D&D General Why the resistance to D&D being a game?

[Aldarc]

The issue is not taunting. It's being able to taunt everyone within 30 feet no matter what the circumstance and forcing them to use their reaction to approach the PC. Anyone can taunt, this is an ability that forces a specific reaction without restriction.

Yes, and...?

 

[Oofta]

Yes, and...?

And the objection is to an ability that not only forces every enemy within 30 feet to approach the PC as their reaction if they fail a wisdom save, it also give the PC a free attack action when they approach. It's the equivalent of a fairly high level spell, there is no way it's something anyone could do.

 

[Aldarc]

And the objection is to an ability that not only forces every enemy within 30 feet to approach the PC as their reaction if they fail a wisdom save, it also give the PC a free attack action when they approach. It's the equivalent of a fairly high level spell, there is no way it's something anyone could do.

Yes, and...?

 

[Gammadoodler]

The latter 3 plus Captain America. Wolverine might come close to being a troll fighter if his radical regeneration wasn't stopped by being burned. And Thor - yeah, well beyond the reach of a fighter who isn't born an Aesir with an incredibly sweet bunch of magic items and a DM's writ to be a divinity.

I didn't say, how do (or should) their capabilities match up.

I said whose experiences are more similar..

..how many giants, dragons, or vampires have any of the bottom 3 engaged in direct melee combat with?

...zero?

Now let's try the top three..

All three of these..multiple times in many cases...and some even more exotic threats.

Edit: Or put another way, at the end of a long campaign, if you wrote down your fighter's various exploits for posterity, do you think which group of heroes' accomplishments do you think it'd sound more similar to?

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

And the objection is to an ability that not only forces every enemy within 30 feet to approach the PC as their reaction if they fail a wisdom save, it also give the PC a free attack action when they approach. It's the equivalent of a fairly high level spell, there is no way it's something anyone could do.

I never said it's anything anyone should be able to do. You know just to keep this as funny as possible, I propose to make this an ability that the fighter and barbarian get at level 5 and for maximal hilarity: Let's nerf it a bit by making it a limited use ability. 3 uses per long rest.

 

[Guest 7042500]

I think taunting is one of the worst things to happen to D&D.

If you still had to hold a line by, you know, having a line, you'd get a lot less "my fighter has a strength of only 16 and his has a 17, my fighter is useless" and a lot more "the more heavy armor types the better."

Of course, I'm an unrepentant wargamer.

 

[mamba]

Apologies for the double post. But also this is backwards thinking.

it isn’t backwards, you were asking why McLane is considered an appropriate archetype, while superheroes are not. My answer was because everything he does is in line with what a fighter can do / should be able to do.

Nothing backwards about it, unless your question already was wrong to begin with

It's less a matter of "Do John McLain's actions fall within an acceptable range of a D&D fighter:

It's more a matter of "Do a D&D fighters' exploits at all levels reliably map to John McLain's level of capability"

well, if that is the question, then my answer is no, I’d expect something more like Conan a better fit. The Hulk still is no fit at all. Feel free to propose some other figure

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because WotC-published NPCs don't have character levels.

Not relevant, and easy to fix.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For the record, we are talking about the fighter having an ability that emulates warriors taunting their enemies in the comparable genre fiction. If any of us are approaching that with honest good faith, we can recognize that none of that is mind controlling NPCs or bending the reality of the world. It's about creating a fighter that emulates the fiction for warriors.

And if the game limited the player to only use those abilities when genre appropriate, that would be a fine philosophy (albeit for a different game). But D&D doesn't do that, so that ability will get used any time a player sees a mechanical advantage in doing so.

 

[pemerton]

I don't let the limitations of the game rules get in the way of the vision and fictional archetype I envision for my fighter. I want a character that straps on armor, grabs their weapons of choice and goes to face down giants. Is that realistic? Well, giants are not physically possible because of the square cube law. On the other hand in the words of Dutch from Predator, "If it bleeds we can kill it".

And if it has emotions, we can taunt it? Or apparently not! Because that would be unrealistic!

I think part of the issue stems from a US pop culture full of references to action heroes in both movies and literature that have character doing very much larger than life things without being significantly supernatural. Robin Hood, Arthur's knights, John McClane, James Bond, John Wick, Fafhrd, even Conan. They're fantastically good at what they do, but they don't warp and redefine reality like magic does. And that's what a lot of people want in their martial characters. A relatively limited scope or portfolio of realty warp.

But this tells us nothing about whether or not they can taunt others. I mean, to reiterate a point from upthread, 5e D&D already has a Goad ability!

people who were out to get him already anyway

No one say it never happens, just that it doesn’t always happen

As @MuhVerisimilitude posted the ability, it applied to enemies - who, in the context of D&D, would be "people already out to get the PC". Further amendments have since been suggested.

And of course the suggested taunting doesn't always happen - the player has to choose to use it, and then the GM has to fail their saves for the NPCs.

That you don't make it a power. You talk to your GM and describe what you're trying to do. If they think it would definitely work, it works. If they think it definitely doesn't work, it doesn't. If they're not sure, an appropriate ability (with appropriate modifiers) is performed.

You know, the gameplay loop.

D&D players can already do this without a specific ability. At some level we need to ask why is such an ability even needed when this is the case.

This is true for everything else in the game too: Action Surge, Second Wind, Second Storey Work, Cunning Action, all the Battle Master Manoeuvres, Extra Attack, etc, etc. Not to mention spells could be adjudicated in this way too, as @Gammadoodler has noted.

Presumably there is a design reason why these player-side abilities are written in the way they are. I'm guessing it's about given players a degree of greater control over how their declared actions work out within the mechanical framework of the game. The suggested Taunt ability seems to me to live in this same design space.

One can override human behavior regardless of circumstance, and the other has to interact with the humans and the world we have.

This was posted as a contrast between magic and non-magic. But is being correlated to player gets to say vs GM gets to say. Hence it rests on an implicit premise that the GM is the world of the game. I think it would help some of these conversations if that premise were made explicit, instead of taking it as unarguable and then using genre and trope labels like "that ability is supernatural".

See, now you have something akin to a PBtA "move", where the DM is forced to make it happen for the player regardless of circumstance if the roll goes in their favor

<snip>

In other words, mechanics over fiction.

I don't know what PbtA game you have in mind. Apocalypse World doesn't look much like what you describe here. It actually seems a much better description of D&D combat, where the if the roll goes in the player's favour then the mechanics - dropping a NPC/creature to zero hp via an attack roll or damage-dealing spell - force the GM to describe the creature/NPC being dead, regardless of circumstance.

The bigger point here is that D&D combat resolution is not consistent with the premise that the GM is the world of the game. It always puzzles me that people who want the GM to be the world of the game nevertheless use a RPG that has a combat resolution engine that is at odds with that.

D&D has drifted toward the end of the design spectrum where you don't improvise and adjudicate, you press buttons on your character sheet.

I think it's worth noting, in reply to this, that the Fireball and Lightning Bolt spells have been part of the game since its inception. "Pressing buttons" has always been the core play experience for players of D&D spell casters.