D&D General Why the resistance to D&D being a game?

[Cadence]

How else do you reach adventurers when they're waaaay over there?

Throw chunks of their horses at them?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oh wow, that's kind of a pathetically low bar compared to what i'd imagine a barbarian would be capable of lifting, a 20 str goliath can lift...a slightly more overweight than average horse, i'd expect a max strength fantasy world barb to be swinging in the range of the loaded school bus, or 10 tons at the least.

Maybe in a supers game...

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's not magic regardless of how many times you say it.

Keep hitting the label. It's what they  call it that matters, not what they're doing.

Now if you're talking about your own game, that's fine of course.

 

[Oofta]

Says who?

You are now houseruling the game, and insisting that that is a standard everyone else must play by.

It's the basic play loop. DM describes the scene, players say what they do, the DM responds. At no point do the player decide what NPCs do.

But this is exactly what you, @Oofta, and @Micah Sweet are proposing for the ability of a warrior to goad opponents into attacking!

Any player can always attempt to goad an NPC into attacking, the DM narrates the result as explained in the intro to the PHB and reiterated everywhere.

You don't play D&D so why do you care? Are you just trolling?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Throw chunks of their horses at them?

And how do you mechanically separate the horses?

See, it comes full circle!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I wonder if part of that is that movie and comic book writers apparently don't have a clue what a bus, or train, or boat weigh and have ruined our perceptions of relative weights?

It definitely feels like the ogre should be lifting a small car, the middle sized giant a pick-up truck, and the titan a bus to me though!

But that would break the oh-so-important (and apparently rather fragile) "bounded accuracy" that is seemingly 5e's sole design contribution to the history of the game.

Oh wait. They did advantage too.

Awesome.

 

[Lanefan]

The fighter also has an ability that reliably heals himself back up using a limited resource that recharges on a long rest. Clearly Second Wind is a magical healing spell!

It's an incongruous ability that, were I running an edition that used it, would be gone in a heartbeat.

An example of falling damage in a more fiction first oriented game would be like in Fate or Blades in the Dark, where things like a broken foot are possible consequences of a fall that can impair the character and be used against them. But these are games where the consequences are meant to follow the established fiction.

And I like this. Falling damage in D&D has always been poorly handled, as have lingering injuries a la your example of the broken foot. In 1e natural healing of any kind took too long, in 4e-5e it's way too fast; and in either case I see it as the altar of simplicity clainimg another sacrificial victim.

IMO the consequences, both mechanical and in-character, of in-fiction events should both follow the fiction and make at least vague sense within it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But you can be good at provoking people. Just give your fighter 20 charisma and proficiency/expertise (by feat) in ... performance, I would say.

Now at the table you say "I wanna taunt that thug over there so he attacks me", and the DM will say "of course. Roll me a charisma check."
"Can I use performance?"
"Of course!"
You roll, the DM will adjucate appropriately taking your roll and the whole situation into account.

Wait. We can't give DMs the ability to make rulings! Who knows where that would lead?

 

[Micah Sweet]

You say that you have no idea what the developers believe, and yet you are going to try and insinuate several times in your argument below that the designers didn't believe that these abilities are appropriate for the fighter. But both times you tell us that the designers didn't think that these were appropriate, you also say that you think that these abilities are supernatural, which further insinuates that you believe this to be the reason why. That sort of argument strikes me as double-speak or at least talking out of both sides of your mouth, regardless of whether you intended it that way or not.


You mean apart from the extraordinary abilities in the non-magical Battlemaster and the Purple Dragon Knight subclasses? I know you consider these abilities magical but I don't really care since the game does not consider them magical abilities.

To be fair, WotC rarely if  ever actually tells us what they believe. We have to guess. It's like a fun little puzzle every time you're confused!

 

[Cadence]

And how do you mechanically separate the horses?

Strength check!