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

[GreyICE]

No I don't think they are crippling for anything.

They are meant for a style of play where things in-world that are interacted with are by default meant to scale to the level of the party. What I have seen done when I, or others who are not fans of 4e, state this is... various 4e fans do mental gymnastics to claim this intepretation is wrong and that the DC should scale with the party level only if the fiction matches a challenge for the party's level... otherwise it shouldn't. GreyIce on the other hand used an example of a burning building as the fiction and stated the DC's would scale with the party to create narratrive difficulty. Basically saying that regardless of the fiction... it should be dramatic and thus everything should scale to the level of the PC's. His way ultimately boils down to a system that assumes scaling per level for damage and DC's... which is the opposite of what I have seen you and many other fans of 4e argue when stated by a non-fan as a reason they don't care for the system.

Uh, no. This is this and that is that.

The example given in that thread was "You go to the city of brass at level 21 and all the doors have one DC. You go back at level 26 and all the door locks have a different DC."

I mean there's compounding absurdities there (all the door locks have the same DC in the city of brass, no matter what? Disregarding when you went there, WHAT?), but in general it's a setting. It's sitting still.

This is "Back in level 3 we were fighting in a burning barn and it did this, now we're racing through the nobleman's mansion, trying to save the visiting princess and as much of the nobility as we can, while Drow Assassins are attacking us. And the fire does something different! How can you be so inconsistent?"

The answer is hah to you, I'm making a different scene. Yes, if you somehow revisited the barn you burnt down at third level, and rebuilt it, and set it on fire again, I probably should use the same damage expressions. But in the burning mansion I don't feel a need to because it's a different setting, a different story, and you want fire to be exactly identical in all circumstances. Do you see how anal and ridiculous this is? Do you see what sort of shackles it throws on the DM?

 

[GreyICE]

That's not anywhere near what I said.

Okay, so the orcs with fire resistance just need to be skinned correctly and its all good?

What if the villain purchased his important henchmen rings of fire resist when he realized that they were under attack by a pyromancer?

 

[Imaro]

Heat damage from extreme heat adds in another 1d6 per minute. That's an average of about 0.5 damage per round. No.

Smoke just shuts down the encounter as no one can do anything, which is kind of the opposite of dramatic. "And then the orcs who accidentally knocked over the candelabra as they were kidnapping the princess, the princess, and our adventurers all stand here choking a little and doing nothing for a while." At that point it's a Monty Python routine.

Uhm... You're making some pretty big assumptions here... like no one in the party or the monsters will make their saves throughout the entire combat... that's a little unrealistic isn't it?

 

[Imaro]

Uh, no. This is this and that is that.

The example given in that thread was "You go to the city of brass at level 21 and all the doors have one DC. You go back at level 26 and all the door locks have a different DC."

I mean there's compounding absurdities there (all the door locks have the same DC in the city of brass, no matter what? Disregarding when you went there, WHAT?), but in general it's a setting. It's sitting still.

This is "Back in level 3 we were fighting in a burning barn and it did this, now we're racing through the nobleman's mansion, trying to save the visiting princess and as much of the nobility as we can, while Drow Assassins are attacking us. And the fire does something different! How can you be so inconsistent?"

The answer is hah to you, I'm making a different scene. Yes, if you somehow revisited the barn you burnt down at third level, and rebuilt it, and set it on fire again, I probably should use the same damage expressions. But in the burning mansion I don't feel a need to because it's a different setting, a different story, and you want fire to be exactly identical in all circumstances. Do you see how anal and ridiculous this is? Do you see what sort of shackles it throws on the DM?

Hmmm, intersting view... I guess some DM's might think consistency makes the world logical and predictable enough that characters can in turn make logical decisions about their actions... But yeah I guess if a DM just does whatever he wants because it's a different scene and story... then yeah he has absolutely no shackles whatsoever. Whether that's a good or bad thing is a matter of perspective.

 

[Argyle King]

Okay, so the orcs with fire resistance just need to be skinned correctly and its all good?

What if the villain purchased his important henchmen rings of fire resist when he realized that they were under attack by a pyromancer?

Again, you seem to be missing what I'm saying.

You are currently offering in-game reasoning for in-game events. I'd be ok with that.

If there's no reason behind why things have changed beyond "well, I'm the DM and I say so," that is not something I am ok with. I'm also not ok with an arbitrary changing of how something works for no other reason than because the DM felt like it. Sure, if a rule is broken or the group wants a houserule to change how something works or the DM gives a prior heads up that rules are changing, I'm ok. If we're mid-game and the rules of the game change for no reason other than DM Fiat, I generally do not like that.

You keep adding more to what I've previously said. There's no reason to. The mock statement I made was meant to be cut and dry; simple -the DM changing something just because. That was something I felt was implied by your previous statement -that you need not keep track of what happened before because you can just make it up without any regard for consistency; that consistency could suck it as far as you were concerned.

That is why I would choose to leave.

 

[Neonchameleon]

No I don't think they are crippling for anything.

They are meant for a style of play where things in-world that are interacted with are by default meant to scale to the level of the party. What I have seen done when I, or others who are not fans of 4e, state this is... various 4e fans do mental gymnastics to claim this intepretation is wrong and that the DC should scale with the party level only if the fiction matches a challenge for the party's level... otherwise it shouldn't. GreyIce on the other hand used an example of a burning building as the fiction and stated the DC's would scale with the party to create narratrive difficulty. Basically saying that regardless of the fiction... it should be dramatic and thus everything should scale to the level of the PC's. His way ultimately boils down to a system that assumes scaling per level for damage and DC's... which is the opposite of what I have seen you and many other fans of 4e argue when stated by a non-fan as a reason they don't care for the system.

I don't get your problem here. Is it:

1: That different fires are treated differently?
2: That you have no problem running tenth level PCs through first level adventures? Because that's what a non-scaling world means.

The 4e rules say "All else being equal, you scale the challenge to the PCs level". This is a good starting point.

It might make it clearer for OSR players to put the damage expressions by approximate level of the dungeon as the rule of thumb rather than by level of the PCs. But this is again level scaling, and you don't expect tenth level PCs to mess around in the first level of the dungeon. (I once or twice have had a first level bandit rading party try ambushing high heroic PCs but only for comedy relaxation).

A hit point has nothing to do with what we are discussing

We are discussing
1: Level scaling and how this impacts play.
2: Worldbuilding in a world with hit points
3: Damage inflicted by fire.

Hit points are 100% relevant for all those things and are the clearest indication of how level scaling is built into the assumptions of D&D.

So no, I'm not going to engage in a hit point discussion with you right now because it bears absolutely no relevance to my point.

Except it does. For all the reasons I've gone into. The changing of the challenges you should be facing and the stark power differential across levels is baked into the assumptions of D&D and is shown at its clearest through the hit point mechanic.

Level scaling has been one of the fundamental assumptions of D&D right from Gygax and Arneson. And hit points demonstrate this. That you don't like this demonstration doesn't make it irrelevant.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You are currently offering in-game reasoning for in-game events. I'd be ok with that.

If there's no reason behind why things have changed beyond "well, I'm the DM and I say so," that is not something I am ok with.

As I have never seen this happen in a game of 4e ever relating to level scaling and fire, I'm going to assume you've no problem then. You literally need to be in two near identical burning houses that have been set on fire at almost identical times in relation to the fight and caught in the same way seven levels apart. If the fiction is not different round the two cases I want to know why and with all due respect what the #@&* the DM thinks he is playing at.

If the fiction is different enough to make the encounter level different then I want to know why the building is catching on fire in almost exactly the same way. You're asking about stepping into the same river twice here in any practical circumstance I have ever heard of.

 

[tomBitonti]

Hit points are inherently disassociative

I think we need to be careful here. There are problems with hit points when they are used to model more-or-less fixed tangible damage.

As an example, we don't need to use burning buildings. Falling damage is more directly illustrative. A non-magically augmented person can only do a little to improve the survivability of a fall. Most of what they can do relies on knowledge and acrobatics. That is modeled better (in 3E and 4E) by skill checks than by hit points.

I could create a similar example of a person being locked in a test chamber for a jet engine. If there is no cover, there isn't much that they could do to avoid the blast of the engine.

The point here is that hit points have problems all by themselves.

Since hit points are a standard in D&D, (I think) one has to learn to ignore the problems.

Or: One of the strong fantasy elements of D&D is that damage is recoverable. Mapping damage to hit points and allowing players to quickly recover from that damage is one of the strong features of the game. Hit points are a part of the fantasy of the game.

Thx!

TomB

 

[mmadsen]

No. They are thinking "Now is the time to pull out all the stops". Which is mechanically represented by the daily power.

What does pulling out all the stops mean? In a real fight, I don't simply choose to pull out all the stops and land my roundhouse kick to the head, or high-amplitude throw, or arm-bar -- and if I do land any of those moves, I'm no less likely to land them again on a different opponent. Awesome moves aren't a resource you use up in real life, so characters in the game world wouldn't see them that way either.

The player and the character are making very different tactical choices. The results can be perfectly plausible and seemingly realistic while the mechanics remain disassociative.

Again, the claim is not that disassociative mechanics always give implausible results, or that all simulations are inherently more accurate.

The term "disassociated mechanics" was invented as one of the early blasts of the trumpet in the edition wars. And is, largely for this reason, almost invariably used as a slam against 4e.

Certainly, but that doesn't mean that the term is meaningless.

At first level a crusader knows five maneuvers and has a deck containing five maneuver cards. On turn 1 they draw two. Then they draw one each subsequent turn until they run out, when they shuffle the whole lot again and draw a new hand of two. This has the advantage that you don't always start with the same maneuvers and can repeat them as often as the opportunity turns up.

I believe that many of the same people who dislike 4E's daily and encounter powers would not mind the crusader's random powers and would not find them as disassociative.

This is always a mistake made by simulationists.

Yes, it is a common mistake to assume that more rules will yield a more accurate and realistic result. When the rules are less specific and more abstract, the DM and players often have less trouble matching what the rules say to what should happen in the game world.

 

[Imaro]

I don't get your problem here. Is it:

1: That different fires are treated differently?
2: That you have no problem running tenth level PCs through first level adventures? Because that's what a non-scaling world means.

The 4e rules say "All else being equal, you scale the challenge to the PCs level". This is a good starting point.

Let's go with both...

1. Because it creates an inconsistent world (unless there are conditions affecting the fire as I stated earlier).

2. Because if that's not possible it excludes a style of play that has been possible throughout all editions of D&D... the sandbox world... or do you disagree?

It might make it clearer for OSR players to put the damage expressions by approximate level of the dungeon as the rule of thumb rather than by level of the PCs. But this is again level scaling, and you don't expect tenth level PCs to mess around in the first level of the dungeon. (I once or twice have had a first level bandit rading party try ambushing high heroic PCs but only for comedy relaxation).

No this isn't level scaling. This in no way sets the default of a difficulty level on the fly... using a PC's level... instead it sets a level of difficulty consistent with the difficulty of the environment the PC's are in, whatever that may be.

We are discussing
1: Level scaling and how this impacts play.
2: Worldbuilding in a world with hit points
3: Damage inflicted by fire.

Hit points are 100% relevant for all those things and are the clearest indication of how level scaling is built into the assumptions of D&D.

I haven't been discussing 2 at all... and that seems to be the only one directly associated with the nature of hit points.

Except it does. For all the reasons I've gone into. The changing of the challenges you should be facing and the stark power differential across levels is baked into the assumptions of D&D and is shown at its clearest through the hit point mechanic.

See and that's the problem... The PC's should determine the challenges they face through their actions, at least in sandbox play, so I don't understand your use of the word "should" here.

Level scaling has been one of the fundamental assumptions of D&D right from Gygax and Arneson. And hit points demonstrate this. That you don't like this demonstration doesn't make it irrelevant.

Huh? So Arneson and Gygax scaled the diffculty for their PC's according to the PC's... even when they were different class levels and/or when they found a way to explore a higher or lower level of the dungeon they were exploring... I was never under the impression they played this way, intersting...