Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5889154" data-attributes="member: 6668292">I can name a few (Strider vs the baby troll in the Fellowship movie, or the dragonslayer from DragonHeart), but I imagine mechanics that dictate this sort of fiction in-game is disrupting to people. However, as hit points have been described by many people in this very thread (and by you on occasion), it's presented as things other than physical damage. As pemerton puts it, it's mojo. This makes things like a dragon biting someone directly seem like it's wiping out the PC's hit points (while mechanics like Snatch for a dragon's jaws have already been described as poor quality in this regard).Well, the dragon can get a clean hit. It can kill you in one hit in the fiction. On the flip side, there will always have something that breaks your fall. Always. The dragon gives us a possible of fiction of attacks and near misses, or attack and unconsciousness/death, both of which are commonly reflected in modern fantasy fiction. The fall is always interrupted, however; there is no falling to your death when you're high level. This isn't commonly reflected in modern fantasy fiction.I think it's a fair comparison. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I highlighted the section I was pointing out. It depends on the person. You said "It becomes hard to reason about what you should and shouldn't try when being bitten or trying to hold back a giant is OK, but falling off a 100' cliff isn't." I answered that people have a certain suspension of disbelief based on the mediums they've observed the genre through.I'm not saying you're wrong to think about the game the way you do. I'm not trying to change the base assumptions of D&D's next edition. I was just answering your seeming inquiry into how people make this sort of illogical leap, where one unrealistic things is acceptable but another isn't acceptable. It's based on the individual person's suspension of disbelief, and if they want to mimic the fantasy fiction they've read/watched, then mechanics that make you always survive a fall and mean that you never feel threatened by low-level archers (no matter the number) sometimes break their sense of verisimilitude.It's just based on genre expectations. People who are first exposed to the fantasy genre through the Riftwar Saga (with Pug/Tomas) and the Wheel of Time series (with Rand al'Thor, god of thunder dragons and magic) are going to have a very different set of expectations from someone who was exposed to Conan and the Lord of the Rings. The former person can probably take a lot more gonzo events in the game without breaking their suspension of disbelief than the latter.Personally, I'd rather see this sort of scenario viable to anybody who wants to use it, not say "well, if you want gritty over gonzo, don't use cliffs!" I'd like both preferences to have options, honestly. But, back to my original reply to you: genre expectations are going to greatly influence any individual's suspension of disbelief. You didn't understand how somebody rationalize fighting giant monsters but not falling 100' and walking away; well, there it is. Agree to disagree, sure, but it makes perfect sense to see fiction and want to mimic it with an RPG. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification