billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Raiders of the Lost Ark - Gun vs Sword
Heck of a lot more than 15 feet? I'd estimate they're only about 15 feet apart.
D&D 5E "But Wizards Can Fly, Teleport and Turn People Into Frogs!"
- Thread starter Falling Icicle
- Start date
- Status
Raiders of the Lost Ark - Gun vs Sword
Heck of a lot more than 15 feet? I'd estimate they're only about 15 feet apart.
G
Guest 85555
Guest
Sure because cops are trying to minimize risk of dying on the job. It is not an ideal distance but I still give the edge to the guy with the gun.
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
The odds of a fired weapon in a fire fight hitting the target in approx. sub 50 foot distances is approximately 1 in 6...according to police/military studies so I disagree.
G
Guest 85555
Guest
Do you have a link?
either way, you are pretty much talking point blank range. I suspect that close it isn't going to be very hard to hit (though I am no gun expert).
This, however is really starting to drag us all way off topic and we are getting lost in the Indiana jones analogy.
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
I read the studies in 1997 or there abouts and did indeed see them on the web then, but havent been able to find them when I looked for them more recently - I personally speculated the results were suprising because many shots by the military and police are not intended to hit and the stats were messed up by that (but rather to intimidate or similar ie control the field) however I have also seen a documentary where they indicated part of the problem is killing is psychologically hard for most people ... target shooting is much easier so we expect better accuracy than we get.
FireLance
Legend
Yeah, but the pointless display of swordsmanship adds 30 feet.
FireLance
Legend
Here's another fundamental disconnect: I don't see why the PC has to take any penalty at all. Why can't the PC impose a penalty on the target unless it does what he wants instead? Either it moves adjacent to the PC or it takes a -2 penalty on all attack rolls, for example.
That D&D posits the role of an omnipotent GM is precisely what is at stake in the contrast between approaches. You take that view (which I described upthread as "unbridled GM force"). I don't, however. And there is nothing in the 4e core rulebooks about an omnipotent GM (though Essentials backpedals to a more 2nd-ed AD&D description of the GM's role).
I think the role of the GM, in 4e and in classic D&D, is tightly constrained. (Eg in classic D&D a GM who introduces an extra complication to stop the PCs getting the gold through some clever stratagem is cheating.)
You can see this type of constraint to an even greater extent in (say) Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, where the GM has a finite though manipulable and growable resource (the Doom Pool) and must spend Doom Pool resources to do things like split the heroes ("The floor collapses under Cyclops and he drops out of sight!") or have Captain America's shield not return when thrown or bring a scene to an abrupt close.
Well, there is a theory of RPG design that takes the view that the preeminent function of mechanics is to solve this problem:
Roleplaying's Fundamental Act
Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not.
So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"
What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush?
1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.
2. Sometimes, a little bit more. "Really? An orc?" "Yeppers." "Huh, an orc. Well, okay." Sometimes the suggesting participant has to defend the suggestion: "Really, an orc this far into Elfland?" "Yeah, cuz this thing about her tribe..." "Okay, I guess that makes sense."
3. Sometimes, mechanics. "An orc? Only if you make your having-an-orc-show-up roll. Throw down!" "Rawk! 57!" "Dude, orc it is!" The thing to notice here is that the mechanics serve the exact same purpose as the explanation about this thing about her tribe in point 2, which is to establish your credibility wrt the orc in question.
4. And sometimes, lots of mechanics and negotiation. Debate the likelihood of a lone orc in the underbrush way out here, make a having-an-orc-show-up roll, a having-an-orc-hide-in-the-underbrush roll, a having-the-orc-jump-out roll, argue about the modifiers for each of the rolls, get into a philosophical thing about the rules' modeling of orc-jump-out likelihood... all to establish one little thing. Wave a stick in a game store and every game you knock of the shelves will have a combat system that works like this.
(Plenty of suggestions at the game table don't get picked up by the group, or get revised and modified by the group before being accepted, all with the same range of time and attention spent negotiating.)
So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.
Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game (players and GMs, if you've even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not.
So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"
What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush?
1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking.
2. Sometimes, a little bit more. "Really? An orc?" "Yeppers." "Huh, an orc. Well, okay." Sometimes the suggesting participant has to defend the suggestion: "Really, an orc this far into Elfland?" "Yeah, cuz this thing about her tribe..." "Okay, I guess that makes sense."
3. Sometimes, mechanics. "An orc? Only if you make your having-an-orc-show-up roll. Throw down!" "Rawk! 57!" "Dude, orc it is!" The thing to notice here is that the mechanics serve the exact same purpose as the explanation about this thing about her tribe in point 2, which is to establish your credibility wrt the orc in question.
4. And sometimes, lots of mechanics and negotiation. Debate the likelihood of a lone orc in the underbrush way out here, make a having-an-orc-show-up roll, a having-an-orc-hide-in-the-underbrush roll, a having-the-orc-jump-out roll, argue about the modifiers for each of the rolls, get into a philosophical thing about the rules' modeling of orc-jump-out likelihood... all to establish one little thing. Wave a stick in a game store and every game you knock of the shelves will have a combat system that works like this.
(Plenty of suggestions at the game table don't get picked up by the group, or get revised and modified by the group before being accepted, all with the same range of time and attention spent negotiating.)
So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That's their sole and crucial function.
Hussar
Legend
Take three steps and that's about nine feet. Extend your arm and that's about three feet. Your sword has a three foot blade.
Done.
- Status
