D&D 5E With Respect to the Door and Expectations....The REAL Reason 5e Can't Unite the Base

[pemerton]

It seems to me - especially reading over the last few pages, that there is some reluctance to view armed, hand-to-hand combat as a real skill.

<snip>

If I said "my character uses woodworking to make a chest", we wouldn't hesitate to imagine that he might use a whole range of techniques and methods to make a chest that could fit a variety of detailed descriptions and a variety of styles. And yet, when my character uses "Come and Get It", there must be one specific technique that "explains" the action and result every single time. Does it really seem that implausible that "dumb fighters" have developed actual skills that allow them to select from a range of techniques and tricks that generate specific types of desired reaction in foes in battle, much like any craftsman selects techniques from a repertoire in order to best form a crafted object for a specific purpose?

Good post. As I've mentioned already, in my own game when Come and Get It is used by the polearm fighter I mostly envisage it (and narrate it) as deft polearm work wrongfooting the opponents, rather than as a Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan-style "mook pull".

 

[stoloc]

Good post. As I've mentioned already, in my own game when Come and Get It is used by the polearm fighter I mostly envisage it (and narrate it) as deft polearm work wrongfooting the opponents, rather than as a Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan-style "mook pull".

While I like the idea of halberdiers using their big axe to pull folks closer I still like my Bruce Lee Come and Get It- amuses me every time.

Maybe for the anti CaGI crowd it could be houseruled that the ability only works with certain weapons (halberd, glaive-guisarme, etc)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

... "What else is there but attack"? Nothing at all - if you aren't picturing yourself as a warrior - or are in a ten foot room fighting an orc guarding a pie mano-a-mano, and the pie isn't even on a table. Or you are on a fencing piste and not allowed to step out of your five foot lane.

Not even then. If all you used fencing were straight attacks, a kid with one year of good training and average speed would eat you for lunch. Against someone more competent, you'd lose a bout 15-0 or maybe 15-1. Same way with boxing. All of these aspects get magnified as soon as you remove the artificial restrictions of something like sports fencing, which only goes to reinforce your larger point. Just the possibility of a hilt to the face or a timely knee or foot in a tricky spot changes the equation, never mind the terrain and movement.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Let's look at a skill that folk might be more conversant with the realities of: metalworking (I'm assuming a few folk will have done a smattering of this at school, as I did, if not later as part of technical or engineering training). If a character undertakes a metalworking task, how should the mechanics go about "linking" the mechanics to the fiction? The range and variety of techniques and actions used while metalcrafting are way too diverse to adequately cover the "how a character might achieve this task" without a treatise of some considerable length, unless either (a) the task is extremely simple or (b) the players are already intimately conversant with metalcrafting techniques. A rule set that says "metalcrafting is the skill of shaping metal by bashing it with a hammer" might get an "explanatory" pass from someone who knows absolutely nothing about the topic, but to most people it will pretty soon be clear that this is hopelessly insufficient.

In passing, part of my objection to 3E professions and crafts is that they have details flavored as if the system was such as simulation, but in no way deliver even a hint of what the flavor suggests. Meanwhile, they are overly fiddly for a quick-and-dirty system that only cares about results, while managing to deliver results that are off. It's a system trying to be too many things at once, and thus failing at all of them.

 

[LostSoul]

I'd like it if some of the people who "get" dissociated mechanics could vet my post here (837).

 

[chaochou]

I'd like it if some of the people who "get" dissociated mechanics could vet my post here (837).

I think that's going to be tricky, because there's nothing to 'get'.

So when Justin Alexander says:

An associated mechanic is one which has a connection to the game world. A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world.​

The people at the table create the game world. The people at the table connect the mechanics to the gameworld.

Association or disocciation are matters of choice or preference - they are how you relate to a mechanic, not a property of the mechanic. A distinction Crazy Jerome has already made in this thread but which seems to have been passed over.

So discussion of this 'theory' is, sadly, superfluous. It's 'what I like' dressed up as objectivity - and then pushed as 'roleplaying' while anything else is, according to the essay, not roleplaying. A manifesto for OTW, if you will.

 

[D'karr]

The people at the table create the game world. The people at the table connect the mechanics to the gameworld.

<SNIP>

So discussion of this 'theory' is, sadly, superfluous. It's 'what I like' dressed up as objectivity - and then pushed as 'roleplaying' while anything else is, according to the essay, not roleplaying. A manifesto for OTW, if you will.

BINGO.

I'd love to XP you, but apparently must spread it out.

 

[Hussar]

I think that's going to be tricky, because there's nothing to 'get'.



The people at the table create the game world. The people at the table connect the mechanics to the gameworld.

Association or disocciation are matters of choice or preference - they are how you relate to a mechanic, not a property of the mechanic. A distinction Crazy Jerome has already made in this thread but which seems to have been passed over.

So discussion of this 'theory' is, sadly, superfluous. It's 'what I like' dressed up as objectivity - and then pushed as 'roleplaying' while anything else is, according to the essay, not roleplaying. A manifesto for OTW, if you will.

While I totally agree with you, I think the difference is, "associated" mechanics are ones which pre-define the world in such a way that the players at the table are given no choice. Take 3e lock picking as an example.

In 3e lock picking, you must use some form of tool to pick a lock. That's hard wired right into the mechanics. If you do not have something you can use as a tool (even as an improvised tool) you may not pick a lock. Period.

Now, how this applies to non-pickable locks like a chinese puzzle box or a combination lock, the rules are silent on, but, that's a nit pick and it's pretty reasonable to presume that most DM's are not going to tell players they cannot open a combination lock because they don't have picks.

However, the reverse is also true. The players can never try to open a lock unless they satisfy the requirements of the mechanic. I've given the example of a "Fonzie Bump" sort of maneuver my theif character tried in 4e, simply because it was funny and cool and totally fit with the character. The table accepted it and it was a good moment.

But that only becomes possible because 4e skills are not specifically associated. You use the Thievery skill to open a lock in 4e and the only thing the rules tell you is that you open the lock, they don't say how. Makes sense, 4e isn't really concerned with process sim. How is up to the players at the table.

So, yeah, I agree that the reality of the game world is defined by the players, I think there is a certain number of gamers for whom the game world is defined primarily by the mechanics. What sort of spins my wheels is that when confronted with the myriad of contradictions this creates in the game world, I'm told that because it's associated, we can just ignore those contradictions.

 

[D'karr]

In 3e lock picking, you must use some form of tool to pick a lock. That's hard wired right into the mechanics. If you do not have something you can use as a tool (even as an improvised tool) you may not pick a lock. Period.

I get what you are saying. However this, ruleswise, is incorrect. If you had no tools you took a penalty. If you had any kind of tool, even improvised, it was a straight roll. And if you had masterwork tools you got a bonus.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I think the difference is, "associated" mechanics are ones which pre-define the world in such a way that the players at the table are given no choice.

[SNIP]

The players can never try to open a lock unless they satisfy the requirements of the mechanic.

This is true, and a somewhat useful distinction in this mess of a "conversation" that's been going on. It's just preference. I imagine that someone could rule that a "Fonzie Bump" as "improvised tools" and let it happen at a -2 penalty, but that isn't the kind of game that 3.X tried to be.

And that's just it; you're right. In 3.X, they tried (and sometimes failed) to bake in "you need to meet this requirement to attempt that." It's something I prefer in my fantasy games, personally. But really, it's just preference, and I get that it's not necessarily preferable to other people.

At any rate, I may not really reply to much in this conversation, because I find the extensive terminology talk, miscast motivations/beliefs, and the like exceedingly unhelpful to a healthy dialogue. Thus far, it's mostly people patting each other on the back saying "we get it" on both sides, and I'm so not interested in that.

There are a few posters so I think the above doesn't apply to (I think Lost Soul and Nagol have done a tremendous job at attempting helpful dialogue, here, and Underman has done a pretty good job), but most of this conversation just doesn't interest me. This post was on-point enough that I thought it might be helpful to reply to it, so that must say something about this post. Hopefully somebody gets something useful out of it (like Lost Soul might have).

At any rate, good luck, guys and gals; JC out. As always, play what you like