A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[Maxperson]

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] - there's a difference between not reading your posts and not really caring. I believe I walk that line every time I post with you.

Then don't respond. I won't miss your Strawmen, believe me.

But, in any case, I'd point out that I did, indeed, read your posts, and even showed that you had, in fact, changed the 5e rules, so, claims that I didn't read your posts don't really work do they? I was just finding it funny that you would look at 5e, and think, "Hrm, I don't like this rule, I'll just change it" but, read 4e, with virtually the exact same rule and think, "Wow, I don't like this game so much I won't play it."

I never said that, and even corrected in the last post, proving that you really don't read what I say. Or if you do, then you intentionally misrepresent me which is even worse. Had that rule been the only thing I didn't like with 4e, I'd have done the same thing I did with 5e which is change it and move on. However, there were so many different things that I personally didn't like about 4e that I would have had to basically re-write the game it it just wasn't worth that hassle when I had all my 3e books still around and working well.

I stand in awe of how WotC has managed to win over folks with 5e. It's a testament to how important voice is in writing. Six years ago, WotC was the evil corporation trying to force a garbage game on fans. Now, it can do no wrong, even though the new version of the game is so very close to the other version.

WotC can do no wrong?! I stand in awe of how you can be so oblivious to all the complaints about 5e from skills, to hit points, to the rule we are discussing, to rulings, to backgrounds and on and on.

I guess the devil is in the details. For me, it's not. I look at these two rules and think, yup, these are pretty much the same thing. Sure, there's superficial differences, but, in play? Yeah, a whole lot more things die to melee attacks than anything else.

Spells and ranged weapons kill a great deal. I don't know if they kill more than melee, but if not, they are certainly in the same ballpark.

 

[pemerton]

Are you even capable of not misrepresenting what people say to you during a discussion? I never said it was unrealistic for someone to survive a fireball. That's your Strawman. I said it's more unrealistic to make fire from a fireball non-lethal damage.

How is that last sentence relevant to a discussion of 4e, which has no concept of "non-lethal damage". The rule in 4e is this (I'm quoting from the Rules Compendium p 261; but the PHB includes the same rule with identical or near-identical wording):

When an adventurer reduces a monster or a DM-controlled character to 0 hit points, he or she can choose to knock the creature unconscious rather than kill it.​

If a player makes this choice, then the creature survived the fireball. Which you've said is not unrealistic. So where is the lack of realism in this rule?

 

[Maxperson]

How is that last sentence relevant to a discussion of 4e, which has no concept of "non-lethal damage". The rule in 4e is this (I'm quoting from the Rules Compendium p 261; but the PHB includes the same rule with identical or near-identical wording):

When an adventurer reduces a monster or a DM-controlled character to 0 hit points, he or she can choose to knock the creature unconscious rather than kill it.​

If a player makes this choice, then the creature survived the fireball. Which you've said is not unrealistic. So where is the lack of realism in this rule?

You can't tell me that there is no concept of non-lethal damage in 4e and then quote me the rule that says that there is. The very fact that you can choose to knock a creature out rather than kill means that there are two types of damage. Lethal and non-lethal. If there weren't, you wouldn't have that choice.

The lack of realism is in the fact that fire is always lethal damage, unless some sort of magic alters it. There is no such magical ability built into a 4e fireball, so it doesn't exist unless the DM adds it to the game. The rule about damage is a general one that involves both time travel and a highly unrealistic ability to alter damage types.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Thanks. Wow, almost 400 pages!

I can be long-winded. Who'd have thought?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Once the spell has been cast, the fireball goes and explodes. Nothing in the fireball daily says or even implies that the caster can make non-lethal fire. What is non-lethal fire anyway? It's absurd to even think that non-lethal fire exists. The DM can add non-lethal fire into the game, but I would never do so. I like a more realistic game than you do.



Because fire is lethal and impartial. There is no control over what it does. If it's non-lethal, then it's not fire. If it's fire, then it's lethal.

Agreed, but that doesn't mean the PLAYER shouldn't have some say in how things go! Think about it this way, there's some plot point that is going to hinge on some particular NPC being disabled instead of dead. Why can't players invoke that? Its a very common thing in any sort of action genre, that one bad guy that still has enough life in him to interrogate, etc. Although 4e doesn't really SAY the DM can also do this, presumably she can also decree non-lethality for whatever reasons.

It is certainly 'gamist', there's no general in-world explanation, and particular instances will probably be explained largely post-hoc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm fairly consistent, yes.

I do tinker with new things due to discussions here, though. A few campaigns ago I had the PCs all be children of various gods of the Forgotten Realms. Part of that campaign was that each child had innate power to "do things" related to the portfolios of the parent god. I let the players know that they could try anything they could think of that relates, and to be creative. The power grew with them as they gained levels and could do things of their level or lower fairly easily, but could be pushed to things more powerful than would normally be possible due to level alone, and I even didn't give them hard rules on what the limits were so they wouldn't feel constrained. I was basically setting it up so that they could create for the game within those limits, to see how the players would react to being able to do things like that. They tried surprisingly few things. I figured they would use it more and more as they got used to the idea, which they did, but still tended to go with their class related abilities far more often.



I enjoy the debate, and more than once after beating my head against the brick wall for a while, someone says something new and different, or in a different way which gets me thinking about the subject in a way I hadn't yet. Occasionally, I will even change my mind about something, like I did in the Shield Master discussion.



Same here!! And I do enjoy our discussions. I wish some others here would engage in good faith discussions the way you do.

That sounds like an interesting campaign! I had one once that was supposed to be basically the first people, and they of course BECOME the first gods, but it never really worked out exactly. Maybe I'll try your idea sometime. It might be a good one to use with HoML.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Huh? In most RPGs, including D&D, the GM can choose for an event to occur which is, in the fiction, sheer chance or providence - eg that members of the sect are in this teahouse rather than that teahouse.

Gygax in his DMG canvasses the same option for a fatal monster attack against a PC, where the player has played with skill and hence PC death would be particularly unfair.

What is the objection to a player making an analogous choice in relation to the effect that a fireball spell has on a target?

Again, this is a vestige of the whole original Gygaxian mindset of skilled play dungeon crawling. If a player wants a monster disabled in this paradigm, then he's got to actually construct, ahead of time or maybe on the spur of the moment, a convincing mechanism which will win the DM's favor and then the DM gets to produce the reward. Players rewarding themselves is ANATHEMA in this paradigm! Again, inertia, people keep these tenets of play even when they have long abandoned the core paradigm itself, de facto if not de jur. Realism, or some close analog, is brought in as a replacement reason when one is required, though "why be realistic" can only be answered as "I like it that way." Obviously we can only accept that at face value.

 

[Maxperson]

Agreed, but that doesn't mean the PLAYER shouldn't have some say in how things go! Think about it this way, there's some plot point that is going to hinge on some particular NPC being disabled instead of dead. Why can't players invoke that? Its a very common thing in any sort of action genre, that one bad guy that still has enough life in him to interrogate, etc. Although 4e doesn't really SAY the DM can also do this, presumably she can also decree non-lethality for whatever reasons.

I think they should be able to knock out an NPC instead of killing him. I just think that they should be working towards that goal in advance with all the limitations that goes with it. Instead of using a fireball, use hold person or some other spell that will incapacitate. Let me know that if you connect with your blow(remember that in 5e RAW, only the blow that takes you to 0 really hits), you will be pulling it so as not to kill the NPC. It's not hard to alter the party tactics to try to capture the enemy. Using those tactics IS the player having say in how things go.

It is certainly 'gamist', there's no general in-world explanation, and particular instances will probably be explained largely post-hoc.

Which of course is an issue.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It makes the game MORE(you misrepresented again) unrealistic that the authority to alter damage types exists for the players at all. Fire is not non-lethal. If a player can just make it and other lethal damage types non-lethal on a whim, the game's realism drops significantly.

But really it isn't necessary to explain the 'non-lethality' as some mutant form of fire. Just assume that the force of the fireball knocked the guy unconscious but didn't quite kill him. PCs, in 4e, AUTOMATICALLY are unconscious at 0 (unless they reach negative bloodied, which is unusual in a single attack). All that this rule is doing is allowing this to apply to monsters, now and then. I'd assume the reason it doesn't always apply is simple convenience in play. We could assume that MANY 'dead' monsters actually could have been saved, and thus the non-lethality is just the PCs bothering to save one. There are other possible explanations too.

I feel like the repugnance for this mechanic has less to do with any really deep issue with its creating impossible or implausible situations and more to do with its tampering with traditions of play.

 

[Maxperson]

That sounds like an interesting campaign! I had one once that was supposed to be basically the first people, and they of course BECOME the first gods, but it never really worked out exactly.

That's an interesting idea, too.

Maybe I'll try your idea sometime. It might be a good one to use with HoML.

The idea behind the campaign was that the Imaskari remnant located one of their old mega artifacts designed to keep the gods from connecting to mortals on Toril with divine magic and activated it. Clerics, paladins, etc. lost their power. However, through a fluke(yeah, right) the PCs via their divine heritage still had a connection to their parent and could draw upon that connection if a divine class, so the cleric in the party was literally the only cleric on the planet who could still use clerical spells. The parents communicated via dreams to their children that they couldn't connect to their followers and asked for help.

At the end of the campaign after the PCs were successful, they were offered the status of Demigods in the pantheon if they so wished, retiring the character, or they could continue on as PCs.