To narrate away a confict rather than resolve it mechanically is to change the stats on the target NPCs. Their AC goes from [appropriate number] to [always suffer a hit when attacked], and their hit points from [appropriate number] to [always fall if hit].
D&D 5E "But Wizards Can Fly, Teleport and Turn People Into Frogs!"
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billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
I don't agree that's what's happening. I find it more of a comparison of values and adjudication based on that comparison rather than using random generation.
Manbearcat
Legend
@innerdude Let me first say that if the revision to the original article has focused on on solely that facet of things then it is such a far cry from the initial article (both in its content and in the interpretation of it that drove a 100? page thread) that it can barely be called a revision. It is tantamount to a total reframing. It should probably just be considered a new article if this is the case; and not as interesting (at least in terms of trying to sift through the confirmation bias and get your head around what the author is actually positing that bears out some objective value). It doesn't say a whole lot and I'm uncertain how there is much of a problem with most of the issues that he formerly had (that were 4e specific).
Action Economy is a metagame construct to facilitate turn-based play. It is never, ever shared, not in perspective nor awareness of it as a reference point for decision-making, between player and character. As such, if the premise of the new article is as you have outlined, there can never be an association between a player decision/action (with perspective driven by and awareness of it as a reference point for decision-making) and a character decision/action. Lets forget for a moment that player:character decisions are fundamentally dissociated due to the metagame construct of the action economy.
What is relevant to decisions/actions?; time, space, awareness and the application of will/force. Time/temporal concerns appear to be a big part of his issue with the player decision:character decision interface (Dailies and Encounters being the favored whipping boy). As such, I'm left wondering why the temporal nuance of an extended duration combat round (1 minute) and the inevitable decisions that should arise from being a martial actor within that time-frame and the associated action economy dissonance with respect to that is not a problem? PLAYERS reference the action economy when making their decisions. The fundamental OODA loop for player and character is this:
Player OODA: <spoken aloud and viewed from 3rd person omniscient> Enemy is 30 feet away? I spend my action economy to move forward, my movement rate allows me to get there within my movement economy, and attack using my 3/2 attack matrix for this 60 second round.
What proportion of the character OODA loop below is associated with the above?
Character OODA: <subconsciously internalized and viewed from 1st person> Enemy at 10 paces. Close the distance and try to expose his defense to attack while warding off his attack. Ok, I've done that. That took all of 5-10 seconds. Now that I've done that, I'm going to Observe my surroundings, Orient myself, Decide what to do and Act for the next 50-55 seconds.
Player: No he's not.
Character: Yes, I am...I'm absolutely doing stuff. I'm not standing here paralyzed for 50-55 seconds. Its just that you're OODA loop, adjudication of my action economy (the means by which you are associated with my in-world actions), is just suspended and dissociated from me for the next 50-55 seconds cause stuff happens during that duration. We are just unsynched for that period; dissociated.
Player: Ok.
How is that player:character OODA Loop/action economy/temporal dissonance scenario less or not dissociated?
Meanwhile, we have a resource scheme that says a character exploits a specific opening 1/encounter/5 minutes or exploits extreme circumstances 1/day. There is metagame temporal stuff going on here but from an OODA Loop perspective, this temporal issue can be handled as: player performs OODA loop and says character exploits opening and presumably the character performs same OODA loop, is aware of that opening, and initiates its exploitation within the fiction. By my estimation, there is much more interfacing and agreement between actors there (they interface in a way that is sensical...but the player is aware of metagame constructs so he can interface with the world that the character is not...but they still perform an extra-fiction OODA loop and in inter-fiction OODA loop that is comparable and relatively synched.) than there is in the 50 - 55 seconds of a 1 round combat where player:character OODA loops are utterly unsynched.
Action Economy is a metagame construct to facilitate turn-based play. It is never, ever shared, not in perspective nor awareness of it as a reference point for decision-making, between player and character. As such, if the premise of the new article is as you have outlined, there can never be an association between a player decision/action (with perspective driven by and awareness of it as a reference point for decision-making) and a character decision/action. Lets forget for a moment that player:character decisions are fundamentally dissociated due to the metagame construct of the action economy.
What is relevant to decisions/actions?; time, space, awareness and the application of will/force. Time/temporal concerns appear to be a big part of his issue with the player decision:character decision interface (Dailies and Encounters being the favored whipping boy). As such, I'm left wondering why the temporal nuance of an extended duration combat round (1 minute) and the inevitable decisions that should arise from being a martial actor within that time-frame and the associated action economy dissonance with respect to that is not a problem? PLAYERS reference the action economy when making their decisions. The fundamental OODA loop for player and character is this:
Player OODA: <spoken aloud and viewed from 3rd person omniscient> Enemy is 30 feet away? I spend my action economy to move forward, my movement rate allows me to get there within my movement economy, and attack using my 3/2 attack matrix for this 60 second round.
What proportion of the character OODA loop below is associated with the above?
Character OODA: <subconsciously internalized and viewed from 1st person> Enemy at 10 paces. Close the distance and try to expose his defense to attack while warding off his attack. Ok, I've done that. That took all of 5-10 seconds. Now that I've done that, I'm going to Observe my surroundings, Orient myself, Decide what to do and Act for the next 50-55 seconds.
Player: No he's not.
Character: Yes, I am...I'm absolutely doing stuff. I'm not standing here paralyzed for 50-55 seconds. Its just that you're OODA loop, adjudication of my action economy (the means by which you are associated with my in-world actions), is just suspended and dissociated from me for the next 50-55 seconds cause stuff happens during that duration. We are just unsynched for that period; dissociated.
Player: Ok.
How is that player:character OODA Loop/action economy/temporal dissonance scenario less or not dissociated?
Meanwhile, we have a resource scheme that says a character exploits a specific opening 1/encounter/5 minutes or exploits extreme circumstances 1/day. There is metagame temporal stuff going on here but from an OODA Loop perspective, this temporal issue can be handled as: player performs OODA loop and says character exploits opening and presumably the character performs same OODA loop, is aware of that opening, and initiates its exploitation within the fiction. By my estimation, there is much more interfacing and agreement between actors there (they interface in a way that is sensical...but the player is aware of metagame constructs so he can interface with the world that the character is not...but they still perform an extra-fiction OODA loop and in inter-fiction OODA loop that is comparable and relatively synched.) than there is in the 50 - 55 seconds of a 1 round combat where player:character OODA loops are utterly unsynched.
Ahnehnois
First Post
Not at all. There's no need to say that their AC changes. What's being asserted is merely that, on average, one character will win the battle as a whole the majority of the time. It's more like taking 10 on the entire combat.
(i.e. what he said).
And, given the way math scales in most any iteration of D&D, it only takes a few levels of difference between one character and another before the lower-leveled character has no realistic mathematical chance of winning a straight-up fight.
If I'm understanding correctly those who are saying that CAGI isn't dissociated in regards to player decision-making and character decision-making (i.e. "I'm going to make my character impose his will on his enemies and draw them over to him" vs. "I'm going to impose my will on my enemies and draw them over here"), it's not dissociated for that reason, but could it still be dissociated by nature of the AEDU structure?
Personally, I don't have a problem with dissociated mechanics, so it doesn't matter to me either way, but I'm curious.
Personally, I don't have a problem with dissociated mechanics, so it doesn't matter to me either way, but I'm curious.
Balesir
Adventurer
You can disagree all you like, the simple fact is that you have suspended the normal rules, replacing them with alternate rules that justify some GM desired outcome. Combined with your post elsewhere about minions I find this surpassingly odd; the creatures in the world, apparently, have some sort of independent existence that is inviolable and must remain sacrosanct, and yet the actual rules for creature interactions my change without warning. This seems to be utterly inconsistent; how can it simultaneously be inadmissible to change a creature's hit points or armour class through the game, and yet should that armour class every become inconvenient it is simply ignored or bypassed?
Ah, so presumably, this revised mechanism may be initiated by the players, as well? I can't help thinking that, like Keynes' "in the long run, we're all dead", the fact that some things are indeed inevitable (or, at least, extremely likely) does not mean that there is no "story" in the way that they play out.
Bounded accuracy. Next cannot be expected to work that way.
I also note some interesting implications for the nature of balance between different classes, if you do expect that lower level characters are unlikely to win a straight-up fight.
Ahnehnois
First Post
Taking 10 isn't necessarily player-initiated. For example, players frequently ask "do I need to roll for this?" or "what should I roll?", leaving the DM to adjudicate the situations. And as a DM, I have NPCs take 10 all the time.
True enough. The question is, do I as a DM want to tell that story. I frequently skip through things to get to parts of a story that I find interesting. I might skip a week of travel and just tell the players they get there, ignoring the travel rules or the events that might have happened along the way.. Battles aren't fundamentally different.
So, as the arbiter of what is worth resolving "on screen", sometimes I think playing out the string or mechanically fighting a battle is worthwhile, and occasionally I don't.
While damage scaling is less absolute than to-hit scaling, I think that the current iteration of 5e still allows you to build high-level characters that render lower-level opponents trivial. The curve isn't as sharp though (which in principle I think is a good thing).
Balesir
Adventurer
I think that's essentially right. In a system with 1 minute rounds, the player's and the character's decisions are both abstracted to the level of "I'll engage in melee combat" - the character then (we assume) fights as hard as s/he can and the player rolls however many "meaningful" attacks the rules say they get in the minute. As soon as you split that minute up, however, the issues (presumably) begin. With 6 second turns, the player who, previously, had to roll for two attacks per minute, has ten rounds in which to make those rolls. The timing of the rolls must be decided somehow. The character, presumably, is making no such decision (as an aside, this is probably not entirely true in a real fight, but let's assume that it is, for now). Thus, turning to 4E, that a fighter gets only one "go" at an encounter power in 5 minutes is not an issue; the fact that the player gets to choose when in that 5 minutes the power may be used is a problem. In short, the character might go into the fight thinking "maybe I'll try to get the ol' hook-trip manoeuvre on this guy", but s/he won't be able to dictate when the opportunity for such a manoeuvre will arise; the player, in 4e, on the other hand, gets to decide exactly this.
The problem, as I see it, is really recursive/unending, though. There will always be tricks and abilities that are only feasible occasionally. Moving to 1 minute (or even 5 minute) combat rounds just shifts the problem; either characters - at least, characters for whom no convenient handwave like "it's magic" can be invoked - are not allowed by the system to carry out skilled manoeuvres that require specific openings that occur less frequently than once per "combat round", or someone or something will be needed to determine the timing of such opportunities. Personally, I don't see a better agent to do this than the player of the acting character for a game with challenge- or narrative-based aims like D&D.
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