A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Maxperson, the fact that you and your group didn't play 4e doesn't respond to what I posted:

(1) It can't be true that, in D&D, it is unrealistc or (more unrealistic) for someone to survive a fireball, as that has been part of the game from the beginning;

(2) You've not articulated any reason why it the way the survival is determined at the table (by roll or by stipulation) should affect the degree of realism of the fiction;

(3) It can'be be true that, in D&D, only the GM can make decisions such as that a fireball doesn't kill someone - because in 4e a player can make that decision;

(4) If a player or GM, on any given occasion when they can make such a decision, thinks that survival would be unrealistic then they can make that call - which has happened on occasion in my 4e game.​

This isn't abour preferences. This is about whether or not a particular mechanic affects realism. You've given no reason why it should. And you make assertions about your game being more realistic than my game, but with no evidence - eg you have no idea what proportion of characters have survived fireballs in my game compared to in your game.

Which really goes back to the proposition at the heart of this thread: if realism is about the properties of the fiction, there is no reason to think that GM-driven play increases that realism; and if realism is about the process of producing the fiction, no reason has been given to suggest that GM-decides is more realistic than any other method of authorship.

Yes, this is the central point of the whole discussion. Why is it held, by anyone, that somehow DMs (at least in D&D if not other systems) are somehow blessed with a 'realism gene' that all the other participants in the game lack? Why are dice more realistic than people? As with you, I am mystified by this. I have asserted it is a holdover of early D&D paradigms that have formed a tradition, which is a theory at least, but its hard to see why it persists so stubbornly.

 

[Hussar]

I'd also point out in 5e, if you play by RAW anyway, it's almost impossible to flat out kill anyone. You need to drill them to negative max HP in a single hit, or force 3 death saves (and, as such, impossible to do in a single hit with anything).

Sure, you can knock them out, but, you can then stabilize anyone with a simple check.

Is it different than straight up stating that fireballs can just knock someone out? Sure, maybe, but, again, in play, there's no practical difference. It's virtually impossible to outright kill anyone with more than about 15 HP or so with a fireball.

 

[pemerton]

You can't tell me that there is no concept of non-lethal damage in 4e and then quote me the rule that says that there is. The very fact that you can choose to knock a creature out rather than kill means that there are two types of damage. Lethal and non-lethal. If there weren't, you wouldn't have that choice.

This is not a good argument. From the fact that fireballs sometimes kill people, but sometimes just knock them out, it doesn't follow that there are two types of damage.

You've already stated that, in your game, some people caught in a fireball, or in red dragon's breath, survive while others do not. That doesn't mean there are two types of fire damage in uyour game - lethal and non-lethal. It just means that some fireball attacks are not fatal.

4e is the same. Some fireball attacks knock their targets unconscious but do not kill them. That's always been a feature of any version of D&D that does not use zero hp = death. It doesn't mean that there are two types of fire damage.

The rule about damage is a general one that involves both time travel and a highly unrealistic ability to alter damage types.

Huh? There's no time travel.

The target is hit by the fireball. Depending on a combination of damage rolls and/or player decisions, the target either remains concsious, falls unconscious or dies. That actually seems quite realistic to me. A game in which people hit by fireballs either remained concsious, or died, but never fell unconscious, would seem somewhat unrealistic.

And there's nothing unreleastic about a player making decisions about the effect of an attack made by his/her PC.

 

[Maxperson]

I'd also point out in 5e, if you play by RAW anyway, it's almost impossible to flat out kill anyone. You need to drill them to negative max HP in a single hit, or force 3 death saves (and, as such, impossible to do in a single hit with anything).

Sure, you can knock them out, but, you can then stabilize anyone with a simple check.

Is it different than straight up stating that fireballs can just knock someone out? Sure, maybe, but, again, in play, there's no practical difference. It's virtually impossible to outright kill anyone with more than about 15 HP or so with a fireball.

This is just another Strawman of the argument being made, which you would know if you bothered to read the posts you respond to. The argument being made has never been that a fireball instakills. It has been that a fireball uses a lethal damage type, not a non-lethal damage type. When your PC is reduced to 0 by a fireball, he is down and DYING, not down and comfortably resting. The reason he is down and DYING is that fire is a lethal damage type.

 

[Maxperson]

This is not a good argument. From the fact that fireballs sometimes kill people, but sometimes just knock them out, it doesn't follow that there are two types of damage.

You've already stated that, in your game, some people caught in a fireball, or in red dragon's breath, survive while others do not. That doesn't mean there are two types of fire damage in uyour game - lethal and non-lethal. It just means that some fireball attacks are not fatal.

Ahh, a veritable Strawarmy has attacked overnight. See my response to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], which you also knew before you posted that.

Huh? There's no time travel.

The player doesn't make the decision until after the target hits 0 with the lethal damage type. If the player makes the decision to make the fire soft and cuddly in order not to potentially kill the target, he has to rewind time to retroactively make that change to the fireball BEFORE it hits the target.

And there's nothing unreleastic about a player making decisions about the effect of an attack made by his/her PC.

The effect has already happened before the decision is made.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This is just another Strawman of the argument being made, which you would know if you bothered to read the posts you respond to. The argument being made has never been that a fireball instakills. It has been that a fireball uses a lethal damage type, not a non-lethal damage type. When your PC is reduced to 0 by a fireball, he is down and DYING, not down and comfortably resting. The reason he is down and DYING is that fire is a lethal damage type.

He may be comfortably resting, we won't know until after all the death saves. Speaking of time travel....

The crux here is that fireballs do not inflict lethal damage prior to zero hitpoints, and everyone agrees with this. You have 45 hp and a fireball dies 36? Doesn't kill you. The question then becomes what happens when you're reduced to zero. Max contends that fire is always trying to kill you, so when it gets the chance at zero hitpoints, it's gonna try to kill you. The other camp contends that it's all just damage, and, as such, fungible in the game rules because the fiction can accommodate. This is just another facet of the fiction as an input vs fiction as an output divide.

For Max, the fictional danger of fire must be set prior to adjudicating any resolution. He's consistent in this with how he handles other damage -- it must be established prior to the resolution. The other side figures it's just damage, so we can resolve and then figure out what matches the resolution. This is fine, both ways work.

The issue I have with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s assessment here is where he asserts that determining the fiction prior to resolution is more "realistic" than not. It's not more realistic, it just matches your sensibilities better. Being knocked out from a fireball isn't less realistic than being killed by one. That should be obvious. The problem Max has is that he doesn't like to resolve then create fiction, he wants to create fiction so that there are limited, usually binary, outcomes that the resolution picks from. In this case, fire will always kill is an input to the resolution, so if resolution results in 0 hitpoints, fire kills, if not, fire damages. Again, this works fine, it's just not more realistic in the way [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] defines it -- this isn't more like the real world where fire can cause unconsciousness (especially in cases where it's relatively easy to revive the victim) . Oddly, it could be in the way I've defined it but that Max flatly rejects, ie that realism means coherent, internally consistent, and believable.

 

[Maxperson]

He may be comfortably resting, we won't know until after all the death saves.

This is wrong. We know after the very first death save, because if he was resting comfortably no death saves would be made at all. Even a single death save means that the person is dying.

The crux here is that fireballs do not inflict lethal damage prior to zero hitpoints, and everyone agrees with this. You have 45 hp and a fireball dies 36? Doesn't kill you. The question then becomes what happens when you're reduced to zero.

They are inflicting a lethal damage type regardless. That you get lucky, skillfully dodge, hide behind a pillar, etc., leaving you with 9 hit points out of 45, does not mean that the fire is not a lethal damage type.

The issue I have with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s assessment here is where he asserts that determining the fiction prior to resolution is more "realistic" than not. It's not more realistic, it just matches your sensibilities better. Being knocked out from a fireball isn't less realistic than being killed by one. That should be obvious. The problem Max has is that he doesn't like to resolve then create fiction, he wants to create fiction so that there are limited, usually binary, outcomes that the resolution picks from. In this case, fire will always kill is an input to the resolution, so if resolution results in 0 hitpoints, fire kills, if not, fire damages. Again, this works fine, it's just not more realistic in the way [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] defines it -- this isn't more like the real world where fire can cause unconsciousness (especially in cases where it's relatively easy to revive the victim) . Oddly, it could be in the way I've defined it but that Max flatly rejects, ie that realism means coherent, internally consistent, and believable.

Fire being a lethal damage type is more realistic than fire that wants to tuck you in at night and make you comfy. It might also be consistent, coherent and believable, but it is also more realistic.

 

[pemerton]

The player doesn't make the decision until after the target hits 0 with the lethal damage type. If the player makes the decision to make the fire soft and cuddly in order not to potentially kill the target, he has to rewind time to retroactively make that change to the fireball BEFORE it hits the target.

But I've seen this rule in play, and I've never travelled in time. Nor have any of the PCs in my game travelled in time when this sort of thing happens. So I know from experience you're wrong.

(And it's weird to describe damage as "soft and cuddly" when it knocks someone unconcsious. To me that actually seems rather brutal. When I used to play AD&D it was not uncommon for PCs to be knocked unconscious. No one thought that this meant that the damage being dealt was "non lethal" or "soft and cuddly". I think 3E has a similar mechanic. And you purport to be familiar with AD&D and 3E.)

What you seem to be confused about is the resolution system in question. In 4e it goes like this:

(1) Apply damage to target;

(2) If damage leaves target at >0 hp, target remains conscious'

(3) If damage drops target to 0 or fewer hp, player makes choice - either target is unconscious, or target is dead.​

There's no time travel. The player's choice about whether the damage is fatal or merely debilitating is part of the resolution process.

In terms of raw mechanics, this is actually no different from what Gygax proposes in his DMG (p 110), except that in 4e the mechanic is player-side whereas Gygax is envisaging a GM-side mechanic:

Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player-character when they have played well. When they have done something stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they may!​

In 4e, the player has the right to "adjudicate the situation" when a foe is reduced to zero hp. This isn't "time travel", just making a choice about the fiction that results from a particular category of successful check.

You may not like the rule, just as - perhaps - you don't like Gygax's suggested rule and don't use it. But neither is hard to make sense of, neither involves "time travel", neither requires any concept of "non-lethal damage" (just the banal notion of "not-fatal attack"), and neither produces unrealistic outcomes in the fiction.

Fire being a lethal damage type is more realistic than fire that wants to tuck you in at night and make you comfy.

"Lethal damage type" isn't a technical term in 4e. So I can only assume it means is able to kill you. Fire can kill things in 4e. My game has seen numerous beings hurt and killed by fire.

That doesn't mean its unreaslistic that sometimes, people who are attacked by fire fall unconscious but don't die.

 

[Maxperson]

When I used to play AD&D it was not uncommon for PCs to be knocked unconscious.

Really? When I played AD&D a fireball knocking someone exactly to 0 was rare. If it happened more than 1 time in 20, I would be shocked. Typically, if they dropped below 1 hit point, it was into the negatives somewhere and they were dying, not merely knocked out.

I think 3E has a similar mechanic. And you purport to be familiar with AD&D and 3E.)

Yep. 3e had you down and dying as well.

(3) If damage drops target to 0 or fewer hp, player makes choice - either target is unconscious, or target is dead.

Fire should not allow that choice. Prior to the fireball hitting the target, the fire damage was lethal damage. After hitting the target and the player discovering that the target is now down, it's now non-lethal damage. Retroactively applying the change to fire is time travel.

In terms of raw mechanics, this is actually no different from what Gygax proposes in his DMG (p 110), except that in 4e the mechanic is player-side whereas Gygax is envisaging a GM-side mechanic:

No. In his description there the fire is still doing lethal damage. It has just failed to kill the PC outright. He is also saying to only do it when super bad luck is going to kill the PC(not NPC of any type) outright, not whenever the DM feels like it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This is wrong. We know after the very first death save, because if he was resting comfortably no death saves would be made at all. Even a single death save means that the person is dying.

Dying in a game term sense, but not dying in the fiction. As shown by the rurst death save coming up a 20 -- back to 1 hp, only knocjed a bit loopy by the blow for just a brief moment. Dying means death occurs if no intervention happens, and we don't know this until 3 failures. Death saves don't, by RAW, have any meaning after 3 successes or failures have accrued -- they disappear and are tracked anew if needed.

Dearh saves are just an extended abstract resolution mechanic -- they have no assigned fiction. A failed death save has mo assigned fiction, only 3 do.


[Quite]
They are inflicting a lethal damage type regardless. That you get lucky, skillfully dodge, hide behind a pillar, etc., leaving you with 9 hit points out of 45, does not mean that the fire is not a lethal damage type.
[/quote]
"Lethal" is baggage you're bringing. It doesn't exist in the rules, and doesn't need to. As such, it's as I said above: fiction you establish to limit the scope of resolutions to preferred outcomes. And that's fine and good -- no insult or demeanment should attach, here. But, it is very much something you bring in that you like, not realism. Fire is often nonlethal in the real world, else firemen would be in trouble.

Fire being a lethal damage type is more realistic than fire that wants to tuck you in at night and make you comfy. It might also be consistent, coherent and believable, but it is also more realistic.

Any damage in the real world is lethal under this concept Max. Name a real world type of damage that isn't lethal. It's just a matter of degree. You've chosen to state that the degree of fire in your game is always lethal at 0 hitpoints. I can't even translate that to the real world, so how can that be more realistic? Others say that fire damage is variably lethal. This, at least, tracks better into the real wotld. Under your assumption, anyone that fails unconscious while taking any fire damage would automatically be dying or dead (I guess it depends on theur PC/NPC status?).

That's not even getting to the point that the game treats any heat damage as fire damage. Steam? Fire damage. Heat Metal? Fire damage. Hug a remorhaz? Fire damage.