D&D 5E Common sense isn't so common and the need for tolerance

[Ovinomancer]

Or in a world where maggots do appear spontaneously, the scientific method will show that.

You're confusing the scientific method for observation. Also, in a world of magic, maggot may sometimes come from eggs and other times spontaneously appear. You're making the assumption that there is a consistent underlying mechanic in a fantasy world that isn't mutable. Once you acknowledge that causes can change from one example to the next or even that causality isn't consistent, the scientific method fails.

Then the scientific method will show that after the other variables are eliminated, there is still an additional factor that is affecting the number of newt eyes required.

Then given enough data to be able to apply the scientific method, we will see that experimenters called Fred need to use more eyes than those called Bob.
In time, other variables can be calculated and eliminated, and eventually the number of newt eyes needed will actually be able to be used as a measure of the god's happiness.

Today, maybe. Tomorrow the god changes it's mind, relents on Fred, and instead gets angry at people with brown hair. Next week it's just Tuesday's that draw it's ire, and you need double the number of eyes on Tuesday. Until a bit later when it's back to people named Fred.

Causality does not need to be consistent in a fantasy world. In fact, in any game run by a DM and not natural principles, causation in game isn't consistent. Sometimes it doesn't even exist, or have you never had something happen in game and then gone back and detailed why that thing happened like that?

At least some of that concept is the basis for the Eberron setting.

Note that there is a difference between the scientific method flat out not working, and someone being unable to resolve something using the scientific method due to lack of data.
Actually creating a world in which the scientific method doesn't work is going to be really difficult: - it would require interference by outside beings in all processes, right down to individual thought processes and basic physical interactions.

Sure, if you want to say that you can always attempt to use a screwdriver, even if it will never tighten a nut, we can agree -- you can. But the argument wasn't that you can always use the screwdriver, it was that the screwdriver always works. And science is just a tool people use to determine aspects of their existence. It isn't a magical force that always finds truth. Science can't even say that science is the best tool to use, but it's ridiculous for a tool to be able to prove it's the best tool. We, as a society, tend to elevate science to some pinnacle of awesome and as the ultimate finder of truth and facts. And it's damn good -- best tool we have, in my opinion -- but it's not that, it's just a tool used by people, people that can be flawed or mistaken or incapable of properly applying the tool. I love science. It's great. But it isn't everything, can't be everything, and isn't a magic wand that can be waved at any problem in any context and find truth. We don't really even know if what we've discovered using it is actually true or just a good abstraction of what we can perceive of our universe.

Putting science on a pedestal is a mistake akin to worshipping your toolbox.

As for you last statement, that's trivially untrue. YOU decide how your world works, and you generally are deciding that at the macro level where it directly affects your players and not at the causation/underlying physical principles of your game. Don't confuse a limited consistency for actual causal mechanisms.

 

[Shasarak]

We don't really even know if what we've discovered using it is actually true or just a good abstraction of what we can perceive of our universe.

The scientific method is coming up with a good abstraction of what you can perceive of the universe and then trying to prove it wrong not trying to prove it is true. Do that enough and you end up with a good abstraction that no one can prove is false.

 

[jasper]

...Putting science on a pedestal is a mistake akin to worshipping your toolbox.....Ovinmacer

blessed be the craftsman the holy box of righteous fixing.
Blessed be the holy hammer which is in the inner space of the craftsman the holy box of righteous fixing.
Blessed be the Phillips screwdriver (which tightens our screws) which is in the inner space of the craftsman the holy box of righteous fixing.
Blessed be the adjustable wrench (which bolts our lives together) which is in the inner space of the craftsman the holy box of righteous fixing.
blessed be the holy level (which allows smooth leveling in our pc lives) which is in the inner space of the craftsman the holy box of righteous fixing.
blessed be the holy magnet (which picks up dropped items in the dark )which is in the inner space of the craftsman the holy box of righteous fixing.
Blessed be the holy duct tape (we honor the light and dark sides)which is in the inner space of the craftsman the holy box of righteous fixing.
blessed be the craftsman the holy box of righteous fixing.

 

[Lanefan]

You're confusing the scientific method for observation. Also, in a world of magic, maggot may sometimes come from eggs and other times spontaneously appear. You're making the assumption that there is a consistent underlying mechanic in a fantasy world that isn't mutable. Once you acknowledge that causes can change from one example to the next or even that causality isn't consistent, the scientific method fails.

Today, maybe. Tomorrow the god changes it's mind, relents on Fred, and instead gets angry at people with brown hair. Next week it's just Tuesday's that draw it's ire, and you need double the number of eyes on Tuesday. Until a bit later when it's back to people named Fred.

Causality does not need to be consistent in a fantasy world.

Though the underlying assumption has to be that cause-and-effect is consistent, if you want to maintain any shreds of a) believability and b) internal consistency - both of which are very important. Even with magic this still applies - I go through motions A B and C, speak incantation X, apply material components Y and Z and a fireball goes off roughly where I want it to, every single time.

In fact, in any game run by a DM and not natural principles, causation in game isn't consistent. Sometimes it doesn't even exist, or have you never had something happen in game and then gone back and detailed why that thing happened like that?

These situations are usually intentional exceptions to the game world's natural order of things, with a specific cause invented by the DM and that may or may not ever repeat.

And yes, some capricious deities of chaos love to turn causality on its head at every opportunity - but even in that they are internally consistent in that the causality break has a consistent (if annoying) source.

Sure, if you want to say that you can always attempt to use a screwdriver, even if it will never tighten a nut, we can agree -- you can. But the argument wasn't that you can always use the screwdriver, it was that the screwdriver always works. And science is just a tool people use to determine aspects of their existence. It isn't a magical force that always finds truth. Science can't even say that science is the best tool to use, but it's ridiculous for a tool to be able to prove it's the best tool. We, as a society, tend to elevate science to some pinnacle of awesome and as the ultimate finder of truth and facts. And it's damn good -- best tool we have, in my opinion -- but it's not that, it's just a tool used by people, people that can be flawed or mistaken or incapable of properly applying the tool. I love science. It's great. But it isn't everything, can't be everything, and isn't a magic wand that can be waved at any problem in any context and find truth. We don't really even know if what we've discovered using it is actually true or just a good abstraction of what we can perceive of our universe.

Putting science on a pedestal is a mistake akin to worshipping your toolbox.

I smell a beyond-the-allowed-forum-guidelines argument brewing here. Storm warning.

As for you last statement, that's trivially untrue. YOU decide how your world works, and you generally are deciding that at the macro level where it directly affects your players and not at the causation/underlying physical principles of your game. Don't confuse a limited consistency for actual causal mechanisms.

I decide how my world works, and how it directly affects the PCs, based on exactly those underlying physical and cause-effect principles you want to brush aside. Obviously, at the table I only narrate the effects and end results.

Lan-"maybe I should worship my tool box - after all, my game is held together with baling wire and duct tape"-efan

 

[TheCosmicKid]

You're confusing the scientific method for observation. Also, in a world of magic, maggot may sometimes come from eggs and other times spontaneously appear. You're making the assumption that there is a consistent underlying mechanic in a fantasy world that isn't mutable. Once you acknowledge that causes can change from one example to the next or even that causality isn't consistent, the scientific method fails.

It's a little premature to abandon the scientific method when you can ask questions like, "What caused the change in causes?" Say a wizard did it. Okay. How does the wizard decide what to do? Does he maybe have interests, desires, psychological motives of some sort? Can we start to make predictions like "The wizard is angry, so he's going to spontaneously detonate something"? Or maybe it's something else. Say it's totally random. Okay. Can we quantify the randomness? Make predictions at a probabilistic level, like "This rock has a 0.5% chance of spontaneously detonating over the next year"?

A scientific approach doesn't require causality to be consistent any more than it requires all data to be consistent. When there's an inconsistency, that's scientifically interesting.

Science can't even say that science is the best tool to use, but it's ridiculous for a tool to be able to prove it's the best tool.

It kind of can, actually. Science is about observing and recording what works. So if there is some hypothetical tool out there that works better than science, science is going to say, "Okay, the scientific thing to do here is use that tool." No tool can be better than science because whatever the best tool is becomes science. (This is a paraphrase of the Pragmatic Resolution to Hume's Problem of Induction, for the philosophy nerds out there.)

 

[Saeviomagy]

If you want the player's action to have a 5% chance of failure, set the DC accordingly. Maybe it'll be 9 or 7 instead of 10. It's entirely in your purview to do so.

Now you're saying that each time I have a player roll I need to be looking at their modifiers and using those to set the DC.

I don't understand how you don't get that that is cumbersome... and indicative of a cumbersome system.

Depends on the dragon, they're not all AC 23+

I recall seeing a designer quoted as saying that was exactly what they had in mind. You could toe-to-toe or cast a dragon to death if you were high enough level, but if you could gather enough determined archers together, you could also defeat it that way.

Sure... but the number is under 2000 archers, which is hardly enormous. The dragon dies in 6 seconds, which is hardly epic.

Narrating success or failure or call for a check is right there in the most basic take on the resolution system in the DMG.

Everything's optional. The passage you quoted was advice.

Right... so why call out the passage I'm using for an argument as optional if everything we are arguing about is optional? It doesn't strengthen your argument at all.

No, DM fiat is removed, at the DM's discretion, and replaced by BA - when he calls for a check.

I think you're being somewhat disingenuous if you argue that "arbitrarily deciding whether a check is made, then calling for a check if it is" doesn't involve an arbitrary decision...

...
The system simply doesn't begin to work until the DM begins making rulings. Calling for a check is a ruling, success/failure, is a ruling. No DM, no ruling, no system. The DM is integral to resolution this time around.

If you're OK ruling something impossible in the face of a table giving a fixed DC for the action in question, and a player who's bonus alone overwhelms that DC, why would you have an issue with it in a system that tells you to rule success, failure, or call for a check?
...

Like I said - downward drag. According to you I'm having to take the skill bonuses and vibe of each character into account before I assign a DC or even permit a roll. That's a big burden compared with (say) 3rd ed where I could just look down the list of DCs and throw one out, confident that the rules were doing the work for me. (well, assuming I don't have a half-elf marshal/bard/exemplar/binder and am running a level 20 game...)

You can get a +11 to a check, a +17 with Expertise. That doesn't overwhelm the d20. The 20th level expert can fail a check that an ordinary warm body might succeed at. (specifically, while rolling a 1, while the warm body rolls a 19, but it's still not quite overwhelmed).

You missed out the fact that rogues can choose to automatically roll 10 or better, giving a minimum roll of 27, 3 less than 'almost impossible', the highest DC in the system. You were holding up a diplomancer against the DCs recommended by the system, not an average character against a DM-set DC. I'm not optimizing beyond "have a good charisma, choose persuasion/deception/intimidation as your expertise, level up in rogue", and the system is 3 points off "unless the DM says this is impossible, you do it". Add a feat and a couple of magic items and you're there.

In 5e, he's required to make that determination every time.

He always was. You can't run a game of 3e without the DM deciding how the world works. If you say you're going to sneak through a wall, or persuade the force of gravity to let you fly to the moon, the DM can say "That's not possible". 5e didn't invent that. It just made a skill system which doesn't support the DM in making more down to earth determinations. If you say "I jump 23 feet", the DM has no clue what the DC is. It's clearly possible: it's been done by real life athletes. It seems like it shouldn't be too tough - it's only 3 feet past what is possible without rolling.

But beyond that? No real help except a comment in athletics that the DM might call for a check.

It makes for better 5e games if you can convincingly feign infallibility from behind the screen.

It would make for even better 5e games if the skill system helped instead of hindered my job.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Now you're saying that each time I have a player roll I need to be looking at their modifiers and using those to set the DC.

Just that if you want a certain task to have a certain final % chance of failure for a certain character, that's a way to do it.

I don't understand how you don't get that that is cumbersome... and indicative of a cumbersome system.

I get it, I'm just long since accustomed to it after running D&D since the early 80s.

Sure... but the number is under 2000 archers, which is hardly enormous. The dragon dies in 6 seconds, which is hardly epic.

:shrug: Whether it was a great idea is debatable, but it was an intended aspect of BA.

I think you're being somewhat disingenuous if you argue that "arbitrarily deciding whether a check is made, then calling for a check if it is" doesn't involve an arbitrary decision...

The basic resolution system calls for the DM to essentially make a ruling every time. That ruling could be made arbitrarily or not, it depends on your DMing style.

That's a big burden compared with (say) 3rd ed where I could just look down the list of DCs and throw one out, confident that the rules were doing the work for me.

3.x was notorious for optimized skill bonuses breaking the heck out of static DCs. Dislike 5e all you want, but at least you'll never have a diplomancer shouting out his 3-digit check result to make the implacably hostile enemy into his new buddy.

It would make for even better 5e games if the skill system helped instead of hindered my job.

It does help, but it helps 'Empower' you as a DM. Empowerment isn't the easiest thing, it's not the path of least resistance, but it does give you the latitude to run a better game, for the standards of 'better' that apply at your table....

 

[Saeviomagy]

3.x was notorious for optimized skill bonuses breaking the heck out of static DCs. Dislike 5e all you want, but at least you'll never have a diplomancer shouting out his 3-digit check result to make the implacably hostile enemy into his new buddy.

Like I said, the skill cap in 5e has already been hit, and anyone trying that in an actual game is still going to come to the 'does the DM allow it' gate, with identical results regardless of edition. The only real difference right now is splatbook proliferation. Let's hope that holds