3 ms·

To give you an idea of how wide the gap is, my issue is not that I want the interaction to be ill-defined. I never ever want to have to think about the interact

To give you an idea of how wide the gap is, my issue is not that I want the interaction to be ill-defined. I never ever want to have to think about the interactions between named spells in a fight. That’s a narratively uninteresting part of the situation. If there is to be a fight between people with fantastical powers, I want the rules to solve the thing quickly without unnecessary fuss so we can get back to what matters. Your two last paragraphs are just tedium from my point of view which is why I dislike D&D so much I guess.

dragontamer 4y ago
> I never ever want to have to think about the interactions between named spells in a fight. Alas, that's not how games work. Someone casts "Insanity", can it be removed with Dispel Magic? What about Antimagic Field? What happens if you kill the person, then resurrect them, do they come back with the insanity effect? The story must go on. You either decide that you want it ill specified (ie: whoever improvs the best gets the decision), or you have a rulebook that carefully lays out the interactions. You don't have to know the interactions. Simply knowledge that millions of other players have come across this game, and have likely already come across this situation and have analyzed the rules + made a decision is enough. No person wants to memorize rulebooks. But we dungeon masters do so to ensure fairness in our decisions. If someone doesn't like the ruling, i can always point out the rulebook (or if not the rules, then an online discussion of a similar situation) that will settle the debate. ----------- Because if you know a thing about players, they will try everything to "Just for flavor, have that +5 Magic Sword on their Gorilla because its awesome" (when they really just want to roll more damage than everyone else in the party). If I let the Druid effectively have twice the magic items of everyone and letting his pet-gorilla play a Fighter, then everyone else loses (because there's no way they can keep up with the damage output of a Gorilla using weapons locked to martial class). Martial weapons are locked to martial classes for a reason: those classes lose spellcasting but gain more damage to gain another role (the damage-dealing role) to play in this game. In effect: the 1d8 fists of a Gorilla are there and balanced against the needs of everyone else. The Druid + Pet-Gorilla already play with two turns per... turn. They're already considered quite strong in the game, I as the dungeon master, need to know where "too much damage" starts to seep in and where "Improv rulebreaking" can start making the Druid stupidly overpowered. ---------- I've played with lots of "Improv" people. Even with their best interests at heart, the game innately becomes a "Lemme bullshit my own powers to be better than everyone else's, so that I'm the star of this show". Maybe you don't do it, but *someone* in the group always tries to do this. You need to cut them down and restrict them so that their power level remains roughly on the same level as everyone else in the party. Knowing the limitations of spells, as well as the limitations of weapons, is a good starting point to ensuring fairness at the table. ------ Going back to the top. Insanity is 7th level and is explicitly stated that only 7th level spells and above (like Limited Wish) can remove it. Trying to bullshit a 3rd level spell (Dispel Magic) into removing Insanity means that the Wizards / Sorcerers become overpowered, relative to the abilities of everyone else. You have to make them spend a 7th level slot to heal this particular curse.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  > Alas, that's not how games work. Plenty of games work this way thankfully. What you describe after is hell. That’s exactly what I hate about RPG. You don’t have to care about balancing power level and people “bullshiting“ their powers if your game simply doesn’t have these mechanics. I don’t want to have to play through a detailed combats ever especially in a heroic fantasy setting. That’s as far removed from fun a situation as I can imagine. It’s interesting because our discussion makes it obvious that there are entirely orthogonal way of enjoying RPG with next to no overlap.
  - the_af 4y ago
    To give my perspective, I fully agree with you and I'm not an "improv" kind of gamer. I want combat, but I also want simple rules and a fast flow to the gameplay, not tedium. D&D is not only tedious to me, it's also a "mechanicist" (for lack of a better word) approach to fantasy. It's rules-based rather than fun-based. It doesn't tell a story, it tells how spell X interacts with weapon Y and how to read charts and stats. A fight in movies doesn't happen like that, the flow and thrill is entirely different. I'm ok rolling dice, it's fun! But give me a result fast and make it narratively meaningful, nothing breaks immersion like arguing whether a level 35 Pastamancer can cast Fireball against a level 5 shield of enchanted wood.
    - dragontamer 4y ago
      > A fight in movies doesn't happen like that, the flow and thrill is entirely different. If we look at real life games, such as Fencing... and less "combat" like games, like Football or Baseball, we end up with huge rule systems to fairly resolve conflicts. One can say "I just want to throw a ball and have fun". But there is no _GAME_ here. If you want to play "Basketball", and get good at "Basketball", it becomes very important to define a foul. Same thing in the D&D world. You may not necessarily have to define what is or isn't a foul in your games, but should combat grow intense and adversarial, then it becomes a necessity. -------- But as I said before: if you want to just roleplay, Dread is there for that. There's a reason why other games systems exist. But I bust out D&D when I want to (and when my players want to) have a complex system of magical spells interact with each other, in a well defined manner. That's still flexible enough for story to be pulled out of it.

dragontamer 4y ago

> I never ever want to have to think about the interactions between named spells in a fight. Alas, that's not how games work. Someone casts "Insanity", can it be removed with Dispel Magic? What about Antimagic Field? What happens if you kill the person, then resurrect them, do they come back with the insanity effect? The story must go on. You either decide that you want it ill specified (ie: whoever improvs the best gets the decision), or you have a rulebook that carefully lays out the interactions. You don't have to know the interactions. Simply knowledge that millions of other players have come across this game, and have likely already come across this situation and have analyzed the rules + made a decision is enough. No person wants to memorize rulebooks. But we dungeon masters do so to ensure fairness in our decisions. If someone doesn't like the ruling, i can always point out the rulebook (or if not the rules, then an online discussion of a similar situation) that will settle the debate. ----------- Because if you know a thing about players, they will try everything to "Just for flavor, have that +5 Magic Sword on their Gorilla because its awesome" (when they really just want to roll more damage than everyone else in the party). If I let the Druid effectively have twice the magic items of everyone and letting his pet-gorilla play a Fighter, then everyone else loses (because there's no way they can keep up with the damage output of a Gorilla using weapons locked to martial class). Martial weapons are locked to martial classes for a reason: those classes lose spellcasting but gain more damage to gain another role (the damage-dealing role) to play in this game. In effect: the 1d8 fists of a Gorilla are there and balanced against the needs of everyone else. The Druid + Pet-Gorilla already play with two turns per... turn. They're already considered quite strong in the game, I as the dungeon master, need to know where "too much damage" starts to seep in and where "Improv rulebreaking" can start making the Druid stupidly overpowered. ---------- I've played with lots of "Improv" people. Even with their best interests at heart, the game innately becomes a "Lemme bullshit my own powers to be better than everyone else's, so that I'm the star of this show". Maybe you don't do it, but *someone* in the group always tries to do this. You need to cut them down and restrict them so that their power level remains roughly on the same level as everyone else in the party. Knowing the limitations of spells, as well as the limitations of weapons, is a good starting point to ensuring fairness at the table. ------ Going back to the top. Insanity is 7th level and is explicitly stated that only 7th level spells and above (like Limited Wish) can remove it. Trying to bullshit a 3rd level spell (Dispel Magic) into removing Insanity means that the Wizards / Sorcerers become overpowered, relative to the abilities of everyone else. You have to make them spend a 7th level slot to heal this particular curse.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> Alas, that's not how games work. Plenty of games work this way thankfully. What you describe after is hell. That’s exactly what I hate about RPG. You don’t have to care about balancing power level and people “bullshiting“ their powers if your game simply doesn’t have these mechanics. I don’t want to have to play through a detailed combats ever especially in a heroic fantasy setting. That’s as far removed from fun a situation as I can imagine. It’s interesting because our discussion makes it obvious that there are entirely orthogonal way of enjoying RPG with next to no overlap.
- the_af 4y ago
  To give my perspective, I fully agree with you and I'm not an "improv" kind of gamer. I want combat, but I also want simple rules and a fast flow to the gameplay, not tedium. D&D is not only tedious to me, it's also a "mechanicist" (for lack of a better word) approach to fantasy. It's rules-based rather than fun-based. It doesn't tell a story, it tells how spell X interacts with weapon Y and how to read charts and stats. A fight in movies doesn't happen like that, the flow and thrill is entirely different. I'm ok rolling dice, it's fun! But give me a result fast and make it narratively meaningful, nothing breaks immersion like arguing whether a level 35 Pastamancer can cast Fireball against a level 5 shield of enchanted wood.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    > A fight in movies doesn't happen like that, the flow and thrill is entirely different. If we look at real life games, such as Fencing... and less "combat" like games, like Football or Baseball, we end up with huge rule systems to fairly resolve conflicts. One can say "I just want to throw a ball and have fun". But there is no _GAME_ here. If you want to play "Basketball", and get good at "Basketball", it becomes very important to define a foul. Same thing in the D&D world. You may not necessarily have to define what is or isn't a foul in your games, but should combat grow intense and adversarial, then it becomes a necessity. -------- But as I said before: if you want to just roleplay, Dread is there for that. There's a reason why other games systems exist. But I bust out D&D when I want to (and when my players want to) have a complex system of magical spells interact with each other, in a well defined manner. That's still flexible enough for story to be pulled out of it.