How Does "The Rules Aren't Physics" Fix Anything?

[Mallus]

Conversely if my PC encouters a group of NPCs with a problem and says "Well why don't you just do blah, that always works for me." only to have the NPCs say "Yeah but that only works for you, we couldn't do that even if Smaug and Santa Claus got out and pushed then my character is going to start to have serious doubts about his own sanity.."

Seeing as PC's have class levels and most NPC's do not (or they have a few non-adventuring class levels), what you describe is going to happen frequently, so your PC should probably start looking for a good therapist.

Am I playing this character, or merely describing his hallucinations?

Ask your DM.

Do you see?

Not really.

If PC and NPCs visibly operate under different rules, it produces a cognitive dissonance that shatters my suspension of disbelief and reduces my enjoyment in the game.

Haven't PC's and NPC's traditionally operated under different rules? Most NPC's don't have class levels. Which means that most of the observable people in the game space are going look like they are operating under 'visibly different rules'. The majority of NPC's can't fly, survive crossbows bolt to their bare chests, heal with a touch, etc. They don't gain XP, or they gain less/more slowly. They don't become superhuman. In other words, they don't behave at all like PC's, barring a few rare antagonists. The universe, so to speak, treats them differently. Kinda like protagonists, as a matter of fact.

Isn't 'different rules for different characters' the norm in D&D, throughout the different editions?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Before I begin, I'd like to say that I HAVE seen the rules, which may color my opinion slightly. Although I can't really talk about the rules, I have a little bit of insight into the idea of "the rules are not the physics of the world."

The point of this idea is the meta-game acknowledgment that some things are more fun when playing a game than others. It's no fun to sit in a corner for 2 hours waiting to be brought back after failing a save against poison the first round of combat. It's no fun to realize that nothing you do on your turn matters at all because it is ineffective. There are many other things in the list, but this gives you an good example.

However, when faced with a choice between two options, you need to make a choice one way or another. For example, you are faced with:
1. Some poisons generally kill people within seconds
2. It is no fun to write pages of background for a character, show up to a game week after week getting attached to your character only to die with (nearly) no chance to stop it. It's also no fun to have the BBEG drop dead immediately for the same reason.

Some DMs would be in favor of number 1 being the dominating factor and telling players to suck it up since they aren't going to break realism in order to make a player feel better about themselves.

Other DMs would simply make all poisons slow acting and make it impossible for the king to die in a round after eating some poisoned food. That way when it is used against PCs, it won't immediately kill them.

The 4e philosophy is simply: Understand that both can be true. The rules are used to describe PC and monster actions 95% of the time. In terms of practicality, only 5% of the time do you use them for generic NPC #1. So, simply write the rules so they only apply to the PCs.

The idea is then that PCs don't die to poisons in one round. Neither do monsters. The king does, however. The PCs are simply hardier, blessed with a destiny, being watched over by the gods, and...well, are more fun to play that way.

 

[HP Dreadnought]

Its just another way of saying the DM sometimes needs to operate outside the rules for the sake of the story. Some people hate that idea, others don't. Personally, I'm in favor of whatever makes the game the most fun.

 

[Fenes]

The healing surge can be easily explained if one (like the official rules) sees the hitpoints not as actual health/flesh/bone, but avoidance pool. Until the last blow that fells the target, one does not really hit it, one glances, tires it, bruises it, and so on, until luck and "evasion-stamina" are used up.

(It also works very well with the "the last blow decides whether someone is killed or knocked out" stance.)

 

[xechnao]

Before I begin, I'd like to say that I HAVE seen the rules, which may color my opinion slightly. Although I can't really talk about the rules, I have a little bit of insight into the idea of "the rules are not the physics of the world."

The point of this idea is the meta-game acknowledgment that some things are more fun when playing a game than others. It's no fun to sit in a corner for 2 hours waiting to be brought back after failing a save against poison the first round of combat. It's no fun to realize that nothing you do on your turn matters at all because it is ineffective. There are many other things in the list, but this gives you an good example.

However, when faced with a choice between two options, you need to make a choice one way or another. For example, you are faced with:
1. Some poisons generally kill people within seconds
2. It is no fun to write pages of background for a character, show up to a game week after week getting attached to your character only to die with (nearly) no chance to stop it. It's also no fun to have the BBEG drop dead immediately for the same reason.

Some DMs would be in favor of number 1 being the dominating factor and telling players to suck it up since they aren't going to break realism in order to make a player feel better about themselves.

Other DMs would simply make all poisons slow acting and make it impossible for the king to die in a round after eating some poisoned food. That way when it is used against PCs, it won't immediately kill them.

The 4e philosophy is simply: Understand that both can be true. The rules are used to describe PC and monster actions 95% of the time. In terms of practicality, only 5% of the time do you use them for generic NPC #1. So, simply write the rules so they only apply to the PCs.

The idea is then that PCs don't die to poisons in one round. Neither do monsters. The king does, however. The PCs are simply hardier, blessed with a destiny, being watched over by the gods, and...well, are more fun to play that way.

I think what is missing from D&D as part of the fun is that there are no rules for PC goals apart from leveling in your class. PCs are more of the archetype classes than human beings. Through mechanics PCs should explicitly have a goal, know the risks and even if they die in the process know that they have accomplished something. D&D is missing a mechanism of this kind but I believe if done correctly, it could answer this whole problematic over here.

 

[Lacyon]

I think what is missing from D&D as part of the fun is that there are no rules for PC goals apart from leveling in your class. PCs are more of the archetype classes than human beings. Through mechanics PCs should explicitly have a goal, know the risks and even if they die in the process know that they have accomplished something. D&D is missing a mechanism of this kind but I believe if done correctly, it could answer this whole problematic over here.

With the Epic Destiny, you may well get something very close to what you want, depending on how easy it is to conceptualize lower-level version.

There's also been a lot of hints dropped about some sort of "quest" mechanic, which may satisfy this craving.

 

[Andor]

The fantasy world is its own reality. It is not supposed to model our world. It should be internally consistent, unless you're deliberately playing something where reality itself is fluid.

Yes, exactly. Just so.

Haven't PC's and NPC's traditionally operated under different rules? Most NPC's don't have class levels. Which means that most of the observable people in the game space are going look like they are operating under 'visibly different rules'. The majority of NPC's can't fly, survive crossbows bolt to their bare chests, heal with a touch, etc. They don't gain XP, or they gain less/more slowly. They don't become superhuman. In other words, they don't behave at all like PC's, barring a few rare antagonists. The universe, so to speak, treats them differently. Kinda like protagonists, as a matter of fact.

Isn't 'different rules for different characters' the norm in D&D, throughout the different editions?

Yes, and it always drove me nuts. Frex in the early days of RPGs (not just D&D) the making of magic items was almost always restricted to NPCs. This drove me mad, that I could play a mage powerful enough to reshape reality or challange the gods, but making a +1 Sword was beyond me. Simply because I was a PC and it was restricted to NPCs because it was assumed the GMs couldn't deal with PCs with the power make a Hanky of Infinite Noseblowing.

If I want to wander around in a world where everybody but my character is a souless, nameless cipher I will play a computer game. If I walk into the closest 7-11 and start talking to the clerk they will have a name, a family, hobbies, and opinions. In a RPG I expect my character to experience that same degree of verisimilitude. Yes, my character (past a few levels) can take a crossbow bolt to the chest and the clerk probably can't. So what? At the start of his career the character couldn't either. IRL there are a lot of things I can do that some other people can't, and vice versa. Some of these are simply a matter of training. I can't run a marathon right now, but if I were to spend a year training, I could.

What there is not however, is laws of physics that work for me but not for other people. If an NPC can perform a trick with a weapon, I expect that my PC weaponsmaster, with the same or greater strength and dexterity, can also learn that same trick. Being told that harpoons don't work right for PCs is not an answer I'm prepared to put up with. I had enough of that crap in older editions of D&D and I see no need to switch to 4e if it means I have to put up with that garbage again.

This practice of getting pained by things over which you have no control, it is self-destructive. Perhaps you should get pained by the things over which you do have control.

You mean like what RPGs I choose to play, based on how they match my expectations? Yes that's exactly what I intend to do, thank you.

 

[xechnao]

With the Epic Destiny, you may well get something very close to what you want, depending on how easy it is to conceptualize lower-level version.

There's also been a lot of hints dropped about some sort of "quest" mechanic, which may satisfy this craving.

Still no good. It has to be a mechanic tied to your development. As long as the mechanic of development is class levels there has been no solution yet.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I think what is missing from D&D as part of the fun is that there are no rules for PC goals apart from leveling in your class. PCs are more of the archetype classes than human beings. Through mechanics PCs should explicitly have a goal, know the risks and even if they die in the process know that they have accomplished something. D&D is missing a mechanism of this kind but I believe if done correctly, it could answer this whole problematic over here.

But that's the entire point to playing D&D. It is a cooperative fantasy game. The point is that each player plays a character who has abilities which compliment each other in order to accomplish a shared goal. It's a game. It isn't meant to model human beings. It is meant to model characters who are the "avatars" of the players in the game world.

Even if it tried to do the things you want, it wouldn't be a solution to the problem I listed. Even if they DM said, "You worked to accomplish your goals for the last 6 months of playing, you died in the pursuit of those goals and you did well, you get X benefit. Now roll up a new character to continue playing. Let me know in 2 hours when you are done." I know that I would say, "I don't want the benefit, could I just not have died?"

There are even rules for this in 4e with the quest mechanics modeling personal goals and giving out rewards for accomplishing them. But they are all character rewards. Your character dies, you lose them all. And certainly, not all players are story motivated(in fact, I've met very few who are) so they don't care what they've accomplished, only that they don't want to deal with the hassle of making a new character.

 

[Storm-Bringer]

Stormbringer, no offense taken. I just like to debate, and don't take it personally. I think I understand your position now.

As do I.

Personally, I believe the tweak to Raise Dead is a change, and a good one. I'll offer my argument:

(NOTE: Before anyone mentions it, I know that a good DM can get around the problems I'm going to mention. I'm just saying that, if it's now easier, then hooray!)

One interesting thing about the 3.5 rules as written is that Raise Dead is not very hard to achieve.

I wrote this after Charwoman Gene mentioned that Raise Dead hasn't changed, but the ideas were running through my head for a bit, so I wanted to post them anyway

1) 9th level clerics are common. On page 139 of the DMG we see that the highest-level cleric in a small city is of level 6+1d6 (roll twice). So the odds are, I believe, 8 in 9 that a small city has at least 1 9th-level cleric. (Large cities are just brimming with clerics of level 9+.) Knowing this, I'd imagine that most smart kings, dukes, and barons would live within a week's ride of a city. (A pretty safe bet in any case.) In order to prevent access to 9th-level clerics, you'll have to run a campaign with lower-level NPCs than the rules assume. Also, if the clerics refuse to cast Raise Dead for the king, duke, or mayor, that sounds like it's pretty close to treason - at least, it will be difficult, politically, to pull off. I think Eberron was partly inspired by a dissatisfaction with the ubiquity of high-level magic like Raise Dead.

Yes, I think this is the crux of the issue, really. The spell itself is not exceptionally easy to obtain. The real problem lies with the expected number of 'classed' NPCs running around, but I think I have a reasonable explanation for that: magic items.

In order to have a magic item shop, there needs to be people around producing magic items. In other words, a passel of Wizards churning out doo-dads like an overseas plastic novelty factory. Of course, Wizards are the most fragile of classes, and the least likely to get high levels without help/protection. So, of course, there will have to be several times more other classes around, gaining experience like the Wizards. In order to have even an iota of verisimilitude, a given city would need something like one fighter, cleric and rogue for every Wizard; essentially, an adventuring party for every magic shop, probably more than one.

So, this presents a variety of problems and solutions. Clearly, the easiest is to cut back on the magic shops and the concomitant need for Wizards, which will lead to a more reasonable number of 'classed' NPCs in a given town. This will require a bit of tweaking to the tables, certainly, but it will also help cut down on the 'Christmas Tree' effect, as there will be less around to simply buy. Each magical item will again be a treasure instead of a temporary boost to be traded in as soon as convenient.

2) Money is not that scarce. A 9th-level NPC, for instance, has wealth of 12,000. That means that the very same cleric who raises the king can probably afford to pay the entire price himself (even if he has to sell all his gear at 1/2 of its actual value). Not that he'd be asked to: I'm sure that most royalty and nobles have put away 5000 GP if it means that they can cheat death. In order to prevent important political figures to have access to 5,000, you'll have to choose to live in a fairly impoverished world.

3) Diamonds aren't mentioned as particularly tough to acquire. As Thyrwyn mentioned, by definition, 5,000GP of diamonds are as much diamonds as you can buy on the open market for 5,000GP. And since a small city has a GP limit of 15,000, it'll be hard to explain why the diamonds can't be raised. Especially since royalty and nobles tend to have a lot of jewelry anyway. In order to prevent people with 5,000 GP from acquiring 5,000 GP of diamonds, you will have to resort to non-rule-supported DM fiat.

And you hit the tricky parts right on the head. Even on a small scale like a thorp or village, the economy is a pain in the a to keep track of.

When making up campaign-world history, I occasionally like to make up bits like "Then Good King Roderigo was slain tragically on the battlefield in his moment of greatest triumph," without adding riders like "and unfortunately his body was lost/his cleric was unavailable for a week/they just couldn't find any diamonds/he decided he really liked the afterlife after all, thank you very much."

Furthermore, I would like to be able to run a "murder mystery" adventure without too much complication. Court intrigue is hampered when every assassination can be undone unless people are soul-trapped or the court unaccountably doesn't have any high-level clerics - not to mention the PCs' ability to cast Raise Dead. Sure, the DM can disallow or prevent Raise Dead - it's just that the DM has to fight the rules a little bit to do it. A minor tweak which prevents rules-wrestling is a good thing, in my opinion.

Excellent on both counts. As a side-bar bit of fluff, I have absolutely no problem with it. It does seem to help out with the type of adventure you mentioned, at least, and probably a good deal of other types.

Now, believe it or not, these problems I had with Raise Dead were all things I thought of BEFORE the 4e developers mentioned them, so I personally am not just repeating things by rote. I went so far as to work on tweaks and rule adjustments to fix them (i'll admit, I like an internally consistent campaign world - I plead guilty to simulationist leanings). In 4e, I may have to houserule other things, but not the raise dead rules, I believe.

Certainly. Not everyone suddenly had these problems at the same time the 4e team mentioned it. It just didn't seem to have the traction that something like CoDzilla had until recently. So, I would say it wasn't a glaring problem for most people. What triggered me is the 'this is so much better' posts, when it was really no different at all, mechanically.