D&D 5E How cognizant are you of the rules of the game?

[The Crimson Binome]

In-world shortswords may be objectively superior to longswords in close-quarters fighting for reasons that are not modelled by the ruleset; eg
the rules assign every combatant a simplistic 5' frontage whereas in-world spears & shortswords need much less frontage than battleaxes and greatswords.

It is a poor game if the rules do not accurately model the reality of the game-world, at least for thosee areas we care about modeling. The whole point of using codified game rules instead of just pretending is that the game rules can resolve things fairly. If they can't get us to the "right" answer, in those times when we turn to them, then they are not useful to us.

 

[S'mon]

Very well. Just so long as you understand that this superior attitude of your character is likely to offend the hell out of a large number of other players who don't think the way you (the player) do. I know a couple of guys from an old group of mine who you would game quite well with. We no longer play with them, however, as we found their constant "suggestions" irritating (they would try to build our characters for us, as well as decide our actions in combat... "for the good of the team").

Yeah, after one session GMing for one of these guys, seeing him constantly tell the lone
female player what she should be doing, I said "I don't want to throw you out of the
group, but..." - ie I threw him out of the group.

It's extremely antisocial behaviour IMO and shouldn't be tolerated. It's responsible for giving new players a lot of bad experiences and even putting them off the game.

 

[S'mon]

Hey, you're right. In the real world long swords do more damage than short swords, so therefore short swords don't exist because only a fool
would use one. Right?

In the real world they do the exact same damage; both are primarily piercing weapons
with very similar cross-sectional area; ie the wound cavity is practically identical. The
longsword has superior reach but is less suited to close quarters combat. Also they date
from eras about 1300 years apart*.

*You could count the Cinquedea as a shortsword, a civilian Italian late-medieval defence
weapon. Personally I do tend to use shortsword stats in medieval-era settings for big knives & such, dirks too big to throw.

 

[Celtavian]

I'm sorry for actually thinking about this sort of stuff in-character. It's only my life at stake here. We can't all be so blasé when it comes to whether we live or die.

Snark aside, I'm only exaggerating my stance slightly, for the sake of contrast. It's just so disappointing to constantly see threads such as this one, which suggest that min-maxers only care about numbers and role-players only care about fluff (even with sufficient weasel words as to not offend either side). A real role-player, looking at everything the character knows about the world, really should care a lot more about how effective one weapon is compared to another.

Seriously, just try to put yourself in the mind of the character, faced with a life of constant danger where you need every advantage you can muster if you hope to stay alive. The character can't afford to be wrong about this sort of thing. You can't afford to be superstitious, or sentimental, or to sacrifice any amount of efficiency for the sake of aesthetics.

I understand your viewpoint. My group's viewpoint is somewhat similar, though we do not harangue people that choose suboptimal options because they are having fun like choosing to play a Wild Mage over a Dragon Sorcerer. Perhaps you're taking the point a little far making the difference between d6 and d8 competence versus incompetence. Like you, I do believe you can be a good role-player and a good roll-player at the same time. Yet I don't choose every optimal option. I do occasionally do something that looks cool rather than being most effective. I also like to play a young and inexperienced character or an idealistic character that makes some less than optimal choices because it is a part of his or her character to do so, such as a person that doesn't like to kill prisoners or doesn't realize that adhering to his code of honor isn't the safest or most optimal way to engage in battle. You can still win with such characters and its fun to play different personalities on occasion than the hardened professional seeking every edge to achieve victory in battle.

 

[Mouseferatu]

It is a poor game if the rules do not accurately model the reality of the game-world, at least for thosee areas we care about modeling.

See my earlier post. No rules set does this. Ever. Not one. Every single rules set, no matter how complex, no matter how complete, includes some level of abstraction. None of them model all the factors that reality includes. No combat system includes, or can include, every single factor involved in what makes a weapon the better choice for one circumstance or another.

Roman legions used the short sword (gladius) for a reason, one that had a huge impact in their success rate but isn't modeled successfully in any edition of D&D. That's not a failure on the part of the game; it's a simple fact of trying to boil down the entirety of physics to a playable engine.

 

[S'mon]

I'm not actually even convinced this is true, since thrusting wounds are often more lethal and more difficult to heal than slashing wounds, but assuming it is...

What Max is saying here is absolutely right. All these weapons existed for a reason, and were used for a reason. Going up against somebody in plate armor? You're better off with a mace than a longsword, on average. (Just for instance.) But note even then it's on average, not guaranteed.

IRL longsword is primarily a thrusting weapon.

 

[Mouseferatu]

In the real world they do the exact same damage; both are primarily piercing weapons
with very similar cross-sectional area; ie the wound cavity is practically identical.

You and I are thinking of very different "longswords." The weapons I'm considering--the arming sword, the bastard sword, etc.--were primarily slashing weapons.

Not to say there weren't stabbing weapons that I guess could qualify as longswords, of course, but I'd think those would be modeled, in-game, more as rapiers.

But this is probably a bit of a divergence.

 

[S'mon]

Of course you're ignoring the possibility that the guy with the mace is badass enough to not need a bigger weapon.

That was my view with my 4e Essentials dagger-throwing Thief, Larsenio Roguespierre - I had unbelievably high to-hit and damage bonuses (vastly outstripping anyone else in single-target DPR), I wasn't going to use a crappy d6 shortbow for +1 damage, having to switch to a different weapon in melee, when my d4 dagger did the job perfectly well.

 

[S'mon]

No matter how awesome he is - level 20, straight twenties across the board, max roll for every hit die - he would always be better if he was using a more effective weapon. That he doesn't do everything in his power to minimize our chance of death (barring unreasonable resource expenditure) means that he's not taking this seriously, and can't be trusted.

Larsenio: "I don't care if you don't trust me - I'm way better than you and could kill you
where you stand. You can stick with me or eff off."

(I had slightly less antagonistic conversations with our party Fighter, as I recall - not about
my dagger; but he wasn't totally happy I was so much better than him and liked to boast.)

 

[S'mon]

That sounds like an unrelated issue. Very few systems attempt to Simulate the real world, probably because the real world is "too boring" or something. GURPS does a pretty decent job, but it can be difficult to have an exciting campaign in GURPS since the characters are so fragile.

It seems like most modern-day-set games try to mimic action movies, and use action movie logic. That's a difficult mindset for me to comprehend. I can't really understand what it would be like to live in a world powered by narrative causality, where the hero never breaks a bone even though quantifiably-identical mooks would suffer exactly that when put through the same circumstances. Like, do they just not notice the inconsistencies?

The divide isn't set along genre lines, though. There are plenty of games which try to inject cinematic logic into a fantasy setting. Savage Worlds can do that, I know. Eberron tried. It was kind of like what 4E felt like, at times. A lot of it comes down to presentation, really. You can usually tell by reading it, where the system fits along the GNS curve, and 5E simply doesn't include the language that you'd find in 4E or Savage Worlds to indicate that you're modeling a story rather than a reality.

You seriously think 5e D&D is a simulationist game modelling reality?

I thought my James Bond example would get through, but apparently not.