D&D 5E Ability Score Increases (I've changed my mind.)

[Lyxen]

Right, I can't be telling you the truth. I must be lying. I must just have started lying to myself after a single bad game, and never let myself truly play the way I "really" want to play.

Whoa, where did you get all these ideas ?

Intent doesn't matter. Only my actions. Until I say that, and then of course the intent matters, I just must have the wrong intent. Because how else could I end up both wanting to play at the powerline curve, and caring about story?!

Look man, you told us your story, and it makes sense. Why are you mad ?

 

[Lyxen]

Isn't that exactly what we are saying? Shouldn't the player know if their spell catches things on fire? Shouldn't a player know if they can cast a spell on their equipment?

And you are pretending that these small examples which are purely tied to combos (in particular the artificer one) are asked to understand how the world in general works ? Again, come on...

Heroic things like what? Are we talking Sin City "get run over by a car and keep going"? Are we talking "leap out of a building using a hose to swing on" like in Die Hard? What kind of "heroic things"?

How different are those, exactly ? Not very much, and if you look at hit points, this is exactly what they represent.

Also, why are you discounting Dark fantasy?

Where did you get the idea that I was discounting it ? But in general, it's sufficiently different from HF (which is, again, the default assumption of D&D) to warrant making things clear.

I've seen characters in dark fantasy keep fighting with multiple broken ribs and a broken leg, running towards the enemy through the pain. That seems rather "heroic" in terms of things you can do.

And yet, it's not the same thing as John MacClane stunts, and I'm sure you know it. How this relates to a cantrip's effect is still beyond me, though.

Just declaring a genre might not be enough to answer the question, hence why people might, you know, try and confirm that their view of Dark Fantasy lines up with yours... or they are lying powergamers seeking to fool you.

No, confirming general views of dark fantasy vs heroic fantasy and what can be expected is absolutely fine. But don't take us for idiots when trying to explain that this is why people want to know how a stupid cantrip works, where absolutely everyone on these forums are aware that, in the end, the only thing that matters to whoever is asking the question, is whether it allows the more powerful cantrips to work with the gauntlet. It has NOTHING to do with the flavour of the campaign, but just finding what the most powerful option is.

Right, can't take us liars at our words. Constant Vigilance. These powergamers can't fool you into letting them know what their characters are capable of. That might lead to ideas that are different than normal, AND CLEARLY MORE POWERFUL!!

Oh yes, like the question about the artificer's gauntlet is so original... Right, inventive that is... sigh

 

[Chaosmancer]

Hit points are an abstraction. They can be a bunch of different things. Stats and arrays are not an abstraction. They are what the game defines them as.

They are an abstraction of real life things that are themselves an abstraction. Unless you'd like to take a crack at defining "intelligence" in the real world. I'm pretty sure you'd win a nobel prize considering how contested the field is.

Lots of people only roll for stats. And lots only use arrays. What I do isn't the rarity you'd like it to be.

I am aware other people tell their players they are not allowed to use the Standard array. I knew that before even engaging in this conversation.

Nope. No more than the game is by limiting you to one class. This is not about your character no matter how much you try to make it be.

This is about nothing except the player's character. That is the only thing this affects. Nothing else in the game is changed by choosing to use the standard array instead of rolling. Certaintly not to the degree that multi-classing changes the game (oh, right, that optional rule that exists so the game doesn't limit you to one class)

Two things. Rolling stats and no dragonborn. Big bad me. So horrible.

You've banned far more than that. Good aligned Necromancers for one. Druids in metal armor if I remember another. I've been in plenty of debates with you Max, and you never budge.

Not my fun. OUR fun. If you don't have fun rolling stats, don't play in a game that rolls stats. For me, I'm not going to play in a game with arrays. Easy peasy. Both of us get our fun. Neither one of us should play in a game where our fun is ruined. Easy peasy. Both of us get our fun.

Only by making sure that the people who are playing are doing what you want. That's how you get "our". But see, my table has had people who like rolling stats AND people who like the array AND people who prefer point-buy. And, to help those people have fun, I've allowed all three. Seems like to have the most fun for the most people, you just have to let them pick the option they want.

You don't get to dictate to me what should or should not matter to my fun, just as I do not get to dictate what you should find fun or not. Don't do it.

Your fun appears to involve telling other people what to do. I don't agree with that.

Nope. I wouldn't say or think, "how dare this player try to ruin my fun." It would just be a no. Especially since the player agreed to roll or he wouldn't be in my game in the first place.

Right, so that has nothing to do with the quote about Theive's Cant. You said that you haven't explicitly banned it, but you do think it would ruin your fun, so what would you do if a player came to you? Would it be "No" just like that?

It absolutely 100% does assume rolling. That's what default is. An assumption made by the game. It assumes rolling and arrays both.

And yep, the game assumes that a full 1 in 5 people will not roll a 15 when they roll. That's a very significant number, so it can't assume that PCs will have a 15 before bonuses.

If it assumes both, then it is certainly less than 1 in 5 because every person who takes the array has a 15. So, if we assume a 50/50 split then it is actually closer to 10%, or 1 in 10. So, we are up to the point where 90% of the people are falling into a single category. That is plenty to make an assumption. Assumptions are never meant to be 100% accurate, and being 90% accurate is certainly good enough.

Yes. Your ridiculous real life stuff. It has no place in the game. The game definitions of these stats are what should be looked at.

And the game defintion of the standard array is that it is perfectly realistic. So if we should only look at game definitions, there we go.

If you want to keep talking about biological reality and perfect statistical models of reality, then we need to go beyond the game definitions.

I'm following what you are saying, but it's not relevant to this discussion. Nobody is saying we should mirror real life.

Except you. Every time we get to a point that requires you to call upon real life to support your argument. Then, as soon as I counter with real life, but in a different way, then you say that real life isn't relevant to the discussion. Until you need to bring it up again to support your position.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Whoa, where did you get all these ideas ?

From you telling me I should just be honest with myself (meaning I'm being dishonest, ie lying) and that I should recognize that one bad game (the gnome cleric) and that has led me to compromising in ways I don't really want to to mechanically optimize.

You know... literally your post calling me a liar and telling me how I really feel, because I'm clearly not being honest with you or me, or true to my ideals.

Look man, you told us your story, and it makes sense. Why are you mad ?

Repeatedly calling someone a liar because they aren't being honest with themselves tends to make them a bit prickly.

And you are pretending that these small examples which are purely tied to combos (in particular the artificer one) are asked to understand how the world in general works ? Again, come on...

Case in point. I must be lying. No one could actually want to know if their main weapon counts for a spell they could take. The only possible reason they might want to know if their primary weapon is compatible with an ability they might take is because they are a powergamer only looking to increase their power. Not a character who just leveled up and wondered which cantrips would be actually useful to them. After all, only power gamers choose options that are useful. What the player should really have done is just gotten the cantrip anyways, because they want to use their Boom-Boom gauntlet, not worried about any rules or rulings the DM made. Then, if the DM ruled against them, they just would have wasted a level up and have to wait til the next one to replace it, because they don't know how their own magic works.

How different are those, exactly ? Not very much, and if you look at hit points, this is exactly what they represent.

Quite different. A car going 60 mph is very different from a short fall onto a car. But, fine, you'd use HP to simulate this, wonderful. How much HP damage would someone take from trying a stop a galloping horse by wrestling it? Would you tell the player if they asked? Because some stories have the heroes stop a charging bull with their bare hands, other stories would have a galloping horse kill the hero. So is this game going to be a 1d10 damage horse, or a 10d10 damage horse?

Where did you get the idea that I was discounting it ? But in general, it's sufficiently different from HF (which is, again, the default assumption of D&D) to warrant making things clear.

And yet, it's not the same thing as John MacClane stunts, and I'm sure you know it. How this relates to a cantrip's effect is still beyond me, though.

Actually, I think that might literally be a John MacClane stunt.

But, here is how it relates to a cantrips effects. The idea of a genre being consistent is a myth. You could say you are preparing for "Dark Fantasy" and some people are prepared for hunting one monster to lead to multiple player deaths, and others are prepared for Berserk, where a single hero can cut down swathes of powerful enemies, but the themes and symbols are grotesquely dark. Both are Dark Fantasy.

So, a player might feel the need to ask. To clarify. This need for clarification moves beyond just genre, but into abilities too. Does a Frostball still catch things on fire? The character would know the answer to this, they did have to literally learn and memorize the spell. But the player doesn't, they need to ask. Is this magical weapon I gained as part of my class counted towards this cantrip? Again, the character would be learning the spell, knowing exactly how it works, so they already know, but the player has to ask.

And this is a larger issue than just one cantrip, this is something that extends deep into this abyss where DMs feel this compulsion to hide information from their players. But doing so makes telling the right type of story difficult, because the player may be playing by a different set of physics than the DM.

No, confirming general views of dark fantasy vs heroic fantasy and what can be expected is absolutely fine. But don't take us for idiots when trying to explain that this is why people want to know how a stupid cantrip works, where absolutely everyone on these forums are aware that, in the end, the only thing that matters to whoever is asking the question, is whether it allows the more powerful cantrips to work with the gauntlet. It has NOTHING to do with the flavour of the campaign, but just finding what the most powerful option is.

Or it isn't. It could be that the player just wants to make more thunder with their gauntlets, saw the spell when they leveled up and asked to confirm that their primary weapon qualified. Is that somehow less acceptable than if they were using a hammer and learned the cantrip? That one they wouldn't need to ask for, it clearly works, so why are you getting so bent out of shape because the person is asking a question when it is actually unclear? It isn't even that good of a combo considering Extra attack.

Oh yes, like the question about the artificer's gauntlet is so original... Right, inventive that is... sigh

True, these lies must just be the ones to lull you into a false sense of security. I mean, how could a player truly be confused about whether or not a special item gained via a class feature has a monetary value? The answer is self-evident.

 

[Helldritch]

And you are pretending that these small examples which are purely tied to combos (in particular the artificer one) are asked to understand how the world in general works ? Again, come on...



How different are those, exactly ? Not very much, and if you look at hit points, this is exactly what they represent.



Where did you get the idea that I was discounting it ? But in general, it's sufficiently different from HF (which is, again, the default assumption of D&D) to warrant making things clear.



And yet, it's not the same thing as John MacClane stunts, and I'm sure you know it. How this relates to a cantrip's effect is still beyond me, though.



No, confirming general views of dark fantasy vs heroic fantasy and what can be expected is absolutely fine. But don't take us for idiots when trying to explain that this is why people want to know how a stupid cantrip works, where absolutely everyone on these forums are aware that, in the end, the only thing that matters to whoever is asking the question, is whether it allows the more powerful cantrips to work with the gauntlet. It has NOTHING to do with the flavour of the campaign, but just finding what the most powerful option is.



Oh yes, like the question about the artificer's gauntlet is so original... Right, inventive that is... sigh

Your post is very up to the point and I agree with almost everything. Save for the last sentence.

You know that D&D has a history of borrowing from all sources available? From Alice in Wonderland, to Star Wars Light sabers with the wand of force in the original Unearthed Arcana, to Conan, Cthulhu, Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser nothing is safe from D&D poaching of idea. Hell, they even made not one but TWO Diablo source books (one was a boxed set if I remember correctly). I am still surprised that we do not have a WoW D&D source book yet...

 

[Maxperson]

I am aware other people tell their players they are not allowed to use the Standard array. I knew that before even engaging in this conversation.

Cool. Will you acknowledge that there are just as many that use only the standard array and don't allow rolling?

This is about nothing except the player's character. That is the only thing this affects. Nothing else in the game is changed by choosing to use the standard array instead of rolling. Certaintly not to the degree that multi-classing changes the game (oh, right, that optional rule that exists so the game doesn't limit you to one class)

Then I expect you to be complaining to WotC that they are controlling your character by only allowing you 1 class at first level. That's the same level of control that not being able to use the array is.

You've banned far more than that. Good aligned Necromancers for one. Druids in metal armor if I remember another. I've been in plenty of debates with you Max, and you never budge.

Wrong on both counts.

During 3e one of the character concepts that I never got to use was a good necromancer. I've never argued that they couldn't be good.

And in a very recent thread on druids, I argued very strongly that the not wearing metal armor was a fluff choice and not a rule, and that if a druid wanted to put on metal armor I'd allow it. I said repeatedly in that thread that while I've never had a player ask to have his druid wear metal, it would be fine by me if that druid opted to break the in-fiction taboo. I also said that there might be in-fiction consequences for the taboo violation if it was discovered by other druids.

Only by making sure that the people who are playing are doing what you want. That's how you get "our". But see, my table has had people who like rolling stats AND people who like the array AND people who prefer point-buy. And, to help those people have fun, I've allowed all three. Seems like to have the most fun for the most people, you just have to let them pick the option they want.

Um, no. That might be the most fun for YOUR table, but it's not at mine. You do you. I'm going to do me. We're both going to have fun that way.

Right, so that has nothing to do with the quote about Theive's Cant. You said that you haven't explicitly banned it, but you do think it would ruin your fun, so what would you do if a player came to you? Would it be "No" just like that?

They've self-banned it for being stupid, but no, I wouldn't ban it.

If it assumes both, then it is certainly less than 1 in 5 because every person who takes the array has a 15. So, if we assume a 50/50 split then it is actually closer to 10%, or 1 in 10. So, we are up to the point where 90% of the people are falling into a single category. That is plenty to make an assumption. Assumptions are never meant to be 100% accurate, and being 90% accurate is certainly good enough.

They can't assume that any specific individual is going to use the array, though. The math has to take into account the 20% of rollers who will only end up with lower numbers.

And the game defintion of the standard array is that it is perfectly realistic.

Quote that please.

Except you. Every time we get to a point that requires you to call upon real life to support your argument. Then, as soon as I counter with real life, but in a different way, then you say that real life isn't relevant to the discussion. Until you need to bring it up again to support your position.

It's BECAUSE you counter with real life. I'm just talking about realism, which is a spectrum with real life at one extreme. I don't do extremes. Why? Because extremes are generally wrong. That would explain why when you go to the real world extreme, you end up either wrong or talking about something completely irrelevant to the discussion almost every time.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Case in point. I must be lying. No one could actually want to know if their main weapon counts for a spell they could take. The only possible reason they might want to know if their primary weapon is compatible with an ability they might take is because they are a powergamer only looking to increase their power. Not a character who just leveled up and wondered which cantrips would be actually useful to them. After all, only power gamers choose options that are useful. What the player should really have done is just gotten the cantrip anyways, because they want to use their Boom-Boom gauntlet, not worried about any rules or rulings the DM made. Then, if the DM ruled against them, they just would have wasted a level up and have to wait til the next one to replace it, because they don't know how their own magic works.

I brought up the artificer cantrip example to support the point that using natural language didn't improve clarity or remove rules lawyering but shifted their modus operandi (instead of appealing to rules, it's an appeal to the dictionnary). Apparently, the point is now that players discussing whether an artificer can use this cantrip must be powergamers and not just genuinely wondering about the extent of their abilities. Which is kind of proving that use of natural language didn't stop these discussions or increase clarity.

Quite different. A car going 60 mph is very different from a short fall onto a car. But, fine, you'd use HP to simulate this, wonderful. How much HP damage would someone take from trying a stop a galloping horse by wrestling it? Would you tell the player if they asked? Because some stories have the heroes stop a charging bull with their bare hands, other stories would have a galloping horse kill the hero. So is this game going to be a 1d10 damage horse, or a 10d10 damage horse?

An alternative is the dreaded "mother may I" approach of asking the GM every time (because rulings can change at the DM's whim since there is no rule saying that they must be consistent, so maybe this horse will be a 10d10 even if the last one was a mere 3d10 one, so you'd better ask before doing anything remotely creative) that reminds me of even earlier editions. "mother may I" cropped up at my table at the beginning of 5e (after a few months , the situation got better, because players know my rulings collection so it's no longer a problem and being an horrible GM I actually try and make them consistent "once and for all" affairs within the same universe so they know what to expect from the game physics).

 

[Lyxen]

From you telling me I should just be honest with myself (meaning I'm being dishonest, ie lying)

No. Simply no. What I'm saying is that sometimes you are not even aware of what you are doing. It happens to me all the time. I can't count the number of times when I was sort of dissatisfied with something in a game or another, without being able to point out what the problem was. In some cases, it was external, in others it was with me (for example for disengaging from remote games for one reason or another and then just feeling dissatisfied with it, which was very easily solved by making sure I was engaged, taking notes, writing summaries, etc.).

You know... literally your post calling me a liar and telling me how I really feel, because I'm clearly not being honest with you or me, or true to my ideals.

My apologies if you took it this way, it was certainly not the intent, believe it or not. I am certainly not calling you a liar.

Repeatedly calling someone a liar because they aren't being honest with themselves tends to make them a bit prickly.

Oh, stop that, everyone is dishonest with themselves more or less continuously.

Case in point. I must be lying. No one could actually want to know if their main weapon counts for a spell they could take. The only possible reason they might want to know if their primary weapon is compatible with an ability they might take is because they are a powergamer only looking to increase their power. Not a character who just leveled up and wondered which cantrips would be actually useful to them. After all, only power gamers choose options that are useful. What the player should really have done is just gotten the cantrip anyways, because they want to use their Boom-Boom gauntlet, not worried about any rules or rulings the DM made. Then, if the DM ruled against them, they just would have wasted a level up and have to wait til the next one to replace it, because they don't know how their own magic works.

No, sorry, it's not the way it's presented. If it's a choice at a level that oyu just obtained, then just ask your DM what the ruling is, where is the difficulty in that ? Asking a DM, at the start of the campaign, what al lhis rulings will be so that you can build a progression over the next 20 levels is powergaming, undeniably.

Quite different. A car going 60 mph is very different from a short fall onto a car. But, fine, you'd use HP to simulate this, wonderful. How much HP damage would someone take from trying a stop a galloping horse by wrestling it? Would you tell the player if they asked? Because some stories have the heroes stop a charging bull with their bare hands, other stories would have a galloping horse kill the hero. So is this game going to be a 1d10 damage horse, or a 10d10 damage horse?

I would tell him for a local situation in general, but again this is not what we are discussing here, we were on the "the DM must divulge in advance of the campaign all the rules he is going to use", which is just ridiculous

Although, thinking about the case above, I would probably give a rough idea as to whether it was easy, dangerous or suicidal, but I would not give precise numbers. And I would not wait for hours for the players to decide and minmax all options. And I would certainly not explore all hypothetical situations with players so that they can decide on a build or another.

But, here is how it relates to a cantrips effects. The idea of a genre being consistent is a myth. You could say you are preparing for "Dark Fantasy" and some people are prepared for hunting one monster to lead to multiple player deaths, and others are prepared for Berserk, where a single hero can cut down swathes of powerful enemies, but the themes and symbols are grotesquely dark. Both are Dark Fantasy.

So, a player might feel the need to ask. To clarify. This need for clarification moves beyond just genre, but into abilities too. Does a Frostball still catch things on fire? The character would know the answer to this, they did have to literally learn and memorize the spell. But the player doesn't, they need to ask. Is this magical weapon I gained as part of my class counted towards this cantrip? Again, the character would be learning the spell, knowing exactly how it works, so they already know, but the player has to ask.

And if he asks at a specific point during his character development, it's fine. But if it's to create a 20-level build, no. It's not the point of the game as I see it.

And this is a larger issue than just one cantrip, this is something that extends deep into this abyss where DMs feel this compulsion to hide information from their players. But doing so makes telling the right type of story difficult, because the player may be playing by a different set of physics than the DM.

And it's a DM's right to keep some information hidden, and to leave his options open. Just as an example, it might be that, at some point in time, the campaign will shift to another plane with other physics. Maybe some spells will not function, or function differently. Should he inform the players in advance so that they can plan for this at build time ? No, it's just ridiculous.

At level 1, when a character has never cast a fireball in his life and will not for several years, why would he know what happens if it turns to frost ? After that, maybe, during the adventures, he can research that. But until there is in character reason for having that knowledge, why would the player possess it ? The ONLY reason that a player might insist on that is because he is afraid for his precious power curve.

And this is where the selfishness of the powergamer shows itself. He does not care about the campaign and what will happen there. He does not care about the circumstances, the NPCs encountered, the situations, and especially he does not care about the other players, what they will do, etc. He only cares about guaranteeing his own personal power curve throughout the levels.

Seeing this, it almost makes we want to allow all powergaming options so that a powergamer imagines his best dream come true, and then create a cataclysm on the campaign world that completely changes simple basic rules of magic and screws up everything. Most players would adapt, change their tack, and consider it a challenge, make it part of their story, etc. But the powergamer would just be lost without his precious build and his early level options all chosen in preparation for a future that would never happen.

Of course, I would never do this, as I respect my players too much for it, but honestly, it's all that this behaviour deserves. Just FYI, in our campaigns, were we all love Planescape, changes of context happen all the time, magic works or not, some school are dangerous or skewed, etc. The players adapt at the time, find solutions, live the story about these difficulties. The sorceress sent into Avernus finds a solution for her fire magic in the game, not only in a rulebook for optimising purposes.

And also FYI, no, I don't know at the start of the campaign all the rulings I'll make (it's an absolutely ridiculous demand to make), and I don't even know all the circumstances of the campaign, because I run sandboxes where the players can go almost where they want in the multiverse to solve what they want to solve. For example, in Avernus, they've had the opportunity to go to other planes of Hell, a PC Bhaalspawn want to go to Gehenna and Hades, they had the opportunity to take the Infinite Staircase and took it, and now want to go to Sigil, they have a side intrigue with a rakshasa prince that might take them to a Domain of Dread, etc. In each of these cases, the circumstances will be different and the answers to "what happens to a cold fireball?" might be different in Caina and on Avernus. I don't want to gimp myself and our collective imagination just for the sake of the POWER of one powergaming PC.

And what I certainly don't want is to have him whinge every step of the way because his masterful plan to be more powerful is gimped at every turn because of local rulings.

Especially since, FYI, I almost never refuse a backtrack on a character's choice, even from 10 levels ago. There are two notable exceptions, one is if the choice was iconic for the character, is part of his history and is well known by the party and the adversary, i.e. a kind of signature move or spell. And the other one is obviously refusing backtracks made for pure powergaming purposes, like suddenly needing a choice that could have been made at a low level but was not taken because it ws not optimal at levels 1-10 but suddenly becomes really powerful because of a synergy at level 11.

But for some reasons, my players never do this, they trust me to make sure that they have fun, whether their character is technically optimised or not. And if a character is lagging behind and a player is obviously not having as much fun, you can be sure that will be discussed and that steps will be taken.

And just the same if a character is hogging the spotlight all the time (technically or not), there will be a discussion about it, maybe followed by some action, because it's not a normal situation around a table.

And I can guarantee that if some rulings are made at that time to adjust the extremely complex dynamic of a party, individual characters and a varied environment, they will not have been obvious during session 0.

Or it isn't. It could be that the player just wants to make more thunder with their gauntlets, saw the spell when they leveled up and asked to confirm that their primary weapon qualified. Is that somehow less acceptable than if they were using a hammer and learned the cantrip? That one they wouldn't need to ask for, it clearly works, so why are you getting so bent out of shape because the person is asking a question when it is actually unclear? It isn't even that good of a combo considering Extra attack.

And here we are, the simple proof, it's for combo. Guess what, I don't care about technical combos.

True, these lies must just be the ones to lull you into a false sense of security. I mean, how could a player truly be confused about whether or not a special item gained via a class feature has a monetary value? The answer is self-evident.

Yes, especially for a value of 1 sp, I can see how important that is compared to a whole campaign.

 

[Lyxen]

I brought up the artificer cantrip example to support the point that using natural language didn't improve clarity or remove rules lawyering but shifted their modus operandi (instead of appealing to rules, it's an appeal to the dictionnary). Apparently, the point is now that players discussing whether an artificer can use this cantrip must be powergamers and not just genuinely wondering about the extent of their abilities. Which is kind of proving that use of natural language didn't stop these discussions or increase clarity.

What has clearly not stopped is the powergamers insatiable thirst for combos and optimisation of DPR. But as you can see in the example below, it falls flat on its face in 5e, same players, same DMs at our tables where we run 2 or 3 games weekly, and not one discussion like this in 7 years at our tables. So yes, for those unable to read the rulebooks and who insist on playing 5e like 3/3.5/PF, there will always be this nitpicking on details to see whether you can achieve 8.3 or 8.456 DPR. As for us, we'd rather play the game to have fun adventures together, but of course YCMV.

So, case in point, for us, a huge improvement of the game in totally removing these discussions from our tables.

But at least you have stepped back to "wondering about the extent of their abilities" instead of "understanding the world, its physics and its magic in its globality because the nasty DM doesn't want to discuss the value of g on every single planet in his multiverse".

An alternative is the dreaded "mother may I" approach of asking the GM every time (because rulings can change at the DM's whim since there is no rule saying that they must be consistent

Oh yes, because any DM not able to make in advance all the rulings that will be needed for a campaign is so stupid that he will change things on a whim and have less memory than a fish in its bowl. What a convincing argument.

, so maybe this horse will be a 10d10 even if the last one was a mere 3d10 one, so you'd better ask before doing anything remotely creative) that reminds me of even earlier editions. "mother may I" cropped up at my table at the beginning of 5e (after a few months , the situation got better, because players know my rulings collection so it's no longer a problem and being an horrible GM I actually try and make them consistent "once and for all" affairs within the same universe so they know what to expect from the game physics).

Oh yes, the (in)famous list of rulings. You know what, in 3e, after a few years of play, we had 20 pages of local rulings, probably thanks to the jargon used, that people still had trouble remembering and that needed update every time a supplement came out.

Now, in 5e, we have... nothing. With the same players and DMs, and about the same length of time playing the game as intensely, we have not found the need to create even ONE permanent ruling that we need to explain and remember. How much simpler is that ? And in the end for a much, much greater enjoyment of the game, because we are not tied in by endless discussions of ruleslawyers and interminable combats.

But of course, we have to be morons incapable of remembering things and deciding on a whim every single time. What a joke.

 

[Aldarc]

What has clearly not stopped is the powergamers insatiable thirst for combos and optimisation of DPR. But as you can see in the example below, it falls flat on its face in 5e, same players, same DMs at our tables where we run 2 or 3 games weekly, and not one discussion like this in 7 years at our tables. So yes, for those unable to read the rulebooks and who insist on playing 5e like 3/3.5/PF, there will always be this nitpicking on details to see whether you can achieve 8.3 or 8.456 DPR. As for us, we'd rather play the game to have fun adventures together, but of course YCMV.

...

Now, in 5e, we have... nothing. With the same players and DMs, and about the same length of time playing the game as intensely, we have not found the need to create even ONE permanent ruling that we need to explain and remember. How much simpler is that ? And in the end for a much, much greater enjoyment of the game, because we are not tied in by endless discussions of ruleslawyers and interminable combats.

For someone who likes to complain about rules lawyering, you do like repeatedly throwing around accusations here in ENWorld that people don't read the books and are somehow being immoral people for it.