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

[Lanefan]

As for the rope breaking, or not breaking, don't forget that your equipment goes through all the same stuff you do in the game, meaning it's also been subject to all the same magical attacks that you've gone through. Hemp rope may be strong, but how strong is it going to be after you've been hit by an acid arrow, doused in dragon-fire, and so on?

While I'm fully on board with this I suspect the designers of both 4e and 5e are not, seeing as (to the best of my knowledge and-or memory) they've removed any reference to item or gear destruction from the rules for those editions.

By 5e RAW, your 30 h.p. character can be melted to a pile of slag by a 100-point dragonfire breath and yet everything she was carrying survives in more or less pristine condition. Yes, it's stupid, but it's what the system wants.

 

[Lanefan]

Its always going to be a hard sell to make people think that's a useful spend of time.

Hard to see why, given that such things are almost always good for a laugh if nothing else.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Ok. I'm at Gencon right now, so I visited the Iron Crown booth and picked up a copy of Rolemaster Core Law. We'll see if everybody's right about how much I would like this.

 

[clearstream]

I find it amazing you are jumping to egregious narrations. I guess my question is outside things contradicting genre or the very thin bit of established fiction in the runes example, what could possibly make whatever the player wants the runes to be egregious. It’s basically a blank slate as far as I can tell and that’s not by accident. That is, what do you base any potential egregiousness on?

Apologies if I mistook what you were saying. It seemed like you were raising a worry that what player said would he unconstrained.

I’m not following this part at all.

I'm describing some likely constraints.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The runes, however, are more of a puzzle - a mental challenge - only the solution is not pre-defined nor are its immediate results. It's by no means clear that the runes provide a potential means for the PCs to escape any current perils they are in; in fact the runes might point toward greater perils, or indeed say nothing of any functional relevance. The fiction is almost put on meta-hold until someone gives those runes a meaning.

That's the way I see it with the risk being the higher the sought after power from the runes, the greater the DC but also the greater the chance one gets hit with a failure/complication etc.

For the more Trad GM who aren't fans of these runes because of the fictional manipulation it provides players, they may find they could work in planes or domains with concentrated chaos, desire or luck - where the runes may take the function the PC desires or least desires due to the particular setting/location.

 

[clearstream]

While I'm fully on board with this I suspect the designers of both 4e and 5e are not, seeing as (to the best of my knowledge and-or memory) they've removed any reference to item or gear destruction from the rules for those editions.

By 5e RAW, your 30 h.p. character can be melted to a pile of slag by a 100-point dragonfire breath and yet everything she was carrying survives in more or less pristine condition. Yes, it's stupid, but it's what the system wants.

5e 2014 has rules in the DMG for damage to objects.

 

[Lanefan]

5e 2014 has rules in the DMG for damage to objects.

Huh. Good.

In my defense, it's about 11 years since I read it...

 

[Pedantic]

That's the way I see it with the risk being the higher the sought after power from the runes, the greater the DC but also the greater the chance one gets hit with a failure/complication etc.

For the more Trad GM who aren't fans of these runes because of the fictional manipulation it provides players, they may find they could work in planes or domains with concentrated chaos, desire or luck - where the runes may take the function the PC desires or least desires due to the particular setting/location.

It always seems to end up being negotiation when you get down to it. Propose an outcome, haggle over whether it's within parameters, propose a fail state, propose a mitigated outcome, throw a roll somewhere in the middle to pick one of the negotiated situations.

 

[Faolyn]

While I'm fully on board with this I suspect the designers of both 4e and 5e are not, seeing as (to the best of my knowledge and-or memory) they've removed any reference to item or gear destruction from the rules for those editions.

By 5e RAW, your 30 h.p. character can be melted to a pile of slag by a 100-point dragonfire breath and yet everything she was carrying survives in more or less pristine condition. Yes, it's stupid, but it's what the system wants.

Sure, there's no mechanics for it. But if (generic) you won't accept "broken rope" as the reason a climb failed, because a hemp rope is too strong, you might be more likely to accept it if that rope was also ingested by a gelatinous cube last week and then got caught in a cone of cold yesterday. We don't need mechanics to accept that things like that would weaken a rope to the point that it might break.

 

[pemerton]

"I jump the gap", "I climb the tower", "I kill the goblin" is all action declarations according to 2. None of them makes the thing declared automatically happen.

If the gap is 6 inches, then jumping the gap does automatically happen. Likewise if the tower has a ladder up its side; or if the goblin is bound and unconscious and the PC has a knife to the goblin's throat.

In more typical cases, it's true that each of the action declarations you describes requires a d20 roll. But "I pick my nose" or "I scratch my head" or "I give my friend a hug goodbye" almost never require a d20 roll. (What - DEX check for your PC to pick their nose, and if you fail your PC accidentally pokes themself in the eye?)

The GM doesn't get to veto a player's description of their PC's simple bodily movements, speech, etc just because the GM thinks that some other fiction would be better, or truer to the established fiction, or because the GM doesn't like it.