D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[FitzTheRuke]

It's preference on style of play and I don't see the difference what label you put on it. I'd rather play the game I want, not be told that I'm not playing the game right or trying hard enough because we don't want the same experience.

Yes. That's what I was talking about.

I think it's a little odd that you seem to think that whenever anyone tells you their preferences, that they're telling you how to play, but that when you tell them your preferences, that you're not telling them how to play, but just stating your preferences.

Perhaps you could grant that everyone is doing the same thing as you are? I mean, I'm just chatting with you about it. I said right at the beginning of the post that I understood that you wouldn't like it, and that I understood that that was fine.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think this is a very good take, however...

...conditions also usually have an unstated logic to how they are achieved. While I would allow an amorphous creature to "become prone" in a manner of speaking the way that you cause that to happen would not be 1:1 with the way you make other creatures prone even if it has the same mechanical effect.

Sure. But there's no reason to think that the character that "trips" isn't using a completely different technique to accomplish it than they would against something else. Sure, it's still within their "trip" capabilities, but even THAT ought to have a vast variety of techniques, or it wouldn't work very often!

Because...it's a cube. One side's as good as another IMO.

Sure, maybe. But it might take a moment, after being turned/flipped/jiggled, for a cube to reorient its senses and figure out which way is up. They're not very smart.

This is straight-up demeaning to anyone who doesn't share your preference. Please try to find a way not to insult those who disagree with you in your rhetoric.

Wow. That's... a surprising take on what I wrote. Sorry if I offended you, though I'm not quite sure how I managed it.

 

[soviet]

This is one of those many cases in D&D arguments where it's just a matter of people being far, FAR too stuck on D&D's use of certain "best-fit" words. They see "Trip" and "Prone" as the only way to imagine what is happening.

It's not their fault, really - the game uses "trip" and "prone" for cause and effect.

But, I think that it's pretty clear that nearly every word in D&D (conditions especially, but also anything the game uses as a descriptor) is meant to mean "Usually and often this is the case, but there are many corner-cases where this word is not meant to be taken literally, and many other adjacent ideas would often fit better".

You don't "trip" an ooze and have it "fall prone". You "flip, smoosh, shake, splat, spin, splatter, etc, etc" an ooze and have it "take some time to reorient itself - anything where it is slightly less able to move and/or defend itself momentarily".

Words in D&D are usually meant to inspire, not to straight-jacket. IMO, we often get stuck on them.

See also 'damage on a miss'

 

[tetrasodium]

Sure. But there's no reason to think that the character that "trips" isn't using a completely different technique to accomplish it than they would against something else. Sure, it's still within their "trip" capabilities, but even THAT ought to have a vast variety of techniques, or it wouldn't work very often!



Sure, maybe. But it might take a moment, after being turned/flipped/jiggled, for a cube to reorient its senses and figure out which way is up. They're not very smart.



Wow. That's... a surprising take on what I wrote. Sorry if I offended you, though I'm not quite sure how I managed it.

Why would it if an ooze simultaneously sees from every surface or can move by doing things like rolling & is used to a far more frequent need to reorient? I think that how a slime might function has been explored pretty in depth through fiction by now. When the reincarnated as a slime lightnovels got adapted to an anime & kicked off a trend of slime reincarnation stories like this & others not coming to mind in the years since it kinda put a hole through most of the "but what if" for a creature so far beyond starfish alien that it's hard to generalize with it sometimes

 

[Oofta]

Yes. That's what I was talking about.

I think it's a little odd that you seem to think that whenever anyone tells you their preferences, that they're telling you how to play, but that when you tell them your preferences, that you're not telling them how to play, but just stating your preferences.

Perhaps you could grant that everyone is doing the same thing as you are? I mean, I'm just chatting with you about it. I said right at the beginning of the post that I understood that you wouldn't like it, and that I understood that that was fine.

When you use phrases like

I can use my creativity

It sounds condescending. That, if only I was as creative as you, I too could play the game right.

 

[Cadence]

Why would it if an ooze simultaneously sees from every surface or can move by doing things like rolling & is used to a far more frequent need to reorient? I think that how a slime might function has been explored pretty in depth through fiction by now. When the reincarnated as a slime lightnovels got adapted to an anime & kicked off a trend of slime reincarnation stories like this & others not coming to mind in the years since it kinda put a hole through most of the "but what if" for a creature so far beyond starfish alien that it's hard to generalize with it sometimes

See one note on this at: D&D (2024) - Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

 

[Hriston]

To me, this seems blindingly obvious.

What feature says it can only be used if it has already been pre-established in the fiction you know a certain person?

How?

How do you know that someone, in a place you've never been? What's the backstory that put that person there? Easy to answer once, sure, but not so easy to answer when it happens in every place you visit no matter how remote.

It doesn’t happen in every place you visit. It just happens when the player says their PC knows someone based on their background feature which, in my experience, isn’t all that often.

This seems an example of letting game rules trump in-fiction believability; where the reverse should IMO be true.

I don't know what fiction you're saying isn't believable.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This is one of those many cases in D&D arguments where it's just a matter of people being far, FAR too stuck on D&D's use of certain "best-fit" words. They see "Trip" and "Prone" as the only way to imagine what is happening.

It's not their fault, really - the game uses "trip" and "prone" for cause and effect.

But, I think that it's pretty clear that nearly every word in D&D (conditions especially, but also anything the game uses as a descriptor) is meant to mean "Usually and often this is the case, but there are many corner-cases where this word is not meant to be taken literally, and many other adjacent ideas would often fit better".

You don't "trip" an ooze and have it "fall prone". You "flip, smoosh, shake, splat, spin, splatter, etc, etc" an ooze and have it "take some time to reorient itself - anything where it is slightly less able to move and/or defend itself momentarily".

Words in D&D are usually meant to inspire, not to straight-jacket. IMO, we often get stuck on them.

Back on the old wizards boards when this sort of thing started showing up, we were calling it Discworld Syndrome, where everything is treated as 100% literal.

It predates... The Event that caused it to run wild in the form of how people understand 'attack', 'hit' and 'damage'. I've run into so many people who insist for example that damage always causes physical bleeding including psychic damage and fire damage from a non-combustion heat source.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I don't know what fiction you're saying isn't believable.

that your rogue can travel quite literally anywhere even other planes of existence and there will be someone who you aparently know who is unconditionally ready, willing and able to get a message back to your little old thieves guild for you free of cost.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Why would it if an ooze simultaneously sees from every surface or can move by doing things like rolling & is used to a far more frequent need to reorient?

Because, like all things in life, their ability to do so is NOT PERFECT. It has a very limited sense of... anything, really. There's a big difference between doing something intentionally and having something done to you. YMMV, but I see no reason why they can't be "discombobulated" (used as a catch-all for all the many ways it could be imagined/described) long enough to suffer the very limited effects of the prone condition - a condition that simply makes you slightly easier to attack, and usually requires you to take up part of your movement to recover from. (I imagine something like T2 - a spread-out ooze that has to form back into a more coherent blob before it can shuffle along once more).

I think that how a slime might function has been explored pretty in depth through fiction by now.

Yup. They can generally get squished and have to spend time "forming up". It's all over the place when you see an ooze monster.

When the reincarnated as a slime lightnovels got adapted to an anime & kicked off a trend of slime reincarnation stories like this & others not coming to mind in the years since it kinda put a hole through most of the "but what if" for a creature so far beyond starfish alien that it's hard to generalize with it sometimes

When something is hard to generalize, that means that it can follow whatever fiction you want it to.

And seeing as I seem to need to mention this: IN MY OPINION. You can do what you like! Ban tripping oozes! Or whatever! That's fine!