# Why have dissociated mechanics returned?



## Sir Robilar (Sep 3, 2012)

So I have been reading the latest playtest material and I’m wondering about many of the new elements included. The designers have repeatedly stated that one of their important goals is that every rules mechanic in D&D Next has a direct connection to something in the game world. I’m completely in favor of this because I have experienced the awkward situation as a DM that I couldn’t adequately explain to my players what a certain rules element represented in the world. For example, in one game session an opponent of theirs was using a special action to give a bonus to allied creatures. However, there was no clear description of what this actually meant, how it looked, and it only seemed to have some sort of meta-connection to what was happening, as in „he sure is inspiring to the others“. 

Here are some examples of what I mean from the current playtest material. I’m sorry If this comes over as a rant at times. I have to say that I was fairly happy with where the game was going before, but this topic really bugs me... To decrease the severity of the rant I will try to include ideas of what kinds of alternative rules I would prefer.  I'd be really interested in your opinion on these thoughts.


From the Bestiary: 

„Mob tactics“. In the description it says that the creature chooses an opponent. Other allies that also have this trait gain a bonus to their attack and damage against the chosen opponent. However, there is no explanation of what is happening and I’m struggling to find an answer. I guess what it means is that the creature isn’t actually choosing anyone, but is itself attacking the target creature, and the bonus it’s allies get represents this. If it is meant like that I don’t like it at all. In my book, when a creature is attacking another creature, it should make an attack roll. Seems to me that this rule was included to reduce the number of dice rolls when many creatures of one kind attack a single foe. If this is the case, I would very much favour seperate stat blocks for single creatures and for swarms of smaller variants of the same creature type.

There are several traits that function just like this. The gnoll is „Savage“, but only when it can see two other creatures with the Savage trait within 30 feet. Why? Why is the gnoll incapable of attacking with all his savagery, when he fights alone and is up against a helpless victim? Is he somehow restrained in his rage when he is alone?

The Hobgoblin has a „Disciplined“ action. It chooses a foe within it’s reach, and the next attack against this foe from his ally has advantage. But what is the Hobgoblin doing? And why is it best explained with the word „Disciplined“? A much better way of explaining things like these can be seen in the Guardian Specialty, where it says that you throw your shield between a creature and the ally that it tries to attack, giving the creature disadvantage.
Continuing with the Hobgoblin, it has the „Steadfast“ trait, meaning it cannot be frightened while an ally is within 30 feet. Why not? This may make sense when the Hobgoblins encounter the Player Characters, but does it make sense when two Hobgoblins encounter Cthulhu?

The same with other traits and actions like „Commander“, „Protector“ and the minotaurs „Armor Pearcing 4“ where the minotaur’s foe takes damage even though he wasn’t hit from the attack (something which I personally can’t stand). 

Summing up, what I see a lot in this iteration of the playtest is monster design where slapping a description like „Disciplined“ or „Savage“ onto a rules mechanic is ok and enough to explain what is happening in the world. I find this a problematic design approach and dearly hope they will reconsider. I’m also not a fan of heavy use of exception-based game design as I believe it is seldom the best way to represent a precise action that a creature is capable of. 

Races: 
Not much here that bugs me. The only thing I find hard to wrap my head around is the Halfling’s Nimbleness. The Halfling can move through spaces of creatures that are larger than it. I find it awkward to accept that every Halfling in the world could do this against every larger creature. 
Also, the Stout Halfing’s „Fearless“, where he takes an action to end the frightened condition. What action does the Halfling take and how does it look like? I don’t like it when the rules tell us that something is an action when it isn’t really an action. And if something isn’t an action, it shouldn’t be resolved by taking an action. I’d prefer an approach where the Halfling can always take a second Save against fear effects or something like that, as it wouldn’t force the player to play out how his Halfling shakes off his fear, when it’s really hard to explain how that would look like. And even harder to explain why he couldn’t have done it earlier.

Spells:
What I dislike considering associated or dissociated mechanics is the fact that you can cast some spells as Rituals and others not. This seems to be tacked on from the designer's point of view but it is hard to explain from the POV of a character that lives in the D&D world. At least I would hope for a sentence of description why this is how it is, even if it was as cheesy as „Only the secret caste of the Ritual Masters knew how to bind a spell into a ritual, but they have crossed beyond the ether aeons ago“.

I’m also having a hard time to accept that some spells can be cast in rounds where the caster also does some other action. If I was a caster I would ask myself why I can't cast my other spells and also do something else during the casting. I could live with it if there was some basic mechanic at the base of things, such as „all cantrips are uncomplicated and fast, they can be cast alongside another spell or action“. Or if this quick casting could be done with all Cleric spells from the War domain. But when something like that is not present, a player could always confront his/her DM with questions such as „So you’re telling me I can cast Battle Psalm, a 2nd Level enchanment, and attack in the same round, but I can’t do the same with Radiant Lance, a Minor evocation?“

I dislike that some spells only affect creatures with a certain hit point maximum. I wish my players wouldn’t have to wonder about how many hit points the monsters have (or Hit Dice, which, although closer to how old editions of D&D did it, I wouldn’t find much of an improvement). Having to think about Hit Point breaks the player’s immersion and tells them to think about monsters from a „we’re playing a game and this is my opponent“ point of view. I would absolutely prefer it if such rules were in the hands of the DM. If, for example, there would be an optional rule like „the DM should consider giving all monsters with 3 HD or more the chance to save against enchantment effects of Spell Level 3 and below, and all monsters with 6 HD or more immunity to any enchantment effects below Spell Level 6“.

Other than that I really like most of the spells, especially toning down potential game-breakers as Suggestion. 


The Fighter:

At first I really liked the new Fighter mechanic. During one oft he Gencon Panels Jeremy Crawford said that the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG had been an inspiration for them and this mechanic speaks for that. When comparing the two distinct mechanics, however, I find that I prefer the one in DCC. 

The DCC RPG’s „Mighty Deed of Arms“ mechanic allows the Fighter to do ANY combat maneuver he can think of in addition to an attack, as long as his Deed die rolls a 3 or more. The type of the deed die increases by level. And whether the Deed succeeds or not, the Fighter always gets the bonus damage from the Deed die. The Mighty Deed rules give some advice on how the maneuver should manifest, depending on the Level of the Fighter. But in the end the DM is the sole arbiter to rule over what the maneuver does. A first Level Fighter could disarm a Goblin or other small creature with it, but maybe not a creature of man-size or a larger one. But, he wouldn’t be constrained to just disarming the goblin, he could also knock him back, tumble over him, overrun it, and so on, all at first level. At 9th level the DM might rule that the Fighter could do all these things with a Titan. For players that don’t want to think about a different combat maneuver each round, the rules encourage the player to give their Fighter one iconic maneuver, that he does each round by default, if he doesn’t say differently. In practice I found that this simple stunt mechanic greatly immerses the Fighter’s player in the action and lets him think about the battle in a creative way.

This iteration of the D&D Fighter, in comparison, can only make the combat maneuvers that he has mastered by aquiring them with a feat. So at first level he could protect an ally from a goblin’s attack, but he couldn’t knock the goblin down until he reaches 5th level. I find this sad since I would prefer a mechanic that lets him do all the cool things from the beginning on, only with weaker opponents.  The Next Fighter player's immersion would also be more tactical and along the lines of „is there a benefit of knocking the goblin down or should I just go for max damage?“ In practice I expect to see many players that always go for max damage. On the plus side however, the Combat Superiority mechanic is very reliable.


( As a quick afterword, I’m not a native speaker and although I can usually convey the basic message I’m trying to make, I find it hard to explain myself as precise as I would like to. Please consider this. )


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## Ainamacar (Sep 3, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> So I have been reading the latest playtest material and I’m wondering about many of the new elements included. The designers have repeatedly stated that one of their important goals is that every rules mechanic in D&D Next has a direct connection to something in the game world. I’m completely in favor of this because I have experienced the awkward situation as a DM that I couldn’t adequately explain to my players what a certain rules element represented in the world. For example, in one game session an opponent of theirs was using a special action to give a bonus to allied creatures. However, there was no clear description of what this actually meant, how it looked, and it only seemed to have some sort of meta-connection to what was happening, as in „he sure is inspiring to the others“.




I certainly hope the answer is that they want to get the best possible data on if, when, how, and why these kinds of mechanics become a problem, and even at what point the community at large tends to think of certain mechanics as "dissociated."  I don't think one can do this very well without actually putting a bunch into the playtest.  Without it, in fact, WotC is in no better position to take the community's temperature on this matter than they  already are with the numerous threads and blogs that discuss it.  Therefore, the presence of such mechanics in the playtest does not necessarily indicate WotC has abandoned the principle you appreciate.  In a conscientious design process it quite possibly means exactly the opposite.

In short, seeing mechanics you dislike in the playtest is probably a very good thing, because otherwise such mechanics _can't_ be playtested. Keep your axioms few, and your principles well scrutinized.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 3, 2012)

If half of what Sir Robilar says is accurate, 5Ed sounds annoying to me.  Even if the game were mechanically sound, inclusion of those disassociated mechanics might keep me from buying the game (beyond the Core 3, at least).


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 3, 2012)

> ( As a quick afterword, I’m not a native speaker and although I can usually convey the basic message I’m trying to make, I find it hard to explain myself as precise as I would like to. Please consider this. )



Dude, your post was clearer than some of the emails I get from my family, and we've been in the USA since the 1840s.


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## 1of3 (Sep 3, 2012)

The idea of using only "associated rules" will not work. (Compare the vey important rule "There shall be a GM.")

Also the problem of association, as the creators of the term meant it, wasn't that you have to think about how something might look in the fiction. That has always been true and will always be so. The perceived problem was that certain game elements would interact with each other in "disassociated" ways, like Fighters's and Paladin's marks. Why would my cool fighting techniques be rendered inactive, when my Paladin buddy asks her employer for some divine vengeance? Why will both stop working when a Swordmage does his Aegis thing?

Such interactions, as far as I see it, are not yet part of Next.


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## slobo777 (Sep 3, 2012)

Associated mechanics are often more work _mechacinally_ at the table. If they are rationale or physics-based, then very often you need to compare traits of two or more things, and bring in more rules. The 3E rogue's Sneak Attack, and how it would work depending on traits of the target, is a simple example of this.

Dissociated mechanics are often more work _descriptively_ at the table. The descriptions are loose, and may need interpretation to maintain the fiction. Proning a gelatinous cube is a simple example of this, but for some people this kind of issue starts with martial characters having Encounter or Daily powers at all.

With dissociated mechanics it's possible, for expedient play, to lose a description or two (this reminds me of the "Shut up and calculate!" philosophy in quantum mechanics BTW). In practice I see this a lot. In a lot of ways in 4E, this is already in the 4E monster blocks. The blocks being short and simple is a big win, hence I think this is why you are seeing it in being re-used in 5E.

With associated mechanics, it's possible, for expedient play, to drop or forget a complicated rules interaction. In practice, I didn't see this happening much in 3E games, and definitely not in monster design. A 3E monster block makes cross-references to feat chains and spells which need looking up. 3E monsters are more complex and difficult to run in my experience than 4E ones.


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## Li Shenron (Sep 3, 2012)

I'm going to comment only on some of your points because they are quite a lot.

Generally speaking I agree with your concerns: experienced gamers can generally find an in-game explanation for everything, but the books should help those who can't do so on their own easily.

Of course let's keep in mind that everything, especially the monsters descriptions, is largely unfinished at this stage, and that they are focusing on the mechanics more than the descriptive text. But this is not a good reason to ignore concerns.



Sir Robilar said:


> From the Bestiary:




I generally agree on all your examples being at the moment poorly described.

There could be a splitting argument here on where to put the explanations: some gamers want everything under each monster's entry, so that they don't need to look anywhere else; I prefer to have descriptions on monsters' abilities at the beginning of the MM, so that they aren't reprinted dozens of time, so my preference would be that if "Mob", "Disciplined" etc are properties used for many monsters (very probable) then they should be described once and for all in a single place, either at the beginning or at the end of the MM.



Sir Robilar said:


> Halfling’s Nimbleness.




It's a confusing ability because it grants the Halfling the possibility of walking through the space occupied by a large monster but it doesn't prevent OA from it, so unless you have an ability or circumstance that lets you avoid OA, you're unlikely to use this at all.

I agree that there should be a note saying that it might not work with every monster... certainly not with a Gelatinous Cube for example! 



Sir Robilar said:


> Stout Halfing’s „Fearless“,




I think this ability is very "gamist" in the sense that it's totally built on game mechanics with no consideration on what it actually represents. What the designers want here, is that you lose your turn's action. But I'm with you thinking that it should say why or how it happens. Maybe something as simple as "you are focusing on your inner strength to shrug off the fear effect" is enough for me.



Sir Robilar said:


> What I dislike considering associated or dissociated mechanics is the fact that you can cast some spells as Rituals and others not.




IMHO it is still unclear what Rituals really represent. Rituals are at-will so presumably they don't "tire" the caster as much as regular spells. But they have a material cost which their regular version doesn't. In the Warlock description it is explained that rituals are actually _simpler_ than spells, in fact the Warlock does rituals but not spells, and this matches the fact that daily spells are limited by your level, rituals are not.

OTOH the Sorcerer does spells but not rituals... but this could be because the Sorcerer doesn't really understand the nature of spells, he only casts them spontaneously, so his powers are rather give-or-take, he has no options to "break them down" to a simplified version. Or it could be said that rituals are partially "externalize" due to the fact that you provide expensive material components in place of your inner expertise. Sorcerer can't externalize spells because they have the inner power but not the understanding. Warlock cannot internalize them (cast as regular spells) because they lack any inner power. Wizards can do both, because some inner power comes anyway from intensive studies.

But this is quite a lengthy and clumsy explanation...

Anyway it might be possible (and simpler) to just allow any spell to be cast as ritual. The benefit would be that you don't need for each spell to repeat "This spell can be cast as a ritual bla bla", if the costs (time and gp) are the same for all rituals of the same level (currently they aren't, but there seems to be a standard time&cost followed by all spells).



Sir Robilar said:


> I’m also having a hard time to accept that some spells can be cast in rounds where the caster also does some other action.




Essentially those spells should be free actions to cast, but IMHO the designers are somewhat afraid to make that so, and are instead currently specifiying for each of those spells individually what you can do in addition during the same round, but more or less it's always 2 actions for the price of one.



Sir Robilar said:


> I dislike that some spells only affect creatures with a certain hit point maximum.




Worth its own debate, we already have a separate thread or two...



Sir Robilar said:


> This iteration of the D&D Fighter, in comparison, can only make the combat maneuvers that he has mastered by aquiring them with a feat. So at first level he could protect an ally from a goblin’s attack, but he couldn’t knock the goblin down until he reaches 5th level.




It's not going to be like that once we have the narrative combat module. Your Fighter (and everyone else) will always have an option for takedown since level 1, only not the more convenient options using CS.

It's also possible that there will be other fighting styles granting the CS takedown at 1st level, or perhaps even that your DM can allow a DIY fighting style.

It isn't possible however (and maybe this is your real concern) to get more than one of those special actions at 1st level. This is certainly intentional, just like a Wizard get only N spells to start from, but you could have argued that another 1st level Wizard might know many more but in weaker versions. From the in-game point of view there isn't much criticism against this possibility, but at some point opening up the rules to this idea would complicate the game quite a lot. So the designers have to make a choice when it comes to how many options you have at each level, and apparently at the moment they decided that 3 for a 1st level Fighter are a good number.


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## Yora (Sep 3, 2012)

slobo777 said:


> Dissociated mechanics are often more work _descriptively_ at the table. The descriptions are loose, and may need interpretation to maintain the fiction. Proning a gelatinous cube is a simple example of this, but for some people this kind of issue starts with martial characters having Encounter or Daily powers at all.



My feeling always was that mechanics are disassociated when they are laking a description of what the characters and creatures are actually doing.
The mechanics are not associated with a narrative action.


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## UngeheuerLich (Sep 3, 2012)

While I believe, you overstate the problem, i do believe, that dissociated mechanics should be going away.

I have no problem with ritual versions of the spells:
You can only power so much spells by your mind, carefully memorizing them after you have rested. But with some material components to burn, you can draw and release the magical energy with yourself as a funnel (or something like that).

Also disciplined seems ok:
A hobgoblin can hold back his action, and aid another, a feat which most humanoids forget about...

But I reallydo want te flavour text of mechanics to be more important that the rules. If defender says: "you bring your shield between your friend and the attack", I want the defender to use that shield (or something similar).

In 4e, and 3e already there was a trend, that it was deemed unfun, if you don´t let the players always use their best tactics. When I played ADnD, there were a lot of times, where we had to fight in such narrow corridors, that you can´t swing a greataxe, and the fighter needed to use a shorter weapon. The wizard could not cast fireballs, as he would burn himself.
It is, that from 3.5 and upwards, you played a game, where rules came first, game world second. 3e had some few remains of the old ADnD: cover was determined by the DM and had 4 or 5 differentiations. concealment was very granular andfully in the hands of the DM. in 3.5, you got your first hard rules: 20% or 50% miss chance. Nothing in between. Always obvious for the players, which to use, but not modelling the sight conditions well any longer... full moon and starlight are now the same... the exact same 20%.

So with the next iteration I really want to have flavour first. The text needs to matter, the situation should be played, the rules only providing guidelines how to resolve the situation. The DMs position needs to be enforced, which is the only way to get away with he dissociation.

Rules such as disciplined are not needed anymore: you just need to tell the DM: "hobgoblines are disciplined in battle and frequently make use of the aid another action if it seems advantageous".

Also Halflings just need the text: "Halflings are small and nimble, and usually they are able to slip past creatures that are bigger than them and can hind behind bigger people if they are not paying attention or actively trying to hide them."

Usually, all those rules should be considered as "As a rule of thumb, you may do..." but there may be exceptions. Most abilities get dissociated, because they are written as you should always be able to use them without regard for the actual in game situation."


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## 1of3 (Sep 3, 2012)

UngeheuerLich said:


> Usually, all those rules should be considered as "As a rule of thumb, you may do..." but there may be exceptions. Most abilities get dissociated, because they are written as you should always be able to use them without regard for the actual in game situation."




That's an interesting thought. But isn't that true for every part of the game? Isn't that an effect of approaching the rules instead of the rules themselves?


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## The Shadow (Sep 3, 2012)

I guess I'm not seeing what's so horrible about 'dissociated' mechanics in the first place?  I mean, Mutants & Masterminds is one of my favorite games ever, and one of its prominent mechanics is Hero Points, which are explicitly a player ability rather than a character one.  The player spends a Hero Point, and the character does something cinematic.  You can fluff it as drawing on inner reserves or whatever, but its not necessary.

And it works just fine.  Better than fine, in fact, it works great!

My problem is not with dissociated mechanics, but with *bad* mechanics, no matter how associated or not they may be.

'Fearless' causes me no problems at all.  Read the chapters about Sam in Mordor, and you'll see exactly what this mechanic represents.

As for the Disciplined ability of hobgoblins, clearly it represents teamwork, training to work together - one guy attacks to take the guy off guard, the other guy exploits the opening.

Steadfast is not quite as good.  I can see what they're going for - hobgoblins won't break as long as there's some unit cohesion (or if there are any witnesses to their cowardice, which they'll be punished for later).  But as a GM, I would feel the need to make the occasional exception.  (Cthulhu would be a good one, as mentioned above.)

Savage is definitely not as good as the others.  It's hard to make sense of.


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## Ahnehnois (Sep 3, 2012)

The problem of "I can't do X unless I have a feat/class ability and then I can do it perfectly" is a very deeply rooted one, unfortunately. That really needs to go.


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## Mattachine (Sep 3, 2012)

That "problem" makes for streamlined play. It cuts down on combat options and makes those options easier to use, both speeding combats.

The Iron Heroes variant for 3rd edition D&D had feat trees for accomplishing combat maneuvers, and also had non-feat ways to do similar things. The non-feat method required lookups, adjudication, and didn't work so well, anyway. It was a great idea, but it didn't work well in practice.


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## rounser (Sep 3, 2012)

The Shadow said:


> I guess I'm not seeing what's so horrible about 'dissociated' mechanics in the first place?



In an RPG, where suspension of disbelief and visualization of a fantasy world is a reason to bother to play at all, they're plain old bad game design

By taking gamist design cues from CCGs, board games and MMORPGs that don't even map to a fantasy reality without much handwringing, references to "Die Hard" movies and horse trading, the designers of 4E (and by the sound of this thread, maybe 5E) are engaging in what is, for a game like D&D, bad game design.  Because if understanding or belief in the scene the game paints is removed, much of the reason to play D&D is removed as well.

Hero points are not bad game design of the "dissociated from fantasy reality" kind, because they can be handwaved as using up all your luck at once.  People believe this is the way luck works, therefore suspension of disbelief is not challenged, therefore they are not bad RP game design.

Cue reversion to the tired defenses that go "ah, but hit points are a bit dissociated from easily believable or envisionable fantasy reality too, so we can be a lot dissociated with all sorts of other stuff and still be legitimately a D&D".  Err no, not according to a lot of the former in-print D&D fanbase.


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## Drago Rinato (Sep 3, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> It's a confusing ability because it grants the Halfling the possibility of walking through the space occupied by a large monster but it doesn't prevent OA from it, so unless you have an ability or circumstance that lets you avoid OA, you're unlikely to use this at all.




the halfling could simply use: 

*Disengage Action*
When you disengage, you move up to 10 feet.
During this movement, you can leave any hostile creature reach without provoking an Opportunity Attack from it.

(How to play, page 10)


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## GreyICE (Sep 3, 2012)

Okay, are we back to complaining that our worlds with dragons and fireballs and wizards aren't realistic enough?

Because I honestly don't see that line of thinking getting WotC many customers or much traction.


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## Ed_Laprade (Sep 3, 2012)

slobo777 said:


> Dissociated mechanics are often more work _descriptively_ at the table. The descriptions are loose, and may need interpretation to maintain the fiction. Proning a gelatinous cube is a simple example of this, but for some people this kind of issue starts with martial characters having Encounter or Daily powers at all.



And there's the problem with dissociated rules right there. I don't care what the rules say, you can't cause a Gelatinous Cube to become prone... its a *Frikkin' CUBE*!!! Saying that you can simply destroys any immersion in the game, which is what a ROLE playing game is supposed to be about, at least to some extent. Sure, there are some wonky descriptions that can be overlooked, but sometimes they can't. And the designers ought to be darn well aware of them, and make exceptions to them when needed.


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## Obryn (Sep 3, 2012)

rounser said:


> In an RPG, where suspension of disbelief and visualization of a fantasy world is a reason to bother to play at all, they're plain old bad game design



Let's just call them "metagame mechanics" because that's really all they are.  It's a new sticker stuck on an old concept.

And frankly, I disagree that a game like FATE (which is more or less completely made out of metagame mechanics) is bad design.

-O


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## rounser (Sep 3, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Okay, are we back to complaining that our worlds with dragons and fireballs and wizards aren't realistic enough?
> 
> Because I honestly don't see that line of thinking getting WotC many customers or much traction.



Ah, the old "it's fantasy, so anything goes!" argument.  Close relative of the "it's just elf pretending rules, so they don't need to be any good, ur taking it too seriously".  Nope, it still needs to be believable and envisionable, or why play D&D?

They've tried that going out on a limb to gain new customers/demographics thing with 4E.  It didn't seem to gain many customers, but ignoring verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief in their mechanics seemed to lose them a few.  And given that people introduce people to D&D, it seems, that didn't work too well.


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## GreyICE (Sep 3, 2012)

rounser said:


> Ah, the old "it's fantasy, so anything goes!" argument.  Close relative of the "it's just elf pretending rules, so they don't need to be any good, ur taking it too seriously".  Nope, it still needs to be believable and envisionable, or why play D&D?
> 
> They've tried that going out on a limb to gain new customers/demographics thing with 4E.  It didn't seem to gain many customers, but ignoring verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief in their mechanics seemed to lose them a few.  And given that people introduce people to D&D, it seems, that didn't work too well.




The problem that I have is that the "it's just fantasy, anything goes" argument seems to go in and out of fashion, depending literally on the argument it's being applied to.  "It's just fantasy, anything goes" explains why dwarves have long beards and lots of hair despite living underground (you know what you don't need underground?  Hair.  It's for insulation, something that occurs naturally underground.  Animals that spend their time underground tend to lose hair as time goes on, evolution being what it is).  "It's just fantasy, anything goes" tends to get invoked to explain why no one in the fantasy world seems to really get into living in a high-magi fantasy world, instead of in Medieval Europe with Wizards (Ebberon, Spelljammer, and Planescape aside).  

Hell, even the "it's a game, roll with it" explanation goes in and out of style, depending on the circumstances.  Fireballs being exactly circular rather than working like actual conflagrations (and like they did in 1E)?  We don't like doing calculus at the table, and it's a game, roll with it.  God giving out spells on a 24 hour clock instead of whenever and wherever the worshiper needs them?  It's a game, roll with it.  Healing magic only restoring some HP, rather than completely healing the target?  What, did God run out of juice?  It's a game, roll with it.  

It's especially ironic these threads only seem to come up when FIGHTERS are involved.  Wizards and Clerics get away with all sorts of "breaks in association," usually with the handwave of "magic is magical, obv."  But give the fighter one cool toy, and you can count on at least one person complaining "man, I just don't know how that guy with the sword is doing that.  Unless the sword is magical!"  

At some point we should accept that some mechanics are just FUN.  And others are... not.  Spell points, despite being brought up every single edition, are not fun mechanics (you pick your most powerful spell. And spam it.  FOREVER).  Yes, it's how magic works in 95% of all books, with the wizard getting more and more tired after each spell and eventually 'running out of juice.'  But it's not a fun game mechanic.  

When I see complaints about an awesome mechanic like "Nimbleness" that really encapsulates something unique, different, and flavorful about Halflings in a short, easy-to-understand way I'm forced to sigh.  Yes, one way may be 4E, but the other way is GURPS.  And if one was not successful, the other was EVEN LESS successful.  5E should probably be aiming for a middle ground.


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## slobster (Sep 3, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> Spell points, despite being brought up every single edition, are not fun mechanics (you pick your most powerful spell. And spam it.  FOREVER).  Yes, it's how magic works in 95% of all books, with the wizard getting more and more tired after each spell and eventually 'running out of juice.'  But it's not a fun game mechanic.




I've played and GMed for plenty of spell-point characters. It is fun. The trick is to have access to spells that are good in different situations. An area of effect spell can be great against swarms, but won't do much against a single foe or when your allies are spread out among the enemies. And so on.

I don't mind if you don't have fun with it, but know that your opinion is not universally held.


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## Obryn (Sep 3, 2012)

rounser said:


> Ah, the old "it's fantasy, so anything goes!" argument.  Close relative of the "it's just elf pretending rules, so they don't need to be any good, ur taking it too seriously".



Oh come on now.  You're mix & matching several things here.

I'd wager that nobody wants their magical elf rules to be bad, unless they're playing out of irony or something.  Your mistake is in believing that metagame mechanics are bad and/or indicative of a bad game.  My suggestion is to branch out and try some different systems.  There's some great, innovative stuff going on right now.

And yes, any mechanic becomes ALEXANDRIAN-APPROVED ASSOCIATED once you throw magic at it.  I consider it a failure of imagination rather than a failure of rules if you need magic to explain everything, and can likewise explain anything and everything with magic.

-O


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## F700 (Sep 3, 2012)

My big problem with disassociated mechanics is that they usually have ridiculously convoluted and wordy explanations to eliminate any misinterpretation, which makes them a pain to read through, keep straight, and apply on the fly.

I'd like to see monsters with these sort of traits playable with them stripped out.


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## Greg K (Sep 4, 2012)

The Shadow said:


> I guess I'm not seeing what's so horrible about 'dissociated' mechanics in the first place?  I mean, Mutants & Masterminds is one of my favorite games ever, and one of its prominent mechanics is Hero Points, which are explicitly a player ability rather than a character one.  The player spends a Hero Point, and the character does something cinematic.  You can fluff it as drawing on inner reserves or whatever, but its not necessary.




M&M Hero Points and Savage Worlds Bennies are the one take place that I like it.  Part of why I like them compared to 4e healing surges and action points is that they come from the same pool, everyone gets the same amount to start (unless they have something like luck), and the player has to decide when they use it limiting the uses in the other areas.  For M&M, the options are

a. Improve a roll: "re-roll any die roll you just made and add 10 if the roll is 10 or less.  You must spend the hero point _before_ the GM announces the result. Cannot be used to affect a GM roll or other character's roll without Luck Control"

So it improves a roll has to be used before you know the result. There is no retconning the result, because no result was mentioned.  Furthermore, I prefer it to CS, because many attacks like power attack still have reduced accuracy. you still have to gamble. This just improves the chances and there is still a chance for failure.


b. Heroic Feat: Spend a hero point to gain the benefits of a feat you don't already have for one round.  You must have the prerequisites and the GM can veto any use deemed inappropriate for the campaign

Basically, the character manages to pull off or attempt something for which they meet the pre-requisites.  

c. Dodge: You can spend the hero points to double your dodge bonus for one round.
No retconning. It is putting extra effort into defense before the attack.

d. Instant Counter:  You can attempt to counter a power with an opposed check as a reaction.
No retconning. It is an opposed check.

e. Cancel Fatigue: any time you are suffering fatigue (including from extra effort), you reduce the amount of fatigue one level.
The character may still suffer effects.  I would like 4e second wind and inspiring word better if 4e had  a Star Wars like condition track and you moved up one level per use still leaving the character, potentially, somewhat affected.

f. Recover: Immediately shake off stun or fatigued condition.  If you exhausted, you become fatigued. If you are staggered, it takes you two rounds to recover.  If you are damaged, it allows you to make an immediate recovery check as a full action.  
 If bruised or injured, a successful recovery check, eliminates all of that condition.
However, if you are disabled, spending a hero point allows you to take a strenuous action for one round without your condition worsening to dying.  You are not getting up (without regeneratoinand only get to make a recovery once a day.  

 I am not necessarily happy with removing all injured conditions, but the rest does not bother me.  

f. Escape death. if disabled, you automatically, stabilize
No real retconning. The character simply stabilizes.

g. Inspiration; get a hint or clue from the GM.
h . Dramatic Editing (requires GM approval):  A form of inspiration in which the characters gains something useful from the environment, but cannot change anything that has alread occurred and already explained in game (cannot edit damage or the effects of powers (other uses allow this to a limited degree). Even if allowed, the GM can veto.

The following is for people that saw Cancel fatigue which includes  canceling the fatigue from Extra Effort. It explains extra effort and its uses.

Extra effort: Once per round, as a free action a character can attempt one of the following. At the end of the round, the character becomes fatigued. If fatigued, they become exhausted. If exhausted, they become unconcious

+2 to a non attack check  (ability, skill or power)
Increase carry capacity: +5 to strength for determining carry capacity for one round
Increase movement rate
Increase power rank 2 ranks
Power stunt: Temporarily add a power feat or alternative power of an existing power. This lasts for the duration of an encounter or until the character stops maintaining it which ever comes first (no longer maintaining includes switching to a new power, alternate power or power feat).
Willpower: gain an immediate save vs a lasting effect (e.g., Mind Control)
Surge: gain an additional standard move before or after attack

So, the extra effort stuff comes with an in game cost- fatigue from the extra stress of pushing oneself or extreme concetration


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## LostSoul (Sep 4, 2012)

Ed_Laprade said:


> And there's the problem with dissociated rules right there. I don't care what the rules say, you can't cause a Gelatinous Cube to become prone... its a *Frikkin' CUBE*!!! Saying that you can simply destroys any immersion in the game, which is what a ROLE playing game is supposed to be about, at least to some extent. Sure, there are some wonky descriptions that can be overlooked, but sometimes they can't. And the designers ought to be darn well aware of them, and make exceptions to them when needed.




I don't know if this is necessarily a problem with edit: unique to dissociated rules.  As far as I can tell, you can make a Trip attack against an Ooze in 3E, even though trip attacks in 3E are associated - that is, they have a connection to the game world.

My point is that associated mechanics can result in absurd results in the game world.

What's necessary, in my opinion, is to give someone the responsibility to make judgement calls based on the fictional events.  Then tie those judgement calls back to the mechanics.  That way you can write dissociated mechanics, use the DM (or whoever) to "make sense" of it all in the game world, and you will rarely end up with results that your group cannot accept.

There are problems with this approach, though.  One solution is to provide advice for whoever makes those judgement calls - principled decisions, where the game provides a set of principles upon which the player makes judgements.


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## Ratskinner (Sep 4, 2012)

Mattachine said:


> That "problem" makes for streamlined play. It cuts down on combat options and makes those options easier to use, both speeding combats.
> 
> The Iron Heroes variant for 3rd edition D&D had feat trees for accomplishing combat maneuvers, and also had non-feat ways to do similar things. The non-feat method required lookups, adjudication, and didn't work so well, anyway. It was a great idea, but it didn't work well in practice.




Both sides of this coin are rooted in the pseudo-simulationism of D&D. If you switch to a totally metagame structure, then speed returns and, in fact, often exceeds what you could hope for with a D&D-like structure. Sadly, I suspect that any such redesign would create a game that most would not choose to call "D&D."


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## Ratskinner (Sep 4, 2012)

rounser said:


> In an RPG, where suspension of disbelief and visualization of a fantasy world is a reason to bother to play at all, they're plain old bad game design




Simply not true. One of the best, fastest, fantasy games I ever played in ran on Capes, and its mechanics are absolutely dissociated. The trick is that they told you the minimum of what you needed to know to tell your bit, and then got out of the way. The "immersion" was far better than D&D, because there wasn't any need to consult a book for wording, etc. 

Now, toss the word "Simulationist" in your quote in a few places, and you are closer to the truth. Yes, metagame mechanics are awkward for simulation. Primarily because folks will often disagree about what they are trying to simulate.



rounser said:


> <snippage> so we can be a lot dissociated with all sorts of other stuff and still be legitimately a D&D".  Err no, not according to a lot of the former in-print D&D fanbase.




...and there we have the crux of the problem before the designers.


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## Sir Robilar (Sep 4, 2012)

1of3 said:


> Also the problem of association, as the creators of the term meant it, wasn't that you have to think about how something might look in the fiction. That has always been true and will always be so. The perceived problem was that certain game elements would interact with each other in "disassociated" ways, like Fighters's and Paladin's marks. Why would my cool fighting techniques be rendered inactive, when my Paladin buddy asks her employer for some divine vengeance? Why will both stop working when a Swordmage does his Aegis thing?




That's not how I read it in the Alexandrian's primer about dissociated mechanics here.

I read the difference between associated and dissociated as:

- The character decides to do action A on his turn. Action A is played out using a rules mechanic that represents this action in the world of the game. The character could talk about this action beforehand, as in "I'm such a good archer I can shoot two arrows at once". (this is not a discussion about realism, an associated mechanic could be completely nuts!)  -> This rules mechanic is associated.
- The Player decides to take an action B with his character that this character is capable of by the rules of the game. The character isn't consciously involved in the decision to act by this rules mechanic, nor could he ever be aware of the existence of action B, as there is no direct translation between the mechanic and what is happening in the game world. This mechanic is dissociated.

So reaching back to my examples from the Playtest, the Stout Halfling's "Fearless" trait is a dissociated mechanic: After the Halfling character by some means aquired the "frightened" condition, the player chooses to use this character's Fearless trait to make it disappear. At his turn, the Halfling uses his action to activate the Fearless trait. But this mechanic is not represented by an action in the game world as the Halfling is not aware of his shaking of the fear. It would be absurd to think about this action as something the Halfling knows about as this would create all sorts of awkward questions such as: Why was he afraid in the first place?


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## Lwaxy (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> The gnoll is „Savage“, but only when it can see two other creatures with the Savage trait within 30 feet. Why? Why is the gnoll incapable of attacking with all his savagery, when he fights alone and is up against a helpless victim? Is he somehow restrained in his rage when he is alone?




Probably because they are based on hyenas, and hyenas usually only go crazy in a fight as a pack.


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## Emerikol (Sep 4, 2012)

I don't mind that people like or dislike dissociative mechanics.  What I hate is the disrespect shown to those of us that do not like them.  I can't stand the fluff mechanics disconnect.  I don't care if others want them.  Of course in a game I care about like D&D, I am going to give my opinion if asked.  The playtest is them asking us what we like.  I say what I like.  

It's pretty clear why magic can affect something beyond the realm of the normal world.  Is that not the definition of magic??  Psionics could of course be used as well since those are practically magic too.

So let me suggest if you want to be taken as anything other than a jerk no nothing, ease up on the condescension.  It's valid and fun for many people to play without dissociative mechanics.  The opposite is also true.   Since D&D has traditionally avoided dissociative mechanics, it's understandable that pre-4e people advocate for a return to that philosophy.  It's because we grew up with that philosophy.


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## Jeff Carlsen (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> So reaching back to my examples from the Playtest, the Stout Halfling's "Fearless" trait is a dissociated mechanic: After the Halfling character by some means aquired the "frightened" condition, the player chooses to use this character's Fearless trait to make it disappear. At his turn, the Halfling uses his action to activate the Fearless trait. But this mechanic is not represented by an action in the game world as the Halfling is not aware of his shaking of the fear. It would be absurd to think about this action as something the Halfling knows about as this would create all sorts of awkward questions such as: Why was he afraid in the first place?




This might not be a good example. I've always seen overcoming a fear affect not as "I'm not afraid" but "I can act despite my fear".  So I can easily see the Halfling taking a few seconds to talk himself out of fleeing or cowering. It's much, though not exactly like counting to ten to recover from anger.

Which isn't to say that the mechanic described is the best. Only that I don't think it's dissociated.


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## Ahnehnois (Sep 4, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> At some point we should accept that some mechanics are just FUN.  And others are... not.  Spell points, despite being brought up every single edition, are not fun mechanics (you pick your most powerful spell. And spam it.  FOREVER).  Yes, it's how magic works in 95% of all books, with the wizard getting more and more tired after each spell and eventually 'running out of juice.'  But it's not a fun game mechanic.



Spell points, FWIW are a great mechanic. Spell slots are less fun because of the sheer complexity of trying to manage dozens of them, spell points are simpler and fast. IME (extensive experience, I might add), the spamming thing does not happen because of good spell design and good encounter design. Typically, a spellcaster will pick spells to target an opponent's weakness: a particular saving throw, touch AC, etc., and thata weakness will vary and will not always be immediately obvious. They also try to conserve spell points, and typically are in no hurry to cast whatever their best spell is. There's plenty of tactical choice there. D&D works best with a diverse set of mechanics, but I'll take a spell point caster over a spell slot caster any day.


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## Sir Robilar (Sep 4, 2012)

Hi Li Shenron, great post, thank you!

Concerning the Halflings Fearless trait again and your reaction here:



Li Shenron said:


> I think this ability is very "gamist" in the sense that it's totally built on game mechanics with no consideration on what it actually represents. What the designers want here, is that you lose your turn's action. But I'm with you thinking that it should say why or how it happens. Maybe something as simple as "you are focusing on your inner strength to shrug off the fear effect" is enough for me.




In my opinion a different way of describing this action (and others where I see this problem) would not suffice. If they went this way they would do it how it was done in 4E. In my experience, we had no problem with these descriptions in the beginning. However, as there was no clear connection between the action and the in-world effect, players soon tended to ignore the flavour text. We didn't think about an action as "this action where you focus your inner strength to shake of your fear" but rather "this action that lets you drop the frightened condition".

Now when people say this is nit-picky or this is a stupid discussion about realism in an unrealistic fantasy game it makes me a little sad as I feel I wasn't able to bring my point across... 

I believe that this is one direction of game design that may not look so bad in the beginning, even not after some time has passed and you've been happily playing with the rules. But at some point, this separation of mechanics and the character's actions will lead to a general drift away from immersion with the events of the game. And at that point an RPG loses what makes it so special.

I'm absolutely not trying to bash 4E as I respect it for it's many strengths. But these kinds of dissociated mechanics were exactly what turned my group away from it. They didn't disturb me or anyone at my gaming table when we started playing the system. But after half a year of playing weekly we realized that we weren't as immersed in the game as with some other roleplaying games. When the discussions about dissociated mechanics came up, we realized that this was our main problem with the edition and decided to drop it. 

This is why I was very hopeful when the designers stated their goal not to go down this road again. At one of their Gencon panels they directly adressed this issue and stated that they wanted each rule to directly represent an action in the game world. Now I realize my original post may sound like I am overreacting, but I fear that if we ignore this issue, 5E will be an edition that, again, may seem like the holy grail in the beginning, but will let groups that are sensitive to these mechanics encounter a burnout in the long run. And that would run against their main goal of uniting all players of D&D.


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## Sir Robilar (Sep 4, 2012)

Jeff Carlsen said:


> This might not be a good example. I've always seen overcoming a fear affect not as "I'm not afraid" but "I can act despite my fear".  So I can easily see the Halfling taking a few seconds to talk himself out of fleeing or cowering. It's much, though not exactly like counting to ten to recover from anger.
> 
> Which isn't to say that the mechanic described is the best. Only that I don't think it's dissociated.




I still believe it is dissociated. The problem I see here is that "a character realizing that he can act despite his fear" should not be represented as an action in a six second turn sequence alongside actions like casting a spell, attacking someone with a sword or drinking a potion. It brings up difficult questions such as: Why couldn't the character just realize that he can act despite of his fear when he was first affected by the fear effect? Does it really take him six seconds to come to this realization? Shouldn't it be a free action? Why can't the character take a double move while he has this realization? And so on.

Also I believe that retroactively fixing these mechanics is not the best way to go. To pull a quote from the Alexandrian's blog post:

" The flip side of the “explaining it all away” misconception is the “it’s easy to fix” fallacy. Instead of providing an improvised description that explains what the mechanic did after the fact, we instead rewrite the ability to provide an explanation and, thus, re-associate the dissociated mechanic. "


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## Obryn (Sep 4, 2012)

Emerikol said:


> Since D&D has traditionally avoided dissociative mechanics, it's understandable that pre-4e people advocate for a return to that philosophy.  It's because we grew up with that philosophy.



Funny thing.  I likewise grew up on that philosophy.  After playing many different games over the years, I have since decided that metagame mechanics don't make for a worse game, and, when done well, in fact make games better.

Look - I don't need, want, or expect a Next that's as metagame as some parts of 4e.  I already have 4e; I am no more interested in 4e Part II than I am in 3e Part III or 1e Part XIV.  And I completely understand that not everybody cares for the 4e style of play, even though I don't share their opinion.  So, I'm more than happy to budge on it - to move towards a middle in the interest of compromise.

So, it's more than a little irksome when that same sense of compromise is nowhere in evidence from the "non-metagame" folks and all I see is yet more people posting yet more links to a pseudo-philosophical manifesto written by a dude on the internet, applying new labels to mechanics that have existed almost as long as RPGs, and excluding many excellent modern RPGs from the RPG club.

-O


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## pemerton (Sep 4, 2012)

rounser said:


> In an RPG, where suspension of disbelief and visualization of a fantasy world is a reason to bother to play at all, they're plain old bad game design





Obryn said:


> Let's just call them "metagame mechanics" because that's really all they are.  It's a new sticker stuck on an old concept.
> 
> And frankly, I disagree that a game like FATE (which is more or less completely made out of metagame mechanics) is bad design.



Besides FATE, we could add to the list of "badly designed" RPGs such games as Maelstrom Storytelling (what would Ron Edwards know when he identifies it as one of the earliest explicitly narrativist RPGs!), HeroWars/Quest and The Dying Earth (what would Robin Laws know about designing a good RPG!).

Oh, and AD&D as explained by Gary Gygax, with its metagame hit points ("luck and divine favour") and saving throws ("maybe the successful save vs dragon breath corresponds to noticing a cleft in the rock and taking last-second cover behind it"). But we all know that Gygax was no good at RPG design either, don't we!


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## pemerton (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> The gnoll is „Savage“, but only when it can see two other creatures with the Savage trait within 30 feet. Why? Why is the gnoll incapable of attacking with all his savagery, when he fights alone and is up against a helpless victim? Is he somehow restrained in his rage when he is alone?



Yes. Gnolls are stereotypical pack animals - that is, savage in packs and cowards alone.



Sir Robilar said:


> Continuing with the Hobgoblin, it has the „Steadfast“ trait, meaning it cannot be frightened while an ally is within 30 feet. Why not? This may make sense when the Hobgoblins encounter the Player Characters, but does it make sense when two Hobgoblins encounter Cthulhu?



I could pose the same question in relation to a dwarf: if it travels through time to the modern world, and chows down some plutonium, is it immune to the toxic effect? I don't think the D&Dnext rules are intended to model these sorts of extreme cases. (Anymore than, for example, it models combat between two ants, or two housecats.)

In addition, one could always rule that Cthulhu does not impose the "frightened" condition, but some more mindblasting effect to which hobgoblins are not immune.



Sir Robilar said:


> The same with other traits and actions like „Commander“, „Protector“ and the minotaurs „Armor Pearcing 4“ where the minotaur’s foe takes damage even though he wasn’t hit from the attack (something which I personally can’t stand).



Commander is pretty clear: the hobgoblin captain gives commands, which help the other hobgoblins in their fighting.

Armour Piercing is also pretty clear. Normally, a hit vs AC 10 would hit the armour but not penetrate it; while a hit vs the target's actual AC would not only hit the armour but penetrate it. (Roger Musson discussed this in an early number of White Dwarf, in an article called How to Lose Hit Points and Survive, but I doubt that he was the first to notice it.) The minotaur is so tough that all its attacks penetrate armour to some extent: hence the descriptor "armour piercing", and the minimum damage on any hit vs AC 10.

If you wanted to make action resolution more complex, you could make the minotaur's minimum target number AC 10 + DEX component of the target's AC. Given that comparatively few PCs with a high DEX component to AC are going to be trading blows with a minotaur, the designers may have though that the extra complexity was not worth the effort.



Sir Robilar said:


> the Stout Halfing’s „Fearless“, where he takes an action to end the frightened condition. What action does the Halfling take and how does it look like?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I’d prefer an approach where the Halfling can always take a second Save against fear effects or something like that, as it wouldn’t force the player to play out how his Halfling shakes off his fear, when it’s really hard to explain how that would look like. And even harder to explain why he couldn’t have done it earlier.



The reason the halfling couldn't have done it earlier is presumably because (as others have posted upthread) it takes time and effort. The halfing is mustering his/her resolve. What does it look like? Pick your favourite scene from LotR - maybe Merry deciding to stab the Nazgul, or Pippin deciding to pledge fealty to Denethor.



Sir Robilar said:


> The problem I see here is that "a character realizing that he can act despite his fear" should not be represented as an action in a six second turn sequence
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It brings up difficult questions such as: Why couldn't the character just realize that he can act despite of his fear when he was first affected by the fear effect? Does it really take him six seconds to come to this realization?



The simpe answer, surely, is Yes, it really does. Maybe it's an idiosyncracy of halfling psychological processes.



Sir Robilar said:


> What I dislike considering associated or dissociated mechanics is the fact that you can cast some spells as Rituals and others not. This seems to be tacked on from the designer's point of view but it is hard to explain from the POV of a character that lives in the D&D world.



Surely here, of all places, the "it's magic" explanation will do! Some spells admit of being reduced to ritual formulae. Others don't. Why? Well, once you have a general theory of how magic works, you can add on the epicycles to explain how some admit of ritualisation and others don't.



Sir Robilar said:


> I’m also having a hard time to accept that some spells can be cast in rounds where the caster also does some other action. If I was a caster I would ask myself why I can't cast my other spells and also do something else during the casting.



Because it's part of the spell effect. Maybe the spell requires speaking very few words, or only a very simple hand gesture, or maybe it has a haste effect built into it.

Again, "it's magic" seems like it might be enough here.



Sir Robilar said:


> a player could always confront his/her DM with questions such as „So you’re telling me I can cast Battle Psalm, a 2nd Level enchanment, and attack in the same round, but I can’t do the same with Radiant Lance, a Minor evocation?“



Mightn't part of the answer that what makes Radiant Lance minor rather than 2nd level is precisely that more time is spent casting it: you can do it repeatedly, provided you say the full rites and make all the right gesticulations every time.


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## triqui (Sep 4, 2012)

There is no single game that do not have dissociated rules. You can argue about how *much* is *too much*, but all of them have. 

To point one: initiative. The fact a character acts, then freezes for 6 seconds while other guys move and do things he can´t answer to, is dissociative.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> Halfling’s Nimbleness. The Halfling can move through spaces of creatures that are larger than it.




I spent a while trying to respond to this, modelling the halfling ability as a new use of improved feint, while giving halflings a bonus to the check based on cultural knowledge, very much like the dwarven bonus to AC against giants.

That works for me, using 3.5E, but, then I ran into a different problem: Why halflings?  I mean, halflings are known to be nimble, but I've never imagined them having a particular better sort of nimbleness that suggests the given ability.

Edit: A second problem with this particular example (and many of the examples given) is that it is exception based.  The ability is specifically "Halfling" nimbleness, and not something more generic, e.g., "nimble sidestep" which halflings have in particular.  That is to say, one is fighting against _both_ that the ability is disassociative  _and_ that is exception based.  That's too many issues all at once!

Let's look at "Nimble Sidestep" as a general ability that could be had given the right combination of innate skill and training.  What would the right combination be?

Thx,

TomB


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## triqui (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:
			
		

> The gnoll is „Savage“, but only when it can see two other creatures with the Savage trait within 30 feet. Why? Why is the gnoll incapable of attacking with all his savagery, when he fights alone and is up against a helpless victim? Is he somehow restrained in his rage when he is alone?



If you have seen how hyenas act, this describe exactly that beheaivor. Hyenas are terrible fierce, cruel, savage and bloodthirsty when in pack. They attack lions, they kill big buffalos, and eat animals alive (literally). But when faced individually, they are coward. Even a dog can scare an individual hyena. 

Gnolls are based on hyenas. So this rule sounds quite simulationist, actually.


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## FireLance (Sep 4, 2012)

Why am I suddenly reminded of the following sketch:

"A disassociated mechanic! We've got a disassociated mechanic!"
"Burn it! Burn!"
"How do you know it is a disassociated mechanic?"
"It looks like one."
"I'm not a disassociated mechanic."
"But there's no clear description of what you actually do."
"I'm an abstraction! There are many ways in which you can tailor the in-game description of events to fit the mechanical effect."
"It knocked a gelatinous cube prone."
"It turned me into a newt."
"A newt?"
"It got retconned."
"Burn it!"


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## F700 (Sep 4, 2012)

triqui said:


> There is no single game that do not have dissociated rules. You can argue about how *much* is *too much*, but all of them have.
> 
> To point one: initiative. The fact a character acts, then freezes for 6 seconds while other guys move and do things he can´t answer to, is dissociative.




Everything is happening simultaneously, so no character is standing around for 36 seconds waiting for the other 5 members and the monster to do their thing.

If you meant he does his thing in the first second of his turn and then waits for everyone else to complete their action - no, whatever any character does fills their entire 6 seconds.


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## LostSoul (Sep 4, 2012)

F700 said:


> Everything is happening simultaneously, so no character is standing around for 36 seconds waiting for the other 5 members and the monster to do their thing.
> 
> If you meant he does his thing in the first second of his turn and then waits for everyone else to complete their action - no, whatever any character does fills their entire 6 seconds.




The headscratcher comes when you make your decisions for the round.  You're reacting to what the other characters have spent their 6 seconds doing.  You see what has happened to everyone who goes before you during the round, and you react to that, but somehow you're acting at the same time as they are.

e.g. You're locked in melee combat with a wolf.  It decides to withdraw.  Before you can make any decisions about what to do next, the wolf is 120 feet away.

I don't think this is dissociated.  I think it is absurd.  Associated mechanics don't prevent absurdity.


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## triqui (Sep 4, 2012)

F700 said:


> Everything is happening simultaneously, so no character is standing around for 36 seconds waiting for the other 5 members and the monster to do their thing.
> 
> If you meant he does his thing in the first second of his turn and then waits for everyone else to complete their action - no, whatever any character does fills their entire 6 seconds.




That's how it *should* reads, but it's not how it happens.

Two characters, armed with bows, roll for initiative. Both roll 15, so the one with higher dexterity goes *slightly* faster, just a split of a second. He starts firing, and manage to launch his four arrows (high level, rapid shot, and all that stuff) before the other guy even blinks (he is flatfooted, because he doesn't have dexterity yet until he acts). Once it is his turn, he realizes he will lose in the next volley (he already has 4 arrows stuck in his chest, as all of them where crits, and he couldnt "dodge" or "turn them into mnor blows" as he was flatfooted and denied to use dex or dodge bonuses). So he knows what he has to do:

As free action he shouts "I'm going to cut your bow!". Then he proceeds to move 30', drawing his weapon as part of his movemnt. As his standard action, he sunders the bow. The other guy *would* had retreated, but he couldn't, despise knowing what's going to happen (because of the shout), but it wasn´t his turn, so he couldn´t flee. The player *knows* why this happen (not his turn), but the character does not. 

Same goes with, say, a guardian trying to block a corridor. When it's the other guy turn, he can just move diagonally, and run past him, without him being able to block, because it´s not his turn, so he is freezed. He can´t react until end of the other guys turn.

I could give other examples (like the guy who makes a 5' step, then proceed to cast a spell or makes a full round attack with a bow, just 5' away from his target, whiw could beat him with oportunity attacks *if* he could make a 5' step himself. But he can´t. He has to wait until the spell ends (or the last arrow from the volley is shot), before he can move and retaliate.


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## Dannyalcatraz (Sep 4, 2012)

> You're locked in melee combat with a wolf. It decides to withdraw. Before you can make any decisions about what to do next, the wolf is 120 feet away.




Unless all movement is simultaneous, stuff like that shows up.  Some wargames get around this by making players plot their movement.

However, the problem this _creates_ is that there is no _reactive _movement. Units end up in places they would not in a RW version of the encounter.


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## Obryn (Sep 4, 2012)

Yep, the game sure has gone downhill since the "declare intentions" phase was removed. 

-O


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## Vegepygmy (Sep 4, 2012)

LostSoul said:


> The headscratcher comes when you make your decisions for the round. You're reacting to what the other characters have spent their 6 seconds doing.



It's a small headscratcher, yes, but only a small one. You (the player) are indeed reacting to what the other _characters_ have spent their 6 seconds doing, but your _character_ has been acting (not necessarily reacting) during those same 6 seconds.



			
				LostSoul said:
			
		

> You see what has happened to everyone who goes before you during the round, and you react to that, but somehow you're acting at the same time as they are.



Yes. You (the player) are reacting, but 'somehow' _your character_ is acting at the same time they are. It's a little counterintuitive, but c'mon...it's not _that_ incomprehensible.



			
				LostSoul said:
			
		

> e.g. You're locked in melee combat with a wolf. It decides to withdraw. Before you can make any decisions about what to do next, the wolf is 120 feet away.



You (the player) don't _have to_ decide what your character will do until you see that the wolf has ended its turn 120 feet away, but _your character_ was acting that entire time. Depending on what you (the player) decide, _your character_ was either chasing after the wolf, or moving in some other direction, or taking out his bow and shooting at the wolf, or...whatever.

I really don't see why this is so difficult for some people to grasp.



			
				LostSoul said:
			
		

> I don't think this is dissociated. I think it is absurd. Associated mechanics don't prevent absurdity.



It is neither disassociated nor absurd, and in fact has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

Associated mechanics don't prevent absurdity, that's true, but disassociated mechanics can certainly promote it.


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## Obryn (Sep 4, 2012)

Vegepygmy said:


> You (the player) don't _have to_ decide what your character will do until you see that the wolf has ended its turn 120 feet away, but _your character_ was acting that entire time. Depending on what you (the player) decide, _your character_ was either chasing after the wolf, or moving in some other direction, or taking out his bow and shooting at the wolf, or...whatever.
> 
> I really don't see why this is so difficult for some people to grasp.



So ... in other words, you're taking the results of the game mechanics as a given ... and then building your narrative around it, filling in the blanks to justify what the rules said happened?

I can get behind this idea!

-O


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## F700 (Sep 4, 2012)

Simple solution: Remove move and standard actions, go back to having turns upon which everybody either moves or attacks/does whatever.

That way everybody's action jive a little better. And nobody's really losing anything in terms of actions, their 2 actions per turn are just split between two rounds.


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## LostSoul (Sep 4, 2012)

Vegepygmy said:


> It is neither disassociated nor absurd, and in fact has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
> 
> Associated mechanics don't prevent absurdity, that's true, but disassociated mechanics can certainly promote it.




I think it's absurd but that's a value judgement.  It falls within my levels of tolerance, though.  I prefer different initiative systems but I can enjoy this one.

I don't know if it's necessarily true that dissociated mechanics promote absurdity.  I think they can but they don't have to any more than associated mechanics must.  If there is no connection to the game world - the mechanic is dissociated - then you're free to create your own.  You can create plausible or absurd fictional results as you like.  Well-designed associated mechanics should create the intended fictional results - absurd or not, depending on the design goals.


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## pemerton (Sep 4, 2012)

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Unless all movement is simultaneous, stuff like that shows up.  Some wargames get around this by making players plot their movement.
> 
> However, the problem this _creates_ is that there is no _reactive _movement. Units end up in places they would not in a RW version of the encounter.





Obryn said:


> Yep, the game sure has gone downhill since the "declare intentions" phase was removed.



I've played a lot of Rolemaster, which has an action declaration phase and (more-or-less, depending on which variant initiative system is being used) continuous action. It tries to cope with the reactive dimension by permitting "press and attack" as one of the declared options.

The system still produces oddities, though, which don't correspond to anything in the gameworld. For example, moving causes a penalty to attack and/or parry. So, depending on how initiative falls, one or the other character may be the one who bears the greater burden for the movement required for the two to close (because you can't exploit the headstart your initiative gives you unless you close to melee range - the system doesn't easily support charging quickstrike duels like that in the Seven Samurai). Also, because the allocation of weapon skill between attack and parry happens as part of the declaration, depending how declared movement works out relative to the distances involved can mean that a player does or doesn't get a chance to declare a new attack/parry split in response to an enemy closing on his/her PC.

My players referred to this sort of thing as being "initiative purged".



triqui said:


> Same goes with, say, a guardian trying to block a corridor. When it's the other guy turn, he can just move diagonally, and run past him, without him being able to block, because it´s not his turn, so he is freezed. He can´t react until end of the other guys turn.



This is why I like 4e's high number of out-of-turn actions: they cost handling time, but they reduce (but don't completely eliminate) the sort of absurdity that you describe here.

(I liked your other examples too, but can't XP you at this time.)



Vegepygmy said:


> It's a small headscratcher, yes, but only a small one.



Well, for some of us it's more than a small headscratcher. It can be a serious issue for verisimilitude, and hence for immersion.



Vegepygmy said:


> You (the player) are indeed reacting to what the other _characters_ have spent their 6 seconds doing, but your _character_ has been acting (not necessarily reacting) during those same 6 seconds.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



You make it sound as if I, the player, am making decisions that draw on a different pool of information from what my PC drew upon, and which don't correspond to the decisions that my PC actually made on the basis of that different pool of information.

I though that that was meant to be the very definition of "dissociation"!

After all, that's just what happens with a martial encounter power: I, the player, decide to use the power now, based on one pool of information (say, that now would be a tactically sound time to get to attack with a close burst); while my PC makes a decision based on a different pool of information to which I, the player, am not privy (say, noticing an opportunity and deciding to exploit it).


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## Li Shenron (Sep 4, 2012)

Drago Rinato said:


> the halfling could simply use:
> 
> *Disengage Action*
> When you disengage, you move up to 10 feet.
> ...




Yes I remember this, but it's just 10 feet, barely enough to get to the other side of a medium creature. I think it might be useful in a corner case (also literally!), e.g. to reach something on the other side, including possibly an escape route from the battle.

When I first read the ability description, the first thing that came to my mind was a cool scene of a halfling passing under the legs of an orc and "emerging" on the other side of it to strike from behind. Unfortunately, without facing rules it won't hardly make a difference.


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## Li Shenron (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> Now when people say this is nit-picky or this is a stupid discussion about realism in an unrealistic fantasy game it makes me a little sad as I feel I wasn't able to bring my point across...
> 
> I believe that this is one direction of game design that may not look so bad in the beginning, even not after some time has passed and you've been happily playing with the rules. But at some point, this separation of mechanics and the character's actions will lead to a general drift away from immersion with the events of the game. And at that point an RPG loses what makes it so special.




I share your feelings... I want immersion too!

I also have to admit however that on the other hand associated mechanics might have one problem: some groups might be more immersive than I want  and start arguing about how descriptive details of the current situation can affect the rule (usually to their advantage), if such rule is strongly associated to an in-game explanation.


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## Sir Robilar (Sep 4, 2012)

It's quite common for discussions about dissociated mechanics that posters show up to explain why each and every criticized mechanic is realistic and in some way an adequate translation of some element of the game world. But - sometimes - that is the "you can explain everything" fallacy and sort of misses the point.



pemerton said:


> Yes. Gnolls are stereotypical pack animals - that is, savage in packs and cowards alone.




This would be a good description for the Gnoll's tactics section so DMs can play them adequately. But the mechanic as written doesn't capture (and doesn't even try to capture) the creature's savage nature. Instead it gives the creature a specific advantage in a combat situation and slaps the "Savage" tag onto it. The trait is a tactical mechanic for a creature in a tactical combat situation and was clearly designed from this point of view. Now this is a suitable design approach for a tactical combat game, but some may say it's problematic in a role-playing game.

Outside of the specific situation's that the trait was made for, it doesn't make much sense in the game world. And this is often a problem with dissociated mechanics. They are cool as long as you use them how they are intended. But since they are not the best representation of something that is actually happening in the world, but just the best representation when looking at something in a special way (usually combat) they break apart when you put them into another context.  A bad example: A lone Gnoll controlled with a Dominate Spell should be able to attack with all it's might when commanded to do so by the Wizard, but this trait would disallow it. 

In my opinion a flexible core system for 5E should carefully exclude dissociated mechanics since a role-playing game's core needs all the flexibility it can get. Or to put it differently, if dissociated mechanics rub some people the wrong way (and they seem to do this especially with many players of old editions) the designers should rethink their addition to the Core and maybe instead add them in a rules module later if there is demand.


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## Sir Robilar (Sep 4, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> I also have to admit however that on the other hand associated mechanics might have one problem: some groups might be more immersive than I want  and start arguing about how descriptive details of the current situation can affect the rule (usually to their advantage), if such rule is strongly associated to an in-game explanation.




Hmmm, interesting. Could you give an example? If this is something opportunistic players will do I bet I've already encountered it with my players. They'd do everything they can to bend the rules in their favor...


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## slobo777 (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> Hmmm, interesting. Could you give an example? If this is something opportunistic players will do I bet I've already encountered it with my players. They'd do everything they can to bend the rules in their favor...




Edit: Sorry, was responding to the general sentiment and enclosed quotes, and noted I don't have an example. I do generally dislike players wanting bonuses to rolls just because they've said or argued something they think is relevant. If nothing else, it can de-rail the game into long passages of "Persuade the DM" (the flip-side to "Mother may I?"). I personally believe bonuses to rolls should come from spending game resources or taking risks in the game side. Although I play that looser with the cross-over skills that include RP/persuasion such as Diplomacy and Intimidate.

With techie education, and with many years in technically-involved jobs, my group tend to find playing gamist and non-simulationist is faster and _more _involving than the very weak simulations provided by any playable RPG. That's because simulationist play gets us dragged down into needless detail, which ends up being mechanics-focussed and _less_ immersive than if we'd skipped the details.

You hit the gamist limits in 3E pretty much immediately you want to do something not explicitly documented, or in simple things such as having to take turns or metagame options around hit points. The options are to extend the simulation to some kind of acceptable depth (perhaps with a quick patch and ruling), or say "hey, it's a game" and roll the dice. 

After many years of trying to extend the depth of simulationist play (including with my own house rules, and game systems based round RuneQuest), I have to say it's very freeing to just roll the dice and tell a good yarn. I don't think we've lost any immersion.


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## pemerton (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> This would be a good description for the Gnoll's tactics section so DMs can play them adequately. But the mechanic as written doesn't capture (and doesn't even try to capture) the creature's savage nature.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> ...



That's a pretty corner case. Apart from anything else, how to we know that a Dominate spell can get a pack animal (or a person, for that matter) to be as solitarily savage as s/he would be in a pack (or a mob)? But if we accept that as given, it seems like a GM who was bothered by this issue could easily rule that the savage gnoll gets the bonus to damage.

The obvious alternative becomes one in which pack animals, including gnolls, are no more dangerous in a pack than any other two animals (say, two giant spiders). Which, in my view, does more harm to verisimilitude and immersion than the Dominate spell being unable to produce the same frenzy in a gnoll that an actual pack of its fellows does.

A comparison can be drawn with 1st ed AD&D. In the AD&D Monster Manual, various monsters - including dragons - got bonuses to attack and/or damage when defending their young. There was no rule to explain how this interacted with illusions of their young being threatened, or the use of telepathy or dominate - it was assumed that the GM could handle such corner cases. Given its overall vibe, I would expect D&Dnext to take a similar approach, of leaving corner cases to be resolved by GM adjudication - while trying to make sure that the consequences of that adjudication are not going to be too extreme one way or another. A dominated gnoll gaining +4 to damage at your table but not mine probably isn't going to break the game.


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## rounser (Sep 4, 2012)

Nm.


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## underfoot007ct (Sep 4, 2012)

Emerikol said:


> I don't mind that people like or dislike dissociative mechanics.  What I hate is the disrespect shown to those of us that do not like them.  I can't stand the fluff mechanics disconnect.  I don't care if others want them.  Of course in a game I care about like D&D, I am going to give my opinion if asked.  The playtest is them asking us what we like.  I say what I like.



Yes, disrespect is rude, we ALL need to be tolerant of ALL play-styles.


> So let me suggest if you want to be taken as anything other than a jerk no nothing, ease up on the condescension.  It's valid and fun for many people to play without dissociative mechanics.  The opposite is also true.   Since D&D has traditionally avoided dissociative mechanics, it's understandable that pre-4e people advocate for a return to that philosophy.  It's because we grew up with that philosophy.




Let me ask just what "pre-4e" people means? I myself have played 1e(years), 2e(not so much), 3.0e, 3.5e (tons), now 4e. I have no interest in avoiding dissociative mechanics yet I played long before 4e was even a dream. I also don't want to take anything from whatever play-style you prefer. So is it only 4e that has dissociative mechanics? No other editions?


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## underfoot007ct (Sep 4, 2012)

Li Shenron said:


> I share your feelings... I want immersion too!
> 
> I also have to admit however that on the other hand associated mechanics might have one problem: some groups might be more immersive than I want  and start arguing about how descriptive details of the current situation can affect the rule (usually to their advantage), if such rule is strongly associated to an in-game explanation.




"Immersive" & "immersion" are buzz words that puzzle me a bit. Can someone supply a working definition of these.  I want to get a better understanding on just people mean with these terms.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> Here are some examples of what I mean from the current playtest material. I’m sorry If this comes over as a rant at times. I have to say that I was fairly happy with where the game was going before, but this topic really bugs me... To decrease the severity of the rant I will try to include ideas of what kinds of alternative rules I would prefer. I'd be really interested in your opinion on these thoughts.
> 
> 
> From the Bestiary:
> ...




Summing the above up, you've just described why I find the even the 2e monster manual mechanically _bores me rigid_.  Without such abilities, the difference between an orc and a hobgoblin with the same equipment is something like +1 to hit and damage.  And there's no major difference between a gnoll and an orc in terms of the way you fight them.  Send in the clones!

With such mechanics for monster psychology and tactics, the way we fight differing monsters varies.  Pack animals are creatures who are much more dangerous in packs and you defeat them in detail to win.  We often go in with psychological warfare against orcs - but against hobgoblins it ain't gonna work.  Simple, effective, allows for differing monster psychology (which is far more iteresting than "Orcs are seven foot tall, green skinned eat the left hind leg of worgs, and are +2 hit points and +1 to hit and damage over humans but -1 morale value" which is about all you are left with when you remove disassociated mechanics).

As a player, monsters who think differently and are at their most effective behaving differently are much more interesting than what are mechanically a set of clones and that I only gain an advantage over by unsettling them thanks to the generosity of a DM.  And as a DM, I have literally _never_ had problems working out how to interpret bonusses that are given for monsters behaving in the way they ought to.

Disassociated mechanics: An aid to gamism as they mean the monsters can be wrongfooted.  An aid to narrativism as they mean the monsters feel more like their mythical archetypes.  And an aid to any except the most process dirven simulationism because it allows the outcomes to match the desired outcomes.


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## Doug McCrae (Sep 4, 2012)

underfoot007ct said:


> "Immersive" & "immersion" are buzz words that puzzle me a bit. Can someone supply a working definition of these.  I want to get a better understanding on just people mean with these terms.



The player becomes immersed in the game-world, seeing it from the perspective of his own character. The rules, the dice, the character sheet, the room the player is in, vanish, or, at least, recede, and the fantasy world becomes in a sense the primary reality.

Immersion is associated with simulationism, verisimilitude, and suspension of disbelief.


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## Emerikol (Sep 4, 2012)

Obryn said:


> Funny thing.  I likewise grew up on that philosophy.  After playing many different games over the years, I have since decided that metagame mechanics don't make for a worse game, and, when done well, in fact make games better.
> 
> Look - I don't need, want, or expect a Next that's as metagame as some parts of 4e.  I already have 4e; I am no more interested in 4e Part II than I am in 3e Part III or 1e Part XIV.  And I completely understand that not everybody cares for the 4e style of play, even though I don't share their opinion.  So, I'm more than happy to budge on it - to move towards a middle in the interest of compromise.
> 
> ...




I'm for compromise.  But I'd rather it be in the form of modularity and not rules done half-way.  

The reason is that I can't play with plot coupons.  I'd honestly just rather go play monopoly.  D&D is a commitment that far exceeds normal games.  I'm the DM by the way most of the time.  And for my style of game it takes a pretty high time commitment.  And I'm not complaining but when I run a campaign it has to be really good for me.  I don't want to feel like I'm playing a boardgame.  Dissociative mechanics give me that feel.  I can't take the world or the characters in it very seriously.   

Since I've been doing this a long while, I have players that enjoy similar approaches.  I give them what they like and we all have fun.  I don't mind a bit if others play a different way.  My issue right now is that I feel the CS dice are dissociative.  And that is on the fighter class!  If it were the warlord or the xyz class I'd just ban that class.  Kind of hard to ban the fighter.  

If I bother with 5e, and I'm on the fence right now, I'll probably rewrite the CS dice rule.  Or if I'm lazy I'll just say "damage only" simple fighter.  My fighter players have never complained that the fighter is boring.  I am writing my own set of rules, which is hard by the way, and if that reaches some level of usability I might go that way.  There are a lot of "minor" things that I accept about D&D and I could fix them all if I did it myself.


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## Doug McCrae (Sep 4, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Summing the above up, you've just described why I find the even the 2e monster manual mechanically _bores me rigid_.



I agree with you, it's terrible. It's just pointless detail, such as, as you say, what orcs eat. Stuff anyone could come up with, like dwarves don't like rust monsters or an aarakocra's feather is a material component for a fly spell.

RuneQuest's Trollpak did this kind of thing much better, and about ten years earlier.


----------



## Emerikol (Sep 4, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Disassociated mechanics:
> An aid to gamism as they mean the monsters can be wrongfooted.



I know you threw this in trying to be fair.  But if this happens it's just bad design.




Neonchameleon said:


> An aid to narrativism as they mean the monsters feel more like their mythical archetypes.



I don't see this.  I'm not sure how it even bears upon the issue.  Could you give me a specific example where the mechanic is dissociative and not and why the not helps?  

I do agree that the narrativist playstyle favors dissociative mechanics generally.  



Neonchameleon said:


> And an aid to any except the most process driven simulationism because it allows the outcomes to match the desired outcomes.




It is harder to produce a game that does not have dissociative mechanics.  No argument there.  But it is not impossible or even really hard.  It is just hard-er.  So for many people if you just slap something together it will have a dissociative mechanic.  Since many of us consider games with dissociative mechanics unplayable, it's of course worth it.

What I find really amusing is that Monte Cook is making a game (Numenera) by the way that is so dissociative it's crazy.  He is widely reviled by the 4e crowd and I doubt they are even giving him a chance.  His kickstart is doing well though and I have contributed hoping I can remove them from my games.  But each time a new article gets posted my hopes sink a little bit more.  So he is making a game for them not me.  Weird eh?


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## Emerikol (Sep 4, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Summing the above up, you've just described why I find the even the 2e monster manual mechanically _bores me rigid_.




Two things here.  I get that you enjoy the special maneuvers that 4e offered for monsters but why the hate for the extra cultural information.  This info was sorely missed by me in both 3e and 4e.  I love all the ecology etc...   As a DM I would design lairs and dungeons based on this culture.  While I realize any DM can come up with stuff, don't you think it helps new DMs and even old DMs occasionally by jarring an idea.


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## Obryn (Sep 4, 2012)

pemerton said:


> You make it sound as if I, the player, am making decisions that draw on a different pool of information from what my PC drew upon, and which don't correspond to the decisions that my PC actually made on the basis of that different pool of information.
> 
> I though that that was meant to be the very definition of "dissociation"!
> 
> After all, that's just what happens with a martial encounter power: I, the player, decide to use the power now, based on one pool of information (say, that now would be a tactically sound time to get to attack with a close burst); while my PC makes a decision based on a different pool of information to which I, the player, am not privy (say, noticing an opportunity and deciding to exploit it).



Yes.  That was kind of my point, above.  It's the same logic that allows me to say (straight-faced) that you've knocked an ooze "prone."  The mechanical effect is clear; I just need to describe the fiction in such a way that it makes sense.  Exactly the same as this definition of initiative.

-O


----------



## Bluenose (Sep 4, 2012)

Doug McCrae said:


> I agree with you, it's terrible. It's just pointless detail, such as, as you say, what orcs eat. Stuff anyone could come up with, like dwarves don't like rust monsters or an aarakocra's feather is a material component for a fly spell.
> 
> RuneQuest's Trollpak did this kind of thing much better, and about ten years earlier.




Trollpak is imo still unbettered as a product describing a race for any RPG. And had great scenarios in it too. Some Traveller 'Alien Race' products get close, but nothing else I've seen. I've seen products of comparable quality, but not Race guides.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 4, 2012)

Dissociated mechanics never left, so they couldn't really return. 

It seems to me that Dissociated Mechanics are fundamentally "Abstractions I don't like", or if you wish a less snarky description, "Abstractions that didn't work for me".


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## 1of3 (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> This would be a good description for the Gnoll's tactics section so DMs can play them adequately. But the mechanic as written doesn't capture (and doesn't even try to capture) the creature's savage nature. Instead it gives the creature a specific advantage in a combat situation and slaps the "Savage" tag onto it. The trait is a tactical mechanic for a creature in a tactical combat situation and was clearly designed from this point of view. Now this is a suitable design approach for a tactical combat game, but some may say it's problematic in a role-playing game.




Personally, I found it rather obvious what the trait refers to. The question is not, whether people see it as problematic, but if there would be a significant portion of consumers who find it difficult to make that connection. 

To describe the problem adequately, you do not even have to resort to notions of "association". It's the conflict between clarity and brevity which has been discussed since antiquity.


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## Emerikol (Sep 4, 2012)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Dissociated mechanics never left, so they couldn't really return.
> 
> It seems to me that Dissociated Mechanics are fundamentally "Abstractions I don't like", or if you wish a less snarky description, "Abstractions that didn't work for me".




This is my #1  point of contention with the other side.  People who don't understand a concept feel the need to denigrate those who do.  It's your own failing.  It's not some random distribution of preferences.  Amazingly we seem to agree on what is wrong.  So there is an underlying connection between these mechanics.  Obviously being dissociated is up to the individual.  But we are talking about something defined over the past few years so it shouldn't be a mystery to you.

Dissociated mechanics are real approaches to game design.  They were not "widely" prevalent in earlier editions of the game.  They were in 4e.  I hope they are not in 5e but it's not looking good


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## Shadeydm (Sep 4, 2012)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Dissociated mechanics never left, so they couldn't really return.
> 
> It seems to me that Dissociated Mechanics are fundamentally "Abstractions I don't like", or if you wish a less snarky description, "Abstractions that didn't work for me".




I don't get why people regard the acceptance of hit points as a green light to pile on more "abstractions" as 3E did to some extent and 4E did to the point of absurdity.
Just because I can overlook faster than light travel in my sci fi isn't a green light to pile on more wonkiness keep your medichlorians to yourself sir.


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## Obryn (Sep 4, 2012)

Shadeydm said:


> I don't get why people regard the acceptance of hit points as a green light to pile on more "abstractions" as 3E did to some extent and 4E did to the point of absurdity.
> Just because I can overlook faster than light travel in my sci fi isn't a green light to pile on more wonkiness keep your medichlorians to yourself sir.



Isn't that kind of what Mustrum_Ridicully was saying?

-O


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 4, 2012)

Shadeydm said:


> I don't get why people regard the acceptance of hit points as a green light to pile on more "abstractions" as 3E did to some extent and 4E did to the point of absurdity.
> Just because I can overlook faster than light travel in my sci fi isn't a green light to pile on more wonkiness keep your medichlorians to yourself sir.



Midichlorians seem more like the opposite - trying to make the world more "sciency" then it was before. Unfortunately ruining the entire feeling.

Which may in turn be exactly what is the problem with trying to bring more process simulation - every time you are busy resolving your process simulation your busy working with the game rules, not with the game world. The process simulation of 3E grapple rules didn't lead to fluent gameplay where you'd focus on the narrative - it lead to people looking through their spell lists to see if they had anything without Material or Somatic components or the combat chapter to see what their exact grapple modifier would be, and whether the Snake would now do Constrict damage plus Claw damage or not with its succesful check. 

While having a rule that says "...damage and you grab the target" you only need to know "grabbed = immobilized until you somehow get removed from the grabber" and can continue talking about what happens in the game world. 

But in the end, the question is not whether a mechanic is "dissociative" or "abstract" but whether it worked for you or not, and that _is_ not an objective measurement. We can describe why the mechanic is "dissociative" or "abstract" but that doesn't make it a bad or good mechanic per se. 



> his is my #1    point of contention with the other side.  People who don't understand a  concept feel the need to denigrate those who do.  It's your own  failing.  It's not some random distribution of preferences.  Amazingly  we seem to agree on what is wrong.  So there is an underlying connection  between these mechanics.  Obviously being dissociated is up to the  individual.  But we are talking about something defined over the past  few years so it shouldn't be a mystery to you.
> 
> Dissociated mechanics are real approaches to game design.  They were not  "widely" prevalent in earlier editions of the game.  They were in 4e.  I  hope they are not in 5e but it's not looking good



And my contention with the other side is that they refuse to see all the abstract/dissociative mechanics in all editions of D&D or any RPG, and single only those out that they don't like as something that is per se bad.

Hit Points are a terrible abstract and dissociative mechanic. It works perfectly fine for you, at least sufficiently so that you accept it, but it doesn't become less abstract or dissociative by that. It's just a rule that worked for you. It's not an objective better design then, say, encounter powers or Vancian magic, because of that. It's just a subjectively better design. 

Figuring out why it works better for you may need you to accept it works better because it was in D&D from the start and you grew up accepting it and seeing the elegance in the abstraction it provided rather than all the "dissociative" flaws it introduced. Because that's exactly the reason why I like AEDU, for example - because I see the elegance in it, I see what kind of interesting play options it allows and how it enriches my game experience. I don't worry about the "dissociative" flaws it has.

That doesn't mean that you have to accept just any mechanic or abstraction in your game. 
Just because you like hit points doesn't mean you have to like AEDU. YOu can fairly evaluate, but you can't not really be objective - you play it, you use it, and if it doesn't work fo ryou, it doesn't work for you. But that doesn't mean it's a bad mechanic or terrible design. You have to value advantages and drawbacks based on your preferences.

This isn't like, say, a car engine design where you have to decide between two engines with identical qualities except one needs 20 % less fuel. It's about deciding between an SUV or a sports car or a limousine or a compact car. None of these are bad designs, but some are suited to your needs and some are not.


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## pemerton (Sep 4, 2012)

Emerikol said:


> I don't see this.  I'm not sure how it even bears upon the issue.  Could you give me a specific example where the mechanic is dissociative and not and why the not helps?
> 
> I do agree that the narrativist playstyle favors dissociative mechanics generally.



Consider the Deathlock Wight's Horrific Visage power:

*Horrific Visage* (standard action; recharge 4, 5 6 ) * [Fear]
Close blast 5; +7 vs. Will; 1d6 damage, and the target is pushed 3 squares.​
I assume that this power counts as dissociated for you, because it recharges on a metagame basis, it uses the blast mechanic to model facing (ie only those on one side of the Wight can see its horriric visage), it uses an attack vs Will that deals psychic damage to model someone being frightened by a glimpse of the Wight's true undead form, and it uses forced movement (the push) to model fleeing in fear.

But for me, this is the single most evocative Wight I've ever used in nearly 30 years of fantasy RPGing. That power, when resolved at the table, perfectly captures the trope of the undead revealing its true, decaying form (like the Barrow Wights in Tolkien) and sending the heroes recoiling in horror.

Here is another power, which the Alexandrian himself puts forward as a paradigm of dissociation:

*Besieged Foe* (minor action; at-will) 
Ranged sight; automatic hit; the target is marked, and allies of the war devil gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls made against the target until the encounter ends or the war devil marks a new target.​
Whereas I have used a Deathlock Wight, I have yet to use a War Devil. But this power strikes me as excellent for doing exactly what it says in it name: bringing it about that the target is besieged. Because it gives the GM a very concrete reason to have every ally of the war devil stack on the target (to get the benefit of the +2 to hit). It's the converse of the paladin power Valiant Strike, which grants +1 to hit for every adjacent foe, therefore giving the player a reason to play his/her paladin as Valiant (ie as charging into the fray, to get the maximum benefit to hit by being surrounded by the maximum number of foes).

   [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] can of course correct me if I've misunderstood what was intended, but the above powers are example, for me, of so-called "dissociated" mechanics making monsters feel more like their mythical archtypes, and thereby reinforcing theme and hence suppporting narrative play.



Doug McCrae said:


> The player becomes immersed in the game-world, seeing it from the perspective of his own character. The rules, the dice, the character sheet, the room the player is in, vanish, or, at least, recede, and the fantasy world becomes in a sense the primary reality.
> 
> Immersion is associated with simulationism, verisimilitude, and suspension of disbelief.



I think of immersion differenty - maybe idiosyncratically. I think of it as emotional investment in the ingame situation, and in one's PC. Getting angry when the PC is angry; crying when the PC is sad; feeling love or conviction that the PC feels.

The receding of the character sheet and preeminence of the fantasy world are tangential to this. It's about emotion, not perception or cognition.



Obryn said:


> Yes.  That was kind of my point, above.



Yes, I didn't mean to give any impression that I'd missed your point. I was just adding my own comments on that somewhat curious post.



Emerikol said:


> People who don't understand a concept feel the need to denigrate those who do.  It's your own failing.  It's not some random distribution of preferences.  Amazingly we seem to agree on what is wrong.  So there is an underlying connection between these mechanics.



No one is arguing that the preferences are randomly distributed. They are disputing your explanation for the distribution. In particular, they are suggesting that you are disregarding _familiarity_ as an explanation for your acceptance of hit points.

I want to add to that candidate explanation: there were a very large number of RPGers in the late 70s through the 80s who abandoned D&D because they found hit points "dissociative" (to speak anachronistically). The people who stuck with AD&D 2nd ed, and then 3E, were those who could handle hit points. Now some of those people don't like martial encounter and daily powers.

There is no reason to think that 4e mechaniics possess some non-relational property that you and the Alexandrian can perceive, but that others of us keep missing no matter how hard we look.

I imagine it's true that many Americans associate pumpkin pie with a certain homely, holiday feeling. But don't have the same association with (say) mince pies or hot cross buns or fruit puddings. That doesn't provie that pumpkin pie has any interesting objective difference from traditional British (and therefore Australian) festive foods, though. It just shows that some people are familiar with one rather than the other.

And, in the even that that culinary analogy fails (maybe Americans _do_ tend to eat hot cross buns at Easter and mince pies and fruit puddings at Christmas), here is another one: were I overseas, Tim Tams and Vegemite would give me a certain nostalgic feeling. And that response would be non-randomly shared with a large number of other Australians. But that doesn't prove that Tim Tams and Vegemite have any inherent property that distinguishes them from (say) Oreos and Peanut Butter, neither of which would produce the same response in me or my compatriots.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 4, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Consider the Deathlock Wight's Horrific Visage power:
> 
> *Horrific Visage* (standard action; recharge 4, 5 6 ) * [Fear]
> Close blast 5; +7 vs. Will; 1d6 damage, and the target is pushed 3 squares.​




If you mixed that with blindness (probably need to dip into 3E for true blindness), or with a necromancer's skeleton (mindless), or if a player puts on a blindfold deliberately to (try to) avoid the effect, what happens?  (Perhaps 4E has creatures with immunity to fear because of their nature, so the skeleton example may or may not work.)

Probably, blindness won't work, since the "Visage" implication of a visual effect is not correct.  Maybe there is a sound effect, too, but that doesn't matter either.  The practical details of effect make it most similar to a purely psychic effect such as an Illithid mind blast.  But then, why doesn't the power have [Fear, Psychic]?  Does the power work entirely through the senses, partly through the senses and partly on the psychic level, or entirely on the psychic level?

TomB


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## triqui (Sep 4, 2012)

Vegepygmy said:


> It's a small headscratcher, yes, but only a small one. You (the player) are indeed reacting to what the other _characters_ have spent their 6 seconds doing, but your _character_ has been acting (not necessarily reacting) during those same 6 seconds.
> 
> Yes. You (the player) are reacting, but 'somehow' _your character_ is acting at the same time they are. It's a little counterintuitive, but c'mon...it's not _that_ incomprehensible.




It's a big gorilla riding an orange donkey playing the banjo right in the middle of the room. It's just that we are used to it, and we understand it is unavoidable without real time computing or extremely complex rules, so we ignore it, and be perfectly happy with it, while other gorillas we are unable to ignore, because they are new, we aren't used to it, or we feel the game could be modeled without them. Not because they are bigger.

To put an example: if the NBA would use D&D (or most RPG, for that matter) rules, every single player would made a lay up every single time, as the defenders can´t move and keep with the attackers. It's my turn, I move past you and wave my hand saying you farewell. and you don't have a chance to move and block me until it is your turn.

Example: We are fighting. I have a bow. You are spending your 6 seconds trying to melee me. I make a 5' step. As a free action, I say "I'm going to screw you from here during six seconds, you dumb ass. I couldn´t, if you could follow me and keep in melee range. I dare you to do so, stupid". Then I proceed to full round you with half a dozen arrows, thanks to high attack bonus, rapid shot, and full round. Of course, I can´t shoot 6 arrows in a split of a second. I need the full 6 seconds to shoot my 6 arrows. And, in fact, I *do* spend my six seconds to make my six shots. THEN, and only THEN, when I'm finished with my 6'' of arrow shooting, IF you are still alive, you can move 5' and get into range again. Until then, you are freezed


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## triqui (Sep 4, 2012)

Emerikol said:


> This is my [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=1]#1 [/URL]  point of contention with the other side.  People who don't understand a concept feel the need to denigrate those who do.  It's your own failing.




You mean like those who don't understand martial dailies association with fatigue? Or those who don't understand hit points association with health? Or those who don't understand "rounds" and "initiative"  and "full round actions" association with a fluid combat? Because I see people doing any of them. Some raise the dissocaitve bar higher than others, and thus some preffer this, or that, game mechanic, and claim  that it is not dissociatied, while the others are.


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## Obryn (Sep 4, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> If you mixed that with blindness (probably need to dip into 3E for true blindness), or with a necromancer's skeleton (mindless), or if a player puts on a blindfold deliberately to (try to) avoid the effect, what happens?  (Perhaps 4E has creatures with immunity to fear because of their nature, so the skeleton example may or may not work.)
> 
> Probably, blindness won't work, since the "Visage" implication of a visual effect is not correct.  Maybe there is a sound effect, too, but that doesn't matter either.  The practical details of effect make it most similar to a purely psychic effect such as an Illithid mind blast.  But then, why doesn't the power have [Fear, Psychic]?  Does the power work entirely through the senses, partly through the senses and partly on the psychic level, or entirely on the psychic level?
> 
> TomB



If it has the "gaze" keyword, being blind indeed blocks it.  This doesn't.

Horrific Visage does, indeed, have the psychic keyword, in addition to dealing psychic damage; it was probably left off pemerton's post just for space consideration.

-O


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 4, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Consider the Deathlock Wight's Horrific Visage power:*Horrific Visage* (standard action; recharge 4, 5 6 ) * [Fear]
> Close blast 5; +7 vs. Will; 1d6 damage, and the target is pushed 3 squares.​I assume that this power counts as dissociated for you, because it recharges on a metagame basis, it uses the blast mechanic to model facing (ie only those on one side of the Wight can see its horriric visage), it uses an attack vs Will that deals psychic damage to model someone being frightened by a glimpse of the Wight's true undead form, and it uses forced movement (the push) to model fleeing in fear.
> 
> But for me, this is the single most evocative Wight I've ever used in nearly 30 years of fantasy RPGing. That power, when resolved at the table, perfectly captures the trope of the undead revealing its true, decaying form (like the Barrow Wights in Tolkien) and sending the heroes recoiling in horror.
> ...




For the record this is absoutely correct.

If my character concept is a Paladin in shining armour who charges into the midst of the foe, challenging them all and powers are associated then my Paladin is, to put it bluntly, much much more stupid than his mount - and I need to play stupidly.  His only reward for this, despite it being a mythic archetype, is going to be a Darwin Award.  And trying to play my Paladin is an unpleasant experience because the game is (arguably justifiably) penalising me for playing the archetype I want to.

If my character concept is a Paladin in shining armour who charges into  the midst of the foe, challenging them all and powers are disassociated 4e style, then my Paladin may still be much more stupid than his mount.  But I'm playing the mythic archetype - and the game rewards me for doing so.  Now charging into the midst of enemies is still a high risk maneuver - I'm surrounded and likely to be gang-shanked.  But it's only a risky maneuver, not a completely stupid one because I get a benefit for behaving in character.  So this becomes a positive play experience - the game rewards me for playing to the archetype.



To pick another illustration, there are two ways of modelling alcoholic characters.  I'm going to call them GURPS and FATE just for the sake of argument.  In GURPS an alcoholic character in the presence of alcohol needs to make a roll not to drink.  A perfectly associated mechanic.  In FATE, the DM offers a fate point to have someone's alcoholism become a problem.  Completely disassociated.

What are the results of this?

In GURPS, getting an alcoholic character into a bar is normally incredibly difficult.  They almost all behave like recovering alcholics who won't let liquor in the house.  It's a simple risk-reward matrix; drinking is all risk and no reward for a GURPS alcoholic character.  The rules even explicitely say that it's an addiction and the character drinks in the evening but this normally has no effect on the game unless they are in the presence of alcohol.

In FATE, an alcoholic character really is an alcoholic.  You'll normally find them in their down time round a bar - and always tempted to take those extra drinks at just the wrong moment.  After all, the FATE points feel good, and they can handle it (or so they _think)_.  And going cold turkey is actually hard.

One is process mapped to alcohol addiction.  The other encourages you to behave as someone with a drinking problem.  I'll leave it to the reader to guess which I consider leads to the more immersive character.



> I think of immersion differenty - maybe idiosyncratically. I think of it as emotional investment in the ingame situation, and in one's PC. Getting angry when the PC is angry; crying when the PC is sad; feeling love or conviction that the PC feels.
> 
> The receding of the character sheet and preeminence of the fantasy world are tangential to this. It's about emotion, not perception or cognition.



That isn't idiosyncratic.  At least if it is I share it.  The process as opposed to the emotional mapping just gets in the way IME.



> No one is arguing that the preferences are randomly distributed. They are disputing your explanation for the distribution. In particular, they are suggesting that you are disregarding _familiarity_ as an explanation for your acceptance of hit points.
> ...
> I imagine it's true that many Americans associate pumpkin pie with a certain homely, holiday feeling. But don't have the same association with (say) mince pies or hot cross buns or fruit puddings. That doesn't provie that pumpkin pie has any interesting objective difference from traditional British (and therefore Australian) festive foods, though. It just shows that some people are familiar with one rather than the other.



This.  A thousand times this.

And I think that familiarity and mindset also comes in the other way.  You and I look at that Deathlock Wight you quoted above and almost instantly see what's going on.  My thought processes as DM are something like 


"Horrific Visage"?  Ah.  It's showing its face.
"Fear"?, "Psychic"?, "vs Will"?  It's terrifying them by projecting its true face into their minds.
"Close Blast 5?  Push?"  It's only affecting people on one side of itself.  And everyone recoils.
Therefore from just those few lines I construct something functionally identical to :Horrific Visage (Su)
As a standard action, once every 1d3 rounds, the Wight can project a reflection of the dark horror that it in fact is into the mind of all those in front of it.  Every enemy not immune to fear in a twenty five foot cone starting at its face must make a DC18 Will save or recoil in fear, retreating fifteen feet, stopping at the nearest wall, and taking 1d6 psychic damage.​Would those four lines of text be considered an associated ability?  Because those are more or less what I (and I think @pmerton and others) see when I read the Deathlock Wight's Horrific Visage power.


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## pemerton (Sep 4, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> If you mixed that with blindness (probably need to dip into 3E for true blindness), or with a necromancer's skeleton (mindless), or if a player puts on a blindfold deliberately to (try to) avoid the effect, what happens?  (Perhaps 4E has creatures with immunity to fear because of their nature, so the skeleton example may or may not work.)
> 
> Probably, blindness won't work, since the "Visage" implication of a visual effect is not correct.  Maybe there is a sound effect, too, but that doesn't matter either.  The practical details of effect make it most similar to a purely psychic effect such as an Illithid mind blast.  But then, why doesn't the power have [Fear, Psychic]?  Does the power work entirely through the senses, partly through the senses and partly on the psychic level, or entirely on the psychic level?



Good questions. (Which reinforce my intuitoin that Emerikol would classify this as a "dissociated" power.)

I think it probably should be psychic damage, with the [psychic] keyword, and the failure to stat it up that way is just an error or an oversight.

On the question about [fear] effects and skeletons, that goes to who has what sorts of immunities. These are scarcer in 4e than 3E, but a mindless skeleton could in principle be immune to fear and/or have psychic resistance.

I think the most interesting question is how, if at all, a blindfold, earplugs etc help. The game leaves this up to the GM to adjudicate. It is not a [gaze] attack, so blindness does not automatically provide immunity, but I think it would be reasonable to have it give the Wight a penalty to attack (-2 is the default circumstance penalty in 4e). This requires the GM and the player to be ready to negotiate some fictional details on the run. My personal view is that 4e's otherwise fairly robust maths helps with this, by giving the player confidence that what is at stake is a meaningful adjustment to what is, nevertheless, a basically mechanically fair starting point, rather than the PC's life or death turning on the GM's arbitration of the situation.


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## Killer GM (Sep 4, 2012)




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## pemerton (Sep 4, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> To pick another illustration, there are two ways of modelling alcoholic characters.  I'm going to call them GURPS and FATE just for the sake of argument.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> One is process mapped to alcohol addiction.  The other encourages you to behave as someone with a drinking problem.  I'll leave it to the reader to guess which I consider leads to the more immersive character.



At the risk of setting up a bit of an echo chamber, I'll quote this for truth.


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## Obryn (Sep 4, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I think it probably should be psychic damage, with the [psychic] keyword, and the failure to stat it up that way is just an error or an oversight.



It does, per the compendium.

-O


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## Jeff Carlsen (Sep 4, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> I still believe it is dissociated. The problem I see here is that "a character realizing that he can act despite his fear" should not be represented as an action in a six second turn sequence alongside actions like casting a spell, attacking someone with a sword or drinking a potion. It brings up difficult questions such as: Why couldn't the character just realize that he can act despite of his fear when he was first affected by the fear effect? Does it really take him six seconds to come to this realization? Shouldn't it be a free action? Why can't the character take a double move while he has this realization? And so on.
> 
> Also I believe that retroactively fixing these mechanics is not the best way to go. To pull a quote from the Alexandrian's blog post:
> 
> " The flip side of the “explaining it all away” misconception is the “it’s easy to fix” fallacy. Instead of providing an improvised description that explains what the mechanic did after the fact, we instead rewrite the ability to provide an explanation and, thus, re-associate the dissociated mechanic. "





My point was that the Halfling actually has to stop and talk himself into acting, which would be an action. Of course, that's the story my mind came up with when I saw the mechanic, so perhaps I've made the association. So your point remains at least so far as the action need to be described as to what it is.


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## Remathilis (Sep 4, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> If you mixed that with blindness (probably need to dip into 3E for true blindness), or with a necromancer's skeleton (mindless), or if a player puts on a blindfold deliberately to (try to) avoid the effect, what happens?  (Perhaps 4E has creatures with immunity to fear because of their nature, so the skeleton example may or may not work.)
> 
> Probably, blindness won't work, since the "Visage" implication of a visual effect is not correct.  Maybe there is a sound effect, too, but that doesn't matter either.  The practical details of effect make it most similar to a purely psychic effect such as an Illithid mind blast.  But then, why doesn't the power have [Fear, Psychic]?  Does the power work entirely through the senses, partly through the senses and partly on the psychic level, or entirely on the psychic level?
> 
> TomB




More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 4, 2012)

Remathilis said:


> More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?




I suspect your first time will be the worst.  But see no reason at all you aren't going to be staggered by repitions.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 4, 2012)

Remathilis said:


> More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?



That depends on what "True Horror" means. But I figure that, say, a man like Giger that has night terrors regularly will find it impossible to get accustomed to his horrors, and my own experiences with dreams where I realize that I forget to take an important exam meaning that I'll lose my diploma (or never gotten it) can repeat as often as it likes, it never ends its horror (for that dream - waking up of course is always a plreasure,m realizing that it was all just a stupid dream..). Where as a soldier that has seen his share of dead may not find as much horror in it as he used to the first time around ...


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## slobster (Sep 4, 2012)

Remathilis said:


> More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?




Well, it is psychic trauma. It bypasses your normal ways of coping with pain and discomfort. It could be like having the person you love tell you that they don't love you anymore. Experiencing it once doesn't mean it gets any easier if it happens again. If anything, the knowing of how painful it really is makes the anticipation and terror all the more powerful.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Sep 4, 2012)

slobster said:


> Well, it is psychic trauma. It bypasses your normal ways of coping with pain and discomfort. It could be like having the person you love tell you that they don't love you anymore. Experiencing it once doesn't mean it gets any easier if it happens again. If anything, the knowing of how painful it really is makes the anticipation and terror all the more powerful.



But in some ways, I realize the answer is definitely yes - you'll probably get some XP from this experience, bringing you closer to a level with a higher defense - at least this particular "true horror" you may get a bit more resilient against...


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## LostSoul (Sep 4, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> If you mixed that with blindness (probably need to dip into 3E for true blindness), or with a necromancer's skeleton (mindless), or if a player puts on a blindfold deliberately to (try to) avoid the effect, what happens?  (Perhaps 4E has creatures with immunity to fear because of their nature, so the skeleton example may or may not work.)




When I run 4E I decide what the wight is doing and describe it.  Based on that description, using blindfolds or averting your eyes may have an affect on its Horrific Visage.

What I find interesting about 4E is that it's not hard to resolve crazy actions that follow from the fiction:

Player: What would happen if I got out a mirror and made it see its own Horrific Visage?
DM: (thinks about the game world) ... Do you know?
Player: No, that's why I asked!
DM: Okay, make a Religion check to find out.
Player: (success)
DM: Well, I think it's an old trope that evil spirits don't like to look at their own reflections.  So yeah, it would probably get blasted back if it looked at itself.  "Oh, the horror I have become reminds me of what I once was, and what I have lost."
Player: I'll do that then.
DM: Cool, make a Wis or Cha attack against Will for (page 42 high regular) damage.  If you "bless" the mirror somehow - Undead Ward, maybe? - you could probably add some kind of proficiency bonus to that.
Player: Nice.  Can I do that again without the Religion check?
DM: Sure, you know how it works now.​


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## slobster (Sep 4, 2012)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But in some ways, I realize the answer is definitely yes - you'll probably get some XP from this experience, bringing you closer to a level with a higher defense - at least this particular "true horror" you may get a bit more resilient against...




Fair enough.  In the long run you get a little better at compartmentalizing your reactions, even resisting it sometimes. Every time is still a struggle, though.


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## 1of3 (Sep 4, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> If my character concept is a Paladin in shining armour who charges into the midst of the foe, challenging them all and powers are associated then my Paladin is, to put it bluntly, much much more stupid than his mount - and I need to play stupidly.  His only reward for this, despite it being a mythic archetype, is going to be a Darwin Award.  And trying to play my Paladin is an unpleasant experience because the game is (arguably justifiably) penalising me for playing the archetype I want to.
> 
> If my character concept is a Paladin in shining armour who charges into  the midst of the foe, challenging them all and powers are disassociated 4e style, then my Paladin may still be much more stupid than his mount.  But I'm playing the mythic archetype - and the game rewards me for doing so.  Now charging into the midst of enemies is still a high risk maneuver - I'm surrounded and likely to be gang-shanked.  But it's only a risky maneuver, not a completely stupid one because I get a benefit for behaving in character.  So this becomes a positive play experience - the game rewards me for playing to the archetype.




While the rest of your post is spot on, this passage shows just one more problem with the term "association". - There is no consensus on what it means. Here it is equivalent to "gritty", "down to earth". Why should shooting lasers from your eyes be "disassciated" in a super hero game? Why should charging an army be "disassociated" in D&D?

For Ioun's sake, guys, just say what you want to say, use ordinary words, get a thesaurus.


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## triqui (Sep 4, 2012)

Remathilis said:


> More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?




Why not? "It's magic". And people who has seen (and killed) dozens of dragons, still have to roll vs dragon fear, in any edition I've played.


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## Cybit (Sep 4, 2012)

So as someone who spent a lot of time (2+ hours) talking to the developers at PAX Prime (I was enforcing many of the rooms they were in, and went to all 5 panels, including the two dungeon panels that basically no one knew about)...I can definitively state the following

1) This version of the game will easily be the most narrative / flavor heavy of the game.  *Classes* aren't being created unless they have a specific spot in the narrative and flavor.  Every time a question was asked, the narrative / flavor element was the first thing discussed, it was talked about 90% of the time, and then they talked about the mechanics.  

2) The playtest is brief on descriptions in some places because, well, it's either "describe out a certain part" or "add extra class we want playtested".  I have no fear that a final release of the game will have maybe even too much flavor.

3) As for dissociated mechanics, they're deliberately trying to avoid that.  Mike even talked about the CAGI problem (Come and Get It, one of the more dissociative powers in 4E), and how they are going out of their way to avoid it.  

As an aside; these boards have terrible speculation and info going across it as a whole.  There are a ton of assumptions being thrown around, and frankly, most of this crap is wrong.  I'm going to try to type up a summary of what was said at Prime later tonight / this week.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 4, 2012)

Remathilis said:


> More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?




Seems to me that inuring yourself against the horror ought to have an in-game effect.  Call of Cthuhu has rules to handle this (repeat exposures do less sanity damage; the accumulation of sanity damage leads to psychological impairment, eventually).

In 3E and 4E, I'm not aware of any similar mechanism.  There are some effects which have a note of "this effect cannot affect the same target again in the same 24 hour period".

For "Horrible Visage", that seems to be designed to work repeatedly.  That is, the monster probably is substantially nerfed if the effect only works once.

Thx!

TomB


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## tomBitonti (Sep 4, 2012)

A different problem of Horrifying Visage is that the "push" is actually a target action taken immediately on the Wight's turn.

That works for me, but only as a "90%" case: That is, in 90% of cases the result of the visage will be that the target reacts to move away from the wight.  (But then again, maybe 90% is too high: The wight is an evil bastard, and will try to use it's visage ability to force the target into a harmful location whenever possible.  Wights are mean like that.)

But then, "Push" is misleading, in that it really isn't the same as a "Push" from a bull rush.  In this case, "Push" is really "Forced Movement".

But then, what if you used Horrifying Visage against a held or webbed opponent?  Or against a slowly oozing intelligent gelatinous cube which has a two square movement?  What if the terrain behind the target was a slippery slope which required a climb or perhaps a balance check?

Then, the problem isn't so much disassociation, but instead that the ruled effect is too coarse for some tastes.  Some folks will be OK with the 90% case, and others will want to have more details.

Some of that turns into a control issue: The rules designers taking away the ability for the GM to manage the details of the game.  Which turns into a trust and question of motivations issue very quickly.

Thx!

TomB


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## AntiStateQuixote (Sep 4, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> Some of that turns into a control issue: The rules designers taking away the ability for the GM to manage the details of the game.  Which turns into a trust and question of motivations issue very quickly.




Funny story: I once DM'd a 4e game and chose to ignore a PC's ability to knock a gelatinous cube prone because it didn't make sense. No one from WotC came to revoke my DM certification for not adhering exactly to the rules as written.

I doubt they would show up if I said a push (fear) power could only make you move your movement rate or not at all if you're grabbed, webbed, etc.


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## Bluenose (Sep 4, 2012)

Brent_Nall said:


> Funny story: I once DM'd a 4e game and chose to ignore a PC's ability to knock a gelatinous cube prone because it didn't make sense. No one from WotC came to revoke my DM certification for not adhering exactly to the rules as written.
> 
> I doubt they would show up if I said a push (fear) power could only make you move your movement rate or not at all if you're grabbed, webbed, etc.




Whereas I'd probably say that it did move restrained targets, since the sheer terror provoked the sort of adrenaline rush that makes people do things they couldn't normally do. And I don't think anyone from WotC could revoke my GM certification, which isn't in D&D. Of course, 5e is going to give us the power to make that sort of decision back.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 4, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> But then, what if you used Horrifying Visage against a held or webbed opponent?  Or against a slowly oozing intelligent gelatinous cube which has a two square movement?  What if the terrain behind the target was a slippery slope which required a climb or perhaps a balance check?
> 
> Then, the problem isn't so much disassociation, but instead that the ruled effect is too coarse for some tastes.  Some folks will be OK with the 90% case, and others will want to have more details.




And to be honest, that is the valid point buried away in the edition warring screed that is The Alexandrian's little essay.  That the effects might all be valid - but second order interactions between them when you have multiple effects flying around can get ... complex. And this is one reason we have DMs.


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## innerdude (Sep 4, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> And to be honest, that is the valid point buried away in the edition warring screed that is The Alexandrian's little essay.  That the effects might all be valid - but second order interactions between them when you have multiple effects flying around can get ... complex. And this is one reason we have DMs.




But as a player, I may want to know in the future EXACTLY how those second-order interactions play out, because it may have vast ramifications on the "fiction," in both the character-driven, and world-building sense. 

The problem with much of the narrativist flavor as espoused in 4e, is that such second-order interactions are often only scene-specific, or even instance-specific. There may be ZERO causal link in the fiction between one particular interaction of a narrativist mechanic, and one that happens literally two rounds later, _even though they're the exact same mechanic as written in the rules_. 

That's the crux of my beef with "dissociation," as the term is usually bandied about (though it's really more a function of where narrative control lies between players and GM, and how willing players and GMs are to construct narrative on the fly without it affecting other aspects of gameplay). 

I totally get that other groups don't have this problem, that it's not really ingrained in how they play, but people talk all the time about how a character in combat would be willing to leverage any advantage they have--using whatever options they have at their disposal. Narrativist mechanics without concrete second-order implications make it very difficult for both players and GMs to make many kinds of "emergent" gameplay possible. It makes it especially difficult for both the player and character, if you're in actor stance, to leverage the ability to learn and adapt to what the character is experiencing in the game world.


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## erleni (Sep 4, 2012)

innerdude said:


> But as a player, I may want to know in the future EXACTLY how those second-order interactions play out, because it may have vast ramifications on the "fiction," in both the character-driven, and world-building sense.
> 
> The problem with much of the narrativist flavor as espoused in 4e, is that such second-order interactions are often only scene-specific, or even instance-specific. There may be ZERO causal link in the fiction between one particular interaction of a narrativist mechanic, and one that happens literally two rounds later, _even though they're the exact same mechanic as written in the rules_.
> 
> ...




I really don't get you... To me most of D&D mechanics are dissociated.
HP are dissociated. Hitting is dissociated. Trying to enforce a sort of "realism" into the mechanics is pointless. I don't want to simulate some sort of fantasy reality, I just want a good game.
But I'm one of those who never had an issue with Come and Get It...


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 4, 2012)

innerdude said:


> But as a player, I may want to know in the future EXACTLY how those second-order interactions play out, because it may have vast ramifications on the "fiction," in both the character-driven, and world-building sense.




You know, I have exactly this problem with hit points and anything that interacts with them.  It's the old "Drop a tenth level fighter from orbit head first" problem.

Any game rules are a map not the territory itself.  And do their best to reflect the territory.  But there are basically three ways of handling complex situations.

1: Model everything as precisely as possible.  The GURPS way (and one D&D has never done - no game with hp can).  This was really big in the 70s and 80s.  This has a lot of problems, not the least of which is that most effects in a game like this are fiddly and/or dull.  You reach the GURPS alcoholic I mentioned earlier.  And a lot of very fiddly numbers.

2: Abstract rules as in FATE, Dread, Wushu, Fiasco, or Dogs in the Vineyard.  Most modern StoryGames fit this pattern.  These produce an excellent and evocative play experience but the actual fluff is almost entirely up to the players.  It can handle anything rather than just specific effects laid down by the rules - but exploiting the fiction is much harder.

3: Hybrid as in D&D, Cortex, Storyteller.  (And I think most of the major gaming systems of the past 20 years).  The goal here is to get near enough the fiction without the complexity of the world and modelling all of it slowing you down.  The more towards the abstract you go, the more you can do - but on the flipside the more of these second order interactions turn up that the game is not directly equipped to handle.



> The problem with much of the narrativist flavor as espoused in 4e, is that such second-order interactions are often only scene-specific, or even instance-specific. There may be ZERO causal link in the fiction between one particular interaction of a narrativist mechanic, and one that happens literally two rounds later, _even though they're the exact same mechanic as written in the rules_.




That's not a problem.  _That's the reason you need a DM_.  Well, one reason.  It crops up more in 4e than previous editions because 4e is fundamentally more ambitious - and does 3.X even _try_ to say what happens when someone trapped in a Web gets hit by Gust of Wind or even a Bull Rush?  It's in the undefined territory.



> Narrativist mechanics without concrete second-order implications make it very difficult for both players and GMs to make many kinds of "emergent" gameplay possible. It makes it especially difficult for both the player and character, if you're in actor stance, to leverage the ability to learn and adapt to what the character is experiencing in the game world.




That depends entirely on DMing - and if in doubt _ask your DM_.  As a DM I'd answer that sort of question (or make you roll an arcana check) happily.  And try to be consistent.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Sep 4, 2012)

I don't see why, with horrific visage, you couldn't modify it to better represent fleeing in fear. Instead of Push 3, have Ongoing Forced Movement (combining two existing mechanics) so that at the start of your turn you must move away from the wight - if you can't, you can't, and nobody is forcing you into anything, there'll be no save against being pushed into a hazard to fall prone instead. It should definitely have Fear and Psychic as keywords though.


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## airwalkrr (Sep 4, 2012)

I think Sir Robilar makes some very good points. However I would disagree with some of them. Particularly, I believe there is something to be said for brevity. I the name of an ability already conveys a modicum of meaning as to how the ability works (disciplined comes to mind; clearly to me this is representing the benefit of training in cooperation in battle against a mutual foe), then there is no need to explain how it works.

Some mechanics I do dislike however, such as armor piercing on the Minotaur. Essentially the Minotaur attack is completely unavoidable. That is difficult for me to justify in my head, although the abstraction of hit points does make it easier. At the very least I can rationalize it by saying there is something magical about a minotaur's charge that makes it unavoidable; it will always cause at least a scratch. But the term "armor piercing" does not seem to describe that at all.

Nevertheless, I find these all to be fairly minor quibbles in what I think is shaping up to be a good game, at the very least one I would happily play, which is not the way I felt about 4e.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 4, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> I don't see why, with horrific visage, you couldn't modify it to better represent fleeing in fear. Instead of Push 3, have Ongoing Forced Movement (combining two existing mechanics) so that at the start of your turn you must move away from the wight - if you can't, you can't, and nobody is forcing you into anything, there'll be no save against being pushed into a hazard to fall prone instead. It should definitely have Fear and Psychic as keywords though.




Well, you could, except that for the rules setting (4E), that doesn't fit the style of the rule.  4E has a lot of immediate forced movement which is actually the target moving in response to an event.  To my knowledge, those are all modeled as "Push".

In 3E, there is a state of "Panicked", where you drop everything and flee.  That doesn't fit the intent, which is much more lightweight than the 3E effect.

The difference is interesting: A character "choosing" to move, but on an opponents turn and requiring no action cost, vs a character "choosing" to move but only on their next initiative, and with an action cost.

Also interesting, for this power, is that it does damage by causing fear to an opponent.  Actual damage, or an example of morale factoring in to hit points?

I always thought that a "dive for cover" mechanic would make sense as a similar "forced movement" mechanic.  That could be done as: "Dive for cover: Prerequisite: Dex 13+, Spellcraft 10 + Spell Level: Encounter: Take an immediate action to move out of an area effect.  You may move up to two squares, and gain a +4 bonus to your defense for using this power."

I actually would prefer that you get a new will save upon encountering an obstacle.  Have you ever jumped back from a fright (say, you walk into a spiders web, a BIG one), where you jump back a step as a new instantaneous reaction?  Or, have you seen an animal (say, a cat which is cornered) jumping frantically for any purchase on unclimbable walls?  I saw that once when one of my cats escaped to a building hallway, and was cornered at the end of the hallway.

That is all getting beyond the initial point (re: disassociative mechanics), so I'm stopping there.

Thx!

TomB


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## pemerton (Sep 4, 2012)

Obryn said:


> It does, per the compendium.



Thanks.

That is not in the errata, but seems to have been introduced in the MM updates that Logan Bonner was doing. And makes complete sense.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 4, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> I don't see why, with horrific visage, you couldn't modify it to better represent fleeing in fear. Instead of Push 3, have Ongoing Forced Movement (combining two existing mechanics) so that at the start of your turn you must move away from the wight - if you can't, you can't, and nobody is forcing you into anything, there'll be no save against being pushed into a hazard to fall prone instead. It should definitely have Fear and Psychic as keywords though.




You could in theory.  But there are at least three good gameplay reasons why you _shouldn't_.

The first is that if you do it that way there's a _hideous_ interaction with opportunity attacks.  If the PC is moving using a move action, everyone adjacent to them gets a free swing, and that's just too much.

The second is action denial.  People don't mind forced movement but don't like having their actions denied.  It feels as if your PC is being taken out of your control - a negative experience.

The third is narrative - and partly a consequence of not all melee classes having strong charge attacks.  With your forced movement you can waste a whole turn.  With the forced movement as written, you recoil, steel yourself, step back in, and try to send the Wight back where it came from.  If all melee PCs could charge effectively this wouldn't be as much of an issue.


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## pemerton (Sep 5, 2012)

Remathilis said:


> More importantly; if you've seen the "true horror of the undead" once, are you going to experience the same effect when exposed to it again?





triqui said:


> Why not? "It's magic". And people who has seen (and killed) dozens of dragons, still have to roll vs dragon fear, in any edition I've played.



Rolemaster, in a variant rule for Fear effects introduced in Rolemaster Companion II, had a rule where PCs got a bonus to save vs fear based on the number of prior exposures to the same stimulus (eg undead, demons, etc). I can report from experience that the pain of tracking it probably outweighs any benefit of verisimilitude that it yields.



tomBitonti said:


> A different problem of Horrifying Visage is that the "push" is actually a target action taken immediately on the Wight's turn.
> 
> That works for me, but only as a "90%" case: That is, in 90% of cases the result of the visage will be that the target reacts to move away from the wight.
> 
> ...



Your comment on Forced Movement is correct. In 4e the same mechanic (Forced Movement) is used for a range of purposes: to model physical pulling or pushing, fleeing in fear, closing rashly (Come and Get It), facilitating an ally's movement, etc. It's a very flexible, widely applicable mechanic. To work out what is actually happening in the fiction when it is used requires looking at other features of the context, the relevant power's keywords, etc. This is not very different, in principle, from the fact that hit point loss can mean a range of different things depending on context.

On the particular point about the held or webbed, 4e does have rules for this: forced movement breaks immobilisation but not restraint. So a grappled target of Horrific Visage will break free (his/her strength augmented by terror!) but a target restrained in webbing will struggle in vain.

The ooze is a corner case. Here is another, similar corner case: when an ooze or snake is knocked "prone", according to the rules it imposes a -2 penalty to ranged attacks from non-adjacent enemies. Why? (This penalty is very obviously meant to reflect the typical case, where a prone target presents a much smaller vertical profile than usual.) I think the average GM can probably adjudicate these corner cases without too much trouble (eg just ignore them, if the group doesn't care, or provide any modest tweak to the outcome that is needed to satisfy the group at the table).

The difficult terrain issue is covered fairly clearly by the rules: forced movement is not affected by difficult terrain, but is affected by blocking and challenging terrain unless the GM applies a special adjudication (for example, a push from a giant's club might send you flying through the air cartoon-style, so you don't fall down an adjacent pit but instead find yourself on the other side of it). So if you're fleeing from the wight and bump into a cliff, you're too panicked to climb! If you're fleeing from the wight and come across a pit, you might stumble into it in your panic!

The pit issue actually came up when I used a deathlock wight. The players (and their PCs) had worked out that there were pits around (I can't remember exactly how - they may have been in a lower-level room and seen the holes in the ceiling, and then gone back to the upper level and heading into the area which they could work out must have holes in its floor). So they roped together.

The room with the pits also had the wight, and it did blast their minds with its horrific visage. At least one PC did fall into the pit, but the rope held, and the dwarf fighter - who was the anchor for the roped-together party - made his STR check. The players were very pleased, because their foresight and planning had paid off!



LostSoul said:


> When I run 4E I decide what the wight is doing and describe it.  Based on that description, using blindfolds or averting your eyes may have an affect on its Horrific Visage.
> 
> What I find interesting about 4E is that it's not hard to resolve crazy actions that follow from the fiction



In my own wight encounter, it was the roping together as described above. (I can't remember now what the DC was for the STR check, but would have set it using the tables from the DMG.)


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## GreyICE (Sep 5, 2012)

I rolled a natural 1 on my attempt to give Neonchameleon experience points for being awesome.  

I'm sure I'll get another opportunity later~


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## pemerton (Sep 5, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> It should definitely have Fear and Psychic as keywords though.



It has both: Fear as originally printed, and Psychic via stealth errata. (And as I posted upthread, the failure to have Psychic from the get-go is a pretty obvious oversight.)



tomBitonti said:


> 4E has a lot of immediate forced movement which is actually the target moving in response to an event.  To my knowledge, those are all modeled as "Push".
> 
> In 3E, there is a state of "Panicked", where you drop everything and flee.  That doesn't fit the intent, which is much more lightweight than the 3E effect.
> 
> The difference is interesting: A character "choosing" to move, but on an opponents turn and requiring no action cost, vs a character "choosing" to move but only on their next initiative, and with an action cost.



All this seems right to me.



airwalkrr said:


> Some mechanics I do dislike however, such as armor piercing on the Minotaur. Essentially the Minotaur attack is completely unavoidable.



Huh? All you have to do is inflict enough penalties on the Minotaur that it misses AC 10.


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## FireLance (Sep 5, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Huh? All you have to do is inflict enough penalties on the Minotaur that it misses AC 10.



Actually, the _attack roll_ has to be at least 10. If the minotaur misses on a roll of 9 or less, it doesn't deal any damage.

Now, if we were to model this mechanic in 3e or 4e, we would probably have something along the lines of: if the minotaur misses an attack against AC, but still hits the target's touch AC or Reflex, it deals 4 points of damage. 

However, what we are up against in 5e is that we don't have a touch AC value (probably for simplicity), and the developers probably don't want to get the players to deduct their PCs' armor bonus from their AC at the table.

You could probably make it seem a little less disassociated if it gets worded as follows: if the minotaur misses an attack, add 4 points to its attack roll. If it now hits the target, the target takes 4 points of damage. However, you still get corner cases: an unarmored target, for example, still gets "hit" and takes damage even though it has no armor to pierce.

You know, I'm starting to think that there are no disassociated mechanics, simply disassociated names (or alternately, there are no disassociated mechanics, only disassociated _non-magical_ mechanics).


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## pemerton (Sep 5, 2012)

FireLance said:


> Actually, the _attack roll_ has to be at least 10. If the minotaur misses on a roll of 9 or less, it doesn't deal any damage.



Ah, I misread that - so it's the same a Glancing Blow, then, except for the fixed damage.

Still, that doesn't seem very mysterious to me - the modelling might be a bit rough-and-ready (eg it's not as nuanced as your touch-AC variant), but it hardly reeks of "it must be magic!"



FireLance said:


> I'm starting to think that there are no disassociated mechanics, simply disassociated names (or alternately, there are no disassociated mechanics, only disassociated non-magical mechanics).



I haven't worked out yet how a "dissociated" mechanic differs from a metagame mechanic that someone dislikes!

Except now all these things which are pretty obviously not metagame, but simply rough-and-ready process simulations- the minotaur's armour piercing, the gnoll's pack savagery, the hobgoblin's discipline - are being called out as dissociated!

It's weird. But you're right that dissociation is confined to the non-magical, and - once imperfect process simulations start to get labelled as dissociated - almost impossible for the non-magical to avoid!


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## FireLance (Sep 5, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Except now all these things which are pretty obviously not metagame, but simply rough-and-ready process simulations- the minotaur's armour piercing, the gnoll's pack savagery, the hobgoblin's discipline - are being called out as dissociated!



Ha! I remember rough-and-ready process simulations. We had a 1 in 6 chance of finding secret doors (1-2 in 6 for elves) ... and we liked it!


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## Chris_Nightwing (Sep 5, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> You could in theory.  But there are at least three good gameplay reasons why you _shouldn't_.
> 
> The first is that if you do it that way there's a _hideous_ interaction with opportunity attacks.  If the PC is moving using a move action, everyone adjacent to them gets a free swing, and that's just too much.
> 
> ...




You've misinterpreted by idea. All I want is the forced movement to take place at the start of a player's turn and to be under their control. It would not use up an action, it would not provoke OA (though the fact that forced movement doesn't has always been.. irritating). It would simply be Ongoing Forced Movement 3 (lasts 1 round). At the start of your turn you must move 3 away from the Wight before taking your actions. There are no interactions, same as being Pushed, but in my mind it better models running away from something you fear - in particular you will follow a sensible exit route (yes, I understand that in a panic you will sometimes run into hazards, but in 4E you *always* run into a hazard).


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## pemerton (Sep 5, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> At the start of your turn you must move 3 away from the Wight before taking your actions. There are no interactions, same as being Pushed, but in my mind it better models running away from something you fear - in particular you will follow a sensible exit route (yes, I understand that in a panic you will sometimes run into hazards, but in 4E you *always* run into a hazard).



But that's what awesome. I mean, what's the point of having a Deathlock Wight in a room with pits if the PCs recoiling in fear don't stumble into said pits?! (My PCs had roped themselves together, so it was only half-as-awesome for me, but even better for the players, as they sat around congratulating themselves on taking a precaution that actually worked out.)


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## Chris_Nightwing (Sep 5, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I haven't worked out yet how a "dissociated" mechanic differs from a metagame mechanic that someone dislikes!
> 
> Except now all these things which are pretty obviously not metagame, but simply rough-and-ready process simulations- the minotaur's armour piercing, the gnoll's pack savagery, the hobgoblin's discipline - are being called out as dissociated!
> 
> It's weird. But you're right that dissociation is confined to the non-magical, and - once imperfect process simulations start to get labelled as dissociated - almost impossible for the non-magical to avoid!




To me, something is dissociated if there is a better way to represent it within the existing rules structure. I will accept something becoming slightly more complicated as a result, though some may not. It is about elegance.

If you take Come And Get It as a pretty damned dissociated power, its unclear if its intent is to attack many foes (and it surrounds you with them as a means to achieve this) or if it is trying to cluster your enemies (and this happens to be around you). If the former, you could have a power that allows you to shift 1 and attack a creature before shifting back to your starting square until you have attacked all creatures you can (as a sort of fencing-ninja). If the latter, you could shift some squares and pull any enemy that you pass as you literally lure them into following you. If both, you could still associate it better with an initial attack on Will, as you attempt to feign a weakness that might provoke your enemies in to attack you.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Sep 5, 2012)

pemerton said:


> But that's what awesome. I mean, what's the point of having a Deathlock Wight in a room with pits if the PCs recoiling in fear don't stumble into said pits?! (My PCs had roped themselves together, so it was only half-as-awesome for me, but even better for the players, as they sat around congratulating themselves on taking a precaution that actually worked out.)




But that always happens! You never, ever run in fear between hazards, or past them, you always run into them! Sometimes multiple times (if you save the first time and there's enough forced movement)!f

Why did they rope themselves together? They knew it had a push attack. Would a character genuinely fearful not slash the rope to escape?


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## pemerton (Sep 5, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> To me, something is dissociated if there is a better way to represent it within the existing rules structure.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If you take Come And Get It as a pretty damned dissociated power  <snippage which I think is not too misleading> you could still associate it better with an initial attack on Will, as you attempt to feign a weakness that might provoke your enemies in to attack you.



What I like about Come and Get It (pre-errata) is that it can be a feigning of weakness, or (in the case of the fighter PC in my game) deft work with a polearm, or (in a narration suggested by [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]) a way of breaking out of the stop-motion turn sequence. This last idea came up when I was posting about the first use of CaGI in my game: the fighter might sprinted across a room and up some stairs to a balcony, then did CaGI - which among other things pulled some of the archers who had run down a ladder at the back of the balcony back up. AbdulAlhazred suggested this is best seen as a modest retcon or interrupt: the archers were trying to run away, but never really made it because the fighter, with his Mighty Sprint, got there first and cut them all down.

For me, this narrative flexibility is not a problem. If anything, it's a strength.

That's not an objection to your analysis - I guess all I'm saying is that when you say "better way to represent it" you are applying a certain interpretation of what is better in mechanics design that is not universal.

Out of interest - does your criterion mean that [MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] is right to describe finding secret doors in classic D&D as dissociated. I mean, there's almost certainly a more elegant perception mechanic possible!


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## Tony Vargas (Sep 5, 2012)

My apologies of all of the following has already been said:



Sir Robilar said:


> From the Bestiary:
> 
> „Mob tactics“. In the description it says that the creature chooses an opponent. Other allies that also have this trait gain a bonus to their attack and damage against the chosen opponent. However, there is no explanation of what is happening and I’m struggling to find an answer.



Picture a mob ganging up on someone.  They attack from all sides, one holds him while the others punch him, one knocks him down and the others stomp him.  What he's doing might be as simple as growling "get him" then makes an aggressive, but easily defended against attack to absorb his attention while his buddies move in on his unprotected back, or it might be some choreographed series of cooperative maneuvers where they support eachother.



> The gnoll is „Savage“, but only when it can see two other creatures with the Savage trait within 30 feet. Why?



Gnoll psychology as pack animals?



> The Hobgoblin has a „Disciplined“ action. It chooses a foe within it’s reach, and the next attack against this foe from his ally has advantage. But what is the Hobgoblin doing?



Executing some well-drilled maneuver in coordination with his ally, no doubt.  Roman legionaries, for instance, would use their shields to block the foe directly in front of them, but attack the enemies to their /right/, for instance.  



> Continuing with the Hobgoblin, it has the „Steadfast“ trait, meaning it cannot be frightened while an ally is within 30 feet. Why not?



Not wanting to show fear in front of his comrades?



> the minotaurs „Armor Pearcing 4“ where the minotaur’s foe takes damage even though he wasn’t hit from the attack (something which I personally can’t stand).



Damage on a miss, much like damage on a hit, can be a matter of more than just actual wounds.  An attack could be so brutal or aggressive that even if you avoid the brunt of it, you still expend some of that precious luck/skill/etc, or still get battered a little even though you got your shield in the way in time.  That's just hps.



> The Halfling can move through spaces of creatures that are larger than it. I find it awkward to accept that every Halfling in the world could do this against every larger creature.



Meh.  That's a matter of scope and abstraction.  'Halfling Nimbleness' could work only for most halflings, only vs certain creatures, only in certain circumstances, with every creature, circumstance, and halfling prerequisite (height, DEX, whatever) all detailed, but it'd be far more rules than such a modest ability calls for.



> Also, the Stout Halfing’s „Fearless“, where he takes an action to end the frightened condition. What action does the Halfling take and how does it look like? I don’t like it when the rules tell us that something is an action when it isn’t really an action.



It's instead of an action.  You're frightened, but rather than staying frightened you fight through it.  



> Spells:
> What I dislike considering associated or dissociated mechanics is the fact that you can cast some spells as Rituals and others not.



Well, some spells would be pretty worthless with a ritual casting time - like any combat spell.  I'm going to put you all to sleep! Just wait while I get out my 50 gp of material components and chant for 5 minutes.  Might as well make 'em some warm milk or valerian tea.



> I’m also having a hard time to accept that some spells can be cast in rounds where the caster also does some other action. If I was a caster I would ask myself why I can't cast my other spells and also do something else during the casting.



Some spells are presumably shorter and/or easier than others.  



> I dislike that some spells only affect creatures with a certain hit point maximum. I wish my players wouldn’t have to wonder about how many hit points the monsters have (or Hit Dice, which, although closer to how old editions of D&D did it, I wouldn’t find much of an improvement).



Yeah, it's prettymuch a return to the HD limits of classic D&D.  The sense of it isn't hard to see, though:  if a monster can resist being beaten to mush by dwarves with giant hammers, it can resist being turned to mush by magic.



> Having to think about Hit Point breaks the player’s immersion and tells them to think about monsters from a „we’re playing a game and this is my opponent“ point of view.



That's a problem with hit points, yes.  If you can't handle the abstraction of hps - which, really a sort of ablative 'plot armor,' and 'narrativist' and dissociative as all heck - then D&D was probably never your game.



> The Fighter:
> 
> This iteration of the D&D Fighter, in comparison, can only make the combat maneuvers that he has mastered by aquiring them with a feat.



I'm not sure it's a feat, exactly, Fighting Styles follow the same pattern as Specialities, which are collections of feats, though, so maybe it is?

Doesn't sound too dissociative, though:  you can do the things you've trained to do, not the things you haven't.


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## pemerton (Sep 5, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> But that always happens! You never, ever run in fear between hazards, or past them, you always run into them! Sometimes multiple times (if you save the first time and there's enough forced movement)!



I can see three ways to handle this issue. There are probably others I'm not thinking of.

One is to give it to the player. In which case the hazard will always be avoided, unless something else very odd is going on in the situation.

Another is to make it random. This would be the Gygaxian ideal, I think: it's player skill to avoid running in fear, but once you do the dice determine what happens to you. Sometimes you'll fall into the pit, sometimes avoid it, but there is no dramatic rhyme or reason to it.

The third is to give it to the GM. Which is what the Deathlock Wight (and 4e more generally) does. Of the three ways, I think this one maximises the likelihood of dramatic logic governing falling into the hazard. If it is getting too boring, or too deadly, the GM is always free to do something different. Or to switch to random resolution and roll the die in front of the players (I'm sure I've done this occasionally when the Chaos Sorcerer has pushed his allies on a 1 - the rule in our game is that this is a GM's push, not a player's push.)

I guess a fourth option is to give it to the Deathlock Wight, whom the GM then plays as an NPC. But that would strike me as silly - the forced movement, here, is running away, not being literally pushed by the wight.

I think that bringing out the difference between 4 and 3 drives home the metagame character of the power. Again, for me that is a virtue. Of cousre for others it's probably an objection.



Chris_Nightwing said:


> Why did they rope themselves together? They knew it had a push attack.



They roped themselves together because, before they knew there was a wight, they knew there were pits. (I can't exactly remember how, now, but I think they may have seen the underside of the pits - where they dropped through to a lower level - before they found the topside on the upper level.)



Chris_Nightwing said:


> Would a character genuinely fearful not slash the rope to escape?



In the fiction, I'm happy to allow that dangling over a 30' drop might restore some clarity to the mind of even the most fearful PC! And from the metagame point of view, I don't think it would help the game to try and rob the players of their little victory. Everything else being equal, I want to encourage them to engage the gameworld and the fiction, not discourage it!

Suppose it had been as you took it to be, and knowing that a scary foe is up ahead the PCs rope themselves together. At the table, this is the players taking steps to defend against forced movement. In the fiction, it's like Ulysses and the sirens: "I fear some of us might break when we confront the undead: but if we are roped together, then none can flee as long as one of us is steadfast!" So I still wouldn't see that as a problem.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Sep 5, 2012)

pemerton said:


> What I like about Come and Get It (pre-errata) is that it can be a feigning of weakness, or (in the case of the fighter PC in my game) deft work with a polearm, or (in a narration suggested by [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]) a way of breaking out of the stop-motion turn sequence. This last idea came up when I was posting about the first use of CaGI in my game: the fighter might sprinted across a room and up some stairs to a balcony, then did CaGI - which among other things pulled some of the archers who had run down a ladder at the back of the balcony back up. AbdulAlhazred suggested this is best seen as a modest retcon or interrupt: the archers were trying to run away, but never really made it because the fighter, with his Mighty Sprint, got there first and cut them all down.
> 
> For me, this narrative flexibility is not a problem. If anything, it's a strength.
> 
> ...




Oh, using CAGI can allow you to perform some excellent tactical moves, drawing in enemies with ranged weapons, arranging a group perfectly for an area effect and so on. Your example just doesn't work if the archers never moved away in the first place though. If they just stood at the back shooting, why the hell would they ever approach the guy with the melee weapon? With a polearm, perhaps, but there are so many more ways in which CAGI defies logic and forces you to twist your fiction to fit.

In classic D&D there are indeed better ways to represent the perception of secret doors. They obviously didn't want it to be ability-dependent and so opted for a class/race based system (same with surprise if I recall). I believe an ability-based or skill system is more associated, yes.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Sep 5, 2012)

pemerton said:


> They roped themselves together because, before they knew there was a wight, they knew there were pits. (I can't exactly remember how, now, but I think they may have seen the underside of the pits - where they dropped through to a lower level - before they found the topside on the upper level.)
> 
> In the fiction, I'm happy to allow that dangling over a 30' drop might restore some clarity to the mind of even the most fearful PC! And from the metagame point of view, I don't think it would help the game to try and rob the players of their little victory. Everything else being equal, I want to encourage them to engage the gameworld and the fiction, not discourage it!
> 
> Suppose it had been as you took it to be, and knowing that a scary foe is up ahead the PCs rope themselves together. At the table, this is the players taking steps to defend against forced movement. In the fiction, it's like Ulysses and the sirens: "I fear some of us might break when we confront the undead: but if we are roped together, then none can flee as long as one of us is steadfast!" So I still wouldn't see that as a problem.




See, to me that last explanation defies logic even further. A group of adventurers are going to face a frightening creature, and they know that some of them might break and flee. There are pits they might fall into. Roping the group together leads to the entire group focusing on pulling the affected out of pits and pulling them back into the fray - realistically once you've got half the group running or dangling, the others haven't the strength to pull them back.

You allowed them their victory, but it was a superlatively metagame idea, if only because the mechanism by which characters flee in terror has a strong chance to push them into the pit. Forced movement allows a save against this, but then you're prone - far better have the save allow them to avoid it and carry on running (they're scared, but a moment of clarity avoids the pit), or even let them try to leap across it. Basically, another way of modelling fleeing in terror wouldn't lead to the bizarre situation of entering combat all tied together. I mean, maybe every other square was a pit, or they lacked light, but it was a direct consequence of the Wight's ability to push them. In a strong wind, on a cliff face or against something that is actually a physical force pushing, that makes sense, but by modelling fleeing as pushing, the game does itself a disservice.


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## slobo777 (Sep 5, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> In a strong wind, on a cliff face or against something that is actually a physical force pushing, that makes sense, but by modelling fleeing as pushing, the game does itself a disservice.




I think D&D, and RPGs in general, suffer problems when modelling forced affects on PC's minds, perceptions and behaviours. Some kind of compromise needs to be reached, because although these effects are fantasy story staples, they break the game contract that the DM controls the NPCs and the players their PCs.

It used to drive me nuts whenever a woolly-minded DM started throwing illusion, fear and charm powers around . . . I don't mind *what* the in-game interpretation is, or whether the DM has control of my PC or I have control of my PC, or even whether that's decided round-by-round with opposed rolls. But I expect some kind of decision or ruling on this, so I can actually play the game!

3E had written rules for this, based on sub-types of charm and illusion spells (compulsions, phantasms etc etc). So few DMs (in my games) seemed to bother or understand 3E's take on it though . . .

4E's style of using forced movement for fear is a workable compromise IMO. It's simple to understand. Control is clearly with player or DM, and generally goes for the most vicious in-game effect.


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## pemerton (Sep 5, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> Your example just doesn't work if the archers never moved away in the first place though.



Sure, but then you'd narrate it differently.



Chris_Nightwing said:


> With a polearm, perhaps, but there are so many more ways in which CAGI defies logic and forces you to twist your fiction to fit.



I've always said (in posts going back well over a year) that a fighter using CaGI it with a dagger against oozes and magma hurlers puts more pressure on the fiction than a fighter using CaGI with a polearm against goblins and hobgoblins. But I've never got any sense of how often those "high pressure" scenarios are coming up.

I know for some players the mere possibility that they _might_ come up, in some possible but not actual episode of play, is objectionable in itself. But I am not one of those players.



Chris_Nightwing said:


> Basically, another way of modelling fleeing in terror wouldn't lead to the bizarre situation of entering combat all tied together.



Are you talking about what actually happened, or the Ulysses and the sirens hypothetical I canvassed?


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## Chris_Nightwing (Sep 5, 2012)

pemerton said:


> Sure, but then you'd narrate it differently.
> 
> I've always said (in posts going back well over a year) that a fighter using CaGI it with a dagger against oozes and magma hurlers puts more pressure on the fiction than a fighter using CaGI with a polearm against goblins and hobgoblins. But I've never got any sense of how often those "high pressure" scenarios are coming up.
> 
> ...




Yes, you'd be forced to narrate it differently. I once had an awkward moment when a CAGI was used on some unarmed enemies as a sudden attack in the middle of parlay. Not only were they surprised, but they had no reason whatsoever to approach the armed guy. As a group we muttered, allowed it and moved on with slight dissatisfaction.

I was talking about the actual scenario with the Wight you encountered. Ulysses tied himself to a mast so that the sirens could not lure him into the ocean. He wasn't trying to kill them in combat, just survive them, it's not really the same thing at all.


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## pemerton (Sep 5, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> I was talking about the actual scenario with the Wight you encountered.



In that scenario the players didn't know about wights, or forced movement, when they roped themselves. They just knew their were pits, and wanted to take precautions.


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## johnmatthews920 (Sep 5, 2012)

Thanks for starting this topic and discussion. i could not find it elsewhere. 
I completely agree with the thoughts.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Sep 5, 2012)

pemerton said:


> In that scenario the players didn't know about wights, or forced movement, when they roped themselves. They just knew their were pits, and wanted to take precautions.




Well that does make for an amusing situation then. Do you think they would have done the same if the forced movement rules were different? Or was it that there might be pit traps as well as pits?


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 5, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> But that always happens! You never, ever run in fear between hazards, or past them, you always run into them! Sometimes multiple times (if you save the first time and there's enough forced movement)!




If you get pushed into a hazard, you get a saving throw.  So sometimes you do run between them because that sends you further.  Sometimes the positioning is wrong - a push is much more limited than a slide.  Whereas put it under the PC's conscious control and they will _never_ run into hazards.  I know which I find more interesting.



> Why did they rope themselves together? They knew it had a push attack. Would a character genuinely fearful not slash the rope to escape?




They roped themselves together as I understand the story because they saw the pits and were scared of the pits.  They didn't know the Wight was there.  And they recoil in fear.  They wouldn't have time to think about the rope, so no.  If they were thinking clearly enough to cut the rope rather than just run they'd no longer be subject to the immediate forced movement.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 5, 2012)

Tony Vargas said:


> My apologies of all of the following has already been said:
> 
> ...
> 
> Doesn't sound too dissociative, though:  you can do the things you've trained to do, not the things you haven't.




Many, many examples omitted.

A question: Do you find detail that you provide for the examples to make the abilities more satisfying?  Even if not tied tightly to more detailed rules, I find the more detailed explanations which you provided to be immensely helpful.  What is disassociative, then, is that we the reader must provide these explanations.  Isn't that the responsibility (read "job") of the game designer?

What bugs me most is that the designer has either thought of these details, and has chosen to (or been forced to) omit them, or has made them up as a kind of gamist detail (meaning: defined in terms of the game abstractions as a "kewl ability"; not grounded in an underlying model).

TomB


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## nightwalker450 (Sep 5, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> Many, many examples omitted.
> 
> A question: Do you find detail that you provide for the examples to make the abilities more satisfying?  Even if not tied tightly to more detailed rules, I find the more detailed explanations which you provided to be immensely helpful.  What is disassociative, then, is that we the reader must provide these explanations.  Isn't that the responsibility (read "job") of the game designer?
> 
> ...




I ignore designer provided fluff. I'm only interested in their mechanics, because frankly we all have imaginations that can handle this. And we all know that once they provide fluff then you run into the complaints of the designers being too restrictive. With minimal fluff CaGI has many scenarios it can be used in. Once the fluff is added, suddenly my challenging taunts are called into question because the enemies are deaf, or don't speak my language. What I expect from a game designer is balanced mechanics to apply to situations. So I'd rather spend $25 for a book of solid mechanics than $100 of space that was wasted on the designer telling me how they imagine it. Their single sentence of fluff on the powers is plenty.

Now if I get an adventure module, then I'm wanting to hear their story. For a monster manual I'd be interested in hearing about how the monster acts (not in terms of powers, but in general). I read pack mentality in their general monster details, and then the savagery power makes a lot of sense. What I don't expect is the designer to hold my hand and explain in small words every detail.

-- On a side note, I think the idea of an "Annotated" Players Handbook would be an awesome idea for those that are more interested in detailed game design philosophy. That would be the place for the designer to explain how and why they did something a particular way.


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## Ratskinner (Sep 5, 2012)

slobo777 said:


> I think D&D, and RPGs in general, suffer problems when modelling forced affects on PC's minds, perceptions and behaviours. Some kind of compromise needs to be reached, because although these effects are fantasy story staples, they break the game contract that the DM controls the NPCs and the players their PCs.




I think FATE suggests a possible answer by using the Fate Point mechanic to partially incentivize player character behavior. So, in this case, the Wight might have some capacity to put a "terrified" aspect on the PC. PCs who react appropriately gain an FP, or you can pay an FP to ignore it. 

Of course, that's just one way to do it.


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## GreyICE (Sep 5, 2012)

Ratskinner said:


> I think FATE suggests a possible answer by using the Fate Point mechanic to partially incentivize player character behavior. So, in this case, the Wight might have some capacity to put a "terrified" aspect on the PC. PCs who react appropriately gain an FP, or you can pay an FP to ignore it.
> 
> Of course, that's just one way to do it.




Or, more likely, in FATE you'd put a Terrified aspect, and then the Wraith would use a Compel to gain a bonus on a Mental attack.  Unless the character was particularly strong-minded, they'd either be Taken Out and forced to flee the scene, or have to take an aspect that represented their mental defenses weakening, either short-term, long-term, or permanent.  

But FATE focuses on narrative aspects and (okay, I'm drawing from my Dresden Files campaign here) in this case the Wraith is probably less of a 'random encounter' (since those don't happen) and is more likely attacking someone the PCs care about.  So unless they have the strength of will to stick around long enough to get the person out of there/defeat the wraith then they'll be faced with that person dying (or, more likely, becoming a mind-blasted slave that they encounter later, to really rub their faces in the consequences of their failure).  

So to rescue this person they might even accept drastic long-term consequences, such as an outright phobia towards darkness, or long-lasting paranoia that takes sessions to fade.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 5, 2012)

nightwalker450 said:


> I ignore designer provided fluff. I'm only interested in their mechanics, because frankly we all have imaginations that can handle this. And we all know that once they provide fluff then you run into the complaints of the designers being too restrictive. With minimal fluff CaGI has many scenarios it can be used in. Once the fluff is added, suddenly my challenging taunts are called into question because the enemies are deaf, or don't speak my language. What I expect from a game designer is balanced mechanics to apply to situations. So I'd rather spend $25 for a book of solid mechanics than $100 of space that was wasted on the designer telling me how they imagine it. Their single sentence of fluff on the powers is plenty.




Ah ... I'm hearing that as a difference of taste, and perhaps of conditional utility.  Which is cool.

I myself prefer to see lots of background detail.  For example, see the Monsternomicon, the Iron Kingdoms monster book, which has at least two pages for each monster.  The additional writing rather helps to enrich the monsters and place them in the Iron Kingdom's setting -- and makes the book very readable.  As a very different example, see the 4E Monster Manual I, which is quite sparse, and rather a terrible read, *but*, has more simple utility and quite a few more monsters packed into the same space.

Focusing on the amount of detail provides a way of splitting the issue: Is there a problem because the mechanic is tersely described, but has a sensible explanation, or because the mechanic is tersely described, and is hard to map to a sensible explanation?

Looking at Horrifying Visage, I think the example suffers from the 4E overuse of "Push", along with the missing "Psychic" keyword.  Those, plus a simple sentence, "The target reacts in abject terror, springing back from the wight."  That, along with a new tone of "hey, these are 90% abilities; according to your players tastes, you will want to adjust these to adapt to particular circumstances" would remove the disassociation from Horrifying Visage.

There are other examples, e.g., Come and Get It, which seem harder to remedy.

Thx!

TomB


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## keterys (Sep 5, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> Looking at Horrifying Visage, I think the example suffers from the 4E overuse of "Push", along with the missing "Psychic" keyword.



It has the Psychic keyword. 

And push is better than forcing the target to take a move action away, or shift, since those have unfortunate interactions with other events. It's possible they should have created a tag for mental forced movement, rather than physical forced movement... but at a certain point, adding complexity to the system is just as likely to lower immersion most of the time even as it helps some of the time.

DMs (and players) can always say "But I'm immobilized because of X, so I probably shouldn't move away in fear - makes more sense to, say,  fall prone instead". And that applies to pretty much every edition of the game.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 5, 2012)

keterys said:


> It has the Psychic keyword.
> 
> And push is better than forcing the target to take a move action away, or shift, since those have unfortunate interactions with other events. It's possible they should have created a tag for mental forced movement, rather than physical forced movement... but at a certain point, adding complexity to the system is just as likely to lower immersion most of the time even as it helps some of the time.
> 
> DMs (and players) can always say "But I'm immobilized because of X, so I probably shouldn't move away in fear - makes more sense to, say,  fall prone instead". And that applies to pretty much every edition of the game.




The addition of the Psychic keyword was made after the example was presented.  I agree that once the keyword is added the disassociation lessens.  (Hmm, on second read, "Psychic" only tells you about the type of the damage.  You have to go back to "Fear" as the effect type to tell where the push is from.)

"Push", without quotes means an actual push.  Horrifying Visage does no such thing.  Sometimes, a word can be given a new meaning, but in this case I think that the 4E designers went too far.  I don't have a better word, but that's not my job to find.  I do know from experience and training that word selection matters, and should be made to avoid all possible confusion.

That ability for DMs and players to adjust is covered by my second point.  I really don't think the 4E presentation went far enough to describe the limitations of keywords.  There is some encouragement, but rather much the policy, as presented, seemed to be to mostly work within the supplied mechanical effect.

Edit:

I'm working from: http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20080425a

Which has:



> Flavor Text
> 
> A wave of acid dissolves all creatures that stand before you.
> 
> The next section of a power description gives a brief explanation of what the power does, sometimes including information about what it looks or sounds like. The flavor text for acid wave appears here as an example. A power’s flavor text helps you understand what happens when you use a power and how you might describe it when you use it. You can alter this description as you like, to fit your own idea of what your power looks like. Your wizard’s magic missile spell, for example, might create phantasmal skulls that howl through the air to strike your opponent, rather than simple bolts of magical energy.




That is, they say to describe the effect however you please, but not on the "the described mechanical application is built to have limited accuracy".

Thx!

TomB


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 5, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> Many, many examples omitted.
> 
> A question: Do you find detail that you provide for the examples to make the abilities more satisfying?  Even if not tied tightly to more detailed rules, I find the more detailed explanations which you provided to be immensely helpful.  What is disassociative, then, is that we the reader must provide these explanations.  Isn't that the responsibility (read "job") of the game designer?
> 
> ...




I think we're getting down to a difference in reading styles here.  My answers would be almost the same as Tony's to all those questions, for almost exactly the same reasoning.   I don't think there was a single one of those cases where the designer didn't think of the fluff, write the mechanical implementation of that fluff down, and convey to both  @Tony Vargas  and myself what was actually happening in the game world.  It was written tersely - but the flavour and the explanation are at the very least implied.

And I find having to wade through so-called associated mechanics such as *Evocation [Fire]*
Level:         Sor/Wiz 3 
Components:         V, S, M                   
Casting Time:         1 standard action 
Range:         Long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)                  
Area:         20-ft.-radius spread                   
Duration:         Instantaneous                  
Saving Throw:         Reflex half                  
Spell Resistance:         Yes           

A fireball spell is an explosion of flame that detonates with a low roar and deals 1d6 points of fire damage per caster level (maximum 10d6) to every creature within the area. Unattended objects also take this damage. The explosion creates almost no pressure. 

     You point your finger and determine the range (distance and height) at  which the fireball is to burst. A glowing, pea-sized bead streaks from  the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid  barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the  fireball at that point. (An early impact results in an early  detonation.) If you attempt to send the bead through a narrow passage,  such as through an arrow slit, you must “hit” the opening with a ranged touch attack, or else the bead strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely. 

     The fireball sets fire to combustibles and damages objects in the area.  It can melt metals with low melting points, such as lead, gold, copper,  silver, and bronze. If the damage caused to an interposing barrier  shatters or breaks through it, the fireball may continue beyond the  barrier if the area permits; otherwise it stops at the barrier just as  any other spell effect does. 

*Material Component*

     A tiny ball of bat guano and sulfur. ​to be obnoxious, tedious, and to slow the game down without adding any relevant detail.  I need to read the above three paragraph description at least twice to make sure I'm not missing anything.  

When the rubber meets the road I just want to be able to glance at the mechanics and read:*Fireball: Level 3 Evocation*
_You point your finger and a red-gold pea-sized bead of elemental fire shoots out from it, exploding on impact_
*1 Standard Action.*
*Range:* Long
*Area:* 20 foot radius Burst (or volume: however many cubic feet)
*Target:* Everything in burst
*Effect:* Level*d6 fire damage (max 10d6), reflex save for half.​That takes me maybe ten seconds to read, and contains enough material to cover at least 95% of all uses of fireball.  The V,S,M parts are implied once we're on spell component pouches - the unusual spells are those that _don't_ have verbal and somatic components.  And likewise spell resistance - spells that _don't_ allow spell resistance should need highlighting.

So what's missing?  No pressure or force?  No keywords for thunder or force.  That you can set things on fire or melt metals with low melting points?  Fire keyword.  (Actually you really shouldn't be able to melt things with a low melting point but that's another story).  Feeding the fireball through a small gap?  Pea sized bead, explodes on impact.  The DM has enough information to make that rules call.

Oh, yes.  There's one thing we're actually missing.  Bat guano and sulphur.  My 4e style spell description didn't include the bat guano or the sulphur.

The designer hasn't omited the details.  They are right there, implicit in the text.  Literally the only details not implicit in the 4e style statblock are the bat guano and sulphur.  The details just aren't painted flourescent orange and getting in the way of me getting on with the interesting parts.


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## keterys (Sep 5, 2012)

Per the rules of keywords, psychic is the damage and fear is the push. 

Forced movement is how they chose to handle unwilling movement. It has some flaws, but so does forcing a creature to take move actions on its turn. I've seen several 3e games get more than a little silly after a cone "Frighten"s people for 1d4 rounds. 

Much like hit points, initiative, defenses & saves... almost every game decision has a mixture of benefits and penalties for modeling the game world effectively and enjoyably.


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## The Shadow (Sep 5, 2012)

I have to say that I find this thread more and more confusing the more I read of it.  There doesn't seem to be any agreed-upon definition of what 'dissociated' actually means.

So I went back and read the Alexandrian's actual article on the subject.  And I found it rather enlightening, even if I don't fully agree with him. (This article also helped me.)

According to him, a dissociated mechanic is one in which the player's decision to do something doesn't map onto the character's decision to do something.  He gives the example of a football player with an ability called One-Handed Catch, which he can use once per game.  The player is not aware that he can only make a one-handed catch once in a game, the player is.  He contrasts this with a Vancian wizard casting a Fireball;  the wizard does know how many times he can cast the Fireball.

He also states quite clearly that dissociated mechanics are not necessarily bad;  they are sometimes necessary (he mentions character creation and many rules for the GM), sometimes helpful, and sometimes fun.  He just thinks there is always a tradeoff involved, that such mechanics take one out of playing a role.

From this definition, a "dissociated mechanic" is NOT:

1) A mechanic lacking a Just-So story explaining what such an ability consists of in the game world.  There is no such Just-So story for memorizing a Fireball, after all, it basically comes down to, "This is the way magic works, run with it."

2) A clunky or badly-designed or inelegant mechanic.  It may be some or all of those things, but then again it may not.

3) A mechanic that threatens suspension of disbelief.  Though it bears some superficial resemblance to the definition above, it does not match up, because threatening suspension of disbelief is a matter of taste and of familiarity, while in principle the Alexandrian's definition is not.

I mean, in terms of Just-So stories and suspension of disbelief, surely saving throws as they were known before 4e are incredibly dissociated?  3e gave them a bit of a fig leaf by categorizing them as Fortitude, Reflex, and Will, but still it's seldom clear what my character is *doing* when I roll a save.  So why don't we notice this?  I submit that it's because we're so used to them, and nothing else.  (Ironically, 4e defenses seem more 'associated' in this sense than previous editions' saving throws!)

But in the Alexandrian's definition, there is no problem with saves, because they are involuntary;  neither the player nor the character has any choice in making them.  Or if the player does opt to forego the save, that just means the character is making no attempt to resist.  (Though again, it's seldom clear just what this looks like.)

For myself, I think the Alexandrian takes too narrow a view of 'playing a role'.  It's a larger concept, so far as I can see, than simply being immersed in a character;  speaking as someone who has done some acting, it also certainly includes portraying a character while also watching yourself do so objectively;  and it includes considering the audience's reaction.  The actor makes all sorts of decisions that the character he's portraying does not.  Now, with experience, no doubt these decisions become more and more instinctive - but that doesn't mean they don't get made.

I also think he gives Vancian magic way too easy a pass in terms of association and suspension of disbelief.  He himself explicitly says that (of course) one's character doesn't know how many d6's of damage go into a Fireball, but that he does know that more skilled characters make hotter flames that hurt more.  I would ask in the same spirit, do mages in the fantasy world *really* know that they can only cast X 1st level spells in a day?  Or is that just a convenient shorthand model, the same way as saying a given Fireball is 8d6?  Presumably not, since in the fiction, the mage has to actually memorize each spell...  But this is a perilously thin fig leaf, in my considered opinion.  It's all too convenient, let's put it that way.  (As Xykon put it, "It turns out everything is oddly balanced.  Weird, but true.")

(It's especially weird that he says that characters wouldn't know about caster levels any more than d6's... but if they do know how many spells they and others cast in a day, why wouldn't they?)

No doubt the Alexandrian would rebut that I, as a dyed-in-the-wool narrativist player, am exactly the sort of person least able to see the problem with dissociated mechanics.  That's certainly convenient for him.  I will concede that there may be a type of extremely immersive play for which dissociated mechanics are a problem;  I just deny that such play (and I'm pretty darn immersive myself, as readers of my Story Hours know) is the only type that really 'counts' as roleplaying.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 6, 2012)

I'm thinking a part of the problem is presentation.

This part is almost identical:



> Fireball: Level 3 Sor/Wiz Evocation [Fire]
> 1 standard action
> Range: Long
> Area: 20-ft.-radius spread
> ...




Then, for mechanics not present in 4E:



> Duration: Instantaneous
> Components: V, S, M
> Spell Resistance: Yes
> Components: A tiny ball of bat guano and sulfur.




Then, stripping out redundant text, and adding detail for common cases.  Note that each of these provides a significant, although secondary, detail:



> A fireball spell is an explosion of flame that detonates with a low roar.  The explosion creates almost no pressure.
> 
> An early impact results in an early detonation.
> 
> ...




I've never seen anyone use the "melt metals" part: You would not survive a blast that melts soft metals, so the detail is ignored. And, mostly, components are hand-waved away.



> It [the fireball] can melt metals with low melting points, such as lead, gold, copper, silver, and bronze.




Putting that together:



> Fireball: Level 3 Sor/Wiz Evocation [Fire]
> Action: 1 standard; V, S, M
> Range: Long
> Area: 20-ft.-radius spread
> ...


----------



## pemerton (Sep 6, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> Do you think they would have done the same if the forced movement rules were different? Or was it that there might be pit traps as well as pits?



I think they were worried about being knocked into the pits by traps or monsters. The actual episode took place over 2 years ago, so my memory is not perfect, and even at the time I don't know if it was all spelled out. As best I can recall, it was a mix of in-character and metagame reasoning, along the lines of:

* the pits are deep enough to hurt us badly  - especially our squishies - if we fall in;

* this place has traps and monsters that might try and knock people into pits;

*the corridor that leads into the room with the pits has stairs going gently down, suggesting possible slide/chute traps;

* pemerton is the sort of GM who woudn't bother placing pits without also placing something there that might knock us in;

* so let's rope together!​
As it turns out, I didn't have anything slide/chute designed - the sloping corridor was rather (i) to make my dungeon geography work out the way I wanted it to, and (ii) to have some stairs in that corridor to make the fight with the undead bursting out of the side-crypts more interesting (the PCs had already fought those undead, and worked out most of the relevant geography, but weren't to know that they had, thereby, exhausted the metagame rationale for the downward slope).

But I did have forced movement in mind, namely, my wight.

From memory they roped with the strong dwarf fighter in the middle, the CHA paladin and archer-ranger flanking him, and the wizard and sorcerer at the ends. I'm pretty sure that it was the ranger who fell into the pit and was saved by the dwarf making a STR check (and/or Dwarven Stability saving throw - as I said, my memory is a bit hazy). As best I recall, the dominant concern at the table wasn't so much "Why exactly is my guy falling back into the bit" - I'm sure I narrated the "recoiling in fear" thing, and no one contested that - but rather "Woohoo! Our roping together worked!" and then making the appropriate checks to pull the ranger up etc.

The deathlock wight then died pretty quickly, as the sorcerer got a good crit with Blazing Starfall (radiant damage). But I didn't mind too much, because it had already got to do its thing.



tomBitonti said:


> Looking at Horrifying Visage, I think the example suffers from the 4E overuse of "Push", along with the missing "Psychic" keyword.  Those, plus a simple sentence, "The target reacts in abject terror, springing back from the wight."  That, along with a new tone of "hey, these are 90% abilities; according to your players tastes, you will want to adjust these to adapt to particular circumstances" would remove the disassociation from Horrifying Visage.





keterys said:


> It has the Psychic keyword.





tomBitonti said:


> The addition of the Psychic keyword was made after the example was presented.  I agree that once the keyword is added the disassociation lessens.



The psychic keyword is not present in the 4e Monster Manual. As best I can tell, it was added in by the revision of the wight by Logan Bonner published in Dungeon magazine a year or so ago (and available for free online). It clearly _should_ have been there from the start - its absence in very obviously a drafting oversight, I think.



tomBitonti said:


> "Push", without quotes means an actual push.



I don't agree with this - or, rather, "push" in 4e mechanical text always has quotes around it. It is a technical term with both ingame and metagame aspects. (Like many D&D mechanics - hit points are the poster child - it mixes ingame and metagame shamelessly. This used to irritate me about D&D, but 4e has persuaded me that it can be a huge strength, because at least for some players it seems to facilitate going metagame without losing inhabitation of character and an ingame orientation towards the fiction.)



tomBitonti said:


> I really don't think the 4E presentation went far enough to describe the limitations of keywords.  There is some encouragement, but rather much the policy, as presented, seemed to be to mostly work within the supplied mechanical effect.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> That is, they say to describe the effect however you please, but not on the "the described mechanical application is built to have limited accuracy".



I think the 4e presentation of keywords is terrible. In the parts of the rules dedicated to explaining keywords, _only their mechanical effect is discussed_. The only part of the rules that talks about their role in anchoring the mechanics to the fiction is in the discussion of damaging objects, and there it's oblique and implicit rather than explicit (eg objects are immune to psychic damage, the GM may rule that paper and wood are vulnerable to fire damage, etc). So, for example, _nowhere in the 4e rules_ does it say that the [fear] keyword, when it occurs in the context of a forced movement power, is intended to help establish the interpretation of the movement in the gameworld (eg as recoiling in horror).

I think this is about as bad an error as can happen in the presentation of rules. It's tantamount to setting up a combat system based on rolls against target numbers, and not even saying that the roll against target number represents an attack.

And the practical consequence is that many RPGers looking at 4e have seen a "fiction free" board game. Which is a false perception - the keywords set up the parameters of a pretty rich fiction - but one which the rules not only fail to dispel, but actively encouraged by talking about keywords only in terms of mechanical interactions.



tomBitonti said:


> A question: Do you find detail that you provide for the examples to make the abilities more satisfying?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What bugs me most is that the designer has either thought of these details, and has chosen to (or been forced to) omit them, or has made them up as a kind of gamist detail





tomBitonti said:


> I myself prefer to see lots of background detail.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> As a very different example, see the 4E Monster Manual I, which is quite sparse, and rather a terrible read, *but*, has more simple utility and quite a few more monsters packed into the same space.





Neonchameleon said:


> I think we're getting down to a difference in reading styles here
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I don't think there was a single one of those cases where the designer didn't think of the fluff, write the mechanical implementation of that fluff down, and convey to both Tony Vargas and myself what was actually happening in the game world.  It was written tersely - but the flavour and the explanation are at the very least implied.





nightwalker450 said:


> I ignore designer provided fluff. I'm only interested in their mechanics, because frankly we all have imaginations that can handle this.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> With minimal fluff CaGI has many scenarios it can be used in.



Interesting points. I am closer to Neonchameleon and nightwalker450 than to Tom - I think that the abilities like Disciplined, Armour Piercing, Savage etc _already contain sufficient colour_ to make it clear what is going on in the fiction, at least typically, and to support extrapolation to less typical and corner cases.

I'm also a staunch (if minoriy) defender of the 4e MM. Once you correct their damage, I think it has plenty of good monsters even at Paragon Tier (I haven't got to Epic yet). And I think it has a perfect amount of flavour - and is far less sparse than is often claimed. For example, when I compare it to AD&D 1st ed, or 3E (I don't have a lot of 2nd ed monster stuff) it is typically richer in its flavour text. For example, it gives me a history and sociology of goblinoids. Its spider entry also has a history of Lolth and some drow sociology. It has a history of the Abyss and details of the layers of the Hells (which is more than I get in AD&D or 3E). Etc.



GreyICE said:


> FATE focuses on narrative aspects and (okay, I'm drawing from my Dresden Files campaign here) in this case the Wraith is probably less of a 'random encounter' (since those don't happen) and is more likely attacking someone the PCs care about.  So unless they have the strength of will to stick around long enough to get the person out of there/defeat the wraith then they'll be faced with that person dying
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So to rescue this person they might even accept drastic long-term consequences, such as an outright phobia towards darkness, or long-lasting paranoia that takes sessions to fade.



My 4e campaign isn't quite as intense as this in the stakes of every combat, but I lean more this way then the "random encounter" way. 4e is a good fit for me in this respect - it _wants_ every combat to be a big deal, and _I_ want every combat to be a big(gish) deal.

The 4e MM helps with this, actually, by locating many creatures within the context of the cosmological conflicts that are at the heart of 4e's default fiction, and therefore making it easier to set up combats that have stakes - cosmological stakes - that are bigger than the mere combat itself.


----------



## triqui (Sep 6, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> I myself prefer to see lots of background detail.  For example, see the Monsternomicon, the Iron Kingdoms monster book, which has at least two pages for each monster.  The additional writing rather helps to enrich the monsters and place them in the Iron Kingdom's setting -- and makes the book very readable.




Aaaaaannndddd once again here we have one of the reasons D&D will always be doomed. Because it is D&D, so the expectatives are different, and higher, for it. Iron Kingdom can  do aditional writing to enrich the monster and place it in the setting. So could do PAthfinder, or 13th Age. D&D, on the other hand, is always doomed. If WotC does that, and writes how, and why, the monster is placed in the setting... they'll get a ton of flak. If they say "tieflings came from Bael Turath" people will fire against them, for "putting fluff into the crunch" or "forcing people to change their campaings" or because "that does not fit into Fogotten, or Greyhawk, or DarkSun or AlQaddim setting". If they don't put fluff to enrich the monsters and place them in the narrative, they'll get flak because they do "only combat stats" and "dry descriptions" with "no roleplaying, just rollplaying".

Poor WotC. What a great game they could do, if they could do it without  "D&D" tag slapped in the cover.


----------



## Drago Rinato (Sep 6, 2012)

WotC should do 2 version: One with a Setting and one without (just like a srd, clean of reference)


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 6, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> I'm thinking a part of the problem is presentation.




I think so too. And what people prefer.



> This part is almost identical:
> Quote:
> Fireball: Level 3 Sor/Wiz Evocation [Fire]
> 1 standard action
> ...




Yup.



> Then, for mechanics not present in 4E:
> Quote:
> Duration: Instantaneous
> Components: V, S, M
> ...




But I explained why most of those aren't necessary - chiefly that other than the components, those are all default settings. Unless they say otherwise most spells are instantaneous, or near as (less than a second to me fits better than instantaneous). Spell Resistance if it means anything should apply except to rare exceptions (not as in 3.X where an entire school (conjuration) just about ignores SR) and all spells that don't say otherwise are V,S,M. 

Further I believe stating the spell resistance status for all spells is actively harmful to good design as it means that too many designers will say SR: No on too many spells. Ignoring Spell Resistance should be an exceptional matter not routine.



> Then, stripping out redundant text, and adding detail for common cases. Note that each of these provides a significant, although secondary, detail:




I disagree. They are a mix of bad mechanics and details we already have. Almost all of them make the game experience actively worse for me and in some cases not just because they are making me waste my time on pointless text.



> A fireball spell is an explosion of flame that detonates with a low roar. The explosion creates almost no pressure.




You can have that one if you like. I already _know_ it's an explosion of flame. It's called Fireball. It does fire damage. It has already been called out as having exploded. It doesn't do pressure damage - that would be force. And it's not loud enough for thunder. That said, the roar is different from the alternatives of a "Fwoosh" of a fire flash flaring, a small explosionary boom, or near silence. The low roar I'll grant does add something.



> An early impact results in an early detonation.




Covered by "Explodes on impact" in the single line of flavour text. We know it explodes on impact. Which means it explodes on early impact. Entirely redundant.



> If you attempt to send the bead through a narrow passage, such as through an arrow slit, you must “hit” the opening with a ranged touch attack, or else the bead strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely.




How do I dislike this part? Let me count the ways.

1: Ranged Touch Attack. Fundamentally this is a bad mechanic to use here. The difference between a touch attack and a normal attack for aiming through an arrow slit should be non-existent. The slit isn't moving after all.

2: Ranged touch attack. The mechanics of this little rule make it easier for a wizard to hit through an arrowslit with a fireball than for an expert archer with an arrow. Thanks, but no thanks. The wizard should not be significantly more accurate with a fireball spell than an archer is with an arrow.

3: This is an edge case. As the DM I can cope with things like this - and if I can't I probably should swap seats.

4: Strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely. This is entirley redundant.

This little paragraph makes the game experience worse in just about every possible way. Not only is it a complex paragraph for an edge case, the answers it gives are fundamentally _bad_. As a one off DM's call there is nothing wrong with them (you roll the dice then move on) but the precidents and consequences set are _terrible_.



> The fireball sets fire to combustibles and damages objects in the area.




It's fire, it's area effect, and doesn't have a selective target. Of _course_ it does. Entirely redundant.



> If the damage caused to an interposing barrier shatters or breaks through it, the fireball may continue beyond the barrier if the area permits; otherwise it stops at the barrier just as any other spell effect does.




And this part is also bad mechanics. The spell is explictly instantaneous so it doesn't have time to spread through. It is called out as not having a pressure component so it can't force its way through. If it hits a simple wooden door (hardness 5, hp 10), it's probably going to turn it into charcoal and make it fall apart in a stiff wind. But it doesn't have pressure behind it so it should not continue. And without pressure the only way it's going to shatter anything is with a heating/freezing combo.

In short there's no fictional reason for it to behave this way, the scenario's an edge case that a DM can handle (and it's obvious that this came from a "rule of cool" precedent), and so it actively makes the game worse.



> I've never seen anyone use the "melt metals" part: You would not survive a blast that melts soft metals, so the detail is ignored.




Agreed. Yet more bad mechanics that make a nonsense of the fluff. The game is better without this rule.



> And, mostly, components are hand-waved away.




Agreed.

So we have one part of additional fluff (the roar), one part that mechanically makes the game worse (the ranged touch attack for getting through arrowslits), two parts that make the game's fluff worse as they contradict the rest of the description either explicitly and implicitely (the continue past barriers issue and the melt metals part). And the whole rest of that additional text you want is redundant.

Give me the single line of fluff over the 3.X description even once you've trimmed it back the way you have _any time_. That said, I vastly prefer your trimmed description to the 3.X version; yours requires no wading through. But it lays bare the fundamental incoherence and bad design involved in what should be a simple spell.

Huh. And I've just noticed one other bit of mechanical oddness in the 3.5 spell text - one that adds a use to the spell but makes it needlessly more complex.
You point your finger and determine the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst. A glowing, pea-sized bead streaks from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the fireball at that point.​Yours and mine both exploded on impact. A 3.5 wizard is meant to play "guess the range" and the exploding on impact is an alternative detonation method. With "explodes on impact" you guess the range to be 500 feet and then point at the ground by the feet of your target - much more accurate against anything not flying. And flyers can really move in 6 seconds. On reflection I prefer one intended detonation method rather than two - especially if we both missed that bit of text summarising the spell (which is another problem of far too wordy text blocks).

So yeah, there are serious presentation issues involved here   (And for what it's worth I picked fireball because it's an iconic spell; I hadn't realised quite how bad the rules were for it in 3.5 before this thread).


----------



## tomBitonti (Sep 6, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> I think so too. And what people prefer.




Lots of text omitted.  Mostly I agree with these; the final text rather reads like a sidebar: Common answers for Fireball; a mini-FAQ for how fireball works when combined with standard spell mechanics.  As well, the examples read like very old 1E rulings updated to 3E.

Not knowing the defaults, I didn't remove details which might be avoided by reliance on the default.  If spell resistence applies by default, then the spell-resistance line should be removed.  If spreads burn-through by default, that can be omitted.

The whole "explodes on impact" is *not* a default mechanic!  Many spells only require line-of-effect.  You can't interpose to prevent a light spell, except to break the entire line-of-effect.  Fireball is unique in that it is aimed like a ray but is an area spell.  That explains, I think, that the "aiming for a aperture" detail, which is rather odd.  Normally, aiming through an aperture means a cover ruling.

That fireball creates just a "low roar" might be unexpected.  A loud boom might be more reasonable.  Although, the "creates almost no pressure" detail goes for less sound, not more.

Comparing all of this to *Horrifying (Horrific?) Visage*, what I'm taking from this is that details of the summary matter, both as regards to specifying correct keywords and for having well explained understanding of the various keyword.  That is to say, having well defined *Push*, *Psychic*, and *Fear*; having clear defaults for spell resistance for an Evocation type spell, having well defined *Fire* and *Spread*.  Also, unique mechanics (aiming an area spell; early detonation) tend to create problems.  (That being said, those unique mechanics are iconic!)

(As a detail: Readying to interpose a fireball perhaps doesn't work out so well given how Readied Actions work in 3.5E.  I thought there were cases where readying to deny a target to an action allowed a new target to be selected.)

Thx!

TomB


----------



## Mallus (Sep 6, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> I've never seen anyone use the "melt metals" part: You would not survive a blast that melts soft metals, so the detail is ignored.



My group in college did, while playing a blend of AD&D and 2e. A fireballed character would roll a saving throw for themselves, and then separate ones for their items and coinage. I recall item saves being important in AD&D/2e. 

It served as a disincentive to wantonly fireball certain opponents, ie the ones who might be wielding valuable items, and as an incentive not to be on the receiving end of a fireball, regardless of your current HP total .

Was it nonsensical that your +1 plate mail and gold coins might melt, while you got little more than a light scorching? (let's leave aside the absurdity of a 'light scorching' in and of itself). Why of course. 

But it was also completely... D&D. We just went with it.


----------



## slobo777 (Sep 6, 2012)

Mallus said:


> My group in college did, while playing a blend of AD&D and 2e. A fireballed character would roll a saving throw for themselves, and then separate ones for their items and coinage. I recall item saves being important in AD&D/2e.
> 
> It served as a disincentive to wantonly fireball certain opponents, ie the ones who might be wielding valuable items, and as an incentive not to be on the receiving end of a fireball, regardless of your current HP total .
> 
> ...




My memory fails me whether it was my houserule, or came from somewhere else, but I recall enforcing only a single item save, only if you failed your own save, and usually selecting randomly from the "outermost" items that made sense - so generally shields, weapons helms and armour needed to make saves. You would lose a backpack before you lost its contents, so you'd get a chance to rescue stuff. Saves versus fire for metal items were pretty good.

It also turned out quite rare in practice - monsters didn't throw fireballs about, and dragons turned up infrequently. Hell hounds became a little more scary . . .


----------



## Neonchameleon (Sep 6, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> Lots of text omitted. Mostly I agree with these; the final text rather reads like a sidebar: Common answers for Fireball; a mini-FAQ for how fireball works when combined with standard spell mechanics. As well, the examples read like very old 1E rulings updated to 3E.




Two of the best bits of DMing advice I know are "Let it ride" and "Roll the dice or say yes".  I have absolutely _no_ desire for a mini-FAQ on such a basic spell outside of tournament play.  I'd far rather the PCs tried stunts with it rather than looked up in the FAQ.



> Not knowing the defaults, I didn't remove details which might be avoided by reliance on the default. If spell resistence applies by default, then the spell-resistance line should be removed. If spreads burn-through by default, that can be omitted.




Ah, I consider that Spell Resistance applying _should_ be a default otherwise spell resistance is just a minor oddity - and stated this explicitely in my writeup.  Which regrettably it is in 3.X.  (4e doesn't have Spell Resistance at all.)



> The whole "explodes on impact" is *not* a default mechanic!




Absolutely.  Which is why it is in the line of narrative description I gave.  Those things matter - but only when we start going into details.  You don't need to say more about it exploding on impact other than that it explodes on impact.  That covers everything until the PCs start trying to get creative - at which point it gives the DM enough to cover everything.  

I neither need nor want the game to hold me by the hand and explain to me in words of one syllable:
This spell explodes on impact.  That means that if it hits something that gets in the way it blows up.  And that is the centre of the fireball.  Also it is possible to aim it through small spaces and if you can hit such a small gap you can make it blow up on the far side of the small gap.  You use the same rules you do to aim at a small gap to aim a fireball.​I find it annoying, patronising, and that it simply gets in the way the overwhelming majority of the time - and the .  The one line text summary on the other hand normally says almost everything important and treats me like an adult whose time is actually worth something.

I also find the _only _significant difference between the paragraph I wrote using as short words as I could think of added to my single sentence and the paragraph below to be that the paragraph below seems to positively enjoy unnecessary obfuscation like "pointing digit", and "prior to attaining the prescribed range".
You point your finger and determine the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst. A glowing, pea-sized bead streaks from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the fireball at that point. (An early impact results in an early detonation.) If you attempt to send the bead through a narrow passage, such as through an arrow slit, you must “hit” the opening with a ranged touch attack, or else the bead strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely. ​In particular the sentence "An early impact results in an early detonation." is overtly as patronising as anything in my paragraph - but it is necessary because of the sheer woolyness and lack of craftsmanship of the sentence " and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the fireball at that point."   That sentence could be simplified to "and it blossoms into the fireball either when it reaches the set range or when it hits something".

I hadn't realised in quite as much detail before this thread why I found the 3.X spell mechanics annoying.  They simply were aggravating.  But now I come to analyse rather than avoid what is actually written, I'm seeing a mix of patronising and obfuscatory that adds precisely nothing to the game and slows me down by forcing me to work out what the spell actually is trying to do rather than presenting it in one single line. Oh, and saddles me with bad mechanics that force me to go to the spell description rather than work out a solution in line with the fiction for edge cases.

Oh, and for more complex spells you have miss, hit, and effect lines in 4e - but the goal of the spell is in the name and line of flavour text.



> That fireball creates just a "low roar" might be unexpected.




We can add it to the flavour line if it's _that_ important.  We can even add a line about material components.  (I categorically refuse to add the line about melting metals however).



> Comparing all of this to *Horrifying (Horrific?) Visage*, what I'm taking from this is that details of the summary matter, both as regards to specifying correct keywords and for having well explained understanding of the various keyword. That is to say, having well defined *Push*, *Psychic*, and *Fear*; having clear defaults for spell resistance for an Evocation type spell, having well defined *Fire* and *Spread*.




Yes, yes they do.  And one of the weaknesses of 4e is that until you've understood what the terms mean it's harder to read and interpret.



> Also, unique mechanics (aiming an area spell; early detonation) tend to create problems. (That being said, those unique mechanics are iconic!)




Only very slightly if you're running on exception based design and have a competent DM.  But 3.X fireball for all practical purposes _doesn't_ have a unique mechanic.  I would be amazed if as many as 5% of all fireballs cast ever used the "explodes early" or the "through arrowslit" clauses.  And I'd be surprised if it hit 1%.  Most of the time fireball is just a big ball of fire (and I've never seen a single person object that 4e changed what the caster did to create one to "create a big ball of fire in his hands then throw it").


----------



## Herschel (Sep 6, 2012)

Sir Robilar said:


> So I have been reading the latest playtest material and I’m wondering about many of the new elements included. The designers have repeatedly stated that one of their important goals is that every rules mechanic in D&D Next has a direct connection to something in the game world....
> 
> ( As a quick afterword, I’m not a native speaker and although I can usually convey the basic message I’m trying to make, I find it hard to explain myself as precise as I would like to. Please consider this. )




The only "issue" with your post is that you used a nonsense term. "Disassociated mechanics" means nothing but a pejorative against which mechanics one has chosen not to like. There is no realism in a game, there's only the "realism" a player chooses to feel. Every rules mechanic having a direct connection to something in the game world is also meaningless because any game rule, by definition, is connected to the game world. 

Otherwise your post reads tremendously well. Maybe non-native speakers more often actually learn the proper way to use a language.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 6, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Only very slightly if you're running on exception based design and have a competent DM.  But 3.X fireball for all practical purposes _doesn't_ have a unique mechanic.  I would be amazed if as many as 5% of all fireballs cast ever used the "explodes early" or the "through arrowslit" clauses.  And I'd be surprised if it hit 1%.  Most of the time fireball is just a big ball of fire (and I've never seen a single person object that 4e changed what the caster did to create one to "create a big ball of fire in his hands then throw it").




Additional text omitted.

I do think you are understating the uniqueness of "explodes on impact".  Line-of-effect is the rule for most spells, and if line of effect is blocked, either the spell fizzles, or you get to choose a new target location.  What happens for rays is quite different, but this isn't a ray.  One other unique case is magic missile, which "unerringly" seeks out its target.  There, if you block line-of-effect, the missile fizzles (or maybe you get to choose a new target. I'm a little fuzzy if you are allowed to interrupt the spell after targets are selected; I do know that casting builds in target selection as a part of the casting decision.  I'll have to go back to the detailed rules to tell what actually happens.)

Thx!

TomB


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## pemerton (Sep 7, 2012)

[MENTION=13107]tomBitonti[/MENTION] and   [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] - interesting discusssion and elucidation of the classic D&D fireball spell.

I agree with Neonchameleon on the desirability of sharp, pithy spell descriptions, preferably with key info in statblocks. (I learned this preference from Rolemaster, which tends to fit 10 or more spells on a page in Spell Law.)

I think Tom is right about the desire, in 3.5 at least, to have fireball behave as a type of "area ray". Should it have read something like:

The fireball detonates when the bead strikes a solid object or surface. The caster aims the bead as a ray; a miss is resolved as if the bead were a grenade-like missile.​
Then instead of a unique mechanic, the spell is framed by reference to existing rules.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 7, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> Additional text omitted.
> 
> I do think you are understating the uniqueness of "explodes on impact".




I don't.  I think you are significantly overstating its importance and uniqueness.  It's just effectively a ray that explodes when it hits - and for 95%+ of all fireballs this doesn't make the blindest bit of difference.  Or it makes a _vast_ difference and SOP is to catch fireballs on shields and have the things blocked _by_ the shield - but that would be an entirely different spell.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 7, 2012)

pemerton said:


> I think Tom is right about the desire, in 3.5 at least, to have fireball behave as a type of "area ray". Should it have read something like:
> The fireball detonates when the bead strikes a solid object or surface. The caster aims the bead as a ray; a miss is resolved as if the bead were a grenade-like missile.​Then instead of a unique mechanic, the spell is framed by reference to existing rules.




Nice expansion.  On the other hand this significantly changes the spell (gives it an attack roll) - and any caster with a brain aims it at the target's feet or the square of ground - AC 5, and by the time you get it you're at least +2 to hit.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 7, 2012)

Chris_Nightwing said:


> Well that does make for an amusing situation then. Do you think they would have done the same if the forced movement rules were different? Or was it that there might be pit traps as well as pits?




No.  Because pits without forced movement are about as relevant as wallpaper.  You just step round them.  With forced movement, holes in the floor are a constant threat.

You might as well ask if the PCs would have brought the same amount of light in if they all had darkvision.


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## GreyICE (Sep 7, 2012)

Drago Rinato said:


> WotC should do 2 version: One with a Setting and one without (just like a srd, clean of reference)




I would LOVE this.


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## pemerton (Sep 7, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> Nice expansion.  On the other hand this significantly changes the spell (gives it an attack roll) - and any caster with a brain aims it at the target's feet or the square of ground - AC 5, and by the time you get it you're at least +2 to hit.



I agree that it adds extra mechanical detail for little practical effect in most (the overwhelming number of?) cases.

I was going to suggest it might make a difference in Against the Giants, when you want to fireball the caves full of trolls - because the trolls provide cover to the ground in the middle of them - but you can probably just detonate it on the roof instead!


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## Tony Vargas (Sep 7, 2012)

tomBitonti said:


> Many, many examples omitted.
> 
> A question: Do you find detail that you provide for the examples to make the abilities more satisfying?



I find player-provided detail more satisfying than boilerplate, yes.  I like having a wide range of possibilities.  With the abstraction of RPG rules, one mechanic can often serve for a variety of concepts - making a virtue (flexibility) of necessity (abstraction).

But, it's also very important to have strong, evocative examples and flavor in the game, itself, to serve as defaults and as inspiration.  It just shouldn't be so tightly coupled to specific mechanics as to be indistinguishable from them.



> we the reader must provide these explanations.  Isn't that the responsibility (read "job") of the game designer?



I can't disagree:  5e does seem to take every opportunity to leave it to the user (DM or player) to complete the design process.


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## Chris_Nightwing (Sep 7, 2012)

Neonchameleon said:


> No.  Because pits without forced movement are about as relevant as wallpaper.  You just step round them.  With forced movement, holes in the floor are a constant threat.
> 
> You might as well ask if the PCs would have brought the same amount of light in if they all had darkvision.




I didn't say 'if there were no forced movement', I said 'if the forced movement rules were different'. Things can physically push you into pits, but perhaps running in fear won't have the precisely identical effect. The difference could be as little as making the saving throw against falling causing you to jump over/around the pit instead of fall prone. It might be as great as forced movement being in a straight line, or giving the player control over the movement (for fleeing, not being pushed).

My point being that the mechanics result in metagame decisions that might not make full sense in a particular scenario and separate the players' worldview from that of their characters.


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## tomBitonti (Sep 7, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> I would LOVE this.




Yeah.  Seems that having both should be possible.  What gets in the way are page counts, for print media, and copy protection for electronic media.

In this space I'm struck by the utility of the PathFinder SRD:

Pathfinder_OGC

We should be at a point where a truly useful SRD + Expandable Background + Character Builder + Monster Builder + Encounter Builder application can be created.  There would be plenty of room to put in an "Expandable Background" section.

TomB


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## GreyICE (Sep 7, 2012)

That's not programmed in effing silverlight.

I mean seriously, why did they pick silverlight?  Silverlight/Flash are designed for dynamic applications.  PHP+SQL were designed for STATIC applications.

Guess what, you don't want to play twitch gaming with your character sheet?  It's FINE if it only responds when you move the mouse or click something.  *sigh*


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## tomBitonti (Sep 7, 2012)

GreyICE said:


> That's not programmed in effing silverlight.
> 
> I mean seriously, why did they pick silverlight?  Silverlight/Flash are designed for dynamic applications.  PHP+SQL were designed for STATIC applications.
> 
> Guess what, you don't want to play twitch gaming with your character sheet?  It's FINE if it only responds when you move the mouse or click something.  *sigh*




It does have some wonkiness, and can be a bit slow.  Took me a while to figure out how to get the downloads for the monster database.

So not a point about how the application is implemented, but of the scope of the application; of what the application is trying to present.

I'd rather prefer a complete download of the application, with an ability to sync up to the master database for updates.  (Or, with a local cache of all the data; same thing, different names.)

Thx!

TomB


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