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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6261784" data-attributes="member: 2067">So, that's useful. We recognize the validity of each others' playstyles and know that they are pretty much mutually exclusive: if you have to imagine events in basically chronological order, that breaks your experience. If I have to imagine events as basically outcomes and figure out the reason that outcome happened after we figure out the outcome, that breaks my experience. We can probably make the leap that we don't just speak for ourselves, but for dozens of people like us. We've also got some supporting evidence. For me, lessons from improv and the flow of causality and the empowerment of character action over mechanical resolution. For you, lessons from actual combats where the input is only figured out in reverse and the flow is much less deliberate. While hypothetically one of us could be persuaded to see the game the other way, if both of our styles are valid, this persuasion is unnecessary. I don't need to convince you to play my way, you don't need to convince me to play your way.Now we come to what D&D should actually do.The neutral ground scenario is that default D&D does what I propose it do with HP: just not be monolithic. There is nothing inherent in the "roll a dice and compare against a target number" core mechanic that mandates it be one or the other (Gygaxian saving throws!). One can say what they're doing and chuck a d20 or chuck a d20 and then say what they did and it's really up to individual tables (or even individual players) and it's not really a problem. All that D&D needs to avoid are default rules that can only work in one way or the other. So, for example, they can't include a default rule that says "roll the die and if it's 5 more than is needed to hit, you can choose to make the target surrender instead," since it is impossible for me to use that rule and enjoy it, because it would involve declaring the action after the die was rolled. A rule that said "the prone condition can apply to any creature, it doesn't always mean that something has been knocked off its feat. An ooze can't be knocked off its feat, but it can still be prone!" would also fall into that camp, because then I can't always say that the Prone status represents something in the world.  I'm not sure what a rule would violate your style, but I'd be surprised if D&D couldn't exclude those kinds of rules, too.Which isn't to say that they can't be added back in. Just that our basic, simple game needs to avoid them.</blockquote>

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