3e, DMs, and Inferred Player Power

[The Shaman]

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.

Tumble is silent on moving from a higher position to a lower position in making the move - one can interpret that to mean that there is no difference since it's not explicitly spelled out but one could make a credible case for a Jump check or increasing the DC of the Tumble check, given that there is a "degree of difficulty" represented by the change in elevation from table to floor.

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.

Your DC 10 assumes that waist-high can be expanded to 4' - in fact when I ran this particular obstacle I made it DC 12 to reflect the height (and I specifically made the wall a bit higher to offer a slightly greater challenge).

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.

Since I said that his goal was to flank the opponent, an ally was assumed. The move was off the table to flank - no mention of moving through an ally's position was mentioned in describing the difficulty.

Now you're picking the flyshit out of the pepper, Patryn of Elvenshae

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

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

I don't see it either, in the first case it matters where the enemy is standing as to what my answer is. You only make one tumble check per enemy, however. It would be a tumble check, however, the table changes nothing (except possibly applying a +2 modifier to the DC due to "uneven terrain"). If your movement rate gets you to where you want to be with only a move action, yes you can attack.

The second one gives you a choice of how to get over. No big deal, the DCs should still be the same at each persons table. Plus, no reason whatsoever for it to be a tumble check.

So far, I find myself agreeing with 2 other people's interpretations of this situation. That's 3 people already who can agree based on some vague wording. Seems pretty consistant to me. Even if the DCs come within 2 of each other, we are all still using the same skill and are very close to each other. Not EXACTLY the same, but close. No one has yet tried to claim that it would be a spellcraft check to tumble past people, because we are all using the same rules.

It's a matter of being able to predict, at least fairly closely what will happen when you take an action. Some DMs will change small things for their game, but changing entire sections of the rules means you aren't playing D&D anymore. You will confuse your players and leave them wondering what will happen the next time they try something they thought they understood.

 

[The Shaman]

Plus, no reason whatsoever for it to be a tumble check.

Other than the rule explicity describing the situation, you mean?

Even if the DCs come within 2 of each other, we are all still using the same skill and are very close to each other. Not EXACTLY the same, but close....It's a matter of being able to predict, at least fairly closely what will happen when you take an action.

Again, my point is, that at three different tables a "nigh-explicit" rule has three different answers - your. mine, and Patryn of Elvenshae's. Not wildly different, certainly, but also not covered explicitly in the rules and one subject to different interpretations by different GMs.

Thank you for making my point for me.

 

[MonsterMash]

The more I talk about it, the more I begin to see Diaglo's real point. (Not the "D&D is the one true game" business, but what's really behind it).

ODD claims another victim

Actually I've always suspected that there was a lot more behind Diaglo's famous quote than many people see.

 

[frankthedm]

It seems to me that WotC cares more about selling books NOW than they do about the long-term health of the hobby.

That is kinda what happens when a profit driven company[T$R] has a hold of a hot property like D&D, drives itself out of business, gets bought by a upcoming game company {WotC], which in turn gets bought by a publicly held profit driven company[Ha$bro]. The employees gotta make profit margins to keep thier jobs. I understand that just as much i will understand any olde school D&D nut who kills them one day for doing that .

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

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).

Of course the DM is the final arbiter when it comes to the 1 in 100 situation the rules don't cover. I don't think anyone here is suggesting otherwise. I expect there to be a slight give and pull in the rules as each DM interprets them SLIGHTLY differently.

On the other hand, I don't expect to fire a ranged weapon through 4 team mates at an enemy and be told that there is a 90% chance to hit my friends, because it is likely at least one of them will move into my shot. Where did this come from? The DM thought it was realistic. There ARE rules for this in the book, if anyone is between you and the target, the target has cover (+4 to his AC), if someone is in melee with the target, you get -4 to hit by trying to avoid your friends.

Would I have made that shot if my character thought he'd hit his friends? Nope. Was I forced to make it anyways? Yep, the DM said I should KNOW that firing past that many friends might hit them and wouldn't allow any rules to tell him otherwise. He knew what was realistic and good for HIS game. He wouldn't let some game designer who OBVIOUSLY didn't know anything about realism to tell him what was good for his game.

Yes, I survived about 5 years with DMs making arbitrary decisions like this and the rules backing them up. Did I like it? No. Did I accept it because there was nothing better? Yep. I liked killing dragons and defeating evil and going up levels. It was worth putting up with the bad part to get the good parts? Yes. I really liked D&D. Is it better now that I can have the good parts WITHOUT the bad parts? YES.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Other than the rule explicity describing the situation, you mean?Again, my point is, that at three different tables a "nigh-explicit" rule has three different answers - your. mine, and Patryn of Elvenshae's. Not wildly different, certainly, but also not covered explicitly in the rules and one subject to different interpretations by different GMs.

Thank you for making my point for me.

Umm...there's a rule about tumbling OVER wallls? Don't remember that one. If there is one, I'd love to see it, normally I don't miss something that obvious. Generally tumble has 2 uses: Avoid AOO and take less damage from falling.

Any time the rules go outside of what is written, I expect different interpretations, but similar ones, as I said. That's why I say that there should be as many rules as possible to minimize the situations where you have to make those decisions. The idea is that actions that are only done rarely don't need seperate rules. Plus, the general idea holds true in each game: Jump gets you over things or takes less damage from jumping down, tumble is as above, climb gets over things you can't jump over (or things you can jump over and just want to climb). They have estimated DCs which allow all our games to be very close.

The goal being that when the player tries any one of those actions, he can know which skill will be used and based on his skill level how likely he is to succeed. He doesn't have to worry that since he didn't take any ranks in Profession(athlete) he won't be able to get over the wall this time.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Tumble is silent on moving from a higher position to a lower position in making the move - one can interpret that to mean that there is no difference since it's not explicitly spelled out but one could make a credible case for a Jump check or increasing the DC of the Tumble check, given that there is a "degree of difficulty" represented by the change in elevation from table to floor.

Right - Tumble doesn't say anything about changing heights, so therefore changing heights has no effect on Tumble. Feel free to move beyond the rules if you'd like, but there's no reason to do so.

Hell, if you feel so inclined, add a circumstance modifier - also known as the "DM's friend." Nothing says you have to, but they're there if you want to use them. Maybe this qualifies as a "+2 to the DC" kind of situation. I don't think it is, but maybe you do. That's ok - it's what it's there for. That way, you aren't even moving beyond the rules.

A Jump check? Please. A DC 15 Jump check allows you to take no damage from the first 10' of a fall and convert the damage from the next 10' into nonlethal, if you jump down. This is a table - it's not high enough for falling damage to enter into it.

If you think it takes a Jump check to get out of bed in the morning, feel free to add one here. Heck, you'll notice that I made an allowance that it might be a particularly tall table when I answered your question. Note also that, if for some reason, you require a Jump check to avoid the damage caused from moving from the table to the floor, you should also allow an additional Tumble check - also DC 15 - to negate the damage, as well.

It's silly, and the rules specifically don't require it - but feel free to add it in if you must.

Since I said that his goal was to flank the opponent, an ally was assumed. The move was off the table to flank - no mention of moving through an ally's position was mentioned in describing the difficulty.

That's because moving through allies' squares is free, and doesn't affect the difficulty at all.

Now you're picking the flyshit out of the pepper, Patryn of Elvenshae

Which, oddly enough, brings me to my final point. Lets look at where, according to you, we have the biggest disagreement.

Your DC 10 assumes that waist-high can be expanded to 4' - in fact when I ran this particular obstacle I made it DC 12 to reflect the height (and I specifically made the wall a bit higher to offer a slightly greater challenge).

How did I rule that this would happen, based on a quick thumb-nail of what I remembered from the Jump skill? Jump check, DC 10.

How did you rule that this would happen, based on whatever method you picked? Jump check, DC 12.

You realize, don't you, that there's an entire 2 point difference in our DCs? And that we both used the same skill? Heck, toss in KM's answer, and you've still only got a 4 point difference between your DC and his - and it's still using the same skill.

Compare that to the methods and answers you would have received had we been discussing how someone should handle this in, say, 2nd Edition. You'd've had people proposing Strength checks, Dex checks, auto-success based on the PCs being heroes and "being able to do this kind of thing," rolls against the Acrobatics non-weapon proficiency, and that's just what I can come up with off the top of my head.

Let that sink in a moment.

For all your comments about how "The rules don't handle this," three separate DMs came up with three nearly identical answers.

And that's why 3rd Edition wins.

 

[FireLance]

Once again, I'm starting my post by highlighting a few other excellent posts that I agree with: Hussar's point in #94 on the shift in emphasis from DM as storyteller/scriptwriter/director to DM as referee/aribiter, Jackelope King's point in #97 about the DM's responsibility to ensure that the entire group is having fun, Majoru Oakheart's point in #103 that a solid set of rules helps rather than hinders the DM, and Kamikaze Midget's point in #119 that the DM has a bigger job, but it doesn't give him extra privileges.

The impression I get from reading some posts is that some DMs do not like the fact that players now have a better grasp of the rules and default assumptions behind D&D and now have expectations when they play the game, whether it is expectations of how likely they are to succeed at a particular action, how magic is supposed to work, what options are available, what sort of challenges and rewards they will encounter, etc. If so, then I will admit that D&D is probably moving in a direction that they will not be happy with. However, I think the change in D&D is not a cause but a symptom of people generally wanting more equal relationships. Consumers want more information about products in order to make better choices, and guarantees of the quality of the services they use. Citizens demand more transparency and accountability from their governments, and more decisions that are based on reason rather than whim. Hence, it is not surprising that players do the same with their DMs.

From that perspective, the DM's power has been eroded. He still has all the authority he needs to do his job - he can make up rules on the fly, he can create a setting and populate it with NPCs, he can set house rules, change the monsters, make a snap decision to keep the game going, run low-magic campaigns, disallow anything he feels to be unsuitable for his campaign, etc. However, what he cannot do is to avoid being judged by his players, and they have a much better basis of doing so because of the clearer, more consistent rules, and forums such as ENWorld which let them know that other DMs are doing it differently. And if he doesn't measure up, he's out of a job.

To answer an earlier point raised by Henry, I don't think any open-ended rules set can ever do without a DM because it is practically impossible to be comprehensive enough to cover everything that creative players can come up with. However, a good and consistent rules set does make it less necessary for the DM to make his own rulings. Some see it as a benefit - instead of thinking about rules, the DM can concentrate on the other aspects of the game that do not rely on rules such as the setting and the portrayal of NPCs. Others see this as an erosion of DM power. However, it is only an erosion of DM power insofar as it presents players with an alternative to how the situation could have been handled. Any DM whose players agree with the way he handles things ought to have no problems whatsoever.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

For all your comments about how "The rules don't handle this," three separate DMs came up with three nearly identical answers.

And that's why 3rd Edition wins.

Yeah. Exactly. Because there are some simple, basic principles that are consistent throughout those rules.

Granted, books beyond core break that. They do contradict the core rules or even ignore some of those good design principles. So there can be (and is) more work when you go beyond PH, MM and DMG. But in many cases those additional rules make less work. The old days of arguments in 1E? My god. My head still hurts remembering some of the absolute knock down, drag-em-outs because there was nothing to even attempt to find a principle with to adjudicate. Whatever logic a player could attempt to grasp became a weapon to "beat" the DM at their ruling to drag out some miniscule advantage in that combat.

Then you had to write it down to be consistent.

Then the PCs conveniently forgot it when it helped them.

Then they argued it when you brought it up with new and different reasons why it shouldn't apply (if it benefitted them) or why it should (if it benefitted them).

Are the current rules stifling creativity and gameplay. Nope. I think they are enhancing it.

What I think is happening instead is that we're hearing more about all sorts of gaming groups. The player whose DM is only doing it because someone "has to" instead of wanting to put in those hours polishing the world. The story-oriented DM who is getting started with a group of veteran powergamers hungry to try out the latest Complete option. The newly formed group who all hate each other but play together because it's the only game in town. And the success stories - the ones behind every successful DM posting in this thread.