D&D General D&D Combat is fictionless

[Maxperson]

Horton the rogue dashed up into the look out tower where the Orc which Hidey Jasper sniped off just moments ago. He step in something squishy.
Jasper, "Get your foot off my brreasstiees."
No D&D Combat can not be IMAGINE by YOU.
The first two sentences are what happen in my game just last night. Horton did not see the Jasper's mini in the outpost.

Please tell me Horton is a Loxodon.

 

[Charlaquin]

No. He's absolutely correct. There's no way to reconcile the following with any sort of fiction.

Two sides stand ready. Neither is surprised. A lone fighter stands 30 feet from the lone exit from the room. 60 feet further into the room are 30 orcs. He has decided to run and didn't spend any time waffling on that decision. Unfortunately for the fighter, he lost initiative to the orcs by 1. All 30 not only move 30 feet before the ready fighter can move, but they dash for a total of 60 feet of movement, cutting him off from the exit before he can take 1 step. In a realistic fictional combat, that's just not possible.

The orcs were faster. They got to the door before him. I don’t see the problem with that narrative. He could have been faster, if he had won initiative.

 

[Maxperson]

The orcs were faster. They got to the door before him. I don’t see the problem with that narrative. He could have been faster, if he had won initiative.

No. No they weren't. Like at all. They move at exactly the same rate as the fighter and were 60 feet from the door. The fighter who was ready to move immediately was 30 feet from the door. All 30 orcs could not be faster than the fighter at reaching that door. It's not possible. It's simply an absurdity of turn based combat that is necessary so that combats can run relatively smoothly.

 

[clearstream]

No. He's absolutely correct. There's no way to reconcile the following with any sort of fiction.

Two sides stand ready. Neither is surprised. A lone fighter stands 30 feet from the lone exit from the room. 60 feet further into the room are 30 orcs. He has decided to run and didn't spend any time waffling on that decision. Unfortunately for the fighter, he lost initiative to the orcs by 1. All 30 not only move 30 feet before the ready fighter can move, but they dash for a total of 60 feet of movement, cutting him off from the exit before he can take 1 step. In a real fictional combat, that's just not possible.

I had a thought about how to reconcile that sort of thing. The general idea is that if one wants to think about how discrete grid positions, initiative counts, hit points and so on connect with any fiction, you have to suppose that they are fuzzy.

• So the fighter is about 30' from the exit, and he is just far enough away that it will turn out to be out of reach. The orcs center of mass is 60' further in, but they are in truth dispersed throughout the room and some will turn out to be far enough in to block escape.
• Initiative is the same. Even though the fighter did not waffle on the decision, the sad truth is that he was just enough slower than he needed to be (he lost initiative) that the orcs were able to cut off his retreat. Given the assumption of fuzzy positioning, we may imagine he started on his dash, but enough orcs got between him and the door to cut him off... and the rest piled in.
• Speed has a similar fuzziness. It tells us roughly where the reasonable next position for each participant, but not precisely how quickly they get there or by what exact route. Our hapless fighter perhaps turns out need to use more than 30' of movement to make it to the door. On the game grid he will die in the square he is standing in, but in the fiction he makes it a few desperate paces toward the exit. All the grid tells us is that it is reasonable to treat the fighter as being about here, when he dies.
• Hit points are of course considered likewise. Not all the hit points the fighter will lose to the orcs will be flesh hits. Some of them capture that his luck ran out this day.

It seems to me that once we want to connect the precise abstracts of the combat mechanics to the fuzzy details of our fiction, we possibly ought to see that those apparently precise abstracts must themselves be fuzzy. We could see them as the statistical hot spots - the fighter is most likely found about here, 30' from the door, and most of the orcs are likely found about over there, 60' further in.

The combat rules and pieces represent well-enough what is going on. But they do not represent exactly what is going on. There is enough leeway that rolling that 1, surging the orcs to block the door, failing to make that desperate dash, are adequately represented by the combination of game elements. Grid positions. Speeds. Initiative rolls. Hit points. None of these need be seen as precise statements about the world, rather they are the world represented usefully.

 

[clearstream]

No. No they weren't. Like at all. They move at exactly the same rate as the fighter and were 60 feet from the door. The fighter who was ready to move immediately was 30 feet from the door. All 30 orcs could not be faster than the fighter at reaching that door. It's not possible. It's simply an absurdity of turn based combat that is necessary so that combats can run relatively smoothly.

Do they all need to be faster? Say 10 of them were faster, and they blocked his route or forced him to take a longer path, which snowballed into letting the rest catch him? Maybe troubling absurdities appear because we read the precision of the abstract representation as too much for-real precise? If you see what I mean?

 

[Maxperson]

I had a thought about how to reconcile that sort of thing. The general idea is that if one wants to think about how discrete grid positions, initiative counts, hit points and so on connect with any fiction, you have to suppose that they are fuzzy.

• So the fighter is about 30' from the exit, and he is just far enough away that it will turn out to be out of reach. The orcs center of mass is 60' further in, but they are in truth dispersed throughout the room and some will turn out to be far enough in to block escape.
• Initiative is the same. Even though the fighter did not waffle on the decision, the sad truth is that he was just enough slower than he needed to be (he lost initiative) that the orcs were able to cut off his retreat. Given the assumption of fuzzy positioning, we may imagine he started on his dash, but enough orcs got between him and the door to cut him off... and the rest piled in.
• Speed has a similar fuzziness. It tells us roughly where the reasonable next position for each participant, but not precisely how quickly they get there or by what exact route. Our hapless fighter perhaps turns out need to use more than 30' of movement to make it to the door. On the game grid he will die in the square he is standing in, but in the fiction he makes it a few desperate paces toward the exit. All the grid tells us is that it is reasonable to treat the fighter as being about here, when he dies.
• Hit points are of course considered likewise. Not all the hit points the fighter will lose to the orcs will be flesh hits. Some of them capture that his luck ran out this day.

It seems to me that once we want to connect the precise abstracts of the combat mechanics to the fuzzy details of our fiction, we possibly ought to see that those apparently precise abstracts must themselves be fuzzy. We could see them as the statistical hot spots - the fighter is most likely found about here, 30' from the door, and most of the orcs are likely found about over there, 60' further in.

The combat rules and pieces represent well-enough what is going on. But they do not represent exactly what is going on. There is enough leeway that rolling that 1, surging the orcs to block the door, failing to make that desperate dash, are adequately represented by the combination of game elements. Grid positions. Speeds. Initiative rolls. Hit points. None of these need be seen as precise statements about the world, rather they are the world represented usefully.

I don't like when the game reality has to shift in order to explain things. When the fighter walked into the room(or when the orcs began entering the room from the other side), he would have seen the orcs and if any had been 30 feet in, he wouldn't have just walked up to them all by himself. The positioning of the orcs would have been described to him. He must have seen them farther back. Had he won initiative, what he saw is true and the orcs are farther back, but if he loses suddenly there were orcs close by and able to pass him before he could move.

 

[Maxperson]

Do they all need to be faster? Say 10 of them were faster, and they blocked his route or forced him to take a longer path, which snowballed into letting the rest catch him? Maybe troubling absurdities appear because we read the precision of the abstract representation as too much for-real precise? If you see what I mean?

Combat positioning isn't an abstract, though. Hit points are different, because they don't represent anything solid in the same way that "here are 20 orcs standing in spots A-T" does.

 

[Charlaquin]

No. No they weren't. Like at all. They move at exactly the same rate as the fighter and were 60 feet from the door.

Well, first of all orcs can move faster thanks to aggressive. But even if it was a different type of monster, just because they have the same value in the stat called “speed” doesn’t mean they cover that distance in exactly the same amount of time. In this instance, they had faster reflexes and booked it to the door before the fighter could get there.

The fighter who was ready to move immediately was 30 feet from the door. All 30 orcs could not be faster than the fighter at reaching that door. It's not possible.

Sure it is. People are faster than other people all the time.

It's simply an absurdity of turn based combat that is necessary so that combats can run relatively smoothly.

It’s entirely possible to come up with a fictional explanation of what happened during the round. But also, it’s irrelevant since that’s apparently not what @FrogReaver was using “fictionless” to mean.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, first of all orcs can move faster thanks to aggressive. But even if it was a different type of monster, just because they have the same value in the stat called “speed” doesn’t mean they cover that distance in exactly the same amount of time. In this instance, they had faster reflexes and booked it to the door before the fighter could get there.

This misses the points. Yes, assume same movement rate. It doesn't matter if some move a bit faster. They aren't going to be moving at more than twice the speed, such that they will move a full 60 feet before fighter can take 1 step. Even something moving somewhat faster at the same speed rate of 30 will not be able to cross 30 feet before the fighter can begin moving. Let's say that they can move 5-10 feet due to that non-existent in the rules speed difference you are trying to use here. Even with that, the fighter is still now moving towards the exit while that orc is 20 feet away from him and 50 feet from the door. It cannot get to that door before the fighter does.

There's a reason why the OP says D&D combat and not real life combat. In D&D combat there are rules and the RULES say that both move at the exact same rate of speed. There is no "some move faster" in D&D.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Well poop.

I was having fun and now see it is only a damn game.

what’s next? Magic is not real?