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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7003579" data-attributes="member: 42582">Steel yourself for a shock - I agree with this!In one of the threads on monster stats that was a precursor to this one, though, the improv ogre-and-tree move was being advocated as an alternative to 4e-style statted moves. And I think this is part of what triggered [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s thread: how easy is it to make the move from the ability check/stunting rules, as presented in the books, to an ogre pulling up a tree?I don't think Manbearcat is against "saying yes" or having ogres do awesome things, in general. (I've been GMed by him - he likes to bring the awesome!)He's trying to tease it out in the context of the 5e rules, though. And one of the things he's linking to is - does it reciprocate to PCs? (And I'm guessing, in asking this, he's also got in mind the "DCs above 30 thread" from last year.) [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] asked the same question.This is an interesting take.As far as the ogre/PC reciprocity is concerned, PCs can become large via spells, potions etc so I'm not sure that solves all the issues.But the idea that an ogre's STR stat is there only to manage combat stats is interesting. It's almost the inverse of AD&D, where an ogre's 18/00 STR didn't inform it's combat stats at all (attack as a 4+ HD monster, for 1d10 or weapon+2) but did inform it's out-of-combat abilities. One reason AD&D could go for ogre/PC parity in this respect was because it used non-linear bonuses (eg via Bend Bars or "open wizard locked doors" chances) and because very few PCs could get to 18/00 STR without becoming enchanted beings by using wishes, magic books and/or gauntlest/girdles. In other words, letting an AD&D character roll the chance to force a wizard locked door as the chance to knock down a big tree won't create any issues, because only those with STR 18/91 or better have any chance at all, ogres only have a 2 in 6 chance, and there are no retries.Bounded accuracy + linear bonus progression changes all this. And so creates this pressure to divorce the ogre's capabilities from its ability scores. Which is what 4e did, by locating a lot of this stuff in "powers", and by using "genre logic" rather than "objective DCs" as the gateway to improved stuff.I don't think this is ultimately about players trusting or distrusting GMs. From Manbearcat's point of view (as I understand it) it's about transparency of GMing procedures, which feed into how much players are driving things vs being along for the GM's ride. And relating this to [MENTION=8900]Tony[/MENTION] Varga's post somewhere around no 21 upthread: talking about GM empowerment and the like as a solution to Manbearcat's question seems to me to be shifting a lot of control over resolution to the GM.I think I have a lot of trust from my players, but I roll dice on the table so everyone can see what is going on. As far as getting into the fiction - in my experience, there's nothing like rolling a crit to make a player feel the pain his/her PC is feeling! Or picking up a big handful of dice to roll damage, to make a player groan along with his/her PC (or to feel the whiff of the near-miss, if I as GM roll 6 dice and 4 of them come up 1 or 2).</blockquote>

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