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

[M_Natas]

You realize that a huge number of modern computer games are derived from D&D, right?

And the point is still, no, you don't have to make characters superhumanly tough to make them survivable. That's just a method OD&D did as a simple derivative from some miniatures games and has carried down out of heritage. Acting like its the only method that allows characters to act heroic is, simply, wrong.

I never said it is the only method. I said it is a valid method to get fights where you can exchange blows, where you can get hit and keep going.
It is a design decision for a specific style of game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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?

That points to an issue with the game, not the fiction. To me at least.

 

[Vaalingrade]

An Okay Ability:

The Swakd

Every enemy within 30 feet must succeed on a Will save or begin clucking like a chicken and preening themselves.

This is magic, so anything it does is fine.

As opposed to:

Hot Take

You tell your enemies exactly what you'd like to do with their mums. In grpahic detail and with artists' renditions. They must succeed on a Will save or attack you because, obviously.

This is bad and wrong because you didn't say 'magic' before doing so.

 

[Oofta]

Yes, and...?

It's magic. I want a fighter that doesn't rely on magic.

 

[Oofta]

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.

Still a high level spell, more powerful in many ways than mass suggestion a level 6 spell.

 

[pemerton]

This again comes down to the point I made in regards to Gygax's statement about D&D saving throws. Are they merely a mechanism to adjudicate plausible lucky escapes requiring a preexisting fictional 'out' or are they a literal narrative mechanism by which a player, with a successful roll, COMPELS the GM to fictionally explain the outcome (or even gives the player that power, Gygax didn't especially come down on one side here, though I expect it's pretty safe to assume he would have given that authority to the GM).

Well the rulebook doesn't provide an answer. It seems to have been left deliberately vague. It also fits with a broader impression that narration of details (like whether or not the chained fighter's fetters are broken) was done rather fast and loose, and at varying degrees of telescoping of detail, in Gygax's approach to play.

Oh, you can't make circumstances apply to saving throw of the taunt?

Gygax covered this in his DMG (from p 81):

DM Stipulations: You may assign modifiers to any saving throws as you see fit, always keeping in mind game balance. . . .

Circumstantial Adjustments: Such adjustments are quite similar to DM stipulations. That is, if a character is standing in a pool of water holding a sword in his steel-gauntleted hand when the blue dragon breathes at him, you just might wish to slightly alter his chances of saving. In like manner, you might wish to give this same character one-half or NO damage from a red dragon's breath in the same circumstances. (In this same fashion you may feel no constraint with respect to allotting pluses to damage so meted out to players, adjusting the score of each die upwards or downwards as you see fit because of prevailing circumstances.)​

I don't know if this sort of thing is considered part of the 5e D&D repertoire.

 

[Aldarc]

It's magic. I want a fighter that doesn't rely on magic.

Says who? You? On what basis are you making that claim? Your opinion? I bet that argument's worth something somewhere, but it's not worth anything here with me.

 

[billd91]

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?

Let's try it again, again...
The latter 3 plus Cap have vanquished their foes with their martial prowess, both with unarmed combat and with their weapons and without having powers making them immortal within their settings.

So yeah, totally the latter 3 plus Cap!

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

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!

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

Ok. I belive that, outside of the PC's (not the player's) direct actions, the GM is the world of the game.

Happy?

 

[Gammadoodler]

That points to an issue with the game, not the fiction. To me at least.

Genuinely not sure what you mean here. Is it that the game facilitates fiction you dislike? Or something else?