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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6598483" data-attributes="member: 42582">The point is that I think CaGI has an ingame explanation that both character and player can share. Likewise inspirational healing. That fact about me doesn't make them good mechanics for you. Likewise, the fact that you can find some ingame explanation as to why a dying farmer can be brought back to full health by curing a light wound, whereas a powerful warrior can barely have a scratch healed when a cleric cures critical wounds, doesn't help me.More generally - everyone, when the play an RPG, is correlating the mechanical results with the fiction. That's what an RPG involves. The mechanics that you call "dissociated" aren't dissociated for me. Any more than the mechanics I've identified as pulling me out of the game, because they make no sense to me in terms of the underlying fiction, are "dissociated" for you.There is a perfectly good technical term to describe so-called "dissociative mechanics", namely, metagame mechanics.This terms characterise mechanics by reference to the role they play in the game, and the way they establish connections between mechanical outcomes and ingame fiction.It is a useful concept, that explains the difference between (say) Runequest's combat system and D&D's, or between AD&D saving throws and 3E's, or between Gygaxian hit points and hit-points-as-meat.All the label "dissociatve" adds is (i) pejorative judgment, and (ii) a psychological fact about the person using the label, namely, that this particular metagame mechanic is not one that they, personally, can easily correlate with the ingame fiction. It's a relational property about a person's response to a game, not an intrinsic property of the mechanic itself.Why? I can see how that's important from a commercial point of view (as in, will many people buy the product I am trying to sell). But what is it's connection to the analysis of a mechanic?Or does dissociative mean "tends to make many people, especially those with tastes similar to [fill in some names], have trouble correlating mechanics and fiction"?In which case hit points probably satisfy the definition, because in the 80s many RPGers left D&D for hardcore simulationist systems because of this very issue.I thought in 3E WF gives a bonus to hit. Did PF change it?My take on this is: if the to hit roll models accuracy, then what happened in the fiction when I roll a 17 to hit and roll a 1 for damage? I really accurately trimmed the ogre's toenail?Perhaps it works for you. But that doesn't help me. Any more than the fact that it's always been crystal clear to me what is happening in the fiction when CaGI is used at my table helps you.</blockquote>

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