D&D General What is the worst piece of DM advice people give that you see commonly spread?

[CreamCloud0]

But you include magic in your games. There is no "veri" to have "similitude" when it comes to magic. There is no "realism," because magic is not real.

I think there might be getting crossed wires with the meaning/implications of the word realism, I believe @Lanefan is using it in the sense that the world feels like a real world, that there are logical world lore consequences that follow on from the fantasy elements, rather than specifically being ‘like reality’, am I correct Lanefan?

For example a bit of verisimilitude I might expect for a world with dragons is that their towns near where dragons live might have alert sirens and bunkers for dragon attacks in the same way our world has tornado sirens/bunkers in areas in risk of those.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

The color of gold is what it is because of general relativity

(GR or SR? I'd be scroggled if GR was operant at that scale.)

Mercury's melting point is so low because of relativity too, if I recall.

The software in a GPS receiver has to use both SR and GR to get an accurate result.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

(GR or SR? I'd be scroggled if GR was operant at that scale.)

Mercury's melting point is so low because of relativity too, if I recall.

The software in a GPS receiver has to use both SR and GR to get an accurate result.

I guess it's really special relativity. Even having studied the two, I always get them confused.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think there might be getting crossed wires with the meaning/implications of the word realism, I believe @Lanefan is using it in the sense that the world feels like a real world, that there are logical world lore consequences that follow on from the fantasy elements, rather than specifically being ‘like reality’, am I correct Lanefan?

If so, I fail to see how that is any different from my description of groundedness:

• feels like the real world (even if it does not actually match real world behavior)
• there are logical world lore consequences (so one can apply naturalistic reasoning, even to fantastical things)
• the fantasy elements are clearly established and become the starting point for such reasoning
• being like reality is not required

Is that not pretty clearly how I defined "groundedness" above, just rephrased? Certainly I grant that there are relations between the concept of "verisimilitude" or "realism" and groundedness, there would have to be if people spent so much time talking about the former two when (as I assert) what they were really after was the latter. But my examples, and the question I posed above, were meant to illustrate that when the chips are down and one really actually has to choose between them, verisimilitude (resemblance to that which is true or real) and/or realism (imitation of actually-existing things) will almost always play second fiddle to groundedness (feeling real and supporting intuitive, naturalistic reasoning.) Only when the cost to either of the previous two is inordinately high--high enough to threaten naturalistic reasoning--will they come into play, and as soon as the naturalistic reasoning is restored, they will become secondary priorities again.

A pithier way to say that is: groundedness has intrinsic value. Verisimilitude and realism have instrumental value. It takes an avalanche of instrumental value to equal a trickle of intrinsic.

For example a bit of verisimilitude I might expect for a world with dragons is that their towns near where dragons live might have alert sirens and bunkers for dragon attacks in the same way our world has tornado sirens/bunkers in areas in risk of those.

Sure. That does not require any loss of groundedness (and, in fact, supports groundedness, because it shows naturalistic reasoning in action--"wouldn't people want to be warned about dragon attacks? Oh, look, they are! Nice.") But if verisimilitude got in the way of groundedness, the former would be set aside for the latter. I gave my time travel example above, but there are others. For example, spells constantly violate the conservation of energy, but this does not lead to GMs mandating that every fireball must extract an equivalent amount of heat from the environment. (Of course, some will do this, but the vast majority don't.)

Instead, many of these physics-required secondary effects are ignored, even though they are theoretically required by hardline commitment to verisimilitude, because naturalistic reasoning does not generally include strict adherence to the statistical laws of thermodynamics. Partly, that's because such statistical laws tend to be really hard to observe; there's a reason we didn't develop kinetic molecular theory until quite late, and why the "caloric fluid" theory of heat held on for so long even though it's almost hilariously wrong by today's standards.

Or, consider the implications of conjuring up food. By the rules, conjured food disappears after a time, usually after a day or so. Yet conjured food that is eaten does not disappear. A full-throated commitment to verisimilitude would either have to reject this, or have to come up with a detailed explanation for why conjured food has no ontological inertia when it is uneaten, but gains ontological inertia when it is eaten. Most GMs don't bother with that though, even those who desire highly "realistic" worlds. They just accept that that's how magic works, that that's just a new rule for naturalistic reasoning to operate upon. Hence: the behavior is grounded, even though it is not particularly verisimilitudinous.

Many of the implications of hit points, attack rolls and AC, Initiative and combat rounds, and other elements of play fall into this category. Some set of these things will almost always get a verisimilitude-focused explanation. But most of them won't in any given game. They're accepted as things for naturalistic reasoning to operate on; they become part of the "new nature," as it were.

TL;DR: I argue the true value folks actually seek is groundedness, and verisimilitude/realism are merely tools used to get there. In almost all cases, if there really is no choice but to either sacrifice groundedness for versimilitude/realism, OR sacrifice versimilitude/realism for groundedness, folks will choose the latter. Because these things are related and verisimilitude/realism is often a useful tool for achieving groundedness, such sacrifices are rare. Oftentimes, when a potential conflict arises, time will be set aside for finding a way to reconcile it without needing to make that sacrifice. But if it really, truly is absolutely unavoidable, the intrinsic value of groundedness will in most cases trump the instrumental value of verisimilitude/realism.

 

[Lanefan]

But you include magic in your games. There is no "veri" to have "similitude" when it comes to magic. There is no "realism," because magic is not real.

I will make it real.

But that is the very process of groundedness--not realism. You are not forcing magic to conform to the laws of Earth physics; you are laying out new, fictional laws of physics which replace them.

Not replace, augment. Big difference.

I mean, for example, instantaneous travel and/or communication necessarily results in time travel in a reality where physics works like it does IRL. (In layman's terms, because of how information propagates through space, being able to instantly move from one place to another allows effects to happen "before" they were caused, from at least some points of view.) And these things are not some distant phenomenon no one can observe. The color of gold is what it is because of general relativity: the outer electron orbitals of the gold nucleus are so large, they start suffering measurable time-dilation effects, which distorts their emission spectrum into being (very slightly greenish-)yellow rather than the typical silvery color of metals. Silver is also big enough to experience some relativistic effects, but human eyes can't detect them; if we could see more short-wavelength light (as some tetrachromats can), silver would appear to have color, effectively "anti-ultraviolet" (since it absorbs ultraviolet radiation while reflecting essentially all visible light.)

But I'm sure this doesn't prevent you from including time stop and misty step in your games. Instead, you most likely wave off relativity, because that's weird esoterica for physics nerds (I can say that, physics is my field!), and being able to use classic magic like plane shift and teleport is more important than perfect fidelity to Earthly physics.

I'm fully prepared to accept that we don't yet know everything about real-world physics. For example, I fully expect that sooner or later we'll learn of something that breaks the current Einsteinian speed limit and goes faster than the speed of light.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Worst advice for DMs?

"5e is a good game for beginners."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Not replace, augment. Big difference.

See some of my other examples. Skipping over the thermodynamic and/or KMT consequences of spellcasting. Accepting whatever physical weirdness must result from how you interpret HP (because there is no interpretation of HP that has no weirdness--as Gygax himself pointed out.) Dealing with the "conjured stuff is only permanent if being impermanent would be the wrong kind of hurtful." Etc. Some things are simply accepted as the new rules--even if they necessarily violate the old ones.

Some of the things you employ will, necessarily, involve the gap between what is intuitive and what is real. Because the real world, while often intuitive, is not always so. Sometimes, what makes intuitive sense to be physical theory is simply straight-up wrong.

Noether's theorem, for example, mathematically proves that, for any "differentiable symmetry" (layman's terms: for any physical property which leaves physics-in-general unchanged if you shift it, and which allows a meaningful definition of "rate of change" for all times/locations), you absolutely must have a conservation law. AKA: Because physics looks the same if you add +t seconds to things, energy must be conserved. Because motion looks the same if you shift things +m meters in an arbitrary direction, linear momentum must be conserved. And because rotation looks the same even if you spin slower or faster, angular momentum must be conserved. This isn't a proof based on empirical observation that could be disproved by finding better empirical observations--it's a mathematical physics proof. As long as the requirements are held true (the whole "differentiable symmetry" thing), these things are absolutely required by logic itself. All physical systems with consistent physical laws will conserve these things.

Demonstrably, D&D magic violates every single one of them. Portals violate both forms of momentum conservation, and nearly all of magic violates energy conservation to one degree or another. Therefore, some of physics must be violated if we are to have magic.

I'm fully prepared to accept that we don't yet know everything about real-world physics. For example, I fully expect that sooner or later we'll learn of something that breaks the current Einsteinian speed limit and goes faster than the speed of light.

I mean, so am I, but that's neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that snapping your fingers and causing a raging sphere of fire to appear, burn things, and then instantly disappear without consuming fuel and without combusting anything is simply, flat-out not possible. The fireball spell is simply un-physical...and that's the tip of the iceberg for magic breaking the laws of physics--by which I mean, doing things that we can prove are mathematically impossible if "the laws of physics" exist at all.

 

[FrozenNorth]

See some of my other examples. Skipping over the thermodynamic and/or KMT consequences of spellcasting. Accepting whatever physical weirdness must result from how you interpret HP (because there is no interpretation of HP that has no weirdness--as Gygax himself pointed out.) Dealing with the "conjured stuff is only permanent if being impermanent would be the wrong kind of hurtful." Etc. Some things are simply accepted as the new rules--even if they necessarily violate the old ones.

I agree. Here’s an example from PF2 that violates groundedness for me.

PF2 establishes that you can use the Medicine skill to allow a creature to recover HP. It represents first aid, it is non-magical, it takes 10 minutes, and once you benefit from it, you are immune to the skill for 1 hour. Whether or not you agree with the rule, I think you can agree that (i) it is not very realistic (since HP are an abstract concept at the best of times); but (ii) it meets the verisimilitude criteria (if you accept HP, it is a decent way to model first aid).

At level 2, if you are trained in Medicine, you gain access to the Battlefield Medicine feat. It is a non-magical effect that allows you to touch a creature and allow them to recover HP, except: (i) you do so instantaneously, not over 10 minutes, (ii) after the battle, you can still treat their wounds normally, without waiting an hour; (iii) after you touch a creature , they become immune to Battlefield Medicine for a day.

This breaks verisimilitude for me, because the game has already established what healing is in the game. What brings it back to @EzekielRaiden ‘s point is that the problem isn’t that Battlefield Medicine is unrealistic, it’s that is contradicts what was established in the Medicine skill, which is itself unrealistic!

 

[Oofta]

I agree. Here’s an example from PF2 that violates groundedness for me.

PF2 establishes that you can use the Medicine skill to allow a creature to recover HP. It represents first aid, it is non-magical, it takes 10 minutes, and once you benefit from it, you are immune to the skill for 1 hour. Whether or not you agree with the rule, I think you can agree that (i) it is not very realistic (since HP are an abstract concept at the best of times); but (ii) it meets the verisimilitude criteria (if you accept HP, it is a decent way to model first aid).

At level 2, if you are trained in Medicine, you gain access to the Battlefield Medicine feat. It is a non-magical effect that allows you to touch a creature and allow them to recover HP, except: (i) you do so instantaneously, not over 10 minutes, (ii) after the battle, you can still treat their wounds normally, without waiting an hour; (iii) after you touch a creature , they become immune to Battlefield Medicine for a day.

This breaks verisimilitude for me, because the game has already established what healing is in the game. What brings it back to @EzekielRaiden ‘s point is that the problem isn’t that Battlefield Medicine is unrealistic, it’s that is contradicts what was established in the Medicine skill, which is itself unrealistic!

I tell my players with the healer feat that their ability is supernatural even if it isn't a spell.

I find it hard to believe that evolution wouldn't find a way to incorporate the supernatural into survival, even if it's not very noticeable. It's just considered normal that people heal as quickly as they do in fantasy land, even though it would never happen in the real world.

As long as it's in keeping with the lore and structure of the fantasy world I just don't see an issue.

 

[James Gasik]

I tell my players with the healer feat that their ability is supernatural even if it isn't a spell.

I find it hard to believe that evolution wouldn't find a way to incorporate the supernatural into survival, even if it's not very noticeable. It's just considered normal that people heal as quickly as they do in fantasy land, even though it would never happen in the real world.

As long as it's in keeping with the lore and structure of the fantasy world I just don't see an issue.

This is a really interesting point, and I wish it was incorporated into the game's lore that everything is a little bit supernatural. FASA's Earthdawn (a game that was so many years ahead of it's time) rolled with this. All player characters augmented their abilities magically and most did not wield anything like spells. Their version of Hit Dice/Healing Surges, Recovery Tests, were specifically described as calling upon the power inherent in the world to heal your wounds faster!