D&D 5E Legend Lore says 'story not rules' (3/4)

[Warbringer]

I get the thrust of what you're saying.

It goes to the heart of whether a key group thinks Next will get of the ground ...

 

[Balesir]

I'd XP you again, but then apparently I'd have to kill you

Well, I tried to XP you with a quip about "reverse thrusters", but it seems the destruction is mutually assured...

 

[Balesir]

But in either situation, the important thing about the fireball spell is that it creates a ball of fire. That ball of fire happens to deal several d6's of damage in the area of the ball of fire, but the point of the spell isn't to do Xd6 fire damage to Y targets. The point of the spell is to create a ball of fire. Whether the rules that flow from that are explicit or in DM control is less important than the fact that a ball of fire is, indeed, created, in the fiction, when you cast fireball.

If WotC's focus on "story" helps ensure that a fireball is defined first, foremost, and occasionally exclusively as a big ball of fire that a wizard makes, and simply uses things like targeting lines, damage lines, and range increments to support that story, then we won't end up with a situation where a DM isn't going to allow you to target objects because "balance." Your fireball might not light the town on fire, but there's gonna be a reason in the story for that, not just a rule nested in the targeting line of the spell's effect description that contradicts common sense.

This is an example of "diff'rent strokes", I think, since this is almost precisely what I don't want, and the reason is simple. "Common sense" isn't. The idea that an instantaneous ball of flame can set things alight seems "obvious" to some people. But - and bear in mind that I have studied chemical plant explosions as part of my job in the past - it's not actually that common.

To get something to ignite you need to get it up to ignition temperature; for vapours and gasses this is pretty easy if the ignition temperature is not too high (and liquids will generally have a vapour layer on top of them), but for solids the boundary layer heat exchange mitigates heavily against such large temperature increases in very short periods of time. Even with military munitions, the explosion itself seldom sets anything on fire; it's the red hot shards of shell casing and the burning embers of wadding that tend to do that. The question becomes "does fireball spread glowing embers or red hot shards around?" - to which I generally answer "no".

So, given the rampant uncertainty of such things when they are decided based upon what the people at the table believe to be "common sense", I would much rather have clear and malleable rules for such stuff. The model of "reality" migh not be perfect, but at least everyone has the same one going in.

 

[Raith5]

Yes they can be, no that will not always work at every table.

I'd imagine by a default they probably should be left open-ended and more about the big idea than about the specific rules implementations. Fireball creates a big ball of fire, that does whatever you think a big ball of fire can do in this situation.

Me, I like to use rules as props, so quick, easy-to-run rules for how a fire spreads across terrain and variable flammability of materials and the like comes in real handy. I want to use this as a thing that is independent of my control, to spur on more interesting events that end up even surprising me as a DM, situations that the whole group needs to work with.

My feeling both in terms of reality and gameplay that the actual context of where the fireball is unleashed is 90% of the issue: ie whether it is raining etc. My sense is that a fireball also has an impact in terms of gameplay. Once I had a player who was silly enough to cast fireball on a ship and it changed the whole context of the combat and the fire proceeded at the "speed of plot" rather than physics. But I fully understand some would want a less cinematic and more realistic rules, I am just not sure that spell descriptions are the place for this.

Also agree about the "knock an ooze prone" situation: seems me to be a key feature/ability of a creature without legs!

 

[Balesir]

Also agree about the "knock an ooze prone" situation: seems me to be a key feature/ability of a creature without legs!

For creatures with no or a multitude of legs, we call the condition "discombobulated"

 

[pemerton]

Its interesting. In a grotesquely simplified fashion, much of it comes to this:

The first camp wants more malleable mechanics (primarily DM adjudication; rulings not rules) for orthodox usage/resolution and codified flavor/fluff with prescriptive unorthodox usage/resolution embedded within.

The second camp wants codified mechanics for orthodox usage/resolution and codified flavor/fluff with codified unorthodox usage/resolution embedded within.

The third camp wants codified mechanics for orthodox usage/resolution and mutable flavor/fluff and open-ended unorthodox usage/resolution.

Which am I? (Seriously - I'm not quite sure I can unpack your camps without being labelled by one of them!)

 

[Manbearcat]

Which am I? (Seriously - I'm not quite sure I can unpack your camps without being labelled by one of them!)

Camp 3 is basically the outcome based + exception based design of 4e. Robust mechanical resolution for the vast majority of needs that aims to provide a user-friendly experience with minimal overhead and handling time; eg you don't need to reference various pages regularly. You've got solid, consistently applicable guidance for ad-hoc adjudication and you're encouraged to interpret fortune resolution (provide texture, color, fluff) as required.

 

[pemerton]

One issue is how to explain the damage. I mean its one thing when you describe jumping, but what about when doing some research? Can I add skill dice onto Arcana? What happens if I take damage? I'm not likely to need those hit points anyway, so what's the cost for taking the risk? Its a lot like the whole HS cost for Rituals idea, sometimes it works great, and other times it seems less useful.

<snip>

The damage concept could work in many cases (abstracted as expended luck or whatever as needed), but the degree of badness of the misinformation the wizard gets from the library is also a perfectly valid dimension. Want to find out the location of the Lost Temple of Zehir? Well, you can do the usual basic library search, you might get lucky. You could also consult the dread Book of Kell's Doom, which probably has the answer, but is also known to lead people horribly astray. If you are TOTALLY desperate you could invoke the name of a certain unspeakable creature which can CERTAINLY tell you the answer, but might suck your brains out if it feels peckish today. No doubt there's nothing revolutionary about this approach of course. In this kind of form though it feels fairly D&Dish.

Yes, I've always thought that consequences of skill checks in D&D are easier to do than most system--thus being a shame that we've always had to stick to the mundane ones. A character "pushing" his skill in a fantasy world full of powerful magic probably would have interesting consequences of failure.

These are interesting posts.

In my 4e game I certainly use damage as a consequence for failed checks - in the case of Arcana, it can be psychic backlash, failure to tame the chaotic forces, etc, depending on who is trying to do what - but there is scope for me (and the players, under my encouragement) to be more adventurous in stakes and consequences along the lines you are talking about here.

 

[pemerton]

It's the "knock an ooze prone" situation. If 5e supports the idea that knocking something prone is first, foremost, and sometimes exclusively, "knocking them to the ground," and uses things like "takes a move action to get up" as ways to support that story, then we don't end up with a situation where someone gets to knock an ooze prone -- something that makes perfect sense in the rules, but requires some mental contortions to think about in the story.

I think there can be an issue in having player resources produce effects adjudicated in this "gritty" or "sim-ish" way, when it is hard for players to substitute in other effects because of the way manoeuvres, spells etc are defined and parcelled out.

Compare a more freeform system, where you can't knock oozes prone, but where your abilities are not limited to knocking oozes prone because you can use your abilities to set up a different sort of complication.

As I replied to [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] in another current thread, I think 4e is trying to be a type of "free descriptor" game, and knocking oozes prone is an instance of this: "prone" is really a label for a slightly more generic movement related complication, and being literally prone is only the most common form it takes.

 

[D'karr]

I think 4e is trying to be a type of "free descriptor" game, and knocking oozes prone is an instance of this: "prone" is really a label for a slightly more generic movement related complication, and being literally prone is only the most common form it takes.

The game certainly used common language to describe several mechanical effects. As such it provided lose ammunition to this antagonistic subculture that wanted to argue the semantics of the game instead of the actual values of the game. If the word "healing" had not been used as part of the "HP Recovery" mechanics, or "out of balance" was used as the label for mechanical conditions that could include the "prone" condition, or "out of it" been the label for the "unconscious and dying" condition you would have removed a lot of that lose ammunition.

If you're "out of it" you could describe the condition in a similar manner to the unconscious condition but being unconscious is not a prerequisite and is only one of many possible examples. In that way a warlord performing HP recovery doesn't have to be a [hyperbole]"jarring" simulation breaking event[/hyperbole]. It is just as common as a ringside coach yelling at his boxer to get up from the mat.

If "off-balance/extended" is a condition that imposes a -2 to attacks, grants combat advantage, and requires a move action to cancel then the "off-balance" condition can easily encompass the "prone" condition in its examples, and nothing really prevents an ooze from being off-balance/extended. You can also apply exceptions to specific creatures as needed, where an ooze is immune to "off-balance" if you so choose.

With "healing" you could even have divergent mechanics. Healing is magical and it does close up "wounds", maybe it's surgeless, but "Recovery" is not magical and is simply a way to gain a respite and it uses surges. Instead of "healing surges" you can call them "recovery reserves" eliminating the "healing" moniker from them and making them language agnostic and simply mechanical labels.

By making the labels separate from the actual language construct you can eliminate a good deal of these issues. You can also take the time to use the examples to show how it works as a "free descriptor" system.