Missing Rules

[Charlaquin]

The Using Ability Scores section goes to a lot of trouble to lay out an approach. It's a method that is at the heart of 5e. "An ability check tests a character's or monster's innate talent and training in an effort to overcome a challenge. The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results. For every ability check, the DM decides which of the six abilities is relevant to the task at hand and the difficulty of the task, represented by a Difficulty Class. The more difficult a task, the higher its DC. The Typical Difficulty Classes table shows the most common DCs."

That all said, I don't think we're disagreeing by much. I don't buy the rulings not rules propaganda, because it is profoundly contradicted by rule books running to hundreds of pages, that players spend good money on and use much of as written. When players cast a Magic Missile, they overwhelmingly go by the rules, i.e. roll a number of d4+1s. Or perhaps more the way I understand the rulings not rules concept is that it simply states out loud something that has always happened in PnP RPG, which is that the situations that can come up, the things that players want to do, are so wide roaming, our narratives and actors so diverse in the particulars, that no rule set will ever cover everything that we might imagine. The incompleteness of rule sets, is what calls for rulings. Rules and rulings: the rest is propaganda

I would recast your framing as - The rules set forth an approach: the group uses and as necessary modifies that approach to achieve their goals.

Not to speak for Iserith here, but I’m pretty sure you’re misunderstanding what they meant by the word “approach.” You’re describing the approach the DM uses to resolve actions. Iserith, unless I’m very much mistaken, is referring to the approach the PC uses to attempt to achieve their goal. The rules don’t say what approach or approaches to the goal of jumping an unusually long distance have uncertain outcomes. That falls to the DM’s judgment. Some DMs consider, “try to jump more than my strength in feet” a viable approach to the goal “jump further than my strength in feet” to have an uncertain outcome in most if not all situations, while others (such as myself) don’t consider it to have an uncertain outcome. The rules (to their credit, in my opinion,) don’t tell us if either is right or wrong.

 

[clearstream]

Not to speak for Iserith here, but I’m pretty sure you’re misunderstanding what they meant by the word “approach.” You’re describing the approach the DM uses to resolve actions. Iserith, unless I’m very much mistaken, is referring to the approach the PC uses to attempt to achieve their goal. The rules don’t say what approach or approaches to the goal of jumping an unusually long distance have uncertain outcomes. That falls to the DM’s judgment. Some DMs consider, “try to jump more than my strength in feet” a viable approach to the goal “jump further than my strength in feet” to have an uncertain outcome in most if not all situations, while others (such as myself) don’t consider it to have an uncertain outcome. The rules (to their credit, in my opinion,) don’t tell us if either is right or wrong.

[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] would be making a fair point then

However, it doesn't seem right for you to migrate a fair point about the open question of what approaches players may take, to a mechanical point about what is implied by the words "an unusually long distance". From any kind of rational, not throwing our intellect out with the bath water perspective, the latter entails not the usual distance and the usual distance is that defined under jumping: distances that are not that distance, are unusual.

 

[Maxperson]

That all said, I don't think we're disagreeing by much. I don't buy the rulings not rules propaganda, because it is profoundly contradicted by rule books running to hundreds of pages, that players spend good money on and use much of as written.

So the 5e game designers are wrong about the intent of 5e to be rulings over rules?

Or perhaps more the way I understand the rulings not rules concept is that it simply states out loud something that has always happened in PnP RPG, which is that the situations that can come up, the things that players want to do, are so wide roaming, our narratives and actors so diverse in the particulars, that no rule set will ever cover everything that we might imagine. The incompleteness of rule sets, is what calls for rulings. Rules and rulings: the rest is propaganda

Already in this thread alone we've had issues with the vagueness caused by "meaningful consequence" and "unusually long." 5e is rife with wording like that.

Edit: Just for the heck of it I looked up Magic Missile since you used that as your clear rules example. Here is the wording.

"You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4 + 1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously, and you can direct them to hit one creature or several."

What does several mean? You create three darts, if you can only hit up to three, why didn't they say so? Can you have a dart hit more than one creature? That wording seems to say so. Several means "More than 2, but not many." Many means "A large number of" So a medium number, say 8 or 12 would be several. The rule also says that each darts hits A creature of your choice, which would indicate 3 get hit. However, the "clear" rules also say you can hit several. Both cannot be true. Which is it?

I think it's pretty clear that most, if not all DMs will rule that you can only hit 3 creatures, but the rules don't actually say that. Instead you are going to need a ruling if a player brings that up.

 

[Maxperson]

That's hugely amusing! I was responding to an assumption that I thought you were making, which is that a check would be needed to jump say Strength in feet (being a value included in "up to Strength").

It seems we were in fact in furious agreement that a check is only called for (under Athletics) when a character wants to cover more than that distance! The shortcut I use to find DCs is essentially to just make them the distance to be jumped, however inverting that slightly to say that the jumper jumps either their check, or their Strength, whichever is lower. That's a quick and easy way to determine an unusually long jump distance. Admitted there are mechanical incongruities, but I've found in play those really don't matter and in many cases could be considered a feature.

FWIW I do not think the designers envisioned doing as I do. I think they envisioned instead (and this is spelled out in the Using Abilities section) that a DM will decide if an unusual jump is easy, hard etc, and set a DC. A DM might feel Strength +1 is very easy, for DC of 5. Whereas given a Strength of 10 I would give a DC of 11 for that.

Confusion happens!

 

[iserith]

The Using Ability Scores section goes to a lot of trouble to lay out an approach. It's a method that is at the heart of 5e. "An ability check tests a character's or monster's innate talent and training in an effort to overcome a challenge. The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results. For every ability check, the DM decides which of the six abilities is relevant to the task at hand and the difficulty of the task, represented by a Difficulty Class. The more difficult a task, the higher its DC. The Typical Difficulty Classes table shows the most common DCs."

When I say "approach," I mean the approach the character is taking to achieve the goal. How the character is going about jumping an unusually long distance, for example. "Make an Athletics check" isn't an approach because ability checks aren't things a character does. It's just a mechanic for resolving uncertainty as to the outcome of the approach the character takes in order to achieve a goal, one that involves athleticism or the like. In order to determine whether there is uncertainty and, if it exists, to set a DC, the DM needs to understand what the character is doing and hoping to achieve. If all the DM has is a goal (jump an unusually long distance), then he or she must assume or establish what the character is doing which is not the DM's role in this game. The player is the one who determines what the character does, thinks, and says.

That all said, I don't think we're disagreeing by much. I don't buy the rulings not rules propaganda, because it is profoundly contradicted by rule books running to hundreds of pages, that players spend good money on and use much of as written. When players cast a Magic Missile, they overwhelmingly go by the rules, i.e. roll a number of d4+1s. Or perhaps more the way I understand the rulings not rules concept is that it simply states out loud something that has always happened in PnP RPG, which is that the situations that can come up, the things that players want to do, are so wide roaming, our narratives and actors so diverse in the particulars, that no rule set will ever cover everything that we might imagine. The incompleteness of rule sets, is what calls for rulings. Rules and rulings: the rest is propaganda

I would recast your framing as - The rules set forth an approach: the group uses and as necessary modifies that approach to achieve their goals.

I tend to think of "rulings" as anything the DM says that isn't describing the environment. That is, calling for mechanics to come into play when he or she finds it necessary to do so and narrating the results of the adventurers' actions. Those rulings may or may not be based on the rules. I don't necessarily think of "rulings" as only those times when the DM is making exceptions to the rules or picking up where the rules leave off. It's more like "Player says a thing, DM determines what follows." And that definitely seems more in line with my understanding of the overall D&D 5e paradigm.

 

[5ekyu]

So the 5e game designers are wrong about the intent of 5e to be rulings over rules?



Already in this thread alone we've had issues with the vagueness caused by "meaningful consequence" and "unusually long." 5e is rife with wording like that.

Edit: Just for the heck of it I looked up Magic Missile since you used that as your clear rules example. Here is the wording.

"You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4 + 1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously, and you can direct them to hit one creature or several."

What does several mean? You create three darts, if you can only hit up to three, why didn't they say so? Can you have a dart hit more than one creature? That wording seems to say so. Several means "More than 2, but not many." Many means "A large number of" So a medium number, say 8 or 12 would be several. The rule also says that each darts hits A creature of your choice, which would indicate 3 get hit. However, the "clear" rules also say you can hit several. Both cannot be true. Which is it?

I think it's pretty clear that most, if not all DMs will rule that you can only hit 3 creatures, but the rules don't actually say that. Instead you are going to need a ruling if a player brings that up.

There is a different between clear rules and ambiguous rules and between reading and hostile reading.

Reading means looking at what something says to determine its meaning.

Hostile reading means reading to look for what it doesn't refuse to twist or find a way to misconstrue its meaning.

Each dart hits a creature" does mean each dart hits only one creature but does not say or imply that the different darts all must hit "only one creature" or "only one dart per creature" it just means each dart hits a creature. That includes 1, 2 or 3 by normal non-hostile reading - not ruling - since you have three darts.

But a key element to avoid confusion there is the references to several creature refer to the "darts" and "them" plural. The reference to "each dart" is where they link in "a creature".

Does it forbid using the dart to vaporize five suns on the way to its one creature? nope, they did not say that didn't happen. But as the designers and rules answer guy says "spells do what they say."

"Clear" does not mean unable to be intentionally misunderstood or misrepresented. i can look out a clear window and say the sky is green and red plaid but thats not the fault of the window.

 

[clearstream]

So the 5e game designers are wrong about the intent of 5e to be rulings over rules?

Rather I consider such ideas in the context of official statements, such as -

Rules are a big part of what makes D&D a game, rather than simply improvised storytelling. The game’s rules are meant to help organize, and even inspire, the action of a D&D campaign. The rules are a tool, and we want our tools to be as effective as possible.

Many unexpected things can happen in a D&D campaign, and no set of rules could reasonably account for every contingency. If the rules tried to do so, the game would become unplayable. An alternative would be for the rules to severely limit what characters can do, which would be counter to the open-endedness of D&D. The direction we chose for the current edition was to lay a foundation of rules that a DM could build on, and we embraced the DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t.

When thinking about what the words for Jumping and Athletics literally entail, I am thinking about RAW. In that mode I don't consider what the designer intends: only what the words on the page imply. What confounds our debates somewhat is a tendency to drift between RAW, RAI and RAF. People sometimes jump on the catchphrase "rulings not rules" and wave it as a flag to somehow prove that they can never be wrong. No one can be wrong under RAF (well, unless they aren't having fun I suppose), but anyone can be wrong under RAW and RAI. I have been myself... recently! Consider an example, does anyone think that "cover a number of feet" in Jumping means your character spreads out thinly like a blanket, to cover that whole distance? Likely not, and the reason is that words can have a settled meaning given context.

"Rulings not rules" calls our attention to the DM as a bridge between what is defined, and what can be imagined.

 

[robus]

robus rolls his wisdom save..... natural 1!

So I've been laboring under the misconception that the etymology of several was derived from the same root as seven. In fact it's not! It's actually comes from the Latin separalis, meaning separate. So several really just means more than 1.

I know the "common" reading of several is more than a few (and less than many) but that's not the only (or even primary) meaning. It just means more than 1 distinct thing. Thus the rule is clear (if your command of English is pretty good )

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/several


Edited for clarity.

 

[Charlaquin]

[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] would be making a fair point then

However, it doesn't seem right for you to migrate a fair point about the open question of what approaches players may take, to a mechanical point about what is implied by the words "an unusually long distance". From any kind of rational, not throwing our intellect out with the bath water perspective, the latter entails not the usual distance and the usual distance is that defined under jumping: distances that are not that distance, are unusual.

I don’t think anyone is doing that. Some folks (that is to say, Maxperson) are pointing to the phrasing “unusually long distance” to explain why they don’t consider the approach “try to jump an unusually long distance” to the goal “jump an unusually long distance” to have an uncertain outcome and rule accordingly at their table. That’s not migrating the point to a mechanical argument, that’s just explaining one’s reasoning for making a personal call.

 

[Hriston]

I find the wording of this passage to be somewhat curious:

Athletics. Your Strength (Athletics) check covers difficult situations you encounter while climbing, jumping, or swimming. Examples include the following activities:
<snip>
You try to jump an unusually long distance or pull off a stunt midjump.​

So having an unusually long distance to jump (greater than your STR score for a running long jump) is a difficult situation you encounter while jumping, which then necessitates resolution by ability check rather than auto success.

For the purpose of resolving such situations, I propose the following DCs (as I'm sure someone else already has):

DC	running long jump	standing long jump	running high jump	standing high jump
5	5 feet	2 feet 6 inches	6 inches	3 inches
10	10 feet	5 feet	3 feet	1 foot 6 inches
15	15 feet	7 feet 6 inches	5 feet 6 inches	2 feet 9 inches
20	20 feet	10 feet	8 feet	4 feet
25	25 feet	12 feet 6 inches	10 feet 6 inches	5 feet 3 inches
30	30 feet	15 feet	13 feet	6 feet 6 inches