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

[Charlaquin]

For me, I don't equate these things.

In real life it's entirely possible you could try to bash down five identical doors and only be able to get through three of them, due to a host of random factors. Thus, this same thing happening in the fiction doesn't break consistency at all.

Except that in real life if I fail to break the door down, I can try again. Which I probably will, especially if I’ve broken down identical doors before.

Which brings up a tangential but related point: a character isn't a robot and thus can't realistically be expected to perform exactly the same way every time in a repeating situation.

Right, which is why we roll the die. A person’s assessment of their own abilities is not 100% accurate and they can’t account for all possible variables, so the dice make a decent abstract representation of those unpredictable factors. Which is all well and good, as long as there is something stopping the character from trying repeatedly until those unpredictable variables line up just right. Which to be fair, there should be most of the time; at bare minimum, the time it takes to perform the action should ideally bring you that much closer to the next random encounter. But some DMs don’t put in the work to make repeated attempts costly, and instead just rely on meta-game costs such as artificially limiting the number of attempts or artificially penalizing repeat attempts. And that breaks my immersion.

Take-20 type rules overwrite this and tend to turn the characters more into robots that will always perform exactly the same in a repeating situation; hardly realistic.*

* - unless one's character is a Warforged

Take 20 is dumb. It’s an attempt to mechanize something that should be a DM judgment call so as to make it player-facing, and it’s a mess. I’m not advocating for take 20. The better alternative, in my opinion, is to structure your adventures such that most if not all actions have meaningful costs or consequences (ticking clocks and/or random encounter rolls at fixed time intervals go a LONG way here), and in the odd case that there is nothing stopping the player from retrying forever, just montage over the time they take trying and retrying.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Except that in real life if I fail to break the door down, I can try again. Which I probably will, especially if I’ve broken down identical doors before.


Right, which is why we roll the die. A person’s assessment of their own abilities is not 100% accurate and they can’t account for all possible variables, so the dice make a decent abstract representation of those unpredictable factors. Which is all well and good, as long as there is something stopping the character from trying repeatedly until those unpredictable variables line up just right. Which to be fair, there should be most of the time; at bare minimum, the time it takes to perform the action should ideally bring you that much closer to the next random encounter. But some DMs don’t put in the work to make repeated attempts costly, and instead just rely on meta-game costs such as artificially limiting the number of attempts or artificially penalizing repeat attempts. And that breaks my immersion.


Take 20 is dumb. It’s an attempt to mechanize something that should be a DM judgment call so as to make it player-facing, and it’s a mess. I’m not advocating for take 20. The better alternative, in my opinion, is to structure your adventures such that most if not all actions have meaningful costs or consequences (ticking clocks and/or random encounter rolls at fixed time intervals go a LONG way here), and in the odd case that there is nothing stopping the player from retrying forever, just montage over the time they take trying and retrying.

True. Id like to add that sometimes IRL you are just having an off day and can't pull off something you normally can. This daily difference is sometimes minor and other times so signifficant that you notice it easily (i consider thia rolling 2 signifficantly low rolls in a row or something like it).

 

[Charlaquin]

So, first of all, this:

Seriously, I've read just about every possible explanation about damage, hit points, and the nature of their relationship, and none of them make sense in an immersive way. So I've learned to just live with it.

is totally fair. Immersion is a subjective thing, and if you’ve given thought to all these proposed explanations and found none of them satisfying, and resolved to just accept that it’s not going to make sense to you, I find that commendable.

Yeah, I've heard it before. It's the option (a) I mentioned earlier, which requires me to believe that those arrows didn't really hit me after all. (Also, sleeping replenishes luck?)

You keep saying they didn’t “really” hit you, as if the game tried to pretend they did hit you and then faked you out or something. That’s why I pointed out the way 5e instructs the DM to describe the effects of damage. If your DM is running the game as the book instructs, there should never have been any suggestion that they did hit you, beyond a glance or a graze, until your HP hit 0. If you don’t care for that way if narrating damage, I understand and respect that. But rendering that as “it didn’t really hit me” is odd to me. No, it didn’t hit you. Who said it did?

 

[Tony Vargas]

...When one roll represents the character's best efforts, it's much harder to do those things. My character might effortlessly break down a door one moment, and be completely unable to open an identical door the next, and these outcomes are both meant to represent the best my character can do? If I accept that, how can I have any confidence in my estimation of my character's competence?

That does make sense.
At high levels of performance - Olympic athletes, elite military, etc - it's consistency that separates the very best from the merely great.
A d20 check is a flat distribution. It takes a special rule like take 10, or the 5e Rogue's similar Reliable Talent, to create a sense of consistency.

Of course a check with more dice, like Hero's 3d6 roll under, or various dice pool mechanics give a normal distribution, in the first place.

 

[Tony Vargas]

. But rendering that as “it didn’t really hit me” is odd to me. No, it didn’t hit you. Who said it did?

Obviously, the attack roll.
Natural-language 'hit' implies some sort of contact. 'Hit' that does 'damage' that goes away with a Cure Wound spell, still all natural language, implies a wound.
If its clearly all jargon - or if the choice of words are different, like 'successful attack' and 'stress' and Restore Vigour, perhaps, it might not be such an issue.

Or, y'know with decades of precedent contradicting it, even more enraging.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Haha I doubt it given the track record of discussions about the matter on these boards, but I'll give it a try.


Well, like I said, I would consider a clear understanding of my character's capabilities, and an ability to reliably predict, with reasonable accuracy, what the likely results of my actions will be to be key components of immersion. It is difficult for me to "get into my character's head" when I don't have a clear sense of what my character can and can't do. It is difficult for me to conceive of the game world as a place that functions under rational rules if I can't make reasonable cause-and-effect predictions. When one roll represents the character's best efforts, it's much harder to do those things. My character might effortlessly break down a door one moment, and be completely unable to open an identical door the next, and these outcomes are both meant to represent the best my character can do? If I accept that, how can I have any confidence in my estimation of my character's competence? How can I have any confidence in the internal consistency of the world?

What I’m running into on this, is the question of how that differs from rolling for multiple attempts, or just...how skills work?

I mean...if you have a week to do something, and there is a chance of either failure, or of it taking longer and that extra time mattering in some way (even if it’s just that you get to do less other stuff with that week, or have to choose between giving up early and doing something else or taking most of the week to finally get it right), then how can it be resolved other than 1 or more rolls?

And yet, if it’s “1 roll per attempt”, the probabilities become even more strained compared to reality than they already are.

The other thing I don’t understand is how or why representing all your efforts with 1 roll decreases your ability to understand your character’s chance of success? I’d go so far as to say that the “best effort” method is much more transparent in terms of representing/telling you how likely you are to succeed than most other methods.

@Charlaquin

I largely agree. It is about the laziest and least interesting way to make failure consequential. It does not actually represent any meaningful change in the fiction. Same door with same lock and same lock picks. If it was possible before why is it not possible now? It makes the whole thing feel like a video game in the worst possible way.

First, that seems extraordinarily edge-case.

The idea is that it’s possible both times, but just because you did it quickly and easily once, doesn’t mean you will again.

 

[Charlaquin]

Obviously, the attack roll.
Natural-language 'hit' implies some sort of contact. 'Hit' that does 'damage' that goes away with a Cure Wound spell, still all natural language, implies a wound.

They’re not natural language in this context, though. They are game terms, with specific rules meanings, which according to the rules on describing the effects of damage, don’t constitute anything more than minor superficial impact until half HP, and don’t constitute a direct hit until 0 HP.

If its clearly all jargon - or if the choice of words are different, like 'successful attack' and 'stress' and Restore Vigour, perhaps, it might not be such an issue.

I don’t doubt it, but the terms “hit,” “miss,” and “damage” are too grandfathered-in to be changed at this point.

Or, y'know with decades of precedent contradicting it, even more enraging.

I’m not sure what you mean by this.

 

[Tony Vargas]

They’re not natural language in this context, though. They are game terms, with specific rules meanings

But, when the rule are vague or quixotic as they were back in the day, or explicitly written in natural language, in the interest of accessibility, as they are in 5e (according to MM), there's no getting away from it.

I’m not sure what you mean by this.

You got it:

too grandfathered-in to be changed at this point.

 

[Charlaquin]

What I’m running into on this, is the question of how that differs from rolling for multiple attempts, or just...how skills work?

If you miss a creature with your attack on one turn, you can try again the next. If you fail to pick a lock... why can’t you try again after whatever interval lock picking takes? It’s inconsistent.

I mean...if you have a week to do something, and there is a chance of either failure, or of it taking longer and that extra time mattering in some way (even if it’s just that you get to do less other stuff with that week, or have to choose between giving up early and doing something else or taking most of the week to finally get it right), then how can it be resolved other than 1 or more rolls?

...huh? It should be resolved with one or more rolls. What gave you the impression that I would have thought otherwise?

And yet, if it’s “1 roll per attempt”, the probabilities become even more strained compared to reality than they already are.

How so?

The other thing I don’t understand is how or why representing all your efforts with 1 roll decreases your ability to understand your character’s chance of success? I’d go so far as to say that the “best effort” method is much more transparent in terms of representing/telling you how likely you are to succeed than most other methods.

Because the “best effort” method makes my character’s utmost capacity a variable determined by a dice roll, instead of a fixed value. Under “best effort,” a Very Hard task might be within my character’s capabilities one moment, and beyond it the next, just based on the roll of a die. Under “one roll per attempt,” I always know the exact difficulty task my character can succeed at under ideal circumstances, and whether or not I succeed at doing it in less-than-ideal circumstances depends on whether or not I’m willing to pay the cost to try and/or risk the consequences of failure for every attempt until I do. And the dice rolls determine how many attempts it takes, if I don’t give up before I get it.

First, that seems extraordinarily edge-case.

The idea is that it’s possible both times, but just because you did it quickly and easily once, doesn’t mean you will again.

Who said anything about quickly and easily? If trying again eats up time, by all means, have it eat up that time. What I find immersion breaking is being told “nope, you can’t try again. That 2 you rolled? That’s the best your character can do, and it wasn’t enough.” Meanwhile, I’ve successfully opened a dozen locks with higher DCs to pick than, but ok, I guess for some reason the best my character can do just got magically lower for this lock. Funny, that.

 

[Charlaquin]

But, when the rule are vague or quixotic as they were back in the day, or explicitly written in natural language, in the interest of accessibility, as they are in 5e (according to MM), there's no getting away from it.

Mearls claims the rules were written in natural language, but even a casual critical reading reveals that not to be the case. There is a great deal of highly technical language in 5e, they just (confusingly) use natural-sounding names for their technical jargon. Either Wizards of the Coast tried to write 5e in natural language and failed spectacularly, or (more likely, in my opinion) they intentionally wrote the language to sound natural but function technically. Which makes a lot of sense coming from the folks behind Magic the Gathering, a shining exemplar of natural-sounding technical rules language.