Does performing Trip attempts every round ruin Suspension of Disbelief?

[Cadfan]

There is a serious contradiction when someone takes these two positions simultaneously

1. You can describe trip as happening multiple ways. Maybe one time the attacker kicks his opponent's leg out. Maybe another time he pulls his opponent off balance. Maybe a third he uses a martial arts throw. Every time can be different, as long as the end result is the same- your opponent ends up prone.

2. You can't describe someone going to zero hit points as them getting knocked to the ground and stabbed. It has to be stabbed, THEN knocked to the ground, in that order. Or else you're doing it wrong.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

Back on topic: I still haven't seen evidence that using numerous trips per 3.x breaks any type of verisimilitude (actually it seems the opposite). IMHO, it seems people have a bigger problem with 3.x's rules for it than anything and that isn't really what the OP was asking about.

I don't know, using martial arts tacticts to trip a guy in full plate kind of breaks it for me. Then again, I am playing an 8th level Gnome wizard, who is currently about to cast a Black Tentacle spell on a room full of Troglydytes, so I guess my standard for belief must be pretty low. I guess I am really baffled by how people can deal with high fantasy as well as metagame elements like Hitpoints or Levels but have a serious problem with 1/day martial powers.

 

[Imaro]

If your DM really will not let you describe the process of defeating a bad guy as involving a takedown with literally no mechanical significance whatsoever, then your DM is stupid. Find a better DM.



This is what minions are for. Hint: when ppl in action movies wade through a dozen enemies at a time, this is what they are.

Oh, ok so my trips only work against minons...ok. That makes sense...NOT, because Steven Seagal beats everyone up the same way.

There is a serious contradiction when someone takes these two positions simultaneously

1. You can describe trip as happening multiple ways. Maybe one time the attacker kicks his opponent's leg out. Maybe another time he pulls his opponent off balance. Maybe a third he uses a martial arts throw. Every time can be different, as long as the end result is the same- your opponent ends up prone.

2. You can't describe someone going to zero hit points as them getting knocked to the ground and stabbed. It has to be stabbed, THEN knocked to the ground, in that order. Or else you're doing it wrong.

Cadfan...you, like Hong are missing the point...what if I want to trip throughout the fight...I have to wait until 0 hp's to do the one trip huh? I'm not arguing I can't see hongs 0 as a trip...I'm arguing it's not satisfactory to a player who wants a character with that type of fighting style. See the difference?

 

[hong]

Oh, ok so my trips only work against minons...ok. That makes sense...NOT, because Steven Seagal beats everyone up the same way.

And against the non-minion guy, he uses his encounter and daily powers. Isn't it fun having to explain everything twice?

Cadfan...you, like Hong are missing the point...what if I want to trip throughout the fight...I have to wait until 0 hp's to do the one trip huh? I'm not arguing I can't see hongs 0 as a trip...I'm arguing it's not satisfactory to a player who wants a character with that type of fighting style. See the difference?

The solution to this problem is to stop playing an annoying character.

 

[Imaro]

I don't know, using martial arts tacticts to trip a guy in full plate kind of breaks it for me. Then again, I am playing an 8th level Gnome wizard, who is currently about to cast a Black Tentacle spell on a room full of Troglydytes, so I guess my standard for belief must be pretty low. I guess I am really baffled by how people can deal with high fantasy as well as metagame elements like Hitpoints or Levels but have a serious problem with 1/day martial powers.

You do realize that knights (in armor) used stances, weapon locks, throws, etc. It's not just a "martial arts" thing.

 

[conanb]

I'd like to throw this out there because my 3.5 game had a ton of this and my 4.0 game does not. We had players who built their guys in 3.5 with an amazingly high trip ability as well as guys who did the disarm trick. The fact is while gaming the system under 3.5 it's possible to get an amazingly stupid trip attempt bonus (like +14 vs. someone +5 to avoid). The fact was that when they got this far into statting their character they could trip anything that could be tripped and they did it every round. Fully possible, within the rules, and let me say was frustrating as hell to play with. As a DM I hated playing against it because the way the trip feat works in 3.5 allows them to trip attempt on the attack, and an attack when they succeed. Then an opportunity attack when they get up from everyone around them. It was stupid. I had to create bad guys that were specifically geared to face trip attempts to make it even challenging, which then pushed the suspension of belief even further. "How come everyone we fight has attack from prone?" I am not saying that your players were powergamers as bad as I had, but it is well within the realm of possibility. Enough that I ended up having to house rule both trip & disarm to balance them out.

Now I personally find tripping every round to be stupid. The guy keeps falling for the same thing? I would think after say the 2nd or 3rd time he's put two and two together and stop. If I was running a 3.5 game again I would start applying a running bonus to the oppnent's roll based on the number of trip attempts the player's done. +1 on the 2nd time, +2 on 3rd, +3 on 4th, etc going up. Eventually your not going to pull that anymore.

That's why I tolerate it under 4th. I describe it to my players that once they've pulled off a trick in combat, the enemy probably won't fall for it again. We are talking about setting up a house rule to use action points to allow for reuse of abilities as well as actions, but we've yet to implement it. Right now we'd apply it to encounter powers only. Dailies are dailies are dailies as we say.

So when it comes to suspension of belief, I think both have problems and they're both fixable if you house rule them. But 3.5 and 4.0 don't really deal with trip in a way I find satisfactory.

 

[mmadsen]

There are plenty of ways in which 4E is more abstract than 3E.

I was not arguing that 4E is less abstract than 3E.

I was arguing that 4E mixes abstract and concrete in a jarring way:

"I'd like to trip him."
"You've already used your trip power."
"OK, I'll swing my sword instead. Woo-hoo! I hit and did a lot of damage!"
"Ah, you successfully tripped him!"
"Um, cool. I guess."​

If, in fact, the entire framework of the game were abstract, as you assert, then it wouldn't be a problem. The problem is that the game specifies certain concrete abilities, but the rules for those abilities are jarringly divorced from people's expectations -- whether they want realism or cinematic action.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Oh, ok so my trips only work against minons...ok. That makes sense...NOT, because Steven Seagal beats everyone up the same way.



Cadfan...you, like Hong are missing the point...what if I want to trip throughout the fight...I have to wait until 0 hp's to do the one trip huh? I'm not arguing I can't see hongs 0 as a trip...I'm arguing it's not satisfactory to a player who wants a character with that type of fighting style. See the difference?

You can try to trip as often as you like, but you get it only actually done if your opponent drops to 0, or if your using a power that actually causes your opponent to go prone.
You can't play a character that chops people of with every strike, either, but you can always play a character that tries to do this every round.

And what do you think all those slide, push and pull effects represent? Your enemy freezes in pace and then is moved carefully to his new destination? You can pretend* all this is you dropping the enemy, he stumbling around until he stands somewhere else. Yes, he won't stay prone until his next turn, but that's what round-based combat gives you - there are states in the gameworld between the 6 seconds interval people get to act during combat.
(Even the 12 points of damage you deal could represent your opponent falling and quickly standing up again.)

I know that not everyone likes to pretend something happens that is not explicitly described in rules. But the last time I looked, the game rules did not contain rules on emotional states of NPCs like "in love" or "happy", their favorite foods or their desire for moneys, no rules how to create a magical ritual that would allow you to bring incarcerated Demons from the Abyss to this world by using a strange magical tree with sacrifical victims hanging in them.

D&D is still a game where you have to pretend some things. You don't have to limit your "pretension" to non-combat stuff. Certainly, highly detailed combat rules sometimes invite people to see the rules as physics of the world (of combat) and to not get it mixed up with pretending stuff or imagination, but it doesn't really work out that great...

 

[Imaro]

And against the non-minion guy, he uses his encounter and daily powers. Isn't it fun having to explain everything twice?



The solution to this problem is to stop playing an annoying character.

First you assume everyone...except ONE major bad guy is a minion. Where in 4e is this assumption backed up, you sure are using alot of assumptions to back up your arguments here. and this just seems boring from a play perspective to only fight minions except for one fight.

Why is someone who uses trips, throws, disarms, locks and leverage to fight "annoying"? Sounds pretty imaginative, out of the box, and exciting to me. Remember the mantra of 4e... "Say yes". I mean how is this anymore annoying that a fighter who always wants to use his greataxe for better damage all the time or a rogue who wants to use ranged attacks all the time to avoid getting too close to enemies? It's called a fighting style.

 

[hong]

I was not arguing that 4E is less abstract than 3E.

I was arguing that 4E mixes abstract and concrete in a jarring way:

"I'd like to trip him."
"You've already used your trip power."
"OK, I'll swing my sword instead. Woo-hoo! I hit and did a lot of damage!"
"Ah, you successfully tripped him!"
"Um, cool. I guess."​

If, in fact, the entire framework of the game were abstract, as you assert, then it wouldn't be a problem. The problem is that the game specifies certain concrete abilities, but the rules for those abilities are jarringly divorced from people's expectations -- whether they want realism or cinematic action.

Abstract is not a binary state.