 'instant KO', but immersion in lava or acid, being on fire, falling damage and the like- all of which would be catastrophic injuries or certain death in reality- can be more-or-less shrugged off by high level PCs. These are events way past the horizon of creative re-fluffing. And of course, by default, a high-level fighter with 60/80 HP (i.e, 'mostly cuts and bruises') takes more 'cure light wounds' to heal than a low-level wizard with 1/8 HP (i.e, 'guts nearly hanging out'.)

Immersion in lava or acid, being on fire, falling damage, and the like are all quite clearly badly written then, aren't they? But other rules that use the hitpoint rules badly are bad rules in and of themselves, they don't make the hitpoint rules bad.

Also, 1/8 hp is not "guts nearly hanging out". If you still have hitpoints and the attacks that hit you didn't have additional effects of their own, all of the injuries you took must have been superficial.


I'm afraid Hit Points in D&D don't really translate into anything besides... Hit Points.

Hitpoints are just hitpoints, but that doesn't make them a dissociated mechanic, because they follow the accepted convention for handling random occurrences: either use a real-world source of randomness such as dice or cards, or if this is undesirable for whatever reason, just pick a result, subject to some common-sense limitations on how often the result is favourable.

Or are dice a dissociated mechanic now?


And never mind that the exact same 20 hp wound that kills any unleveled and most low-level characters, is going to be laughed off by a higher-level character.

The model is quite clearly predicting that it is NOT the exact same wound.


They're absolutely disassociated -- most of the "rest reset" powers have absolutely no in-setting reason to be limited to once before resting. It's purely a "game balance" mechanic, and NOTHING more.

It is entirely clear what is going on: whether or not an opportunity exists to use the power is random. The same reasoning applies as for hitpoints: a random occurrence may be modelled by letting the player choose a result, subject to restrictions on how often the result may be favourable. As with hitpoints, complaining that this approach is 'dissociated' reduces the term to absolute meaninglessness.

If you want a real example of a dissociated mechanic, try the rule in 4e that if you jump, you cannot end your turn in mid-air. If running up to the edge of a pit and jumping over it requires more than your movement allowance this round, then the outcome by 4e rules is that you run and literally Wil-E-Coyote straight into it.

[Kurald Galain]

And never mind that the exact same 20 hp wound that kills any unleveled and most low-level characters, is going to be laughed off by a higher-level character.
Movie logic, duh. Bruce Willis's character can take more punches to the face before dropping than some random desk clerk does.



It is entirely clear what is going on: whether or not an opportunity exists to use the power is random. The same reasoning applies as for hitpoints: a random occurrence may be modelled by letting the player choose a result, subject to restrictions on how often the result may be favourable. As with hitpoints, complaining that this approach is 'dissociated' reduces the term to absolute meaninglessness.
When the player makes the choice rather than the character, that's what makes it disassociated.

[Quertus]

It is entirely clear what is going on:

I'm not sure those words mean what you think they mean. :smalltongue:

[Max_Killjoy]

Movie logic, duh. Bruce Willis's character can take more punches to the face before dropping than some random desk clerk does.


"Movie Logic?" Really?




When the player makes the choice rather than the character, that's what makes it disassociated.


The very example of this used is of the arbitrary use limit.

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer
An associated mechanic is one which has a connection to the game world. A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world.

The easiest way to perceive the difference is to look at the player’s decision-making process when using the mechanic: If the player’s decision can be directly equated to a decision made by the character, then the mechanic is associated. If it cannot be directly equated, then it is dissociated.


For example, consider a football game in which a character has the One-Handed Catch ability: Once per game they can make an amazing one-handed catch, granting them a +4 bonus to that catch attempt.

The mechanic is dissociated because the decision made by the player cannot be equated to a decision made by the character. No player, after making an amazing one-handed catch, thinks to themselves, “Wow! I won’t be able to do that again until the next game!” Nor do they think to themselves, “I better not try to catch this ball one-handed, because if I do I won’t be able to make any more one-handed catches today.”

On the other hand, when a player decides to cast a fireball spell that decision is directly equated to the character’s decision to cast a fireball. (The character, like the player, knows that they have only prepared a single fireball spell. So the decision to expend that limited resource – and the consequences for doing so – are understood by both character and player.)


The non-disassociated version would be one in which the character is able to attempt one-handed catches, either as purchased "feat" or at some sort of offsetting penalty, but in which there is no arbitrary limit in the attempt to balance the ability -- because this puts the decision firmly in the character's hands, rather than being a "resource expense" that the player is calculating.

[Kurald Galain]

The non-disassociated version would be one in which the character is able to attempt one-handed catches, either as purchased "feat" or at some sort of offsetting penalty, but in which there is no arbitrary limit in the attempt to balance the ability -- because this puts the decision firmly in the character's hands, rather than being a "resource expense" that the player is calculating.

Well, yes. We're talking about different sides of the mechanic.

You're talking about when the character uses the maneuver. It is disassociated to say "you can do maneuver A and B once each, but not A twice or B twice". It is associated to say "you have X fatigue points, each maneuver has a fatigue cost, and once you run out you're too tired to use those maneuvers".

I was talking about when the character recharges the maneuver. It is disassociated to say "it recharges when the next scene starts" (because the character doesn't know about scenes). It is associated to say "you recover Y fatigue points when you rest for Z minutes" (because the character understands that resting makes you less tired).

This is basically why almost nobody complains about X-rounds-per-day rage or performance mechanics, whereas there have been a lot of complaints about "once per encounter" abilities. The latter are commonly considered "ridiculous" and the former are not.

[SimonMoon6]

[The purpose of the white hat on the hero? So you can identify him throughout the fistfight, despite the poor film quality.]

I remember when I was a kid and my grandparents went to see the Star Wars movie (the thing that kids these days call "A New Hope", but back then it was just "Star Wars"). They came back, saying that they were very confused because some of the bad guys wore black (Darth Vader) and some of the bad guys wore white (stormtroopers), so how are you supposed to tell who the good guys are?

[Tobtor]

Well, yes. We're talking about different sides of the mechanic.

You're talking about when the character uses the maneuver. It is disassociated to say "you can do maneuver A and B once each, but not A twice or B twice". It is associated to say "you have X fatigue points, each maneuver has a fatigue cost, and once you run out you're too tired to use those maneuvers".

I was talking about when the character recharges the maneuver. It is disassociated to say "it recharges when the next scene starts" (because the character doesn't know about scenes). It is associated to say "you recover Y fatigue points when you rest for Z minutes" (because the character understands that resting makes you less tired).

This is basically why almost nobody complains about X-rounds-per-day rage or performance mechanics, whereas there have been a lot of complaints about "once per encounter" abilities. The latter are commonly considered "ridiculous" and the former are not.

I agree that if it is described as a fatigue cost it can make sense, but that requires it to stack with other things demanding fatigue, otherwise it does get disassociated.

Most cases in DnD is "you can do maneuver A and B once each, but not A twice or B twice". The bard apparently gets tired after 1 song per level, so a lvl 2bard/lvl 2 fighter gets tired after two songs, a lvl 4 bard after 4 songs, and a bard/barbarian can sing two songs, and is then too tired to sing, but NOT too tired to do barbarian rage (or worse rage first, then dripping with fury, still being able to sing). Which to most characters must find odd. Other systems handle it differently.

[Jay R]

Well, yes. We're talking about different sides of the mechanic.

You're talking about when the character uses the maneuver. It is disassociated to say "you can do maneuver A and B once each, but not A twice or B twice". It is associated to say "you have X fatigue points, each maneuver has a fatigue cost, and once you run out you're too tired to use those maneuvers".

I was talking about when the character recharges the maneuver. It is disassociated to say "it recharges when the next scene starts" (because the character doesn't know about scenes). It is associated to say "you recover Y fatigue points when you rest for Z minutes" (because the character understands that resting makes you less tired).

This is basically why almost nobody complains about X-rounds-per-day rage or performance mechanics, whereas there have been a lot of complaints about "once per encounter" abilities. The latter are commonly considered "ridiculous" and the former are not.

In fact, I have had two actual "once-per-encounter" moves in SCA combat.

When I was still active with sword and shield, I had a spin move I'd use occasionally. But it depended on surprise. If I used it a second time in the same fight, my opponent was likely to see it coming and defeat me.

Similarly, I have a foot shot with a rapier. I can often throw a low blow to the top of the foot, and get my blade back up for protection before my opponent responds. But the second time, as soon as my tip starts to drop, he'll thrust at my head.

I'm not defending the arbitrary 4e approach to fighting abilities, but the idea of an "once-per-encounter" move can be interpreted as one that depends on surprise.

Of course, the foot shot could be used more than once in a single melee, on different foes, so it's actually closer to a "once-per-opponent" ability. I never used a spin in melee at all.

[Lacuna Caster]

Immersion in lava or acid, being on fire, falling damage, and the like are all quite clearly badly written then, aren't they? But other rules that use the hitpoint rules badly are bad rules in and of themselves, they don't make the hitpoint rules bad.

Also, 1/8 hp is not "guts nearly hanging out". If you still have hitpoints and the attacks that hit you didn't have additional effects of their own, all of the injuries you took must have been superficial.
That doesn't make sense. If 0 HP means 'guts actually hanging out', and 1 HP is as close to that as it's possible to be, then that logically translates to 'guts nearly hanging out'. Otherwise you have a 1 HP loss (i.e, the merest possible scratch) translating to a spontaneous gouging gut wound.

Frankly, I don't see why I should have to expend this much mental effort trying to retrofit imagined physical outcomes to match with up with the math here. I am perfectly comfortable with the idea that high-level D&D characters are supernormal entities that can take repeated savage whacks from a claymore to the face and bathe in nitric acid, and I don't see how 'deciding' that every blow aside from the last was a superficial scratch (which basically implies a very uneven luck distribution) is any easier to swallow.

I am, in fact, fully aboard (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22192/heroquest-advanced-quest) with play as an abstract grid-based numeric chess exercise based around area-effect templates, positional advantage, and looting and slaying. This doesn't remotely replicate the feel of most fantasy fiction or any kind of real-world combat scenario, particularly gel with ethics simulation or fantasy geopolitics, but if I want that, I play a different system.

[Quertus]

That doesn't make sense. If 0 HP means 'guts actually hanging out', and 1 HP is as close to that as it's possible to be, then that logically translates to 'guts nearly hanging out'. Otherwise you have a 1 HP loss (i.e, the merest possible scratch) translating to a spontaneous gouging gut wound.

Frankly, I don't see why I should have to expend this much mental effort trying to retrofit imagined physical outcomes to match with up with the math here. I am perfectly comfortable with the idea that high-level D&D characters are supernormal entities that can take repeated savage whacks from a claymore to the face and bathe in nitric acid, and I don't see how 'deciding' that every blow aside from the last was a superficial scratch (which basically implies a very uneven luck distribution) is any easier to swallow.

I am, in fact, fully aboard (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/22192/heroquest-advanced-quest) with play as an abstract grid-based numeric chess exercise based around area-effect templates, positional advantage, and looting and slaying. This doesn't remotely replicate the feel of most fantasy fiction or any kind of real-world combat scenario, particularly gel with ethics simulation or fantasy geopolitics, but if I want that, I play a different system.

I don't know about you, but most of the combatants I've KOd (reduced to 0 HP) have not had their guts hanging out.

[Lacuna Caster]

I don't know about you, but most of the combatants I've KOd (reduced to 0 HP) have not had their guts hanging out.
(Yes, I know, technically not dying until subzero, not dead until -10 HP. It's the same principle though.)

My overall point is that people can still have a blast playing games that have absolutely nothing to do with modelling realistic injury. I've sunk hundreds of hours into, e.g, blades of exile (http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/blades/winBOE.html) or Diablo 2 multiplayer, and while I'm unlikely to revisit those titles it never once occurred to me to wonder why my characters weren't keeling over from sepsis.

[Jormengand]

Also, D&D characters at low hit points may not be physically impaired as much as they are likely to be careful, which is, Iunno, exactly what you would expect from someone who had enough pain tolerance to go toe to toe with a minor deity but also enough common sense to realise that they're not taking another hit like the one that went straight through their insert-semivital-organ-here. Yes, technically, you don't get affected by being on only 1 hit point, but you do affect yourself by running way from evil thing trying to murder you.

[Telok]

Dm: "The dragon breathes fire on you for 80 points of damage. The archer demon shoots you with a five foot long arrow for 50 points of damage."
Player: "Ha! Mere scratches. I still have a hit point left."
Dm: "An angry rabbit bites you on the foot for two points of damage."
Player: "I am laid low! I fall over and start bleeding to death from a maimed toe!"

No, I don't have a good answer to any of it.

[Tobtor]

Dm: "An angry rabbit bites you on the foot for two points of damage."
Player: "I am laid low! I fall over and start bleeding to death from a maimed toe!"

No, I don't have a good answer to any of it.

Well, there are rabbits, and then there are rabbits (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgj3nZWtOfA).

But yes, otherwise I agree.

[Thrudd]

Dm: "The dragon breathes fire on you for 80 points of damage. The archer demon shoots you with a five foot long arrow for 50 points of damage."
Player: "Ha! Mere scratches. I still have a hit point left."
Dm: "An angry rabbit bites you on the foot for two points of damage."
Player: "I am laid low! I fall over and start bleeding to death from a maimed toe!"

No, I don't have a good answer to any of it.
The mistake is the DM declaring what was the nature and result of the attack before knowing the HP total of the character.

DM: A dragon breathes fire! It does 80 damage
Player: I still have a hit point left.
DM: You roll away in the knick of time, with your clothes and hair smouldering, roll saving throws for vulnerable equipment...

DM: A rabbit attacks! It does 2 damage
Player: I'm down to 0 hp!
DM: The rabbit leaped up and got you in the neck with its fangs, like this *monty python*

[RazorChain]

In fact, I have had two actual "once-per-encounter" moves in SCA combat.

When I was still active with sword and shield, I had a spin move I'd use occasionally. But it depended on surprise. If I used it a second time in the same fight, my opponent was likely to see it coming and defeat me.

Similarly, I have a foot shot with a rapier. I can often throw a low blow to the top of the foot, and get my blade back up for protection before my opponent responds. But the second time, as soon as my tip starts to drop, he'll thrust at my head.

I'm not defending the arbitrary 4e approach to fighting abilities, but the idea of an "once-per-encounter" move can be interpreted as one that depends on surprise.

Of course, the foot shot could be used more than once in a single melee, on different foes, so it's actually closer to a "once-per-opponent" ability. I never used a spin in melee at all.


This is modelled in other systems like giving defense bonuses etc if you perform the move again against the same foe, but you still have the choice. If your character is fighting another foe in the same encounter that hasn't seen your special move then there is no excuse not being able to execute it.

[Max_Killjoy]

The mistake is the DM declaring what was the nature and result of the attack before knowing the HP total of the character.

DM: A dragon breathes fire! It does 80 damage
Player: I still have a hit point left.
DM: You roll away in the knick of time, with your clothes and hair smouldering, roll saving throws for vulnerable equipment...

DM: A rabbit attacks! It does 2 damage
Player: I'm down to 0 hp!
DM: The rabbit leaped up and got you in the neck with its fangs, like this *monty python*


Which just continues to show how abstracted and disconnected D&D-style hit points are.

[PersonMan]

Look... it's all very romantic to think of how Hit Points might be squinted at juuust right in order to arrive at this interpretation, but I don't think there's any particular consistency on this point in the rules (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Environment). Sure, drowning, suffocation and the coup-de-grace potentially amount to 'instant KO', but immersion in lava or acid, being on fire, falling damage and the like- all of which would be catastrophic injuries or certain death in reality- can be more-or-less shrugged off by high level PCs. These are events way past the horizon of creative re-fluffing. And of course, by default, a high-level fighter with 60/80 HP (i.e, 'mostly cuts and bruises') takes more 'cure light wounds' to heal than a low-level wizard with 1/8 HP (i.e, 'guts nearly hanging out'.)

I'm afraid Hit Points in D&D don't really translate into anything besides... Hit Points.

I sometimes think of it as a mix between ability to shrug off or otherwise deal with injuries. If you have 100 HP, you can be covered in massive burns and keep fighting, but when you hit 1 HP you're at your limit, so anything more that hits you causes all the damage you've taken to stop being able to function normally. It could be that a high-level fighter at 1 HP isn't a guy covered in cuts and bruises, but rather someone who barely seems alive to the untrained viewer - massive wounds covering his body, broken bones protruding from arms that are somehow still being used as if they were undamaged.

Yes, this does break with the idea of "HP isn't purely physical injury" completely, but it is a way of seeing the HP model as something other than "just HP". After enough of a beating has been applied, the character's willpower gives out and they fall, still holding on to life but in a horribly mangled state (and therefore requiring a lot more healing magic than Mr. Knocked Out By His Cat).

[Keltest]

I sometimes think of it as a mix between ability to shrug off or otherwise deal with injuries. If you have 100 HP, you can be covered in massive burns and keep fighting, but when you hit 1 HP you're at your limit, so anything more that hits you causes all the damage you've taken to stop being able to function normally. It could be that a high-level fighter at 1 HP isn't a guy covered in cuts and bruises, but rather someone who barely seems alive to the untrained viewer - massive wounds covering his body, broken bones protruding from arms that are somehow still being used as if they were undamaged.

Yes, this does break with the idea of "HP isn't purely physical injury" completely, but it is a way of seeing the HP model as something other than "just HP". After enough of a beating has been applied, the character's willpower gives out and they fall, still holding on to life but in a horribly mangled state (and therefore requiring a lot more healing magic than Mr. Knocked Out By His Cat).

The way ive always imagined it is that your hit point total gained at level 1 is your "base" hit points, and those represent serious threats to life and limb. When you take damage to those you could have wounds that will tear open if you exert yourself too hard and theres a legitimate chance of spontaneously passing out. We even modeled a bunch of optional extra rules to apply to a character fighting while wounded at base HP. Anything above that is a combination of endurance and ability to function in spite of existing wounds. Again, we have rules for modeling that where you can lose HP by, say, climbing a tall cliff all day when you aren't trained for it.

[Tobtor]

The mistake is the DM declaring what was the nature and result of the attack before knowing the HP total of the character.

DM: A dragon breathes fire! It does 80 damage
Player: I still have a hit point left.
DM: You roll away in the knick of time, with your clothes and hair smouldering, roll saving throws for vulnerable equipment...

DM: A rabbit attacks! It does 2 damage
Player: I'm down to 0 hp!
DM: The rabbit leaped up and got you in the neck with its fangs, like this *monty python*

Well how does magical healing work in this context?

How does it help your ability to "dodge" the rabbit, that after narrowly escaping the dragon flame, and the large demon arrow, a cleric cast a heal on you? I mean you were never really hurt by the dragon flames, nor the demon arrow, at least not badly hurt, so a cure light wound should be sufficient right?

If hit points represented your ability to avoid attacks, healing shouldn't work (or at least you'll need a complete re-fluff of the healing spells).

Also evasion becomes a bit strange as it exactly represent your ability to duck out of the way of stuff like large flames etc, but in your description hit point represent the same...

It is also weird that the character should know how good they are at avoiding thing (hit points). Every layer will be carefull when at low hit points, and the CHARACTER will likely drink a healing potion (or cure x wound etc) or ask the cleric to heal them. Talk about weird: i dodged the dragon and the demon-arrow, but lo, there is a rabbit! I better drink a healing potion....

It doesn't really work, now does it.

[Quertus]

Well how does magical healing work in this context?

How does it help your ability to "dodge" the rabbit, that after narrowly escaping the dragon flame, and the large demon arrow, a cleric cast a heal on you? I mean you were never really hurt by the dragon flames, nor the demon arrow, at least not badly hurt, so a cure light wound should be sufficient right?

If hit points represented your ability to avoid attacks, healing shouldn't work (or at least you'll need a complete re-fluff of the healing spells).

Also evasion becomes a bit strange as it exactly represent your ability to duck out of the way of stuff like large flames etc, but in your description hit point represent the same...

It is also weird that the character should know how good they are at avoiding thing (hit points). Every layer will be carefull when at low hit points, and the CHARACTER will likely drink a healing potion (or cure x wound etc) or ask the cleric to heal them. Talk about weird: i dodged the dragon and the demon-arrow, but lo, there is a rabbit! I better drink a healing potion....

It doesn't really work, now does it.

Yeah, this is where HP systems break down for me.

I suppose it's possible that the spell heals whatever you need of meat, stamina, luck, etc. It's just kinda hard for me personally to groc at that point.