Literal reading vs common sense - which should take precedence?

[Regicide]

I agree that, from a gameplay perspective the kitten should be able to tackle the bull if the game rules include powers that allow this to happen. In that case knowing that the kitten possessed such a power and seeing the result makes perfect common sense in the game world.

Antonio Banderas was great in Shrek 2.

 

[LostSoul]

Cats can trip Giants or the Tarrasque itself. So much for common sense with real life animals.

Real life animals live in a magic bag, not needing food, water, or air, and come out in a ball of rage and fury when you call on them?

 

[Arbitrary]

Rules versus common sense is dependent on how well polished the game system is. There have been many long and complicated arguments about a wide variety of topics in 4th and I'm fine with siding with intent when the wording used just leaves me scratching my head.

 

[Derren]

About which type of "common sense" are we talking now? The "realism common sense" (e.g. No way a cat can trip colossus) or the "in game common sense (e.g. There are a lot of flying monsters/wizards so everyone would have ranged weapons and castles would have air defences)?

 

[Dausuul]

Not always true. Let me cite a a 3e example from an old discussion on the gleemax boards.

In this sort of situation, I am not sure what can be done. The players are astute (which is represented by them playing their PCs to perfection), and are merely reaping the rewards of their flawless strategy. While it may be frustrating for the DM to constantly see his challenges being overcome so readily, it is not as if the players are abusing any particular rule or loophole. They are just that good. It somehow seems wrong to want to punish them for excelling.

Lets assume that a similar issue crops up in 4e, where you are able to create some super all-stars party. What would you do?

Crank up the difficulty level of the opposition, of course. Continue cranking until victory is no longer a foregone conclusion. (Be sure to tell the players just how much they're playing over their level, so they can take pride in their skill.)

That's the thing. No matter how good the PCs are, unless they've found a loophole that gives them literally infinite power, the DM always has an answer: More brute force. If they can slaughter Orcus without breaking a sweat, they get to fight Tiamat next time. If they can slaughter Tiamat, they get to fight Tiamat at +10 levels with four templates on. And her clone.

 

[DM_Blake]

But all that matters is what I and those at my table think. If you disagree with our version of 'common sense', there IS no problem.

We don't all have to be playing every situation the same way.

This works only if you assume that you will always game with just the people at your table.

Allowing for things like people moving away, you moving away, you playing at a convention, you deciding you want to play in two games each week but your regular group doesn't, or any other change in the situation, we can assume that sometime in the future, it's very likely that you'll be sitting at a table with a group that includes some people who are not at your current table today.

Which means you will repeatedly need to rehash the "common sense" arguments over and over, each time you have a new face at your table.

And, as seems to be suggested by this thread, it's likely that some of those new faces at the table might have a different "common sense" than yours.

Which will cause friction, debates, even arguments. Unfortunately, it's hard to change people's common sense (I guess it's not really all that "common" is it?).

So, when this friction arises, and the difficulty of changing the new person's common sense results in a stand-off, the general solution is the DM says "well, since we can't find a 'common' ground, I'll just make a ruling and forevermore this rule is interpreted thusly..."

Which inevitably results in one of the dissenters being unhappy with the ruling.

Which undermines the "fun" - wasn't "fun" one of the cornerstone 4e principles?

All of that is a round-about path that gets us back to a principle of game design that I'd like to see more of in 4e, specifically, less is NOT more. Provide more rules. Provide clarifications. Avoid ambiguities. Make the rules as clear and concise and complete as possible. Eliminate any and all rules or rule conflicts that call for individual player interpretation.

Sure, I know that no game will ever achieve this 100%, but I do believe it should be a goal of good game design.

I'm hoping that as the months go by, WotC is compiling a very comprehensive list of issues and providing solutions for them that will be publicly available and downloadable as official rules corrections, changes, and errata - they've already made a small inroad to this; I'm hoping to see that become an errata superhighway.

 

[FadedC]

Well the cat tripping a tarasque bring up an interesting question regarding regarding common sense (never mind the fact that a cat can't hit a tarasque to trip him in the first place).

I have no problem imagining that there could be a magical cat that can trip giant creatures. I do however question if this was really the intention. It's clear that the designers sometimes use common sense when designing powers (for example tide of iron can't move something too much bigger then the fighter) but sometimes I think they simply don't think about it too much. When your creating a cute magic item like the bag of tricks it's more likely they aren't going to think about it too much.

As a result 2 things are possible

1) Cats can trip elephants by design. The designers could have put size limits on it but made a concious decision not to.

2) The designers never gave the matter much thought, and it didn't occur to them that something wierd like a cat tripping an elephant might happen.

I'm inclined to lean towards interpetation 2, and so I'd have no problem saying no that cat can't trip an elephant. But that's just my opinion and is far from an exact science.

 

[Benly]

Real life animals live in a magic bag, not needing food, water, or air, and come out in a ball of rage and fury when you call on them?

They do if you keep them in a bag without food or water.

 

[FireLance]

Well the cat tripping a tarasque bring up an interesting question regarding regarding common sense (never mind the fact that a cat can't hit a tarasque to trip him in the first place).

Actually, the cat can hit the tarrasque on a natural 20. If anything violates common sense, it's the idea that 1 in 20 attacks wil always hit, no matter who is the attacker and who is the target.

 

[FadedC]

Actually, the cat can hit the tarrasque on a natural 20. If anything violates common sense, it's the idea that 1 in 20 attacks wil always hit, no matter who is the attacker and who is the target.

Actually from what I can tell from reading the PHB, a natural 20 is no longer an automatic hit. It's possible I missed something, but even in the section on critical hits it says a 20 is only a crit if the roll would have been high enough to hit the target.