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

[mamba]

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

they have CRs, not all that different

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

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.

I would love to see this passage in the 5e PH, just so that players would stop complaining (not that they would, of course).

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

The way high level fighters behave in modern D&D, outside of supernatural effects, is ridiculous to me.

 

[pemerton]

The players decide what their character is doing. The DM and the game mechanics decide what the rest is doing in reaction to Player Characters Actions.
Having a mechanic that makes certain that a player can get always the same reaction from NPCs breaks that.

I'm not saying that their couldn't be a Taunt mechanic in D&D, but the implementation I saw so far would feel game breaking to me.

"The game mechanics" decide whether or not the NPC is goaded into attacking. So that fits with your first line.

If you mean the GM decides, well that's not true if you apply the D&D combat rules as written - the GM can't just decide that a creature dodges a PC's attack, or is not scared by the Battle Master using Menacing Attack.

As others have pointed out, earlier editions had morale rules that worked similarly.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I agree with him, does that matter? And for the record, your argument is worth no more to me than his is to you.

 

[M_Natas]

And there it is.

This is an example of someone resisting D&D being a game. We need to keep up kayfabe at all times even if it presents us from playing out the genre fantasies we want to play out like taunting.

Of course it is important to keep up appearances. We need a feel of reality in order to have an RPG game at all.
It is part of the game design. Some proposed rules destroy that illusion.

From a game design standpoint especially in RPGs the mechanics need to be there to support the fiction.
If you have mechanics that bend, break or overshadow the fiction you are loosing players. You get one of those candy crush clones where you need to match 3 or more stones in order to fight monsters.
Game feel matters.

And then we let magic do everything!

So wizards get to be good at fighting and sneaking and doing things normal people in the normal world can do but some people in the fandom can't accept.

That is more a case for making wizards weaker.

I am not. That is the part you keep ignoring over and over again. I'm complaining that a fighter can't taunt someone and expect them to react the way extras in an action movie react when taunted. It's not mind controls.

But it is mind controll. You want NPCs to react in exactly the way you want by speaking to them.

It's not bending reality. It isn't supernatural. It's a thing people do both as a trope in media and in the actual world--people do this all the time to the point that it's gained a term for its use as a means of ending one's life.

In the fiction of DnD it would be either a supernatural ability to do that consistently or it would be a player mechanic that brakes with the fiction.

Also, Bladesinger: the wizard better at melee fighting than the fighter. So yes, it would be wrong to complain about wizards not being good at fighting because they're spectacular.

That is more a case against the Wizard class.

Bad design.

It is a design that works and made 5e the best selling D&D edition ever, outpacing anything that came before it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

"The game mechanics" decide whether or not the NPC is goaded into attacking. So that fits with your first line.

If you mean the GM decides, well that's not true if you apply the D&D combat rules as written - the GM can't just decide that a creature dodges a PC's attack, or is not scared by the Battle Master using Menacing Attack.

As others have pointed out, earlier editions had morale rules that worked similarly.

But they don't demand specific actions from the NPCs, particularly ones that put their lives in danger, without magic.

 

[Oofta]

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

Please show where anyone said that. You can taunt all you want, the reaction of the target will be up to the DM's judgement because barring magic the DM is responsible for the reactions of NPCs. There are some battlemaster maneuvers that I consider explicitly supernatural which is fine. I don't have to play that subclass. But they still don't force an enemy to use their reaction to approach and they certainly don't affect every enemy within 30 feet.

 

[mamba]

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 is it always happening… I did not mean ‘always’ as ‘constantly, without the player triggering it’ but as ‘whenever the player is triggering it’…

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.

what’s the alternative, the DM saying what happens? Have fun with that approach… why even have any rules at that point…

The rules are the physics of the world that everyone follows

If all there were is what the DM decides, we have story hour, not a game

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure I even understand what your objection IS now. I think you are saying that every game master would allow you a charisma check to taunt all enemies within 30 feet to attack you and you get a free counter attack? Is that it? Because I don't think many GMs would do that. That's why I made it into an ability.

This. 100 times over.