"The spell gives control of the target's muscles, at a gross level. I can't make them talk, the level of manipulation required is too fine for such a simple casting, but I could make them walk around or swing a weapon in a pattern they've practiced enough."
In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics
- Thread starter innerdude
- Start date
"The spell gives control of the target's muscles, at a gross level. I can't make them talk, the level of manipulation required is too fine for such a simple casting, but I could make them walk around or swing a weapon in a pattern they've practiced enough."
Yesway Jose
First Post
Can you control the target's muscles so that they drop an item? Stand still? Fall prone?
Pentius
First Post
Don't have time to make a lengthy post, I just wanted to chime in that only tripping or pushing or sliding once per encounter or day assumes that your character isn't specializing in that move. If you wanted to make a Fighter that used trip(4e's version being an attack that knocks prone) every turn, you could. If you wanted to make someone that focused on pushing or sliding, and did it over and over, you could.
"The muscles in the hands are too small for me to affect. Standing still, well, that's easy. If someone's trying to run out of the room then I can stop them doing so with no problem. Falling would be harder. When I take control of someone's muscles they are tense, and it's not really practical to make them relax enough to give way. I suppose it would be possible to make someone fall by going over something, but that's obviously situational."
Surely we can just ask Frodo for the definitive description - in the same way, according to the Alexandrian, we can ask a wizard to describe a fireball and ask a rogue why he can only use his power once a day?
Why the need for the fans and writers - unless it's actully the fans and writers doing the describing?
If the 'theory' had been honest, it could have simply said "A disassociated mechanic is one that I can't - or don't want to - conceptualise."
Instead his prejudices get wrapped up in a load of, frankly, garbage about wizards being able to describe things on their own. Being able to explain things to us on their own. Like Frodo without an author. It's pure bunkum.
Yesway Jose
First Post
"Why can't they tensely sit down? One doesn't have to be relaxed to sit. Here, I'm doing it right now. All my muscles are clenched and yet I am nevertheless moving down to the ground."
"If your knees are bending then all your muscles aren't clenched. It's the quadriceps, I believe, or that's what some of those muscle-bound sword-swingers call it. Their's tend to be rather hefty."
Yesway Jose
First Post
"Wow, I didn't realize that taking control of someone's mind make them THAT tense! Very interesting. It's funny, though. I'm picture this warrior -- he's slicing and dancing through the battlefield, his wrist and fingers deftly spinning his sword, and suddenly you grab his mind, and he suddenly almost bizarrely locks up all Frankenstein-like (still surprises me, the very thought, I never learned about that from other mages before) and yet you can still get him to attack. I imagine that his attacks are clumsy and easy to parry, him being so tense and locked up and all."
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Can you justify it? Sure, why not. Human beings have justified weirder stuff for fun, profit, and religion.
But why the nine hells should I have to? I've got better things to do than to write fluff for the designers. Fluff that they're fully capable of doing themselves if they took their brains out of the number-cloud for half a second and thought, "Wait a second, does this make enough sense?"
Effect-based design like that is boffo for balance, since the designer has total control over the limited uses of the ability and they don't have to worry about anything unexpected or surprising happening at all.
Of course, IMO, it's regular bollocks for fun, since loosing control and having unexpected and surprising things happen is part of what fun is. And it's bollocks for immersion, since it gets the chronology of physics entirely backwards. "Here's the result, you figure out how it happened" is not how the world works, so it's not good for imagining how this imaginary world works. There's no cause and effect, it's just effect, effect, effect, and I suppose you can interrupt that chain of effects and hypothesize about the cause if it makes you happy, but since those causes have no effects themselves, it's basically pointless.
"I told you, I don't take control of their mind, I take control of their muscles. If I want to make them swing at somebody, then I only need control for a moment, just enough time to get one swing off. After more than a moment, they start to fight me and their muscles become tense, which is why I can't make them move fast. No doubt you're going to suggest I should use that moment to make them fall down, but they are after all in the middle of a fight, expecting to have to swing a sword. It's perfectly practical to make muscles do something that they are ready to do anyway, but very few people are standing around on a battlefield waiting the opportunity to fall down."
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