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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7628866" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>Heh. Three of those are just radically anachronistic. "Synergist" is a good example of how a label can be much more accurate and precise, but horribly off.</p><p>But, I have long thought that it'd've made sense to break out a Blaster (AE damage) role from the Controller. </p><p></p><p></p><p> For a term that need never be used in character, not bad.</p><p></p><p></p><p> Inspiring Leader, the PDK, Rally maneuver (among others), and Social Skills, all have that same issue with rankling Player Agency, IFF the player subject to them isn't given an out. But, they're in the game, and people deal with them routinely without issue. In particular, Inspiring Leader feat and PDK are opt-in optional. </p><p></p><p> Backgrounds can outright grant superior social status or legitimate authority, the mere /implication/ of which is cited as impinging on this same area of Player Agency. Abilities that force saves, and change the PC's actions or emotional state or internal life or whatever violate the same final redoubt of Player Agency, and they do so mechanically. The distinction that they're bad, and generally happen 'because magic' is not meaningful to that issue: Agency is still lost.</p><p>And CHA is an attribute that affects how others are supposed to perceive, feel about, and react to the character. </p><p></p><p>So they're all examples of intruding on the same narrow realm of the PC's decisions & internal life to which Player Agency is arguably limited in 5e.</p><p></p><p>Ultimately, it's a "5e isn't a good enough system to handle this" argument. Which is, IMHO, pretty mean-spirited (we are all supposed to be fans of the game, here), and which ignores that players & DMs /can/ work together to iron out any conflicts. </p><p>But it can be made.</p><p></p><p>"Roleplay" is the entire activity, saying "this will be solved by roleplay" is meaningless. What you mean is, the mechanics at issue would have to be superseded by a negotiation among the players. In that case, you're really sacrificing one player's Agency for another. One player has invested resources in making his character persuasive, or a good liar, or whatever, and another, who has invested no resources in making his character insightful or willful, can just override all that. It's like the player of an 8 STR character being able to insist that his arm-wrestling with the 20 STR character always ends in a tie. </p><p></p><p>That's ultimately an intractable problem with CHA & social skill checks. It's not as intractable a problem with abilities like Rally or Inspiring Leader - the ability is not nullified by a player who decides not to accept it, it can still be used on any other PC (or even allied NPC), it's no more a ding to the agency of the player who chose the feat than declining a heal or buff from a cleric for "RP reasons." Worst case, if it's a single-target/limited-use ability, and is declined, the DM could be nice and rule the ability isn't expended (again, much like if the PC had said "keep your god-blessed glowing hands off me.")</p><p></p><p> In 5e, fluff vs mechanics is a dicey distinction, anyway, so it's important to phrase anything like that carefully, and we can only hope a hypothetical 5e Warlord were designed with sufficient circumspection. </p><p>In 4e, fluff was a non-issue, and could be changed by the player. So if characters had a relationship dynamic (fierce rivals, reluctant hero & enthused side-kick, cooperating only out of necessity, ... IDK, contractually obligated? whatever), other than they blithely-assumed "allies" (which was jargon, in it's own right, anyway), then the player was more than free to adjust the fluff to fit that dynamic.</p><p>Re-fluffing in 5e is sometimes suggested, but not strongly spelled out as an option nor encouraged (the DM of course, can re-fluff /and/ re-write rules), but I'd think an agreement between two players about their relationship, and how it plays out in their respective headspaces when they cooperate, would not be unreasonable - and could have some RP potential.</p><p></p><p>Even though it shows you don't really know what you're doing? </p><p></p><p>I'm vehemently opposed to any sort of imposition of thoughts/emotions/actions on my characters. Maybe I'm too fanatical on that position. Like Emerikol is about "disassociative mechanics" or Saelorn is about using out-of-character knowledge or Tony is about the need for non-magical abilities. That's my thing, and I'm 100% consistent about it (or at least I think I am) and I adamantly oppose anything that starts to infringe on it.</p></blockquote><p>I'm sorry, but I can't accept your use of my insistence that concepts that call for magic v not magic NOT be forced to the opposite side of the distinction and asked to 'refluff' as an example of fanaticism comparable to those (especially not Saelorn's - c'mon, his thing with whatever he means by 'metagaming' doesn't even make sense, like, you can't even parse it). </p><p></p><p>It's very simple: magic vs not /has mechanical meaning in D&D/. You can't re-fluff that, end of story. It's a reality of the system in every edition. </p><p></p><p>I am, OTOH, /fine/ with taking the exact same power in Hero System, and 're-fluffing' (in Hero it's called a 'special effect') it as magic for one character and something else (martial arts, technology, mutant power, whatever) for another. In that system, anything you designate as magic in it's F/X interacts with advantages, disadvantages, & limitations calling out magic as such. There's no mechanical issue.</p><p></p><p>D&D just takes some things that probably rightly /should/ be fluff, and hard-codes them. Even 4e, which let you endlessly re-fluff your powers, didn't let you change their Source Keywords, so Martial was Martial, and Divine was Divine and there's no pretending one is the other. Heck, if 4e were designed like Hero in that sense, it would have only had 4 classes.</p><p></p><p>But, you can still use me as an example: I'll admit to my "fanaticism" (I prefer 'zeal,'), in this context, which wanting to see 5e live up to it's goal of inclusion of fans of all past editions, including fans who clamor for things I'd never been able to stand, myself, which I'd always felt should have no place in the game. </p><p>And, yeah, I acknowledge how annoying that can get.</p><p></p><p> Convert's Zeal, like I copped to earlier, yeah. It's not easy to be this inclusive and this cynical /at the same time/.</p><p>[/QUOTE]</p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7628866, member: 996"] Heh. Three of those are just radically anachronistic. "Synergist" is a good example of how a label can be much more accurate and precise, but horribly off. But, I have long thought that it'd've made sense to break out a Blaster (AE damage) role from the Controller. For a term that need never be used in character, not bad. Inspiring Leader, the PDK, Rally maneuver (among others), and Social Skills, all have that same issue with rankling Player Agency, IFF the player subject to them isn't given an out. But, they're in the game, and people deal with them routinely without issue. In particular, Inspiring Leader feat and PDK are opt-in optional. Backgrounds can outright grant superior social status or legitimate authority, the mere /implication/ of which is cited as impinging on this same area of Player Agency. Abilities that force saves, and change the PC's actions or emotional state or internal life or whatever violate the same final redoubt of Player Agency, and they do so mechanically. The distinction that they're bad, and generally happen 'because magic' is not meaningful to that issue: Agency is still lost. And CHA is an attribute that affects how others are supposed to perceive, feel about, and react to the character. So they're all examples of intruding on the same narrow realm of the PC's decisions & internal life to which Player Agency is arguably limited in 5e. Ultimately, it's a "5e isn't a good enough system to handle this" argument. Which is, IMHO, pretty mean-spirited (we are all supposed to be fans of the game, here), and which ignores that players & DMs /can/ work together to iron out any conflicts. But it can be made. "Roleplay" is the entire activity, saying "this will be solved by roleplay" is meaningless. What you mean is, the mechanics at issue would have to be superseded by a negotiation among the players. In that case, you're really sacrificing one player's Agency for another. One player has invested resources in making his character persuasive, or a good liar, or whatever, and another, who has invested no resources in making his character insightful or willful, can just override all that. It's like the player of an 8 STR character being able to insist that his arm-wrestling with the 20 STR character always ends in a tie. That's ultimately an intractable problem with CHA & social skill checks. It's not as intractable a problem with abilities like Rally or Inspiring Leader - the ability is not nullified by a player who decides not to accept it, it can still be used on any other PC (or even allied NPC), it's no more a ding to the agency of the player who chose the feat than declining a heal or buff from a cleric for "RP reasons." Worst case, if it's a single-target/limited-use ability, and is declined, the DM could be nice and rule the ability isn't expended (again, much like if the PC had said "keep your god-blessed glowing hands off me.") In 5e, fluff vs mechanics is a dicey distinction, anyway, so it's important to phrase anything like that carefully, and we can only hope a hypothetical 5e Warlord were designed with sufficient circumspection. In 4e, fluff was a non-issue, and could be changed by the player. So if characters had a relationship dynamic (fierce rivals, reluctant hero & enthused side-kick, cooperating only out of necessity, ... IDK, contractually obligated? whatever), other than they blithely-assumed "allies" (which was jargon, in it's own right, anyway), then the player was more than free to adjust the fluff to fit that dynamic. Re-fluffing in 5e is sometimes suggested, but not strongly spelled out as an option nor encouraged (the DM of course, can re-fluff /and/ re-write rules), but I'd think an agreement between two players about their relationship, and how it plays out in their respective headspaces when they cooperate, would not be unreasonable - and could have some RP potential. Even though it shows you don't really know what you're doing? I'm vehemently opposed to any sort of imposition of thoughts/emotions/actions on my characters. Maybe I'm too fanatical on that position. Like Emerikol is about "disassociative mechanics" or Saelorn is about using out-of-character knowledge or Tony is about the need for non-magical abilities. That's my thing, and I'm 100% consistent about it (or at least I think I am) and I adamantly oppose anything that starts to infringe on it.[/quote]I'm sorry, but I can't accept your use of my insistence that concepts that call for magic v not magic NOT be forced to the opposite side of the distinction and asked to 'refluff' as an example of fanaticism comparable to those (especially not Saelorn's - c'mon, his thing with whatever he means by 'metagaming' doesn't even make sense, like, you can't even parse it). It's very simple: magic vs not /has mechanical meaning in D&D/. You can't re-fluff that, end of story. It's a reality of the system in every edition. I am, OTOH, /fine/ with taking the exact same power in Hero System, and 're-fluffing' (in Hero it's called a 'special effect') it as magic for one character and something else (martial arts, technology, mutant power, whatever) for another. In that system, anything you designate as magic in it's F/X interacts with advantages, disadvantages, & limitations calling out magic as such. There's no mechanical issue. D&D just takes some things that probably rightly /should/ be fluff, and hard-codes them. Even 4e, which let you endlessly re-fluff your powers, didn't let you change their Source Keywords, so Martial was Martial, and Divine was Divine and there's no pretending one is the other. Heck, if 4e were designed like Hero in that sense, it would have only had 4 classes. But, you can still use me as an example: I'll admit to my "fanaticism" (I prefer 'zeal,'), in this context, which wanting to see 5e live up to it's goal of inclusion of fans of all past editions, including fans who clamor for things I'd never been able to stand, myself, which I'd always felt should have no place in the game. And, yeah, I acknowledge how annoying that can get. Convert's Zeal, like I copped to earlier, yeah. It's not easy to be this inclusive and this cynical /at the same time/. [/QUOTE]
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