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<blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 7069120" data-attributes="member: 6787503"><p>You said adventurers are hyper-aware while asleep, so I asked why elves would use <em>trance</em> since it makes them semiconscious, which I assume is less than hyper-aware. It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to me and certainly isn't lacking in either relevance or content. I don't know what you have against rhetoric, since it's what we all engage in when we form arguments, but when I said my question was rhetorical, I didn't mean that it employed rhetoric. I meant I wasn't particularly interested in your reply and asked it to make a point of my own. Conveniently, though, you seem to have responded to the content of my post in your post below. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This seems horribly fiddly to me. Do we really need more states of consciousness than the three I have proposed: conscious, semiconscious, and unconscious? The books are clear that even a fully conscious creature only uses its WIS to notice hidden threats when not using it for some other task of exploration. How much less of a chance does a semiconscious or unconscious creature have of becoming aware of a threat? Since the normal rules for noticing threats clearly apply to fully conscious creatures that are keeping watch, I'd give the trancing elf disadvantage as long as it wasn't otherwise preoccupied, and a sleeping non-elf would have no chance at all. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Real life annecdotal evidence and medical opinion have no bearing on a discussion about how a game treats varying states of awareness. What makes for an enjoyable game does, and for me the game is more enjoyable when there's a meaningful trade off between having a chance of noticing hidden threats and doing other things with your awareness like mapping, navigating, foraging, and tracking. I don't think a sleeping person is going to have a better chance of noticing threats than someone who's doing one of those things.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Hriston, post: 7069120, member: 6787503"] You said adventurers are hyper-aware while asleep, so I asked why elves would use [I]trance[/I] since it makes them semiconscious, which I assume is less than hyper-aware. It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to me and certainly isn't lacking in either relevance or content. I don't know what you have against rhetoric, since it's what we all engage in when we form arguments, but when I said my question was rhetorical, I didn't mean that it employed rhetoric. I meant I wasn't particularly interested in your reply and asked it to make a point of my own. Conveniently, though, you seem to have responded to the content of my post in your post below. This seems horribly fiddly to me. Do we really need more states of consciousness than the three I have proposed: conscious, semiconscious, and unconscious? The books are clear that even a fully conscious creature only uses its WIS to notice hidden threats when not using it for some other task of exploration. How much less of a chance does a semiconscious or unconscious creature have of becoming aware of a threat? Since the normal rules for noticing threats clearly apply to fully conscious creatures that are keeping watch, I'd give the trancing elf disadvantage as long as it wasn't otherwise preoccupied, and a sleeping non-elf would have no chance at all. Real life annecdotal evidence and medical opinion have no bearing on a discussion about how a game treats varying states of awareness. What makes for an enjoyable game does, and for me the game is more enjoyable when there's a meaningful trade off between having a chance of noticing hidden threats and doing other things with your awareness like mapping, navigating, foraging, and tracking. I don't think a sleeping person is going to have a better chance of noticing threats than someone who's doing one of those things. [/QUOTE]
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