Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5143781" data-attributes="member: 80487">Why should a push or swing from a chandelier not "attack the AC"?People indeed do so, and that is indeed a common means of resolution in my experience. That some other factor might serve has sweet nothing to do with what is or is not a "tactically inferior choice". An attacker's "to hit" roll of 13+ or a target's "to save" roll of 9+ are exactly the same probability.It's the DM's job to set that probability, just as it is in WotC's designs.Overbearing can be as effective using later approaches (DMG, Dragon, UA) as it was in the very first D&D FAQ. The books offer factors covering a wide range of actual tactical considerations from ancient and medieval warfare, and -- although the focus is explicitly not on lengthy blow-by-blow simulation of battles -- those factors are not in any way exhaustive limits on what is possible.What is possible comes first, in the imagination. Abstract mechanical "rules" are useful exactly insofar as they conform to that conveniently for implementation in the game.It seems to be the fashion to turn that completely backwards and upside down. One possible consequence of such a topsy-turvy view is players considering their options limited to making such moves as one might make in a game of checkers or in playing a hand of cards. "Off the menu" becomes "not permitted".Unencumbered by the view that only a very few numbers are "legitimate", an old-style referee has access to the broadest range possible -- and so the players have the broadest possible spectrum of tactics from which to choose.If what one really wants is to spend a real hour working out the details of an imaginary incident of less than a minute, then that is certainly as possible in old D&D as in, say, Amber Diceless. It is not really the expected or designed-for desire, though, any more than in a typical adventure movie, TV show, comic book or novel. Fast action, rapidly decisive in the development of events, is what the designers had in mind.There are games designed especially to produce such prolonged combats, but the most prominent ones may not be so well suited to "old fashioned" pacing.</blockquote>

Verification