D&D 5E Geniuses with 5 Int

[Ovinomancer]

The only effect here is the change in narration. Which is the whole point. Which means it's not true that it doesn't change anything: it changes the fiction.

What it doesn't do is confer any practical gameplay benefit upon Eloelle's player.

It does. It allows her to continue to know the correct answer while denying the Evil Cleric that same information despite LOL's failed save because LOL has a powerful patron that works to subvert Evil Cleric's magic. That she failed an INT check earlier doesn't really matter -- that's come and gone. What matters is that LOL believes she knows the correct answer and is able to circumvent the mechanics of ZoT because you think it's a better story. It might be, I'm not judging that, but it does require that you change the way ZoT works. I know you're fine with houseruling, and you call it such, which is great. No issues, mate, enjoy your game. My problem is claiming that this is how the rules actually work instead of stating that it's a houserule. The way the rules work doesn't allow for this narration.

Why? The first doesn't confer any gameplay benefit: the player plays under all the burdens of having 5 INT (little or no practical access to useful information) and gets one of the few benefits of that (little or no liability to having to divulge information when affected by Enchantment spells).

The other would be cheating, in the traditional sense of that word: the player would be ignoring or breaking the rules of the game to get a significant gameplay benefit.

What possible reason is there to think that permitting one narration entails, or even opens up the suggestion of, permitting the other? I mean, your table isn't going to allow it, because you won't even allow the move with respect to ZoT.

And [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] and I aren't going to allow it, because it's cheating.

So who do you think has some reason to agree with your "surely" claim?

Because that's how the rules work. Again, if you change the rules, and you're welcome to, that that's fine. You, at least, seem to have a pretty good handle on potential pitfalls and are willing to take action. Elfcrusher, on the other hand, refuses to see any potential issues and further declares that he's 100% in the rule swim lane. That's an issue. I've no problem with the concept, I have a problem with not being honest about what the concept is. The LOL fiction requires ad hoc changes to rules because she's the only character that declares a narration in opposition to the mechanics -- that she knows when the mechanics say she doesn't. The rest don't know because they failed -- they're pitched as capable of knowing, but, through their handicaps, didn't put forth the effort at the right time to know. So, they're not the issue. The issue boils down to declaring narration in opposition to the initial mechanics, and how that sets up a chain of further necessary changes to mechanics to allow for the narration to survive. That's an issue.

Who do you think takes a different view from the one that you express in the final quoted sentence? I don't, and I doubt that [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] does either.

I don't understand your question. It seems to be 'why do you have with incoherent narration when others don't?' At least, that's my best parse, and the answer should be clearly self-evident -- I like coherent things.

But Eloelle isn't a self-evidently bad concept. The ZoT narration is ad hoc, but it's not incoherent nor is it particularly outlandish in a fantasy RPG.

Again, you're separating the narration from the mechanics when the mechanics directly constrain the narration. You're separating things that cannot be separated without an ad hoc houserule, which you admit. Yet you persist in arguing when I've made my point (LOL's example requires houseruling) by essentially saying that LOL's example requires houseruling. Yes, it does. Thanks!

I think the Eloelle character would be potentially more interesting if at a certain point s/he read a Tome of Clear Thought or acquired a Gem of Insight and was suddenly able to bring her secret knowledge to bear! - thus creating some sort of character arc or transformation that play a major role in driving the game. Without that, s/he's mostly just a bit of colour that adds some minor flavour to play but doesn't really drive things. But that still strikes me as mostly harmless colour - and her warlockishness still has the capacity to play out meaningfully in some other (non-knowledge-related) aspect of the game.

No doubt. I disagree that it's harmless to have to constantly create ad hoc rulings to protect the LOL concept when it runs afoul of the rules, but to each his own. So long as we're agreed that such ad hoc rulings are creating houserules, we really have no difference of opinion except as to the worth of the event. I find LOL needlessly silly and convoluted for little payoff -- she's a nuisance concept. Any concept that has as it's core reversing the outcome of the mechanics in narration is a nuisance. The not-strong Orc is decent - it accepts the result of mechanics and doesn't reverse them to say "I'm secretly strong, I just failed that on purpose to throw you off the scent of my secret power." It fails or succeeds with the die rolls and has an interesting way of explaining those failures and successes. LOL reverse the outcome in her narration. She doesn't give a reason for the result, she contravenes the result. That's just a nuisance and not interesting enough to play with. I grew out of finding that interesting around the time 2e came out and I graduated high school.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not 100% sure what you're intending to convey by this, but 4e's mechanics engage the fiction at many of the same places as 5e's. In both games, for instance, the mechanics and rules generate exactly the same sort of reason to think that a fireball spell might set combustible material alight.

I fail to understand the mind that makes this argument while simultaneously holding that ZoT doesn't make the character tell the truth. For one, fireball doesn't say that it sets things on fire while ZoT does say that it makes people under its effect tell the truth.

To follow up, if LOL cast fireball and narrated the results as the damage and that Evil Cleric's hair and robe were now on fire, would that be okay for you?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[pemerton]

In a game about stories, changing the fiction changes the outcome.

But not in a way that breaks the game.

Gygax, in his DMG, gives the example of the low-DEX character who is nevertheless agile. Playing that character will produce different fiction from playing the low-DEX character who neverthless has (say) good hand-eye co-ordination; or the low-DEX character who is an all-rounder in respect of his/her physical inadequacies.

But these are all permissible, because none of the narrations actually gives the player a gameplay advantage: s/he still has to suffer the AC penalty, the saving throw penalty, the ranged weapon attack penalty, etc. The low-DEX but agile character (whom Gygax describes as "slippery in the grasp") even suffers the same consequences for grappling as the low-DEX character who is narrated as not agile at all. Gygax doesn't tell us what ad hoc narration is required to explain, in the fiction, this particular outcome: I assume that he thought D&D players were capable of handling it on their own.

The same is true in the case of Eloelle. Changing the fiction generated by the ZoT spell doesn't actually confer any gameplay benefit. Nothing is making me think that it's fundamentally any different from Gygax's example of a low-DEX character who is nevertheless slippery in the grasp, and yet is mechanically as vulnerable to being grappled as any other low-DEX character.

I gave an example with myself, tracking, and my ranger character. I narrate that I tell the truth that my character knows, even if I don't.

First, in the context of ZoT this is handing over narration to the GM - who has to actually tell you what your character says, and hence what you (and everyone else present in the fiction) hears and learns.

Second, in the Eloelle scenario this would be cheating, because it would be giving the player (and other players whose PCs are present, and NPCs) access to information to which the mechanics of the game don't entitle them. (Because Eloelle has a 5 INT.) It would be like the player of the low-DEX but "slippery in the grasp" character trying to claim an ad hoc bonus against grappling attacks.

The player in both Elfcrusher's and my examples both narrate their actions -- they action declaration is the same in both.

No.

In [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]'s application of ZoT to Eloelle, on a failed saving throw roll Eloelle's player hands over all the information to which s/he is entitled to have gameplay access (ie none, or its the false information that the GM handed over when the player rolled poorly on knowledge checks due to having 5 INT).

But this is not all the information to which, in the fiction, Eloelle has access. In the fiction, it is Eloelle continuing to lie and relay information she knows to be false, in accordance with the commands of her patron.

In the fiction, therefore, in Elfcrusher's narration, Eloelle is not prevented from telling falsehoods. Which means that, in the fiction, Eloelle did not fall victim to the ZoT spell - although, at the table, Eloelle's player failed the saving throw roll. Hence the narration that, in the fiction, Eloelle's patron interceded to block the enchantment effect.

Whereas your posited action declaration is "Eloelle tells them the truth that she knows." In the Eloelle scenario as Elfcrusher has laid it out, this would be tantamount to cheating because an attempt to circumvent the burden of having a 5 INT. (Indeed, the whole reason we are discussing ZoT is because, quite some way upthread, someone put it forward as a way to break the Eloelle concept. And Elfcrusher put forward a non-standard application of ZoT as a solution to the threatened breakage.)

It doesn't matter if the player doesn't know the answer. Eloelle does because her patron gave it to her. That the patron lied is another matter entirely. Eloelle is required to give that answer. Since the player didn't receive the information on what the lie was, there are two choices. He can invent something, or ask the DM what the lie was that she was told so that he can give the truthful answer to the caster. In no case can he simply narrate that she made a save that was failed and then offer up a lie and say anything other than the truthful incorrect answer. At least not without a house rule to change the mechanics of the situation.

I don't understand why you are talking about the patron lying. That is some odd interpolation of yours that has no connection to the original scenario as outlined by Elfcrusher.

Anyway - the ZoT thing is only going to come up if the player has been allowed to play Eloelle at the table. At that point, we have two options: allow a 2nd level spell to break the game and break the character concept; or find a narration of the spell that will preserve both the gameplay status quo and the integrity of the character concept.
[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] has identified a simple solution that does both these things: at the level of gameplay, the evil cleric who casts the spell gets all the information s/he is entitled to get from ZoTing a 5 INT character (namely, little or none); and within the fiction, Eloelle keeps her secrets (thereby both preserving the integrity of the character concept and making sure that Eloelle's player continues to labour under the ignorance that follows from playing a 5 INT character who fails a good number of knowledge checks) because her patron protects her from the evil cleric's puny enchantment.

The spell requires that she tell the truth. The truth is that she knows the answer. Her answer is incorrect. Therefore she tells the incorrect answer that she knows to be the truth.

<snip>

There is no requirement that any truthful answer be correct. Only that it be the truth.

This is confusing. I think you are using "true" to mean "believed" and are using "know" to mean "believed" but I'm not sure.

Anyway - it would be broken to allow a 2nd level spell to circumvent the penalties that accrue from having a 5 INT.

And (everything else being equal) it is boring gameplay for the GM to play with him-/herself - in this case, by taking the role of Eloelle and telling all the secrets that she hitherto has not revealed, and which her player has no knowledge of and (quite properly, given the 5 INT stat) hitherto has had no gameplay access to.
[MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION]'s suggested narration of ZoT, as applied to the 5 INT Eloelle, avoids both these problems, while preserving the gameplay status quo. I therefore think it's quite elegant.

 

[pemerton]

Your examples are further conflation. The example of healing 4 HP over four days isn't extrapolation, or a house rule, it would be RAW. Period. Broken down, the player rests one day (1 hp), then another day (1 hp), then another day (1 hp), then the fourth day (1 hp).

What you're trying to do, and the point of disagreement, is that you're saying (reasonably) that common-sense adjudications are not house rules or extrapolations. In a sense, you are eliding a premise of your argument. Allow me to demonstrate.

The rules do not state that jug can hold water.
(Unstated premise - everyone knows that in the real world, jugs hold water!)

Your example of RAW also contains an unstated premise, something along the lines of "four days worth of healing is the same as four lots of one day's worth of healing". It assumes that the cumulation of days, and of the causal effects of the passage of time, is not governed by some non-linear mathematical function.

That may be self-evident - I don't have a strong view. (I recall that there was a lot of controversy in the early days of 5e over whether or not short rests are similarly cumulative, only with "hours" in place of "days".) I don't think it's much more self-evident, though, than that jugs hold water or that flames can set combustible materials alight. (Arguably being able to hold water, or being capable of lighting combustible materials, is a constitutive property of being a jug or being a flame respectively.)

What the chance of combustion taking place is is not something that can be as easily extrapolated. Similarly for the degree of impedence to swimming from wearing metal armour. But all this tells us is that the point where application of the rules runs out and the creation of new rules, or principles, or rulings, or house rules, or whatever you want to call them, is vague.

(A side issue here, but relevant to any discussion of the application of rules, is the point made by Lewis Carroll in his well-known paper on "What the tortoise said to Achilles". If we reduce all our rules of inference to premises in the argument, then we will end up with an infinite regress of premises. Hence, whenever rules are being applied and consequences determined, there must be some unwritten rule of inference that is applied. On[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s account, that is not RAW, and hence (on that account) every decision in the application of a rule goes beyond RAW. That conclusion seems counterintuitive to me.)

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[pemerton]

I don't understand your question.

<snip>

I like coherent things.

You said "I also expect such narration to be long term coherent and not a series of increasingly outlandish patches to save a bad concept." I asked "Who do you think takes a different view from the one you expressed?" The question was mostly rhetorical, because I think the answer is obvious: everyone expects narration to be long term coherent and not a series of increasingly outlandish patches to save a bad concept. Everyone likes coherence.

Hence, appealing to these values (coherence, avoidance of bad concepts, etc) doesn't tell us anything about Eloelle, ZoT or house ruling. The fact that you don't like Eloelle doesn't tell us anything about the degree of your love for coherence compared to (say) me or [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION].

But I think it does tell us something about differing views as to the nature and purpose of RPG mechanics.

[The change in narration doesn't] confer any practical gameplay benefit upon Eloelle's player.

It does. It allows her to continue to know the correct answer while denying the Evil Cleric that same information despite LOL's failed save because LOL has a powerful patron that works to subvert Evil Cleric's magic.

This is not a gameplay benefit conferred upon Eloelle's player (or upon anyone else). It's not even a gameplay change.

The NPC does not have access to any less information than s/he would if Eloelle was narrated as being thick as two planks. The player does not have access to any more information than s/he would if s/he narrated the 5 INT character as being thick as two planks. (So it's not true that Eloelle's player continue to know the correct answer while denying the NPC that information. Eloelle's player has never know the correct answer, and has no access to that answer for gameplay purposes. This is a consequence of the character having 5 INT.)

All the changes are in the narration alone. I think that [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] has used the word "fluff". Following Ron Edwards, I would describe it as mere colour. It is colour/flavour that is being very deliberately quarantined from having gameplay consequences. (I've pointed to a scenario in which this might change - namely, the use of a Tome of Clear Thought or of a Gem of Insight. But that change would be quite acceptable in mechanical terms, because those items change the INT of the character.)

What matters is that LOL believes she knows the correct answer and is able to circumvent the mechanics of ZoT because you think it's a better story.

There seem to be category errors here. Eloelle "exists" only in the fiction. The mechanics of ZoT exist only at the table. At the table, the question is how to narrate the outcome of ZoT, given that Eloelle is not to be permitted to hand over any information, because as a result of the 5 INT on her character sheet s/he is not permitted to have access to information in such a way as would inform the play of the game.

Coming up with the idea that, in the fiction, her patron shields her from the enchantment is an ad hoc narration to preserve the gameplay status quo. It is not a conferral of a benefit on any player. (That there are, relative to the fiction, counterfactual possibilities where Eloelle is worse off is neither here nor there. Eloelle is not a participant in the game who has interests that need to be respected, balanced, etc. The point of the mechanics is to adjudicate the play of the game, not ensure some imaginary "balance" between imaginary people, such as Eloelle and the GM's ZoT-casting NPC.)

it does require that you change the way ZoT works.

<snip>

My problem is claiming that this is how the rules actually work instead of stating that it's a houserule. The way the rules work doesn't allow for this narration.

<snip>

The LOL fiction requires ad hoc changes to rules because she's the only character that declares a narration in opposition to the mechanics -- that she knows when the mechanics say she doesn't.

<snip>

you're separating the narration from the mechanics when the mechanics directly constrain the narration. You're separating things that cannot be separated without an ad hoc houserule, which you admit.

<snip>

I disagree that it's harmless to have to constantly create ad hoc rulings to protect the LOL concept when it runs afoul of the rules, but to each his own. So long as we're agreed that such ad hoc rulings are creating houserules, we really have no difference of opinion except as to the worth of the event.

I think we have different views as to what the mechanics of the game are for. Hence - in virtue of applying this different general conception to a particular situation - I think we have different view of what the mechanical workings of ZoT are.

I see ZoT as serving two purposes. When cast by PCs on NPCs, it is a device (like scrying magic, detection spells, etc) that obliges the GM to hand over some bits of backstory. (In this case, backstory concerned with the beliefs of NPCs.)

When cast by a NPC on a PC, it is a device that enables the GM to permissibly declare actions for his/her NPCs which have regard to the beliefs of the PCs without being accused of cheating, or abusively metagaming, by imputing knowledge to the NPCs about the beliefs/motivations etc of the PCs which they couldn't reasonably enjoy.

These functions are mediated via a notion that the spell exerts a compulsion on the character (hence it is an Enchantment spell, it grants a CHA save, etc).

These are the functions that generate its interaction with INT, which - via knowledge checks - is another device for regulating access to backstory (in the case of players) and for constraining GM action declaration for his/her NPCs (eg the GM is expected to play giant ants differently from liches and gold dragons, in virtue of their differing INTs).

If a character has 5 INT, the player of that character gets less access to backstory (because knowledge checks will fail more often). A flipside of this is that NPCs who case ZoT on that character get less access to information, and hence - at the level of gameplay - have fewer GM action declaration options opened up for them.

This is the salient mechanical operation of ZoT. When Eloelle is being played at the table, this is the operation that needs to be preserved. That the narration is adjusted in an ad hoc way to ensure this (namely, Eloelle's failure to hand over much useful information is narrated in terms of patron intercession rather than being thick as two planks) is not, in my view, any sort of fundamental change to the mechanics of ZoT. Rather, it is upholding a mechanical status quo.

As I've said, it's no skin off my nose if someone wants to call that a house ruling, but that's not really how I see it: no new resolution device, no new game element, no new option, no new constraint, has been introduced into the game. Rather, the status quo of how a 5 INT should interact with ZoT has been preserved.

I suspect that [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] sees the matter in broadly similar terms to me.

 

[pemerton]

In the first example, the RAW state you get 1hp / day.

That is introducing a degree of precision into the statement of the rule that you didn't use first time round, and (as best I recall) neither did I.

Suppose the rules state One day's rest restores 1 hp. That is no longer stated as a liner function (unlike Rest restores one hp per day, which is stated as a linear function). My view is that the difference between these two ways of stating the rule is editorial, not substantive; and that in either case there is no house ruling involved in inferring that 7 days rest restores 7 hp; and that in both cases the drawing of this inference is an act of rules application/adjudication.

If we were discussing a physics textbook rather than an RPG rulebook then the difference would be substantive, and not merely editorial; but we're not.

The extrapolation from fireballs do fire damage and fire damage is the sort of thing caused by dragon breath and conjured flams and flaming torches, burning oil and alchemist's fire all do fire damage (all of which are things expressly stated in the Basic PDF) to a fireball might set combustible materials alight is, for practical purposes, no more conjectural than the mathematical extrapolation involved in the healing example.

What the chance of the fireball setting things alight is is a different matter. The Basic PDF gives little guidance on this, though on p 66 there is the following:

Characters can also damage objects with their weapons and spells. Objects are immune to poison and psychic damage, but otherwise they can be affected by physical and magical attacks much like creatures can. The DM determines an object’s Armor Class and hit points, and might decide that certain objects have resistance or immunity to certain kinds of attacks. (It’s
hard to cut a rope with a club, for example.) Objects always fail Strength and Dexterity saving throws . . .​

This doesn't help a great deal with a fireball - a fireball automatically does full damage to an object (failed DEX save) but extrapolating from this mechanical state of affairs to the in-fiction question of whether or not a fire has started is left as an exercise for the referee.

But that there is an in-principle chance of combustible material being set alight by the fireball (and probably a higher chance than by a flaming torch, given the latter does only 1 hp of fire damage) strikes me as hard to deny, given everything that the rules say.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Yardiff]

PHB pg 153 gives us container capacities one of which is a jug has a capacity of 1 gallon of liquid.