Sacrificial Bunnies (Warlock curse question)

[WalterKovacs]

Random explanations:

"Explanation" of the pact. Your curse/pact boon was given to you for a reason. The pact has clauses involved. They aren't giving you power to kill things you could easily kill with a dagger.

Healing strikes ... "motivation" seems to be a general factor for activating healing surges [there is also divine part]. I hardly think that either a god, or a fellow PC, would find inspiration in killing a random bunny.

Healing surges represent something specific, a 'capacity' for healing. You can't just infinitely 'surge'. In 3e ... how would a character 'in game' know that they are at full HP and can't benefit from a healing potion? Similar concept with healing surges.

There are no in game explanation for OR against most of the interpretations. However, there is a 'game' explantion for how they work, and a DM/player can use any in game justification they want for it. The listing of the abilities effect in the PHB isn't an "in game world" explanation either

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Shoot, I'd allow this under two conditions:

1. The character in question plays an undead warlock named Richard.

2. The bunny has big teeth, and the party cleric is carrying the Book of Armaments.

 

[robertliguori]

"Get up Rock, cause Micky loves ya!" if they're unconscious.

Also, they can still see the Warlord looking all charismatic. Maybe they feel his aura if they're blind and deaf. Its not a simulationist game.

No DM should be expected to account for patently ridiculous rulestwisting.

*coughs politely*

Look, pick a paradigm. Either throw on arbitrary restrictions hither and yon in the name of balance, fun, or whatever, or run the rules straight. But don't try to claim that engineering a fight to gain a "when you defeat an enemy" effect doesn't make sense, and inspiring someone totally unaware of your presence does.

As was pointed out, the question was answered in the first page. You really didn't contribute anything to the discussion by reiterating your same '4E is the terrible because its paradigm is rooted in metagame/gamist issues rather than simulationism' speech.

Hell, I'm still waiting for an answer of how a player-engineered scenario is different from a DM-engineered scenario, with regards to captive minions. "They aren't; this rule does not serve the DMs desires in such a scenario so it is perfunctorily ignored." is a valid answer. If you're going to make an argument about rules, discuss what's written. If you're going to make an argument about common sense, explain the obvious difference between two identical scenarios, posited above.

I think that a hard-and-fast guideline concerning valid targets for a warlock's ability are a good thing. I think that once these guidelines are established, the possibility should exist of a warlock getting together a large number of captives, slaying them all, and gaining a massive pact bonus, and that the hard limit on doing this repeatedly should be expressed in the original guideline. I think that the various classes and races are cool, not because of their abilities to shuffle numbers and status conditions around, but because those numbers and conditions represent cool things, and rules that interfere with the representation of said cool things are bad rules. I think that doing this in the small scale with a single creature is also cool, and that "That doesn't work because it's dumb." is a non-argument.

Mostly, I really hate "At the DM's askance"-type abilities. When I play, I like to know that my character can absolutely do certain things, and that said effects happening aren't simply the universe happening to bend in a particular way (but possibly bending the other way tomorrow). The trick is not to throw gotchas into the rules set, but to construct the original abilities such that even when they are used in scenarios not originally anticipated, the game does not explode messily.

The bag of bunnies doesn't work because it's dumb. It also doesn't work because it's against the rules.

That's all there is to it. That's the end of the discussion.

But the bound giant rat (freed before its slaughter) is cool, and does work according to the rules, because whoever wrote the Credible Threat rule fundamentally misunderstood how to write rules that resist scrutiny.

 

[cangrejoide]

More than 3e, 4e requires a DM to use common sense and have a backbone.-O

I am so gonna sig you.

 

[GravyFingerz]

And what is reasonably? What is when a vodoo themed warlock wants to sacrifice a chicken so that he can use its death to open a channel to the spirit world which he can use to communicate with the spirits and ask them for gifts?

What if a evil/unaligned PC warlock in a bar brawl kills an innocent bystander (no credible threat) to get some backup from his devil masters? Are those unreasonable situations?

Wow. Simply, wow.

Others may say you are trolling, but I'd like to think you are being consistently and forcefully obtuse.

 

[robertliguori]

Wow. Simply, wow.

Others may say you are trolling, but I'd like to think you are being consistently and forcefully obtuse.

I'm not seeing a whole lot of "Yes, that is an unreasonable situation that would never come up in play." or "No, that's a reasonable situation, but the rules can't handle players attacking mobs unless the DM puts a red circle around their feet." or even "The rules don't need to cover the intersection of what the player thinks he can and should do and what the DM things he can and should be able to do."

Given this, I am curious why the 'consistently and forcefully obtuse' is being leveled at Derren, and not at, you know, the people failing to respond to the examples and arguments given.

We get that some people think that Credible Threat is a workable, useful rule. We disagree. We are providing examples of situations in which Credible Threat fails to produce useful and desirable results across DM interpretation. If this thread is producing more heat and smoke than light, perhaps the imprecations should be pointed at the people making the declarative statements and declaring the debate over.

My common sense tells me this is true.

 

[Kishin]

As the "Credible Threat" is more of a guideline than a rule as it does not have any hard rules associated to it I just offered a different perspective of how to deal with this situation and pointed out the, in my eyes, problems with the gameist approach.



And what is reasonably? What is when a vodoo themed warlock wants to sacrifice a chicken so that he can use its death to open a channel to the spirit world which he can use to communicate with the spirits and ask them for gifts?
What if a evil/unaligned PC warlock in a bar brawl kills an innocent bystander (no credible threat) to get some backup from his devil masters? Are those unreasonable situations?

'What is is?"

Are we going to now switch our tactic to bogging down the discussion with semantics?

In answer to your what ifs, they don't work. Plain and simple. The warlock can do that all for flavor, but he receives no mechanical benefit from it. The end.

I'm not seeing a whole lot of "Yes, that is an unreasonable situation that would never come up in play." or "No, that's a reasonable situation, but the rules can't handle players attacking mobs unless the DM puts a red circle around their feet." or even "The rules don't need to cover the intersection of what the player thinks he can and should do and what the DM things he can and should be able to do."

The reasonableness of the situation has nothing to do with the rule. If it comes up in play, it doesn't work. That's the way the game mechanics are designed. The game was designed with this principle in mind.

 

[Derren]

In answer to your what ifs, they don't work. Plain and simple. The warlock can do that all for flavor, but he receives no mechanical benefit from it. The end.

So a warlock with a devil pact can kill a whole village full of innocent civilians and recieve no benefit, but when he kills a giant rat he does (assuming its in his appropriate level range)?

Thats really "common sense".
Anyway, everything has been said, this discussion is finished. Bottom line: DM does what he wants and the advice given by the books is "don't allow it when it doesn't involve (dangerous) combat.

 

[Cadfan]

robertliguori- The "credible threat" rule doesn't have to produce consistent results. It has to produce results appropriate for the gaming group and the context of the game.

It seems like the larger disagreement between what I'm going to term "your side" and what I'm going to term "the side of sanity, sweetness, the light of reason, and the glorious Future ahead," is in whether DM discretion counts as a valid rule. I say yes.

 

[Kishin]

So a warlock with a devil pact can kill a whole village full of innocent civilians and recieve no benefit, but when he kills a giant rat he does (assuming its in his appropriate level range)?

Thats really "common sense"...

If none of those villagers were a threat? Yup. Its not 'common sense' in the simulation/versimilitude sense, its 'common sense' with regards to exploiting rules.

Look, pick a paradigm. Either throw on arbitrary restrictions hither and yon in the name of balance, fun, or whatever, or run the rules straight. But don't try to claim that engineering a fight to gain a "when you defeat an enemy" effect doesn't make sense, and inspiring someone totally unaware of your presence does.

Engineering the fight to gain a when you defeat an enemy effect has a rule forbidding it. Inspiring someone unaware of your presence does not.

I see where my mistake is. I attempted to offer you a vaguely in character plausible justification. From now on, I'm just going to say 'the rules say so'. Which, you will then reply 'This is inconsistent with my paradigm!" to which I reply "but consistent with the design paradigm of 4E', and then you will reply 'But it is inconsistent with my paradigm!'
And then I will reply 'Perhaps you should seek a different mechanical framework on which to base your games of the imagination'.