D&D 5E How has your personal experience/expertise affected rulings?

[Caliban]

I know I rambled, but I'd be curious to see what experience and expertise you've had in certain areas and activities, and how that made you do some houseruling to your games.

I grew up in a trailer park in the middle of Texas. I use my experiences and personal knowledge to inform the social structures of the goblins, orcs, and humans that live in the poorer areas on the outskirts of the cities in my campaign.

i.e. they are violently xenophobic, but can be reasoned with if you open your negotiations with a gift of cheap alcohol and agree with whatever complaints they have about taxes, the local government, and the city watch.

 

[MNblockhead]

It also showed up in the Holmes basic book under an example of play. A PC lit natural spiderwebs on fire and burned up a bunch of enemy spiders.

I beg to differ with those who have been posting that lighting webs on fire is unrealistic. Old, dusty cobwebs can be a significant fire hazard in real live. Perhaps fresh webs are not flammable. But spiders in a dungeon are unlikely to clean up after themselves, so I would expect there to be old and new webs, and that you could light a fire and burn up the webs and spiders.

The National Ag Safety Database lists "cobwebs" under "highly flammable or combustable materials" and warns against having cobwebs where you store "machinery or near any type of electrical or heat source."

A Barn Safety Expert from the National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) Technical Committee on Fire Safety in Animal Housing Facilities warns of the danger of cobwebs:

Cobwebs A Danger

Loveman says that brooms and rakes are two of the best fire prevention tools available to barn owners. "Get rid of cobwebs hanging from the rafters," she says. Even though cobwebs are persistent—they seem to grow back over night—keeping after them robs fire of an easy pathway to spread throughout a barn. "Cobwebs provide excellent pathways along which flame can travel--so quickly that in seconds fire will have spread from one end of the barn to the other. In addition, flaming pieces of cobwebs falling into stalls will start new fires."

Again, I think that much of the danger is that old spider webs have collected dust.

 

[Mercule]

Actually, no. I can actually was friends with an 18 intelligence 3 wisdom sort of person who was profoundly intelligent, but basically needed an adult caretaker to watch after him. I was just barely intelligent enough to understand him, and he found me just barely intelligent enough to not be threatening and mysterious.

Yeah. I actually pondered Rainman while writing and hoped no one would call me on it. But, as you say, he wasn't exactly functional. To the point about "medicine is an INT skill", would he have made an effective doctor, even one with a marginally less pleasant bedside manner than House? I would guess not. To actually use either intelligence or wisdom, you need both. Again, game abstraction. you can argue the two aren't hard-linked, but they are for most intents, if you want to gain the benefit of the high score.

It's probably even more difficult to have a high effective wisdom with a remarkably low intelligence, barring the excuse of "instinct". Cunning and judgement are the application of knowledge. If you don't know that something is a hazard, it's very hard to have the wisdom to avoid it.

[/quote]And while I agree agility is interconnected with strength, dexterity is a far broader concept. It certainly not at all clear to me that anyone who is strong is necessarily agile or dexterous, and it's only slightly more convincing that high agility implies high strength to weight ratio. And in any event, since Mass is not an ability score (as it is in BRP/CoC) in D&D, it's not clear how we would accurately constrain the two anyway.[/QUOTE]
Definitely some good thoughts. I'm going to drop back to "abstraction" here, too. If we assume that gymnasts and dancers are marquee examples of high-dexterity individuals, we can also use them as examples of good musculature. That's not the same as saying they are heavily muscled or extremely strong. In D&D terms, they would have above average strengths, but probably not above, say, 13 as a very broad general rule.

I'll definitely agree, though, that a high strength is probably significantly less reliant on a high dexterity. There's a potential rabbit hole around dexterity giving you the ability to correctly position your body to apply your brute force, but I really don't want to go down that road. On occasion, an extremely high strength could even be a hindrance to dexterity, as you get the cliched muscled-bound tough that's too thick to turn his head. Without a Mass stat, as you mentioned, that really isn't clear.

Come to think of it, one could even say that dexterity is limited by low wisdom because you need sufficient perception to be able to have the good hand-eye-coordination that is part of dexterity.

Regardless of all the above, my point actually was this:

The D&D ability scores aren't quite as big of an abstraction as hit points, but they're still a pretty big abstraction. The real world is considerably more complex. While a system could be crafted to account for some of that complexity, it would quickly hit a point of diminishing returns (IMO) and probably isn't worth the effort. Personally, I'd rather leave the exact definitions of the ability scores a bit squishy and subject to interpretation. That way, my Rogue can be an amazing juggler, capable of catching almost anything thrown at him, but totally oblivious to social cues; but my Ranger excuses his high dexterity as being an effect of his incredible perception making him always prepared for action. Both have a high dexterity, and the game effects are identical. One acts quickly because of their body. The other because of their mind.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I grew up in a trailer park in the middle of Texas. I use my experiences and personal knowledge to inform the social structures of the goblins, orcs, and humans that live in the poorer areas on the outskirts of the cities in my campaign.

i.e. they are violently xenophobic, but can be reasoned with if you open your negotiations with a gift of cheap alcohol and agree with whatever complaints they have about taxes, the local government, and the city watch.

I found this extra funny because I grew up in a single parent household in poor white rural America lol. And it's true in large part

 

[Soul Stigma]

I beg to differ with those who have been posting that lighting webs on fire is unrealistic. Old, dusty cobwebs can be a significant fire hazard in real live. Perhaps fresh webs are not flammable. But spiders in a dungeon are unlikely to clean up after themselves, so I would expect there to be old and new webs, and that you could light a fire and burn up the webs and spiders.

The National Ag Safety Database lists "cobwebs" under "highly flammable or combustable materials" and warns against having cobwebs where you store "machinery or near any type of electrical or heat source."

A Barn Safety Expert from the National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) Technical Committee on Fire Safety in Animal Housing Facilities warns of the danger of cobwebs:



Again, I think that much of the danger is that old spider webs have collected dust.

Spider webs aren't flammable, but cobwebs often are, for the reason you mention. However, webs actively used by spiders are not flammable, but will shrivel away from heat, so can be easily destroyed using fire. Applying fire damage to the spiders, though, I would take issue with.

I guess my point is, I'll easily allow a party to destroy a web instantly with a torch, flame bolt, etc., to render the terrain normal, but the spiders in the area will not be harmed.

 

[Uchawi]

Is the DM trying to relate a story or a realistic world? The former tends to lead to railroad answers and the later random dice rolls.

 

[Celebrim]

You can be very intelligent and lack "common sense". The difference between intelligence and wisdom is all around us on a daily basis, so I have no problem seeing the two as completely separate things either.

Sure. But "common sense" has almost no relationship to wisdom, though of course "common sense" says otherwise.

Common sense is largely a social construct. It's the basic working model of the world that society constructs and imparts to its members, and which largely exists unquestioned by the members of society. Having no "common sense" can make it hard at times to relate to other members of society, and people with poor social skills similar fail to learn "common sense" from lack of socialization. But whether that is an advantage or disadvantage depends on the particulars of that body of knowledge. Most societies have "common sense" which is a highly evolved construct, based on the accumulated practical knowledge of centuries. And as such, "common sense" often is very practical as it concerns every day affairs. It also tends to be wildly wrong in areas that humans reason poorly in (statistics, quantification, etc.) and in areas humans don't have direct experience or about things which aren't experienced every day.

People from two different cultures can also have profound culture shock when encountering the other cultures "common sense", which will mostly seem like insanity rather than sense to the other person.

 

[Celebrim]

It's probably even more difficult to have a high effective wisdom with a remarkably low intelligence, barring the excuse of "instinct". Cunning and judgement are the application of knowledge. If you don't know that something is a hazard, it's very hard to have the wisdom to avoid it.

Knowing something is a hazard is wisdom. Explaining why it is a hazard or even something as basic as how you know it is a hazard is intelligence.

It might be a good start to explaining the way I utilize the mental skills in my games to quote myself from an earlier conversation on the relationship of alignment to mental attributes:

"Intelligent: Intelligent people are more likely to have thought out a sophisticated and coherent version of their beliefs and to be able to express exactly what they do believe and why. The less intelligent the character, the less coherent their explanation for what they believe is likely to be, and the less sophisticated is their description of their beliefs. That doesn't however make them less likely to behave 'well', for whatever their alignment describes as 'well'.

Wisdom: High wisdom people are better able to understand the implications of their own beliefs, recognize when choices are consistent with their beliefs, and will themselves to follow the dictates of their beliefs even when that choice would be hard. The higher your wisdom, the more likely you are to consistently act the way you state that you should act. Low wisdom people are less able to understand the implications of their own beliefs, more likely to misjudge how they should behave, and less able to follow the dictates of their own beliefs even when they want to. It doesn't mean that they are inherently less good, it just means that they fail more often and less conscious of their failures. Once they recognize their own failures, they'll sincerely try to rectify them. It's worth noting that the higher your wisdom, the more 'depraved' it is to consciously decide to do what you know is not right, and the greater the moral hazard risked by that choice. Conversely, very low wisdom people might not even know their own hearts enough to know even what their alignment is.

Charisma: High charisma people are better able to represent themselves as persons of their alignment to others, better able to persuade others that they are behaving reasonably, and generally more likeable regardless of the fact that their beliefs may differ than your own. Low charisma people on the other hand generally poorly represent themselves as members of their alignment, less able to persuade others that their beliefs are reasonable, and generally more odious regardless of your views about their beliefs. Members of the same alignment may consider them embarrassing, and members of opposing alignments may use them as stereotypes of the wrongs of that alignment - regardless of whether or not the person actually commits said 'wrongs'."

Regardless of all the above, my point actually was this:

The D&D ability scores aren't quite as big of an abstraction as hit points, but they're still a pretty big abstraction. The real world is considerably more complex. While a system could be crafted to account for some of that complexity, it would quickly hit a point of diminishing returns (IMO) and probably isn't worth the effort.

I agree with that point.

 

[Celebrim]

I found this extra funny because I grew up in a single parent household in poor white rural America lol. And it's true in large part

Yes, but if you've travelled widely enough, you know that there are "rednecks" of all races, colors, and socio-economic backgrounds - it's not just the rural Scot-Irish. There is also an incredibly profound relationship between inner city residents that have never left their neighborhood, and rural people who have never left their community. And that's true regardless of socio-economic class. All narrow horizons seem to produce similar tribal outlooks, even if your narrow horizons are say Manhattan.

 

[goatmeal]

As many have discussed in this thread (and I haven’t read the entire thing) much of the game is built on abstractions and isn’t really intended to model our world directly. I used to get hung up on certain things that I thought weren’t “realistic” and came up with lots of house rules to adjust them. What I found was that players were either confused or even angry about these ideas. There are enough rules to learn for new players without trying to be “realistic.”

Having said that, to your original point, I have had fun in Pathfinder relating my knowledge of chemistry to the alchemist class. This has never been in any way that changes the rules to be more scientific, as many of the discoveries verge into hopelessly unscientific territory. What I did instead was use some of the terminology of early chemists/alchemists in the game. Making the game experience a bit more fun without fiddling at all with the rules. I did write an article about this that gets into a bit more detail (and does introduce some new discoveries, so technically is changing the rules a bit) but it’s currently under review so I can’t say much more about it for the time being.

In general, I would say that applying our own experiences to the game is probably best done in a way that leaves the rules mostly intact.