You learn funny things when you read what the rules actually say.

[Michael Silverbane]

If you can touch yourself, you can hold yourself...right?

Not in public.

 

[Celebrim]

If you can touch yourself, you can hold yourself...right?

Sure. But this is an approach to rules interpretation that might be called 'the natural language' method. I got it the joke the first time.

But I'd argue its not the mode of rules interpretation that 3e encourages.

3e tends to treat 'held' as an explicit property of weapons somewhat distinct from the fictional positioning. It becomes a held weapon if it has the weapon property, has the held property, and is occupying your 'held in hand' slot. This is an almost programmatic approach to the rules. If you hold your own hand, it doesn't become a 'held weapon' because while that state can exist in the fictional positioning, it's doesn't actually correspond to any special game state. The attack remains an unarmed attack (or natural weapon if you have a natural weapon), because the property of being 'held' while derived from the fictional position that the weapon is held, is not actually dependent on it. 'Held' is just a property intended to simulate a particular situation, but which is withholdable and indeed still withheld even if the fictional positioning implies that the holding in the generic sense is taking place. The two-handed unarmed attack to the kidneys is just as it were, color. You can offer that proposition, but the proper simulation of that proposition isn't as a held weapon and we don't use fortune as if it were.

To see why that is the case, if holding your hand could count as employing a held weapon, then your held hand could now be sundered or disarmed, and rendering your PC in natural language well, "disarmed". Clearly that's not the intention. Just grabbing your head isn't intended to make you vulnerable to a decapitation called shot.

 

[Celebrim]

For example, an older gamer recently told me that early D&D lacks AoO-like rules because the writers came from a wargaming background, and they assumed that everyone knows that you don't simply run past an armed enemy. I guess they figured that running past an armed enemy would be such an unusual occurrence that it wasn't worth having official rules for.

I guess that depends on how 'early' we are talking about. The 1e AD&D DMG includes 'attack of opportunity' type rules. If I'm recalling all my old rules here, if you move next to an enemy you 'enter melee'. You immediately stop moving when you 'enter melee'. Getting out of melee requires waiting at least a round and then taking a 'disengage from melee' action, which draws an 'attack of opportunity' from the foe(s) you are in melee with. While it is the case that they didn't have a unified language for 'attack of opportunity', the idea that they represent of doing something that exposes you to an attack did exist as early as 1e, and in my opinion the AoO rules were very much drawn from those rules and were an attempt to make them more systematic and understandable.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

It is not a crime for PC's to be good at something.

At least there is no rule forbidding it. Let PC's be awesome at stuff. The game will VERY likely survive. Just my reaction to the topic...

 

[Greenfield]

It is not a crime for PC's to be good at something.

At least there is no rule forbidding it. Let PC's be awesome at stuff. The game will VERY likely survive. Just my reaction to the topic...

Characters are supposed to be awesome at some point in their careers.

The problem comes when one PC is seriously outside the curve for the group. Either the DM has to be prepared to challenge the group and let the ubermanch roll over everything, challenge the ubermanch and slaughter the rest of the group (or obviously pull all the punches on them), or come up with a reason why the nastiest traps, worst disasters and biggest monsters only target one PC. Every time.

The other thing is, people who pursue the ubermanch builds seldom stop at being awesome. They like constant ego gratification, so they keep pushing the limits. They're all too often out to "win", to "beat the DM". This means that the DM has to watch them all the time, to see what else they're trying to slip through. That detracts from the game for the rest of the players, and that is something that can kill a game group.

The game was designed with a specific balance in mind. 3.*, for example, was designed so that, for a "typical" party of four characters, an opponent with a CR to match the party's level should call for about 1/4th the party's resources, in terms of spells, hit points, healing etc.

To challenge the ubermanch type you need bigger monsters, which means higher CR, which earns the PC more Exp, and makes them even more ubermanch. It's a cascade effect that the game wasn't really built to handle.

Now there's nothing wrong with a game scaled that way. The DM can basically redo the CR scale, using the party power as the yardstick. Kill an Ancient Wyrm at 4th level? I guess an Ancient Wyrm is CR 4 then.

But when there are only some PCs that fear Kryptonite, with the rest still afraid to cut themselves shaving... well, it's no fun being Jimmy Olsen every day when all you get to do is report on the other guy's activity.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

The problem comes when one PC is seriously outside the curve for the group.

True. But every DM has a pocketful of Kryptonite which, with 3E, they have always been weirdly reluctant to use when they need it most. It is the word, "no". People love to toot their own horns about saying "yes" as a DM, but if a PC is really, truly blowing the bell curve just say no. No, you may not combine the effects of those feats because it is too powerful. No, I have decided it does NOT work that way because it creates too much of a problem. If they ask why - tell them: "Because you found the edge of the envelope. Congratulations on your superior System Mastery. Your character is wildly unbalanced with the rest of the party and your relentless pursuit of greater imbalance is disruptive. It makes my job too hard. It no longer serves a useful purpose to accommodate you, and in fact your PC needs to be taken down a notch if it is to continue to fit in with the party."

Every rules issue that comes up for 3E, ever, is solvable simply by the DM serving their actual function of ADJUDICATING rules, rather than simply applying them. jmo.

[edit]When you eliminate the impossible, then whatever is left - no matter how improbable - must be the truth. - Sherlock Holmes
When the problems are being created by the rules - whether creating a problem was the intent of the rules or not - the only logical solution is to stop following those rules. That may mean... refining the rules. It may mean disallowing certain combinations of rules. It may mean removing certain rules entirely. But finding that solution is what the DM is there for - adjudication. Anyone can apply rules and you don't need the DM to do that. Again, jmo.

 

[delericho]

The game was designed with a specific balance in mind. 3.*, for example, was designed so that, for a "typical" party of four characters, an opponent with a CR to match the party's level should call for about 1/4th the party's resources, in terms of spells, hit points, healing etc.

Yep. Or, at least, that was the theory.

The problem comes when one PC is seriously outside the curve for the group. ...

The other thing is, people who pursue the ubermanch builds seldom stop at being awesome.

Aye, that's the real problem there. The bottom line is that you have a player who is acting in a way that is indeed within the rules of the game but which is making the overall game less fun for everyone else.

In cases like that, I would suggest that the solution lies not in trying to apply or tighten the rules to stop them, but rather to speak directly to the player. It's actually possible that he simply doesn't realise how much of a problem he's causing for the rest of the group, and that a quiet word will fix the issue, permanently. (Plus, it has the added bonus that then the DM isn't constantly saying "no" to that one guy, which is liable to grate on him really quickly.)

And if he is aware that it's a problem for everyone else, or if he refuses to change? Then boot him. Better for the game to lose one problem player than for all your DMs to get increasingly frustrated and burnt out dealing with him.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm normally one that loves rambling off topic discussions, but this one seems to be bringing in discussions from prior threads that never really the point of this thread as far as I can see, and is turning into something that sounds like a let's berate Greenfield session.

I don't think the intention of this thread was to discuss power levels. I think it's rather incidental to the discussion that some rules when applied may weaken or strengthen particular builds. The infamous problem player so frequently discussed elsewhere wasn't even mentioned in the OP.

What's interesting to me are topics like, "How do we go about writing rules?" and "How do we go about reading rules?"

The haste rules for example appear to me to contain a clause meant to be only explanatory, "that they are holding", but which in fact turns out to reduce clarity rather than increase it. Myself, I'm going to go to my own copy of the rules and see whether the clause is in there, and if it is scratch out the clause as an example of bad rules smithing.

But am I misreading the clause, and does that matter? Was the clause really intended by the original writer to be effective and limiting? Did they through some line of reasoning really think to themselves, "No, this would be better if it didn't increase natural or unarmed attacks", and if they did or I think it really a possibility, how should I respond to that? The very fact that I have my own copy of the rules ought to suggest I've already answered the question for myself, but it would be really interesting to me to hear other theories and look at other examples.

 

[Greenfield]

The addition of "that they are holding" could be read many ways.

For example, it could limit the spell effect to melee weapons.

It could, as face value suggests, have been meant to exclude unarmed and natural weapon strikes.

It could have been meant to include only the weapons the beneficiaries were holding at the time the spell went off.

Or, as Celebrim suggests, it could have been some author, in love with his own writing style, who added an unnecessary phrase because more is always better.

Back on original topic: An old favorite is the Mirror Image spell. The caster can swap places with an image only on their action, as part of a move. So once you hit the real person, you can continue to target them and ignore the images for the rest of your attacks. Anyone else who can observe your success can, in theory, also target the real spell caster, at least until the caster's next turn, when they can shuffle into the mix again.

The spell says images must be within five feet of the caster, or of another image. That suggests, but doesn't actually say, that the caster would/could have some control over the placement of those images. It also suggests that each image can take up its own space.

That last makes sense. If they all dance around and overlap in the single square then an attacker, knowing which square the caster is in, could close their eyes and attack into that square. That would reduce the miss chance to 50%, and effectively foil the purpose of the spell.

 

[nijineko]

Agreed that that is the intent, but I can see Greenfield's point regarding the clause "...he is holding". Those three words are unnecessary, but if you take them as actually part of the intention, then a natural weapon is a light weapon but by the rules it isn't a held weapon. So by the rules a natural weapon can't be disarmed, sundered, or interact with the haste spell..

As another point where the distinction between a weapon and a held weapon matters, if you attempt to sunder a spiked gauntlet does it count as a held weapon, or as a worn object, or as worn armor? My instinct from the rules is that it counts as a worn object, but I can see a DM ruling all three and all be perfectly logical.

soooo, in other words... since a monk can use any part of their body as their unarmed strike, as long as they hold some part of their body with one of their hands, they qualify for haste with all the rest of their body? ;D