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

[Lanefan]

Oh, and the most immersion breaking rule in the game is that every class is a wizard now.

You think it's bad now, just wait until 6e when all the non-adventurers and commoners will be wizards too.....

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Would it help if HP were renamed "plot armor"?

It would help by re-classifying the game from an RPG to a story game.

In an RPG, the rules of the game reflect the reality of the game world. There can be no rules governing meta-game factors, because a believable world can't actually operate on the principles of narrative causality. Plot armor only makes sense in fictional stories, and the conceit of an RPG is that this could really be happening in some hypothetical setting.

 

[Lanefan]

Spells being described as super incredibly difficult but working absolutely reliably like clock work make me go hmm-mm ...

Yeah, I'm with you on this one; particularly when it comes to aiming or targeting spells with range greater than "self".

I long ago houseruled that many spells (including all AoE spells) require an aiming roll to determine whether you put it exactly where you want to, or close, or not-so-close; and yes you can fumble on aiming a spell just like you can when firing a missile weapon.

 

[Charlaquin]

I agree with this, however "time between checks" for the same kind of check may be variable. For instance...say you are in a dungeon and you try to pick a lock of a chest and fail because you rolled a 2. Perhaps your character failed because they had a bad day. Perhaps they failed because they don't have quite the right tool for the lock on them. Or maybe they failed because the lock is jammed up and rusted shut.

Note that I don't have to have pre-written in my adventure notes "This lock requires the #7 hooked file to open" or "This lock is rusted and cannot be picked in the dungeon", making up a reason you failed to pick the lock is just something I, as the GM, would do in the course of a game. In each of those cases you would eventually get the chest open however the "wait time" for that to happen would be based on whatever popped into my head as the reason you failed on that initial 2 roll.

And this is what I was getting at when I was saying that (the thing I’ve been referring to
as) “best effort” harms my ability to assess my character’s capabilities and make predictions about the likely outcomes of events. If you just decided the lock was rusty on a whim, to explain in terms of the fiction why I didn’t succeed, then there is no way I could have predicted that outcome. That leads to questions of “well, why couldn’t I tell the lock was rusty before trying to pick it? I would have done something different if you had described the rust first.” It makes it difficult to immerse myself in my character because I can’t make decisions as I think my character would when I am lacking vital information that would inform my character’s decision-making.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I’ve heard lots of DMs on these forums say that this is how they handle it.

EDIT: Case in point:

I’ve also experienced it in actual play, though much less often since the switch to 5e. And I usually see it from DMs who cut their teeth on 3.x

Now I’m confused again, because I’m not sure how that fits what you described before?

 

[Lanefan]

Right. I agree with this. The way to do that is to say “you (eventually) succeed.”

...

I disagree. They should be allowing me to pay the cost or risk the consequence of failure to try as many times as I like. Or, if there is no cost or consequence, they should be narrating my (eventual) success.

And this is the problem in a nutshell: you're taking that eventual success* as a given. How, under the hood, is this any different than Take-20?

Put another way, in any case where the outcome is doubtful enough to require rolling dice even just once, eventual success on repeated tries should never be guaranteed.

* - or, if what you're trying to do really is beyond you, eventual failure

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And this is what I was getting at when I was saying that (the thing I’ve been referring to
as) “best effort” harms my ability to assess my character’s capabilities and make predictions about the likely outcomes of events. If you just decided the lock was rusty on a whim, to explain in terms of the fiction why I didn’t succeed, then there is no way I could have predicted that outcome. That leads to questions of “well, why couldn’t I tell the lock was rusty before trying to pick it? I would have done something different if you had described the rust first.” It makes it difficult to immerse myself in my character because I can’t make decisions as I think my character would when I am lacking vital information that would inform my character’s decision-making.

Okay, now it makes sense to me.

 

[Garthanos]

Yeah, I'm with you on this one; particularly when it comes to aiming or targeting spells with range greater than "self".

In an earlier edition I seem to recall changing the mechanics of spell casting even more dramatically skill checks while casting and I considered critical failure tables and a base-line hit point cost channeling the energy . The caster gets better hit points to deal with that cost of course. (interupting a spell doesnt cause amnesia - maybe just half energy loss)

 

[Lanefan]

I’ve heard lots of DMs on these forums say that this is how they handle it.

Yep, I'd be another who does it that way; and despite @doctorbadwolf 's opinion I don't see myself as a "garbage DM" for doing so.

I’ve also experienced it in actual play, though much less often since the switch to 5e. And I usually see it from DMs who cut their teeth on 3.x

You'll see it much more from DMs who started with 1e, as one-roll-only is RAW there.

 

[Campbell]

I think a better way to make it so you cannot have an infinite number of retries is to make failure consequential. Maybe if you fail a check to pick a lock by 5 or more your tools are damaged and you need to get them repaired before you can pick another lock.