D&D 5E What are your biggest immersion breakers, rules wise?

[Charlaquin]

Probably the biggest one for me is the old "one roll represents your best effort" thing. I get what DMs who employ it are going for, but it really ruins my ability to form a reliable picture of my character's capabilities and make predictions about how the world will likely respond to my actions, which are pretty key components of what I would call "immersion."

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Probably the biggest one for me is the old "one roll represents your best effort" thing. I get what DMs who employ it are going for, but it really ruins my ability to form a reliable picture of my character's capabilities and make predictions about how the world will likely respond to my actions, which are pretty key components of what I would call "immersion."

Do you think you can expand on this without it sparking a derail argument?

I’m just having trouble seeing the difference, in terms of immersion, between “best effort” and other methods.

 

[Flamestrike]

It does to me: how else does the poison get into me?

It doesnt neccesarily, any more than a dagger sticks in you every time a melee weapon attack scores a 'hit'.

Remember - RAW Hit Points represent 'luck, resolve and the will to live' (in addition to health). They also represent fighting skill and experience (which is why martials get more, and you get more as you advance in experience level).

Among other things Hit Points are also 'Luck points' and 'Fighting skill and experience at avoiding blows points'.

An attack roll that scores a 'hit' against your AC might not actually strike you at all, instead being parried or dodged (using your experience and fighting skill) at the last second, or luckily glancing off armor or striking a nearby wall or door frame, or be resolutely stared down instead of striking you.

Its a question of narration.

Under "health" comes physical harm...

It does indeed, and if that's all hit points represent, you could argue this point further. They dont only represent health (that's only a fraction of what they represent, and they also represent things like luck, parrying and dodging ability, fighting skill, experience, resolve, the will to live etc) so you cant make this point.

When you read a DnD novel and read Drizzt whirling around parrying blows and dodging attacks, and blows glancing off his armor, he's losing hit points. Thats just how the 'hits' are narrated.

He has a lot of Hit Points, so he dodges and parries blows and gets lucky with attacks glancing off armor, and demonstrates resolve to keep fighting for a long time and the like constantly.

Erm...so...if the arrow never struck you at all, how did the poison on it get to you in order to force that save, particularly if you failed said save?

Maybe in some cases the arrow did glance your skin, causing a slight nick and poisoning you (HP loss represents health loss). Maybe in some cases you luckily dodged at the last moment, and the HP loss represents you tiring and your luck running out.

Its a question of narration. You choose to narrate HP loss as 'meat loss'. Thats not a fault of the system, its a fault with your imagination and interpretation of an intentionally abstract system.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Seems like a child should be able to understand that any of these things can be situationally true:
1. The person who cant tolerate something is not the problem but rather the thing which they cant tolerate is the problem
2. The person who cant tolerate something is the problem
3. A response adopting "2" is dismissive
4. A response adopting "2" is not dismissive
5. A dismissive response is not the appropriate response
6. A dismissive response is the appropriate response
7. Agreeing with the person is the appropriate response
8. Disagreeing is the appropriate response
None of these 8 actualities are necessarily the case and to assume so is any or a combination of lazy, illogical, and false.
Fyi i side with you @iserith as i think there is some strategic rhetorical dishonesty/lack of intellectual charity going on here from what i have reas at worst and at best an inability to dissociate on the part of some other people. I share your point of view on this. I agree. It is better if possible to begin with controlling the self as a first resort rather exerting control on others because someone personally finds something intolerable.

 

[Lanefan]

Your belief can’t cause something to be true, but it also can’t cause something not to be true. when a thing happens in the game, it is true in the fiction whether you believe it or not. If you refuse to come up with or accept any explanations of how it could be true, that’s on you.

Not entirely; it's also on whatever allowed that nonsensical thing to happen in the fiction in the first place and thus forced me into the position of refusing to accept it.

Obviously the reason is that the writer made a mistake. And yet, it’s canon. It happened. Come up with an explanation, or be dissatisfied, the choice is yours. Personally, I don’t really enjoy being dissatisfied.

The difference in an RPG is that something jarring in the fiction can be argued against in hopes the DM will fix it. Thus, questioning and arguing are step one; followed on lack of success by step two (which is step one in your comic-canon example), and that's to disengage and walk away.

 

[Flamestrike]

Yep, and it's immersion-breaking for me. An arrow misses me but somehow pushes me closer to death? That's the part that I can't get past. So I just roll my eyes and ignore it as best I can.

Your luck is running out.

Its how Spock can literally fall into a volcano (he has 100 HP) and survive, or Kirk can basejump onto a platform from Orbit (also 100 HP) and live, while a redshirt falls into the lava or off the edge and instantly dies (he only has 10 HP).

A 20th level Fighter has a lot of fighting skill and luck. Much more than a 1st level fighter. If both men charged forward into an enemy position from the trenches, the 1st level fighter gets nailed on the way over the trenches and dies, while the 20th level fighter zigs and zags past enemy arrows, arriving unscathed.

 

[Lanefan]

I haven’t made any comments about quality or burdens. All writers make continuity mistakes from time to time, and yes, that is on them. Working to reduce such mistakes as much as possible is part of improving as a writer. But, once the creative work is released, it’s released. Any mistakes that were not caught before that point are now part of the work. If there are a lot of mistakes, especially serious ones, that reflects poorly on the quality of the work. But pointing out the mistake won’t make it go away. When you notice a mistake in a work, you can complain about it, or you can come up with your own explanation that satisfies you.

Again, the difference between noticing mistakes in a TV show and an RPG is that in an RPG the audience can provide direct and immediate feedback to the source, in hopes of fixing the errors.

Mistakes in a TV show (as an example of a medium where the audience usually has no means of direct feedback to the writers/producers) leave you with three options - the two noted above (accept and keep watching, or complain and keep watching) plus the third, which is to simly not watch any more of that show.

Indeed, if you just stop at “well, none of it is real, so it doesn’t matter if it’s consistent or not,” then we are dodging the question. It is also dodging the question to say “this inconsistency breaks my immersion” and leave it at that. If we want to answer the question, we must accept that what has happened in the fiction has happened in the fiction and does not match our expectations of what would happen in reality and then come up with an in-fiction reason how it happened.

That's neither the only solution nor the best one.

What happens in the fiction happens in the fiction only until and unless someone (and I'll volunteer!) stands up and calls BS on it based on in-fiction precedent(s) established earlier; and tries to get it fixed. But this has to be done immediately, because if you let the error pass at the time then yes, it does become locked in; to the ongoing detriment of that campaign or game.

 

[Lanefan]

I think what we may be running into here is a difference of opinion about what “the problem” is. As I understand it, the problem under discussion is broken immersion. It seems like you’re arguing about a problem of inconsistent writing.

Inconsistent writing, inconsistent rulings, inconsistent descriptions, inconsistent form and-or genre inconsistencies, (unexplained) inconsistency with reality - all of these tend to shatter immersion beyond recovery.

The common denominator here is inconsistency.

 

[Lanefan]

No it’s not. Like, at all. What I’m suggesting is when you see something that “doesn’t make sense,” like 8 hours of rest restoring you to full health (for example), it is within your power to change the way you think about HP to account for the way the rules say it works, rather than just accept that it “doesn’t make sense.”

It may well be within my power to do this, but it's also within my power to decline to exercise this option of passive acceptance and instead argue for a rule change.

It's also within my power to simply decline to play in a game that has this as a rule.

 

[5ekyu]

What breaks my immersion is tiny creatures get no bonuses to hide. Big creatures get no penalties to hide. Big creatures get no bonus to push or shove or grapple.

"I beast-shape in to a spider and hide under the couch and spy on my enemy's conversation."
"what's your stealth?"
"+2 "

To me, if you are the size of a spider, no one is going to see you or hear you unless you run out in the open.

I like 3.5 that has gradient bonuses/penalties for smaller and larger creatures.

Unless you run out in the open is the key part.

A small cat in the center of the coffee table is not hard to spot. Nor is a tiny ladybug sitting in the middle of a wall.

In 5e nobody stealthy in the open, unless special circumstances.

So, your steslth issue is handled by the cover rules. The large creature finds it harder to find enough cover to matter even to get a chance. . The tiny figure finds it easy in many places to get full cover from a wide variety of things and 3/4 or half from almost anything

Stealth is less about the roll than creating the opportunity.

By the rules at least.