Here's the first: Pages 72-73 of the 5e D&D Basic PDF, under the heading "Making an Attack", say
Determine Modifiers. The DM determines whether the target has cover and whether your have advantage or disadvantage against the target. In addition, spells, special abilities, and other effects can apply penalties or bonuses to your attack roll. . . .
Resolve the attack. You make the attack roll. On a hit, you roll damage, unless the particular attack has rules that specify otherwise . . .
To make an attack roll, roll a d20 and add the appropriate modifiers. If the total of the roll plus modifiers equals or exceeds the target's Armoo Class (AC), the attack hits. The AC of a character is determined at character creation . . .
When I compare that text to the Shield spell, which is triggered by
a hit and which adjusts AC
other than at character creation and
not because the GM determined that someone has cover, and which retroactively applies the adjusted AC to the attack roll that
has already been determined to hit, what sense am I to make of it? It's obviously fortune-in-the-middle. And it's obvious that the attack, although it
hit, because if it didn't, the spell wouldn't be triggered, also didn't
really hit. Because it's character as a hit or a miss is
reassessed by reference to the new AC total.
There are so many reasons to be wrong here that it's really silly to go to that level of detail:
- You are confusing the process of resolving an attack with its result
- You are forgetting that 5e has a specific beats general rule
- You are forgetting that Shield is a reaction: "CASTING TIME 1 Reaction * / * - which you take when you are hit by an attack or targeted by the magic missile spell
- You are forgetting (or do not even know) what reactions are: "A reaction is an instant response to a trigger of some kind, which can occur on your turn or on someone else's... If the reaction interrupts another creature's turn, that creature can continue its turn right after the reaction."
- You have not even read the description of the shield spell, which is very specific: "An invisible barrier of magical force appears and protects you. Until the start of your next turn, you have a +5 bonus to AC, including against the triggering attack,"
So clearly someone attacks you, the triggering attack occurs, it interrupts the hitter's turn, it applies the bonus to AC for that triggering attack, so the process might not be fully linear, but is there an obligation for what is clearly a purely technical process to be completely linear ? Especially since you cannot give any description of what happens until it is fully resolved ? All the reactions work that way, by the way, counterspell ("i cast a spell" "yes, but it does not take effect"). What is your problem with reactions ? There is even a ready action in 4e but like everything there it is very constrained, as you can only use an action as a trigger.
And it's actually exactly the same thing in 4e, by the way:
- Angelic Intercession Paladin Utility 16
- You teleport to the side of a friend in peril and take the effects of an attack meant for him.
- Daily ✦ Divine, Teleportation
- Immediate Interrupt Personal
- Trigger: An ally within 5 squares of you is hit by an attack
- Effect: You teleport adjacent to the ally and are hit by the attack instead.
Oh My God, an ally is HIT by an attack, but no, wait, he is not and you are hit instead. They are called interrupts in 4e and they are even written and resolved exactly the same. And you know what, they are not called "retcons", they are called "interrupts".
Anyway, this is the standard, RAW application of the shield spell that everyone uses in 5e, and when you show that you know nothing about the rules that everyone uses, you have the audacity to call this "a departure from the process stated in the 5e rules" ? This would be laughable if it was not so ridiculous, but maybe it's because there are too many rules tied in together, reactions and such?
On the other hand, you seem to be incapable to read the single unitary rule from 4e, and it's your system of choice, all in a single section:
Dying: When your hit points drop to 0 or fewer,
you fall unconscious and are dying. Any additional damage you take continues to reduce your current hit point total until your character dies.
✦ Death Saving Throw:
When you are dying, you need to make a saving throw at the end of your turn each round. The result of your saving throw determines
how close you are to death.
How can it be more clear ? And from this, you infer that no, you are actually not dying (despite it being written clearly twice in as many sentences), you are in a shrodinger state that may last multiple rounds until somehow you die or revive ?
I'm sorry, I fully support narrativism, but this does not hold water. You can pull it off now and then for dramatic effect, but claiming systematically that you are not dying when the game writes, in plain words "You are dying" is a bit too much.
So what happens to the guy if someone looks at him and does not do anything one way or another ? Is he dying or not ? Or, like Heisenberg's principle, it takes the cat out of the box and suddenly he is dying ?
You seem happy to go along with the above, and yet imply a completely different approach to the Dying condition in 4e. On what basis? None that you've articulated: it's clear that dying, in 4e, works the same way as hit in 5e - it is subject to revision based on subsequent action declarations and resolutions. Eg if in fact someone restores the notionally dying character to a hit point total greater than zero, then it turns out they weren't dying after all. This was obvious to everyone at my table as soon as we read the game rules. And it's even built right into the description of the dying condition on page 295 of the 4e PHB: a player who rolls 20+ on a death saving throw is able to spend a healing surge, with the result that their PC is no longer unconscious and dying.
So he was dying, right ? You even say it yourself.
5e D&D has a very similar rule (p 76 of the Basic PDF; instead of spending a surge the character regains 1 hp). In the 4e Rules Compendium, p 260 (but not in the 4e PHB, nor on the 5e Basic PDF) an additional gloss is added to this rule: the character "taps into his or her will to live".
And have you READ THE F...G Paragraph: "
You are no longer dying". So even in that case, the game tells you that you were dying before. That's the third time in as many short paragraphs. How many times must the game tell you that you are dying when at 0 HP ?
Honestly, how can one discuss with you when you dare interpret rules that you know nothing about and are not even able to read the simple rules that you claim to apply every day ?
THIS IS WHAT THE GAME TELLS YOU: YOU ARE DYING. After that, at your table, you can interpret it the way you want, obviously.
Notice that there is no difference between 4e or 5e as far as interpretive process goes, for either shield (an immediate interrupt triggered by being hit by an attack, in both editions) or "dying" at zero hp (which is nearly the same in both systems, except that 4e has the additional option that a warlord can speak an Inspiring Word which has the same practical effect as rolling a 20 on the save).
And this is the part that I find ridiculous, totally technical, and with nothing in reality or in fiction to support, that "inspiring word" which is not even magical. I have given you tons of examples of genre fiction to support my views, surely you will be able to give me ONE supporting you ?
This is your assertion. I could say the same about a cleric's miracles, which seem to eclipse in number the miracles attributed to saints and the like in actual historical records. The proper comparison is fantastic or super-powered serial fiction - comics are the most obvious example, but REH's Conan stories could also be pointed to.
Oh yes, sure, Conan or someone is dying and is revived by inspiring words. Right...
Well, again, all I can report is that no one was puzzled at my table. Encounter powers are trying harder; daily powers are trying even harder, and the effect of the beholder gaze is not to "pre-fatigue" you (it doens't drain powers) but to make it so hard to act that even your best is not better than your ordinary typical (ie an at-will ability). The idea isn't unique to 4e D&D: it is found in portrayals of "reality distorting" effects, mostly in comics and film (where there would typically be a type of rippling visual overlay to represent the effect).
These are all your own description, unsupported by anything in the rules. I have given you extract from the rules that you use, please read them again.
I don't understand your question. A Deathlock Wight's Horrific Visage does not affect or create a zone. It is a blast - ie it affects everyone within a certain distance to one side of the wight - ie everyone the wight is looking at!
What I meant is that the character, during his turn, moved towards the wight, maybe from the side. Sometimes later, when other characters or monsters have played and taken into account the position of the character (for example not taking him in an AoE), the wight uses his ability and blasts the character away, to another position. And your interpretation is that it is as if the character never approached the wight ? Despite the fact that the intermediate position was taken into account by players in between the actions ?
No rules were ignored. Nothing was played incorrectly. What errors are you purporting to have found?
Jumping on a another creature's back ? And acting from there ?
Again, I'm not saying that it was a bad call, it was a really good one, my point being that you had to violate some rules to make your narration look cool, and the more rules there are, the more restrictive they are, the more you will have to violate them to make the narration look cool.
After that the summary was extremely technical with powers that I have certainly forgotten in all these years if I ever knew them, but that is not really the point.
I don't even know what you mean by this, but as someone who has a reasonable amount of experience with rules-heavy RPGs (Rolemaster, RuneQuest, AD&D, 4e D&D) my experience is that 4e is incredibly robust and easily adjudicated "on the fly".
Good for you. It was not for us. Every time we tried something, someone other rule told us "No, you can't do that." Case in point above, although you can enter a creature's space, as far as I know you can't stay there.
Huh? When Spider Man and Wolverine team up they are about equally powerful. Nothing about the success of their team up (either in the fiction, or from the perspective of a reader) depends on them having different power levels.
And how about Superman and anyone else ?
And the idea that a RPG is better because some players have more access to the resources to affect play than others do seems very odd to me.
It's better when they have access to DIFFERENT resources, because it makes people complementary. Case in point, in comics, there is usually no overlap.
Well, for me the fiction is much more important than it's mechanical instantiation. I find it convenient to use the same resolution process as much as possible, because it reduces special-case fiddliness and having to remember multiple subsystems; and the fiction carries its own weight.
And what it does is overall have a constrained and repetitive system because everyone uses the same thing, especially if it's a good one. I don't care if there is manageable difference in power, which has always been the case because a DM has many more strings to his bow than controlling precisely each character's power.