D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[AbdulAlhazred]

Do you have a citation for that? Because God in Heaven that quote would be useful to me!

1e DMG. I don't have it in front of me, but he brings this up several times in different contexts. First of all is the general GMing advice and discussion on using dice in the first part of the book. He also touched on it at the start of the combat system chapter, IIRC with respect to combat, and by extension similar situations. He also touched on it in his famous observation on the nature of hit points. Sorry I can't be more specific, but I could look up a few quotes later.

 

[Eric V]

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/cgi-bin/uy/webpages.cgi?/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Authority​

'Appeal to Authority​

argumentum ad verecundiam

(also known as: argument from authority, ipse dixit)

Description: Insisting that a claim is true simply because a valid authority or expert on the issue said it was true, without any other supporting evidence offered. Also see the appeal to false authority .'

Here's some evidence of the proper definition.

My definition comes from an academic, peer-reviewed source. It's not wrong.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Character death due to arbitrary roll is not high-stakes, though; it's random crap. In fact, character death is the least imaginative of stakes to be high.

For some people it absolutely is. The fact its not for you doesn't change that.

 

[FrogReaver]

My definition comes from an academic, peer-reviewed source. It's not wrong.

It is, but that's okay. We apparently are not going to make any headway here.

 

[AlViking]

Huh? It's not fallacious to appeal to authority. Given that most of us are not geniuses, we rely on authorities for most of our knowledge.

I've linked to the rules for Burning Wheel probably a dozen or more times in this thread.

And have quoted them.

From p 32:

Failure Complicates the Matter​

When a test is failed, the GM introduces a complication. . . .The GM must present the players with varied, twisted, occult and bizarre ramifications of their decisions.​

Another note - if you're referring to the rules from BW you should say so, many games take ideas from The Forge but put different spins on them. Also ... there are more than 10,000 posts on this silly thread. I don't remember every single one.

 

[AnotherGuy]

There have been improvements IMO on some major save-or-die affects over the course of the years.
We have 3 death saves when one reaches below 0, we have several levels of exhaustion, petrification and level drain have been reworked, there is a cost of concentration to maintain certain save-or-suck powers, saving throws every round to shake a condition etc.
Yes, they have taken things too far (but that is not the point I'm making).

The idea that a single climb check kills a character feels to me as it goes against the ethos of 5e. It is a bit of a nonsense example.
If there was indeed a highly dangerous cliff face that needed to be scaled, I would imagine most of us would run it like a skill challenge or with several check points. There would be multiple levels of failure needed or attempts to save oneself with various stakes/loss conditions at different points.

• damage of a boot (decreasing movement)
• lingering injury (per DMG)
• exhaustion levels
• loss of hit points from limited fall
• winded (loss of Hit Dice)
• equipment destruction (rope tear etc)
• equipment loss (weapon, money pouch, backpack loosened and fell)
• temporary madness (fear grips you)
• condition imposed (unconscious, entangled via rope while falling etc)

Death would definitely be possible, but that would mean a horrible series of bad luck and maybe mixed with some poor-decision making. Russian Roulette with dice yields too small a return.

EDIT: Even @Lanefan, who posted that he tries to emulate GoT at the table in another thread, would have to admit that a one-off failed climb check in no way reflects the types of main character death occurring in Westeros.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

Whatever your source is incorrect as well.

My definition comes from an academic, peer-reviewed source. It's not wrong.

A textbook example of Big Fallacy sewing division. We can't let them divide us!

 

[Faolyn]

I’ve never understood this and it’s from 2 perspectives.

1. You advocate for a technique where any 1 of hundreds of die rolls could just as easily allow the DM to create the consequence of ‘your supply is cut off’.

Can you explain why you are okay with that but not a GM generating similar fiction absent a fail forward consequence?

I don't understand where you're getting "any one of hundreds" of rolls. Are you assuming a random event table?

However, I can't imagine any fail-forward game saying "you failed a die roll, so a war hundreds of miles away has cut off your supply of tea" because that's not how fail-forward games work. The idea is that the fail-forward keeps the game moving along using the immediate circumstances and surroundings.

2. Why would this be a jerk move if the players have aprior agreed to the move in order to play a specific game. Something I’m sure @Lanefan’s players have done.

It's a jerk move because it's 100% GM fiat. Even in a trad game, no failed roll a PC can make in regards to their own little tea shop would cause an event like a war hundreds of miles away has cut off your supply of tea. At most, the PC would have to seriously fail some Charisma-type checks with a trade master for them to have their supply cut off. Whereas in a fail-forward game, the player may have to choose one or two consequences from "have to pay higher prices for the goods; get lower-quality raw goods; get half as many raw goods; something something."

 

[Micah Sweet]

Still more than 1 in 100 though...which is pretty high, considering the character dies otherwise. In the real world, would you engage in a particular activity for money (gold in the RPG) if you knew you had a 3% chance to die by doing so? It's just weird to me that the G matters somewhere between 5% and 2%; "you can't throw things at me for you being really unlucky, though I suppose you can if you are merely pedestrian-unlucky."

Probably not, but I'm not an adventurer, most of whom by the way engage in far more dangerous activities than climbing cliff.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For sure. My first post indicated that I am sure there are players that love it when their characters die this way.

Sounds like sarcasm to me from your corner, but what do I know?