Large red dragon mini with only 5 fire resist...

[Primitive Screwhead]

Care to give a reason for removing immunities from the D&D/mechanical side (except giving bad build the illusion of effectiveness)?

check out Sean Reynolds Fewer Absolutes articles on just that.

And regarding the 'the fire is magical and doesn't injure the weilder discussion', Hypertext SRD
states that a flaming weapons "...fire does not harm the wielder." So if my character has a 2-h sword and uses a manuever that requires placement of a hand on the blade... the magic would protect him from the flaming blade.
So why can't a Red Dragon's ability have the same effect where its own breath weapon does not harm it while other forms of fire can?

 

[TwinBahamut]

I find this more of a modern video game mentallity where everyone has to be 100% effective all the time or they don't find it fun. The fact that not everyone is equal just seems hard for people to realize now days....

Ugh, please don't bring the "videogames are a bad influence" thing into this discussion, especially when you are not even making sense... I can name many videogames which are at the complete opposite of the spectrum from "100% effective all of the time". In fact, pretty much every videogame RPG I have ever seen is much more about "the enemy will be healed by 3 out of 4 elements rather than hurt, has no weaknesses, and all of our special effect spells are completely useless!" instead of "100% effective all the time".

Just because you dislike a mentality does not mean it comes from videogames.

Anyways... back to the main discussion.

Water can be dangerous when you add or remove substances to it. Right...
Did you know that air is absolutely deadly for human beings (when you remove the oxygen from it)? Its a miracle that we are still alive.

And all arguments so far have been "Creatures should not be immune because of real life/scientific example" or "when things hit you with enough force..." and those are very weak reasons and look as if you only want to argue.
Care to give a reason for removing immunities from the D&D/mechanical side (except giving bad build the illusion of effectiveness)?

Considering you made this comment in response to my post, I will claim that you either ignoring other people's arguments or just not reading them or making an effort to understand them.

The part of my post you quoted and responded to was just a few random musings based on the arguments others have made in this thread. I agree with the basic argument that is being made, that "creatures in the real world can only tolerate any particular substance or temperature within certain physical boundaries and limits, so it is a plausible explanation for dragons not being totally immune to an energy type". I don't think you have made any kind of satisfactory rebuttal to that argument, but I don't think you will make any more of one than you already have, so I will ignore it for now.

Also in the post you quoted, I made an entirely new argument which can be summed up as "In many works of fiction, a creature can be harmed by its own breath weapon or equivalent. As such, it is perfectly fine if a dragon can be killed by its own breath weapon, so giving it total immunity is not necessary." I consider this argument to the main point of my last post, compared to the random musings that you happened to quote.

Please clarify how my (unquoted) argument falls under either of the so called "only arguments" you claimed to see in this thread. I can't possibly see how it does. As such, your claim that we are just reusing two arguments in this thread is defeated by the very post you quoted at the time you made the claim.

Anyways, if you want a "mechanical" reason, then you need to be much more clear about what you exactly mean. At the very least, I think you should provide a "mechanical" reason to give creatures immunities in the first place, and let us offer a rebuttal.

However, to go with you request, I think I will just claim "giving whole categories of creatures an immunity to a whole category of effect can very easily result in whole adventures and campaigns in which a PC can not contribute to a battle, which is not fun". For example, a Wizard of the Hidden Flame discipline under the new rules is presumably designed to be a great fire mage, and I bet it would be logical for him to take a lot of fire-based powers (which he presumably can't just switch around on a whim). If the campaign he was playing in suddenly took a turn towards a long series of adventures fighting against a kingdom of Fire Giants, it would be bad for the Wizard of they were all immune to fire. His main abilities would be completely useless for weeks of gameplay.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Care to give a reason for removing immunities from the D&D/mechanical side (except giving bad build the illusion of effectiveness):
Mechanical/DND: 100% immunities result in periods where certain characters are rendered unable to contribute. That is boring for that player. Whereas partial resistance means that character is less effective to some extent but can still contribute to the game.
Don't know what you mean by your parenthisized comment.....?
ps Paladin is spelt with one l
EDIT: same as 2xBahamut..

 

[Derren]

U

The part of my post you quoted and responded to was just a few random musings based on the arguments others have made in this thread. I agree with the basic argument that is being made, that "creatures in the real world can only tolerate any particular substance or temperature within certain physical boundaries and limits, so it is a plausible explanation for dragons not being totally immune to an energy type". I don't think you have made any kind of satisfactory rebuttal to that argument, but I don't think you will make any more of one than you already have, so I will ignore it for now.

I still want to hear an explanation how water hurts a human (no ingestion, no drowning. Just pure contact as this is how most energy spells work). as energy in the real world works completely different than in D&D I guess you won't find a example for it.
Anyway, "air in the bloodstream" and similar things is not a valid argument in my opinion as it works on a complete different way than energy spell (messing up ones body functions).

Also in the post you quoted, I made an entirely new argument which can be summed up as "In many works of fiction, a creature can be harmed by its own breath weapon or equivalent. As such, it is perfectly fine if a dragon can be killed by its own breath weapon, so giving it total immunity is not necessary." I consider this argument to the main point of my last post, compared to the random musings that you happened to quote.

And I consider such real world mythology examples not valid. By now D&D has its own mythology and in that dragons can't hurt themselves with their breath weapon and fireballing fire elementals is a very bad idea.

However, to go with you request, I think I will just claim "giving whole categories of creatures an immunity to a whole category of effect can very easily result in whole adventures and campaigns in which a PC can not contribute to a battle, which is not fun". For example, a Wizard of the Hidden Flame discipline under the new rules is presumably designed to be a great fire mage, and I bet it would be logical for him to take a lot of fire-based powers (which he presumably can't just switch around on a whim). If the campaign he was playing in suddenly took a turn towards a long series of adventures fighting against a kingdom of Fire Giants, it would be bad for the Wizard of they were all immune to fire. His main abilities would be completely useless for weeks of gameplay.

As I said, giving players who build bad PCs the illusion of usefulness. It doesn't matter if you do no damage at all or a small fraction of your normal damage. When you balance the game you have to assume that the players do full damage, especially as energy resistance is so easy to bypass.

I am against this trend of "every build, no matter how bad, must be viable". When a player builds a wizard which only uses one energy type (which is quite hard to do), fully knowing that there are fire immune creatures out there, then he deserves to suck when he encounters them.
Fire immunity is simply more stylish, traditional and (don't really know how to say this) better for world building as damaging fire creatures with fire (or fire creatures burning themselves) is very silly.
And imo those things weight more than giving players with bad build the illusion that they actually contribute to the combat when in reality they would be more useful when they would use other abilities they have. That way they will never learn how to be effective combatants.

 

[The Little Raven]

I am against this trend of "every build, no matter how bad, must be viable".

And most of us don't agree with this "I don't believe your concept is viable, therefore I'll have the rules screw it over" viewpoint that was present in 3e. Deliberately making certain choices trash compared to others is telling players "Play how I want you to play, or your character will suck." Tricking new players into making poor choices and trying to polish it up by calling it "system mastery" is still poor design.

 

[pemerton]

The fact that not everyone is equal just seems hard for people to realize now days

I'll note that the authors of the Declaration of Independence disagree - but moving on from any violations of the no-politics rule, II'll focus on the application of this maxim to the gametable:

I don't buy the whole, to make a pc useful in an encounter. Just like real life, there isn't always a time that everyone is 100% useful.

<snip>

I find this more of a modern video game mentallity where everyone has to be 100% effective all the time or they don't find it fun.

First, the notion of 100% useful is a red herring, because any energy resitance at all reduces the effectiveness of such an energy attack to a degree - and perhaps by 100% if the attack is weak compared to the resistance.

Rather than 100% useful, the relevant notion seems to be "meaningful". And I don't see what is wrong, IN A GAME, with wanting every player to be able to do something meaningful every turn. I get enough pointlessnness and desire-thwarting in my real life. I play a game for fun, not to get more of the same.

Earlier versions of AD&D inherited a certain approach to gameplay from oldstyle wargaming and boardgaming, namely (1) that it is OK for meaningful participation in the game to depend upon long exposure to and experience with the rules, and (2) that part of the fun of play is spectating others' actions, rather than performing actions of one's own. Given that (1) is an obstacle to player recruitment, and (2) is not true for most players of most games, it makes sense that 4e should abandon design based on these notions.

 

[mach1.9pants]

WotC will have to do a complete rewrite of the draconomicon physiology for the new edition.
In 3E the dragon has a fundament organ which all its blood runs through. This infuses the entire dragon with its element, converts all energy into its elemental type and stores it for use with the breath weapon and muscles.
Have to be more like an elemental version McCaffreys (IIRC) or Scott Rohans chemicals stored and only mixed on breath weapon use. Which could happen outside the dragons mouth, or just leaving it, this needing (and developing) only small resistances to type.

 

[Derren]

And most of us don't agree with this "I don't believe your concept is viable, therefore I'll have the rules screw it over" viewpoint that was present in 3e. Deliberately making certain choices trash compared to others is telling players "Play how I want you to play, or your character will suck." Tricking new players into making poor choices and trying to polish it up by calling it "system mastery" is still poor design.

Roleplaying its not about kicking in the door, kill things and take loot. Its about the decision of the players and the consequences. And if one of those decisions is to knowingly make a character which is completely useless in a specific situation then so be it. Then the player has to cope with the consequences of building the character this way.

And before someone comes with this silly argument, no that doesn't mean that everyone has to minmax or play the same characters. Its harder to make a character which rely only on energy spells of a single element than making a character which, besides energy spells, also has other options like buffing, controlling etc. In my my entire time I have never seen a character which was completely useless just because the enemies were immune to a energy type. Imo you need to actually work hard to make a character this bad and when indeed a player makes such a character on purpose I call this weakness "roleplaying potential".

 

[The Little Raven]

Roleplaying its not about kicking in the door, kill things and take loot. Its about the decision of the players and the consequences. And if one of those decisions is to knowingly make a character which is completely useless in a specific situation then so be it. Then the player has to cope with the consequences of building the character this way.

See, that's what you don't seem to be getting.

It was designed for people to unknowingly make useless characters on purpose. It was designed to trick new players into making bad choices by offering bad choices disguised as good choices, so that they will later learn that some of the stuff in their PHB is worthless trash.

Intentionally designing trash is a horrible way to design games.

Imo you need to actually work hard to make a character this bad and when indeed a player makes such a character on purpose I call this weakness "roleplaying potential".

Glad to see you think poor game design is "roleplaying potential." The rest of us will call it by it's real name... poor game design.

And no, it doesn't take hard work to make a character that sucks. All it takes is multiclassed spellcasters, a bard, or a monk.

 

[JohnSnow]

I still want to hear an explanation how water hurts a human (no ingestion, no drowning. Just pure contact as this is how most energy spells work). as energy in the real world works completely different than in D&D I guess you won't find a example for it.
Anyway, "air in the bloodstream" and similar things is not a valid argument in my opinion as it works on a complete different way than energy spell (messing up ones body functions).

And I consider such real world mythology examples not valid. By now D&D has its own mythology and in that dragons can't hurt themselves with their breath weapon and fireballing fire elementals is a very bad idea.

So basically, you won't take real world examples, or mythological examples, because "D&D is a creature of itself." Which means the only examples you'll take are from D&D. And of course since immunities have historically been part of D&D, you've set up parameters whereby nobody can convince you. I've heard plenty of closed-minded arguments on the internet before, but even by that standard, I'm impressed.

So, it's fine with you that the God of Fire can't harm a red dragon with fire. It's fine with you that no amount of fire can damage a fire elemental in any way. It doesn't bother you that a fire elemental can literally plunge through the heart of the SUN and survive. It's fine with you that a lock that's been magically sealed by Elminster, Raistlin (or Vecna!) can be opened by Bobo the 3rd-level wizard with a knock spell.

Absolutes are bad from a narrative standpoint. Immunities are absolute. Nobody can be MORE than perfectly immune.

But hey. Play the game you want. I understand 3e isn't gonna spontaneously combust. Just stop trying to screw up Fourth Edition for the rest of us.