In Defense of the Theory of Dissociated Mechanics

[Yesway Jose]

"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."

"Are you SURE you're a real mage? I read the Official Wizard's Tome and it clearly states: 'Your piercing gaze and whispered word let you seize momentary control of your enemy’s mind'. If that's not enough, the spell is actually called 'Hypnotism', not muscle control. The definition of hypnosis is not Control of Super Tense Limb Muscles Only.

Secondly, I just tried it again, I clenched all my muscles, even my quads, so that I can't bend my knees right. Then I tipped my ankles slightly back and I almost toppled backwards. You can't tell me the spell cannot control ankle muscles, otherwise, you'd never get them to walk in the first place.

I don't understand what the victim's expectations have to do with anything. If YOU take control of THEIR muscles, you call the shots. Their expectations of suddenly falling down or not are irrelevant.

I don't know, boss, your explanations are a bit fishy, to tell you the truth. Are you under some sort of coersion, or something you're not telling me? You can be honest with me, boss."

 

[Bluenose]

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.

Unexpected and surprising things happening is not what D&D magic is about. It's extreme reliability is one of the things that makes it most unlike most magic in fiction and myth. And the nature of cause and effect is clear; a spell was cast and it has a particular effect. It's not as if there's any particular fluff attached to all spells in earlier editions. Things just happen because the spell says they happen. Try describing a Fabricate spell in terms of what people see happening, based on the fluff in the books.

 

[Bluenose]

"Are you SURE you're a real mage? I read the Official Wizard's Tome and it clearly states: 'Your piercing gaze and whispered word let you seize momentary control of your enemy’s mind'. If that's not enough, the spell is actually called 'Hypnotism', not muscle control. The definition of hypnosis is not Control of Super Tense Limb Muscles Only.

Secondly, I just tried it again, I clenched all my muscles, even my quads, so that I can't bend my knees right. Then I tipped my ankles slightly back and I almost toppled backwards. You can't tell me the spell cannot control ankle muscles, otherwise, you'd never get them to walk in the first place.

I don't understand what the victim's expectations have to do with anything. If YOU take control of THEIR muscles, you call the shots. Their expectations of suddenly falling down or not are irrelevant.

I don't know, boss, your explanations are a bit fishy, to tell you the truth. Are you under some sort of coersion, or something you're not telling me? You can be honest with me, boss."

"Maybe some people do it that way, making an enemy suddenly think the person moving up next to them is a foe, or giving them a sudden thought that they need to move in a particular direction. But I'll tell you what, let's just say it's magic, and since magic violates a whole host of the laws of physics and biology without people batting an eyelid about that, that will have to do as your explanation."

 

[I'm A Banana]

Unexpected and surprising things happening is not what D&D magic is about.

This is the same game with ricocheting lightning bolts and fireballs that backfire on the party and charms that make someone your "friend" (whatever that means) and divination spells that give misleading information and summoning spells where the demons rebel against you?

At any rate, if surprising and unexpected isn't involved in D&D magic, then neither is fun, and I'll take D&D's calculus-spells and throw them off the boat with the accounting spreadsheets and the level grinding and the armor vs. weapon tables. It'll just be me and the wandering prostitute table, sailing into the sunset, because saucy wenches are apparently more fun than violating the laws of reality in this game. At least there's some risk there!

It's extreme reliability is one of the things that makes it most unlike most magic in fiction and myth. And the nature of cause and effect is clear; a spell was cast and it has a particular effect. It's not as if there's any particular fluff attached to all spells in earlier editions. Things just happen because the spell says they happen. Try describing a Fabricate spell in terms of what people see happening, based on the fluff in the books.

"I wiggle my fingers and turn those trees into a house. Or maybe a ship. Or maybe just ten thousand toothpicks that I then jam into ten thousand olives for this cocktail party I'm throwing."

Of course, we can't have that in a balance-obsessive game, since there's no telling what those toothpicks could be used for! Cocktail parties are potentially a balance problem for some DMs!

 

[Yesway Jose]

"Maybe some people do it that way, making an enemy suddenly think the person moving up next to them is a foe, or giving them a sudden thought that they need to move in a particular direction. But I'll tell you what, let's just say it's magic, and since magic violates a whole host of the laws of physics and biology without people batting an eyelid about that, that will have to do as your explanation."

"I wish I could swing that way, boss, but I can't. See, the original point was that mages like yourself might explain what you were doing on all those fantasic adventures, spin an engrossing tale to regular folk like myself. But in the end, it all comes out confused and mysterious-like, and you throw up your hands, and just say it's magic. That doesn't work, though, if I want to hear a good story of what happened, as if I was actually there, as if I were in your head and knowing what it's like to be a mage. Mayhaps I'll go off to another land, where wizard-bards tell a good coherent story and where a Hypnotism spell is a REAL hypnotism spell and not some misnomer. So long, boss."

 

[Bluenose]

This is the same game with ricocheting lightning bolts and fireballs that backfire on the party and charms that make someone your "friend" (whatever that means) and divination spells that give misleading information and summoning spells where the demons rebel against you?

The only one of those that isn't entirely calculable beforehand is the divination magic, which specifically has a mathematical chance of failing. That's not to say that a lightning bolt ricocheting and affecting members of your party is a good thing, but it's entirely predictable if you have the relevant information.

At any rate, if surprising and unexpected isn't involved in D&D magic, then neither is fun, and I'll take D&D's calculus-spells and throw them off the boat with the accounting spreadsheets and the level grinding and the armor vs. weapon tables. It'll just be me and the wandering prostitute table, sailing into the sunset, because saucy wenches are apparently more fun than violating the laws of reality in this game. At least there's some risk there!

The laws of reality in this world allow magic to work. They also mean that people don't miscast spells (unless affected by other magic) unless they're casting a spell more powerful than they'd normally use from a scroll. There's no question of someone trying to cast a fireball and making a mess of it, with the spell ecploding somewhere they didn't intend it to, or pushing themselves beyond their normal limits to cast an unusually powerful spell despite the risks, or any of the other things that seem to happen with quite some frequency to magicians in fiction.

"I wiggle my fingers and turn those trees into a house. Or maybe a ship. Or maybe just ten thousand toothpicks that I then jam into ten thousand olives for this cocktail party I'm throwing."

Of course, we can't have that in a balance-obsessive game, since there's no telling what those toothpicks could be used for! Cocktail parties are potentially a balance problem for some DMs!

This does of course have economic implications. But discarding those, how do you get from a grove of trees to a wooden house? Personally I don't think it matters, the magic spell has a defined effect, get on with the game, but that's not something that people who believe in dissociated mechanics that have no in-game explanation want to see.

 

[Njall]

Depending on the skill level of the person you can just punch someone over and over again in the face... it happens in UFC matches all the time.

Going further with the example of the boxer... against an average joe he is probably going to throw numerous punches faster and more accurately than average joe can dodge them or block them. A fighter who has spent a majority of his time training to trip is going to be able to trip someone who hasn't numerous times and with great accuracy. What doesn't make sense to me is that I wasted all that training and the ability to trip someone only comes up once in any given fight... and I can still mess it up. It seems to me a warrior wouldn't waste his time learning something like that.

In D&D, you don't face average joes, usually, though.
If your fight involves an "average joe", he's probably a minion, which kind of makes the point moot.

You do realize that most real world fighters don't utilize a ton of different moves... and many, though admittedly not all, are actually specialists.

Wait. Most boxers and MMA fighters don't use a ton of different moves because nonlethal fighting puts quite a bit of constraints on what they can and cannot use; in addition, it's usually "unarmed dude vs unarmed dude", and you're usually fighting someone that's roughly your size.
And, again, they're not really using the same technique again and again; they're often using variations of the same technique ( something you can actually simulate in 4e as well... just take a host of powers that trip or grapple and you're set).
If you take a look at a swordfighting treatise, though, there's quite a bit of moves, pins, grapples, unarmed strikes, as well as counters, fighting stances and so on. How you fight depends a lot on who you're facing.

I can agree that it's perspective on what you want out of fights. To me 4e martial fights feel like purposefully coreographed action cinema fights like those found in a standard popcorn action movie. They don't feel gritty or real to me... which is not to say that I don't enjoy them if I want the action movie feel.

On the other hand martial characters in Pathfinder feel more real to me and my players, yes if I've trained to be the best tripper, disarmer, grappler, or whatever I would continuously be trying to use it... Chuck Lidell is always throwing punches, Royce Gracie was always grappling, etc. What makes that exciting is in the facing of different foes in different environs who may or may not be able to counter your strategy with their own specializations... and what you do when your tactic is sub-optimal in a particular fight, like facing foes from a distance, since in specializing so strongly you have made a conscious choice against being well rounded.

The problem is that some tactics are pretty much always effective, while some aren't. Sure, if you create a disarm monkey, you're going to suck against everything that uses natural weapons, and if you create a trip monkey you're going to suck against large or huge opponents with decent dex scores, but if, for example, you just optimize your damage output you're pretty much set.
Focus on stunning ( there's a high level feat in the APG, IIRC, that lets you stun things pretty much at will ) and you'll never suck; take some archetypes and, again, you're never going to suck no matter the opponent and despite the fact that you're "overspecialized".
Again, this is probably a matter of taste, but 4e combat doesn't look that cinematic to me, compared to 3e... not when you can pretty much do the same things in 3e ( except you can do them over and over again rather than once in a while), and it's not like a tricked out character can't do some crazy stuff in 3e as well...

 

[Bluenose]

"I wish I could swing that way, boss, but I can't. See, the original point was that mages like yourself might explain what you were doing on all those fantasic adventures, spin an engrossing tale to regular folk like myself. But in the end, it all comes out confused and mysterious-like, and you throw up your hands, and just say it's magic. That doesn't work, though, if I want to hear a good story of what happened, as if I was actually there, as if I were in your head and knowing what it's like to be a mage. Mayhaps I'll go off to another land, where wizard-bards tell a good coherent story and where a Hypnotism spell is a REAL hypnotism spell and not some misnomer. So long, boss."

"While you're there, get them to explain how a Hold Person spell paralyses people without it affecting their lungs, and find out why they can't make it so it does. Also, get them to explain how a Fireball doesn't set anything on fire, how injuries and dying and healing magic interact, why I can never learn just one thing at a time, and how it is that someone who never picked up a weapon in their life nevertheless becomes much more competent with every weapon in existence simply because they've learnt to cast more magic. I'm sure that won't be problem."

 

[Dunnagin]

These are my opinions, I hope they are not taken as edition bashing... they are simply my tastes.

3.5/Pathfinder: I've found this rules sets very complex to DM, it takes much more time to plan, and limits my ability to DM "on the fly" (the manner I prefer to DM, it allows me to let players explore what they want more easily). The granularity of the options in this rules set does give a lot of mechanically aligned flavor, but sometimes details are so complex that it slows game play (via cross referencing in the rules). I am sure that once you have played using this rules set for a number of months it becomes easier (much like mastering a video game like Starcraft), but I'm an older guy with less time on my hands, I want to get into the game easily and also use rules that allow new players to pick up the basics quickly so we can focus on the storyline. One cure for this is adventure paths, but if I accept that as my best option based on the rules set, then I also accept that I run stories written by other people... that means I lose my favourite part of DMing.

4th Edition: Disassociated mechanics are odd, whether that term is accurate or not, who knows. To explain further, when a Mage has a mechanic called "Blink" (minor teleport), and a Rogue has a "Quickstealth" ability which does the exact same thing... then I feel the pursuit of balance has sacrificed flavor to achieve it's goals. This quickly made me feel that I could just assume an "optimized character build" and no matter what my class or race I would have the same chance to hit using my chosen method, do essentially the same damage, etc. etc. In addition to this, the flavor of this edition felt wrong for me, terminology like "powers" and mechanical descriptions which evoke video game special effects as opposed to LOTR or Conan didn't really help me imagine world I wanted to create, or play in.

Also, both systems do not discourage "role play" (again, if that can even be defined clearly), but both systems do focus heavily on mechanics. I prefer simple broad mechanics that allow myself and my players to define and execute our own strategum based on circumstance, as opposed to finding the optimal preset combo for a given encounter.

Example: Can my Paladin use a Holy Strike Feat or Power versus some evil Orcs, sure... the rules tell me to do it, it damages Evil creatures optimally... but I often find when I play a more open game, my players may lure the Orcs onto a ridge and start a landslide knocking the Orcs off the cliff... they may try and dupe the Orcs by impersonating their Evil Diety using fog and a cow horn to their advantage... they may realise this type of Orc is Lawful Evil and challenge the leader to Single Combat.

The other rules sets mentioned do not ban this type of play, but neither really focuses on it either. Once you delve too deeply into the pit that is fiddly mechanics, I think you may lose some potential for thinking outside of these mechanics and creating an engaging quirky, comical and very unique game for your players.

What I like about role playing is the freedom to adventure... to few rules or to simplistic rules can break suspension of disbelief... many and overly detailed rules can lead to a "mathy" focus (generally saying "look at the math options", not "look at the situational options").

I think the various editions have given us many cool things... I think each edition has also changed the focus of play. I am well aware of where I want my game focus to be... the other styles of play I have mentioned are not wrong, nor are they "not fun"... but I prefer a DMing simple rules set and giving as much freedom to players as possible. To achieve this, I have customized my particular game to focus on these goals... since my final goal is to have fun with friends.

In closing... I have no preference... I will steal good ideas from any game

 

[Yesway Jose]

"While you're there, get them to explain how a Hold Person spell paralyses people without it affecting their lungs, and find out why they can't make it so it does. Also, get them to explain how a Fireball doesn't set anything on fire, how injuries and dying and healing magic interact, why I can never learn just one thing at a time, and how it is that someone who never picked up a weapon in their life nevertheless becomes much more competent with every weapon in existence simply because they've learnt to cast more magic. I'm sure that won't be problem."

"Firstly, calm down, boss. I didn't mean no offense. Please don't use your Muscle Control... I mean, Hypnotism to make me hurt myself.. oh wait, you can't do that. I guess I'm safe enough, so I'll say it plainly.

I understand that we live in a strange, strange world. But all that strangeness, it's all relative, right? In the conversation that I was having with a lad from Manchester (wherever that is!) which you interrupted, I admitted that no place is perfect. So I may never find my ideal Hypnotism spell, but I figure I could find one that's a whole lot better than the piss poor excuse of a spell that you learned, pardon my foul language.

What I mean to say is, it's all relative. A Hold Person spell that does what it says but lets people breath vs a Hypnotism that doesn't even do what it implies. Two wrongs don't make a right. huh?"