Why I'm done with 4e

[Vurt]

Are you saying that you have often smashed through stell doors using your adamantine weapons? Or know of other people who have done just that in real life?

What, have you never heard of people digging their way out of prisons with (not-even-remotely-adamantine) spoons?

 

[Jack99]

What, have you never heard of people digging their way out of prisons with (not-even-remotely-adamantine) spoons?

Sure, but I can pretty much assure you that they didn't dig out through the steel door.

 

[MerricB]

This statement makes me real twitchy.

The moment a game or DM tells me that I cannot do something that would be completely and utterly reasonable to attempt in real life (and digging through a wall with a weapon - while difficult and time-consuming - would count, IMO), is the moment my suspension of disbelief goes out the window.

The problem was that in 3e, my suspension of disbelief went out the window when high-strength characters could dig through that stone wall in 10 minutes - with no damage to their normal weapons.

I don't object to them taking a long time - that would be fine - but doing it in such a short space of time?

In 3e, a 10 foot unworked stone wall can be tunneled through by four Strength 20 fighters wielding greataxes in about 10 minutes...

Cheers!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

What, have you never heard of people digging their way out of prisons with (not-even-remotely-adamantine) spoons?

Yeah, but it takes them months if not years.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There is a psychological difference the size of a universe between "you can't do it" and "it wouldn't be effective to do it."

 

[Jack99]

There is a psychological difference the size of a universe between "you can't do it" and "it wouldn't be effective to do it."

Are you saying that you in the real world could poke a whole in a steel door with a steel dagger? I must admit that I know little of such things, so I am asking, because my guess would be "no".

 

[Votan]

Yeah, but it takes them months if not years.

It also damages tools unless they are specifically designed to do this type of digging -- especially with hard rock or steel.

To use an example earlier in the thread:

"In 3e, a 10 foot unworked stone wall can be tunneled through by four Strength 20 fighters wielding greataxes in about 10 minutes..."

As 10 feet is a thick wall, this seems to remove the need for seige engines!

 

[PoeticJustice]

This statement makes me real twitchy.

The moment a game or DM tells me that I cannot do something that would be completely and utterly reasonable to attempt in real life (and digging through a wall with a weapon - while difficult and time-consuming - would count, IMO), is the moment my suspension of disbelief goes out the window.

I've had players hold grudges on me for not letting them use Scent to smell an approaching zombie in a mausoleum, for not using firearms in the campaign (they're in the DMG!), interceding against PvP spellcasting, and other things I do to maintain the regularity of the game.

Situations like this usually arise when a player is being stupid, whiny, and disruptive, not when a DM is trying to screw over players. We (DMs) have much better and easier methods of doing that--contact poisons, dragon attacks, etc.

So sorry about your suspension of disbelief, but in the end the DM's the boss and you ought to trust him or her to have a good reason for doing what they do.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Are you saying that you have often smashed through stell doors using your adamantine weapons? Or know of other people who have done just that in real life?

When the game insists on things that have no real-world correspondence, I usually resort to analogy and logic to assist me in reaching sensible conclusions.

Given adamantine's ridiculous hardness, it makes complete sense to me for someone to be able to eventually work their way through any sort of real-world metal.

The times required are probably longer than given in d20. But that doesn't mean it's impossible or even impractical to do.

The problem was that in 3e, my suspension of disbelief went out the window when high-strength characters could dig through that stone wall in 10 minutes - with no damage to their normal weapons.

I'll agree that the time required to do these sorts of things is probably less than it should be.

I'll also agree with you that the weapons should definitely suffer for the effort. If you use a greataxe to hack through a 10 ft cube of stone, it is probably going to be rather useless after, if not start failing to have any effect somewhere in the middle.

 

[GnomeWorks]

So sorry about your suspension of disbelief, but in the end the DM's the boss and you ought to trust him or her to have a good reason for doing what they do.

It disrupts my suspension of disbelief no matter which side of the screen I'm on.

If I'm DMing and using a game that does not allow for a full range of sensible answers, or even allow for the possibility of ludicrous things (ie, give me rules for how long it will take to use a spoon to dig through a stone wall [or at least give me the means to calculate it], rather than tell me "it can't be done," even if it takes so long to the point of being completely unreasonable to think that someone would attempt it), that game will rapidly irritate me to the point of either (1) me house-ruling the crap out of it, or (2) I no longer run the game if there are enough such instances.