Musings on TTRPG rules and making sense, ambiguity, and clarity.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Preface: These are just some thoughts I've been noodling through. This isn't THE way to categorize things--I don't believe such a thing exists. But it's some ideas to spark discussion.

Not considered: I'm going to leave off caring about malicious or intentional misreadings. That's a whole 'nother mess and one that writing rules more clearly doesn't really solve. People can always read them however they want. I'm going to stick to good-faith attempts to read rules here. Ones invoking context, following normal definitions of words and not cherry-picking or proof-texting, etc. I'll call those valid readings.

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It seems to me that among the many dimensions of "what makes a good rule set", several intertangled ones are
- ambiguity
- clarity
- "fit"

For "ambiguity", I mean "how many valid readings are there of this text/rule element?" A text is ambiguous if there is more than 1 good reading. For "clarity" I mean "how easy is it to reach one of the intended readings (and conversely how easy is it to come to a valid reading that is unintended)". A text is (relatively) clear if the intended reading(s) are the most easily accessed and you have to depart further and further from the "happy path" to get to unintended valid readings. For "fit", I mean "how well does/do the intended (and otherwise valid) reading(s) actually work when implemented in the game as designed?" A ruleset has good fit if the rules evoke the intended gameplay; conversely a rule is a bad fit if it goes counter to the intended gameplay.

Spoiler: aside about context and fit

Show

Fit is contextual. Rules that fit a gritty, death-is-easy, combat-is-best-avoided game may be very bad fits for a heroic, death-is-hard/reversible, combat-is-normal game. For that matter, rules that are great fits for LARPs are not necessarily good fits for a TTRPG (no, hitting your DM over the head with a stick is generally bad form when making an attack in a TTRPG, while hitting the opponent with a (padded) stick may be exactly what's required to make a successful attack during a LARP. Context matters.

With that said, there seems to me to be several categories of "rules that make sense". All the terms except "nonsense" are made up by me. Ignore them if they don't make sense.

Eusense--These are rules with good fit and at least reasonable clarity. Some may have ambiguities, but all of the valid readings (or at least all of the non-strained valid readings) work in the context of the game. People may differ on whether eusensical rules should be unambiguous or not--I personally have a high tolerance for eusensical ambiguity. I enjoy variation. Others may not. These are the kinds of rules we want to shoot for.

Nonsense--These rules have no valid readings at all in the context of the game. For example a D&D 5e feature that said "when you make a d100 check to cast a spell, you gain a +flowers bonus."
Or the archetypal "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." These are pieces of text that say nothing. Often due to a rules shift during playtesting that wasn't caught or an editing mistake that left erroneous words. These are "mostly harmless" (although still not a good sign of quality), because they don't actually say anything at all. They can be ignored without consequence. Unless, of course, your core rules that everything else depends on are nonsense. That's bad.

Malsense--These rules have valid readings, but they're all bad for the game. They might even be perfectly clear and unambiguous. But they're a bad fit. In a D&D-type game, a general rule that said "any attack that hits a PC automatically kills the PC" would be a malsense rule--it's clear, it's unambiguous, and it makes the game basically unplayable under normal D&D conventions. These are the worst kinds of rules--rules that actively harm the game by existing. They may be contextual--it may be fine in some cases but there are cases where it just makes things painful. Or annoying. The effects might not be catastrophic, but they're bad. IMO, avoiding malsense is a top priority. Even if it means introducing some ambiguity.

Of course, you can have mixed-sense texts--for example one that has two valid readings, one of which is an ok (if not great) fit (eusense) and one that causes absurdities (malsense). This is not good, but I'd rather have this than an unambiguously malsense rule. Because players (including the GM) can avoid the shards of broken glass by ignoring the bad reading while benefiting (somewhat) from the good reading. That option just doesn't exist for unambiguous malsense.

[JNAProductions]

Do you have any examples from actual games of a malsense rule?

[RandomPeasant]

3.5 wish would be the simplest example. There's really no RAW argument that it doesn't allow you to ask for a Ring of Infinite Wishes, nor that doing so incurs any XP cost if you are making your wish as a SLA or Supernatural ability, so the ability is straightforwardly game-destroying in its most standard use-case (asking a genie for a wish).

[stoutstien]

Do you have any examples from actual games of a malsense rule?

Lucky turning disadvantage into super advantage, SSI doesn't add Prof bonus, and big T can be effected by caltrops and ball bearings spring to mind.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Do you have any examples from actual games of a malsense rule?

I've got an example of a very minor malsense combination of rules (note that being malsense does not mean it's horrible, just negative):

How do you roll the damage dice for magic missile in 5e when all the dice target the same creature? It's validly ambiguous. Nd4+N vs N*(1d4+1). (On average, all else equal, there's no difference. Ok, by itself it's not a big deal, and not malsense.

But each of the two further readings opens you up to two further slightly bad readings in concert with other features.

1. If you read it as Nd4+N, you're reading it as multiple sources of damage. So it provokes N concentration checks, making that low-level spell that never misses be one of the best at breaking concentration against anything that can fail on a DC 10 CON save. Which is kinda wacky. But, all things considered, better (IMO) than the alternative if particular other features are in play.
2. If you read it as N(1d4+1), you're saying that there is only one damage roll. Which is ok, unless you then combine it with features that let you stack extra damage on a damage roll of a spell. Such as the Evoker. Because going to N(1d4+1+INT) is a massive improvement. Doubling the damage minimum (assuming you only have a +3 INT at level 10). Making that 1st level spell one of the hands-down best damaging abilities in the game. Never misses, deals crap-tons of damage, huge range, can be split up however you want, etc. And at high levels you can spam it endlessly. Or, if you don't combine it, it's objectively way worse than the other option.

Thus, both readings of magic missile cause knock-on effects that don't fit very well, mostly due to interaction effects. And which one is more acceptable depends on the external state of the rest of the game (ie what options specific characters are using).

And I think this goes for most rules--the designers (assuming minimal competence) aren't usually going to put in outright "this is crap on its face." I mean, sometimes they do. Sure. But it's not as often. But the number and "badness" of combinations of abilities grows super-exponentially with the number of interacting features (including spells, etc). So there's just no sane way to track all of that as features start to combine. And the result is that malsense readings of the whole game grow (at least are likely to grow) as more and more disparate features are combined.

[Vahnavoi]

Do you have any examples from actual games of a malsense rule?

Drown healing from D&D 3.x. works.

To wit: that glitch relies on following explicit interpretation guideline, "specific trumps general", to argue drowning rules are more specific than dying rules, and hence take precedence. Noteworthy: specific trumps general exists as interpretation guideline to facilitate exception-based game design of d20 and to stop obvious malsense readings that would keep feats and spells from working as meant. But in this case, it would appear the base rules were not actually written or proof read with such priorization in mind.

The "air-breathing mermaid" joke has its root in the same place: feat-based exception to allow mermaids to breathe on dry land makes sense only if the general rule is that they can't.

Another part of malsense in 3.x.: the way skill points and class skills are distributed across the board. They're perfectly clear cut, yet bad in many ways that directly contribute to imbalances between base classes. Notably: neither fighters nor barbarians have spot as class skill.

[KorvinStarmast]

The "air-breathing mermaid" joke has its root in the same place: feat-based exception to allow mermaids to breathe on dry land makes sense only if the general rule is that they can't.

Another part of malsense in 3.x.: the way skill points and class skills are distributed across the board. They're perfectly clear cut, yet bad in many ways that directly contribute to imbalances between base classes. Notably: neither fighters nor barbarians have spot as class skill.

The first example strikes me as poor editing (as do a lot of Phoenix's points on Malsense in general) while the latter strikes me as a profound design error.

[OldTrees1]

Drown healing from D&D 3.x. works.

Yup. Even worse it was ambiguous enough that it had 3 readings that were all bad:
1) Drowning heals dying
2) Drowning can't be stopped
3) #1 & #2
Luckily the error was obvious to correct (Option 4: Not #1 and not #2) despite not following from the text.

Noteworthy: specific trumps general exists as interpretation guideline to facilitate exception-based game design of d20 and to stop obvious malsense readings

The "air-breathing mermaid" joke has its root in the same place: feat-based exception to allow mermaids to breathe on dry land makes sense only if the general rule is that they can't.

I never read it that way. Specific trumps general does not mean a specific feature implies a general lack. It implies a possible lack.

Mermaids might or might not be able to breath air (unspecified). This feat grants those that can't breathe air, the ability to breath air. Therefore some can't (implied by the specific feature).

However this is not the first time I have heard someone make that leap. What is a better way to communicate "specific can trump general but specific does not imply general"?

[Telok]

I never read it that way. Specific trumps general does not mean a specific feature implies a general lack. It implies a possible lack.

Mermaids might or might not be able to breath air (unspecified). This feat grants those that can't breathe air, the ability to breath air. Therefore some can't (implied by the specific feature).

However this is not the first time I have heard someone make that leap. What is a better way to communicate "specific can trump general but specific does not imply general"?

I've always felt that the whole "drown healing" was an intentional misreading intended to cause a kerfluffle. The rule works fine for the intended case of people with positive hp drowning and there's an undefined interaction with people at negative hp. The obvious intent is to model air breating creatures trying to breathe water and you only get serious dysfunctions by ignoring the intent.

On the mermaids I understood it to be closer to an instance of "specific trumps undefined". There simply wasn't a defined answer to "can mermaids breathe air" before the ability gets printed. The feat allows a specific thing within the undefined space. In doing so it defines that space like a negative space drawing creates an image without drawing the image.

Remember, with the air breathing mermaids feat a central part of the basis of the scenario is that nobody has any cause to think or act like the mermaids can't breathe air. It's closer to a new d&d 5e feat that lets a character dash for rounds = con mod+prof before taking a level of exhaustion. Before there's no rules defining dashing to exhaustion (outside the chase rules which I'm ignoring because they're [opinion] terribad [/opinion]), but after there's this feat that's supposed to be an improvement over the undefined baseline capabilities. By defining this "better than default value" you have also defined part of the default value.

[RandomPeasant]

Another part of malsense in 3.x.: the way skill points and class skills are distributed across the board. They're perfectly clear cut, yet bad in many ways that directly contribute to imbalances between base classes. Notably: neither fighters nor barbarians have spot as class skill.

By that standard any design decision you don't like is "malsense". Things can be dumb or bad without being mechanically nonfunctional, and in fact many things in many systems are like that. If 5e were to release a book tomorrow with a spell that was exactly fireball, but d4s instead of d6s, that would be dumb but it would not be something you could reasonably call "malsense".

[Vahnavoi]

I never read it that way. Specific trumps general does not mean a specific feature implies a general lack. It implies a possible lack.

Mermaids might or might not be able to breath air (unspecified). This feat grants those that can't breathe air, the ability to breath air. Therefore some can't (implied by the specific feature).

However this is not the first time I have heard someone make that leap. What is a better way to communicate "specific can trump general but specific does not imply general"?

Specific trumps general does in fact imply exception proves the rule: just like a traffic sign saying "parking prohibited between 10 AM and 6 PM" implies parking is allowed at other times, a feat-based exception allowing (or prohibiting) a thing implies the opposite for the non-exceptional, general case.

The only way you can communicate "specific can trump general but specific does not imply general" is by stating exactly that in rule interpretation guidelines in the game. Then you, of course, also have to have the general rule actually written down.

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By that standard any design decision you don't like is "malsense". Things can be dumb or bad without being mechanically nonfunctional, and in fact many things in many systems are like that. If 5e were to release a book tomorrow with a spell that was exactly fireball, but d4s instead of d6s, that would be dumb but it would not be something you could reasonably call "malsense".

No. The standard to which fighters and barbarians are held to is their purpose in the game's setting. For example, fighter, and it's NPC counterpart warrior, are default classes for military characters across the board. But because they lack certain class skills and skill points, they cannot function as guards, or scouts, or a variety of other military roles you'd expect to find these classes in.

That's the dysfunction: classes you would expect to be good at a thing or which are even stated by game material to be good at a thing, are not good at that thing.There being no ambiguity or mechanical glitch is not a defense, it is what makes it malsense instead of nonsense. d20 errors in making these classes changed an entire generation's idea of what these kinds of characters can do, needing active revision to rebuke.

Your fireball example is not in the same category; it's a redundant spell with subpar damage. With a case like that, you can just pick the spell that fits a game best and then ditch or ignore the other. It does not have similar overarching implications to a game as the other examples of malsense.

[KorvinStarmast]

That's the dysfunction: classes you would expect to be good at a thing or which are even stated by game material to be good at a thing, are not good at that thing.

Perhaps we could coin a phrase for this, like 'narrative dissonance' or something similar like ludonarrative dissonance.

[RandomPeasant]

they cannot function as guards, or scouts, or a variety of other military roles you'd expect to find these classes in.

They cannot function effectively in those rules, but it's not like missing out on Spot makes you blind. A Fighter is perfectly capable of accomplishing a "go over there and see what's over there" objective, they have a move speed and eyeballs. They're just not as good at it as a Rogue or a Ranger. This is exactly what you would expect from a class which is underpowered rather than one which is nonfunctional.

With a case like that, you can just pick the spell that fits a game best and then ditch or ignore the other. It does not have similar overarching implications to a game as the other examples of malsense.

Alright, suppose that's the only version of fireball. Suppose it's even worse and only does 1 point of damage ever. Is that "malsense"? No. It's just a thing that's bad. "Bad" and "dysfunctional" are different things, and it is useful to be able to talk about them with different terms. You can fix dysfunctional things with editing, you can't fix underpowered things that way. Hell, by this standard we can move the Fighter from "malsense" to "underpowered" simply by printing a Soldier class that is good at soldier-ing, and that's just not consistent with how people use "dysfunctional" in rules conversations. You can't make wish not do broken stuff by adding a parallel "heart's desire" spell.

[Vahnavoi]

@KorvinStarmast: That's the wider category this kind of dysfunction falls under, yes. I still would've had to explain what the specific dysfunction is.

Overall, whether ludonarrative dissonance qualifies as malsense depends on whether its use is intentional, and what it is being used for. You can legitimately use it for irony or comedy, as examples. But that's plainly not what d20 skill system was going for.

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@RandomPeasant: you aren't getting anywhere with your hypothetical fireball examples. You also ought to go back and look how PhoenixPhyre defines use of malsense: "These rules have valid readings, but they're all bad for the game. They might even be perfectly clear and unambiguous. But they're a bad fit." A fighter being underpowered at fighting is a bad fit, you don't fix the ludonarrative dissonance by introducing another class, you make it worse. This is in fact what happened with d20, with various "don't use X, use Y" style arguments becoming pervasive due to some classes being unable to carry their intented gameplay purpose.

Saying you can fix one thing with editing but not the other is ridiculous, editing covers all rules revision within a text. Which is why we speak of 3rd and 4th editions of D&D despite them being entirely different games.

[KorvinStarmast]

Overall, whether ludonarrative dissonance qualifies as malsense depends on whether its use is intentional, and what it is being used for. You can legitimately use it for irony or comedy, as examples.

It depends on the game system, yes.

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@RandomPeasant: you aren't getting anywhere with your hypothetical fireball examples. You also ought to go back and look how PhoenixPhyre defines use of malsense: "These rules have valid readings, but they're all bad for the game. They might even be perfectly clear and unambiguous. But they're a bad fit." A fighter being underpowered at fighting is a bad fit, you don't fix the ludonarrative dissonance by introducing another class, you make it worse.
This is in fact what happened with d20, with various "don't use X, use Y" style arguments becoming pervasive due to some classes being unable to carry their intended gameplay purpose.

Rogues, monks, etc in the 3.x system.

Saying you can fix one thing with editing but not the other is ridiculous, editing covers all rules revision within a text. Which is why we speak of 3rd and 4th editions of D&D despite them being entirely different games.

+1

[PhoenixPhyre]

@RandomPeasant: you aren't getting anywhere with your hypothetical fireball examples. You also ought to go back and look how PhoenixPhyre defines use of malsense: "These rules have valid readings, but they're all bad for the game. They might even be perfectly clear and unambiguous. But they're a bad fit." A fighter being underpowered at fighting is a bad fit, you don't fix the ludonarrative dissonance by introducing another class, you make it worse. This is in fact what happened with d20, with various "don't use X, use Y" style arguments becoming pervasive due to some classes being unable to carry their intented gameplay purpose.

Saying you can fix one thing with editing but not the other is ridiculous, editing covers all rules revision within a text. Which is why we speak of 3rd and 4th editions of D&D despite them being entirely different games.

As someone who rarely agrees with you...I agree with this entirely. Adding new things doesn't fix the old things being garbage. Unless you remove the old things. And removing old things is really really hard in a TTRPG format, where sending goons to rip pages out of people's books is generally frowned on.

[RandomPeasant]

you don't fix the ludonarrative dissonance by introducing another class, you make it worse.

By this standard "fireball, but it sucks" is in fact malsense. Because there is a ludonarrative dissonance between what the spell is supposed to do (be good) and what it actually does (suck). Like if you want we can name it "Totally Rad Fire Blast of Being Better Than Fireball" if it's really important to you that there be an explicit claim that it is supposed to be good at a thing, but personally I feel that printing material includes an implicit claim that there might be circumstances in which that material would be worth using.

Saying you can fix one thing with editing but not the other is ridiculous, editing covers all rules revision within a text.

I personally am able to see a clear distinction between "I have re-written this so that it does the same thing but in a way that is less amenable to stupid interpretations" and "I have written an entirely new thing that is conceptually related to the original". If you feel that "editing" should be taken to refer only to the second, I suppose that's fine, but it seems to me that arguing that sort of semantics is not really getting us anywhere useful.

Compare what it takes to fix 3.5 wish to what it takes to fix the 3.5 Fighter. In one case, you have to take a line that was in the previous version of the spell and add it to the new version. In the other case, you have to write an entirely new class that at best shares its name with the existing one. Certainly both of those are "writing words", but by that standard we don't merely have different editions of D&D, every single game is in fact a different version of the same game because you can change enough words in Shadowrun to get D&D and vice versa. Again, that's simply not how people use words.

As someone who rarely agrees with you...I agree with this entirely. Adding new things doesn't fix the old things being garbage.

But adding new things can make old things garbage. It doesn't make sense for a property about the clarity of rules to be dependent on unrelated rules.

[PhoenixPhyre]

But adding new things can make old things garbage. It doesn't make sense for a property about the clarity of rules to be dependent on unrelated rules.

Only relatively. And relative doesn't really matter in this context. Malsense is for rules that absolutely cause bad outcomes. Ie standing alone, without reference to any other similar-level[1] rules.

So no, adding a new thing doesn't change the absolute goodness (aka "fit") of a different rule. It may make it relatively worse...but that's an entirely separate issue. The existence of rule elements with bad absolute fit reduces the overall "fit" of the ruleset. Adding rule elements with better fit without removing the bad rules doesn't change that. In the same way that adding a spoonful of horse crap to a keg of soda makes the entire thing worse than not doing so, even if you add more soda.

The way to reduce malsense is by...removing malsense. Having a strong idea of what you're trying to do and doing that. And ruthlessly editing and playtesting ahead of release. And then errata'ing things you didn't see. The way to fix malsense as a table is by banning or houseruling those elements. Often banning is easier because editing them involves an entire rewrite.

Adding eusense doesn't do the job.

Personally (and this is just personal taste), I'm much more sensitive to the existence of bad fit (malsense) rules than I am to overall proportion of good fit rules. A rule set with 1 malsense rule elements and 100 eusense rule elements (of similar levels of generality) is worse, for me, than one with 0 malsense rule elements and 10 eusense rule elements (of similar generality).

[1] comparing, for instance, spells to spells and classes to classes. Rules have to be judged in context of the general rules they depend on, up to the base framework level. But one "better" class doesn't make a different "worse" class any more or less malsense.

[Telok]

The way to reduce malsense is by...removing malsense. Having a strong idea of what you're trying to do and doing that. And ruthlessly editing and playtesting ahead of release. And then errata'ing things you didn't see. The way to fix malsense as a table is by banning or houseruling those elements. Often banning is easier because editing them involves an entire rewrite.

Adding eusense doesn't do the job.

I'd consider well done clarifications of intent & loophole closing to be "adding eusense" in a way that fixes "malsense". Like you could fix the d&d 3.x drown healing thing by adding a general rule stating something like "when a rule intended for characters in normal circumstances (e.g. alive healthy & moving freely) conflicts or produces different or silly outcomes if applied to characters in abnormal circumstances (e.g. dying poisoned & restrained) then use whichever outcome is more logical ir worse for the character, GM choice". It adds a basic general rule to the set that corrects for unintended interactions. Or you could apply it to the d&d 5e magic missile thing, make a general magic use rule on how to calc multi-hit spell damage that also says to sum the damage as one hit for concentration checks.

But yeah, good playtesting with people who don't share the devs assumptions would solve lots of stuff. Also design notes & real in-the-books talk about how different interpretations can change stuff would help in many many games. Picked up a copy of Mazes & Minotaurs recently that had commentary. Very nice to know intended direction & stuff.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd consider well done clarifications of intent & loophole closing to be "adding eusense" in a way that fixes "malsense". Like you could fix the d&d 3.x drown healing thing by adding a general rule stating something like "when a rule intended for characters in normal circumstances (e.g. alive healthy & moving freely) conflicts or produces different or silly outcomes if applied to characters in abnormal circumstances (e.g. dying poisoned & restrained) then use whichever outcome is more logical ir worse for the character, GM choice". It adds a basic general rule to the set that corrects for unintended interactions. Or you could apply it to the d&d 5e magic missile thing, make a general magic use rule on how to calc multi-hit spell damage that also says to sum the damage as one hit for concentration checks.

But yeah, good playtesting with people who don't share the devs assumptions would solve lots of stuff. Also design notes & real in-the-books talk about how different interpretations can change stuff would help in many many games. Picked up a copy of Mazes & Minotaurs recently that had commentary. Very nice to know intended direction & stuff.

I am 100% in favor of extensive developer commentary. It doesn't fix malsense, but can turn mixed-sense (one reading is malsense and another is eusense) into less-offensive mixed-sense. The readings are still there and can't change with commentary, but you can strongly disfavor one reading vs another.

My experience with adding "general clarification rules" is that, like adding rules generally, it runs the risk of creating even more loopholes. Patching by addition often ends up being "organic growth" (a pejorative).

But yeah. There's going to be weird wording. Malsense isn't really possible to 100% eradicate, but you can turn most of it into mixed-sense at least.

IMO, there's somewhat of a tradeoff (not 100%, but frequent) between clarity, fit, and ambiguity. Making things clearer sometimes removes the "safe harbors" of generous interpretations, increasing the chances of bad fit. Removing ambiguity, if you're not careful, can result in turning mixed sense into malsense by removing good-fit readings. Etc.

In general, writing good rules is hard.

[KorvinStarmast]

I am 100% in favor of extensive developer commentary.

But that requires editing and good writing as well, not knee jerk Twitter commentary that confuses as often as it clarifies. (JCraw, I am giving you and Mearles a little frown face here).

In general, writing good rules is hard.

Understatement of the week.

[gatorized]

How do you determine what's a reading and what's a misreading, or who's acting in good faith? This presupposes that you've already discovered the objectively correct interpretation, or that you can read minds.

[Vahnavoi]

Oh, there's these things called logos, pathos and ethos. A good faith argument comes from a credible person using credible sources, made with sincere emotion, backed by logic and evidence.

A bad faith argument comes from a shifty person using shady sources, with insincere emotional appeal, not backed by logic and missing evidence.

[gatorized]

That just moves the problem without solving it. For each of those properties, you need some way of convincing others that you've determined whether they're present beyond reasonable doubt. And of course, if someone doesn't believe you're credible, they're obviously unlikely to agree with you about your opinions on which people are credible.

[Vahnavoi]

Sure, you need a pre-existing standard for each, but how willing are you to continue pretending that you didn't learn one as matter of basic education?

[gbaji]

I've got an example of a very minor malsense combination of rules (note that being malsense does not mean it's horrible, just negative):

How do you roll the damage dice for magic missile in 5e when all the dice target the same creature? It's validly ambiguous. Nd4+N vs N*(1d4+1). (On average, all else equal, there's no difference. Ok, by itself it's not a big deal, and not malsense.

But each of the two further readings opens you up to two further slightly bad readings in concert with other features.

1. If you read it as Nd4+N, you're reading it as multiple sources of damage. So it provokes N concentration checks, making that low-level spell that never misses be one of the best at breaking concentration against anything that can fail on a DC 10 CON save. Which is kinda wacky. But, all things considered, better (IMO) than the alternative if particular other features are in play.
2. If you read it as N(1d4+1), you're saying that there is only one damage roll. Which is ok, unless you then combine it with features that let you stack extra damage on a damage roll of a spell. Such as the Evoker. Because going to N(1d4+1+INT) is a massive improvement. Doubling the damage minimum (assuming you only have a +3 INT at level 10). Making that 1st level spell one of the hands-down best damaging abilities in the game. Never misses, deals crap-tons of damage, huge range, can be split up however you want, etc. And at high levels you can spam it endlessly. Or, if you don't combine it, it's objectively way worse than the other option.

Thus, both readings of magic missile cause knock-on effects that don't fit very well, mostly due to interaction effects. And which one is more acceptable depends on the external state of the rest of the game (ie what options specific characters are using).

This isn't really about how the math is done ( (N*(1d4+1)) is mathematically identical to ((N*1d4)+N) ). What you're asking is about whether magic missile combines all of the missiles into a single damage hit, or is counted as multiple single smaller hits. I'm honestly not familiar enough with 5e to say which it should be or what other rules may interact with that. But yeah, if there is a distinction between those, then the lack of clarity in the rules as written is a problem.

On the con side, if someone has some kind of force resistance/immunity (or whatever terminology 5e uses), and we count it as N individual 1d4+1 hits, then having 5 points of resistance/whatever means you are immune to magic missiles. If we count it as a single tally of damage, then just the first 5 points are stopped by the resistance/whatever and the remainder go through.

On the pro side, if you have the feat you mentioned, then if we count them as individual hits, then each should get the +INT value added to it (which you are correct is pretty absurd). But if we count it as a single strike then it's just added to the total once. Additional pro is that any interruption effects/saves would have to be made multiple times.

It's not really about how the dice are added up though. It's about how we interpret "darts" in the spell description, and I suppose how we handled simultaneous strikes from multiple "darts".

No. The standard to which fighters and barbarians are held to is their purpose in the game's setting. For example, fighter, and it's NPC counterpart warrior, are default classes for military characters across the board. But because they lack certain class skills and skill points, they cannot function as guards, or scouts, or a variety of other military roles you'd expect to find these classes in.

That's the dysfunction: classes you would expect to be good at a thing or which are even stated by game material to be good at a thing, are not good at that thing.There being no ambiguity or mechanical glitch is not a defense, it is what makes it malsense instead of nonsense. d20 errors in making these classes changed an entire generation's idea of what these kinds of characters can do, needing active revision to rebuke.

Eh. I can see it either way. Are fighters expected to serve as guards or scouts? Maybe some other classes could exist that are going to be better at this? Fighters are good at fighting, not necessarily spotting.

That's less a malsense in the rules, as a disconnect between what someone might think a class should be good at and what the rules say they actually are. Fighters can still take cross class spot if they really want to be good at spot. Or they can take levels of other classes to branch out from just "I hit things good!" to "I've got the eyes of an eagle". One could even argue that giving fighters spot as a class skill intrudes on the territory of rangers (who fit far better into "scouts" at least), and maybe fighters take a level or two of ranger if they want to be better than average at guarding stuff. Dunno.

This really depends on whether we start with what we want and pick a class that has those feats/abilities/whatever, or start with what we want to call ourselves and then don't like it if feast/abilities/skills we want aren't there. And to be honest, 3.5 has a pretty decent amount of flexiblity embedded in it, and pretty friendly multi-classing rules to allow you to pick and choose different things if you want. Pretty much for exactly this kind of reason.

A fighter being underpowered at fighting is a bad fit, you don't fix the ludonarrative dissonance by introducing another class, you make it worse. This is in fact what happened with d20, with various "don't use X, use Y" style arguments becoming pervasive due to some classes being unable to carry their intented gameplay purpose.

Having a mediocre spot doesn't make a fighter "bad at fighting" though. In that case, I don't necessarily have an issue with saying "if you want spot skill, take a level in a class that has spot as a class skill, or spend the extra points for cross class skill".

I can think of a lot of things that I think a "traditional fighter" should have, that the D&D class does not. I mean, Conan is a fighter, right? So my fighter is like Conan, and he is skilled at climbing, sneaking, hiding, pilfering gems, etc... Oh wait! There's another class that gets those things you say? Huh...

To be fair, I actually kinda agree that maybe fighters should have spot. But I don't think it's a broken rule (or rules that works, but doesn't do as intended) if they don't. Clearly the game designers choose to make spot a more expensive skill for fighters to learn, almost certainly because there are three other core melee classes that get it as a class skill and for whom it is more thematicallly appropriate. Gotta draw lines somewhere.

I'd consider well done clarifications of intent & loophole closing to be "adding eusense" in a way that fixes "malsense". Like you could fix the d&d 3.x drown healing thing by adding a general rule stating something like "when a rule intended for characters in normal circumstances (e.g. alive healthy & moving freely) conflicts or produces different or silly outcomes if applied to characters in abnormal circumstances (e.g. dying poisoned & restrained) then use whichever outcome is more logical ir worse for the character, GM choice".

Sure. Not a bad idea for any rulebook to have a section specifically about "rules interpretations" and spell out that "if a rule can be interpreteed in a way that makes no sense, follow the interpretation that makes sense instead".

On the flip side, the rule should have been written explicitly to describe that "HPs are reduced to 0" or "all positive HPs are lost" (or something similar). If something is describing "damage" being done, it should always use the rule of "apply damage downward to X or by Y points", never "set HPs to X". That's just sloppy writing IMO.

[Telok]

That's just sloppy writing IMO.

Ha! That was just a writer assuming that the reader was going to act in a logical manner about the question "how do we do drowning in this game". This is sloppy rules writing:

Shock and Awe
Enchantment 1
Test: Enchantment + Charisma
Target Number: 15
Action: Half Action
Keywords: Attack, Combo-OK, Somatic, Verbal
Duration: Instant
Everyone within 10m of this spell's target loses 5 from their initiative score. If they have already acted this round and this change in the initiative order would give them an additional turn, they skip that turn.

Because go back to that game's bit about general casting tells you to look at the specific spell for the range. That's why we always need editors and a fresh set of eyes to go over stuff.