D&D 5E Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e

[pemerton]

I hadn't looked at the underwater combat rules but rather relied on the fact that arrows are effectively useless for shooting into water in real life.

I feel like I should be sending a care package to your suspension of disbelief!

 

[Ovinomancer]

I feel like I should be sending a care package to your suspension of disbelief!

Nah, it's not that damaged. Shooting things underwater is one of those genre trope things that's super common in all kinds of action. That it's totally unrealistic (as in not something that happens in real life) is just fine. Neither is jumping down 20 feet and sprinting away, or just walking away from huge explosions with the badass stride. I'm good, no worries! I just temp forgot. Previous editions I believe did have a total cover from water thing -- 3e, maybe?

 

[Campbell]

Nah, it's not that damaged. Shooting things underwater is one of those genre trope things that's super common in all kinds of action. That it's totally unrealistic (as in not something that happens in real life) is just fine. Neither is jumping down 20 feet and sprinting away, or just walking away from huge explosions with the badass stride. I'm good, no worries! I just temp forgot. Previous editions I believe did have a total cover from water thing -- 3e, maybe?

It sounds like a 3e thing, but apparently not so. Thrown weapons are utterly useless, but other ranged attacks merely take a -2 penalty for every 5 feet of water they pass through. So pretty much useless, but not entirely so.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No, it's a house rule. 5e is pretty clear that it means a multitude of things, including luck, skill, will to continue, and health. If you whittle that down to just physical wellbeing, that's a houserule to edit the rule as presented. I mean, is this controversial? I can very easily say that your houserule really has nothing to do with this argument -- you can go your way or the book's way and the things I'm saying do not change.

As far as it being an abstraction, this is a dodge, because it's being use to discard any consideration of how it works. "Abstraction" isn't a magic word. The reality is that we're using out-of-fiction knowledge to inform in-fiction actions and understanding. In fiction, character A has a wicked gash on their chest. This, unfortunately, does not provide any information on how close to death this person is from, say, repeated attacks from a goblin. Like, if I took the example character A (with a large gash) and character B (with a scratch), we cannot extrapolate at all how many successful attacks from a goblin (1/4 CR 5e version from the MM) each can withstand. The fictional positioning with regards to their wounds has zero predictive or explanatory power. Further, according to the rules, each person will heal their injuries in exactly the same amount of time (this is more a problem with making hp be physical wounds, and usually means additional house rules are in play to mitigate this injury to the fiction). We have no ideas, here, without enabling the out-of-fiction knowledge channel, which is what is usually meant by "meta."

Hitpoints are meta. So far you've evaded my questions or attempted to dismiss them under the banner of "abstraction," as if abstractions are somehow immune to being meta devices (most meta devices you'd complain about are also abstractions). This really seems like you're just staunchly defending hitpoints as being not meta because you don't mind them but you do mind meta, so hitpoints cannot be meta. This is thin rationalization.

Well, this is completely ignoring what I was talking about/asking in order to make an unrelated comment on how 4e's healing surges were tied to the max hitpoint stat in a way that 5e hit dice are not. That doesn't address the question, either, as I could just as easily ask how many healing surges would be needed to heal each character respectively and it wouldn't change the question at all. Given that your response doesn't connect with the question and raises a topic that doesn't address it at all, one could say this was a non sequitur.

Tl;dr: you don’t understand how abstractions work.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Tl;dr: you don’t understand how abstractions work.

How did you reach this conclusion? Is it because I said that abstractions do not prevent something from being meta or is it just because you cannot answer the question and the non sequitur didn't distract as hoped?

 

[hawkeyefan]

The second example, though, seems like the GM wanted to ambush the party with redcaps, felt that the familiar would have spoiled that, and so did some quick thinking to line up some bits of fiction to make it happen. This is Force, though, because the GM is ignoring the intent of the player's actions and then deciding what the outcome was without regard to system (ie, no tests made). This actually feels quantum ogre to me.

I can see that. I didn't really feel that way in play. Once the reveal of the redcaps happened upon the return of the familiar, it felt more like they were already out there, and then the familiar attracted them and so they wound up coming to us. They didn't get any kind of surprise on us or anything like that; in fact the GM made it seem like they were quite surprised by what happened.

I do think the lack of any kind of roll is my biggest concern on this one.

Yeah. It's plausibly a different interpretation of "fair play" and also the fact that every description says "it" and nothing more (and I'd have to ponder the potential for shenanigans before allowing a familiar to carry something into the pocket dimension).

I think I'm perfectly fine with the familiar grabbing something and then bringing it along with them through the pocket dimension. It doesn't seem to alter what they can do so much as speed it up, right? They can certainly carry an item back to their owner, so the pocket dimension thing just lets that happen faster, and seems a creative way to swipe something or similar.

I honestly have to admit to not really knowing exactly how the 5E version of the spell worked until this session. That's part of the issue with having like 5 versions of the same spell rattling around in my brain. So this aspect of it is new to me and seems like it offers some utility.

Eh. I'd think the caster would know how the spell worked. I think it's the fact the player had no warning as to the possibility that's really grating on my nerves about it. Like, that seems like a time when as a caster I'd just right off that particular incarnation of the familiar, rather than bring the redcaps that close to me--and I'd expect my character who's casting the spell to anticipate the possibility.

Yeah, I get that. A Perception roll for the familiar or maybe an attack by the Redcaps to grab the familiar.....something to establish exactly what happened beyond the whim of the GM.

I have to say that one change with the spell I find annoying is the fact that there is no risk at all with the familiar. I think past versions of the spell have been a bit too harsh in that regard, but I think there should be some kind of element of risk when deploying the familiar in such ways.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Nah, it's not that damaged. Shooting things underwater is one of those genre trope things that's super common in all kinds of action. That it's totally unrealistic (as in not something that happens in real life) is just fine. Neither is jumping down 20 feet and sprinting away, or just walking away from huge explosions with the badass stride. I'm good, no worries! I just temp forgot. Previous editions I believe did have a total cover from water thing -- 3e, maybe?

Bow fishing exists.

Like standing on a boat and sniping fish with barbed arrows.

You have to account for defraction and it's short range. It's easier to start your shot by dipping the arrow in the water to see that angle, but it's a thing. Full cover from water is ridiculous.

The 'you can't shoot something underwater' is an issue with bullets.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Fair. I did later say more was needed, and this does seem like it established the hag was visibly swimming. I hadn't looked at the underwater combat rules but rather relied on the fact that arrows are effectively useless for shooting into water in real life. Mea culpa.

No worries. I get it, for sure. I felt like shooting at a swimming target near the surface seemed still within the bounds of reasonable expectations.

I think an arrow would lost nearly all momentum after only a few feet worth of water. I have no data to back that up though...just a hunch that the fletching would be an issue.

 

[Manbearcat]

Oh, so, in the fiction, player A tells player B that they lost a larger percentage of their hitpoints than player B did. That's odd, have you introduced hitpoints into the fiction of your game as a real thing that exist and can be measured?

I hate to say it, but it looks like hitpoints are pretty meta because you don't have any in-fiction explanation for them. For me, this is perfectly fine. I can see it's a problem if you're blanket declaring meta things to be bad, though, as this might expose that it's only meta things you're not used to being labeled bad and the ones you are used to are just plain hard to see.

Or what happens when the character with the scratch comes up to the one with the horrific gash and says:

“MAN YOURE GONNA BE ON THE SHELF FOR LIKE 3 WEEKS! HOW ARE WE GONNA ADVENTURE WITHOUT OUR FIGHTER BEING ABLE TO USE HIS ARM?”

Fighter: Nah, it’ll be fine tomorrow morning. Actually, lets do a test. This looks like I’ve severed my UCL. So I shouldn’t be able to <throws his spear the typical distance>…

Yeah I’m good, let’s roll.

I do somehow feel closer to death though, let me just put that out there for the record. Did you slip some shrooms into my rations?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Bow fishing exists.

Like standing on a boat and sniping fish with barbed arrows.

You have to account for defraction and it's short range. It's easier to start your shot by dipping the arrow in the water to see that angle, but it's a thing. Full cover from water is ridiculous.

The 'you can't shoot something underwater' is an issue with bullets.

Well, yes, bowfishing exists with specialized arrows (heavier, unfletched). Still, this is limited to very shallow depths of only a couple of feet maximum and usually very near surface targets. Water for normal arrows and bows is effectively full cover except at very shallow depths. That arrows penetrate at all is due to mass. I mean, we can get physicy on this if we want. In general, it's a pretty safe bet that the surface of water makes archery non-viable in the real world. It seems easier in D&D. This is okay.