Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 9482757" data-attributes="member: 93670">That's not all.  They can do so with basically zero investment & in some cases literally zero opportunity cost in addition to their normal attack & move an absurd distance without triggering extra saves.  Most (maybe all?) of those are new to 2024 rulesYepYes and no.  It's not that drag is not defined by raw, drag is reprehensibly used in RAW by listing it as a thing that a PC can simply do to a target they have grappled.  All of the mechanical details are stacked in favor of the player except the gaping void of how the grappler/grappled actually move about on the grid.  That's a toxic combo because the player has ample reason to believe that the gaping void should be interpreted as favorably to them as possible due to everything else being stacked so far in their favor.... I'll get back to that though.Here is where things break down & require an errata to fix the whole mess originally reported during the playtest.  "Natural Meaning" is a meaningless phrase. There are two actually defined linguistic terms that could apply.  The first is "<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/natural%20language" target="_blank">Natural Language</a>", which is defined as "the language of ordinary speaking and writing".  The second is "Technical Writing" , it may not have a dictionary definition (that I can find), but <a href="https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/technical-writing" target="_blank">indeed</a> & <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_writing" target="_blank">wikipedia</a> define it as "Technical writing is a form of communication that professionals use to convey information about specialized topics" & "a specialized form of communication used by many of today's industrial and scientific organizations to clearly and accurately convey complex information to a user.".  Knowing when to use one style of writing over another & how much to use☆ is an important part of conveying information like rules & directions. In the case of grapple rules I found flowcharts for multiple TTRPG systems (<a href="http://www.tenebraemush.net/images/d/d0/Grapple_flow_chart_B.pdf" target="_blank">and a MUSH!!</a>) in the first few resaults for <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=ttrpg+grapple+flowchart&sca_esv=28f8fab5923385a6&sxsrf=ADLYWIIX2qGp4h8sz-xa2QTBN8LMXwBH_g%3A1729026018169&ei=4tcOZ9aGCtHPwbkPtLLugQ8&ved=0ahUKEwjW__rso5GJAxXRZzABHTSZO_AQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=ttrpg+grapple+flowchart&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiF3R0cnBnIGdyYXBwbGUgZmxvd2NoYXJ0MggQABiABBiiBDIIEAAYgAQYogQyCBAAGIAEGKIESKEdUJIRWMsacAF4AZABAJgBeaABiQWqAQMxLjW4AQPIAQD4AQGYAgegApYFwgIKEAAYsAMY1gQYR8ICBxAAGIAEGA3CAggQABgFGA0YHsICCxAAGIAEGIYDGIoFwgIKECEYoAEYwwQYCpgDAIgGAZAGCJIHAzIuNaAHuxk&sclient=gws-wiz-serp" target="_blank">ttrpg grapple flowchart</a>.  Given that grapple flowcharts were once well known valuable tools for d&d it should be obvious that grapple is a subsystem that needs well structured rules or none whatsoever beyond fiat & "hey GM, can I try to....?".☆   The <a href="https://www.dummies.com/" target="_blank">[Thing] for dummies</a> books are well known examples of extremely well done technical writing that gets the balance right.  Ikea directions are an extreme (and generally poor example) of technical writing  that gets the balance wrong by being too dry & technical. The grapple & drag rules we are discussing are an example of technical writing that is a complete failure in the other directionby failing to be technical enough.That's not how d&d works & it's not how this kind of rules conflict gets solved because there are two parties who feel they have significant say in how this whole thing works.  <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">First you have the player(Bob) who may have built their PC expecting a certain result, they are going to feel justified in pushing for the most PC friendly interpretation both for personal benefit as well as the fact that everything else in the deck of grapple mechanics is stacked so far in their favor.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Second is the GM (Alice) who is responsible for adjudicating the rules in a  generally fair & impartial way, for the mutual enjoyment of everyone at the table</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Finally you have all of the other players at the table who are generally going to be strongly incentivized to see things Bob's way & turn any dispute over this poorly constructed rule into a firehose of 2:1 to 5:1 or more peer pressure.  That is where all of the things Alice needed to do in order to increase difficulty, create challenge, & generally run a fun game by making things more difficult than RAW guidelines comes back to bite Alice by giving the other players a personal reason to empathize with Bob's position due to being negatively impacted on some other thing they would have liked the group to have their back on</li> </ul>There is that completely meaningless  grouping of words again.  The 5e ruleset abuses natural language in places that should obviously require technical writing to the point that the resulting obfuscation & confusion doesn't even get nailed down for what it isYes, I've never (deliberately & knowingly) tried to claim otherwise.   The very fact that we are even having this discussion is why the grapple & drag rule itself should be totally redesigned, rewritten with proper technical writing, & updated by wotc via errata.</blockquote>

Verification