Amusing Jump Detail

[myradale]

Well, there already exists rule 0 for these sort of things.

There should be a rule 0.5 as well...the "don't make me smack you" rule.
It would come in handy for situations like this...

P-Ok, I'm running full out in one direction 20' and then jump back the other way 10'
GM- ok <SMACK>

Solves everything.

 

[domino]

On the subject of food...

It says you take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage each day.

How fast do you heal non lethal damage again?

 

[Egres]

On the subject of food...

It says you take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage each day.

How fast do you heal non lethal damage again?

From the SRD:

Nonlethal damage from thirst or starvation cannot be recovered until the character gets food or water, as needed—not even magic that restores hit points heals this damage.

 

[domino]

Poop. Well, if the SRD would have loaded for me, I'm sure I could have seen that for myself.

Thanks.

 

[moritheil]

Here's an example. Can you walk through a wall using d20 rules? Before reading this post, did you know that a rule specifically exists that says you can't walk through a solid wall? Did you think it necessary for that to be in the rules? IMO, it's on the same line as something like eating; which, by the way, I believe is specified as necessary in the rules in the D&D DMG under the rules on starvation (but maybe not).

Eating is covered, and I believe the tangibility of walls is explicitly mentioned in passages related to dungeon design, as well as in the Guide to Puzzles, Traps, and Challenges.

Prices exist for "a meal," so you can claim that one grain of rice feeds you, but don't be surprised when your DM forces you to pay for it as you would for any other meal.

I see a lot of reaction along the lines of, "well, duh, common sense should be used." That's a rare thing to see on these boards - voices crying in unison for common sense and actually meaning the same thing.

 

[moritheil]

As my original post was supposed to emphasise, the 'rules' DO NOT attempt to spell out everything, and nor should they. Any DM who can't make common sense rulings without resorting to 'the rules' and any player who can't accept it shouldn't be playing IMO. And it is pretty rare that I'd say something like that.

The rules don't need to spell out anything that should be obvious to anyone with half a brain.

I will have to respectfully disagree with that. The rules are often so hair-splitting in detail that their writing implies to many people that they are absolute and comprehensive. The trouble, as I see it, is that WOTC decided to try to idiot proof some spells to avoid abuse (one person I know used to always claim he could use Create Water to create a gallon of water in someone's brain cavity, thereby instantly killing them), and in putting the details into their spells, skills, and feats, they opened up Pandora's proverbial box. One can never idiot proof against all manner of idiocy.

Patryn, for example, said:

And, I've never seen anyone - other than here - who argued that the run up to the jump could be anything other than in the direction of the jump (or, at least, close to it).

But therein lies the problem. How close to the direction of movement should the jump be? 30 degrees? 45 degrees? 90 degrees? My most extreme example of 180 degrees? The rules are silent, not saying where to draw the line. And inevitably, somewhere, we will have a confrontation between someone who attempts some silly stunt like jumping backwards, and their hard-line DM, who rules that not even the slightest deviation is possible, and both sides will accuse the other of misinterpreting the rules.

I do not argue that the rules can be perfect, or that we should expect them to be. I instead wish to present this example to point out that taking things to their logical conclusion is satisfying to different degrees to different players.

And yet, on the EN Rules board, that is all we can do - take rules to their logical conclusions.

 

[CM]

Guy guys guys. Obvoiusly you've never played Mario 64. The second best way to gain height in a jump is to run one direction, and turn 180 degrees on a dime and leap the other direction in one swift move!
This is basic people!

Thank you! I've been wracking my brain trying to remember which game that was in. Seems to fit the subject at hand perfectly.

Now how do you translate the crouching jump to D&D terms?

 

[Pielorinho]

And yet, on the EN Rules board, that is all we can do - take rules to their logical conclusions.

As an individual poster--not as a moderator--I tend to disagree. If there are two DMs:

1) who understands the rules perfectly and hasn't a lick of common sense; and
2) Who has a terrible understanding of the rules but has a wealth of common sense,

I'd immediately choose to play with #2. The rules may be written in a cross between legalese and C++, and that may have many advantages, but it's got some serious disadvantages, too: the current state of legalese is the end product of thousands of years of refinement and redefinition and constant challenges, and C++ is a language whose errors manifest themselves unambiguously.

RPG rules have been around for a few decades, with 3.x being around less than a decade. It's nowhere near as refined as legalese is, and treating it like legalese is, in my opinion, unwise. Treating it like a programming language is similarly unwise, inasmuch as its basis in natural language means that it's riddled with ambiguities.

Would a terrible metaphor help? Of course it would! I see 3.x rules as an archipelago, in which many, many rules rise above the sea of ambiguity (I warned you!). When those rules sink into the sea, we can either spend our time diving beneath the surface trying to map them out, or we can navigate those areas with the Raft of Common Sense. I'd rather do the latter.

And while the DMG gives a price for a meal, it nowhere requires you to eat a meal in order to avoid starvation. It just requires you to have food. The meal-module is imperfectly implemented.

Daniel

 

[Celebrim]

The meal-module is imperfectly implemented.

Hey. Now I know you are a programmer.

I doubt there is such a thing as a perfectly implemented module. There are just modules that do the job well enough that some programmer has gotten tired of fiddling with because it works and he'd rather move on.

 

[Pielorinho]

Actually, the most involved programming I've ever done is setting up fussy little Visual Basic modules in Access databases--I'm no real programmer. But I take your point about how there's no such thing as a perfectly-implemented module!

Daniel