Logic to the un-logic! [3.5]

[SilverLeaf167]

I don't know if this topic already exists on the forum, but as you probably know, searching for old topics is really a pain.

So, this topic is devoted to making up logical explanations to things in DnD that most find un-logical.

Example:
W (Weird): Power Word Kill and such spells taking nine pages of space in your spellbook, even though casting them only takes a standard action (about three seconds).
E (Explanation): Powerful spells, when written, include complex diagrams, symbols, notes and perhaps poem-like long incantations. It all is simply activated with a single or few words; in this case, "Kill".

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The power word spells are indeed each a word, but the word that appears at the end of each of the spells' names is just a summary of what the word does, not the actual word that completes the spell. Each of them is an ancient word of arcane power, completely foreign to any current language. Each word is comprised of several syllables, long enough to take a standard action to speak. There could be pages of pronunciation for each syllable, notes on emphasis and tone, etc. The word is so unlike everything you've ever spoken before that your natural instinct will be to mispronounce it, but by doing so in even the slightest way it would become meaningless babble. Once you understand how the word is to be properly spoken you need to note every last detail about it lest you make a mistake.

[Daremonai]

Assuming that you don't already, try learning to speak Chinese* - and have a native speaker on hand to correct you. If you mispronounce any part of the word, either you've said something else, or just gibberish. Trying to record such things in the Latin alphabet (pinyin, or whatever you want to call it) relies heavily on a series of accent marks to approximate the pronunciation, but still only really acts as a reminder rather than an explanation.

Power Words are even pickier than that. Those nine pages discuss the pronunciation in excrutiating detail, because anything less will fail.


*or any other language that relies very heavily on the tone and pronunciation of its vowel sounds. Chinese was just the first one I thought of.

[Cespenar]

No. There's a better explanation than all that.

It's one word, but it never says that it's a short word.

[DemLep]

This is actually explained in the books, just not with the spell specifically. When wizards prepare there spells in the morning they are actually completing the first part of the spell, the more powerful the spell the longer the first part is. This way they only have to do a short second part to activate the spell when needed. Power Word spells are longer than one word, but only one word is used to activate them.

[EvilJoe15]

W: You can hide behind a tower shield, while hiding the shield it's self.
E: You're Solid Snake, and this is MGS. Or. The resulting paradox creates a miniture sigularaty that bends the fabric of space-time around you so that you appear nearly invisible.

[DemLep]

You are hiding behind the shield and the shield is hidden, then would you not be hidden through the transitive property? Or am I reading something wrong?

[Kurald Galain]

W: you can heal people by drowning them.

E: adrenaline.

[Cespenar]

W: you can heal people by drowning them.

E: adrenaline.

Or, the external pressure of whatever medium it is drowning you stops your wounds from bleeding further.

[Shademan]

W: dwarves get a bonus to hit goblins because they have developed tactics to fight them. but goblins have NOT developed dwarf-fighting tactics despite no penalty to INT.
E: goblins are peaceful pacifists

[SilverLeaf167]

Actually, most of my goblins are neutral or even good. Orcs, on the other hand, and most other savage species, are evil.

[Bayar]

W: dwarves get a bonus to hit goblins because they have developed tactics to fight them. but goblins have NOT developed dwarf-fighting tactics despite no penalty to INT.
E: goblins are peaceful pacifists

E: Goblins get slaughtered by dwarves before perfecting any dwarf fighting tactics. Supported heavily by Dwarf Fortress.

[Shademan]

hence why the goblins adventurers meet are evil. they have all had their clans butchered by dwarves and is so consumed with revenge that they become evil.
ergo: dwarves cause evil!

[tyckspoon]

You are hiding behind the shield and the shield is hidden, then would you not be hidden through the transitive property? Or am I reading something wrong?

Step 1: Set up a Tower Shield. This provides Total Cover, allowing you to Hide.
Step 2: Roll a good Hide check. You- and your equipment- are now visually undetectable, as per Invisibility.
Step 3: Your Tower Shield, as part of your equipment, is now visually undetectable. It's also the thing that is providing the cover that allows you to Hide..

Basically, imagine something like a magician's vanishing act. A dude walks up to you, puts up a sheet. He disappears behind the sheet, and then the sheet falls to the ground. Dude's gone.. and then when you look for it, the sheet's gone too.

[Aotrs Commander]

Basically, imagine something like a magician's vanishing act. A dude walks up to you, puts up a sheet. He disappears behind the sheet, and then the sheet falls to the ground. Dude's gone.. and then when you look for it, the sheet's gone too.

And suddenly, it occurs to me how those paper screens ninja use in (among others) in Naruto. They most grant total cover.

[UserClone]

Very simple: I as the DM call shenanigans on the drowning heal and the hiding tower shield, and the game moves on without such nonsense occuring.

[Crasical]

Very simple: I as the DM call shenanigans on the drowning heal and the hiding tower shield, and the game moves on without such nonsense occuring.

Aww. But the 'nonsense' with the tower shield is kind of cool, insofar as the vanishing act/ninja paper visualization goes.

[DemLep]

Step 1: Set up a Tower Shield. This provides Total Cover, allowing you to Hide.
Step 2: Roll a good Hide check. You- and your equipment- are now visually undetectable, as per Invisibility.
Step 3: Your Tower Shield, as part of your equipment, is now visually undetectable. It's also the thing that is providing the cover that allows you to Hide..

Basically, imagine something like a magician's vanishing act. A dude walks up to you, puts up a sheet. He disappears behind the sheet, and then the sheet falls to the ground. Dude's gone.. and then when you look for it, the sheet's gone too.

This sounds like munchkin logic to me. I think the tower shield wouldn't count as being hidden because you are behind it. I'd rule the tower shield visible.

[Yukitsu]

This sounds like munchkin logic to me. I think the tower shield wouldn't count as being hidden because you are behind it. I'd rule the tower shield visible.

Well yeah, but this entire thread is about stupid RAW stuff that should either be houseruled, or just ignored.

[olelia]

W: Commoner Rail Gun
E: Somehow the object moves a great distance without increasing its velocity...or something that still makes my brain hurt.

[Jack_Simth]

I don't know if this topic already exists on the forum, but as you probably know, searching for old topics is really a pain.

So, this topic is devoted to making up logical explanations to things in DnD that most find un-logical.

Example:
W (Weird): Power Word Kill and such spells taking nine pages of space in your spellbook, even though casting them only takes a standard action (about three seconds).
E (Explanation): Powerful spells, when written, include complex diagrams, symbols, notes and perhaps poem-like long incantations. It all is simply activated with a single or few words; in this case, "Kill".

Casting it is a standard action.

However, you will note that you can't cast it an infinite number of times per day, just for the recital. The word itself is not, strictly speaking, the most important part (you can have a Silent Spell Power Word Blind, and it's still just as effective). The spell is not so much a single word, as it is a bunch of layers of power, built up, caged, and keyed to a single word. Once you speak it, it's gone. If you try to speak it again, nothing happens, because you don't have those layers of power built up, caged, and keyed to that single word anymore.

Those pages in your spellbook? They're describing how to properly build up, cage, and key those layers of power.

[Eurus]

W: Commoner Rail Gun

E: Creatures in D&D are actually nebulous entities who exist in a state of quantum uncertainty. That's why every human, regardless of height and weight, occupies a perfect 5' cube and why a rogue can dodge a fireball even while unconscious. So when a creature hands off an object like that, it doesn't actually cross the distance, but simply appears where it is directed.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

and why a rogue can dodge a fireball even while unconscious

A helpless rogue does not gain the benefit of evasion

+
Unconscious: Knocked out and helpless.

so no

[Cespenar]

W: Commoner Rail Gun
E: Somehow the object moves a great distance without increasing its velocity...or something that still makes my brain hurt.

Meh, it's easy. See, in d&d, each being capable of performing actions possess their own spacetime continuum. So, when an object is being given from one commoner to another, the object doesn't gain velocity in an axis that we can perceive, it gains velocity in another axis, allowing it to be moved from one continuum to another. To us, the object doesn't move but rather disappear here and appear there. Thus, a series of actions that actually takes a lot of time seems like an instant to us, because of our limited perception.

[TaintedLight]

Meh, it's easy. See, in d&d, each being capable of performing actions possess their own spacetime continuum. So, when an object is being given from one commoner to another, the object doesn't gain velocity in an axis that we can perceive, it gains velocity in another axis, allowing it to be moved from one continuum to another. To us, the object doesn't move but rather disappear here and appear there. Thus, a series of actions that actually takes a lot of time seems like an instant to us, because of our limited perception.

Not quite. Momentum of an object is given by mass * velocity. Because velocity is not increasing and momentum is always preserved, mass must be increasing :D. Something very much like this happened to my group recently. We had to escape a mile-deep hole via roller coaster. At the bottom of our ascent, the psion cast skate on the cart, I cast mass reduce person on our party, and the other wizard cast shrink object on the cart. Our mass dropped dramatically, so our velocity skyrocketed. About 15,000 feet into the air .

[Reis Tahlen]

W: Paladins can't take a level of Priest of the same deity and then come back as Paladins, even though they still follow the same code of conduct.

E: Paladins are arrogant jackass who think they' re even better than Priests of the same church.

[Bayar]

W: Paladins can't take a level of Priest of the same deity and then come back as Paladins, even though they still follow the same code of conduct.

E: Paladins are arrogant jackass who think they' re even better than Priests of the same church.

E: Paladins and monks think they are playing World of Warcraft, where if you change class means you re-rolled a character...

[Peregrine]

Well yeah, but this entire thread is about stupid RAW stuff that should either be houseruled, or just ignored.

Really? I read it as "things that seem odd but can be made logically consistent with the game world (preferably without changing RAW)". A power word spell is an example of this. (My personal variation is that you're harnessing phenomenal cosmic power that is released by a word, but is harnessed by all that other stuff.) Justifying commoner railguns and drown-healing are not consistent with a (serious, believable) fantasy-medieval world.

W: Elves take a century to gain the same first-level benefits as any other race.
E: Elves are dabblers with short attention spans, especially young elves. They only focus on learning one thing for a very short amount of time before going on to something else. They also don't study intensely like humans do; they prefer to "study by immersion", very slowly. Adventurer-elves gain XP at the same rate as anyone else, showing that elves aren't thick -- they can focus and learn fast, if they want to -- but they're unusual among elves, and even they only devote a "short" time (a human lifetime, maybe two) to this "focus".

For the record, I intensely dislike the Races of the Wild elves that grow and learn as fast as humans, and then... err... they, umm...?

[Oslecamo]

W: you can heal people by drowning them.

E: adrenaline.

Actualy, scientific studies have showed that cuting the oxygen supply of a person in a controled manner can reduce it's metabolism wich will stop certain diseases and problems. You cannot bleed yourself to death if your heart is almost stoped, reducing the pressure on your cut blood arteries and allow them to close themselves naturally.

[BobVosh]

W: Once you start drowning, you never can stop.
E: Obviously you have pissed off the over diety, Dee-Emm. You dared to heal by using water.

W: Elf + Human = Half Elf. Half Elf + Half Elf= Half elf. Elf + half Elf=Half Elf. Half elf + human = Half Elf. How are there any elves and humans left? Or at least not a huge thriving community of HEs?