D&D 5th Edition: the fifth edition of the discussion thread

[Togath]

well, looking at the mechanics, first, they use the old style roll a die as a saving throw, rather then having saving throws behave like armour class, I also like that the monsters appear to be closer in mechanics to players, which is both useful for if a dm wanted to advance a monster, by granting it levels in a class, and also makes it easier to build your own, if they end up adding rules for it, it could also make monster PCs a possibility eventually.
I also like how the spells work so far, as it reduces the chance of 15 minute workday spellcasters.
I also like the new currency as well(not sure if it's against the NDA to mention it, though it was also in 2E so it's probably fine), as it's fun to have more varieties.

[kyoryu]

oddly looks closer to dnd 3.0 or 3.5 then to dnd 4E, which is interesting

Really? Play much 1e or 2e? Because it sure looks more like 1e to me than anything else.

[Togath]

well, aye, that too, but I meant mechanically it's a lot like 3.0, 3.5 or pathfinder, style-wise it's somewhat like 2E and possibly like 1E(the only edition I haven't read much about yet)
I really hope they decide to keep the stat layout for monsters, as it's both; easy to use, and also looks fairly neat, and reminds me of 2E

[Camelot]

No matter how much I will myself to levitate, I'm not going to take off. Except that happens in D&D. So do thousand of other unrealistic things.

That's why I specified that it would happen if no magic was involved. I still assume that in a D&D universe, physics is the same when magic is not involved. Maybe you don't, in which case your games would have different expectations from mine, hence our disagreement. Maybe Wizards doesn't, in which case the game will end up supporting different physics.

And if one dagger stab will take you out no matter what level you are, just how do you expect that to happen? Making sure high-level characters can slay dozens of orcs without breaking a sweat is precisely why we have inflated HP pools.

Because you gain more abilities as you level up that can prevent enemies from hitting you without just inflating the numbers. Great warriors don't survive combat because they can endure dozens of wounds; they survive because they have mastered the art of combat and always know where to position themselves to avoid attacks and where to strike their opponents. Sure, that can be simulated using attack bonuses and more hit points, but I find it more interesting when it's done through abilities.

Of course, it all comes down to what those numbers symbolize. Do hit points cover attacks that miss but exhaust you anyway, or are they reduced only when you are actually wounded? Does your attack bonus increase your accuracy or is it something more abstract? I personally prefer the numbers to be what they literally are; it's called HIT points, so they should change only when you are HIT, and I prefer that my characters take a realistic number of hits before they can no longer continue fighting.

[1337 b4k4]

This creates a lack of clarity about what matters and what does not, because when I look at one entry, the game provides me with one set of rules, and when I look elsewhere, the game provides me with an entirely different set of rules.

Ah, now I discover our disconnect. You're assuming that both versions will appear in the same rule book. They don't and they shouldn't. I agree with you that having conflicting rules in two sections of the rule book is bad design, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that a fluff + mechanics design is no more inherently bad, confusing or unclear than any other rule if you agree that fluff is rules.

What the fireball looks like has no mechanical effect on the range, blast radius, damage, or damage type.

This is true.

It's not relevant to the decisions of when, how, where, and against whom to use a fireball.

This is not true at all. If a fireball flies as a small marble of flame from your fingertips to the target, then that influences your decision to use it as a sneak attack against the orc war camp in the middle of the night because it gives away your position at the edge of the camp. Even worse if it stretches out from your location like a long snake or dragon, the flashier it is, the more likely someone notices. On the other hand, if it just suddenly appears in a spot the wizard concentrates on, then it makes a very viable opening move that keeps the party location from being observed.

More follows...

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Basically, instead of empowering the players to play the game they want to play, you're advocating for a system which creates meaningless limitations for the players, and then puts the responsibility for lifting that limitation on the player's ability to convince their DM. That kind of limitation serves no real purpose. So why have it?

Because the limitations are not meaningless and without purpose in a world and a game where what happens is defined by more than simple range and damage numbers. They're additional rules, just as if they had been formally laid out in a stat block.

"You can't do it, unless you can, and only when the DM says so, and the DM can always change it, even if he can't, and you have no options except to leave the game."

Welcome to the world of playing someone else's game. Incidentally, if I go over to your house and we start playing chess, you could declare that you play chess without the en passant rule and while that would alter the game and alter strategy, it in no way means I can't make reasonable decisions. How many variations on Rummy are there? Travel around the country and see if you find one consistent version of spades being played. Rules are meant to be broken, bent and adjusted to fit the individual players tastes. As long as everyone at the table agrees to the changes, it doesn't matter.

As for hastily written, absolutely. It should have been blast, not burst, and then it would need a range. Unless fireball is suddenly an AoE centered on the caster.

Good thing D&D has never had hastily written or poorly worded rules before! This sort of thing will never happen!

Which unintentionally is an example of how fluff as rules can improve clarity. Since we know that sometimes rules are hastily written, or that editing misses mistakes, we know that occasionally there can be typos or rules that need to be errata'd. But in 4e since we've arbitrarily defined "burst" (a common english word with widely understood meaning) to mean something different from what it means in the natural language we now have a rule that because it was written hastily, the intent of the rule is unclear, and much arguing will ensue around the tables. On the other hand, the fluff as crunch version is clear in the type of effect it is describing and intending to happen. In other words, the only reason you understand what the (typo'd) non fluff fireball is supposed to do is because you already know how a D&D fireball is supposed to work. The fluff as rules version requires no such prior knowledge. Fluff adding clarity to the rules.

By definition, if you are not changing mechanics, and making a purely cosmetic alteration, then it does not change mechanics.

See earlier up this reply. Perhaps it would help if I clarify. Fluff is rules means if you change the fluff, you are changing the mechanics, just perhaps not the particular numbers used to model the event.

Your point is good, except that D&D mechanics do not model the fluff. Oracle_Hunter's point about how the mechanics make commoners more familiar with Abyssal creatures than with bears, for example. Or how magic is described as hard to learn, but it actually takes no more experience to gain a level of wizard than anything else. So when players are told that the world works one way in theory, but they see how it works another in practice, all that default fluff becomes questionable -- suddenly, players don't know how the world works. Do mechanics trump fluff? Does fluff trump mechanics? Do peasants know about bears? If so, why does the knowledge skill work differently for players than for peasants?

This is a problem of A) poorly designed rules and B) attempting to apply rules outside a given realm that they're supposed to model. Neither of which have anything to do with whether rules as fluff detracts from clarity. If the knowledge check was supposed to model all knowledge checks for everyone everywhere, then it was a bad mechanic, and no amount of separation of mechanics and fluff solves that. If on the other hand (and as is likely) it was meant to model knowledge checks for adventurers encountering a creature they have no previous experience with ever in their lives, then complaining that doesn't work for modeling a farmer is like complaining that zero G combat rules don't work for modeling combat in low G.

Incidentally, rules as guidelines solves this problem with a little bit of thought. It might be that hard to know stuff about bears, but experience with the real world tells us that those with hands on experience with things that often require advanced knowledge otherwise, can perform those things as if a learned person. Consider how much math and physics goes into calculating how to throw a ball at a target, and then realize that even a 5 year old is pretty damn good at it, even without advanced trig under their belts.

Really? Play much 1e or 2e? Because it sure looks more like 1e to me than anything else.
...
well, aye, that too, but I meant mechanically it's a lot like 3.0, 3.5 or pathfinder, style-wise it's somewhat like 2E and possibly like 1E(the only edition I haven't read much about yet)

This combined with the number of 1e players who think it reminds them of what 4e tried to do as well gives me hope that WotC might just be able to pull something together that reasonably has something for everyone and that people can agree to play. The only real question is whether 3e people see *enough* 3e, and 4e people see *enough* 4e and OSR people see *enough* OSR that they'll be willing to sit down at a table with the others and play this game, as opposed to continuing on their separate paths.

[Ashdate]

This is a problem of A) poorly designed rules and B) attempting to apply rules outside a given realm that they're supposed to model. Neither of which have anything to do with whether rules as fluff detracts from clarity. If the knowledge check was supposed to model all knowledge checks for everyone everywhere, then it was a bad mechanic, and no amount of separation of mechanics and fluff solves that. If on the other hand (and as is likely) it was meant to model knowledge checks for adventurers encountering a creature they have no previous experience with ever in their lives, then complaining that doesn't work for modeling a farmer is like complaining that zero G combat rules don't work for modeling combat in low G.

Knowledge checks are supposed to model individual knowledge in 3.5e tho, whether it be for an adventurer, farmer, monster, or god. This is because there is an assumption that everything in the world is playing by the same "rules" (i.e. some combination of racial factor, class selection, and level adjustment). As skills are determined (usually) by some combination of level, intelligence, class, and racial hit dice, the system is attempting (no matter how badly) to emulate what a character (be they peasant or wizard) can or can not do.

It's sillyness like that why I prefer the 4e assumption that NPCs and Monsters play by their own rules (although there are certain things that are shared); it cuts down preperation time, and if I want an NPC who is really good at Streetwise, I can simply pick a number and say he has it, without needing to justify it as him being a level 7 Rogue.

[1337 b4k4]

Knowledge checks are supposed to model individual knowledge in 3.5e tho, whether it be for an adventurer, farmer, monster, or god. This is because there is an assumption that everything in the world is playing by the same "rules" (i.e. some combination of racial factor, class selection, and level adjustment). As skills are determined (usually) by some combination of level, intelligence, class, and racial hit dice, the system is attempting (no matter how badly) to emulate what a character (be they peasant or wizard) can or can not do.

I have to say that reading the linked SRD on "Knowledge" that it does not appear the 3.5 rules are supposed to model what a farmer knows about the bears that plague his fields. Supporting quotes from the SRD as follows:

Knowledge represents a study of some body of lore, possibly an academic or even scientific discipline.
...
Answering a question within your field of study has a DC of 10 (for really easy questions), 15 (for basic questions), or 20 to 30 (for really tough questions).
...
An untrained Knowledge check is simply an Intelligence check. Without actual training, you know only common knowledge (DC 10 or lower).

It seems pretty clear to me that applying the knowledge check to what a farmer would know about his cows or the bears that attack his flock is outside the scope of what knowledge was supposed to model. And even if it were supposed to model it, the last part about untrained checks clearly indicates that "common knowledge" is DC 10 or lower, which means at the absolute worst a commoner has a 50/50 chance of knowing about bears, and that assumes that you don't simply allow the commoner to take 10, which is actually perfect for modeling an untrained peasant recalling common information about a bear as the SRD says:

Taking 10 is especially useful in situations where a particularly high roll wouldn’t help.

It's sillyness like that why I prefer the 4e assumption that NPCs and Monsters play by their own rules (although there are certain things that are shared); it cuts down preperation time, and if I want an NPC who is really good at Streetwise, I can simply pick a number and say he has it, without needing to justify it as him being a level 7 Rogue.

Oh I certainly agree that I prefer allowing monsters and NPCs and PCs to all have their own particular rules. There's no reason why we have to model a PC the same way we model a monster or an NPC because they serve different purposes and therefore need to have different things modeled. I suppose though you could look at modeling monsters and NPCs and PCs the same way as the result of insisting that every aspect of the game be predictable to the players up front. After all, how can you make important decisions about your skills and characters if the DM can just declare that the NPC you meet has any skill level he wants.

But seriously, I much prefer well written guidelines to a heavy mechanically robust rules system for stuff like this.

[Togath]

This combined with the number of 1e players who think it reminds them of what 4e tried to do as well gives me hope that WotC might just be able to pull something together that reasonably has something for everyone and that people can agree to play. The only real question is whether 3e people see *enough* 3e, and 4e people see *enough* 4e and OSR people see *enough* OSR that they'll be willing to sit down at a table with the others and play this game, as opposed to continuing on their separate paths.

I personally view it as being somewhat like pathfinder(which is a good thing, as it means 3.5 stuff may end up somewhat compatible with 5E), in how close it is to 3.5, as least if I'm understanding the mechanics correctly(which from the comments in this thread, i may or may not not be)
1st: are spells expended via spell slots or simply never expended?
2nd: there is a skill system same as the previous 3 editions and pathfinder, correct?
3rd: weapons work the same way(roll 1d20+modifier against AC, and certain rolls can cause critical hits), correct?(I wasn't 100% sure, as I didn't see anything mentioning critical hits, which seems like an odd thing to not include)
I do hope that they decide to balance the classes better then 3.5 did, and that they eventually add an srd like with 3.5, d20 modern, or like pathfinder's srd

[Oracle_Hunter]

It seems pretty clear to me that applying the knowledge check to what a farmer would know about his cows or the bears that attack his flock is outside the scope of what knowledge was supposed to model.

This is exactly the problem.

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On one hand we have Monster Knowledge Checks which are used "to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities" -- a wonderfully fluffy turn of phrase that refers to nothing in the rules. Is it a "special power" that Bears attack with claws? If no, is that a "really easy" question (DC 10)? What if it were an Owlbear? Or a Tarrasque? Are those all DC 10s? Most importantly is the identify portion of this rule: you need to make a Monster Knowledge Check to be able to identify (i.e. name) a monster but what is a monster? Bears are listed under the "Monster (Animal)" heading of the SRD after all. What about cows -- they're not listed at all. Of course Cats are listed under Monsters (Animals) and, with at least 1 HD, no Commoner untrained in Nature could "identify" one.

The other hand lies in the poor design of NPC Classes. Trained skills are supposed to be the "common" skills known by members of that Class and yet Commoners -- the "farmer" class -- have no Knowledge skill whatsoever. This means they can only answer "really easy questions" about plants and animals and not "basic" ones. Where to draw the line?

Finally, note how your assumptions change on what is "common knowledge" based on other fluff concerns. I would wager you wouldn't say that a city-bound Commoner could treat knowledge of farm animals as a "really easy question" but does that mean that fluff influences knowledge DCs? Does a Wizard get to roll a DC 10 when asked about Wizarding Schools but a Rogue would need to roll a DC 15? There is literally no provision for this sort of thinking in the rules and this lack of guidance leads to equally valid arguments on all sides.

In short, you're "pretty clear to me" is not universal and is in fact fought-against by the way the rules are written. I'm not saying my interpretation is right, but it is easy to see how someone reading the rules could get a different impression. This is exactly the issue with unclear rules and the need for precision.

[jseah]

After all, how can you make important decisions about your skills and characters if the DM can just declare that the NPC you meet has any skill level he wants.

Especially when you are looking to gain NPC allies or make connections?
It's often a good idea to know what the people in the setting are generally capable of.

I might also note that in roughly half the games I have run, I have found need to stat up random NPC people mid-game, giving them plausible abilities that could be made with the level system and so on.
A number of my players' plans have hinged on X level spell being rare (due to nearly all NPCs being below class level 2X) or being able to easily find and talk to NPCs with certain abilities (craft smithing for one guy and 3rd level spells for another)

[jseah]

It's a very awkward blend which achieves neither the objective of a clear and developed setting nor the freedom to easily develop your own.<...>
And that, to me, is very disappointing.

This becomes less true when you move away from a specific setting, and try to have a multi-setting system like D&D. Then, it's the rules that matter, because fluff isn't set.

Which is why it is very important that the default fluff explanations for everything need to be setting independent.

Explaining the mechanics of spellcasting that results in certain crunch is setting independent. Saying that wizards need their fingers is setting independent (or at least has such a tiny effect that it can be worked in).

Putting things like Mage of the Arcane Order is bad, because positing the existence of some artifact and an entire organization of wizards around it is a setting thing.
Explaining the spells that make organizing wizards possible is not.

As an example, having core-book flavor text which says it is twice as hard to learn a level of wizard only makes sense if the mechanics actually follow through on this. In a defined setting, this might be perfectly acceptable. In a setting where the setting-fluff says that it is no harder to gain a level of wizard than anything else, plus mechanics which make it equally easy compared to other classes, then suddenly that core-book flavor text from earlier is not just out of place, but actively working against other elements of the game.

Which is just a matter of how you write it.
If you wrote the fluff explanation FIRST, then no such problems occur since your mechanics will model the fluff explanation.

Furthermore, the stated connection from specific fluff explanations to specific crunch rules tells you what you need to change if your setting mods those explanations.

EDIT: back when I had the conception of my magic system, I spent a year discussing and thinking about how magic would work before I wrote a single line of rules.
Mechanical sections only exist to be written AFTER I am able to explain how they end up that way.

The ability for the player to really develop their own image and define their character is one of the key draws of a tabletop game over, say, movies, or books, or video games. If the players are comfortable with someone else telling them who their character is, what they do, and the style of in which they do it, then there are better mediums for that sort of thing.

However, that aside, the more a system (as opposed to a DM) limits the ability of the players to define and describe themselves, the more people it excludes. On the other hand, leaving that option in the hands of the players only eliminates DMs who would rather have an audience than players, and players who are strangely afraid of imaginary responsibility for their in-game avatar.

I would contest this. The primary defining characteristic of a Character is the actions they take and decisions they make.
This part the rules should not touch, at least not if it is to be setting independent. EDIT: apart from telling you what you cannot do of course XD

But the fluff explanations and crunch models dictate the options and their balance. They tell you the results of actions and how things are done.
Having rules for culture is for setting books, having rules for how magic works is not. Without explaining a basic set of knowledge of how the world operates, there is no clarity, no predictability and no way to know anything.
And if a specific setting requires changing some fundamental rules of the world (like magic operation), then it has be reflected in the crunch provided with that setting.

What is needed is a baseline explanation that can accommodate many different usages and is flexible enough to support diverse settings with a minimum of modification.
But you cannot cover everything under the sun with the same explanation, and leaving out the explanation results in everyone taking their own assumptions and personal interpretations -> aka. chaos.

"You want your fire dragon spell? Hmm... this is how it is different from fireball, so this is how your spell will be different!"
-is quick and easy for a DM. Writing a couple of pages of explanation and what you forgot clash with their assumptions is neither quick nor easy.

[Doug Lampert]

Because the entire stated purpose of hit dice was to give you the ability to have limited self-healing without having to spend resources, just to help you get from one encounter to the next. Healing kits completely negate that.

Hit dice were also supposed to make you independent of needing a cleric. 50 GP per kit, UNLESS you have the Cleric of Pelor who makes them in an hour for 25 GP each, and who also happens to be the only playtest character with a kit.

So at least in the playtest the healing kit succeeds in its design goal of making you not need a cleric IF and ONLY IF you have a specific subtype of cleric.

Great.... Is it just me or is this really just plain over the top stupid? I mean you can't even SEE sane and sensible from wherever they were standing when they came up with this one.

And what's IN a fifty GP healing kit? That's a nice chunk of change, it's not just a few bandages and the like or it would cost about 1% of that AND the significant skill (if any) would be required in use rather than manufacture.

Also if a character can routinely spend on hour making 25 GP worth of stuff into something that commonly retails for 50 GP then I think our heroes are in the wrong line of work, who needs to loot monsters when you can earn more faster and safer back in town.

The whole idea fails on so many levels. Just say "you spend five minutes tending your wounds and that lets you recover encounter powers and spend your healing surges" like fourth edition did.

[1337 b4k4]

Finally, note how your assumptions change on what is "common knowledge" based on other fluff concerns. I would wager you wouldn't say that a city-bound Commoner could treat knowledge of farm animals as a "really easy question" but does that mean that fluff influences knowledge DCs? Does a Wizard get to roll a DC 10 when asked about Wizarding Schools but a Rogue would need to roll a DC 15? There is literally no provision for this sort of thinking in the rules and this lack of guidance leads to equally valid arguments on all sides.

That's because those aren't questions for the rules system, they're questions for the fluff to answer. What is "common knowledge" is entirely dependent on culture and the people. For example, everyone in Japan knows what Golden Week is, but hardly anyone knows what it is in the US. That means if you played a D&D game set in modern day Japan, it's common knowledge for commoners, and if it was set in modern day US, it would be something more difficult. The rules don't need to (and shouldn't) try to spell this out. They should give some example guidelines for the DCs, but otherwise this is something that by nature HAS to be left up to the DM, or else the rules just become a morass of jumbled legalese, edge cases and obvious rules patches.

This is exactly the issue with unclear rules and the need for precision.

I'd argue this is why you don't want highly precise (which is distinct from clear) rules, because once you start narrowly restricting the language into a limited grammar whose meanings are only relevant to the book, you generate all sorts of inconsistencies or edge cases that are otherwise covered by the years of human experience that players have and the flexibility of the human language.

Especially when you are looking to gain NPC allies or make connections?
It's often a good idea to know what the people in the setting are generally capable of.

Sorry, I was taking a cheap shot at Fatebreaker, that wasn't meant to be a serious expression.

[jseah]

I suppose though you could look at modeling monsters and NPCs and PCs the same way as the result of insisting that every aspect of the game be predictable to the players up front. After all, how can you make important decisions about your skills and characters if the DM can just declare that the NPC you meet has any skill level he wants.

But seriously, I much prefer well written guidelines to a heavy mechanically robust rules system for stuff like this.

I was deliberately taking it seriously though. I do think we need a "Creature Modelling" ruleset that gives a base for how all creatures work in general. Which is then modified per race.

Why should NPCs have special rules when players cannot also access the same abilities they can, especially if they are of the same race?

If you can't fit this into a level system, then don't have a level system.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Because you gain more abilities as you level up that can prevent enemies from hitting you without just inflating the numbers. Great warriors don't survive combat because they can endure dozens of wounds; they survive because they have mastered the art of combat and always know where to position themselves to avoid attacks and where to strike their opponents. Sure, that can be simulated using attack bonuses and more hit points, but I find it more interesting when it's done through abilities.

Fair enough, but this isn't a praise of 5E because, by all indications, these abilities won't exist.

Knowledge checks are supposed to model individual knowledge in 3.5e tho, whether it be for an adventurer, farmer, monster, or god. This is because there is an assumption that everything in the world is playing by the same "rules" (i.e. some combination of racial factor, class selection, and level adjustment). As skills are determined (usually) by some combination of level, intelligence, class, and racial hit dice, the system is attempting (no matter how badly) to emulate what a character (be they peasant or wizard) can or can not do.

The skill system in 3.X was designed solely to simulate adventurers in adventuring situations. And honestly it only really works passably at that. It completely falls apart and becomes unusable when you apply it to other contexts.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I'd argue this is why you don't want highly precise (which is distinct from clear) rules, because once you start narrowly restricting the language into a limited grammar whose meanings are only relevant to the book, you generate all sorts of inconsistencies or edge cases that are otherwise covered by the years of human experience that players have and the flexibility of the human language.

I'd like to counter with 4e which is notable for both using legal-like language (e.g. Terms of Art) and not having a whole lot of "inconsistencies or edge cases" over the course of its run.

There is a reason legal documents use a "limited grammar" and it isn't just for the enrichment of lawyers: human language (particularly English) is imprecise by design and the interpretation of it where its meaning can have important consequences tends to result in more heat than light. If you are trying to design a system of rules that gives out consistent results it is better to rely on precisely defined terms than the "flexibility of human language."

If you'd rather have an inconsistent system, I'd suggest making it yourself instead of shelling out cash for rules that say, essentially, "make it up yourself."

[jseah]

I'd like to counter with 4e which is notable for both using legal-like language (e.g. Terms of Art) and not having a whole lot of "inconsistencies or edge cases" over the course of its run.

It has edge cases all over it, see my example with Icy Terrain vs Cube. The rules do not cover nearly enough use cases nor do they give intuitive results (or explain why their results are unintuitive).
Many people reading the same 4E ruleset come away with VASTLY different ideas about how things work. Including hilarities like Fireball doesn't actually set things on fire.
Seriously, I was reading the rules and the Fireball daily power doesn't actually say it does, neither does taking fire damage have anything to do with actually burning; and there is no explanation of how fireball appears to work that would imply it should set things on fire. (unlike 3E fireball which even mentions it is hot enough to melt lead)

You can explain all of that. You can explain nearly anything if you really needed to. The requirement for explanation is bad.
This is why we need fluff explanations for things.

Additionally, 4E is a system whose rules largely focus on combat. The moment you start applying character powers to out of combat situations, GM adjudications are required basically everywhere.



Note that I do not mean to imply any amount of praise for 3E. Other problems exist for that edition.

[Togath]

I personally liked the 3E and 4E skill systems, but I also feel that for spells, interesting combat spells are probably better to focus on first than out of combat only ones(though a few tout-of-combat spells are still useful to include somewhere even if your system doesn't have a lot of them), as many combat spells have some clever out-of-combat uses such as "lockpicks", lighters, or making objects such as bridges.

[Ashdate]

It has edge cases all over it, see my example with Icy Terrain vs Cube. The rules do not cover nearly enough use cases nor do they give intuitive results (or explain why their results are unintuitive).

I can tell you that after an entire 4e campaign stretching from level 1 to 15, the number of weird inconsistencies we've encountered can be counted on one hand. The question isn't whether "Icy Terrain" should slow down oozes, the question is whether there is a particular benefit to put in multiple edges cases to cover the small (and I reiterate, small) chance where things-don't-make-sense.

And honestly, on the subject of fireballs to do you require the rules to say that "fire burns things"?

I'm not completely against using fluff to help describe how powers "work", but I would argue that there's nothing wrong with allowing players and DMs to adjudicate the effects of using a Fireball in a wooden structure, as long as there are guidelines about improvisation to be followed as long as an agreeable solution isn't present (which is what page 42 of the 4e DMG does well). A good way of adjudicating "fluff" is a hundred times more useful in my opinion than baking in "fluff" directly.

[jseah]

I can tell you that after an entire 4e campaign stretching from level 1 to 15, the number of weird inconsistencies we've encountered can be counted on one hand. The question isn't whether "Icy Terrain" should slow down oozes, the question is whether there is a particular benefit to put in multiple edges cases to cover the small (and I reiterate, small) chance where things-don't-make-sense.

Then your group must be very different from mine. Or at least the style of campaigns must be radically different.

Because even when there was fluff to explain things, my players required adjudication at least once per combat and half a dozen times in the space of one in-game day.

We also make incredibly long range plans involving multiple entities (one player was setting himself up as the saviour of a city from his own undead hordes... as another secret army of ghouls were digging tunnels to various important residences and guild headquarters. He implied that he had other plans involving some other cities but hadn't put it into motion yet.
This is one guy. At least two others had similar levels of schemes going, including one where the player mind controlled a number of politically important giants to introduce sleeper agents for an undeclared purpose. )

None of this would have been possible under 4E, with its inherent unpredictability, and 3E's meager fluff explanations were already showing cracks as they tried anything they could think of.

And honestly, on the subject of fireballs to do you require the rules to say that "fire burns things"?

I'm not completely against using fluff to help describe how powers "work", but I would argue that there's nothing wrong with allowing players and DMs to adjudicate the effects of using a Fireball in a wooden structure, as long as there are guidelines about improvisation to be followed as long as an agreeable solution isn't present (which is what page 42 of the 4e DMG does well). A good way of adjudicating "fluff" is a hundred times more useful in my opinion than baking in "fluff" directly.

Oh, I did pull clarifications out of thin air every time they came up and for certain, fireball will set things on fire if I was GMing a 4E game. But other spells and powers are rather less clear.
Fireball was just an example. And yes, it would be nice if the rules said fireballs set things on fire.

However, as you can see in previous posts, when someone can refluff his "fireball" into a dragon-made-of-fire, whether THAT sets things on fire is rather more unclear. Maybe the dragon homes on lifeforce and so inanimate objects get ignored? Who knows, it's up to the description.

This sort of thing matters. One of my players would have died more or less instantly if I had ruled the other way on whether incorporeal creatures took up space for other incorporeal creatures. (unbodied vs multiple shadows) 3E never explained how incorporeality actually worked, or at least when used outside the normal cases.
And if the player had known about my ruling ahead of time, his plans would have been rather different... The requirement that I make a snap ruling caused his death and severely disrupted the plans of the other player (who was the one who killed him)


Additionally, I do not want to have to pull out the GM ruling too often. Some use of it is unavoidable. But when I have to give my players a multipage document of pre-start rulings on little things like "fireball sets on fire" (although not quite to that level), then it gets a little tedious.

[Oracle_Hunter]

It has edge cases all over it, see my example with Icy Terrain vs Cube. The rules do not cover nearly enough use cases nor do they give intuitive results (or explain why their results are unintuitive).

That is not an edge case.

An edge case is "a problem or situation that occurs only at an extreme (maximum or minimum) operating parameters" not something that commonly occurs during play. Furthermore, if you had read the rules you would have noted that Cubes are not immune to the Prone condition, and therefore would be affected by Prone as normal. It is a straightforward situation, handled directly by the rules and is not an "edge case" at all.

This is the point of a legalistic system -- people read the rules and do what they say. The fact that your "intuition" did not jive with the rules is not a problem with how the rules are written. This is much like complaining that your recipe failed because you used "all-purpose flour" even though the recipe called for "self-raising flour:" when terms are defined by a system you have to use the definitions provided and not just whatever you think the words are supposed to mean.

[jseah]

An edge case is "a problem or situation that occurs only at an extreme (maximum or minimum) operating parameters" not something that commonly occurs during play. Furthermore, if you had read the rules you would have noted that Cubes are not immune to the Prone condition, and therefore would be affected by Prone as normal. It is a straightforward situation, handled directly by the rules and is not an "edge case" at all.

And by the rules, fireball doesn't set things on fire.

In which case, the operating parameters are far too narrow to run a world. If the edge cases that fall at the edges of the rules do occur commonly, which they apparently do all the time in my games, then clearly the rules aren't good enough and don't cover a wide enough range of circumstances.

[Oracle_Hunter]

And by the rules, fireball doesn't set things on fire.

In which case, the operating parameters are far too narrow to run a world. If the edge cases that fall at the edges of the rules do occur commonly, which they apparently do all the time in my games, then clearly the rules aren't good enough and don't cover a wide enough range of circumstances.

And by the rules of 3.x a torch can't set anything on fire either, since it's not in the items description

* * * *

Yeah... we gotta agree to disagree on this one.

I, for one, have never found the parameters of 4e to be too narrow to run any D&D game I wanted to run. Nor did I hit any of these so-called "edge cases" -- I simply followed the rules. The few times that the rules were not explicit I made rulings as I had in every other RPG every made: was that enough heat to set the wood on fire, or did it just scorch it? At no point were this issues frequent enough to render the game "unplayable" -- stopping for five minutes to resolve a straightforward rules interaction would literally have never entered my mind.

[1337 b4k4]

I'd like to counter with 4e which is notable for both using legal-like language (e.g. Terms of Art) and not having a whole lot of "inconsistencies or edge cases" over the course of its run.

I'd argue that there are plenty of inconsistencies. How does an ooze "lie on the floor" (prone), or get deafened? How do you deal necrotic damage to a ghost or a stone golem? For that matter, you can't disease, poison or sleep a stone golem, but you can petrify it? Why does the camp fire bun you more if you fall into it when you're 30th level than when you're 1st level? The fact of the matter is, 4e is only consistent if you operate under the principle that the only things that exist in the world are the actual mechanics that exist in the stat blocks. That "Prone" isn't really knocking something prone, that a Stone Golem isn't really a magically animated mass of stones , that a ghost really isn't a dead creature with no body, and that your camp fire is inhabited by a malevolent spirit which senses your power and burns you more for it.

If you are trying to design a system of rules that gives out consistent results it is better to rely on precisely defined terms than the "flexibility of human language."

Which leads us to the question of is the purpose of D&D to provide consistent results between individual groups, or to provide a set of rules that groups can use to model and play in a fantasy world? They're not necessarily mutually exclusive, but I would certainly argue that 4e errs too far on the side of consistency for consistency's sake.

If you'd rather have an inconsistent system, I'd suggest making it yourself instead of shelling out cash for rules that say, essentially, "make it up yourself."

Except they don't say "make it up yourself" they say "Here's a basic world and here's some mechanical modeling of things within that world. You can use these to extrapolate other modelings as needed."

And honestly, on the subject of fireballs to do you require the rules to say that "fire burns things"?

Well, if fluff can't be rules...

The fact that your "intuition" did not jive with the rules is not a problem with how the rules are written. This is much like complaining that your recipe failed because you used "all-purpose flour" even though the recipe called for "self-raising flour:" when terms are defined by a system you have to use the definitions provided and not just whatever you think the words are supposed to mean.

And perhaps this is why so many people were turned off from 4e. Because their intuition says you can't deafen an ooze, you can't fight a fire elemental with a fire, but the rules absolutely say you can, and arguably more than any other D&D system, the rules in 4e are sacrosanct precisely because of how tightly they all fit together.

At no point were this issues frequent enough to render the game "unplayable" -- stopping for five minutes to resolve a straightforward rules interaction would literally have never entered my mind.

And I agree here, none of these inconsistencies are enough to stop a game for me, as well they shouldn't be in any game system. Then again, I never have those problems with 0e and 1e games that I run either, but some people seem to think the edge cases in those editions are show stoppers.

[Oracle_Hunter]

And perhaps this is why so many people were turned off from 4e. Because their inspiration says you can't deafen an ooze, you can't fight a fire elemental with a fire, but the rules absolutely say you can, and arguably more than any other D&D system, the rules in 4e are sacrosanct precisely because of how tightly they all fit together.

Eh, I modify 4e rules all the time when I'd like them to work otherwise -- but that doesn't mean I say "this game makes no sense."

But yeah, I'm not doing any further Edition Warring here, but I will reiterate that it always saddens me to hear people won't play a game because of what is, essentially, a failure of imagination. If you don't like a particular rules interaction because it doesn't taste right then play it otherwise -- making Oozes immune to Prone doesn't make them that much stronger and if that's all it takes to make you happy with the system, go ahead. It's just a real shame that people won't play games like 4e, Mouse Guard, or Bliss Stage all because something doesn't work exactly how their gut tells them it should.

[1337 b4k4]

But yeah, I'm not doing any further Edition Warring here, but I will reiterate that it always saddens me to hear people won't play a game because of what is, essentially, a failure of imagination. If you don't like a particular rules interaction because it doesn't taste right then play it otherwise -- making Oozes immune to Prone doesn't make them that much stronger and if that's all it takes to make you happy with the system, go ahead. It's just a real shame that people won't play games like 4e, Mouse Guard, or Bliss Stage all because something doesn't work exactly how their gut tells them it should.

Absolutely. I get not liking a game and not choosing to play it as your regular game. I don't get ignoring a game completely just because it rubs your intuition the wrong way.

[Fatebreaker]

Lots of things to reply to, so in the interest of brevity, I'm going to cut out everything but the most salient points use a lot of spoilers since "brevity" still translated to nine pages of text.

Editor's Note: Fatebreaker needs something to do on Saturday nights.

Ah, now I discover our disconnect. You're assuming that both versions will appear in the same rule book.

This is one of the problems, yes. And it's a problem which D&D has had in the past, whether through inconsistent language or poor layout or what have you.

But here's an actual example of what I'm talking about: elves are described as being "hauntingly beautiful" (page 15, 3.5 PHB), but they receive no bonuses to Charisma, which is in part a reflection of physical appearance. The fluff makes a claim which is in no way backed by the mechanics -- elves are no more likely to be beautiful than anyone else. On the other hand, they are also described as graceful, but for this they do have a +2 Dexterity modifier to back it up. What is "graceful" worthy of a mechanical bonus, but "beautiful" is not?

Let's look at that for a moment, and then we'll look at it in comparison to your fireball example. Note that "Charisma" means the technical term, the definition as provided by the rules, as opposed to "charisma," which means the conventional definition as used in common speech. Note also that there is an entire spoiler dedicated to the importance of understanding terms as the system defines them specifically. It is located, oddly enough, under the spoiler whose label includes the word "definitions."

So, are elves beautiful?

Is the average elf more beautiful than the average human? Hmm. Both races have a +0 modifier to their Charisma, so neither is more likely than the other to have a higher Charisma score. So, given a large enough sample size of each, the bell curve of Charisma scores for both races are going to be the same. Why, the average elf is no better than the average human when it comes to Charisma!

Are elves still beautiful relative to humans? If so, does an elf get more out of the same Charisma score than a human? Is a Charisma 10 elf more beautiful than a Charisma 10 human? That seems unfair. And imagine how hideous dwarves must be -- they actually receive a penalty to Charisma!

"Ah, but wait! Charisma measures more than physical beauty! Elves can still be beautiful and have the same Charisma score!"

Right you are, my conveniently-created imaginary audience member! So, does this mean that elves have other subsets of Charisma -- force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism and/or ability to lead -- which are worse than average humans, thereby offsetting their beauty and restoring the balance? Hmm. Odd that none of those qualities were mentioned as being lacking under the elven racial entry. Or perhaps elven beauty means less than human beauty, so a beautiful human is Charisma 12, while a beautiful elf is Charisma 10. Why, how strange that would be, for a system designed to allow you to compare different races and creatures to be inconsistent when applied to different races and creatures. And none of the other abilities seem to work that way -- why, equal Strength scores let you carry the same amount of weight, no matter what race you are!

So if elves are no more likely than humans to have a high Charisma score, and if they aren't described as having some offsetting racial quality which balances out their physical appearance, then why are they described as being better than their mechanics would dictate? And why is their grace worthy of a mechanical bonus, but their Charisma isn't?

Is it beautiful, as per the fluff? Or average, as per the mechanics? Why is elf-Charisma worth more than human-Charisma? Why are the fluff and the mechanics telling me different things?

What does my elf actually look like?

The answer ends up being: whatever I want my elf to look like. It's my character after all. His appearance is up to me. That doesn't mean it has a mechanical effect... unless, of course, I actually have the mechanics to go along with it.

And if elves are allowed to look however they want without changing their mechanical bonus -- after all, their average is equal to a human average and yet their average is beautiful while the human average is not -- then why can't other things change their appearance without affecting their mechanical bonuses?

Definitions, Clarity, Rules, & You

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But in 4e since we've arbitrarily defined "burst" (a common english word with widely understood meaning) to mean something different from what it means in the natural language we now have a rule that because it was written hastily, the intent of the rule is unclear, and much arguing will ensue around the tables.

Arbitrarily defined? It's used rather specifically, to mean something very clear and very precise. It has clearly written rules with clearly labeled diagrams and pictures.

The lack of clarity stems from the conflict between the fluff (which says that the ball of fire flies "from the wizards fingers to a fixed point which then explodes") and the rule ("burst 4") which operate at cross purposes. The rule says it's a burst 4, but gives no range; the origin square is thus the caster, extending outwards four squares in every direction. The fluff now introduces a confusion by implying that the ball of fire leaves the caster's square and enters another before exploding, which not only creates disagreement about where the origin square of the burst is, but also whether the fireball has unlimited range (since none is provided, and the fluff implies that the fireball's origin square is other than the caster's).

The mechanical rule was quite clear already. The addition of contradictory fluff creates the confusion.

I'd argue this is why you don't want highly precise (which is distinct from clear) rules, because once you start narrowly restricting the language into a limited grammar whose meanings are only relevant to the book, you generate all sorts of inconsistencies or edge cases that are otherwise covered by the years of human experience that players have and the flexibility of the human language.

These things are only inconsistent if you insist on defining the rules and the terms they use in ways which run counter to how the system defines them.

See below, where "Prone" and "prone" are two different things -- but "Prone" is still clearly defined and easily understood in mechanical terms.

It has edge cases all over it, see my example with Icy Terrain vs Cube.

This is why we need fluff explanations for things.

Additionally, 4E is a system whose rules largely focus on combat. The moment you start applying character powers to out of combat situations, GM adjudications are required basically everywhere.

The "Icy Cube" scenario only doesn't make sense if you can't imagine how introducing ice between the ground and a creature whose locomotion is dependent on friction with the ground would make it suffer penalties to move.

Seriously, though, Prone is a condition. It has a definition for what happens (-2 to attacks, grant combat advantage, cannot move except for specific types of movement, etc.), and that definition is very specific mechanically. How you define it fluff wise is left intentionally up to you, because you know best what, exactly, is happening in your story against that enemy at that very moment. In the Icy Cube's case, it can no longer move reliably over the frozen ground, and so it can neither defend itself (combat advantage!), attack accurately (-2 to attack!), etc. It doesn't have to be "prone" to be "Prone."

I would contest this. The primary defining characteristic of a Character is the actions they take and decisions they make.

In Ghost in the Shell, one of the main characters carries an old revolver. This is a high tech cyberpunk world, in case you're not familiar with it, so the decision to carry an older gun is in and of itself indicative of a defining characteristic of the character. It's such a defining part of the character that the other characters actually talk about what a defining element of his character it is.

In Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, one of the main characters also carries a revolver. We meet Jim Raynor in a shabby, broken down ol' bar on a shabby, broken-down ol' dustball of a planet, drinking whiskey(?) from a dirty glass, wearing shabby, practical clothes. Ah, but that revolver... what a sexy little thing she is. She's got a well-worn look to her, but it's clean rather than dirty, with ornate decorations across the barrel, and it features prominently in most of the opening cinematic while Mengsk, Raynor's arch-enemy, is talking on the SPACE TELEVISION! This gun matters. Raynor may not care about the flies in the bar or the apathetic sanitary standards of the establishment, and he may not even care much about his own appearance, but this gun? This gun he takes care of. That tells us a lot about him. And so, when the gun continues to appear throughout the game, it matters, too, because it's no longer just a gun -- it's a symbol of Jim Raynor and all the things that make up his character.

We use cues like this in all sorts of things to tell people about ourselves or to listen to what others are subtly telling us. In movies, what music is playing the background when a character does something? What do their clothes look like? What does their home look like? What kind of lighting or colors did the director put in this scene? Or that scene?

In Avatar, when the human SPACE HELICOPTERS! and the alien SPACE BIRDS! are flying towards one another, the music for one is ominous and the music for the other is uplifting, and if you change the music for that scene, the subtext of the scene changes even though neither side actually did anything differently. In the theatrical version, the music is (not so) subtly trying to tell you how to feel about the different sides.

These sorts of things matter. You can condense a lot of character development, backstory, themes, and motivation into a few simple character traits.

For a player who wants to take advantage of these little tricks to better develop and flesh out their character, to roleplay in their roleplaying game, the specific way they go about an action can say as much about their character as what action they take.

The NPC Who Knew Too Much & the Mystery of Golden Week

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After all, how can you make important decisions about your skills and characters if the DM can just declare that the NPC you meet has any skill level he wants.

(emphasis added)

This is actually something different. The DM can already decide that you meet an NPC who has any skill level he wants. However, 3.x demands that, for individuals to possess a certain degree of skill in something, they must be a certain level. Linking that skill level to a character or class level creates additional weirdness. The idea that, to improve an character's knowledge skills, you also have to improve their hit dice, their various saves, their base attack bonus, and any associated class abilities is silly.

"Wow, this old librarian guy sure knows a lot about ancient heraldry! He must be at least fifth level!"

"I'm sure glad I stopped wasting my time reading books. Stabbing rats has taught me everything I ever wanted to know about ancient philosophical trends in djinn society!"

"Guys, check it out! I was reading the latest copy of Mysterious Monsters -- the one where they finally explained what a "bear" was -- and it was making no sense at all. Then I killed a minotaur, and now not only do I understand bears, but I can also throw fireballs! Hooray!"

The DM is already able to conjure up an NPC with a skill level. In some systems, however, your ability to comprehend ancient languages is not intrinsically linked to your ability to stab people in the face. In 3.x, it is, and so when the DM creates an NPC with the appropriate skill level, he also has to tack on all sorts of other abilities to make it fit within the system.

This has no affect on your ability to make important decisions about your character, unless other things also change. For example, if the way skills worked changed arbitrarily over the course of the campaign, then that would invalidate your ability to make important and meaningful decisions. Or if it was consistent over the course of the campaign, but inconsistent between players. Those would certainly have an effect on the meaningfulness of any individual player's decisions!

That's because those aren't questions for the rules system, they're questions for the fluff to answer. What is "common knowledge" is entirely dependent on culture and the people. For example, everyone in Japan knows what Golden Week is, but hardly anyone knows what it is in the US.

I do know what Golden Week is. And I didn't have to level up to learn about it, or improve my ability to ride horses, or my overall health, either.

Other Stuff

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Bears & Knowledge Checks

Once you establish that you can know things which are otherwise determined by knowledge checks, you should just remove the knowledge skills altogether.

This is not true at all. If a fireball flies as a small marble of flame from your fingertips to the target, then that influences your decision to [do stuff].

Ah, but your example didn't say "a small marble of flame." It said "a ball of fire."

How big a ball? How bright? There are equally valid opinions here which are not specified by the rules, and otherwise valid options which are "wrong" because some game designer wanted to decide what my fireball power looked like rather then letting me do so. Under the pure-crunch way, there are no wrong answers to what it looks like. The player can decide for themselves.

Welcome to the world of playing someone else's game. Incidentally, if I go over to your house and we start playing chess, you could declare that you play chess without the en passant rule and while that would alter the game and alter strategy, it in no way means I can't make reasonable decisions. How many variations on Rummy are there? Travel around the country and see if you find one consistent version of spades being played. Rules are meant to be broken, bent and adjusted to fit the individual players tastes. As long as everyone at the table agrees to the changes, it doesn't matter.

It's not "someone else's game." Once I start to play, it stops being someone else's game and starts being our game. To paraphrase Fast Times at Ridgemont High:

"You're creating a disturbance on my time!"

"Y'know, I've been thinking... if I have to be here... and you have to be here... doesn't that make it... our time?"

The DM may get to create the scenario, but once I'm in it, I get to control my character. One of those elements includes what my character looks like. This is important for reasons discussed later on in response to jseah.

But seriously, I much prefer well written guidelines to a heavy mechanically robust rules system for stuff like this.

Who said the mechanics have to be "heavy?"

Games Workshop regularly puts out a miniature version of their rulebook. It is six inches wide by eight inches tall by a quarter-inch deep. It has all of the rules included in the full-sized rulebook, plus helpful pictures and diagrams. 4e's Rules Compendium is not much bigger (twice as thick, an extra inch or so in height, half an inch extra in width). Both are written in a clear, easily understood, well-defined fashion.

Which is just a matter of how you write it.
If you wrote the fluff as crunch explanation FIRST, then no such problems occur since your mechanics will model the fluff explanation.

There's a key word there: "if."

Given the emphasis that 5e is putting on "iconic" elements, I think we're going to see the same bass-ackward odd-couple of fluff which describes things totally unsupported by mechanics ("elves are pretty!") and mechanics which don't model fluff ("magic is hard!" vs "wizards levels are no harder to gain than peasant levels").

However, as you can see in previous posts, when someone can refluff his "fireball" into a dragon-made-of-fire, whether THAT sets things on fire is rather more unclear. Maybe the dragon homes on lifeforce and so inanimate objects get ignored? Who knows, it's up to the description.

No, by definition, it functions exactly as a fireball would. It has no mechanical differences. No improvements to range, accuracy, damage, blast radius, etc. It just looks cool because I'd rather watch my enemy consumed by flaming serpents than a nondescript ball of fire.

Whew. Thanks for sticking through that wall of text, gang. Good times. Fun stuff.

[jseah]

These sorts of things matter. You can condense a lot of character development, backstory, themes, and motivation into a few simple character traits.

For a player who wants to take advantage of these little tricks to better develop and flesh out their character, to roleplay in their roleplaying game, the specific way they go about an action can say as much about their character as what action they take.

Singular character traits can be a useful tool as you point out. Some traits, like carrying an ancient gun, or always climbing circular stairways on the outer edge are perfectly fine.

But this does not give you a license to rewrite anything. When changing fluff explanations, I would default to "ask your DM".

In most cases, you shouldn't need to do it. There are any number of ways to give your character traits, all of which will be far more acceptable within the setting if it means your DM doesn't need to rewrite explanations for basic rules.

Given the emphasis that 5e is putting on "iconic" elements, I think we're going to see the same bass-ackward odd-couple of fluff which describes things totally unsupported by mechanics ("elves are pretty!") and mechanics which don't model fluff ("magic is hard!" vs "wizards levels are no harder to gain than peasant levels").

Fair enough, you don't trust WotC to do it right. But surely they could write just a bit more fluff explanation than 3.5 had. Maybe a paragraph or two per spell.

It's not hard and when they can write descriptions of setting locations and NPCs, they can also do the same for mechanics.

No, by definition, it functions exactly as a fireball would. It has no mechanical differences. No improvements to range, accuracy, damage, blast radius, etc. It just looks cool because I'd rather watch my enemy consumed by flaming serpents than a nondescript ball of fire.

The thing is, by altering the description (in such a way that the original crunch model still applies), you change how it handles edge cases if you are applying fluff as explanations. Either that or your new fluff makes no sense at all, I can think offhand a number of questions to ask regarding the dragon fireball but will desist to prevent thread derail.
And without fluff as explanations, you end up with crunch mechanics in a void with as many possible interpretations of fluff explanations being tacked on by as many people who read it. Which strikes me as utter chaos and a recipe for silliness.

Also, I do not see how having dragons consume your enemies helps develop your character, and it negatively affects the consistency of the setting. If you want a dragon themed character, your DM can make some new crunch for you (or veto/compromise if he doesn't like dragons in this setting).


NOTE: DO NOT ASK HOW MAKING FIREBALL A DRAGON WILL BE DIFFERENT. That way lies the flame hair thread.

Also, jseah needs to sleep earlier. Especially when I need to go work on a sunday. T_T

[Fatebreaker]

Singular character traits can be a useful tool as you point out. Some traits, like carrying an ancient gun, or always climbing circular stairways on the outer edge are perfectly fine.

But this does not give you a license to rewrite anything. When changing fluff explanations, I would default to "ask your DM".

In most cases, you shouldn't need to do it. There are any number of ways to give your character traits, all of which will be far more acceptable within the setting if it means your DM doesn't need to rewrite explanations for basic rules.

Three immediate problems with this line of thinking leap out at me:

(#1) Saying "you shouldn't need to do it, because there are other ways," is a line of reasoning which can be applied to every individual way of expressing my character.

(#2) It's not up to you what I think best represents my character from a cosmetic standpoint.

(#3) If you do not understand why something matters to my character image, that in no way means that it does not matter, nor that an alternative is acceptable.

Oh, a fourth!

(#3) "The DM needs to rewrite basic rules" is an entirely artificial and self-created problem on the part of the objector (or the DM, if they are one and the same). My crew does stuff like this all the time, and it's never been a problem or created a situation where I've needed to rewrite the rules. If you feel compelled to do so, that's on you, but it's not something that is intrinsically part and parcel of describing your fireball as a flaming serpent.

The thing is, by altering the description (in such a way that the original crunch model still applies), you change how it handles edge cases if you are applying fluff as explanations. Either that or your new fluff makes no sense at all, I can think offhand a number of questions to ask regarding the dragon fireball but will desist to prevent thread derail.

In answer to your unasked questions, I'm gonna go with "in all mechanical ways it functions exactly like a fireball spell, except it just looks cool in a way I think looks cool."

Seriously. All of them. Each and every one.

My backup answer is, "because magic."

Y'know, 'cause it's magic.

And without fluff as explanations, you end up with crunch mechanics in a void with as many possible interpretations of fluff explanations being tacked on by as many people who read it.

And this is a bad thing because...?

Seriously, what is the drawback to letting individual players have cosmetic control over their own characters and abilities?

Why is being hogtied by the limitations of the designer's imagination superior to me using my own imagination in a game of make-believe?

Also, I do not see how having dragons consume your enemies helps develop your character, and it negatively affects the consistency of the setting. If you want a dragon themed character, your DM can make some new crunch for you (or veto/compromise if he doesn't like dragons in this setting).

NOTE: DO NOT ASK HOW MAKING FIREBALL A DRAGON WILL BE DIFFERENT. That way lies the flame hair thread.

Well, here are a few ways:

(#1) My wizard worships a god whose symbol is the serpent. All of my spells are thus themed around snakes.

(#2) My wizard has a vague Asiatic elemental theme going based on stylized, blended Asian imagery. He wears monk/ninja style robes and has a lot of tattoos. Each tattoo represents a spell or type of spell he knows (for our purposes, the tattoos are not my spellbook, though there are rules for doing so). Having decided that my snake tattoos are tied in with fire spells because my character believes that they share visual similarities in how they move, when I cast fireball, the serpent tattoos on my arms seem to catch fire, come to life, and fly out to explode in the exact same manner as a fireball.

(#3) My wizard has yaun-ti heritage, and therefore has snake-themed spells to symbolize his ancestors.

(#4) My wizard hunts down serpent-men, and therefore has snake-themed spells to symbolize power over his prey.

(#5) My wizard is a treacherous, shifty sort of mage, and his magic expresses his personality. To my wizard, who cannot be honest even with himself, the fireball looks like a snake because it looks cool. Over time, he may come to realize the truth, either embracing it or rejecting it, depending on how the campaign goes.

I mean, these are just off the top of my head. But all of those are examples of how reskinning a "ball of flame" as "snakes on fire" can express something about my character.

At the end of the day, we're talking about a magic spell which has no observable appearance in reality. It would have been equally easy for the designer to write "looks like a snake on fire" rather than "looks like a ball on fire," and neither one is more true than the other. It could be either or both or neither, and it wouldn't change the damage, the range, radius, or any other mechanical ability which a fireball spell already possesses, nor would it grant it anything new. It looks like whatever we want it to look like, so it might as well look cool for the guy who's casting it!

-------

P.S. You keep saying dragon. I keep saying serpents or snakes. Admittedly, I'm arguing that the cosmetic appearance of the fireball doesn't matter, so snakes or dragons are both okay in my book, but I'm not sure why you consistently say something that is not what I am specifically saying. Is it because dragon has connotations of some big, major change compared to a snake? Or do you have some weird and exciting reading disorder which replaces snakes with dragons, which would actually be kind of cool, considering that there are two snakes dragons in our house right now.

P.P.S You also keep mentioning "flame hair thread," which I am not familiar with. Can you provide a link so that I can properly understand what you mean?

[1337 b4k4]

Beautiful Graceful Elves

But here's an actual example of what I'm talking about: elves are described as being "hauntingly beautiful" (page 15, 3.5 PHB), but they receive no bonuses to Charisma, which is in part a reflection of physical appearance. The fluff makes a claim which is in no way backed by the mechanics -- elves are no more likely to be beautiful than anyone else. On the other hand, they are also described as graceful, but for this they do have a +2 Dexterity modifier to back it up. What is "graceful" worthy of a mechanical bonus, but "beautiful" is not?

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So, are elves beautiful?

Is the average elf more beautiful than the average human? Hmm. Both races have a +0 modifier to their Charisma, so neither is more likely than the other to have a higher Charisma score. So, given a large enough sample size of each, the bell curve of Charisma scores for both races are going to be the same. Why, the average elf is no better than the average human when it comes to Charisma!

Are elves still beautiful relative to humans? If so, does an elf get more out of the same Charisma score than a human? Is a Charisma 10 elf more beautiful than a Charisma 10 human? That seems unfair. And imagine how hideous dwarves must be -- they actually receive a penalty to Charisma!

"Ah, but wait! Charisma measures more than physical beauty! Elves can still be beautiful and have the same Charisma score!"

Right you are, my conveniently-created imaginary audience member! So, does this mean that elves have other subsets of Charisma -- force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism and/or ability to lead -- which are worse than average humans, thereby offsetting their beauty and restoring the balance? Hmm. Odd that none of those qualities were mentioned as being lacking under the elven racial entry. Or perhaps elven beauty means less than human beauty, so a beautiful human is Charisma 12, while a beautiful elf is Charisma 10. Why, how strange that would be, for a system designed to allow you to compare different races and creatures to be inconsistent when applied to different races and creatures. And none of the other abilities seem to work that way -- why, equal Strength scores let you carry the same amount of weight, no matter what race you are!

So if elves are no more likely than humans to have a high Charisma score, and if they aren't described as having some offsetting racial quality which balances out their physical appearance, then why are they described as being better than their mechanics would dictate? And why is their grace worthy of a mechanical bonus, but their Charisma isn't?

Is it beautiful, as per the fluff? Or average, as per the mechanics? Why is elf-Charisma worth more than human-Charisma? Why are the fluff and the mechanics telling me different things?

What does my elf actually look like?

The answer ends up being: whatever I want my elf to look like. It's my character after all. His appearance is up to me. That doesn't mean it has a mechanical effect... unless, of course, I actually have the mechanics to go along with it.

And if elves are allowed to look however they want without changing their mechanical bonus -- after all, their average is equal to a human average and yet their average is beautiful while the human average is not -- then why can't other things change their appearance without affecting their mechanical bonuses?

My answer to your objections about the mechanics not matching the fluff would be as follows

1) Obviously though many (which note is not a majority, most or all) humans and other races might find them "hauntingly beautiful", hauntingly beautiful is not enough to significantly alter one's ability score. This is especially reasonable when you consider that physical beauty is only 1 of 5 attributes the Charisma mechanic is supposed to model.

2) Apply rules as guidelines: Since the "average" human is represented by an ability score of 10 and since many humans find other average humans to be beautiful, it's quite clear that one can have an "average" charisma score, and still be beautiful.

3) More rules as guidelines: We know from human experience that beauty as it relates to a persons charisma (non mechanical) is a subjective thing. On the other hand, gracefulness as it relates to a person's dexterity (non mechanical) is very much an objective thing. Therefore, being more graceful always makes you more dexterous, hence the always on modifier. Being more beautiful does not always make you more charismatic and therefore has no permanent bonus, and that the mechanical bonus is covered under the "Favorable and Unfavorable Conditions" section of skill checks: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm

4) As for the book not mentioning the charismatic flaws an elves have, you must have missed the following:

Elves are more often amused than excited, ... remaining aloof and unfazed ... They reply to petty insults with disdain and to serious insults with vengeance. ... frail. ... unearthly ... Elves consider humans rather unrefined, halflings a bit staid, gnomes somewhat trivial, and dwarves not at all fun. ... haughty, ... those who fall short of elven standards (which, after all, consists of just about everybody who’s not an elf).

5) Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder, as is Charm, Sleep, Petrify, Disintegrate, Fear, Slow, Wounds, Telekinesis and Death.

Seriously, though, Prone is a condition. It has a definition for what happens (-2 to attacks, grant combat advantage, cannot move except for specific types of movement, etc.), and that definition is very specific mechanically.

It also says that your lying on the ground. How does an Ooze lie on the ground? How does a Ghost?

Once you establish that you can know things which are otherwise determined by knowledge checks, you should just remove the knowledge skills altogether.

Hey, I'm all for ditching the knowledge checks. Give me a good reason why your character should have the knowledge you're seeking and I'll give it to you, no check required.

Ah, but your example didn't say "a small marble of flame." It said "a ball of fire."

How big a ball? How bright? There are equally valid opinions here which are not specified by the rules, and otherwise valid options which are "wrong" because some game designer wanted to decide what my fireball power looked like rather then letting me do so. Under the pure-crunch way, there are no wrong answers to what it looks like. The player can decide for themselves.

None of which has any bearing on your statement that how the fireball looks has no impact on the decisions of who what where and when to use it.

As to no wrong answers, there's still no wrong answers, its your game make it up. It takes no more mental effort to decide that your fireball is a winding serpent in the fluffless model as it does in the fluffful model. Either way you're making a call about the appearance and deciding if that has any in play effects. And sure, your DM could tell you that "No the rules say it's a small ball of flame", but he can just as easily in a fluffless system say "No, your flaming serpent is stupid, and you can't have it" or "No, the spell is called fireball, not fire serpent". If your DM is unwilling to negotiate, leave.

It's not "someone else's game." Once I start to play, it stops being someone else's game and starts being our game.

But ultimately, if the DM wants to play a certain way, regardless of what the rules say, your option is to play along or go play a different game. Equally, the if the DM wants to continue playing, his options are to be reasonable with his players, or go play Sim City.

Games Workshop regularly puts out a miniature version of their rulebook. It is six inches wide by eight inches tall by a quarter-inch deep. It has all of the rules included in the full-sized rulebook, plus helpful pictures and diagrams. 4e's Rules Compendium is not much bigger (twice as thick, an extra inch or so in height, half an inch extra in width). Both are written in a clear, easily understood, well-defined fashion.

Heavy meaning laden with jargon and layers upon layers of rules all of which while tightly knit, fall apart if you start breaking bits.

Given the emphasis that 5e is putting on "iconic" elements, I think we're going to see the same bass-ackward odd-couple of fluff which describes things totally unsupported by mechanics ("elves are pretty!") and mechanics which don't model fluff ("magic is hard!" vs "wizards levels are no harder to gain than peasant levels").

There's no reason to assume this to be so, because there is nothing inherent about fluff as rules that makes it so. I already showed that the first is reasonably supported by the rules, and more supported if you take the "Rules as guidelines" approach, and as for #2, well that's WotC being stupid, since every edition before 3e had different experience tables per class, no points for guessing which classes had the slowest progression.

No, by definition, it functions exactly as a fireball would. It has no mechanical differences.

Again, this is absolutely false unless you think the only thing that happens in world is exactly what's written in the power block, in which case your wizard can't light something on fire with a fireball. In fact, none of your wizard's spells can light something on fire. In other words, by RAW, a peasant with a torch an a flask of oil is more dangerous to the town's thatched roof cottages than your 30th level wizard. Actually, I take that back, there's no flask of oil in the gear section (although it is in the summary, whoops), so he'll need a flint and steel and some patience.

Also, you're lucky that your DM isn't a stickler for the rules, given that the spell is called fireball, and later on there is a lightning serpent, clearly that means that your fireball can't be anything other than a ball (even though it's a square)

It would have been equally easy for the designer to write "looks like a snake on fire" rather than "looks like a ball on fire," and neither one is more true than the other. It could be either or both or neither, and it wouldn't change the damage, the range, radius, or any other mechanical ability which a fireball spell already possesses, nor would it grant it anything new. It looks like whatever we want it to look like, so it might as well look cool for the guy who's casting it!

Which leads me to ask, if it doesn't matter, why do you care if the book says what it is?