D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[hawkeyefan]

@Maxperson As I said, your interpretations are yours and you are entitled to them. I think they're causing you dissatisfaction, so it seems odd to choose such an interpretation, but hey, people are complicated.

My interpretation allows the fiction to work perfectly fine for me, so I'll just have to take comfort in that.

Neener neener!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Exactly! I don't need to convince you that my gamist reasons are universally valid in order for my own preferences to be personally valid.

Sure, but your preferences are not valid to me the way they are to you, so we're not going to see eye to eye on this.

 

[Mort]

A lunge is not a reaction. It's an action. IMO, you simply shouldn't be able to react to a reaction. All of this goes away if you make that change.

You'll note, in the same post, I stated perhaps a riposte is more analogous, which IS a reaction.

The point is, even in the real world, people react to reactions. It's not some impossible to perceive action, it's just quicker than a standard action.

Since you only get 1 reaction, there's even a nice built in cost to doing so.

If the timing doesn't matter to you, then we really have nothing to discuss. No one's going to persuade anyone here.

That's mostly true. When responding on a board like this persuading the person you're responding to is a near impossibility (though I've certainly seen good arguments and been persuaded before). But it's fun to get the arguments out there for others to judge and decide for themselves.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Again, that's an interpretation. And like I said, you're entitled to it, but it seems so dissatisfying to you that I'm not sure why you won't consider others.

There's nothing that says that casting counterspell is always done exactly the same way by everyone who uses it.
There's nothing that says that the counterspell cannot be interrupted. In fact, we've been told the opposite.
There's nothing that says that magic spells cannot interact with each other in mysterious and unexpected ways.
There's nothing that says that the person casting the second counterspell didn't intuit what the other was doing and beat them to the punch... that the order of events for the characters MUST match that of the players. A lot happens in a round, and expecting that every participant is just standing around in stasis except on their turn is bonkers.

Actually, the rules are very specific about how magic spells interact. There's nothing mysterious or unexpected about it. That's the D&D magic system. I'm pretty sure if there were unexpected consequences, a lot of people would complain.

 

[tetrasodium]

So here you're saying there's a way that counterspelling a counterspell could work, in the fiction?



No, that's you interpreting things in only one way... which in and of itself is fine, that's your interpretation and you're allowed to have it... the problem is that you think your interpretation is the only one that's accurate and therefore anyone else's interpretation is somehow "twisting the fiction".

Which is bizarre for a few reasons. First, we're talking about magic... which can work however we want it to work. There's no real life correlary. Second, we're all making the fiction match what's happening in the game in some way. That's what has to happen. You're just predisposed to making the fiction not satisfy your preferences. Which seems odd to me.

You lamented out of fiction elements influencing the fiction... yet you seem compelled to force all of the fiction to fit into the turn order.

It's more than just interpretation they are objectively problematic to both mechanics & fiction. Magic is specific has already been covered by others so I won't repeat that part. Minimum response time for a stimulus (ie fire bad daggers hurt) is around 200 to 300ms. More likely anything more involved than mere reflex is going to be even higher because the brain needs to process understand and decide how to react to anything more involved even if the individual reacting is vigilant & hyper focused on the stimulus rather than busy doing something else.

Wotc made these reaction instant interrupt abilities thinking it would make players more involved after they removed all of the tactical components that pressure players tmske plans that take longer than a single turn & pay attention so that on their turns they could react to the now removed risks of getting caught in the plans oth their opponents. The trouble is that not every interaction is equally good to the health of the game and these abilities treat them as if they are equal to justify the fact that these abilities fire on someone else's section of the playloop so that the player & their pc don't actually need to be focused vigilant or proactive.

What if some people prefer otherwise does not matter when it comes to the way 5e is designed because the way to support that is an optional rule that dials it back after designing for the one that can't be trivially achieved with a "you can ignore it like so" sidebar but 5e exclusively caters to forcing one particular style making it too late to discuss the preferences of those who prefer the sidebar that can't be written.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Sure, but your preferences are not valid to me the way they are to you, so we're not going to see eye to eye on this.

Absolutely. That's what I was saying.

I think all these conversations are interesting, but I wish it could be more, "Huh, that's interesting. I have a different preference, though." and less "No your opinion is not tenable. Only mine is consistent." (Not thinking of you in particular. Maybe some of the people who share some of your preferences, though.)

 

[Maxperson]

@Maxperson As I said, your interpretations are yours and you are entitled to them. I think they're causing you dissatisfaction, so it seems odd to choose such an interpretation, but hey, people are complicated.

It's not really causing me dissatisfaction, because much like turn order combat being a necessary evil that I have to ignore, I ignore counterspell's finer nuances and just let it work.

As I've said, this is a temporary thing. My next campaign won't have counterspell in it. Not because of the fictional issues, but rather because it exists almost entire as a fun sucker. It's not fun for the DM or a player to have a completely wasted round and lost slot because someone counterspelled.

Neener neener!

I'm rubber, you're... cough

 

[Micah Sweet]

Absolutely. That's what I was saying.

I think all these conversations are interesting, but I wish it could be more, "Huh, that's interesting. I have a different preference, though." and less "No your opinion is not tenable. Only mine is consistent." (Not thinking of you in particular. Maybe some of the people who share some of your preferences, though.)

I agree, but the end result of that would be very short threads indeed, and far less activity in the community, in addition to being utterly against human nature.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I agree, but the end result of that would be very short threads indeed, and far less activity in the community, in addition to being utterly against human nature.

Some of the threads would be shorter, and probably should be.

But maybe in some cases the conversation could go in new directions that would be interesting and valuable.

(And I acknowledge that I'm human...or at least demi-human...and am not always the poster I aspire to be.)

 

[JiffyPopTart]

New questions.

In your campaign can a character uncanny dodge a lightning bolt spell?

Rules say yes.

Reality says it takes the bolt .00015s to hit a target 60 feet away.

Is anyone here bothered by this gap in game vs narrative (which happens orders of magnitude timesat a table than counter spelling counter spells)?