Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DracoSuave" data-source="post: 5310442" data-attributes="member: 71571">wutNo.  No.  No.My point was that the argument 'Grabbing simply doesn't make sense on a swarm' is as equally as valid as 'single target attacks don't make sense on a swarm.'  That it actually makes no sense to say that one game construct requiring accomodation (the ability to make single target attacks on a swarm) makes sense while another equal game construct (the ability to grab a swarm) is senseless, when both taken literally make the same amount of sense.The argument form used is called 'disproof by contradiction' where you take the exact same argument form they have, replace the details, and show that the argument form itself is flawed.But the fluff isn't being ignored.  The fluff of D&D 4th edition, at its heart, is heroes doing greater and greater deeds until they join the immortals.  That fluff informs everything from the levelling process, to how powers work, to page 42, to the general suggestion that DMs give allowances to players attempting to do heroic deeds.My argument is that saying, arbitrarily, that you cannot grab a swarm not only makes no logical sense, but also makes no sense from the basic fluff roots of the game, that doing so needlessly and arbitrarily castrates certain character concepts simply due to their power source.The problem here is you've got a cognitive dissonance.  You're allowing the game rules to use the swarm as a singular creature, but you're disallowing interactions that treat it as a singular creature... and then complain that it's abstraction of those interactions that are faulty.The reality is, the swarm itself is the offending abstraction.  You've already, once you've allowed the swarm to become that abstraction, gone over the limit, and now you have to explain everything that happens in terms of post-attack fluff.  Even Ranged Basic Attack breaks down in this manner.So thusly, the burden of proof is on you to explain why abstracting Ranged Basic Attack, Reaping Strike, Furious Smash, Magic Missile, Oath of Emnity, Combat Challenge, and all these other abilities is OKAY, but suddenly grab offends your sensibilities because, in your words, "abstractions risk dissociation from the underlying fluff."Why does abstracting a ranger shooting a swarm with an arrow to something appropriate for a swarm make sense... but abstracting a grab does not?The onus is on you to prove that one, because if you cannot, you have an invalid (and almost hypocritical) argument.Immunity is a tricky word tho... it means 'This is now impossible.'  However, D&D's central fluff is growing to accomplish the impossible.  Such a comprimise would damage and strike at the heart of the game itself.Plus, conditions on swarms are completely possible.  Grabbing the alphas in a swarm might cause the betas to remain... using a herd instinct to your advantage on a swarm is -very- plausible.  Hey, look, grabbing in a way that affects a swarm!  Using mundane methodology!<img src="http://www.tc.umn.edu/~reute001/images/Sarah_bb1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Here is a picture of a woman using control of a central figure, or alpha, of a literal swarm of bees, to literally control them and keep them in one place.REALITY allows for this to happen, so the LEAST imaginative explanation for grabbing/controlling a swarm "I grab/control the swarms alphas" is not only plausible, there are people who do this for a fun and interesting if somewhat scary hobby.So, something that is plausible, and doable, at the University of Minnesota, by the act of putting a bee in a box... is somehow implausible and breaks your sense of the fantastic if it's done on a floating continent threatening to drop and destroy Waterdeep by people who can move in bursts of 27 kms per hour (little over 16miles per hour) while wearing heavy armor.I just think you lack imagination.Yes, but that's a matter of scale.  Keeping something from escaping an area is not the same thing as removing it from that area.  The same swarm is not immune to immobilizes, or even slows from melee and ranged attacks.  Grabs are closer to an immobilize than they are to forced movement... the comparison itself is arbitrary.Except there IS no problem.  The burden on you to prove is this:That a hero on his way to immortality cannot grab a swarm.  That such things are impossible in the milieu of heroic legend and high fantasy.If you can do that, then you can actually start to introduce the premise 'It does not fit the fluff.'The fact is, you cannot do so.  High fantasy is filled with rediculous stuff like that, and that high fantasy is the main inspiration informing D&D4th, with an emphasis in the rise to immortality.  Grabbing a swarm fits that central concept -perfectly-.  Therefore, it cannot violate the fluff.</blockquote>

Verification