D&D General Alternate thought - rule of cool is bad for gaming

[Thomas Shey]

Which is fine, once.

I believe I already addressed all this, and as I noted before, when you don't want a cinematic experience in the first place, the point is moot to you, but you're not who the whole discussion is aimed at.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure there are things that can let you get into a better position. Maybe it's swinging from a vine while doing a Tarzan yell, maybe it's throwing down a shield and riding it down a slow ala Legoland Legolas. But if that chandelier is 30 feet off the ground and you're trying to jump up from the floor and grab it from a standing start, you are clearly violating the letter and the spirit of the rules.

Which is why its a separate issue from the second case.

I'm all for flair. It just can't completely bypass the rules of the game to gain a significant benefit. If someone wants to do a fancy tumble I may have them do an acrobatics check. If it doesn't exceed movement or gain them some other advantage, they'll still get to where they want to go it just may look awesome or they may look like they accidentally trip. Maybe if they roll a 1 they fall prone at the end of their turn but if they roll a 20 they get advantage.

Here's where the problem comes in with that; unless they'd have had similar risk doing the mundane move (that otherwise gets them the same practical result) what this teaches people is "Don't do anything with flair." Expecting people to "die for their art" is not fundamentally reasonable if someone cares about results, like, at all.

That's a separate issue.

I just wanted to note it.

 

[Older Beholder]

The rule of cool doesn’t even need to benefit the players.

In the game I was playing last night we were fighting dinosaurs, a player polymorphed one into a mouse and had his familiar pick it up and fly into the sky. He was then hit and lost concentration.

The mouse turned back into a T-Rex and fell to the ground, the DM had it fall nearby, but I personally would have rolled to see if it fell on a player character as that’s just a cooler thing to have happen.

 

[Oofta]

...

Here's where the problem comes in with that; unless they'd have had similar risk doing the mundane move (that otherwise gets them the same practical result) what this teaches people is "Don't do anything with flair." Expecting people to "die for their art" is not fundamentally reasonable if someone cares about results, like, at all.
...

What can I say, we have fun with it. It's not like anything truly bad happens, but they can get some minor benefit.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What can I say, we have fun with it. It's not like anything truly bad happens, but they can get some minor benefit.

Yeah, but that's a case where you're trading off some risk for a minor benefit. Besides the question of whether the tradeoff is worth it (obviously your folks consider it so), it still doesn't address the issue of when its just color.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, but that's a case where you're trading off some risk for a minor benefit. Besides the question of whether the tradeoff is worth it (obviously your folks consider it so), it still doesn't address the issue of when its just color.

The "penalty" is just something we play for laughs. It adds to our games. Since it's something like an acrobatics check by someone that's good at acrobatics it's usually an impressive display of form and them showing off how awesome they are.

It also doesn't really have much of anything to do with the topic of the thread. On topic, there are plenty of times when people improvise, I just try to figure out how to make it work within the framework of the game. I just don't call it "rule of cool", I call it "following the rules of the book".

 

[Thomas Shey]

The "penalty" is just something we play for laughs. It adds to our games. Since it's something like an acrobatics check by someone that's good at acrobatics it's usually an impressive display of form and them showing off how awesome they are.

It also doesn't really have much of anything to do with the topic of the thread. On topic, there are plenty of times when people improvise, I just try to figure out how to make it work within the framework of the game. I just don't call it "rule of cool", I call it "following the rules of the book".

I disagree that it doesn't have anything to do with it. As I said, the question sometimes is "This doesn't matter materially, but doing it may be excessively risky for just using the extent mechanics. So we're not going to use those." That's quintessential Rule of Cool.

 

[Oofta]

I disagree that it doesn't have anything to do with it. As I said, the question sometimes is "This doesn't matter materially, but doing it may be excessively risky for just using the extent mechanics. So we're not going to use those." That's quintessential Rule of Cool.

There's no "excessively risky". If you think there is, then either I expressed myself poorly or you misunderstood.

If you attempt something beyond what you could normally do in order to get significant advantages, there is a risk. For something you can do normally? Not really.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There's no "excessively risky". If you think there is, then either I expressed myself poorly or you misunderstood.

Was there a roll involved and possible failure where the equivalent non-flashy move wouldn't have had one? That's excessively risky.

 

[Seramus]

Was there a roll involved and possible failure where the equivalent non-flashy move wouldn't have had one? That's excessively risky.

I think the only negative consequence was rolling a Nat 1, with the positive consequence of advantage on a Nat 20. Essentially just rolling/fishing for an exteme result one way or the other.

I may have misunderstood, though.