Mechanics vs. Flavor text

[Lorehead]

How about this one? The inclusion of the word "chivalry" in paladins without defining chivalry and how it applies to a fantasy setting has caused the paladin more headaches than any other fluff in the game.

I've just read through the class description twice, and I don't see that word anywhere. Could you please point it out to me?

The description of low-Dexterity characters as "inept" at dodging blows is a piece of flavor text that's led many people astray. Despite the fact that the rules of the game say directly and with no ambiguity that a character who would lose a Dexterity bonus to AC does not lose a Dexterity penalty, and despite the fact that an immobile character is easier to hit than one with a Dexterity score between 1 and 9, some people imagine that characters with a Dexterity penalty actively put themselves into the path of blows. They then incorrectly conclude that characters who would be denied their Dexterity bonuses to AC should lose their Dexterity penalties.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I think a better poll would gauge how much flavor you'd want with your "crunch."

I voted in the middle, but I tend towards the "allow me to add the fluff" option, as far as core rules go. Some things need a certain amount of flavor (especially campaign specific bits). Err on the side of minimal fluff, and allow me to add my own without having an assumed baseline.

I agree, though I fall the other way, between 'some', and 'yes, tell me'.

The Auld Grump

 

[Hussar]

Lorehead - pick up an earlier edition PhB and take a look. The vast load of anti-paladin sentiment stems from those earlier descriptions. And, people tend to talk about how the fluff in 2e was just so superior to the crunch of 3e. Me, I'm glad the fluff is mostly gone.

But, I think my point is still made. Fluff leads to so many problems because people try to use fluff as rules instead of realizing it for what it is - description which may or may not apply at a given time.

I once had an arguement with another DM about how a lammasu would always kill any evil creature on sight, even if it surrendered, because of the description in the monster manual (3e).

 

[Thunderfoot]

The paladin arugement is why there should be flavor text - or more precicesly wy people should PAY ATTENTION to the "flavor" text. Ignoring rules and rulings as flavor text burns my butt! Many things that have been "standard" rules in past editions became "flavor" in 3.XE due to writing style. *deep breath, don't have a heart attack*

Another reason I don't PrCs - the "flavor" text that describes the rules gets run rough shod by the "crunch" blocks at the end. I can understand why some people play the older rules, at least when it was written down, it was understood that that was a paradigm, not a suggestion.

 

[Hussar]

But, the problem becomes Thunderfoot, that flavour text becomes shackeling. If I include the word chivalry in the text for paladins, then I cannot have a paladin based on Mayan culture. Or Roman. Or Mesopotamian. Or anything else other than quasi-French half remembered ideas. If the idea of chivalry is never explored in the context of a fantasy world, then we wind up with huge problems. And we did.

 

[GSHamster]

Sometimes flavor should drive crunch, and other times crunch should drive flavor.

I would say that the more specialized something is, the more that flavor should drive it.

For example, a base class should be driven more by crunch, and a prestige class should have more flavor. Similarily, low-level, common spells are more crunch and open to interpretation. High level or narrow spells should be flavorful and more rigidly defined.

This allows you to put your own spin on the basics, and yet at other times be inspired by someone else's vision. Sometimes, a prestige class can just perfectly capture an ideal, that changing the class to be more generic would ruin it. Instead it would be better to create a different prestige class to reflect what the player wants.

 

[sckeener]

So fireball should be fire damage III? Various demons should just be a bunch of stats with no description? Nah, I like flavor text.

Speaking of fireball....I always loved Ars Magica's Fireball.....called Ball of Abysmal Flame

But then in my game I tend to have spell thematics without any of the crunch behind it. I like it when my players have a theme running through out their spells. I usually consider all spells players get because of gaining a level to be their spells and thus have their theme applied. If a wizard learns a spell during the adventure (say from a enemy spellbook), I tell him what the theme is from wherever he learned it.

I loved giving fireball to one of the players in a spell book....I loved telling him that he smelled a scent of sulfur whenever he cast it. (he got the spell book from some cultists )

 

[woodelf]

HERO and D&D are almost completely opposite ends of the spectrum, in terms of the GM's approach, tho. HERO assumes that the players and GM all want to build characters and effects to their own conception, and provides tools for that. D&D assumes that people want to take a precreated set of options and run with it.

While I personally fall into the HERO camp on this, the other GM in my group is entirely in the D&D camp. He can't even create a simple character in HERO, not because he can't understand the rules, but because without a framework he just can't get started. He needs the "class / race" hook to start with, and then develops the character through play. (What he tells me every time he tries to create a HERO character is, "Gawd, I can't think of disads. I don't KNOW what his weaknesses are yet!")

I don't think it's even that your friend needs a hook. Rather, he simply can't create a character prior to playing the character. It's just that having the relatively vague and open-ended packages that are classes and races in D&D allows him to have a character sufficiently-detailed to make the rest of you comfortable when he plays it, while sufficiently un-detailed that he doesn't have to come up with all that stuff that he doesn't yet know.

The single most pragmatically-useful bit of theory to come out of r.g.f.advocacy, and to have seemingly been completely forgotten, is the DIP/DAS split. Some players are DIP: develop-in-play; some are DAS: develop-at-start. The archetypal DAS player comes to the table with an elaborate backstory, detailed well-thought-out personality, and 47 NPC relationships for the GM to screw with. The archetypal DIP player comes to the table with a 1st-level human fighter with a longsword, and no name until the other players cajole him into calling his character 'Bob'. Come back a few months later, however, and both characters will be equally well developed--the DIP's character may even be better developed, as the DAS personality type can edge in the direction of ignoring in-play character repercussions in favor of the developed-at-start characterization.

But those are just the extremes. In the real world, most people are identifiably one or the other, but not so extremely that they can't borrow some techniques from the other camp. So your typical DIP player can make some interesting (possibly sub-optimal) feat choices, choose an unusual signature weapon, or otherwise create an atypical starting character. But they may not be able to tell you why their ranger uses a whip--it just seemed like a good idea at the time. And the typical DAS player will have a few mechanical bits that are there 'just because'; and won't have such an elaborate background that there's no room for further development, and will gladly adapt as the game progresses. Nonetheless, the conflicts generated by this difference of attitude towards character development are at least as significant in the real world as any generated by differences in play preference, as classified by the Threefold. It should be more widely recognized and addressed.

 

[Hussar]

While I'm not sure about calling my players dips , that seems like a pretty good take on things Woodelf.

The paladin arugement is why there should be flavor text - or more precicesly wy people should PAY ATTENTION to the "flavor" text. Ignoring rules and rulings as flavor text burns my butt! Many things that have been "standard" rules in past editions became "flavor" in 3.XE due to writing style. *deep breath, don't have a heart attack*

Again, the problem comes up when the flavour text uses loaded words. Even the term "Prestige" class has many people in a spin. Prestige classes are not special, or at least, they don't have to be. They can simply be a specialization of the base class. A new package of skills that tweaks a character in a particular direction.

But, they're called "Prestige" classes, they must be extra special right? I've seen numerous DM's on this board talk about how they hate PrC's and disallow most of them. My thought is, why? They are not unbalanced (usually) nor are they going to destroy a campaign. So long as it makes sense in game for the character to take the PrC, or at least there is nothing preventing the character from taking the PrC, where's the problem?

But, they're PRESTIGE classes. They have to be special.

No, they don't. Not unless the Dm decides to use that particularly loaded word prestige and take it to mean so. If the player wants to become a Mystic Theurge, and jumps through the level hoops to do so, why not let him? Unless there is some specific in game reason why not, what's the harm?

Prestige =/= special. It's just a word that is used to denote a 10 or 5 level class that you can take some time after level 1.

This is why I get so annoyed by flavour text. Flavour is fine, if designers would stop using loaded words to describe things so that DM's start feeling the need to second guess everything.

 

[woodelf]

I'd like to see feats, spells and class ability described in game terms with maybe the occasional example (and examples should be given in mutually exclusive pairs to demonstrate flexibilty and make sure neither is confised with a requirement). The new format in the spell compendium where they give you even the dramatic coments to make before casting annoys the heck outa me and I see as just taking up space. Find some other way to pad your word count.

Similarly, the "flavor" of the power attack feat has been used to generally pervert a perfectly good and flexible mechanic to favor one fighting style and not work with another because "Its raw POWER!" ugh. Its trading to hit for to damage, let me apply it to my characer and describe it as I see fit.

I think that highlights the real problem: when fluff and crunch don't agree. When that happens, and you have some people who take the fluff into consideration and some who don't, you get conflict. Frex, when i read just the title and flavor text of the cleave feat, i expect something that really doesn't mesh with what i get from reading just the rules. (For starters, the name of the feat implies one mighty attack, not a series of attacks, and thus skipping an adjacent ally to hit a 2nd foe shouldn't be possible.) Now, we can argue whether the crunch or teh fluff is broken in this specific example--it just depends which came first, i guess--but the real problem is that they don't jive. Just like your example of power attack.

I really like your idea of always giving the fluff in multiple instances, which cannot be synthesized into a single interpretation. I also agree with you that the new flavor bits on spells, like the flavor bits that substitute for monster descriptions in the newer books, aren't helping at all. In both cases, i think they're too specific. I don't want a bit of purple prose i can drop into my game when the spell/monster shows up. I want a neutral description that i can then derive my own purple prose from.