3e, DMs, and Inferred Player Power

[The Shaman]

I disagree, the DM and players should be able to use the rules as a solid basis for role playing as it covers most common things that people will do. For anything beyond the scope of the rules, the actual RAW can be used as a springboard to come up with new rules a lot like the originals that fit rarer situations.

This is just as true with OD&D as it is with 3e - that's not a strength of the current iteration, just a recapitulation of the status quo.

Plus, I've rarely, if ever, come up with situations the rules didn't cover.

My character is standing on a table and wants to tumble past an opponent standing on the floor to assume a flanking position and attack. Is this a Tumble check, two Tumble checks, or a Jump check and a Tumble check? Can my character attack in the same round that he tumbles past the opponent?

Later in the same encounter my character is running and wants to hop over a four-foot wall, placing his hands on top of the wall for extra leverage as he boosts himself over. Is this a Climb check, a Jump check, or another Tumble check? What's the DC?

Any good DM should use common sense to interpret the rules anyways. A couple of the game designers have stated this directly. The rules ARE there to make the game easier on you so you don't have to make rulings for every action PCs do, not to provide a straight jacket that can't be changed. Even my players know that in very specific situations, the rules may be SLIGHTLY modified, but compared to other people's house rules, people probably think my rules ARE the ones in the book....As I said before, this should be rare..the grapple rules can be used for a lot of things that "don't fit", tripping, disarming, charging all can be interpretted loosely to allow almost all situations.

Now you seem to be backing away for your earlier position that the rules are an "independent third-party" to the game by suggesting that in fact interpretation is necessary, that the rules need to be stretched to cover actions either not covered or inadequately covered, and the ultimately the rules more like guidelines, actually, regardless of edition.

The current iteration certainly details a wider range of options then earlier editions, but the idea that the rules can handle a huge chunk of managing the game without adjudication by the GM simply isn't true, IMHO, unless you limit options to those covered explicitly by the rules.

I don't see it as a control issue, per se. I am just tired of games I was playing being ruined because a perfectly valid idea on my part was ruined by a DM that thought it was stupid(either because of a lack of imagination to see something as possible or because of a perceived balance issue without ever having tested it to see if there was a problem) and changed to rules so it was nearly impossible to succeed.

How is this not a control issue? As a player you wanted to control what does and doesn't work and the GM disagreed, so you favor a system that minimizes the GM's input into making these calls. That seems like a control issue to me.

(BTW, any chance that the GM didn't lack imagination, but rather that your ideas were truly unworkable and the GM made a common sense call?)

There's also the issue of things in the game-world that don't conform to how the rules dictate they should, such as magic. Is it possible, for example, that the way magic functions in the game-world at the time of the game is different from the way magic operated at a different time in the continuity of the game-world, such that dispel magic may not work against certain kinds of spells as effectively (if at all)? Is there no room in a fantasy roleplaying game for the fantastic and the mysterious, that which works by forces unknown to the mages and sages of the present?

For me, the key to this questions is, is the GM using this as a feature of the game-world that reflects the history and cosmology and metaphysics of the universe, or just trying to hose the characters? If it's the latter, that's just poor GMing, and no set of rules or differing editions will change that. If the former, then being frustrated by it is just petulance that the world doesn't work the way the player thinks it should, in which case my suggestion to that player is to GM and not play, to avoid being disappointed.

It seems to me that a focus on teaching GMs how to be better arbiters, rather than loading down the system with more and more rules, would handle many of the problems that players cite with respect to RPGs. However, as noted, a book on GMing has a smaller audience than a book of "player options," so the fact that shelves are weighted down by the latter is no great surprise.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It seems to me that a focus on teaching GMs how to be better arbiters, rather than loading down the system with more and more rules, would handle many of the problems that players cite with respect to RPGs.

This is often WAY too subjective to be effectively taught, and often involves too much investement. You're effectively asking the DMG to educate people to be amateur game designers. That's going to take a *comittment* from a lot of poeple. DMing when you can just pick up the book, look up the rule (or something similar) and say "this is how it works, and that makes sense, so this is how it's going to work" makes the DM's job *infinately* easier, and also makes the game more standardized, so you don't have eighteen different awkward ways of handling grappling (for instance), all of which must be taken into account when developing new material for the game.

My character is standing on a table and wants to tumble past an opponent standing on the floor to assume a flanking position and attack. Is this a Tumble check, two Tumble checks, or a Jump check and a Tumble check? Can my character attack in the same round that he tumbles past the opponent?

It's tumbling through another character's space. "assuming a flanking position" happens automatically on the other side of the creature.

Later in the same encounter my character is running and wants to hop over a four-foot wall, placing his hands on top of the wall for extra leverage as he boosts himself over. Is this a Climb check, a Jump check, or another Tumble check? What's the DC?

It's up to the player. If they want to hop it, it's a Jump check. DC 16 with a running start, DC 32 from a standing position. That'll put you over the wall. Putting the hand on the wall is covered in the normal course of a jump check. In the possibility that they describe an ingenious tactic, a circumstance bonus is applied. If they want to climb it, they can (assuming 4 ft. is <= 1/4 their speed) with a DC 10 climb check.

 

[Belen]

It seems a common misconception that "the DM is the ultimate arbiter" equates to "the DM is frequently arbitrary (or worse)". Only the latter is likley to prevent you from having players who want to be in your games. I've seen many a DM take the ultimate arbiter role, and have plenty of people who want to play, because they are fair and consistent.

Someone made the argument that the DM would (or should) always have more power because the DM puts more time and effort into building the campaign. This is correct, but not in the "effort yields power as a reward" sense.

The DM knows what's in the game world, the PCs, the monsters, the plot hooks, the whole enchilada. If the DM knows what's going on better than everyone else, the DM is in the best position to guide the game to the most fun for everyone. Thus, the DM probably ought to have the most power to guide at hand. In essense - the DM is the one who is in the best position to solve problems, and so should have the ability to do so.

Well said. You made it far clearer and in fewer words.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

there is a large and vocal group of players who do interpret the WotC material to mean that a DM should allow any option unless there is an extremely compelling reason to say no. I.e., the DM whose world was long ago established as having no orcs should allow a PC to be a half-orc if that is what the player wants because there must be some way to explain the presence of this anomaly.

Never once said allow everything. What I said is you need a compelling reason not to allow it. "There are no orcs in my world" is certainly a compelling reason. However, you might restrict your game from all those players who like half-orcs. If you are fine with this, no problem.

2) If you're a DM, and your players are doing as much work as you are, then by all means let them make the decisions. Apparently, they're making them anyway. For most groups, however, the concept of the players doing as much as the DM is ludicrous.

As I said, I do nearly no prep work. Most of the prep work I actually do is just thinking about things and not writing anything down. I once ran 2 sessions with just the notes: "Orcs paid off by local Baron to attack villiages as first step towards declaring martial law and conscripting an army to conqure country. He hires adventures to send them into an orc trap and get rid of possible opposition." I had some ideas about him having a wizard to assist him with his plans. I didn't know what country he was in, what else was in the world. I figured I'd build the rest as I went. Now, if someone wanted to be from a certain type of culture, I could write it into the world. With their input, my world could be more interesting than if I had designed it alone. Plus, the rest didn't matter to the game session at hand.

a one-page character background that I use to develop 100+ pages of material does not make the player's contribution equal in my eyes.

Seems you do a lot of work preparing for your game. Is all that extra effort worth the payoff you get if the adventure involves combat against orcs?

6) Not only do I reserve the right to say No, but I reserve the right to completely rewrite the rules from the ground up. Modify the classes. Change the races. Redefine feats and spells. Finally, I reserve the right to not tell you all the rules ahead of time. Sure, you may have the character generation rules, but there are feats and spells the PCs must learn of in-game, and monsters can be quite different.....

You do...and people like me have the right to get annoyed at your game and leave part way through when we realize that no matter what we do, you'll change the rule and make it different next time, so we can't count on anything working twice. Then, we'll wait until you make up a rule that you came up with off the top of your head that has a glaring hole in it that you don't see, and use it against you. I've seen it happen. One DM was SO positive his rules were better than the ones in the book because the ones in the book were all stupid. Then, he made a rule that players figured out how to abuse and suddenly they were overpowered.

 

[Henry]

DMing when you can just pick up the book, look up the rule (or something similar) and say "this is how it works, and that makes sense, so this is how it's going to work" makes the DM's job *infinately* easier, and also makes the game more standardized...

However, it's not that simple, because the more rules the DM and players have to know, the more bogged down a human being gets. I'm all for standardization, but there has to be a happy medium. As of right now, the core rules do an admirable job. However, anything beyond that and things just get too messy to keep up with. There has to be a point where the DMG says, "the final authority is invested in THIS person", so that rules debates do not slow or confuse the game play, and that's happening less in this edition. No one in this thread seems to deny that there's a NEED for a clean path for arbitration, but many seem to think the rules will do it 99 times out of 100. However, as the rules forum frequently attests, they DON'T. (I've seen Hypersmurf blanch more than once at a SKip Williams or Andy Collins ruling. )

The part I'm interested in is that 1 in 100; I'm interested in when there needs to be a final word within 30 seconds of a discrepancy, and people are more interested in debating rules than taking the DM's word for it and moving on. The game thrived for 35 years on there being one arbiter who the buck stopped with, and now it's supposedly inferior to some people, and without that final arbiter (being replaced or marginalized) I don't forsee the game continuing as anything more than a different version of Mage Knight or Heroclix (or those "fighting flip-books" I played as a kid).

 

[Templeton580]

*

 

[The Shaman]

This is often WAY too subjective to be effectively taught, and often involves too much investement. You're effectively asking the DMG to educate people to be amateur game designers. That's going to take a *comittment* from a lot of poeple. DMing when you can just pick up the book, look up the rule (or something similar) and say "this is how it works, and that makes sense, so this is how it's going to work" makes the DM's job *infinately* easier, and also makes the game more standardized, so you don't have eighteen different awkward ways of handling grappling (for instance), all of which must be taken into account when developing new material for the game.

I don't consider stopping the action to thumb through one of a dozen or more books (for the truly option-heavy) to look up a rule to be infinitely easier than teaching a GM how to break down a complex action into a couple of checks on the fly. Of course, that's where my comfort zone lies, and I'm sure it's quite different for other GMs.

As far as being too subjective to teach, I believe it's a skill that can be learned - Rich Redman's excellent Modern articles, "Notes from the Bunker," come to mind.

It's tumbling through another character's space. "assuming a flanking position" happens automatically on the other side of the creature.

The character is moving from a table to the floor during the tumble (read the description closely) - only one Tumble check, same as on flat ground? Also, moving through the opponent's square would mean he's now opposite his old position, in which case he's not flanking anything - he must be moving to a square adjacent to the opponent but opposite another character in order to be flanking.

It's up to the player. If they want to hop it, it's a Jump check. DC 16 with a running start, DC 32 from a standing position. That'll put you over the wall. Putting the hand on the wall is covered in the normal course of a jump check. In the possibility that they describe an ingenious tactic, a circumstance bonus is applied. If they want to climb it, they can (assuming 4 ft. is <= 1/4 their speed) with a DC 10 climb check.

What you described is a long jump in the rules - but what if the character doesn't want to end up eight feet beyond the wall, but rather wants to simply hop over it and use if for cover from the other side? The Modern and 3.5 SRDs both offer long jump, high jump, hop on, and jump down as options - nowhere is "jump over" described in the manner in which my character wants to get across the wall. Would you then say that what my character wants to accomplish can't be done, since it's not covered in the rules.

Also, why not use Tumble instead? The description of what the character wants to do sounds oftly close to tumbling through an opponent's square to end up on the other side, and the description of Tumble (in the Modern SRD, at least) specifically includes "jump" as a descriptor of the action: "...the character can roll, jump, or dive through squares occupied by opponents, moving over, under, or around them as if they weren't there..." (emphasis added).

Before we get any further bogged down by this, my point is simple: the rules don't cover every action, even relatively simple ones like those I described. That's what a GM is there to do.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

This is just as true with OD&D as it is with 3e - that's not a strength of the current iteration, just a recapitulation of the status quo.

Except, in earlier editions, players had much less access to which rules would be covering a particular point (including, perhaps, the module's own particular ruleset for this particular situation).

My character is standing on a table and wants to tumble past an opponent standing on the floor to assume a flanking position and attack. Is this a Tumble check, two Tumble checks, or a Jump check and a Tumble check? Can my character attack in the same round that he tumbles past the opponent?

Tumble check, DC 15, to not draw an AoO as you move past the guy on the floor, and move at half speed. Take a -10 penalty if you want to move at full speed. If you need to move through the guy, the base DC increases to 25.

The table is likely not high enough to cause falling damage, so no jump check is required. If it was, the DC is 15, and a failure would indicate that you fall prone.

You can make an attack in the same round if it only took you a single move action to get into flanking position, the same as with any other movement.

Later in the same encounter my character is running and wants to hop over a four-foot wall, placing his hands on top of the wall for extra leverage as he boosts himself over. Is this a Climb check, a Jump check, or another Tumble check? What's the DC?

Jump check. DC 10 to "Hop up" an land on your feet on anything up to waist high. Doing so costs 10' of movement. Since you're not trying to end up on top of the wall, we'll just leave this one alone and say that, even though 4' is [likely] higher than waist height, the fact that you're just attempting to clear it balances out.

Note that Jump and Tumble, when you have 5 ranks, provide synergy bonuses to each other. Thus, someone with 5 ranks in Tumble gets a +2 bonus to Jump checks, and vice versa. This covers exactly this situation: your training in gymnastics helps you properly place your hands for your vault over the wall.

These are, all told, pretty basic questions that are covered nigh-explicitly in the RAW.

 

[The Shaman]

These are, all told, pretty basic questions that are covered nigh-explicitly in the RAW.

Perhaps, but so far we have three possible interpretations for these "nigh-explicit" rules, as well as differing circumstance bonuses and DCs.

That's my point.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Perhaps, but so far we have three possible interpretations for these "nigh-explicit" rules, as well as differing circumstance bonuses and DCs.

That's my point.

I see two.

There's no difference on the Tumble checks to move off the table, on to the floor, and around your opponent. I just provided additional options. It's otherwise stock Tumble skill.

As for jumping, Kamikaze gave you the correct rule for a character making a leap starting from a point 8' in front of the wall, clearing 4' at the midpoint of your jump, and landing 8' beyond the wall. This is a DC 16 jump when you've got a running start, or a DC 32 jump when you don't. In other words, his interpretation is wrong based on your description (where you run up to the wall before jumping).

Accordingly, my interpretation gives you an easier chance to jump the wall - DC 10 vs. 16+ - but takes into account the way you wanted your character to move.

Note that, in the end, they both result in nearly identical results. I let you run 10' up to the wall, and then I charge you 10' of movement to clear the wall at DC 10, and you end up immediately on the other side of it. Total movement cost? 20'.

KM has you jump from 10' away, spend 10' of movement in the air up to the wall, spend 10' of movement past the wall, and then an additional 10' of movement getting back to the wall. Total movement cost? 30'.

However, we come to the important point. If your objective is to end up directly on the other side of the wall, using it for cover, you should use my way of doing it. It's more efficient (20' of movement vs. 30'). If your objective is to clear the wall while escaping, then you should use KM's way. It's more efficient for that purpose (30' of movement vs. 20').

It's good to see the rules support something that makes cinematic sense.

EDIT: Moreover, you did not provide enough information in your initial setups to determine where, exactly, everything was placed. For instance, there could be an ally directly in line with your character, the edge of the table, and your opponent, meaning that a tumble directly through the opponent would land you in flanking position.

Additionally, "Flanking position" is a meaningless term unless you've got an ally to flank with.