Legends and Lore - Maintaining the Machine

[D'karr]

Absolutely true. However, at least within the D&D game... there's never been an evolution of where the magic should have gone based upon who was using it. Once the "customers" started using an item in a different time than originally intended (ie during combat), immediately the market would correct itself by beginning to produce items of similar function that could be.

The trope is usually, "none of those that have explored the ruins have ever returned." So I would say that the market has never corrected because there are very few "customer reviews"... LOL

 

[Umbran]

Actually... with the amount of things magic can do, I think it stretches suspension of disbelief that drinking or eating would be required of anything magical.

Outside of the well-defined spells, rituals, and powers, "what magic can do" is entirely setting (perhaps individual campaign) specific. It is not universally true that "if you can imagine it, magic can do it" - that's a fairly modern trope inflicted by folks who want magic to be like engineering, but better In many places (meaning both real-world magical traditions and game worlds), magic is not infinitely malleable, and has these obscure, inexplicable rules that must be followed, and will not flex.

For example - there was at a time a standard rule that potions *must* be stored in crystal vials. If you stored a potion (or holy water) in something else, it would quickly be ruined. You could not make a waterskin "camelbak" container for your potions. You wanted portable healing that can heal you by touch? You'd get a cleric. You could also get Keoghtom's ointment, but that takes time to apply - not wise in the middle of a fight to be rubbing yourself down with magical Tiger Balm.

It should not be a stretch that magic isn't infinitely flexible.

 

[LurkAway]

Actually... with the amount of things magic can do, I think it stretches suspension of disbelief that drinking or eating would be required of anything magical. It's just too, too inefficient.

Historically and in myths, people believe in these conconctions
Elixir of life - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Potion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If bodily contact of magic was required in any way... at the very least any magic-user worth their salt would have designed magic transferable through the skin. After all... the game has magic tattoos... those should really be much more prevalent than potions ever would be (especially non-permanent tattoos).

There is a precedence for ancient real-life belief in magic tattoos, but for protection, etc.
Yantra tattooing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There's probably human/cultural psychology behind why consumption of elixirs is assumed for magical healing effects.

Anyway, if you turn healing potion into tattoos, why not turn everything into tattoos (wands, staves, etc.) like the Death Gate Cycle?

 

[Croesus]

Oops...duplicate post

 

[Croesus]

If there's a hope for 5e, it is that every rule becomes as simple to ignore as encumbrance, item HP, and...even alignment, actually...is in 4e.

Agree 100%.

We might still disagree on how to present the rules (I prefer a basic core system, then add-ons for extra stuff, while I think you prefer to have it all in one place/book). But my dream system would incorporate the design principal that pretty much all rules should be removable, if a group prefers. If WOTC can hit that target, I won't sweat the presentation too much.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Re: Beer helmet inspiration

The argument that clever people would certainly invent such a device for potions is flawed. Beer has existed for at least 8,000 years and most historians believe it has been around much longer. Yet, the beer helmet was only introduced in recent history.

This is the same argument I've seen players use for collecting the ingredients for gunpowder and trying to insist that their character is using his ingenuity.

In neither case is this character ingenuity. It is nothing more than modern player knowledge.

Add the fact that the beer helmet was created as a groan-worthy novelty item and it leads to elements that hurt a serious-toned gameworld.

If it's something you want in your games, that's fine. But the arguments that this should be natural evolution of technology in the game are unfounded IMO.

 

[Dausuul]

Re: Beer helmet inspiration

The argument that clever people would certainly invent such a device for potions is flawed. Beer has existed for at least 8,000 years and most historians believe it has been around much longer. Yet, the beer helmet was only introduced in recent history.

Ugh, I shouldn't wade back into this, but... the beer helmet is a novelty. It's a toy. Reducing the delivery time of beer by a couple of seconds, and enabling it to be consumed hands-free, adds minimal value to beer. You can get just as drunk with a plain old mug.

Reducing the delivery time of a healing potion by a couple of seconds, and enabling it to be consumed hands-free, adds enormous value to a healing potion.

This is the same argument I've seen players use for collecting the ingredients for gunpowder and trying to insist that their character is using his ingenuity.

Rather different case, isn't it? I mean, the medieval character has no way of knowing that mixing these ingredients in the right proportions would produce gunpowder. And if she did, it's not immediately obvious how this is useful, since after you invent the gunpowder you still have to invent the gun, and there isn't a similar device to build on. And once guns were invented, it took centuries to bring them up to par with the weapons of the day.

Compare to a healing potion: You've already got the potion and the idea of putting it in a container to drink in the field. You've also got leather flasks and metal bottles. Is it such a stretch to realize, "If I put this flask inside my helmet and pull the cork out with my teeth, I won't have to drop my sword and shield to fish it out?" That's an innovation that a single person could devise, requiring neither special knowledge nor lots of money to attempt (assuming you're smart enough to fine-tune your design with flasks of water before taking it into battle).

All that said, I do agree with Umbran: The rules of magic are what the game designer and the DM say they are. If there were a rule that potions must be contained in fragile crystal vials, that would go far to discourage putting them in your helmet! The idea of "engineering a new potion that can be held in a leather flask" might seem as silly to a D&D wizard as "engineering a car that manufactures its own gasoline out of nothing" does to us. The world just doesn't work that way*.

And the less common healing potions are, the fewer "innovations" of this type one is likely to see.

[SIZE=-2]*Although this does explain why glassteel is such a high-level spell...[/SIZE]

 

[Anselyn]

We certainly have memories, but, sadly, they get worse as we get older - that's life. Of course, we can (and do) get clever and "assist" our memories by writing such stuff down. Increasingly, recently, we seem to be getting ultimately clever and are paying other people to do this for us - imagine!

Luckily, this has been made easier recently by a set of folks who have made a set of rules that actually don't need wholesale remodelling to make them serviceable.

Yes, indeed - and I am delighted to report that this still applies even if you have written the rule down in the meantime. Furthermore, it even works if it was someone else who wrote the rule down - astounding!

Well, well done you! Mummy must be proud.

Unfortunately, I find that these days I usually can't remember where I left my reading glasses so this "writing" stuff defeats me after all. Hence, my group have hired a bard to stand in the corner and recite appropriate rule passages on demand.

And then we ignore them anyway.

 

[pemerton]

Ah, well spotted - unwritten rule 645,712 that says "potions must always be carried in unprotected glass "vials" (a Gygaxian word meaning, apparently, "like a bottle, but more fragile")".

<snip>

There are plenty of ways to avoid this inconsistency: make potions very rare, make them much smaller, make them heal over a longer period so that gulping them down mid-fight doesn't help, make them so that they have to be mixed carefully just prior to drinking - and so on.

Is guzzling down a whole pint of "potion" really a fantasy genre convention? All my memories, from fantasy films, books and so on, have the hero sup the thing pretty rapidly.

Where doe it say that potions are a pint? I've always assumed that they are about 100 ml or so (3 to 4 fl oz), and I thought I got this from somewhere back in my AD&D days (DMG? a Dragon magazine? who can remember!?).

Anyway, that's an amount that can be taken in one gulp.

 

[pemerton]

"What's the Dungeon Master's real role?"

Dosen't the answer to this vary from group to group and style to style?

For my part - as a GM, my most important jobs are (i) to set up the situations that confront the PCs (which means authority over situation and over a good chunk of backstory), and (ii) to play my part in the action resolution mechanics - which means (in 4e) choosing actions for monsters and NPCs, keeping up the pressure in skill challenges, and adjudicating page 42.

As I read it, Monte's column is mostly about (ii). My personal preference in relation to (ii) is for a game that reduces the need for the GM to invent new resolution mechanics, and that presents robust mechanical guidelines (in 4e, DCs, damage expressions etc) that permit adjudication to be done in a maximally thematic and minimially adversarial/"mother may I" style.

An ounce of flavor text is often worth a pound of rules crunch.

Consider the venerable fireball.

<snip>

you can say, "This spell creates a tiny glowing bead that streaks to its destination and detonates in a 20-foot-radius burst of flame."

This does not state that you can use the spell to set a barn full of hay on fire, or to create a momentary burst of illumination, or to signal someone from miles away if you cast it straight up into a night sky. Yet all of these are implied by the flavor text. A player who reads that text does not have to ask the DM if she can do these things; it's clear that she can, even though no rule says so.

I quite like the way 4e handles this - that is, not via flavour text, but via keywords. Fireball has the fire keyword, and hence does damage by conjuring flames. From this the ability to set fire to hay, to act as a flare, etc can all be inferred.

Another example that came up in my game on the weekend involved the fear keyword. The Enigma of Vecna has a "horrific transformation" power which causes an attack vs will dealing psychic damage and pushing the target away. The fact that the power has the fear keyword indicates that the "push" is, in fact, the victim fleeing from fear. (Some wights have a similar ability.)

The item damage rules in 3e (and 4e <- DDI Link) fall mostly under the "too detailed to be effective" bucket of rules.

Of course, the crux of the matter is, "if I need them."

The role of keywords, of anchoring the mechanics and the fiction, is made clear in the DMG's discussion of attacking objects. As you say, however, this is a rather peripheral component of the rules. I think the importance of keywords is something that would be better stated as key principle of action resolution adjudication.

The problem is compounded by the fact that, in the discussion of keywords in the power rules (PHB, Rules Compendium, etc) they are discussed only in terms of their interaction with other mechanical elements of the game, rather than also in terms of the role in linking mechanics and fiction.

WotC D&D, but especially 4E (which I enjoy, btw), is designed in such a way that there are so many secondary and tertiary elements that the player is further removed from their character, and ends up running their character like a piece on a board game or a video game avatar (at least in combat, which is why some have noted that 4E is like two games in one: the actual role-playing game that takes place outside of combat, and combat that is essentially a miniature skirmish game).

The experience you describe here may be common - I don't know - but it is not universal - because I don't share it.

This relates to the role of keywords, and also to page 42. 4e combat in fact (in my experience) makes the fiction, and fictional positioning, pretty important, but the presentation of the rules tends not to draw attention to this.

One simple example: suppose a combat involves a stream or pond which is difficult or perhaps hindering terrain. How can the PCs interact with this? One way is to use Icy Terrain - a 1st level wizard encounter power with the cold keyword - to freeze the water, turning deep water (hindering terrain) into difficult terrain, perhaps, or at least less hindering (Acro checks to maintain balance rather than Ath checks to swim); or turning a shallow puddle that is difficult terrain into an ice slick that is modestly hindering terrain (Acro check to maintain balance).

If the difficult or hindering terrain on the battlemap was instead a boulderfield, or a mass of tangled vines, then Icy Terrain would interact with it completely differently.

Rather than reinventing the basic action resolution mechanics, I think WotC should think hard about how they right their guidelines for GMs and players. If you spend pages talking about the minutiae of adjudicating cover and line of sight, but say nothing about how keywords anchor the mechanics in the fiction, and in turn therefore provide conduits from the fiction to the mechanics - instead talking only about the mechanics-to-mechanics role of keywords - is it any wonder that some people mistake your RPG for a skirmish boardgame?