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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8675717" data-attributes="member: 16814">Sim is definitely a thing in 5e.  It's just a chaotic mess of jumbled up and opposing simulations.  You have some genre sim, some real world sims, and a great big middle finger to simulation called 'magic' that's entirely prevalent throughout the system.  The arguments are really between people that see this and people that want to insist that it's coherent.  If you use a definition of simulation as 'like the real world' then D&D is piss-poor at this, with a few fragments that directly contradict the rest of the game.  D&D isn't the only game, though.  I'd actually make a strong argument that Dungeon World does a better job of real world simulation with the same trope and genre set at D&D.  Certainly dragons are a better go of it!And that's really the problem.  The OP defined simulation as a goal -- to play and feel like it's close enough to real world stuff that you can easily discard disbelief.  That got almost immediately tracked into arguing that specific mechanical approaches are needed to do this.  That's where pushback came from, because those mechanical systems are the incoherent jumbled mess I mention above -- where you mechanically have a fighter that can only jump like a non-world class athlete, but can also engage in superhuman feats of endurance, toughness, and agility when they face off against even common monsters like ogres, much less dragons!  So that got pushback.  I think the OP definition is workable, though, but 5e doesn't do the job, and coming up with new mechanics to force the issue in some places while ignoring the glaring inconsistencies in others just adds to the incoherence.  YMMV, and you may like the incoherence (and this is 100% fine), but at least acknowledge that it's there and you don't care about it.  This argument is people declaring it doesn't exist -- or saying it does and then immediately arguing that it doesn't with the next breath. For the uninitiated, DW dragons are 1) smaller than D&D dragons (but still terrifyingly big) and 2) are actually statted out to be as horribly scary as they should be.  And that includes only having 16 hitpoints in a game where a Fighter can reliably deal d10+d6 damage.  This is because dragons have all the fun tags -- reach, meaning you have to defy danger to close, where anything not 10+ means the GM can level damage on you (bad, see later); terrifying, meaning you have to defy danger to act against your fear to begin with; Messy, meaning that when the dragon deal damage it rips things apart, so like losing armor or an arm, depending.  It also has 5 armor, which is straight damage mitigation.  And it's damage is 2d12, keep highest, +5 with armor penetration 4.  So, to fight this thing with a sword, you have to defy danger to overcome it's Terrifying nature, then you need to defy danger to get close (and need a 10+),  then you need to successfully clash with it (again, a 10+ is important here) to deal damage, which would require rather high level and specific effects and some good dice luck to do in one go.  And, if you miss a 10+, you're taking a crapton of damage (PCs have around 18 hitpoints themselves) AND losing something to the Messy tag.  Since DW is also monsters don't take turns, there's not concern about action economy. That's not considering anything at all about the environment -- just white room straight up fight.  So, yeah, I'd say that if you want to simulate what it might be like to fight a dragon in the real world (if you squint), DW is doing a better setup of what that might look like than 5e.  But it's using verboten mechanics to do so, so the mechanics argument on simulation is going to be upset at the suggestion.</blockquote>

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