D&D 5E Does RAW have a place in 5e?

[KarinsDad]

Just adding to what Hussar said: if I succed on the Tracking roll, then the upshot of following the trail of dropped items etc is that I find my quarry; if I fail, then the upshot is that the items lead me astray.

Also, on this issue of tracking over cobblestones: I live in a suburb with many cobbled lanes. Cobblestones hold mud (and you can clean your shoe by dragging it across a cobblestone); plants grow in the cracks, and those plants can be knocked over or torn up by passing feet; puddles form in unevenness on the stones, and those puddles can be splashed; if it stops raining, water from puddles can be stepped in, leading to wet footprints on the stones; etc.

I have no skill at tracking, but I don't see why cobblestones are so much harder to track over than, say, a relatively featureless grassy plain. Whereas the idea that the sound of footsteps, short of an army or a herd of cattle, might travel 10s of miles through the ground seems rather fanciful to me.

The point is, the DC is set high (shy of an actual RAW rule for the DC) because it is a hard to track on surface, and being a road, it might have some significant amount of traffic. If the roll is made, the DM can describe it however he wants, but I still wouldn't make it a low DC.

A featureless grassy plain would tend to have very few travelers all traveling the exact same route. There might be a few paths, but then again, those paths should often be dirt/mud, not stone. The harder the surface and the more travelers on it, the harder it should be to track.

As for listening for horses galloping miles away, American Indians reported being able to do that. I don't think anyone is claiming that someone could hear normal footsteps at that range.

 

[Hereticus]

RAW = Rules As Written
RAI = Rules As Intended

Rules as written is reading things by the letter of law, and rules as intended is reading them by the spirit of the law.
RAW is normally not subjective it is clear and if you break a rule down easy to grasp.
RAI is hard most of the time because it is very subjective and without the original author sharing their intent subject to much debate.

Thank you for the explanation. Rules as written is often vague and incomplete, and intentions are often colored toward preferences. Having started role playing with AD&D, I'm no stranger to house rules that create rules where there are none, or just flat out change things that were written and intended differently.

An example was scrolls in 4e. The DM and all the players realized that rituals were almost never used, we revalued scrolls and ritual costs in silver rather than gold. Everyone, even the non-casters found that the game was much better with that ruling.

In 3.5/PF we allowed players to modify some racial and class abilities to better fit what they wanted to do with their characters. I'm hoping to be able to do the same thing in 5.0.

 

[Li Shenron]

The rules are not based on real world believability in D&D. There are games that have that as a goal, but D&D is not one of them.

Are you sure about this, and why are you so?

I have a very different impression, given the fact that all these years the designers of D&D (not just us fans) have been providing rules clarifications, rules additions, sage advice and a variety of adjudication suggestions that were strongly based on believability. Sometimes based on balance concerns, but more often than not based indeed on believability.

I'm wondering if there is even any point at all to arguing RAW. It seems intentional that 5e be RAI, and that it's up to groups to determine their own interpretations.

I agree that the feeling is that RAI > RAW in 5e.

There are still gaming groups who prefer the RAW approach however, so within those groups it's totally appropriate to still spend time arguing about RAW. In some specific case it might prove near-impossible, but still there are many areas of the game where the rules are laid out clearly and fairly unequivocally.

If this was the intention and it ends up staying that way, i.e. WotC doesn't start a Sage Advice column so as to end disputes, I have to say that I think I prefer it this way.

I prefer it too.

The problem with RAW is that it can lead to unintentional conflicts and absurd combinations that, due to being RAW, are allowed and therefore argued by players as being legitimate choices in the game. RAI, OTOH, creates the expectation that the DM & group agree on what is going to be the interpretations used in their game.

Good summary. My general opinion is that the game is too complex to think that the RAW can truly be flawless. To have fool-proof RAW, it probably requires to seriously simplify the game mechanics (thus losing something in the process) and/or force players into playing it like a board game (thus disassociating it from the freedom of narration, which may be irrelevant to some gamers but is absolutely essentials to many others).

 

[Hussar]

The rules are not based on real world believability in D&D. There are games that have that as a goal, but D&D is not one of them.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?365146-Does-RAW-have-a-place-in-5e/page27#ixzz3GOfCQWBS

Note, though, that believability is the entire reason that the example of tracking over cobblestones came up. Karinsdad believes that it is a certain difficulty for tracking over cobblestones, and that is based on his views on how the real world works. Note, I'm not saying he's wrong, but, it seems odd that you would criticise me for choosing to look at the real world for designing mechanics while ignoring someone else doing the exact same thing.

 

[Mistwell]

Unfortunately, gut rulings have as much to do with who is doing the asking as what's being asked. Not every time of course but often enough.

Bob is being a PITA tonight so his chance of tracking is vetoed. Dave is having a bad night and the DM is throwing a bone so his chances are good.

I prefer sticking to RAW as much as possible thanks. Saves so much arguing around the table.

It doesn't bother me that it's based on how humans think rather than what a book says though. I don't want a game that could be theoretically run DMless with a computer.

But more importantly, it sounds like you want a game with a lot more rules, a lot more coverage of the details, and that 3e does that for you better. So why not stick with that?

 

[Mistwell]

Are you sure about this, and why are you so?

I have a very different impression, given the fact that all these years the designers of D&D (not just us fans) have been providing rules clarifications, rules additions, sage advice and a variety of adjudication suggestions that were strongly based on believability. Sometimes based on balance concerns, but more often than not based indeed on believability.

I disagree. They try to focus on internal consistency, and ease of play at the table, and what feels intuitive. Those all seem motives that have dominated far more than real world accuracy. I've never once seen an answer like Hussar wants, where someone has tested swimming in armor, or cutting a tank with a katana, or tracking a person over cobblestones. Real world physics doesn't take a top place in their rules or clarifications from what I've seen - ease of use, consistency, and intuition all do though. And they've made it clear for this edition they want it to be more rulings and less rules, so I don't think there is much debate that for this edition that is not the focus.

 

[pemerton]

As for listening for horses galloping miles away, American Indians reported being able to do that. I don't think anyone is claiming that someone could hear normal footsteps at that range.

In the quote from LotR that I posted, Aragorn expected to be able to hear the footsteps of some dozens of orcs some dozens of miles away.

I stand by my view that this is evidence that Aragorn is not "mundane" in his tracking abilities.

 

[KarinsDad]

In the quote from LotR that I posted, Aragorn expected to be able to hear the footsteps of some dozens of orcs some dozens of miles away.

I stand by my view that this is evidence that Aragorn is not "mundane" in his tracking abilities.

Evidence?

'Where sight fails the earth may bring us rumour,' said Aragorn. 'The land must groan under their hated feet.' He stretched himself upon the ground with his ear pressed against the turf. He lay there motionless, for so long a time that Gimli wondered if he had swooned or fallen asleep again. Dawn came glimmering, and slowly a grey light grew about them. At last he rose, and now his friends could see his face: it was pale and drawn, and his look was troubled.
'The rumour of the earth is dim and confused,' he said. 'Nothing walks upon it for many miles about us. Faint and far are the feet of our enemies. But loud are the hoofs of the horses. It comes to my mind that I heard them, even as I lay on the ground in sleep, and they troubled my dreams: horses galloping, passing in the West. But now they are drawing ever further from us, riding northward. I wonder what is happening in this land!'

Sounds more like a spell or ritual than it does the tracking skill.


And of course, since we do not actually know, this passage cannot be used as evidence of anything. The default D&D world and the LotR world are different worlds with different ideas on skills, spells, rituals, powers, abilities, etc. One cannot actually use one to prove anything in the other.

 

[billd91]

Sounds more like a spell or ritual than it does the tracking skill.

More like a practice inspired by American West stories about Native American trackers.

 

[Hussar]

I disagree. They try to focus on internal consistency, and ease of play at the table, and what feels intuitive. Those all seem motives that have dominated far more than real world accuracy. I've never once seen an answer like Hussar wants, where someone has tested swimming in armor, or cutting a tank with a katana, or tracking a person over cobblestones. Real world physics doesn't take a top place in their rules or clarifications from what I've seen - ease of use, consistency, and intuition all do though. And they've made it clear for this edition they want it to be more rulings and less rules, so I don't think there is much debate that for this edition that is not the focus.

Number one, please don't tell me to play another game, that's just rude.

Number two, even if 5e is less focused on rules than, say, 3e, that doesn't mean that there is no place for RAW. RAW may be less important than it was in 3e, but, I'd wager a guess that it is still very important.

For example, take the first line of a Charm Person spell - it only works on a target you can see. That's specifically called out in the spell. Why? Because the hiding rules are a bit vague, so, they put the RAW elements into the spell descriptions. If you read the spell descriptions, you'll see the line "Target you can see" repeated in a lot of spells. Again, to make RAW an important thing. If you look at AD&D, you'll see that the line "target you can see" rarely appears. Can you target an invisible target with a Charm Person in AD&D? Well, that's a DM's call. In 5e, it's a RAW call.