Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5944323" data-attributes="member: 2067">I dunno 'bout you, but I never used poison saves in that way. If a character makes their poison save, they're tough enough to resist the poison, and if not, they're not. Either way, having to make the save to me always indicated that there was some real threat the character was responding to.But you're getting to the crux of the matter: "fortune in the middle" is not necessary for D&D, and is very undesirable to a lot of people playing it.I'd even say that "fortune in the middle" undercuts the very nature of call-and-response dynamics, but that's a different, broader case. For these purposes, it's enough to say that (a) it's unnecessary, and (b) it is strongly opposed, so that (result) it shouldn't be assumed as part of D&D.The rest of the post goes into the details about the problem with "fortune in the middle" in general, so I've sblocked it off. The short version is that FitM suffers the same problems as an unreliable narrator. Which means it might work great for a game about madness and uncertainty, but is not great for most purposes. [sblock=Design Wonkery]Things like this are part of that "broader case" I was talking about,  but it can basically be summed up like this:If a core part of the rules relies on players being fundamentally unsure about the features of the world their characters inhabit, then the apparent reality of that world often becomes unsustainable. Due to call-and-response dynamics, there is a need to understand what the effects of the hit are before one removes them. Inventing excuses after the fact is unacceptable for a lot of players, and unnecessary besides.Well, the caveat being, if you remain vague and noncommittal about what each call-and-response phase describes, you give yourself some wiggle room.I would've thought the problems with fortune-in-the-middle style mechanics would be pretty obvious, and that their application in D&D would certainly be seen as superfluous at the least, but I guess I was wrong about everyone being on the same page about that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> In improv, it's easy to pretend to be a liar, or a deceiver, or a madman, or someone else with a fundamental problem with comprehending reality and acting in a realistic manner. It gives you all sorts of license to "take back" things, or to "be wrong" without breaking character.In writing, it's easy to posit an unreliable narrator, one whose word should not be trusted, one who lacks comprehension or who wakes up and it was all a dream. It lets you say all sorts of things that you don't have to remain consistent or believable on.The first advice when learning these crafts: don't do this. The thing you learn as you do these crafts: this is very difficult to do in a way that doesn't leave the audience feeling messed-with and annoyed and cheapened.This applies to "fortune in the middle," too. I mean, if you're going to use those mechanics, you might as well put them in a Call of Cthulu game, or something, where madness and unreliability are part of the feel. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />[/sblock]Even if warlords don't heal HP by yelling right out the gate and extended rests take a week by default, those aren't hard things to put back in.</blockquote>

Verification