Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4861706" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, that's true in 3e or 4e or any edition. I was just drawing the distinction between starting points: 4e starts with the numbers you need, while every other edition starts with the idea you have. The math isn't any more or less the story than the ideas, of course, but that's where 4e's issue with verisimilitude comes in: if I can't suspend disbelief that a bare-chested pirate is as difficult to hit as a fully armored paladin, then it's a problem, even if the numbers say that's the way it should be.You're right, but that level of abstraction can be mind-breaking for a lot of people. It is important how the pirate got to be so hard to hit. It is key to describing it as a DM, it is key to comparing it with the paladin the party fought earlier, it is key to guiding player choice about what they want out of the experience, and how they view the workings of the world.It's not enough for the pirate just to have an arbitrarily determined numerical AC. The story and meaning behind that number is very important to a lot of players (myself included, though I'm more flexible than some. <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=";)" />)</blockquote>