The double standard for magical and mundane abilities

[evileeyore]

Please explain. I'm having a hard time understanding a fair die as anything other than a pseudo-random number generator.

That's all it is.

It's your declaration that if the dice are rolling badly for someone, they are doing it wrong that is moronic.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Since magic can do anything (or face any arbitrary restriction), it could always be justified (or not) in the narrative. We can narratively justify casters having a chance of failing any spell at any time. We can narratively justify them casting only rituals that take at least an hour and must be done under the light of the full moon, starting at midnight.

We could. We could make you succeed in an Intelligence (Spellcraft) check, with a DC based on the level of the spell, in order to cast any spell. I'm pretty sure that it would be bad for gameplay, though, since it would give most spells two independent chances to fail.

If you're familiar with any of those other systems where the attacker rolls to hit, and the defender can negate that with the roll to dodge, then you're probably familiar with the two ways that usually ends up: 1) the attack roll becomes superfluous as a near-certainty, or 2) there's a whole lot of whiffing going on.

What I was saying is that it's much harder to justify a Fireball, once successfully cast, that fails to have any effect whatsoever on someone in its area. It's been over a decade, and people still use Evasion as a punchline to certain jokes. Even if we wanted to remove damage-on-a-miss as a method to help balance spellcasters, it would be non-trivial from a narrative standpoint.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It's your declaration that if the dice are rolling badly for someone, they are doing it wrong that is moronic.

No, it's perfectly possible to roll dice and have them come up badly. That's one of the expected outcomes of dice. It's why you're rolling dice in the first place, is because there's a chance that it might go badly.

What I can't understand is how you can attribute the probability of the dice to the person who is rolling them. Of all of the variables involved with how a die roll turns up, the person performing the physical motion is not a meaningful consideration (unless there's something shady going on).

It can't be the case that I roll adequately, and you roll poorly, because the outcome of dice is not a factor which can be attributed to individuals. Regardless of who throws a d20, there's a 50% chance that it will come up 11 or higher, with very little room for error.

 

[Tony Vargas]

We could. We could make you succeed in an Intelligence (Spellcraft) check, with a DC based on the level of the spell, in order to cast any spell. I'm pretty sure that it would be bad for gameplay, though, since it would give most spells two independent chances to fail.

There'd be no need for that, though. The result of the check (which'll be proficiency + caster stat, exactly the same as making an attack roll with a spell in 5e) could simply be used as the attack roll, as well. The better a job you do casting the spell, the more likely it hits. Could also work for overcoming a save mathematically inverted to act as a defense, or to set the DC for a save (though, you'd have to be pretty careful with that, as it does become two rolls).

What I was saying is that it's much harder to justify a Fireball, once successfully cast, that fails to have any effect whatsoever on someone in its area.

Fireballs /can't/ fail to do damage, and one that's mis-cast isn't really a fireball, it's a failed attempt to create a fireball, so I don't see the objection.

Furthermore, magic can do (or be restricted arbitrarily) from doing anything. A magical fireball doesn't have to act exactly like ordinary fire. It could fail to burn someone 'pure of heart' or with 'great courage' (like Sigurd riding through the ring of fire), it all depends on how magic works in that universe (or even for that caster or that spell).

So there's no issue at all with justifying a fireball that manifests, but does no damage to a particular target, even as it incinerates others and burns the surrounding scenery (or doesn't).

Indeed that goes anytime the 'demands of narrating magic' conflict with balance or playability - just change the narrative of the magic to suit. That's prettymuch where Vancian came from. Gygax realized that an artillery-like mage would be broken if it could fire frequently, so, daily slots. By the time that got adapted to 9 spell levels and 18+ character levels, it was thoroughly broken, of course, but the original /reason/ was not wanting to model the Dying Earth, but wanting to include a payable implementation of magic in a medieval wargame.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Fireballs /can't/ fail to do damage, and one that's mis-cast isn't really a fireball, it's a failed attempt to create a fireball, so I don't see the objection.

I was thinking traditional usage, against massed foes. If you have nine orcs in a traditional Fireball formation, then it's hard to explain when the ones on the edges get burned and the ones near the middle are un-hurt.

I mean, you could do it. You could make up another layer to what's going on, like you suggested, but it might not be very satisfying in terms of gameplay if everything is always more complicated than it seems.

 

[Morty]

The situation the OP describes is why I think non-magical heroic efforts should rely more on discrete abilities than just numbers.

 

[Dannager]

Sigh.

It's that you don't even notice your logically fallacy that makes me weep for the future of the human race.

In addition to being incredibly insulting, this is pretty rich coming from a guy who is convinced that, over years of playing D&D and rolling god-only-knows-how-many dice, he falls into anything but the "statistical middle".

 

[Ranes]

If the thief only had to make a check for tightrope walking in extreme conditions I think we would have a greater degree of parity.

A fair point but one that others have already taken up in this thread, so I will return to my lurkdom for the time being.

Oh, but before I do, I'll tell you what; even taking into account my sporadic attention to this forum, I don't recall seeing a thread quite like this before, despite it being relevant to any number of editions. Fun, fun, fun!

 

[Tony Vargas]

I was thinking traditional usage, against massed foes. If you have nine orcs in a traditional Fireball formation, then it's hard to explain when the ones on the edges get burned and the ones near the middle are un-hurt.

I mean, you could do it. You could make up another layer to what's going on, like you suggested, but it might not be very satisfying in terms of gameplay if everything is always more complicated than it seems.

Why would anything be un-hurt by a DoaSS attack like Fireball?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Why would anything be un-hurt by a DoaSS attack like Fireball?

That's what I'm saying. Part of the disparity between mundane and magical abilities comes from the narrative.

Since we've decided that we want the wizard to throw around huge explosions, it's hard to come up with a reason why that wouldn't be unavoidable; but any fighter is limited to mere swords and arrows, where it's hard to justify why it would be unavoidable.

That's why there's a double standard.