D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

EzekielRaiden said:

But nothing they tell you is ever anything more than what you already knew. That's my problem here. It's that literally ANY form of oversight, ANYTHING whatosever, is impossible. It's that ANY concern, ANYTHING at all, has exactly two possible choices for the player:

1. Ignore it and soldier on, no matter how concerned you might be
2. Drop the nuclear option and depart the table

That's it. That's all you're allowed. There isn't anything else.

Surely you can see how this forces the player into extreme positions? Their only options are infinite submission or table-flipping!

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EzekielRaiden said:

But you would screw them over if they cast it and it turned out the opponent hit them by more than +4, almost entirely wasting the spell slot? One would think a spellcaster using the spell would have a pretty good idea whether it would work or not, but your statements point in the other direction.

Because that's the thing here. If they hit you by 5 or more, then shield is pointless and using it is almost entirely wasteful. If they hit you by anything less than 5 (e.g. anything between exactly hitting your AC and hitting 4 more than your AC), then shield makes the attack miss, making it very valuable.

In a world where you cannot ever know whether the margin is close enough or not, shield is...not quite worthless, but definitely has gotten an ENORMOUS nerf. Given it doesn't scale at all and is basically just a way to make use of your lower-level spell slots, that might not quite kill it, but it would definitely be far less useful.

You don't have to tell the players what the creature's attack bonus is. You can just say whether shield would be worthwhile or not. Again, I would think a spellcaster who prepares that spell would be pretty good at knowing whether it's useful or not!

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hawkeyefan said:

Unless the GM has decided ahead of time that the blacksmith cannot be swayed!

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EzekielRaiden said:

Again: no.

It is that...let me put as much emphasis on this as I possibly can...

IF

If something concerning happens, what can be done? What options do I have? How can I expect accountability? How can I ask for redress? How can I work toward a fixed situation, where the concerns have been properly dealt with in a way any reasonable person could call fair and forthright?

Every single time I ever bring this up, it's always dismissively as either "wow bro, guess you can't trust anyone, that must suck", "the game doesn't work if you don't trust the DM so you just gotta do that", or "don't play with jerks". Never--literally never, not once, in any of these threads, has ANYONE on the other side actually stopped to take my concerns seriously. Literally actually never.

Is it any wonder I'm suspicious? Literally not one of you has EVER stopped to empathize, to understand, to be like, "Okay, let's talk about it. What would you want to do? How would you approach this?" It's always either insulting me for being some kind of mentally stunted freak, blithely ignoring any possible concern whatsoever with (as Lord Acton put it) "the office sanctifies the holder", or pretending that the only two possibilities are saints and jerks and nothing else ever occurs anywhere in-between.

There are other options. You can have someone who is playing fast and loose with the trust given to them because they believe it's the right thing to do, or the necessary thing, or that the ends justify the means. You can have someone who is accidentally giving off really really really bad vibes even though not one single thing they're doing is actually a problem. You can have someone who is usually entirely wonderful, but every now and then they hear that siren song, to just this once, just for a moment, "bend the rules". Etc., etc., etc.

There are an infinitude of ways for a GM to be less-than-saintly but in no way actually a jerk. To have zip-zero-nada ill intent, but still acting for ill. I, as a social person, want to be able to fix that. I don't want my only options to be "well I guess I just have to take it" or the outright nuclear option of leaving.

But every single time, that's literally the only two options you folks give me. Those are the only answers. Either I do nothing, or the game is completely over. I want other options! I want to know that I can work things out with people! I want to build and maintain trust, and doing that REQUIRES give and take! But as it's been presented, literally every single time, there is no give and take--or, at least, the give is all on one side and the take is all on the other, unless you blow up your participation in that game completely. Either you accept literally everything, regardless of how concerning it is, because the only possible answer you'll ever get is "just trust me bro", or you leave, destroying your participation in that game and probably hurting some relationships in the doing.

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Paul Farquhar said:

It’s easy enough for the DM to control the outcome if they choose too. Fudging rolls, adding additional enemies or allies, choosing foes that exploit a party’s strengths or weaknesses, etc. If you don’t want that you have to trust the DM not to cheat. Because cheating is easy. In any game, not just D&D. Last time I had to play Monopoly I cheated, since its such a boring game and I wanted to get it over as quickly as possible.

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The Firebird said:

"Doesn't respond well to intimidation" or "doesn't like flattery" both seem more likely than "cannot be persuaded by any means available".

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EzekielRaiden said:

BuT hOw CoUlD wE MaKe OuR oWn DeCiSiOnS iF wE dO tHaT???

There are times that, even though I know it would screw up vast swathes of modern culture (certainly an enormous slice of video gaming), I almost wish I had two-use time machine (once out, once back) so I could prevent D&D from taking over the TTRPG market.

Because then this idea that rules are a horrible nasty bad thing which should be abjured whenever and wherever possible might actually goddamn die, rather than lingering like a mummy lord or the world's most tenacious fart. It's got to be the single most tedious thing in all TTRPG discussion--the constant need to defend the idea that rules are useful tools, and should thus be purposefully designed, and tested to see if they actually fulfill the function for which they were designed, so you can...y'know...make rules that actually work when used!

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hawkeyefan said:

I was kind of assuming there would be a roll involved, and that would be the information the Gm would share (or not share).



Thank you for actually offering some specifics!

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hawkeyefan said:

Some of these things... time of day, the PCs' gear... are set ahead of the arrival at the cliff. Those seem very potentially relevant to me.

Others... the treacherousness of the cliff or the presence of illusions, etc... may be established ahead of time, or may be something the GM has to decide during play.

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TwoSix said:

I think a communication issue is here around “realistic”.

We’re (we being this loose confederation of narrative game enjoyers) generally using it to means “within the boundaries of plausibility and causality”. The living world proponents are generally using it more strictly to mean “purely derived from sim-style heuristics, with no consideration for narrative concerns.” Using narrative considerations to drive play is generally frowned on in living world play,

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hawkeyefan said:

I don't think this has anything to do with what I said. Someone can cheat, yes. I'm uninterested in discussing bad faith activity

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