So please, when I ask questions about the way your are gaming, or when I sound convinced about the way we are gaming, it's not an attack on your way of gaming, it's just explaining that, because we have different tastes, our solutions differ, which should not prevent us both from benefiting from each other's experience.
So if word which can have a negative connotation in some (usually toxic) circles best describe your or my way of gaming, we really should not take offense.
See, the problem is when you use a word that has negative connotations, and that you know is used toxically to belittle groups... then you can't expect people to just turn around and ask "well, do you mean that offensively or not?" Like Max tried to explain to you earlier, there is a big difference in the way a term like 'optimizer" gets tossed around compared to "powergamer" or "munchkin" and that is in large part to realizing that putting people with bad habits in the same box as people without those habits wasn't working.
If your goal isn't to cause offense, don't use terms you know to be offensive and just say "but I don't mean it that way"
You gave the example above with metagaming, which in a sense you endorse, because if I understand correctly, you allow it while at the same time removing not allowing some of its negative effect to affect your game, and ignoring those that are of no concern to you in your game.
I view "metagaming" a bit differently than I think the commonly accepted definitions are.
For example, if we run a module (which we rarely do) and you read the module to track down everything and have perfect knowledge. That's flat cheating and unacceptable. But then we get to classic situations like trolls, where attacking with your sword is just as much metagaming as attacking with your torch. I've seen people purposefully attack Flesh Golems with lightning to heal them, just so they can later say that they didn't metagame, but that is also exactly what they did. They just metagamed to make the game harder instead of easier.
"Metagaming" is just using things from outside the game to make decisions in the game. And part of what makes it so difficult to get away from is that you can't perfectly silo knowledge. And we do it all the time. We give magical armor to the person with the lowest AC. That's a metagame concept though, AC doesn't exist in the world.
And also, there are some things that work better when the players are in on the bit. The biggest metagaming I encourage? Figuring out why the party is sticking together and accepting the quest. Logically, I've seen many times when a group should never be sticking together, but this a group game, so we stick together anyways and figure it out. Pure Metagaming, but of a type no one has a problem with.
The thing is that you have clearly seen what I'm trying to do in terms of general principles, but I must also say that we rarely have to do it in most cases for the game, new options being some of these cases (for example, we allowed most of Tasha's new options for classes without problem as they were destined to boost "weak" classes, but not the Floating ASIs for the reasons discussed here).
Sure, it is rare to come up, but I think you are taking our argument to an extreme it isn't meant to be taken to. A question like suggestion is about general principles, and I don't even know how you could "powergame" it. A question like Booming Blade one a Thunder Gauntlet is about a specific. But neither question needs to be reacted to with hostility, which is exactly what you did. You acted as though the only possible reason someone could ask this question is because of powergaming. The truth is however that there are many possible reasons, and there is no reason to be hostile about answering. Especially because, these sort of questions are things that can lead into other questions and aspects of the game. But if the player's feel like asking is wrong, then they stop asking and just (in my experience) start shutting down ideas.
The thing is that I don't see this as physics. I know that gravity can be a bit wonky in D&D (see the spelljammer gravity which is canon in our universes and has been imported back into 5e through Dungeon of the Mad Mage), but in our view, it's not even about gravity.
It's about the fact that HP represents lots of things, but ultimately what they are is some sort of plot protection that shows why heroes survive things that normal people would not, dogding dragon fire or being stabbed by 100 swordsmen. Being plot protection, it is part of the story, which is what we are looking for in the game (in a sense, even more than roleplaying, we are story orientated).
So while the story of "Aragorn fell down the cliff and miraculously survived" is nice once in a while, the story of "Aragorn jumped on purpose straight down the canyon because the rules said that he had to survive" floats our boat a bit less, because it's not even about physics (physics would simply say that he died).
Does this make sense ?
Sure, but then you look for story explanations. For example, the Paladin could have said that they knew the Gods would not let them die or that they blessed his fall so he could pursue the fiends. Does that come across as insane? Yeah, but he was also a paladin pursuing fiends, who jumped off a cliff and the party found later alive and well.
I've also got a more "magical physics" answer, but the point is that as was said, DnD Fantasy isn't the fantasy of needing to explain why your superhero adventurer can survive jumping off a cliff. You do. Because you are a badass and this is just highlighting it. I understand it might not work for you, but the example shows a clear disconnect between the reality you expect, and the reality of the game.
I understand your perspective, I hope that you can see above why ours is different (once more, not better, not worse, just different for different aims at the table), because it's not about physics (and even yours is probably more about skill and cinematics than actual physics), it's about what makes a nice story and does not break suspension of disbelief.
And the story of DnD has established itself in a certain way. I don't know if you watch Marvel movies but if you saw Winter Soldier back when it came out, did it break your suspension of disbelief to see Steve Rogers hold down a helicopter with his barehands? Or how about surviving a fall from multiple stories up and into water (which would be as hard as concrete at that impact)?
It didn't break my suspension of disbelief, because Steve Rogers is superhumanly strong. And, most likely, your first response is that DnD character's aren't, or at least not until high levels. But, the game tells us that they are. From a commoner casually benchpressing 300 lbs to seeing that the standard adventurer at a 16 strength is matching gorillas, who can casually rip up banana trees and bend iron bars. They are nearly 4 times stronger than us. That is the bar of a 1st level adventurer. And they hit these numbers in all categories. An Intelligence of 16 is close to an IQ of 128, which is a "superior intellect" and nearly a Mensa member (who normally have a 130, which is obtained by 17 INT)
I'm not trying to tell you that you are wrong to play the way you do, but again, the game itself is telling us that these are not normal people. So, of course, in treating them as though they are normal people when the game does not is going to lead to dissonance. And while your standard group might be making the same assumption, that doesn't mean a new person will, and they might approach the game as though they were superhumans.
I understand, in our case, we'd rather than the options come from projecting yourself in the game world and imagine cool things rather than listing the technical options that would be available.
But how are the two really different? For example, Mage Hand has a weight limit of 10 lbs, but appears as a spectral glowing hand. Casting it takes an action and it appears within 30 ft, and takes an action to move. That is all technical information. It also allows me to more fully project into the game world, because I know how it works.
I have a +6 to my skill, passively that means that I can achieve a 16, which means that I can generally achieve a medium challenge reliably. This is all technical information, it also informs me no how good my character is and how good they know they are. It allows me to project into the character's head, because I know which solutions they would go towards. They don't negate each other, they compliment each other.
See above, it's not at all about realism, in particular because I don't think that D&D is particularly a realist game. The main problem, I think, is that some DMs make things difficult (like yours did) not for realism reasons but more for "balance" reasons, because he had not realised that your character might be able to do this with a climbing speed. Because there are far more unrealistic things that happen every single game while playing D&D. I might be mistaken there, obviously, about your DM's decision, so let me know.
There was no balance, it was an RP scene, he just said that it was absurd.
See above, it's about gaming the world instead of letting the world guide you. It's about trying to cumulate technical bonuses about various rules in a combo that was certainly not playtested, and which is all the more silly because of the bounded accuracy in 3e.
While I find it funny to see people rack their brains to find the potentially best combo using the rules, having someone abuse the way these rules combine to make the world forcefully behave to match rules is unnatural to us.
Remember my perspective that the rules are like the "laws" of physics in our world. These so called "laws" are not really laws, they do not force the world to behave, they are actually theories that try their best to describe how the world actually behaves. The best examples are Newton's laws, who are actually pretty accurate descriptions, but which completely break down to describe the very small or the very big. Despite their attempt at universality, they only do their best to describe the world, they do not rule it.
And our approach to D&D rules is exactly the same, they do not force the world to behave in a certain way, they just describe the way it works most of the time. But if you try to force the world to behave a certain way when you get to the limits of the "law", they won't accurately describe it anymore, and the combo, while theoretically valid, will just not work.
And this is what the players at our tables expect, they know that using the rules to force the world to behave in a way that breaks the collective story and suspension of disbelief will fail, because the world is not based on the rules, but on the collective imagination of the players. So they know better than trying to break the world by combining rules.
But, it is equally damaging to the story to have artificial limits because of suspension of disbelief. Because everything we know about the world tells us it should work, but it doesn't, because an outside authority has come in and told us that they won't allow it.
And, again, you have made a claim that the way this world behaves is "unnatural" but again, it is natural for that world. There is a valid approach in trying to match the world to our expectations, but it carries with it an onus of more rules to constrain more things. If instead we match our expectations to the world, it is easier.
This is not to say that we do not expect that "mundane" skill will be limited to that of earth. We have played a lot of Herowars/Heroquest (following Runequest) in which there is a continuum between mundane skill and godly magic, and getting better at running can get you to godly speeds because that's the way the world works.
But in the case of Glorantha, the world is built that way, and the system follows that. It's not the case in D&D, mundane skills stay mundane in general, the only exceptions are when combination of very specific rules technically allow it, but in that case, why only those and not any others ? Why allow incredible jumps but not incredible strength to punch through walls, for example ? Just because there is a technical combo in one case, and not in the other ? That does not seem to be sound rules of story world "rules" for us (and again, just a question of preference, right ?
)
They should. Actually, in some ways they do. You can punch your way through a stone wall created by Wall of Stone, the DMG has rules for doing it to other stone as well.
I think, in part, the rules don't cover this because people keep trying to limit martials to their "expectations" of the world of mundanity, even though they do not live in Mundane worlds. Beowulf ripped the arm from Grendel, who tore through wooden walls like they were nothing. Beowulf shattered metal swords whenever he used them. He wasn't mundane. But people don't want Beowulf, they want a medieval soldier standing against terrible foes, someone who might be strong, but certainly not THAT strong.
The interface is bugging, so I'll try to address all these points here. The thing is that most of the players I've met share a common understanding as to how the D&D world works, it's basically our earth with specific magic described through the available spells in the book. Most people don't ask themselves any special question, for example about gravity, although the example above (Spelljammer) shows that it's not really behaving as it does on our earth.
What people don't really share understanding on is not the world, it's about these fuzzy rules, which is particularly true in 5e. And this is why, in link with the above, and when we want people to play with the world, not with the rules, and in particular not gaming the rules to twist the world, we don't want to incite them to ask questions, because I'm 99% sure that it will be about the rules, not the world.
I find the rules and the world inextricably linked. Without the rules, the world falls apart. And I think we have been straining against this idea of the DnD world being "basically our earth with specific magic". This has led to the discussion of the "Guy at the Gym Fallacy" because we know that our Fighters and Barbarians and Rogues should be capable of so much more.
In a different thread Talisien and Merlin were brought up, spellcasters from King Arthur's court. They are the sources of some various magical spells, but look at some of the feat of Arthur, who was not always considered the strongest of his knights. This is the
link, and it seems to reference the Mabinogion from the 12th century
Toughness? He ignores a blow from a giant wielding an iron club.
This is but a single figure, whose mainly known for being a great leader, and not a unstoppable warrior, yet is still credited with hundreds of kills in a single battle.
Are these exagerated for the sake of the story? Most likely. But DnD
is a story. We take the feats of Merlin and Talisien why can we not take the feats of Arthur, and have our fighters capable of crushing gold and cracking walls with a single blow? Not at level 2, but by level 10?
And this is why, even if the question seems innocuous, I will not waste time answering technical questions that might actually never have a practical application, i.e. if it's not for a technical choice that is important "right now". Moreover, "In a few levels" is not really important, I'd rather focus on the now.
And what is the focus "now"? While you are packing up your dice and putting your notes in a folder? While you sit at your computer and they text your phone?
No one said that these questions had to be asked at the table in the middle of play... but they often do when they end up using something they couldn't ask about before.
