"Stumbling Around in My Head" - The Feeling of Dissociation as a Player

[prosfilaes]

The rules don't say your character is virtually immune to non-magical fire. The rules say nothing at all about what's a good damage value.

That's not at all true. The rules are filled with instructions as to what the right damage value is. Over and over they tell you if this creature hits you with this weapon, it should be this damage. Page 128 of D&D 3.5 gives one fire-based example; alchemist fire does 1d6 this turn and 1d6 the next.

Why should they? HP are an abstraction, it's up to the DM to decide how dangerous the fire is to the characters.

Why I am I wasting my time leveling up if it's a lie? Getting more hit points is not about getting higher precision on the hit points. It's about being able to take more damage. If we're going to play a game where characters are pages and pages of numbers and mechanical notes, they've got to mean something.

And here's where I get confused. I do not expect the heat of a candle flame to do the same amount of damage as a magnesium fire. I expect a fire in an empty wooden house to do a lot less damage than one full of straw and with barrels of pitch stored in the corner.

Which is beside the point. If you want to say that a barn full of straw and with barrels of pitch does 7d6 damage a round, then go for it, and as long as you try and be consistent, I'm not going to complain. That's simulationist. What I'm complaining about it is:

D&D 4E lets you set narrative damage for fire. Want people to be panicking? Go to page 42 chart, pick a moderate or high damage type, make that the environmental damage for being in the firefield.

As a player, I'm stuck in a simulationist role in D&D. I'm objecting to games where the DM can arbitrarily ignore simulation and set a fire to be as powerful as they want, to hell with any known properties of fire and PCs in the universe, because it furthers the narrative but if my character wants to tie a rope to the bannister, swing down, grab the innocent victim and swing out of the barn, I've got to make simulationist skill checks about tying ropes and swinging and grabbing and the whole bit.

As the DM, you've got the power to define the world as you want. If you want to declare this is full of barrels of pitch that make this fire especially dangerous, go for it. Pack it full of gnomish fireworks, or add in a rod of the archmagi that will blow up if it catches, or enchant the whole thing so when the fire does enough damage to the barn, everything including the innocent victims is getting sucked into the Negative Energy Plane.

Just don't start setting values based on narrative. If we encounter a burning barn at first level, and another one at 7th, it shouldn't simply do more damage with no justification.

 

[Desdichado]

You know what's a terrible rule? The 3E rules for drowning.

If your low-Con Wizard is into the negative HP and you don't want him to die, stick his head in a bucket of water. As soon as he fails a DC 10 Constitution check he goes to 0 hp.

Can we please stop picking on Come and Get It?

Or I'll start picking on these horrid drowning rules for every one of the flaws of 3E. You don't like Come and Get It, I GET IT. The fighter has other powers. Go find a Rogue power you don't like! Or a Ranger Power! Come on! Convince me you actually know what you're talking about, find a different whipping boy.

I see your problem! Unfortunately, it's not with the stupid rule, it's with stupid players.

Seriously. I'm not being "cute." That's the stupidest interpretation of a rule I've ever seen. If anyone at my table ever did tried to pull out that interpretation, I'd probably punch him in the face.

 

[GreyICE]

I see your problem! Unfortunately, it's not with the stupid rule, it's with stupid players.

Seriously. I'm not being "cute." That's the stupidest interpretation of a rule I've ever seen. If anyone at my table ever did tried to pull out that interpretation, I'd probably punch him in the face.

Sorry, clearly says that the player goes to 0 HP. There's actually no way to argue it, 3.5E rules say that if someone fails their con check while drowning they go straight to 0, from any value at all, including negative values.

Maybe it simulates how extra water in your system makes up for blood loss?

Anyway, point made. We can find stupid in any system. At least Come and Get It is really fun at the table. The drowning rules are stupid everywhere for everyone.

 

[D'karr]

I see your problem! Unfortunately, it's not with the stupid rule, it's with stupid players.

Seriously. I'm not being "cute." That's the stupidest interpretation of a rule I've ever seen. If anyone at my table ever did tried to pull out that interpretation, I'd probably punch him in the face.

The problem is that we don't "interpret" english. We plainly read it. That is the problem with "over-technical" rules that try to cover too much ground, and with rules that use "plain english" for some of their keyword terminology.

They tie themselves in knots when no additional explanation is really required, and it causes these weird corner cases. Remember when people where talking about carrying around bags or rats to trigger certain mechanical effects from the rules? In 4e there is even a mention of this making targets NOT be "bags or rats." Was that specification necessary? Not, except for pedantic internet chatter.

In the drowning rules does the meaning of unconscious have to be further defined as 0 HP? Of course not, but the designers contort themselves trying to define everything. Why? To avert bad behavior, to save us from ourselves, and from rules lawyering. Someone would argue that falling unconscious does no damage if the "rules" didn't say so.

Well, when the designers go to such extremes to remove the need for sound arbitration by the DM by attempting to spell everything out, they create these weird spaces where things don't work as described or intended. Directly because they went to the trouble of attempting to spell everything out.

Monte Cook made a comment that is appropriate to this, "The designers of the newest edition (3.x) built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?'"

What they have wrought is a culture of players that only look at the rules as written for guidance instead of relying on the intent of the rule and the sound decision making capacity of the DM.

When people complain about "disassociated mechanics" IMO its all a hoax. A way to put down something by using "elaborate sounding" language. Because maybe if somebody coined a term for it its really a valid complaint against a rules system, instead of what it really is, a personal preference.

I agree with Monte's second comment, "Don't let rules replace good DMing skills". But that's just my opinion of course and YMMV.

I never had a problem with immersion due to "disassociated mechanics". All rules in a game are disassociated. They serve as representations for a fantasyt genre game. The rules don't provide immersion, the players and DM at the table do that. When rules are pushed to absurdity the resulting immersion is absurd, that is why this whole idea of disassociation is a red herring. The rules are only disassociated when the DM, and players choose to play them in that manner.

 

[GreyICE]

Oh and in case I mentioned, the 3E rules are ass at simulating drowning.

You can begin to drown immediately at 6 seconds of immersion with a Con mod of 0. If you do, you go to 0 HP.

So at level 1 a Wizard with 10 constitution takes FOUR DAYS to recover from being submerged in water for SIX BLOODY SECONDS.

Good simulation, that. What, is everyone with Con 10 and 0 ranks in swimming the Wicked Witch of the West? I feel immersed in the story! It's like we're in Oz already!

See how long we can continue in this vein?

 

[mmadsen]

The cry of "disassociated mechanics" means neither more nor less than that the person using it thinks that one way of modelling the fiction is better than another.

That is not at all how I'm using the term, and it's not how you (correctly) used it later in your own post:

In other words a disassociated model because there is no direct correlation between FATE points and anything in the world.

 

[FireLance]

Oh and in case I mentioned, the 3E rules are ass at simulating drowning.

You can begin to drown immediately at 6 seconds of immersion with a Con mod of 0. If you do, you go to 0 HP.

So at level 1 a Wizard with 10 constitution takes FOUR DAYS to recover from being submerged in water for SIX BLOODY SECONDS.

Good simulation, that. What, is everyone with Con 10 and 0 ranks in swimming the Wicked Witch of the West? I feel immersed in the story! It's like we're in Oz already!

To be fair to 3e, there is that bit about holding your breath for twice your Constitution score in rounds first. So, unless the wizard starts breathing water immediately (or trying to, at any rate), he would have to be immersed in water and unable to breathe for at least 2 minutes first.

 

[timASW]

To be fair to 3e, there is that bit about holding your breath for twice your Constitution score in rounds first. So, unless the wizard starts breathing water immediately (or trying to, at any rate), he would have to be immersed in water and unable to breathe for at least 2 minutes first.

He also left out that at 0 CON the wizard is already dead. He's not drowning, he's dead. But no one really expects w4rriors to understand 3e rules.

 

[FireLance]

He also left out that at 0 CON the wizard is already dead. He's not drowning, he's dead. But no one really expects w4rriors to understand 3e rules.

He said 0 Constitution modifier, which you would have with a Constitution score of 10 or 11.

I should add that I also found your remark about "w4rriors" to be in rather poor taste. 4e happens to be my system of choice, but I have played and enjoyed 3e and I still retain a certain amount of familiarity with the system. By all means, support your system of choice and correct any mistakes you come across, but I do not see the need to either spread misinformation about or denigrate the fans of any system.

 

[GreyICE]

To be fair to 3e, there is that bit about holding your breath for twice your Constitution score in rounds first. So, unless the wizard starts breathing water immediately (or trying to, at any rate), he would have to be immersed in water and unable to breathe for at least 2 minutes first.

That's the same line as they have for holding your breath in a stinking cloud. I was assuming that it was modifier because that alternative makes zero sense too. The average person can hold their breath for 2 minutes? Well... okay. I guess for certain values of average that's correct. "The average olympic swimmer" is indeed an average.

Actually how do spells like stinking cloud work anyway? "It's a nasty cloud!" "Cool, I hold my breath for 20 rounds. LOL@Cloud."

This is why I hate simulationism. The more you look at it the more it starts to fall apart.

Anyway, what I am saying is you can get huge disconnects with EITHER system. The advantage to abstract systems is that you don't bother to pin down certain things. It leads to less rules lawyering, less table debates, less ridiculous moments. Yes, you might have to work a little harder to explain HOW certain abstract things work. It's not an easy flow. There's a lot of on-the-fly creativity involved.

For every power like Come and Get It in an abstract, narrative environment, you have a rule like the 'drowning rules' in a simulationist environment. And the advantage of the ones like Come and Get It is that they're just fun to use. Whereas I can't think of a single person who went "oh gee, the drowning rules, lets go get em out!"

More like "oh hell, lets look something up again." Does that dissociate anyone else from the game?