I'm being firm with you, not because you challenged me, but because you are showing a continued resistance to the idea that different games have different tones, insinuating through repetition that your preference is the only good one.
I’m going to operate under the assumption that you don’t intend to come across as condescending as you do. However, while you may have shot for “firm”, you landed on “uncessarily aggressive”.
You may not mean to, but you're ignoring my core thesis:
"In order to adjudicate a situation, you must specify what you're trying to accomplish, how you're going to accomplish it, and we need to know the tone of the game."
Not at all, I simply disagree with many of the particulars of your reasoning, have asked for clarification on others, and disagree with your conclusions.
My goal is to show that defining your goal, approach, and tone in advance is critical, whether adjudicating on the fly or designing a system in advance, and to show that once you really understand how this works, on-the-fly is usually the best choice.
Everyone here understands all of it. No one is in need of a lecture on it. Understanding your logic which underline the claim, that on the fly adjudication is always or most of the time the best course, doesn’t automatically lead to agreement with it.
So, let's design the "Fastball Special".
First, let's establish the base tone of the game. We could go with this:
Adventurers are ordinary people in a harsh world seeking out extraordinary circumstances.
But, if you'll allow me to assume your preference, I'll go with this:
Adventurers are larger-than life characters in an exciting world, capable of fantastic deeds.
There are a few possible goals for throwing another character:
- To throw a character a distance that they couldn't otherwise jump, or because they're unable to jump, say over a pit.
- To use a character, willing or not, as a projectile in order to bowl someone over.
- To allow to characters to work together to create a melee attack that is either stronger, has greater reach, or both.
- etc.
And there are also goals for why you want to add it to the game:
- PCs throwing things keeps coming up, and I want a fair system.
- I have this encounter where a giant throws his underlings at people.
- A couple of my players have this idea for a character duo: Conan and his Gnome Half-brother, and they want a special maneuver.
- etc.
And then there's the final goal of making it easy to use.
We are all more or less on board, or at least know what the points of contention are, on these points, sure.
Already, this is a lot. We could create a system that could handle all of it, but most of that system wouldn't be used very often, if at all. We'd never remember it all, so there would be a temptation at the table to look it up when we needed to know what the damage bonus is for medium armor when throwing a goblin at a giant.
What? Why would you ever need to look something like that up? Every idea proposed by someone not opposed to the idea ITT has been simple enough to remember or write on a playing card sized area of a “running the game” cheat sheet or stuck to a DMs screen.
But, we can focus. Choose the important goals. Throwing people over pits doesn't come up often, but perhaps you do want a small system for handling generic throwing of objects because you have Hurlor the Rock Pitcher in your party.
In this case, though we want Fastball Special.
Goal: One big guy throws one little guy at an opponent so that they can get a melee attack with higher range and impact. It will be used often, so we want it simple, effective, but not so effective that it's the only strategy.
Approach: Two people, both practiced in the maneuver, work together. One throws while the other jumps, targeting a specific enemy. The thrown character aims a piercing attack in midair, striking with great force and possibly knocking over the enemy.
Tone: Somewhat goofy and certainly larger than life. Acceptable for the established tone of the game.
We’ve hit another of those points of contention wrt any inherent goofiness, but we needn’t dwell on that.
But there is no reason this needs to be distinct from throwing over a pit.
So, now we can build it. Because it requires training, and because it's an attack, we could make this a fighter maneuver, which would give us the option of adding the thrower's superiority dice to the attack, thus making it advantageous to the thrower and making it a limited resource. We don't want it to be too expensive, so only the thrower needs to have the maneuver. Also, thematically, it only works with smaller creatures. Here's a first pass:
Fastball Special
You may expend one superiority die to throw a willing creature at an opponent. The creature must be at least one size category smaller than you and have readied their action to be thrown. Make a ranged attack with proficiency at any target within a number of feet equal to your strength. If you succeed, the thrown creature may make a melee attack against the target and add your superiority die to the damage. Regardless of whether the attack hits if the target is Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw or be knocked prone.
This may be flawed, but it works. It can be a signature move for a character. And in for that reason, it could be worth adding to your game. We know if it is because of the whole "goal, approach, tone" thing. It fits within the needs of a specific campaign. And you won't be looking it up often because it's a player's signature ability. They'll hopefully learn it and use it a lot.
Still, most maneuvers aren't signature moves designed for a specific character. They're something that happens during play by creative players, and usually only once. It's practically impossible to consider all of them in advance.
I’d rather not create a power for a subclass to cover a thing that any barbarian and rogue combo might want to do, when I can work a simple general rule that simply covers throwing things that are about creature sized, and a general set of guidelines for dealing with group maneuvers. This is exactly why it’s worthwhile to, when something like this has come up and you’re done with the session, come up with a general rule for like cases, based on how the system handle things, and what you and your group want out of the game.
That's why it's more valuable to get good at adjudication. When a player want's to do something new, ask them what their goal and approach are, and take a moment to consider the tone of your game. Then ask: Can it succeed? Can it fail? What's the skill and DC? You rarely need more than this.
Even as a player, having a grasp of goal, approach, and tone can make adjudication easier, because by making it clear what you have in mind, the DM is more likely to work with you.
Once you're practiced at adjudication, you become incentivized to remove codified rules. Simple, flexible abstractions become more useful tools.
Sure, this can lead to inconsistencies across tables, but such consistency isn't important. It's far more important that each table develop their own internal understanding of the game-world.
Hopefully this gave you somethign useful to think about.
Yes, I know how to adjudicate. I’ve been doing this for a over 20 years, now, in a variety of systems. If I can run heavily improv supportive 4e games, and SWSE, and less defined games like The One Ring, and extremely crunchy games like GURPS, I’m good here.
I promise you, having a different approach from you doesn’t mean someone needs a long lecture on the benefits of adjudication in the moment.
