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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="B.T." data-source="post: 5954398" data-attributes="member: 84465">This is a big one.  A lot of the old-school gamers say, "Well, you can just improvies these neat maneuvers!"  While that's true, it's also less than ideal.  The problem that DMs face with such a system is ruling consistently and fairly, and ruling with respect to game balance.  Each one of these is difficult in its own right, but nailing all three (offhand, without time for preparation) is exponentially moreso. There are a handful of not-good outcomes to the improvisation route. 1. The ruling is too powerful. The player is greatly rewarded for improvising.  Unfortunately, the reward is so tempting that the player decides to use the same improvisation over and over again.  Sand to the face?  Fun and interesting.  Once.  Not so much every round.  So what happens when the players realize that it's such a good tactic that they're hurling dirtclods every round?  The DM has to change the rule by imposing limitations.  Now, he can do this by writing up a whole bunch of house rules on how the "throw sand" ability works (imposing penalties on subsequent attempts, it only works once per target, it only works once per encounter, and so forth).  This is a lot of extra work. Alternatively (and more frequently, in my experience), the DM will just say, "No, it doesn't work."  This is not very fun for the players.  Essentially, they are trained to do something once and never try again, at least not for awhile (or until the DM has a bit of liquor in his belly).  In essence, you've created a once-per-arbitrary-unit-of-time ability without actually creating rules for it.  At that point, you might as well just not have improvisation at all. 2. The ruling is too weak.  Whether through incompetence or adherence to "realism," the DM's ruling is very weak.  The players realize that improvisation doesn't work and so stick to the same-old attack routine because, hey, swinging your sword each round at least guarantees the chance to do damage, whereas trying something interesting might leave you wasting your action (and thus potentially killing you).  For instance, if Legolas attempts leaping onto the troll and firing arrows into its skull, the DM might decide he has to make a check to jump onto the troll, a second check to balance himself on the troll's back, and then (and only then) can Legolas shoot the troll. There's also the potential for the ruling to punish players for trying.  While wasting your action is bad enough, a capricious DM might decide that, in the name of "realism," an improvised attack has the potential to backfire spectacularly.  In which case, the attack will backfire spectacularly, usually without the player's foreknowledge of the potential consequences.  Returning to the example of Legolas above, the DM might rule that a failure indicates that Legolas falls and injures himself.  While that might be realistic, it also means that Legolas is never going to try to jump onto a troll again because he's likely to break his leg. 3. The ruling is inconsistent.  This is less problematic than the first two reasons, but it's irksome nonetheless.  Rather than creating a standard ruling, attempting anything outside of the standard options involves entirely on the whims of the DM.  (While this is always the case to some extent, it matters significantly more when your character might live or die based on the die roll.)  Thus, the effects of your improvisation might be a little of <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=1" target="_blank">#1</a>  and they might be a little of <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2" target="_blank">#2</a> . Again, this isn't so awful, but it can result in game slowdown and a perceived lack of fairness.  If Conan wants to do a whirlwind attack, spin around in circles, and hit everything around him, and the DM says, "Okay, you can do that, just make an attack roll against everything," Conan is probably going to be pretty happy.  But if Conan later does this and the DM says, "You can, but you're going to take a penalty on your attacks," Conan is probably going to feel cheated.  There will probably be a discussion involving the effects of then vs. now, and there will be an "official" ruling at some point...at which point, you are again making up rules for the game, so why not include them in the first place?</blockquote>

Verification