In music, for example, chord progressions exist and are vital. In the vast majority of allegedly "only did good work because no one told them they couldn't" cases, the composer will either have an intuitive understanding of chord progressions (particularly cadences), or accidentally re-create them, or imitate the extremely popular ones they heard as a child/teen (e.g. the vast majority of "pop" music uses the exact same four-chord progression, as
quite humorously parodied by Axis of Awesome.)
I play music with a couple of guys, and come up with my own tunes now and then. They've both got formal musical training. I don't. And during this messing around I've been told on numerous occasions "What you just did there, it's not supposed to work. But it does." This is the sort of thing I mean: going outside the guidelines can work and sometimes does.
If "generally, vaguely, kinda sorta tells [you] what to expect" is all you need, why are you so hung up on an absolute representation then? The narrative part of a monster--the part that doesn't change, the part that is always true in the world, regardless of what abstractions we derive from it--tells you at least that much anyway. The combat mechanics don't need to.
When talking about "what I expect" I'm referring to the potential outcome of a combat with all the other assumptions - absolute representations, etc. - already in place.
...so...you're not even actually playing D&D, you're playing "the thing I made from D&D that includes several systems that were never part of any official D&D in order to make the things I want to make sense actually make sense"?
Just like any other dyed-in-the-wool kitbasher.
Come on, man. This isn't cool for a meaningful discussion about things. You can't substitute "the thing I built out of D&D which differs in key ways from every published D&D" for "D&D," no matter how much you might like to.
Well, that's what you're gonna get.
Hard disagree, if only because there's absolutely no reason a character should be able to "see in the fiction" that an adult black dragon's scales are 2 points worse than an adult red dragon's scales--arbitrary differences that, while meaningful for what choices you might make, are only meaningfully available to the players if they read the statblock itself.
The meaningfulness comes once the characters have tried hitting each one a few times and been able to realize that chopping through one type of scales is a bit easier than through the other.
Stop.
Stop right there.
I did not say it has "different intrinsic toughness."
Yes you did. See below.
That's something YOU are bringing into this. Stop doing that.
I said its intrinsic toughness remains: but the way that intrinsic toughness manifests in any given context changes.
An ogre, for a 3rd-level character, should be very hard to hit with even a glancing blow, but even a glancing blow should contribute to taking it down. That's both a real, physical element of the world, AND a narrative, pacing element of the game. 4th edition manifests this as "to a 3rd-level character, an ogre is a powerful solo monster with higher-than-average AC and HP." To a 13th-level character, it is not only easy to hit an ogre for at least a glancing blow, it's reasonably possible that they could just cleave through its defenses with a single telling blow. But instead of trying to somehow force "AC 25" to simultaneously be super-duper-ultra-hard for a 3rd-level character AND super-duper-ultra-easy for a 13th-level character (a very delicate balancing act that, quite often, simply fails), it says: "Okay. When you land a hit on an ogre as a 13th-level character, it's not the same kind of thing as when you land a hit as a 3rd-level character. You hit an ogre at 13th, you're gonna kill it dead. Skip over all the complicated mathematical gyrations to make that happen, and just say it happens."
And that's what an ogre minion IS: it is recognizing that, BECAUSE a hit from a 13th-level character is simply so much more than a hit from a 3rd-level character, and BECAUSE the toughness of an ogre doesn't and shouldn't change, the mechanical representation MUST change in order to account for the new relative difference between the far-more-powerful character and the no-more-powerful ogre.
If the mechanics don't reflect the intrinsics (or vice-versa) then either the mechanics are garbage or the intrinsics are garbage; because
reflection of the intrinsics is what those mechanics exist to do. Period. They'r either locked together or they're useless, pick one.
Which means that yes, you DID say the intrinsic toughness changed when you said the mechanical toughness changed.
I didn't say that. I said that pretending an abstraction is reality is the problem. "The map is not the territory." There IS a difference between "these are what the mechanics say about this monster" and "this is the absolute totality of what this monster IS." There has to be.
No there doesn't; and further, any such difference is an error in the mechanics at best and plain poor design at worst.
A map, to be of any practical use at all other than artwork or a vague schematic, has to
accurately portray what it's being asked to portray. You don't just put a note on a nautical chart saying "By the way, there might or might not be a dangerous rock in this area somewhere"; instead you do the surveying, find the rock if it exists, note its precise location and height/depth relative to chart datum, and then put it on the chart exactly where it is in relation to everything else.
Same with mechanical representaiton of a creature. It's only any use if it's accurate.
You keep projecting onto me the notion that the mechanics MUST be one, singular, only representation when I have explicitly rejected that notion and asked for you to demonstrate why it should be that way. Stop just steamrolling with that same assumption, and either justify it, or accept that you're bringing an assumption that is just, flat, NOT required.
You say assumption, I say fact. And I have justified it, numerous times, with these words: internal setting consistency.
That right there is all the justification required and more.
Not at all unrelated. It is a problem that precisely and exactly arises from treating abstractions (HP) as though they really, literally, physically were the object being abstracted, and not merely symbols standing in for something. When you accept the abstraction AS an abstraction, you can then accept that modifications to that abstraction must also be understood as abstracted away from the actual, physical thing, and thus look for whatever actual situation is happening to have given rise to that abstraction in the first place.
Fine, but when there's a choice between minimizing the degree of abstraction and doing anything else, taking the minimum route seems both easiest and most logical.
Again, you are conflating weird edge-cases with consistent numbers, which is exactly what the problem with 3rd edition IS: that it sets hard numbers for things, and then almost immediately invalidates those numbers because players have the freedom to build their own solutions outside those limits. I'm not talking "dealing 45 damage on a crit." I'm talking "dealing 45 average damage." Because, believe it or not, sometimes it really is possible to achieve crap like that in 3e. You even see shades of it in 5e, despite the overall power-down of the system; for instance, IIRC, it was quite possible (20%or 25% probability, IIRC) for a commoner to deceive Asmodeus himself, while simultaneously being possible for an ultra-tricked-out hyperfocused Bard to fail to do so with roughly the same chance. THAT is the kind of enslavement to numbers I'm talking about: again, NOT weird statistical edge cases, but reasonably common events. (One in five commoners attempting to lie to the Prince of Darkness himself really shouldn't succeed.)
To flip this around - and I don't say this in criticism - instead of pulling edge-case random events you're pulling edge-case rules exploits, which are something any worthwhile DM should shut down as soon as they arise. Why the different approaches to each? Simple. Edge-case random events are just that: random, unpredictable, and infrequent-to-rare. Edge-case rules exploits are repeatable at will and, unless shut down, can and will become commonplace once found.
Not at all. Players are not permitted to fiat declare success, for instance. The rules can and do limit what players can do. With relative representation, however, the system no longer needs to set such rigid scaling, because it innately accounts for "you now deal so much damage that, if you even hit an ogre once, it just dies." So the players are free to employ their zany schemes without being shut down by "no, sorry, you can't do that, it's too much damage" or "no, that's an unfair advantage over the fighter" or whatever.
This assumes there's been such a ramp-up in power level on the part of the PCs that they can ever get to the point where an ogre can be one-shotted every single time. I don't see that as achievable; a character can still roll '1' on the damage die and if their bonuses give enough plusses to take down a 40 h.p. ogre even on a minimum roll that's simply not a game I'm interested in playing.
Put another way, and in more general terms, I see the ramp-up in PC power as being (more than) enough to reflect their development as they advance in level; and see no need at all to also correspondingly weaken (or, at low PC levels, strengthen) the creatures they're facing. It also depends, I suppose, on just how much difference you want there to be between a 1st level PC* and a 12th-level PC*.
* - or 1 HD (or CR 1) monster and 12 HD (or CR 12) monster, either comparison works for this purpose.
No, they aren't. The numbers are there to represent how the creature interacts with its current environment. They don't need--and have never needed--to represent the whole entirety of the creature as a natural object for all time.
Where I think the numbers not only need to do that, but doing that is why they exist at all.
The numbers exist to enable actions, and to respond to the actions of others. D&D has never handled monster-on-monster action particularly well, and 4e was honest enough to admit that.
Not that it exactly comes up every week, but on the occasions it has I've never had any problem whatsoever in handling monster-v-monster interactions*. This is the advantage of absolute representation: the setting can interact with itself on a consistent basis if-when it has to.
* - some example of how this has come up in my games:
--- [rare] the PCs come on to some monsters that are fighting each other, so they take cover and watch the proceedings in order to a) assess the capabilities of the combatants and-or b) let them beat each other up and then move in and finish them all off
--- [common] the PCs summon some monsters and turn them loose to wreak what havoc they can while the PCs do other things elsewhere
--- [rare] a shapeshifted or polymorphed individual, having for whatever reason retained few if any of its original abilities, enters or is forced into combat while still in that form
Most of the time with the first two instances and every time with the third instance I do the requisite rolling and play these out as full combats; an example exception would be if in the first instance there's a huge number of creatures involved I'm not going to roll for each one of them.
I mean, if we want to talk about gamist BS in editions, how about that explicit rule in...was it OD&D or 1e? where the instant a monster allies with the party, it loses its darkvision. Doesn't that pretty well put the pin in the idea that the abstractions were EVER meant to represent the sum totality of things, and were instead meant to represent the interactions between things?
Fortunately I've never encountered this incredibly ass-dumb rule; were I to ever trip over it - or anything else that ridiculous - I'd remove it from my game before I'd finished reading the sentence it was in.
So you agree that you aren't actually playing D&D-qua-D&D then? Because D&D doesn't use "body-fatigue" or "wound-vitality" systems....except...well, you aren't going to like this, but 4e does. Healing Surges ARE a "body-fatigue" system. You can only squeeze so much healing out of a person before they just run out of juice, and even magic can't do much about that. (Daily powers can! ...but those come back in exactly the same way surges do, so it's a wash.)
Healing surges aren't it, but you're right in that 4e is the only D&D edition to even wave at a body-fatigue system in any way; and that's with its 'bloodied' mechanic. 4e IMO went way too far with some of what it did, so its perhaps ironic that I say here that with this mechanic they didn't go nearly far enough; as it's a pretty short jump from bloodied to a full-on body-fatigue or wound-vitality system.
A 747 is hollow and has engines. I'm pretty sure those work differently from flappy wings, and that dragons are not only not hollow, but have very heavy bones. Being flippant about this isn't brightening up the conversation.
Birds aren't hollow either, but their bones are; as I think would also be those of dragons other than a few key structural pieces e.g. spine and leg bones.
Who said anything about "morphing" the setting? You keep projecting these ideas. Please, please, please stop. I said that the RULES are about what the PCs do, not that the SETTING is about what the PCs do. The rules are not the setting, and the setting is not the rules. (Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to play homebrew settings with the same rules, nor established settings with alternate rulesets!)
The rules simultaneously define and reflect the setting, which is why every time I change a rule I have to be a bit careful as in doing so I'm also changing the underlying physics of the setting. If for example I was to take the homebrew setting I'm using for my current game and suddenly overlay, say, the 3.5e or Pathfinder ruleset on to it; though the physical aspects of the setting e.g. mountains, oceans, etc. wouldn't change, aspects of just about every living or undead creature would, and quite dramatically in some cases.
Whereas in my experience, a lone survivor of a party means the game ends, because no one has any meaningful notion of how you can bounce back from that sort of catastrophic failure.
I've seen it happen numerous times both as DM and player. The survivor either finds a way to revive some or all of the fallen companions or goes out and recruits a new party. Simple.
The map is not equivalent to the territory. The territory comes first; you draw the map after, and you draw it based on what you need the map to accomplish. It is, I argue, just as needles to say, "One territory, one map. End of story." How could one map possibly be the correct answer for all situations a "describe the physical space" need might appear in, even if we only consider its use for navigating around?
The map, regardless of purpose, still needs to be accurate.
