Hiya.
If you were playing a halfling with a dagger and hit a dragon (clearly making the AC), how would you feel if the DM told you "I didn't ask for you to roll damage" because it made no sense for a dagger to pierce a dragon's hide? Combat works because we all know and agree upon the rules and there is clarification.
Apples to oranges, my friend. There is a whole section on Combat in the rules....not so for Social Combat (although that would be kinda cool to see!...I always thought "
The Game" as presented in the
Wheel of Time books and RPG was a really neat concept to incorporate into play....).
In answer to your question...I may be a bit surprised, and ask for reasoning, but I'd be cool with it. Why? Mainly because the DM is in charge of how 'reality' works in his game...not me, and not the RAW. After the game, I'm sure I'd discuss it with him/her and maybe point out the need for a house rule about creature size and minimum damage needed to penetrate or some such thing. This is a GOOD thing, by the way. It adds flavour and distinction to an individual campaign. It gives chaos and differing outlooks. It adds vibrancy to the entire D&D community...players and DM's at CON's could all swap ideas, stories, and all that other cool-azz
imaginative stuff that *should* be coming from everyone playing. If the only thing "imaginative" discussed is what splat books someone uses for their campaign...well, that'd be just sad.
prosfilaes said:
If you've made it clear how you deal with diplomacy upfront, that's one thing. But there is a concept of a character who can fast-talk anyone, who could convince the guard that he was really Pope Benedict and he shouldn't mention the visit to anyone, and that's not that outlandish a character concept as D&D characters go, so it makes no sense to you, but may well make sense to other people. The lack of clarification here, both inherently in the Diplomacy rules and how you're applying them is what's causing the problem.
I don't think it is "lack of clarity". I think it is lack of "player expectation". Right now, because of 3.x/4e/PF/etc's "lets codify everything and then publish 335 ways to ignore all that by taking a certain class/feat/race combo!"...the general player base sees it this way. They see "clarified" rules as something they can point to and say "I can ignore that because I have X, Y and Z". They have the opinion that, because the rules say X, and they have Y, that anything the DM says or does that goes against that, is somehow "wrong", or the DM is cheating. If rule X is sufficiently vague (e.g., open to DM interpretation), then ability Y is automatically open to interpretation as well. Ergo, you don't have all the "negative emotions" I mentioned earlier instantly popping up at the table because the player
knows that it's up to the DM to make a ruling....not the player, not the rules.
I also firmly believe that 5e
is actually built to be kinda loosey-goosey. Much like 0e/1e/(2e), the rules were there to be used as a structure for an individual campaign to be built on. Each game of AD&D that I ever played in was different. DM's and players had different interpretations of things. Those things were all easily recognizable, but still different enough to make me go "Oh! Hey, I never thought of it like that!", or "Wow...thats really cool! I think I'll use something like that too!". Some DM's used the "1d6/10', cumulative", others used the flat "1d6/10'" with regards to falling damage (re: falling 40' was either 10d6 damage, or 4d6 damage)...but everyone still knew what the base idea was; you fall, you take X d6 damage based on distance. So, I think 5e is attempting to go back to that state. It's like the half-way mark between a totally free-form system and a codified compilation of complicated circumstances. It's not as loose as FATE, but not as codified as 3.x/Pathfinder...it's somewhere in between. IMHO, this is a good spot to be right now for D&D.
^_^
Paul L. Ming