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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 6257533" data-attributes="member: 3400">I think you're doing a little conflating lack of abstractness with process simulation issues here. The issue I'm seeing, and that I think forms a significant contrast between players like me and pemerton (who has been known to point out process simulation as an element of how I describe my preferences) isn't the level of detail. I don't and have never had an issue with how detailed D&D combat is or isn't with respect to misses and hits. That's all part of the narration. What I see is the issue is the issue of root causality. What caused the PC to damage his target? He successfully hit the target number with his check - it doesn't matter exactly how he did so. The axe may have connected with the target's body and drawn blood, it may have hit his shield hard enough to cause pain, it may have glanced off the armor or shield but the target's ankle buckled under the strain. In any event, the task required to achieve the result was met. On the flip side, if the PC failed to achieve the target number for success (and, let's be honest, this could be many other game systems other than D&D, including Call of Cthulhu, Champions, Villains and Vigilantes, etc), he failed to achieve the conditions necessary to ablate the target's hit points. Maybe the target deflected the blow safely with his shield, maybe it glanced off the armor without injuring the target, maybe it was a clean miss because the target dodged effectively or the attack was ill timed. We can hash that out in the narration, no problem. The point is the root causality is contained within the event itself and can, often, be affected in the future. If the attack failed to cause damage, it was insufficient to the task of doing so. What can I do to make it sufficient in the future? Here's where I see where I and pemerton differ the most - the success or failure is owned by the acting player (whether via the PC or an NPC). He is the source of the causation and, knowing that, can act on it in a rational way. If in a fight, can he come up with a tactic to give him a better chance at the attack? Maybe he can - that's up to him to find it. In a skill check, whether he is pursuing a foe on horseback or trying to engage the local ruler for help with his diplomatic skills, success or failure is because his attempt was sufficient or insufficient to the task at hand - not because some outside complication, uncontrolled and uncontrollable by the character, intervened. The example I'd bring up here is rain starting up and spoiling the diplomacy attempt. Any attempt to rationalize the cause of the failure is obscured because the chain of causality is irrational. There's nothing the PC can do in that situation to improve on that skill check - no lesson to be learned from the mistake. No alternative tactic other than "I guess I'll try on a sunny day" that can be taken away from that situation. The player's ability to predict the outcome of his actions becomes obscured and so does his ability to make meaningful choices. So it's not really a question of the system producing a specific or unspecific level of detail. It's the system preserving the causality of the player doing something, observing the result, and understanding how the character got from point A to point B.That's my general view. There are exceptions to the approach - saving throws being the most prominent I can think of that get really weird. But then saves have, as far as I'm concerned, always been a (near-)miraculous, last ditch attempt to save one's self from an otherwise unavoidable negative effect (not simply a defense to be hit).</blockquote>

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