The Emerikol Fallacy .... or .... Fallacious uses of the Oberoni Fallacy

[ExploderWizard]

"During the course of the spell the recipient cannot handle obiects which weigh less than 50 g.p., for such obiects will stick to the creature's hands/feet..."

Edit: Ninja'd by Tony Vargas.

Merely touching a purse string or item instead of having to actually grasp it should make it easier to pilfer in certain situations.

Easier to grab YES. Easier to grab with skill so that that the victim is unaware of the theft-not so much.

Its super useful for cleaning out behind the sofa cushions or feeling around for something that rolled under the refrigerator.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Y'know, this little Spider Climb digression illustrates why it's preferable to have clear rules text partitioned from 'fluff.' If Spider Climb followed that design philosophy 'sticky fingers' would be one of however many possible ways of describing the spell, and it would simply allow you to climb. No temptation to try to squeeze extra usefulness out of the spell with a protracted 'rules lawyer' debate. If there was a desire to make the spell more versatile in design, the rules text could reflect that - for instance, granting advantage in circumstances where wall-crawling would be handy. That would open back up 'room for creativity' (or rules lawyering), but limit the reward to something not too disruptive (advantage doesn't give you a chance to succeed at the impossible, nor does it stack, etc).

 

[Crothian]

Y'know, this little Spider Climb digression illustrates why it's preferable to have clear rules text partitioned from 'fluff.' If Spider Climb followed that design philosophy 'sticky fingers' would be one of however many possible ways of describing the spell, and it would simply allow you to climb. No temptation to try to squeeze extra usefulness out of the spell with a protracted 'rules lawyer' debate.

I remember when that was called creativity and it was a good thing. I like it when players come up with interesting uses for spells and abilities. I don't see it as them taking advantage of the rules or having to deal with rules lawyer debates. But I guess it depends on one's approach and if you treat the game like the tax code in that people try to abuse it to get every little thing they can then it would be a lot less fun.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Y'know, this little Spider Climb digression illustrates why it's preferable to have clear rules text partitioned from 'fluff.' If Spider Climb followed that design philosophy 'sticky fingers' would be one of however many possible ways of describing the spell, and it would simply allow you to climb. No temptation to try to squeeze extra usefulness out of the spell with a protracted 'rules lawyer' debate. If there was a desire to make the spell more versatile in design, the rules text could reflect that - for instance, granting advantage in circumstances where wall-crawling would be handy. That would open back up 'room for creativity' (or rules lawyering), but limit the reward to something not too disruptive (advantage doesn't give you a chance to succeed at the impossible, nor does it stack, etc).

Its pretty clear cut as written. It allows small light objects to stick to your hands. Saying that that side effect replicates the skill of a thief is where the crazy train gets boarded. You reach your crazy glued hand into a pouch and all kinds of stuff sticks to it-including the pouch! Yeah you get whatever stuck to your hand but hardly without the target noticing.

 

[Emerikol]

You keep misunderstanding Tony.

A rule can have open ended adjudication by the DM. It could state in plain english the effect. Let's forget about the actual charm person spell. What if the spell just said "the person has a positive reaction to you in a way similar to that of a friendly acquaintance". Just because a DM could in theory misjudge what a friendly acquaintance means does not make the rule bad. Obviously my example is contrived. I'm not saying adding in some more details is bad either. I am saying that there exists open ended rules that require DM adjudication. The fact that DMs can adjudicate them poorly does not make the rule a bad rule.

The Emerikol Fallacy says that the potential to adjudicate a rule poorly does not make the rule a bad one. Something else about the rule could make it bad but not that one fact.

There are people that believe that everything has to be written out like a legal contract with hyper precision. I find that ALWAYS following that approach stifles the game and makes it less fun. Just like the current skill system. I as a DM could wrongly believe that climbing is super hard and I could consistently make the DCs way too high. This would not make the skill system a bad set or rules.

 

[Bawylie]

Of all the things we might call "Emerikol's fallacy," I hadn't expected this...

;-)

 

[Tony Vargas]

A rule can have open ended adjudication by the DM. It could state in plain english the effect. Let's forget about the actual charm person spell. What if the spell just said "the person has a positive reaction to you in a way similar to that of a friendly acquaintance". Just because a DM could in theory misjudge what a friendly acquaintance means does not make the rule bad.

It makes it vague, and clarity is among a variety of desirable attributes that make for a good rule. And it could very easily lead to the player selecting the spell thinking it does something very different from what it will actually do when he uses it, which is not a nice thing for either the player or the DM when it happens.

Even if you don't want to label such a rule 'bad,' it could certainly be better. For instance, in the way the 5e Charm Person spell shores itself up by referencing the Advantage mechanic.

The Emerikol Fallacy says that the potential to adjudicate a rule poorly does not make the rule a bad one.

I know it /states/ that. But, stating something and giving it a cute label doesn't make it true.

I'm still not convinced. Either you've got a valid construct there, or you're bordering on committing an Oberoni Fallacy, yourself, in constructing it.

One of the sticking points - and there are several - is that 'adjudicate' or 'interpret' can shade into actually changing/overriding the meaning/intent of the rule, much like house-ruling. Taken that far, it's no problem. Changing a rule to a broken form and claiming it was already broken is a clear fallacy.

OTOH (and another sticking point), if the rule is so vague that no two DMs are likely to agree on what it means, then which interpretation is the rule and which the changed rule? At that point, you certainly don't have a good rule (nor even a bad one - it might not be a rule, at all, but a hole in the rules). It would, indeed, be technically incorrect to say that a rule that doesn't exist is 'bad.'

OTOOH, even if you do trot out this 'fallacy' in defense of a bad rule and people buy it, you still haven't proved that it's good, just deflected one instance of it being bad. If you stretch it such that it can be used to deflect any instance of a bad rule being bad, it becomes meaningless, and the use of the fallacy in that mode would be a fallacy, itself, and one very similar to Oberoni.

I as a DM could wrongly believe that climbing is super hard and I could consistently make the DCs way too high. This would not make the skill system a bad set or rules.

If the system gave you reasonable DCs, you'd've gotten a better result from it. A system that delivers a better result is arguably better, no? Of course, you could over-ride the system to get the same poor result, but, /then/ you'd indeed no longer be reflecting the quality of the system, but your qualities as a DM.



Oh, and for the nth time, stop pretending that people who disagree with you "don't understand," it's condescending and rude. You might even want to open yourself to the possibility that you could just plain be wrong about something.

 

[Hussar]

For me it's never worth it to argue at the table. If the players know up front it's not allowed they are actually happier because it lifts a burden to argue off their shoulders. I welcome discussion after a session because then I'm not wasting game time. If I feel due to error I royally screwed over one of the players then I consider the cosmic forces of the universe in that players debt. Having the cosmic forces of the universe in your debt is a truly great spot to be in. Most of the time though (like 99.9%) the ruling is what fits and I explain and they understand.

My players can ask me at any time the chances of success before attempting an action. I will mostly tell them if I think it is at all possible for them to know. I believe in most cases they would.

I was more commenting on the "I'm not strict" part of your point. I'd say that's an extremely strict table rule, for me anyway. If my character is going to die because of what I feel is a mistaken ruling by the DM, I'm pretty strongly inclined to argue the point with the DM. Being told up front that I cannot, ever, argue the point at the table is a very clear signal to me. The fact that you feel that you are right 999 times in a thousand generally speaks volumes as well.

Y'know, this little Spider Climb digression illustrates why it's preferable to have clear rules text partitioned from 'fluff.' If Spider Climb followed that design philosophy 'sticky fingers' would be one of however many possible ways of describing the spell, and it would simply allow you to climb. No temptation to try to squeeze extra usefulness out of the spell with a protracted 'rules lawyer' debate. If there was a desire to make the spell more versatile in design, the rules text could reflect that - for instance, granting advantage in circumstances where wall-crawling would be handy. That would open back up 'room for creativity' (or rules lawyering), but limit the reward to something not too disruptive (advantage doesn't give you a chance to succeed at the impossible, nor does it stack, etc).

This is the point I was trying to make. It doesn't matter how you or I or anyone else would interpret things. The fact is, the spell can be interpreted to give you pick pocketing abilities. That's pretty obviously true when we've had at least one AD&D player step up and say it can be interpreted that way, and the Dragon Magazine article makes it pretty clear that it can be interpreted this way as well. Again, whether or not you agree with the interpretation is irrelevant.

The thing is, if, as Crothian above says, this is player creativity, then where does that stop? At what point is it player creativity vs rules lawyering? That's the line that's going to be drawn at a different place for every DM. For Exploder Wizard, it's obvious that you cannot use Spider Climb to pickpocket. To others, it's not. And if JRR Neiklot is sitting at EW's table, now you have an argument, either during game or afterwards. Rules clarity means that this argument gets a whole lot shorter. A rule that says that any spell which replicates a thief ability does so as a thief 5 levels lower than the caster would go a long, long way to end rules debates.

Heck, if you want to see what problems vague rules can cause, you only have to look at the alignment wanks that have been ongoing for decades.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Here's another way to think about it: is a rule that's good some of the times and bad some of the time a bad rule or a good rule? Is there a threshold (90% good, 70%, 50%)?

Whether you have a low tolerance for badness or a high tolerance for it, Oberoni remains valid: a good DM fixing a rule doesn't make the original rule any better.

 

[Rygar]

I caught that, and that's where you blew it.

Let's try looking at it yet another way. When you commit the Oberoni Fallacy, you're making the mistake of assuming that every DM will be good enough to note that the rule is broken, and exercise his right of DM judgement to fix it. If you even acknowledge that not every DM might be able or inclined to do that, you essentially assert that his players deserve it. (And, I can see why you'd want to chip away at Oberoni, since I'm afraid you do commit it now and then.)

The Oberoni Fallacy has always been a fallacy. In fact, it is so obviously a fallacy that I have to wonder if the person who came up with it did it as a joke.

The problem with the Oberoni Fallacy, and the reason why it is a fallacy, is because it fails to define a "bad rule". If we exercised this as a logic test, we would arrive at a contradiction every time we try to evaluate some rule as "bad", because all we need is a single person to state that rule is good.

We can see this in practice, most of the things people claim are bad rules and start telling others they are committing the "Oberoni Fallacy" when they defend it are the result of personal preferences. The problem often isn't the rules, the problem is they're trying to play the game in a way that isn't supported, the rules are fine because when used as intended the problem doesn't exist.

At this point, it really needs renamed the "Oberoni Strawman", because it isn't possible to invoke it and have it evaluate to true as it is impossible to demonstrate any given rule is "bad". Its invocation is an attempt to defend a personal preference or a playstyle without admitting that its a personal preference or playstyle. There isn't a "Fallacy" committed when the statement is actually "I don't want to play the game the way this rule intends the game to play so it should be removed", that doesn't make a rule "bad".