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

[Ahnehnois]

See, this gets to my point. "Some" dissociated elements in the CS dice? Are you kidding me? Ret-conning events every single round is less dissociated than insisting that a given power only works once per day?

See, the issue is not that it works once a day, but that every other time you try to use it during that day, it doesn't work, and there's no clear reason why.

 

[Hussar]

See, the issue is not that it works once a day, but that every other time you try to use it during that day, it doesn't work, and there's no clear reason why.

What is the clear reason that you can retcon hits? What is the in-game rationale for this?

And, just as a point, there are all sorts of clear reasons why a daily doesn't work twice in that day. The easiest is simply, "the set up was wrong". After all, why don't you score six criticals in a row? Your character is obviously trying to make the best, most accurate attack every time, yet will only succeed 5% (depending on weapon and edition, this might be somewhat higher) of the time. I can go an entire day of adventure and never score a critical. Why not? What is the clear, in-game reason that I do not score a critical in 20 rounds of combat (to pick a number) that doesn't equally apply to why I cannot reuse the same daily?

What is the clear, in-game reason that after I am hit, I can somehow reduce the damage to zero, yet still be knocked off my feet by a blow that wasn't aimed at my legs? How exactly did I get poisoned by that arrow that dealt no damage to my character?

See, for me, I don't care. Doesn't faze me in the slightest. I like the mechanics because they're fun and they add a nice tactical element to fighters that will allow players to choose whether they want to be a (to use 4e terms) striker fighter or defender fighter or controller fighter or some Frankenstein hybrid of all of the above. Fantastic. I think the CS dice are great.

But, I also have no problems drawing the line from 4e mechanics to CS dice. There is a nice line of development that's pretty clear. Or, to put it another way, I could see someone using CS dice mechanics in a 4e game with no one at the table batting an eye. Trying this at a 3e table and people would wonder what the heck you were doing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

(only that the base CS mechanic is better than the base AEDU mechanic)

Odd comparison. CS is a class feature. AEDU was a common advancement structure for all classes.

 

[Sadras]

What is the clear, in-game reason that after I am hit, I can somehow reduce the damage to zero, yet still be knocked off my feet by a blow that wasn't aimed at my legs? How exactly did I get poisoned by that arrow that dealt no damage to my character?

You got knicked, not enough to cause hp loss, but enough to scratch your skin and infect you with the poison. I know you said you dont care

I also agree with your view on 5E and ED/CS - one can clearly see how one can make it 4E combat style play. I actually think they have done a brilliant job so far - the stuff I might not like, I can easily handwave and it wont require any work. I am just hoping for a software system for drawing up NPCs fast (like DDI) and I'm practically sold.

 

[Balesir]

The idea of abstract vs dissociated is separate to what I was talking about; if not completely unrelated. For example, D&D's conceit of referring to all humans as being of one race is abstract (as real humans are of many races), but not particularly dissociative. The ability to use rage once a day is dissociative, but not particularly abstract (it's quite discrete and well-defined).

You say these are unrelated (again), but I'm seeing the exact same thing.

It's simply not feasible to do multiple things in a combat round. Just how much you might be able to do is a matter of conjecture - and will likely change with situation and circumstance (bringing in an element of luck). But, for game system purposes, we simply say that there is a limit to the number of "actions" and "effects" that you can stack in there. This is an abstraction of the problem; we estimate what is reasonable on average, and we set a system limit at that level.

By the same token, there are many actions or effects which it is simply impossible to do multiple times in quick succession. Either the action is particularly draining on the physique of the actor, or the circumstances required occur only infrequently, or the sequence of actions necessary to set up the manoeuvre only come together successfully on a few occasions, or some other limitation means that the feat cannot be attempted very often. A 'barbarian' rage is a good example of this; it would be unbelievable if a "berserker" never raged, but at the same time it is quite clear that they did not rage in every combat. We don't have very precise answers as to why this is/was, but it seems nevertheless to be true. How do we represent this in a game system? We say that the "barbarian" may only rage x number of times "per day" - with the exact occasions when s/he does so determined by the player. It's an abstraction, nothing more. You might prefer that the player have no say in when the rages occur, but then you would need to invent some sort of system that does determine when rages occur that is both fun and plausible. The obvious options (die roll to rage and GM fiat) are neither. The abstraction seems to me to be fine with the player "spending the resource" to time the rage as s/he sees fit.

See, the issue is not that it works once a day, but that every other time you try to use it during that day, it doesn't work, and there's no clear reason why.

In the game world, there are clear reasons why - we just don't model them all. The alternatives to this are:

1) To model every circumstance and resource that may lead to actions that clearly are not attempted every few seconds not being attempted every few seconds, or

2) Ignore all actions and abilities that are not routinely attempted every few seconds completely (unless we can invent some hokey excuse like "remembering" them, thus neatly restricting such possibilities only to invented, or "magical", effects).

The first of these I defy anyone to achieve in a playable system; the second is intensely unsatisfactory to me.

You got knicked, not enough to cause hp loss, but enough to scratch your skin and infect you with the poison.

Oh, great. Now, not only does hit point loss not always coincide with a physical wound (per Mike Mearls' hit point explanation a while back), but a physical wound does not neccessarily coincide with hit point loss... Remind me what "dissociated" means, again?

 

[Sadras]

Oh, great. Now, not only does hit point loss not always coincide with a physical wound (per Mike Mearls' hit point explanation a while back), but a physical wound does not neccessarily coincide with hit point loss... Remind me what "dissociated" means, again?

Sorry, I dont buy it that every scratch requires Hit Point reduction or that every Hit Point lost is a scratch - no matter what anyone says, particularly in a system where Hit Points are the lone mechanic representing a number of things. We accepted that fact a long time ago. With regards to dissociated mechanics - every D&D edition incorporates it to some degree. It all comes down to us having different levels of tolerance.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

What puzzles me is people's ability to internalise the turn-by-turn initiative sequence - or even the classic D&D version, which still lacks continous action - as if it were somehow consistent with process simulation. LostSoul's example in the third of his posts that I quote brings out this point.

Kind of Surprised this thread is still going becasue I think chaochou nailded it here, however, I think the asnwer to the above question is that the immersionest people are not really using process sim in the Gurps/Rolemaster sense to D&D. They have mapped traditional D&D process to the created world in a faily loose manner and used them as a kind of aide memoire to determine what happened. There is as far as I can see no actual consensus among any group of epople as to what most D&D processes actually represent.

Thus stuff like AEDU that provokes obvious questions about its its "in world" nature provokes dissonance but stuff like CS may not.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Odd comparison. CS is a class feature. AEDU was a common advancement structure for all classes.

In a sense, there is no valid comparison between the AEDU system and any other mechanic in D&D, as there is no other version of the game that has a common advancement structure for all classes. However, the application of the AEDU system to martial classes and particularly fighters has been a source of controversy, so I think comparing a new advancement mechanic just for fighters is a useful comparison.

 

[Shadeydm]

See, this gets to my point. "Some" dissociated elements in the CS dice? Are you kidding me? Ret-conning events every single round is less dissociated than insisting that a given power only works once per day?

To me, the only real difference here is you like one mechanic and don't like the other. Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with having a preference. But, pretending that that preference is grounded in dissociation is ridiculous. You simply don't find one dissociation objectionable. Therefore "dissociation" isn't the problem. Something else is.

CS dice can be applied every round and can be simplified to adding extra damage (not dissociative imho) and nothing more. Can we change 4E melee encounter powers to work every round? There lies two very big differences...if you can't see the diff I don't think there is much more I can do to help you understand.

 

[Neonchameleon]

How about comparing AEDU to the classic source for controversy then? Vancian casting. Especially All Magic Being Vancian. The issue there is that it breaks immersion, feels non-magical, and breaks balance.