Could you clarify why you think so? To my understanding the definition of a dissociated mechanic is when the player's decision-making process can't be equated to the character's decision-making processes.
It doesn't help that even the Alexandrian has never been perfectly consistent about what it means, but under this metric: Your decision to "attack" is not actually correlated with any specific choices on your part. It's, by necessity, a mechanical abstraction. The biggest problem is the disconnect between
damage roll and
attack roll though. There's a causal break here, where it is
purely because of the abstraction--the vagaries of damage dice--that can cause even a critical hit to deal minimum damage, or a barely-hitting hit to deal max damage. You can't know what the events are until after the
mechanic resolves--not the choice, the choice has already resolved.
The problem is that "dissociated"
wants to have all the useful aspects of "diegetic" without any of the baggage. It doesn't want to recognize that most D&D mechanics aren't diegetic, so that word can't be used.
There's definitely room for subjectivity regarding which mechanics are associated and which are dissociated. I'm curious whether we're reaching different conclusions about attack rolls because of such a subjective difference in how we frame the OOC/IC decisions to attack, or whether we're using different definitions of "dissociated mechanics".
Well, as alluded above, part of the reason I
extremely strongly dislike the phrase "dissociated mechanics" is that it is not consistent, neither in what it means nor in how it is applied. It is a poster child for trying to reify "I don't like this" into "this is an objective fault," just presented with enough awareness that simply decrying things as abstract or non-diegetic is facile (since the vast majority of D&D mechanics are extremely abstract and frequently non-diegetic).
I'm completely onboard with your point that using subjective disagreements about realism to make objective claims of "inherent wrongness" is problematic. But I don't see any problem with making openly subjective claims about one's preferred level of "realism" and advocating for the game to accommodate one's preferences.
Because a serious problem with game design is that people refuse to consider new methods which might achieve their desired ends better, but which are not the same as the methods they're familiar with. They reject the unfamiliar as bad, and accept the familiar as good, rather than being willing to examine whether their aims are met effectively by the tools to which they have become accustomed. Subjectivity is fine when it is open and understood
and not used as a shield against criticism or development.
This gets into one of the biggest problems with the "dissociated" mechanics argument: it's inherently pro-caster. Because magic
doesn't exist, there cannot be any preconceived expectations about what it can do, and thus it is
prima facie impossible to have dissociated magic. The player must just accept that that is how magic happens to work. But "martial" mechanics? Those at least
resemble real-world stuff. Which means people can come in with some expectations, which is the true root of mechanical "dissociation": martial characters are forced to abide by
what people THINK is physically realizable IRL, not what is potentially realizable in a fantastical setting. The whole thing then reveals its true colors, becoming "magic characters should simply have fewer limits than non-magic ones, because magic is whatever we choose to define it to be, whereas non-magic is limited to only (and often
much less than) what we could achieve in the real world."
I have an additional question regarding the scope of your conclusion:
My opinion is that 5e, taken as a whole, is sufficiently "realistic"/verisimilitudinous/etc to satisfy my personal preferences. There are certainly aspects of the system that I wish were more "realistic"/verisimilitudinous than they are, but there aren't enough if them to spoil my enjoyment of the system.
Could you please clarify whether you intend your conclusion above to be broad enough to cover subjective opinions like mine, and therefore that you think I'm getting tangled up in one of those layers (or an unspecified layer)? Or do your intend your conclusion to be narrow enough to focus only on objective claims and thus not apply to subjective opinions like mine?
Thanks!
You're not getting tangled up because you're not even entering the discussion. You have no problem with what is offered, or no problem sufficiently strong to be worth discussing.
It would be like someone saying "there are all these
problems that come from people trying to critique French cuisine, that basically everyone runs into" and then you saying, "well, I've dined at Petit Provence several times, and while the food wasn't always 100% perfectly what I would want, I enjoyed what I ate. So...where am I getting tripped up with these problems?" You aren't, because you aren't critiquing the food in the first place. Likewise, you aren't critiquing the realism of 5e; you're accepting it at face value.
As soon as you start actually digging in and voicing what concerns you
do have, though, you're going to start falling prey to at least one of the above things, almost surely. E.g., if you would find it utterly unacceptable to add a Warlord class because you consider martial healing "unrealistic" ("insufficiently verisimilitudinous," "poorly grounded," however you wish to call it), well, that's precisely inviting at least one of the aforementioned issues, because that invites questions like "well if that's okay why are hit points
in general okay when they have so many unrealistic(/ungrounded/etc.) characteristics to them?" etc.