Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[billd91]

I'm not confusing anything. I'm accepting the words as written. A man who could divert two rivers by himself in the span of a single day is a fighter.

Make of that what you will .

Sounds perfectly fine to me. An elf fighter is different from a dwarf fighter is different from a human fighter or demigod fighter. That being a demigod brings extra stuff to the table doesn't mean Heracles isn't a fighter.

 

[Derren]

Except it is still a ball of fire, regardless of what a player decides it looks like, and as I pointed out, the player can argue that it affects creatures only all day long, but that's not a player decision to make - it's the DMs. Just like it always has been.

Except it's nothing like a bag of rats. A player can try to describe things any way they like, but the effect is still a burst 3 Arcane Fire attack, so if the DM wants to rule it catches things on fire, they can. If the social contract at that particular table is such that a description of the effect can change how the DM parses the effect in game, fine, but that is veering into houserule territory.

The reason the flavour text is malleable is to reinforce the fiction, not try to destroy it. If you're determined to make it sound silly, then the same can be done of any of our games of choice. We sit around pretending to be elves and wizards.

Except that it doesn't work this way at all. You toss a fireball, you have to deal with the consequences. Nothing has changed.

So, players at the mercy of the DM - juuuuuust like every other edition of the game.

And 'say yes' doesn't guarantee that things will work in a player's favour. This has also been discussed to death.

Why? The rules part do not mention anything of a ball of fire or collateral damage. The rules only say that creature in an area take X fire damage. And when again following Balesir's argument from Post 282 just because the Power is named Mocking insult it doesn't mean that an insult is invloved.

So why would a fireball be a ball of fire? The player can simply describe that all enemies in that area simply burn from within.
So either the player can change on a whim the description of the powers, which means a fireball is not a fireball anymore and thus flavor doesn't matter or the player can't change the nature of the fireball no matter how he describes it, contradicting your previous statements, and we are back to 4E allowing skelettons to be mocked to destruction.

Your opinion. Not one universally held, and certainly not a hard fact of any kind.

When someone says to you "Do it however you want", do you get the impression that it matters to them?
When you ask someone how you should do something and they answer "However you want", do you think it is important how you do it?
When you ask someone "How should it look like?" and they answer "However you want", do you get the impression that it is important?
When a power says "Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls, make it look however you want", is the look of it important?

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Why? The rules part do not mention anything of fireball or collateral damage. The rules only say that creature in an area take X fire damage. And when again following Balesir's argument from Post 282 just because the Power is named Mocking insult it doesn't mean that an insult is invloved.

Again, incorrect. The rules, as I have spelled out references to no less than FOUR times now in this thread, do specify that there may be collateral damage (in the case of fireball). DM's discretion. Just like every other edition.

So why would a fireball be a ball of fire? The player can simply describe that all enemies in that area simply burn from within.
So either the player can change on a whim the description of the powers, which means a fireball is not a fireball anymore and thus flavor doesn't matter or the player can't change the nature of the fireball no matter how he describes it, contradicting your previous statements, and we are back to 4E allowing skelettons to be mocked to destruction.

A fireball is a ball of fire. An Arcane attack with the Fire keyword. Whether it only hits creatures or burns the whole dungeon to ashes, is, like I said, up to DM discretion, just like every other edition.

If the players and DM have a social contract at their game that says that how they describe their powers affects how the DM will make judgement calls, then fine. If not, then it's entirely in the DM's hands, just like always.

No matter how many times I point out to you that your grasp of the rules of 4e are less than firm, you keep arguing with me. I get that you don't like 4e, or its style of narration, and that's just ducky with me. I couldn't care less, to he honest.

If you find it so objectionable, and don't want to see such things in 5e, my suggestion to you is, go write to WotC, and tell them what you think. Vote in Monte's polls. Make your voice heard.

And if you don't care what happens in 5e, and are content to just keep playing 3.x or PF, or AD&D, or whatever - keep on doing what you love. There is no need to just argue for the sake of arguing.

The arguments I've heard so far are hardly compelling enough to make me have some kind of epiphany and decide that suddenly I've been having BadWrongFun all these years.

EDIT:

When someone says to you "Do it however you want", do you get the impression that it matters to them?
When you ask someone how you should do something and they answer "However you want", do you think it is important how you do it?
When you ask someone "How should it look like?" and they answer "However you want", do you get the impression that it is important?
When a power says "Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls, make it look however you want", is the look of it important?

It matters to me. It's important to me. In fact, I relish the opportunity to make my own flavour text. It's one of those things that keeps me engaged in fiction of the game. Clearly, YMMV. And that's fine. Like I said above, if you have an issue with this, complain to WotC. If you never intend to play a hypothetical 5e, go play the way you want, and let others do the same. Neither one of us is Wrong.

 

[Gentlegamer]

A fireball is a ball of fire. An Arcane attack with the Fire keyword. Whether it only hits creatures or burns the whole dungeon to ashes, is, like I said, up to DM discretion, just like every other edition.

What happens when the Fireball doesn't ignite the orc's wooden stockade (benefits players) but does the dungeon they are in (harms players) because the DM made an ad hoc adjudication on the nature of magical fire?

 

[JamesonCourage]

I'm not confusing anything. I'm accepting the words as written. A man who could divert two rivers by himself in the span of a single day is a fighter.

Make of that what you will .

Well, I assume that for that to matter to anyone, they'd need to know who Hercules is. Knowing that, I could see how they could accept him being a Fighter, but I don't see the logical leap to "all Fighters are therefore like Hercules!"

That is, it follows that Hercules is a Fighter (they said so). That does not mean that all Fighters are Hercules (obviously). What makes Hercules unique? Well, how he was raised, his heritage, his training, his feats (not in the WotC sense), etc. A cursory glance at Hercules reveals that yes, he is indeed a Fighter, but he is also the son of the most powerful god.

I think being one does not preclude the other, nor necessarily imply it. Vecna is a wizard; that does not mean that all wizards get to be Vecna. As always, play what you like

A man who can kill with a plasma rifle is a fighter. See how I can compare apples to oranges? Unless you've played D&D like a greek myth, you're mixing up 2 different mediums.

This is a very good point.

Reading the game rules for a power, and it's associated flavor text and then saying, "that is the ONLY way that a power will ever function" totally dismisses the function of a DM in the game.

I find this to be pretty inaccurate. As a GM, I definitely do interpret the flavors or powers, or their interaction with the game world. However, if a group approaches a game where the players know exactly how their powers interact with the game world, then the GM still has incredibly important functions to fulfill. To imply that the GM's function is totally dismissed is rather... limited, in my opinion. As always, play what you like

Again, if you can change something at will it is not important.

I have to personally disagree with this statement on the plain absurdity of it. I can change who I talk to at will, so family/friends/significant others don't matter. I can walk to any part of the house right now (or anywhere outside that I can reasonably reach), so where I'm at doesn't matter.

This line of thinking just does not follow logically. Maybe you missed qualifying your statement? "If you can change flavor mechanics at will, they are not important"? If, however, you truly believe this is true in a general sense, it's no surprise that people disagree with you. As always, play what you like

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

What happens when the Fireball doesn't ignite the orc's wooden stockade (benefits players) but does the dungeon they are in (harms players) because the DM made an ad hoc adjudication on the nature of magical fire?

I don't know - ask the DM. Seriously, it's been the same since AD&D. Back then, some items made their saves, some didn't. Likewise, in 4e, you hit sometimes, others, you miss. DMs have always made ad hoc judgments in these situations. I have already spelled this out FIVE times now in this thread alone (again, in case you weren't here before Rules Compendium p107).

I find your post particularly amusing in light of your Gygax quote:

From my perspective wanting less in the way of rules constraints comes from being a veteran Game Master who feels confident that more good material comes from imagination and player interaction with the environment than from textbook rules material.

Because the passage in th rulebook I keep quoting is instructing the DM to do exactly that.

 

[Derren]

A fireball is a ball of fire. An Arcane attack with the Fire keyword. Whether it only hits creatures or burns the whole dungeon to ashes, is, like I said, up to DM discretion, just like every other edition.

So every arcane power with the fire keyword is now a fireball? Even when described as not being one?
You can't say that a fireball is always a fireball but a mocking insult can be something totally different. Its either one or the other.

But back to the "Nod to realism"
Where in my eyes 4E fails is that balanced combat is more important than "realistic" worlds. The "Mocking a skeletton" ties into this but there are many other examples.
After 3E turned out to be rather unbalanced, 4Es prime objective and major selling point was balanced combat. To achieve that nearly everything in 4E had to obey the math, the power, the healing or the magic item prices.
All those things had to be consistent all the times and there was no room for flavor breaking the math (resulting is situations like Mocking a skeletton or shouting someone healthy).
But all this made the game "less real" for a larger group of persons as the mechanical, gamist, construct behind the system was much more visible and required much more effort to ignore and especially in the beginning in 4E there simply were taboo topics you were simply not allowed to mention as they would expose how much had been sacrificed on the altar of balance. (Wanting to be a necromancer was such an issue).

The argument that 4E looks like a video game also comes from that. What do video games very well? Balanced tactical combat. What don't they do well? Reacting to player input in a fluid way. Yet 4E for some reason did try to compete with video games in the tactical combat department instead of concentrating on what it does better than video games. Just look at the early 4E WotC adventures. You could practically port them 1:1 into a video game as they were nothing but dungeon crawls.

 

[Derren]

I have to personally disagree with this statement on the plain absurdity of it. I can change who I talk to at will, so family/friends/significant others don't matter. I can walk to any part of the house right now (or anywhere outside that I can reasonably reach), so where I'm at doesn't matter.

This line of thinking just does not follow logically. Maybe you missed qualifying your statement? "If you can change flavor mechanics at will, they are not important"? If, however, you truly believe this is true in a general sense, it's no surprise that people disagree with you. As always, play what you like

When you change the one you are talking to you get different results (= answers, etc.)
When you change the flavor text of powers the results stay exactly the same (Ranged 10, single target, CHA v WILL; on a hit, 1d6 + CHA mod -2 to hit rolls).
So yes, I guess the more correct sentence would be "When you can change something at will while always getting the same result it doesn't matter"

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

So every arcane power with the fire keyword is now a fireball? Even when described as not being one?
You can't say that a fireball is always a fireball but a mocking insult can be something totally different. Its either one or the other.

That's because I *didn't* say that.

What it does mean, though, is that using a power with the Fire keyword may have consequences, at the DM's discretion, if you use it to target things other than creatures, or in the case of AoE powers, incidental things caught in the area. Using Fire keyword powers on flammable objects may cause them to catch fire. Using ones with other keywords may have other effects, at the DM's discretion. Just like using an Arcane Charm may have side effects. At the DM's discretion.

But back to the "Nod to realism"
Where in my eyes 4E fails is that balanced combat is more important than "realistic" worlds. The "Mocking a skeletton" ties into this but there are many other examples.
After 3E turned out to be rather unbalanced, 4Es prime objective and major selling point was balanced combat. To achieve that nearly everything in 4E had to obey the math, the power, the healing or the magic item prices.
All those things had to be consistent all the times and there was no room for flavor breaking the math (resulting is situations like Mocking a skeletton).
But all this made the game "less real" for a larger group of persons as the mechanical, gamist, construct behind the system was much more visible and required much more effort to ignore and especially in the beginning in 4E there simply were taboo topics you were simply not allowed to mention as they would expose how much had been sacrificed on the altar of balance. (Wanting to be a necromancer was such an issue).

The argument that 4E looks like a video game also comes from that. What do video games very well? Balanced tactical combat. What don't they do well? Reacting to player input in a fluid way. Yet 4E for some reason did try to compete with video games in the tactical combat department instead of concentrating on what it does better than video games. Just look at the early 4E WotC adventures. You could practically port them 1:1 into a video game as they were nothing but dungeon crawls.

That's as valid an opinion as any other, it's just not one I share. My experience does not support your opinion, just as I'm sure your experience probably does. You are not unique in your opinion, and I am not unique in mine. I believe we have reached (finally) a point where we will just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I don't know - ask the DM.

"Dungeon Master, why did you tell us our magical Fireball didn't set the orc's stockade on fire because the Fireball spell only affects enemies, but now when we cast it in a confined space, you have it ignite everything around us, choking and killing us?"

In AD&D, this question doesn't come up because the Fireball spell explicitly states that it can set non-living matter on fire (subject to item saving throws). Famously, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief described the giant's wooden hall as too damp to able to set on fire easily (though still possible) to prevent this tactic.