Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[KarinsDad]

I can't imagine many groups wanting to adjudicate fireball in the way you describe, but if they do, what's your objection to them doing so?

My objection is lack of consistency.

The ability to reskin spells (prayers, powers, whatever) or other abilities is not actually a good idea per se. It can lead to arguments and situations where last week, the Fireball burned the entire library, but this week, it doesn't burn the single sheet of paper on the desk.

I prefer spells to work in a certain specific way (i.e. as written) and not reskin them into anything a player wants. The reason I prefer it this way is that the designers would then create logical spells where the fluff matches the mechanics and not ones where the description of the fluff is stretched to match the mechanics.

I might just be an old curmudgeon, but I prefer a clean system where not just anything goes over a chaotic system where players can describe their abilities any way they want and it can change from session to session.


Climbing should be climbing. It shouldn't be some weird acrobatics jumping from one outcrop to another. Yes, the movies (like Jackie Chan or James Bond) allow people to imagine (see on film) and hence believe that this is plausible and can be done in real life, but the thing that people don't see is that in the movies, those moves take many takes (and often with cut scenes) to get them absolutely perfect.

Fireballs should be an area of fire. That means that they should affect every creature and object in the area. So should all elemental area effects. At Paragon levels, sure, elemental area effects should be controllable so that they do not damage an entire room and can be targeted for specific creatures or objects, but 4E doesn't take that into consideration well. 4E hands a 2 target ranged lightning effect and a 3 target ranged radiant effect as an At Will at level one, totally invalidating other At Will area powers that did affect every creature in an area. This level of precision should be a higher level effect. First level should be either single target, or every target in an area. The designers do not understand the balance of handing out enemy only or multi-target effects at level one. They just want to make everything cool.

 

[darjr]

That's not true.

Here's one counter-example: my child's name could be anything before I name her. It doesn't follow that, once I name her, it doesn't matter. Calling her "Beatrice" will create a different impression from calling her "Madison". Calling her Kiende (a Meru name) in a predominantly English-speaking, non-African community will also create a diffrent impression.

In my experience, the "flavour" in 4e also matters, because it creates a fictional reality with other implications for the fiction. Because of the way the action resolution rules are structured, those consequences tend to play out at a higher level of detail than "did I strike him with the flat or the point of my blade?" But that gritty level of detail is not the only level that matters.

In my experience it is true.

If I reflavor magic missile as a tossed small yellow poisonous frog it doesn't matter that the target may be poison immune, or that the target is a demon poisonous frog that can control poisonous frogs in a certain radius. The fluff doesn't matter. I do agree that it is a subjective thing. My DM could decide that that demon could control those frogs or is immune to them, but then my DM would be house ruling that fluff DOES matter ( I guess that's what really matters ).

I'll just finish that reflavoring is house rulling anyway and a good DM can work with that and make it matter.

 

[Argyle King]

Cold is better than fire (i) if you want to trigger frostcheese, or (ii) if you want to freeze water to cross it. Both have come up in my game. Whether this is enough of a balance to an "igniting" fireball will obviously vary a lot from table to table.

I'm aware of those things. My point was that an giving extra benefits based upon realism to one energy type, but not doing the same for the others would -I feel- be somewhat lopsided. Granted, there already are certain types which are better due to feat support an such, but I had been ignoring that in favor of keeping my example and my statement simple during my previous post.

edit: There's no reason you could not then ad extra benefits to other energy types to even things out. However, for me, sitting and trying to make all of 4E give more of a nod toward realism is an exercise which lead me toward bitterness in the past. Personally, I have a better experience with 4E when I accept 'reality' as presented by the system. I still have my gripes and complaints, but I'm now at a place from where I can enjoy the game.

 

[LurkAway]

If the game involves bards as PCs, it is presupposing the magical power of words - as is evident in much myth. Vicious mockery - affecting things by the use of words that mock them, or relevant aspects of their history or creation - doesn't threaten my sense of (fantasy) verisimilitude.

Allow me to off topic for a moment and I'll wrap it all back. I had started another thread about what it means to roleplay an evil PC and is eeeevil just a funny hat. Celebrim articulated it best:

In my experience, most people neither play particularly evil nor particularly good characters in the long run. Most players make considerations based on 'winning' the game, a very little else. This tends to produce a sort of casual brutality that most players don't dwell on much, and which doesn't really hit them much because they don't spend much time thinking of the characters in the game as more than game peices to move around. That is to say, you aren't killing orcs, you are 'killing' a miniature, or reducing down a pile of numbers. So conversely, most people playing 'evil' are not engaging the world at a level deeper than that either. It takes quite a bit to shock your average player - especially an experienced one - out of this mode of thought.

Substitute "evil" and "good" (above) with "unrealistic" and "realistic" and I think you can have the same situation with nods to realism, such as bards insulting skeletons to death.

For example, I dislike being around people who swear too much or have extremely negative attitude. Imagine being around a person so very negative and so very offensive that his distressing insults actually hurt and kill almost anything that moves (unlike the source myth where this talent is probably limited and used with discretion). Even worse, imagine being that bard, imagine being that person who insults the universe, who knows how to push the buttons of any creature in order to devastate and kill them, and he/she does this frequently in every combat. I can't even begin to imagine having to put up with the sordid toxic psychological baggage this person carries around.

Many people don't think about that stuff, because they don't care to dig that deep in the high fantasy genre. Which is fine -- all fantasy tropes fall apart when you dig too deep. But IMO, equal opportunity has no place in the realm of plausibility. A sword duel to the death is cinematic and compelling, whether you're metagaming with miniatures or immersed in your character. An insulting duel to the death... not so much.

Bard A: You suck! (inflicts psychic damage)
Bard B: No, you suck! (inflicts psychic damage)
Bard A: Idiot! (inflicts psychic damage)
Bard B: Moron! (inflicts psychic damage)
Bard A: Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!!! (kills opponent)
Bard B: Oh, bon mot! I wish I had agreed to a duel of swords, but alas, you have slain me with words. Good bye, cruel world, good bye!

(please, not in my game, thank you very much!) I don't want to feel forced to allow a metagame rule like Vicious Mockery to dictate the fiction so heavy-handedly in my game world. I didn't sign up for that, so to speak. I signed up for a story that feels as compelling as the genre conventions, where bards are warriors with a sword that have some mysterious subtle tricks on the side, sweet words and treacherous whispers, and not loud powers being smacked around ostentatiously like an oversized baseball bat on almost anything that moves.

Previously, LostSoul wrote:

I come down on Imaro and Derren's side in this. It's been my experience that, if you don't give the flavour text any weight in action resolution, then the specifics of what the characters do in the fiction tends to get ignored.

So let's stop ignoring and give some weight to the flavor text of Vicious Mockery.

It's inspired by myths that bards could kill with an insult. What's evocative and compelling about this myth is that some ideas are so potent as to kill you, and that bards should be treated with respect, because maybe -- just maybe -- this one is wise and knowledgeable enough to know the exact thought that is deadly to your soul.

Give that flavor some weight, and you have nods to realism like: do bards know the insult that harms any personality or just those he understands which buttons to push? Can he effectively insult all fellow human beings, humanoids like giants, abominable demonic minds, non-sentient artificial minds, the higher minds of devils and gods, sticks and stones, and the fabric of magic itself? Must the insult be spoken or whispered to a single soul to direct its potency, or does the potency of the word dissipate like ink in a lake when shouted openly to many ears in a room? Is the victim harmed if he cannot hear? Is the victim harmed if he does not understand the bard's language? Do lethal insults always kill you in 6 seconds, or might it take a day or longer? Is this talent the epitome of bardish lore and only master bards are so gifted, or can any bard kill with a word instead of the sword? All of these and more are natural, organic questions about the process.

IMO, 4E, being oblivious to fictional positioning, asks none of these questions (not a single one). Neither do the DMs and players who must justify the powers on the fly. Thus IMO the game translates the myths very poorly into a videogame-y fighting action, converting rich myths into combat fast food, losing almost all the nutrients and flavor in the process.

When the game dumps all these questions of process and cause-and-effect onto the shoulders of DM and players, it's often ignored or handwaved away as an unwelcome or undesired burden, but even players who are genuinely interested in the process may a) not want the obligation unto themselves, b) be unable to come up with a subjectively satisfying fluff at that very moment in time, c) be digging themselves into a hole as their explanation becomes more and more elaborate to offset a domino effect on the game world (like with skeletons and oozes), d) have a conflict of interest -- do I play according to RAW or do I gimp my PC's success in favor of choosing and using powers "realistically"?

Thus, in practice, more often than not, I think the DMs and players avoid the very questions about nods to "realism" that the metagame originally offloaded to the group. I'm not saying those problems come up all the time in gameplay, but it's why I find a number of the justifications on Enworld to be so unsatisfying, incohesive, and, well, "unrealistic".

Because of those difficulties, I asked why players might not refrain from using powers "unrealistically" and there was a curious lack of answers (this is why I posted that other poll).

I know I'm not the only one concerned -- others seem to have an itch to ban the bard class or modify powers based on fictional positioning.

In the interest of compromise though, I think the solution is not to "ban" per se a class or power, but rather have the game system openly encourage every group to pick the classes and powers that mesh with what's plausible for their game world.

For example, in GURPs, I assume you don't have modern day soldiers and Viking warriors in the same party (unless the genre is a crossover genre), even though there are rules for both. Dark Sun doesn't allow all PC options.

So rather than assuming "everything is core" and always "say yes", D&D could contain various classes and various amounts of gonzo fantasy powers withOUT the implied default that they should or could all co-exist in any one story. I think that would be yet another compromise between 2 opposing schools of thought.

 

[FireLance]

D&D could contain various classes and various amounts of gonzo fantasy powers withOUT the implied default that they should or could all co-exist in any one story. I think that would be yet another compromise between 2 opposing schools of thought.

This sounds a lot like what Crazy Jerome was suggesting back in post #217.

On a related topic, I wonder what the most "gonzo" 4E powers would be. The one that usually keeps getting brought up (in my experience) is come and get it, and martial healing (second wind, inspiring word) also gets the occasional mention. It's only recently (in this thread, in fact) that I've learned that some players also have an issue with vicious mockery (despite it being an actual arcane spell), although that might have more to do with mind-affecting (or language-dependant) magic having an effect on creatures that are traditionally mindless.

Is the "gonzo" effect really that pervasive, or is it a matter of (to adapt a metaphor) making a mountain out of corner cases?

EDIT: For the record, when I last asked the question (admittedly, not entirely seriously - I tagged the thread as "Humor") the other issues that were raised were martial healing and the 15th level rogue daily bloody path.

 

[TheFindus]

Some of us want less ambiguity. We want the choice not up the whim of the DM. "Hardcoded" into the rules means that if the DM changes it that both the DM and the player are aware of the change and that if they don't want it burning objects that it doesn't and shouldn't change on a case by case basis in the future.

I understand that. But where does it start and where does it end? For me, I do not want to read anything about the sound a power makes unless it is keyword-related. I most of the time do not want any designer's default version of the visual components of a power as a fixed rule. 4E does it right here in that it presents a flavor text only.

You see, I think this thread makes obvious the fact that "realism" differs from player to player. The discussion ignites on the fact that in 3e the fireball burns objects explicitly and in the 4E version the GM has to decide. The people that want the fireball to burn stuff can still reach the same conclusion with the rules 4E presents without ever changing a rule. The people who do not want the 3e version of the fireball to burn stuff have to change the rule.
I think the latter is harder to overcome, at least that is my personal gaming experience, as I have seen a lot of GMs struggle with this when I as a player wanted to narrate my fireballs in 3e in a different way.

This is why I think 4E is better in this regard. The rules say "Say yes!" and "page 42" and "here is a flavor text". And that makes changing things to accomodate individual play tastes easier. Because you do not have to change a rule.

I don't want to argue anymore either. I just want to straighten out some points. I can happily agree to disagree, if that's what you want.

That is not what I was trying to say, although reading my sentence again I realize that it was badly written. Sorry about that. What I meant to say that I do not need to argue about this anymore at the game table, because the 4E design is clear on this. And that is why there is only one the RC at my game table instead of a box full of 3e books. And there is much much less argument over the rules.
I find great insights reading through the posts and discussing this topic with you.

 

[LostSoul]

So let's stop ignoring and give some weight to the flavor text of Vicious Mockery.

1. It's inspired by myths that bards could kill with an insult. What's evocative and compelling about this myth is that some ideas are so potent as to kill you, and that bards should be treated with respect, because maybe -- just maybe -- this one is wise and knowledgeable enough to know the exact thought that is deadly to your soul.

2. Give that flavor some weight, and you have nods to realism like: do bards know the insult that harms any personality or just those he understands which buttons to push? Can he effectively insult all fellow human beings, humanoids like giants, abominable demonic minds, non-sentient artificial minds, the higher minds of devils and gods, sticks and stones, and the fabric of magic itself? Must the insult be spoken or whispered to a single soul to direct its potency, or does the potency of the word dissipate like ink in a lake when shouted openly to many ears in a room? Is the victim harmed if he cannot hear? Is the victim harmed if he does not understand the bard's language? Do lethal insults always kill you in 6 seconds, or might it take a day or longer? Is this talent the epitome of bardish lore and only master bards are so gifted, or can any bard kill with a word instead of the sword? All of these and more are natural, organic questions about the process.

3. IMO, 4E, being oblivious to fictional positioning, asks none of these questions (not a single one). Neither do the DMs and players who must justify the powers on the fly. Thus IMO the game translates the myths very poorly into a videogame-y fighting action, converting rich myths into combat fast food, losing almost all the nutrients and flavor in the process.

4. When the game dumps all these questions of process and cause-and-effect onto the shoulders of DM and players, it's often ignored or handwaved away as an unwelcome or undesired burden, but even players who are genuinely interested in the process may a) not want the obligation unto themselves, b) be unable to come up with a subjectively satisfying fluff at that very moment in time, c) be digging themselves into a hole as their explanation becomes more and more elaborate to offset a domino effect on the game world (like with skeletons and oozes), d) have a conflict of interest -- do I play according to RAW or do I gimp my PC's success in favor of choosing and using powers "realistically"?

Thus, in practice, more often than not, I think the DMs and players avoid the very questions about nods to "realism" that the metagame originally offloaded to the group. I'm not saying those problems come up all the time in gameplay, but it's why I find a number of the justifications on Enworld to be so unsatisfying, incohesive, and, well, "unrealistic".

1. I like that, it's interesting.

2. That's a lot of questions for the rules to answer. In my experience you don't need to answer all of those questions; one simply defines how magic works in general (a feature of the tone, setting, genre, and themes of your game), producing principles from which one can extrapolate answers without having to answer an infinite list of questions.

3. 4E is not oblivious to fictional positioning. I think it has more effective rules than any previous edition of D&D for adjudicating ad-hoc actions that arise from the fiction. It does have some other problems regarding fictional positioning, though.

4. I find it interesting that you think answering those questions will cause all sorts of problems. I personally find that many more issues crop up when the game book tries to answer all conceivable questions. Anyway. My answers to your concerns are:
a) that's what it means to be a DM; you have to make judgement calls
b) making creative contributions means that you're going to be judged by your peers; you can't avoid it, so deal with it
c) given that any answer is going to lead to ever more elaborate explanations for strange corner cases, I think it's better to explicitly state that the group has the authority to change those answers (or devise their own elaborate explanations)
d) that's why you have the DM make the judgement calls

My preferred way to approach things is to get something like what we have in 4E right now, then tell the players that they have to "flavour" it; that will answer some questions about Vicious Mockery. If it is a "magic word" (in 4E that would be in Supernal) that represents the idea of mockery, then the target wouldn't need to understand it or be concious at all; but you would have to be able to speak, so stuffing a rag into your mouth would screw up the spell.

 

[TheFindus]

Give that flavor some weight, and you have nods to realism like: do bards know the insult that harms any personality or just those he understands which buttons to push? Can he effectively insult all fellow human beings, humanoids like giants, abominable demonic minds, non-sentient artificial minds, the higher minds of devils and gods, sticks and stones, and the fabric of magic itself? Must the insult be spoken or whispered to a single soul to direct its potency, or does the potency of the word dissipate like ink in a lake when shouted openly to many ears in a room? Is the victim harmed if he cannot hear? Is the victim harmed if he does not understand the bard's language? Do lethal insults always kill you in 6 seconds, or might it take a day or longer? Is this talent the epitome of bardish lore and only master bards are so gifted, or can any bard kill with a word instead of the sword? All of these and more are natural, organic questions about the process.

IMO, 4E, being oblivious to fictional positioning, asks none of these questions (not a single one). Neither do the DMs and players who must justify the powers on the fly. Thus IMO the game translates the myths very poorly into a videogame-y fighting action, converting rich myths into combat fast food, losing almost all the nutrients and flavor in the process.

I think this is a valid point. As has been said upthread by somebody else, 4E makes room for narrating powers in lots of ways but the books do not really explain or give enough examples on how to relate the fictional description of a power in the story with the power's crunch. I wish they had a regular column in any of the magazines on how to do that and about how to change the flavor text so it fits a certain situation.

But, that being said, how did other versions of DnD handle this? If I remember correctly (it has been a long time), 3e had the Book of Exalted Deeds in which rules for "word" magic were published. If I recall correctly, you could take a feat that gave a bonus of some sort or opened up a whole chain of feats. Now, how does this enable a player or a GM to make better changes to the description of the rules of each individual bard spell? I would assume, it doesn't. At least not by much. I think that the 3e bard was in no way better designed on a fictional level than the 4E bard. And not better suited for narrative play, either.

Most of the 3e bard spells were spells from other classes that somehow fit the flavor of the bard being a singer, a lover, not a fighter. How the bard fights, attacks with spells and a rapier and still sings (to give attack boni, etc.) had to be narrated by the player. Was there a rule or advice in any of the 3e books on how to actually play that on a narrative level? By all means, prove me wrong, but I do recall that there was.

 

[LurkAway]

The one that usually keeps getting brought up (in my experience) is come and get it, and martial healing (second wind, inspiring word) also gets the occasional mention.

I'm sure there are plenty others, different issues to different degrees to different people. If you only hear about certain ones, I think people tend to pick their battles (I know I'm holding back ). I know if I discuss something that feels out of place to me, and others counter with various subjective rationalizations/justifications, it quickly gets time-consuming and (not to be dramatic but...) demoralizing -- web forum terrain seems to confer a good probability of 'Stake Your Position' conditions -- and I don't think it helps anyone to catalog a long list of my complaints about any edition.

Is the "gonzo" effect really that pervasive, or is it a matter of (to adapt a metaphor) making a mountain out of corner cases?

For me, the "gonzo" and "videogame-y" elements feels pretty pervasive, or at least enough bits here and there that seem to add up to something bigger, but that could be somewhat fixed for me if a 4.5E factored in for some of the suggestions offered here on Enworld.

 

[Imaro]

As I've often posted, elements of the mechanics - especially skill challenges - remind me of both HeroWars/Quest, and Maelstrom Storytelling.

Uhmm... good for you, IMO, Skill Challenges are a badly thought out, badly presented and badly implemented mechanic that have been changes so many times and become so vague in how they are presented, explained and implemented by the developers/designers and fanbase of 4e that I'm not even sure where the line between a proper skill challenge begins and ends... thus it's hard for me to discuss the mechanics for them in any coherent manner as far as their merits and disadvantages are concerned. IMO, this again speaks to pemerton overlaying his own playstyle over mechanics that don't actively do anything to support it. But if you're having fun then you're not doing it wrong.

Which powers are you talking about? The effects of some powers sometimes change. So while I'm not entirely sure what's at stake in this rote/principle discussion, but the premises on which you're basing your argument for "rote" are mistaken

I was speaking to spells and according to the RAW, as opposed to pemertons interpretation of RAW, in order to change a visual or audio quality of a spell one must make an arcana check. this seems to infer that in general spells are rote and in order to change the visual or audio properties of a spell (and as I noted before, only a spell) then one has to put forth effort and is not guaranteed success.

For example, Come and Get It can have different effects in the fiction (sometimes skilled weaonplay, sometimes lulling enemies into a false sense of confidence, sometimes goading them, etc) althought mechanically these are all resolved as a pull. If the same PC sometimes used Come and Get It with a dagger, sometimes with a pike, I would think the procuedure and effects are very different.

But what does the fiction matter in this instance? How does the fiction of whether you use weaponplay or lulling an enemy influence the gameplay, your chances of success or the effect? It in fact doesn't... Come and Get It will always work the same without a DM houseruling it.

The effects of Twist of Space can also differ - it can be used, for example, to rescue a NPC magically trapped in a mirror (I know this, because it happened - via p 42 - in my game). I've not seen the effects of Bigby's Icy Hand vary - yet.

*sigh* no one's arguing against DM implemented houserules, so I'm not sure what your point here is??

With my group, we assume that this is about concealing the glow of fire, or the sound of thunder - things that otherwise wouldn't be "reskinnable" because they track keywords.

Again, if you want to houserule no one is stopping you, but that's not what the rules specify... It says changing the visual or audio properties... not to silence or obfuscate spell effects only.