D&D 5E "But Wizards Can Fly, Teleport and Turn People Into Frogs!"

[Garthanos]

The absence of a restrictive ability is actually "more options" because the player can attempt to taunt or bait or manipulate his opponent in any way he chooses

Do you use a spell list?
Are you iplaying mother may I with hit points. and to hit rolls... "ok I hit it with my sword" becomes the only relable well defined thing... that ends up being all that is worth doing.

And what mechanism does the system provide for adjudicating whether a feint/invitation/false opening has any useful combat effect or not... Deceptions are so incredibly common in actual fights rock paper scissors is a better simulation that dice throwing.

Arguing against having standard maneuvers is a different argument really. I dont like relying on a DM to make up all the interesting things in the game particularly on the fly

They result in worthless implementations just like the idea Bedrock threw out... not worth it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Isn't the real lesson here in all of this that there is absolutely no reason why D&DN can't have rules in place that satisfy both sides of the argument and thus each table can choose for themselves whether or not to use them (since at the end of the day they're all going to be add-on rules to the Basic game anyway?) Since all of this stuff is at the very least Standard game rules (if not Advanced)... each table will decide for themselves whether or not any particular rule satisfies them and can be added to their game?

So since all these rules are technically "optional" (IE not a Basic game rule)... the books can include them for those that want them (and not be used by those that don't). But if a particular player finds the very existence of those rules in the book are enough to make them say "I don't want to play D&DN at all"... then so be it. Don't play the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The Tueller Drill. Here's a link to the original article. There are people who deny it's validity, but police forces believe in it. It is just possible that being within a second or so of being stabbed has an effect on people's psychology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGzeyO3pGzw for Myth Busters examination of this. At 24' and 20' basically it is a tie, the gun can be drawn and fired just as the attacker barrels into you, so probably both combatants would take a wound. At 15' the knife wins. I haven't seen a comparison with a DRAWN gun, but it is quite likely that with a small opening (IE gun wielder slightly distracted or needing to cover more than one target, etc) you could close from 15' or even 20' with a decent chance of success. This is why cops absolutely want you down on the ground ASAP, typically just standing around near them makes you a threat.

 

[Neonchameleon]

i did look into this a bit just know. Concrete data was a bit difficult to find. Just going to say again, this is really a detour into the indiana jones analogy, and doesn't really shed light on cagi, but it looks like mythbusters took this one on as well. In their reenactment of the drill it became an issue at fifteen feet. But the key of it is the gun being holstered, not the difficulty of aiming at close range. If the guns out of the holster then its quite a different story. It does shed light on the difficulty of switching weapons mid fight as well.

This is a partial truth - earlier in this thread I linked a real video of someone with a knife against IIRC four trained police officers with guns in hand. To cut a long story short it didn't go well for the cops. For one thing he didn't stop moving when he had been shot. In the mythbuster cases (other than the one where whoever was carrying the knife tripped), unless that shot hit the heart the charge would have been followed through and be at the very least crippling for the gunman. One bullet still leaves it as a win (allbeit phyrric) to the knife.

At that range an archer should be thinking of switching weapons. If they don't have a handweapon in hand, so to speak, and the fighter comes for them they are in deep trouble. Their bow is no defence and running backwards is a bad plan. Which makes the hand weapon, believe it or not, possibly the least bad choice.

Edit @AbdulAlhazred: Knife vs four trained cops, guns in hand.

Me, earlier in the thread
Indeed. 15ft is well inside the range at which knife beats pistol. And a sword cuts several feet off the effective distance.

 

[D'karr]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGzeyO3pGzw for Myth Busters examination of this. At 24' and 20' basically it is a tie, the gun can be drawn and fired just as the attacker barrels into you, so probably both combatants would take a wound. At 15' the knife wins. I haven't seen a comparison with a DRAWN gun, but it is quite likely that with a small opening (IE gun wielder slightly distracted or needing to cover more than one target, etc) you could close from 15' or even 20' with a decent chance of success. This is why cops absolutely want you down on the ground ASAP, typically just standing around near them makes you a threat.

And in the case where you are firing a bow, you'd still have to "load" it, unless you already had it "loaded and drawn". Which is another abstraction that the game makes - free action load/draw.

 

[Garthanos]

And in the case where you are firing a bow, you'd still have to "load" it, unless you already had it "loaded and drawn". Which is another abstraction that the game makes - free action load/draw.

If you can do that in under half a second we need to talk about arming our police with bows.

 

[D'karr]

If you can do that in under half a second we need to talk about arming our police with bows.

That, and accurately hitting a moving target intent on killing them. LOL.

There's a good reason the game abstracts all different kinds of "little fiddly details/things" within the metagame mechanics.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And it is exactly because of this variation in "believability" that the power "works everytime" in a reliable way (attack vs. will) as defined in the rules. It doesn't assume that the DM will take off his omniscient hat, and move forward to attack. It doesn't assume that a particular threshold of believability has to be satisfied. It simply abstracts it as an attack vs. will against the NPC. It doesn't depend on the DM believing that the opening is there. It depends on the NPC believing that it's there. With a successful attack the NPC "believes" it and acts according to the trick.

If the maneuver was simply left to a "DM believability threshold" it would work extremely erratically from table to table. It would usually disadvantage the player that took the manuever, so that his PC could perform it. The player expends a resource in the action economy (an action), but he only gets a payoff if the DM believes it? So does the PC get an action back, if the DM decides that "He doesn't believe it", or is the action wasted?

There is a reason why the martial maneuvers behave mechanically as they do. They don't depend on DM fiat, or "believability threshold" to work. They are reliable in their mechanical implementation. An attack vs. will is a reliable methodology that takes the PC skill in combat and pits it against the NPC skill in combat. It does not rely on an esoterical, and ill-defined "believability threshold" on the part of the opposing Out of Charater DM. It relies solely on an in-character metagame abstraction - PC vs. NPC, not PC vs. DM.

Eh, well, the thing is I want to see the player create a believable narrative. I'm fine with it being a player controlled resource and a player choice, but with power comes responsibility, you have to come up with an explanation of how it worked. Of course the players can come up with any sort of fantastical narrative they want to, it is their story as much as the DM's, but I consider that part of the contract. OFTEN in our play players will forego using a power when they aren't satisfied with the resulting narrative. OTOH all sorts of hilarious nonsense happens at my Tuesday night table. The Saturday group is a bit less slapstick. In practice they don't find narrative to be too hard a constraint. If someone REALLY wants to use CaGI they'll figure out some sort of story for it.

 

[Guest 85555]

This is a partial truth - earlier in this thread I linked a real video of someone with a knife against IIRC four trained police officers with guns in hand. To cut a long story short it didn't go well for the cops. For one thing he didn't stop moving when he had been shot. In the mythbuster cases (other than the one where whoever was carrying the knife tripped), unless that shot hit the heart the charge would have been followed through and be at the very least crippling for the gunman. One bullet still leaves it as a win (allbeit phyrric) to the knife.

At that range an archer should be thinking of switching weapons. If they don't have a handweapon in hand, so to speak, and the fighter comes for them they are in deep trouble. Their bow is no defence and running backwards is a bad plan. Which makes the hand weapon, believe it or not, possibly the least bad choice.

Edit @AbdulAlhazred: Knife vs four trained cops, guns in hand.

I think this issue is tangential but a single video of one incident isn't data. You cannot extrapolate much from one example. You have to run it a lot of times to get something more concrete. Either it just shows what a bad choice dropping the Bow and picking up a drawing a melee weapon is. The examples you are offering work against your bowmen scenario IMO. If you can't even draw a gun and blast him in that time, then you will get cut down before you can draw a sword. If I am holding a bow and a guy lunges at me with a sword I am going to move and fire if I can, sidestep him and get the heck away or run.

 

[Garthanos]

That, and accurately hitting a moving target intent on killing them. LOL.

There's a good reason the game abstracts all different kinds of "little fiddly details/things" within the metagame mechanics.

I have a fine natural quick fire in with a tight cluster when doing it (ok I believed the compliments from a state archery trainer) still If somebody was 15 feet away? crimeny I am already caught.

Honestly come and get it reflecting entirely real and common fencing moves and in general false openings being rejected by these people are exactly why I want the game system to have them defined.