Missing Rules

[5ekyu]

I agree that vagueness is baked in in to 5E, which for this kind of game I'm a fan of. Even if it does result in thread bloat and arguments that go on forever that at most tables would be resolved in two minutes.

I just don't see that many contradictions. If someone does, maybe they're just overly picky like those click-bait ads "Unbelievable mistakes in movies!" which turn out to be "In one scene the person is holding the glass in their left hand and then in the next it's in their right! How did this happen?". Or maybe it's because the interpretation of the rules is not what the writers intended. Or I'm just too easy on WOTC.

LOL one i remember was some sort of "shocking mysteries in Avengers Infinity war..." which included "hey, the black widow went blond and she should be redhead" ans some inexplicable thing for a secret spy on the run from an international police force.

Women dies hair - shocking.
Spy on the run changes looks slightly - unexplained

And yes, clickbait.

 

[Oofta]

LOL one i remember was some sort of "shocking mysteries in Avengers Infinity war..." which included "hey, the black widow went blond and she should be redhead" ans some inexplicable thing for a secret spy on the run from an international police force.

Women dies hair - shocking.
Spy on the run changes looks slightly - unexplained

And yes, clickbait.

What's worse? That it's clickbait or that we both just admitted that we occasionally fall for it?

 

[5ekyu]

I agree. I wish I had made a note about a podcast I listened to a while back from Mr Crawford. One of the things he discussed were the stealth rules where he explained that at one point they had detailed instructions on how to handle hiding and stealth. All written up, ready to go.

They decided to toss them for the rules we have now because they preferred DM discretion and leaving it up to individual groups how to handle it. So what it means to be sufficiently distracted and "clearly seen" are not explicitly spelled out. It's left up to the group.

So that's what I mean by vague, and is my understanding of rulings over rules. There are certainly gaps in the rules and the DM has to make a lot of judgement calls. I only see endless arguments about that on the forums, not in real life.

That last bit is a point i wind up making on more than a few forums or groups where its extremely common for those wanting lotsa clicks to frame the intro post in very very polarizing extremes.

"I find that its great that the vast majority of games played are played and loads of fun in actual play in the vast middle ground between the polarizing extremes we see commonly propped up as if normal in forum posts."

As for the podcast... stealth... rules rulings.

i remember that same podcast. I remember him saying something to the effect that they looked at the big page(s) of stealth micro-details and realized it simply wouldn't cover all the cases, left many more still open and so... made the choice they did which i love BTW.

My experience has been that everytime a game system (RPG TT specifically but principle holds) is released that gets popularity on a sizeable scale that expands to more mainstream, its because of a higher degree of accessability in no small part. That almost always includes a non-daunting approach to the volume and intensity of rules which leads to more "conversational" approaches with fluff and setting intertwined with the "rule mechanics code" etc.

Almost immediately a smaller subset looks for more "rules as hard code" than that and degrees of furor, debate etc rage and inevitably someone releases another game amazingly similar with more "want intense rules" focus for those already into the game etc. Saw a recent PF2 playtest review which praised the "the style of the rules is like a computer language syntax..." etc etc and how there werent fluff and flavor and the focus for the rulebook was "where it should be - on laser tight rules code" (close to quote but really paraphrase."

And i looked at that and went "sure, if your market is folks already into the rpg and who lean towards hard rules hard core gaming."

Seen this parent and child RPG spawn happen dozens of times, its like a fairly typical life cycle that keeps repeating - its like re-runs of reboots of series that were derivatives of early series in the first place.

there's always gonna be a segment that believes "just a few more rules and a few more clarifications and we will get to the right ruleset". As often as not, that also applies to "balance" - one more layer of granularity in the costing balance formula and... yup breath Fresh water should cost 4 and breathe salt water should cost 5 if we keep 1d6 of genericum blast at 5."

personally, i find myself in the camp of "give a good enough baseline and tools/approach to make good calls" as a gold standard for RPG rulesets. its literally a sort of "teach a man to fish" mindset vs a "spoonfed charts a'plenty approach". ("We thought maybe we had gone too far when we published the Midwifery Critical Chart. But, f'n no, turned out we hadn't. Not even close")

 

[5ekyu]

What's worse? That it's clickbait or that we both just admitted that we occasionally fall for it?

oddly enough, both. But i actually did the youtube "dont show me this channel again" plus unsub just the other day on a channel i watched often enough and had found pretty useful when the author did a rather egregious click-bait-n-switch title thing that just caught me on the wrong day in the wrong day so i left a very brief comment about it and unsubbed and "not interested" google-fued it - all that jazz.

Doesn't matter, i am sure he saw a up-tick on his views.

 

[5ekyu]

I see what you mean. For sure they deliberately left gaps that call for judgement calls. Possibly also they didn't want to commit to text, rules that they were not very confident was adding value to the game. I suspect that in some cases - especially around the vision mechanics - they just didn't have anything they felt was robust enough to say "do it this way". That is, I think they consciously applied a quality-control check to the rules they decided to include.

Visions rules.... *sigh* now there really is an area I wish they'd done more of the work for DMs!

"We can add three more pages of stealth rules and get about 50% of the remaining questionable use-cases done... So do we toss sorcerer class out for that?"



and BTW i agree - perhaps the single most glaring actual hard core "breaks game if played as written" section to me is "Vision and Light"

 

[smbakeresq]

Wow I guess my use of 4e rule of DC=feet jumped didn’t cut the mustard for ease of use or playability.

20 pages didn’t convince me to use something else either.

 

[Satyrn]

Wow I guess my use of 4e rule of DC=feet jumped didn’t cut the mustard for ease of use or playability.

20 pages didn’t convince me to use something else either.

This is how I do it.

When describing a gap that is too big to jump across automatically, but it's still possible I will say something like "but it's still doable, DC 10" or "it's quite a leap, DC 15." I find that giving my players the DC allows them to visualize the gap better than any description I can give, and does excellent double duty by immediately answering the one question they really have.

(When I draw battlemaps with lots of terrain, I'll mark the climb DC on slopes and cliffs for that reason, too.)

 

[Maxperson]

It was alleged that 5e's designers made a specific statement "rulings not rules". Which designer? Where? If the alleged quote turns out to not represent a statement by a 5e designer, then lets look at what they say under Philosophy Behind Rules and Rulings

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/sage-advice/philosophy-behind-rules-and-rulings

Rulings and rules, that seems to be WotC's official position on the subject.

Did you read the article? The rules say that the rules are secondary, that the DM can change them at will, and that the DM needs to rule when the rules don't cover situations. Then they filled 5e with so much vagueness that the DM will need to be ruling on a regular basis. His rulings come first and the rules are secondary. Hence, rulings over rules.'

The article is very clear that 5e is open ended to allow rulings and not hard rules to bind PCs into actions. The bolded sections very clearly tell you that the rules are not intended to be crystal clear, because that would severely limit what characters can do, and D&D is intended to be open ended.

"The DM is key. Many unexpected things can happen in a D&D campaign, and no set of rules could reasonably account for every contingency. If the rules tried to do so, the game would become unplayable. An alternative would be for the rules to severely limit what characters can do, which would be counter to the open-endedness of D&D. The direction we chose for the current edition was to lay a foundation of rules that a DM could build on, and we embraced the DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t.

In a typical D&D session, a DM makes numerous rules decisions—some barely noticeable and others quite obvious. Players also interpret the rules, and the whole group keeps the game running. There are times, though, when the design intent of a rule isn’t clear or when one rule seems to contradict another."

 

[clearstream]

Did you read the article? The rules say that the rules are secondary, that the DM can change them at will, and that the DM needs to rule when the rules don't cover situations. Then they filled 5e with so much vagueness that the DM will need to be ruling on a regular basis. His rulings come first and the rules are secondary. Hence, rulings over rules.'

The article is very clear that 5e is open ended to allow rulings and not hard rules to bind PCs into actions. The bolded sections very clearly tell you that the rules are not intended to be crystal clear, because that would severely limit what characters can do, and D&D is intended to be open ended.

"The DM is key. Many unexpected things can happen in a D&D campaign, and no set of rules could reasonably account for every contingency. If the rules tried to do so, the game would become unplayable. An alternative would be for the rules to severely limit what characters can do, which would be counter to the open-endedness of D&D. The direction we chose for the current edition was to lay a foundation of rules that a DM could build on, and we embraced the DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t.

In a typical D&D session, a DM makes numerous rules decisions—some barely noticeable and others quite obvious. Players also interpret the rules, and the whole group keeps the game running. There are times, though, when the design intent of a rule isn’t clear or when one rule seems to contradict another."

I read a commitment to providing a solid rules foundation, with an acknowledgement that imagination is boundless. Authorising the DM to make rulings when the action goes outside the scope of the rules is pragmatism: it helps play at the table.

I read that their goal is to provide "rules the DM could build on" and that the DM is a "bridge between the things the rules address and things they don't". The rules address some things. Those things that they address lay a solid foundation. The Philosophy calls out that 5e contains rules that are not yet clear enough. A need for rulings does not entail that rulings are superior to rules.

It is fair to say that we haven't yet found evidence that a 5e designer said or wrote the exact words "rulings not rules", right? The section is titled rulings and rules. Use both.

 

[Manbearcat]

This thread’s conversation has some similarity to the very large “DC 30...and 35?” thread I started a few years back that was eaten up by the last big board reboot.

Just a few quick thoughts.

1) I don’t have my books with me and I haven’t run 5e for a few years, but the jumping rules seem abundantly clear:

a- A character’s STR is the floor for their long jump in feet.

b- An Ability Check decides the ceiling for a character’s long jump (which cannot be less than their floor).

2) A 19 year old nearly jumped 29 feet last year (without the luxury of being in their physical prime nor world class training). He did this through physical ability and honed technique, the latter of which being crucial (in the same way it is for a trained swordsman). He could trivially and routinely clear 20 feet.

3) The world of D&D appears to have lines of evidence to support either less than earth’s gravity and/or atmospheric friction (at least situationally!).

4) We don’t ask for martial heroes’ approach when they are engaging in amelee exchange in mortal combat (which would involve the technical aspects of martial arts well-beyond the overwhelming percentage of players’ knowledge-base).

5) Why, given 1-4 above, do we need further information on how a martial hero is performing their noncombat archetypal shtick; in this case the technical information about how a martial hero in arbitrarily-relaxed (or weird) physics D&Dland performs a long jump beyond what would be trivial for them (those sorts of jumps which are trivial to earth athletes who couldn’t survive more than a moment in martial combat with most of the mythical D&D creatures)?