Most Ridiculous Rules in RPGS

[NoldorForce]

So it sounds like you are saying that people arent allowed to express oppinions?

As far as I can tell you're statement could be boiled down to:

Person A: I dont want to eat chili, its too spicy.
Person B: Dont use a dog whistle term like "spicy" to badmouth chili!
Person A: How is spicy a dog whistle term?
Person B: Because it is dishonest to dislike spicy food when you eat tons of icecream and don't complain that it is sweet!

Please correct me if I am missing something, but it really does seem like that is the structure of your argument.

No, this wasn't what I was referring to at all. My argument was roughly:
Person A: I don't want to eat chili, it's too spicy.
Person B: But you were fine with the aji last week, so what's so different this time?

There's a difference between saying "I don't like this" and saying "this is inherently bad"; that distinction is the very essence of opinion. But "dissociated mechanics" was a term coined to express the latter about 4E, and shows up almost nowhere else besides such discussions. It's a phrase intended to demonstrate opinion disguised as fact. Obviously some folks have employed it in a neutral and generalized manner to refer to (potentially unwanted) gameplay abstractions, but the dog-whistle nature is that the phrase was code for "4E is bad for not being 3.x" to people who've read the essay it originally came from.

You can dislike 4E. You can say so, and say why. But you don't need to trot out uncandid terminology to do so.

Edit: Anyway, to move this back to the original topic, I'd like to posit the advanced crafting rules from L5R Fourth Edition. See, if you want to make an Excellent weapon with some spiffy bonuses on it, you have to throw some Raises on the crafting roll (basically, each is +5 to the TN declared ahead of time) and triple its value for various purposes such as materials. Except...there's a flaw with that.

Weapons are generally priced in the range of 5 to 20 koku (skewed towards the latter), and thus making a weapon with the basic crafting rules requires you to succeed at a crafting roll of TN 5 + Cost, rounded up to the nearest multiple of five. (A katana costs 30 koku for the purposes of crafting, though they're rarely sold for cultural reasons and generally aren't the paragon of damage that L5R's society believes them to be.) Because L5R uses the roll-and-keep system, you're never going to get more than 10k10 (roll 10 d10s, and keep 10 of those) on any given roll, and even then hitting 10k10 requires serious investment. Thus, trying to make an Excellent weapon will generally incur you a stiff TN 5 + 3x Cost before even checking for Raises. If you're a Kaiu Engineer and wanted to make a cool tetsubo with +1k0 to attack (nice but not great, kept dice are where it's at)...that'd require you to make a TN 80 check. When your average dice result is 60.

Yeah, that wrinkle of tripling costs even for the purposes of crafting TNs wasn't well thought-out.

[Max_Killjoy]

No, this wasn't what I was referring to at all. My argument was roughly:
Person A: I don't want to eat chili, it's too spicy.
Person B: But you were fine with the aji last week, so what's so different this time?

There's a difference between saying "I don't like this" and saying "this is inherently bad"; that distinction is the very essence of opinion. But "dissociated mechanics" was a term coined to express the latter about 4E, and shows up almost nowhere else besides such discussions. It's a phrase intended to demonstrate opinion disguised as fact. Obviously some folks have employed it in a neutral and generalized manner to refer to (potentially unwanted) gameplay abstractions, but the dog-whistle nature is that the phrase was code for "4E is bad for not being 3.x" to people who've read the essay it originally came from.

You can dislike 4E. You can say so, and say why. But you don't need to trot out uncandid terminology to do so.

Really?

Because I'm not really a fan of 3.5 or any other edition of D&D, and I find the term very fitting for 4E, along with some other systems.

[Kurald Galain]

There's a difference between saying "I don't like this" and saying "this is inherently bad"; that distinction is the very essence of opinion. But "dissociated mechanics" was a term coined to express the latter about 4E,

No, it wasn't. Disassociated mechanics are not inherently bad, they're simply disliked by a lot of people. The term shows up almost nowhere else because 4E is the only common RPG that has a lot of disassociated mechanics in it (basically because most RPG designers go out of their way to avoid them).

Come to think of it, the majority of complaints about 4E boil down to "I don't like disassociated mechanics", just as how most complaints about 3E are "I don't like character imbalance", and most issues with 5E are ultimately "I don't like bounded accuracy". That doesn't make any of these systems inherently bad, of course; you might as well argue that strawberry ice cream is inherently bad because you prefer chocolate ice cream.

And for the purpose of this thread, disassociated mechanics commonly give "ridiculous" results. Not in the sense of "WTH were the developers smoking", but in the sense of making gameplay silly. For example, the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed.

[NoldorForce]

No, it wasn't. Disassociated mechanics are not inherently bad, they're simply disliked by a lot of people. The term shows up almost nowhere else because 4E is the only common RPG that has a lot of disassociated mechanics in it (basically because most RPG designers go out of their way to avoid them).

[Citation needed]

But seriously, I doubt that gameplay abstractions presented in large quantity are either -disliked by a lot of people or -actively avoided by most RPG designers. Most games out there, in fact, use more metagame abstractions than D&D by virtue of not being nearly so rules-heavy. (Fate points, luck points, void points, willpower points, or whatever else you want to call them fit right into such a mold.) People may still invest a lot of playtime into rules-heavy games like D&D, but that's less due to particular mechanical interests and more due to things like setting preferences and what your friends are playing. If Gygax and Arneson had published the current edition of Fate Core back in 1974 instead of the original set of D&D, we'd probably be having an inverse discussion.

And like I said, the term was coined for the express purpose of edition warring. The term shows up almost nowhere else not because 4E uses a lot of them (which it doesn't, compared to most others that haven't ended up in the pile of forgotten heartbreakers). Instead, it was created in May 2008 (one month before 4E's release) by a 2E and 3E aficionado who didn't prefer the direction that 4E was heading when he playtested it. Here's the original essay, with some further commentary that walks it back but at the same time still claims that the use of dissociated mechanics isn't roleplaying. This is understandable considering that the author has built a small career on subscribing to method acting, but is nonetheless funny considering that tabletop roleplay is to a fair degree improv theater. (That last link is mildly NWS.)

Come to think of it, the majority of complaints about 4E boil down to "I don't like disassociated mechanics", just as how most complaints about 3E are "I don't like character imbalance", and most issues with 5E are ultimately "I don't like bounded accuracy". That doesn't make any of these systems inherently bad, of course; you might as well argue that strawberry ice cream is inherently bad because you prefer chocolate ice cream.

And for the purpose of this thread, disassociated mechanics commonly give "ridiculous" results. Not in the sense of "WTH were the developers smoking", but in the sense of making gameplay silly. For example, the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed.

This is what happens when you take an excessively mechanistic view of the rules. Rules-as-physics can work within the rules of a game, but isn't required. If the rules followed to the letter produce weird results, you should back up and consider:

• Am I rolling when I don't need to because at least one outcome of success/failure isn't useful to the story? AKA Should I be evaluating this result in the first place?
• Can I reflavor or embellish these results to something that makes more sense? AKA Am I evaluating this result properly?
• Am I wandering into an edge case? AKA Am I evaluating a result outside the scope of the rules?

Here's an in-depth example of dealing with the second from Strike!:

Alex describes her character doing a sweep kick and tripping all the enemies around her in a Close 1, but she has a bird-man adjacent that has already been described as being above the ground, though not high enough to have the Flying Status. Kwame points out that this doesn’t make sense. Even though the mechanics of her power say that the bird-man takes damage, that cannot happen unless Alex elaborates on her description. Jamar suggest that following her sweep kick, Alex’s Martial Artist could snatch a goat-man’s axe and hurl it at the bird-man. That description fits perfectly with the mechanics and works with their game’s gritty tone.

[Max_Killjoy]

And for the purpose of this thread, disassociated mechanics commonly give "ridiculous" results. Not in the sense of "WTH were the developers smoking", but in the sense of making gameplay silly. For example, the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed.

Exactly the sort of video-gamey, what-the-hell rules that make 4E so wonky.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is what happens when you take an excessively mechanistic view of the rules. Rules-as-physics can work within the rules of a game, but isn't required. If the rules followed to the letter produce weird results, you should back up and consider:

• Am I rolling when I don't need to because at least one outcome of success/failure isn't useful to the story? AKA Should I be evaluating this result in the first place?
• Can I reflavor or embellish these results to something that makes more sense? AKA Am I evaluating this result properly?
• Am I wandering into an edge case? AKA Am I evaluating a result outside the scope of the rules?

Here's an in-depth example of dealing with the second from Strike!:

The rules of an RPG are supposed to be a mechanical model of the events occurring in the game, that work well enough that they don't produce "what the hell?" moments. If the setting and characters and events of the game are the actual territory, then the rules are supposed to be the map, and not one drawn in crayon on a napkin.

This is why I find rules sets such as FFG's Star Wars so terrible -- there's this whole build up of the rolls based on this back and forth of modifiers, and then this result comes out, and it represents a whole glob of events that need to further cooperatively narrated. The whole thing is about 1 step removed from "let's play make believe!"

See also, some other newish systems that grossly abstract everything and anything that might be attempted, into a handful of possible rolls, which might be parodied as an entire rule set consisting of "hit stuff!", "know stuff!", and "talk to stuff!" rolls.

[NoldorForce]

What sorts of games do you play, anyway? It sounds as if, at the least, your preference is for more complex and concrete rulesets.

[Milo v3]

See also, some other newish systems that grossly abstract everything and anything that might be attempted, into a handful of possible rolls, which might be parodied as an entire rule set consisting of "hit stuff!", "know stuff!", and "talk to stuff!" rolls.

I have seen an RPG with the only stats being "Killing", "Avoiding Being Killed", "Knowing ****", and "Talking Your Way Out Of Anything".

[georgie_leech]

So now I'm totally imaging 4e Druids as horrid shapeshifting abominations constantly sprouting whatever animal bits they happen to need onto an arbitrary chassis, and I love it.

Erm, actually, that's more or less what Druids do. See, 4e Druid Wildshape isn't 'turn into whatever animal you want,' it's 'assume an aspect of the Primal Beast.' The Primal Beast was 'the first spirit of the world's noble predators. A formless thing of Shadows, fur, feathers and claws...' So when you used Wild Shape, you got some of those and you took on either an indistinct shape or into a form of your size that resembled a natural or fey beast. Maybe you turned into a tiger form; you didn't literally become a tiger, but you would have 4 legs, probably striped, had claws and such. You wouldn't be able to use said claws or teeth effectively as weapons, unless you channeled that Primal Beast by using one of your Powers, whether At-will, Encounter, or Daily. Taking that chaotic, primal power and using it to turn into something specific was hard, and meant you needed to take certain Powers or Feats to do so.

In other words, it's less that turning into a bird doesn't let you fly, and more like people not realising you can't turn into a bird by default. Like if people complained about 3.X Druids not being able to breathe fire when they turned into a Dragon, without realising that you need a feat to let you turn into the dragon in the first place.

[Max_Killjoy]

What sorts of games do you play, anyway? It sounds as if, at the least, your preference is for more complex and concrete rulesets.

Right now? It's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to play anything.


Of the systems I have played, it's more a matter of "which system's flaws do I find the least distracting from my enjoyment and immersion..."

OWOD as a system has some serious warts, but it's not bad, especially if the ST isn't being a pretentious poof and understands that the point of gaming is to have fun, and is willing to tweak the rules a little here and there.

HERO 4th or 5th was good, but that was with a group who cared more about the end result than mechanical pedantry -- it goes bad fast when people get focused on HERO as a system instead of using the HERO system to map a territory and then set all the scaffolding aside and PLAY THE GAME.

Some homebrew stuff, though it had its flaws too.


I like the game to be about the characters (as characters, not the mechanical constructs) and the story that emerges from their interactions with each other and the setting... but I find it very aggravating when the rules are set up to get mechanically involved in "creating narrative" as a design objective.

[Telok]

I'd seen the whole disassociated mechanics before D&D 4e, in respect to the Hero system where you built superpowers by describing what they did and then choosing which power fit then modifying the base power to do what you described. In that system "turn into a beam of light to zip to the other side of the room and reform" was a teleport power with some additional limitations. I'd never seen it applied to D&D before 4e since most of the previous editions were pretty sorta-simulationist.

That said I did get to see 'Come And Get It', a 4e fighter power, drag a levitating wizard out of the sky, a stunned and prone beholder across poison spikes without harm, and a hyena out of a pit. Pull 3 squares can be a versatile power.

Although Hero can get pretty silly too if you ignore the advice to put limits on the number of points you can out into a power.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'd seen the whole disassociated mechanics before D&D 4e, in respect to the Hero system where you built superpowers by describing what they did and then choosing which power fit then modifying the base power to do what you described. In that system "turn into a beam of light to zip to the other side of the room and reform" was a teleport power with some additional limitations. I'd never seen it applied to D&D before 4e since most of the previous editions were pretty sorta-simulationist.

That said I did get to see 'Come And Get It', a 4e fighter power, drag a levitating wizard out of the sky, a stunned and prone beholder across poison spikes without harm, and a hyena out of a pit. Pull 3 squares can be a versatile power.

Although Hero can get pretty silly too if you ignore the advice to put limits on the number of points you can out into a power.

For a certain meaning of "disassociated mechanics", it does apply to HERO, but then that's kinda the point. HERO isn't built for one setting or one campaign. If one takes the view that the rules are supposed to be the map of the actual character/setting/atmosphere territory of the game, then HERO is in theory a universal mapping tool, rather than one actual map.

This gets into an argument I repeatedly had with two big factions of HERO fans. One faction argued that the construction used was meaningless, and one should be as point-efficient as possible to get to the end result wanted. The other argued that to be "balanced", if two constructions were both viable, one should always take the MORE expensive way of building something.

My counter to both of them is that the construction used should be the one that does the best job "modelling" the actual power wanted, of capturing the SFX and evoking the feel of the thing.


Of course, there's another meaning of "disassociated mechanics" that I think hits closer to the target on D&D 4E -- that the rules appear to be divorced from the reality that they're supposed to be mapping. For example, as someone noted earlier, "the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed". 4E often appears to be about the rules, full stop, with no association at all to what's happening "on the ground" from the perspective of the characters.

[Telok]

For a certain meaning of "disassociated mechanics", it does apply to HERO, but then that's kinda the point.

I quite agree with you. I really enjoy HERO and don't have any problems with it (my groups have always played honestly and with GM approval of all characters). I've also met people who can memorize and use the D&D grappling rules (all editions) and all the Prismatic Wall/Sphere effects while they counters balk at figuring out how to roll skill checks in HERO. That's cognitive dissonance for me, right there.

See, 4e Druid Wildshape isn't 'turn into whatever animal you want,' it's 'assume an aspect of the Primal Beast.'

You know, I played a 4e druid for six months and never got that vibe from the book. Heck nobody in our group thought it was anything but turning into an animal and they read the books too. Of course I ran around saying 'bark' and 'woof' in (dog shape) character and nobody caught on for the first few months either. It ended up being a very Discworld effect.

I also made a mage who was just a fighter with all the special effects rewritten as spells. The game crashed before I got to play him though. I never did get very far on the opposite character, a wizard with all the powers rewritten as mundane face stabber abilities. And of course the urinary lazy-lord was vetoed right out of the gate.

[goto124]

Of course, there's another meaning of "disassociated mechanics" that I think hits closer to the target on D&D 4E -- that the rules appear to be divorced from the reality that they're supposed to be mapping. For example, as someone noted earlier, "the fact that you can prone an ooze, or that a warlord's inspiring word works on people who cannot hear it, or that certain swordmage powers allow you to teleport but only at the precise moment that your ally is being stabbed". 4E often appears to be about the rules, full stop, with no association at all to what's happening "on the ground" from the perspective of the characters.

Those seem to be examples of the rules not literally stating every instance of a power or skill or spell not working the way it's intended to be (which sounds much like a 3.5e attitude - that rules have to cover every inch of the in-game reality).

Magic can easily be refluffed or justified in many ways. Maybe the swordmage powers require reality to tear in this very specific manner, which involves getting your ally stabbed.

[georgie_leech]

You know, I played a 4e druid for six months and never got that vibe from the book. Heck nobody in our group thought it was anything but turning into an animal and they read the books too. Of course I ran around saying 'bark' and 'woof' in (dog shape) character and nobody caught on for the first few months either. It ended up being a very Discworld effect.

I also made a mage who was just a fighter with all the special effects rewritten as spells. The game crashed before I got to play him though. I never did get very far on the opposite character, a wizard with all the powers rewritten as mundane face stabber abilities. And of course the urinary lazy-lord was vetoed right out of the gate.

So did I at first. But the 'fact' that you could turn into a dolphin but not swim well made me double check a while back and I realised I had skimmed over the class feature that pointed me at the Power, since those usually just say 'you have a Power,' and little else. In this case though it supplied some rather interesting fluff bits. Specifically, when it refers to what forms you take it only ever says that you resemble a natural or fey beast. In other words, you don't become a wolf, you get some of the aspects of a wolf. So even if you're taking a specific form, it's not actually close enough to whatever animal you're resembling to get any of their statistics.

At least, that's what I get out of it. As The Giant pointed out, making assumptions and then complaining the text doesn't match them makes less sense than choosing assumptions that fit with the text. It's not perfect, and it's not quite what I wanted out of the power, but it has its own charm for me. After all, there is a certain style to there still being the suggestion of the Dwarf Druid being present while what looks mostly like a bear is mauling somethings face off.

[Kurald Galain]

[Citation needed]

Feel free to name other games with a large amount of disassociated mechanics. HERO appears to be one, but I've never seen it played myself.

But seriously, I doubt that gameplay abstractions presented in large quantity are either -disliked by a lot of people or -actively avoided by most RPG designers.

Ah, here's your problem. You think that "disassociated mechanic" is another term for "abstraction". That's completely not what the term means.

"Abstraction" is a tautology in that all mechanics and rules are, by definition, abstract. It's extremely rare (and frankly, pretty meaningless) to complain that a rule is abstract.

Those seem to be examples of the rules not literally stating every instance of a power or skill or spell not working the way it's intended to be

Nope. These powers are all working exactly as intended, but numerous players don't like the intent.

Erm, actually, that's more or less what Druids do. See, 4e Druid Wildshape isn't 'turn into whatever animal you want,' it's 'assume an aspect of the Primal Beast.'

Then I'd say the problems are that (1) the class description doesn't make this clear, and (2) turning into animals is a common thing in fiction that players want to emulate, whereas "assuming an aspect" isn't really.

[NoldorForce]

Feel free to name other games with disassociated mechanics. HERO appears to be one, but I've never seen it played myself.

Ah, here's your problem. You think that "disassociated mechanic" is another term for "abstraction". That's completely not what the term means.

"Abstraction" is a tautology in that all mechanics and rules are, by definition, abstract. It's extremely rare (and frankly, pretty meaningless) to complain that a rule is abstract.

I corrected myself later in the post, that "dissociated mechanics" is a dysphemism referring to metagame abstractions. And I also offered an example that many, many games use. Hell, the Storyteller system (D&D's single biggest competitor in all its variants) employed it since day one.

But seriously, I doubt that gameplay abstractions presented in large quantity are either -disliked by a lot of people or -actively avoided by most RPG designers. Most games out there, in fact, use more metagame abstractions than D&D by virtue of not being nearly so rules-heavy. (Fate points, luck points, void points, willpower points, or whatever else you want to call them fit right into such a mold.) People may still invest a lot of playtime into rules-heavy games like D&D, but that's less due to particular mechanical interests and more due to things like setting preferences and what your friends are playing. If Gygax and Arneson had published the current edition of Fate Core back in 1974 instead of the original set of D&D, we'd probably be having an inverse discussion.

This one is discussed in the comments on that second essay, and it's comical to see the contortions Mr. Alexandrian went through to say that it was still alright despite generally being entirely out of the hands of the character. It's a huge exception to his point, but he let it slide because he's so used to it. Anyway, other examples include a lot of abilities (not all of them, but certainly enough to notice) that are limited by either some in-game length of time (X times/day) or some metagame duration (once per session).

• Take the Barbarian's Rage from 3E, for instance. It's one of the first abilities on the first class in the PHB...that works some number of times per day. Why, in-character, is the limitation so awkward? Dunno; the book certainly doesn't say. (The real reason is that it's a metagame abstraction for the sake of 3E tenuously clinging to its resource-management roots.)
• If you're playing any of the Chronicles of Darkness (formerly nWoD) games from White Wolf/Onyx Path, Beats (the smallest unit of XP) are generated by among other things either having Conditions affect the PCs or by downgrading Failures to Dramatic Failures. (Most Conditions are bad, but some are instead good for you.) Your character wouldn't want to be screwed by such circumstances, but by putting that character through adversity you're rewarded as a player.
• Similarly, if you're playing Fate and receive a compel, then you as the player are receiving metagame currency in exchange for something bad happening to your character.
• All characters in Iron Kingdoms have various stat caps that increase based on your tier, which is thresholded by your XP gained. Why is it that a caster can't push above ARC 4 at 49 XP, but is just fine with going to 6 ARC at 50+ XP? Metagame abstractions for the sake of balance, that's why.

Edit: I'm not just asserting that metagame currency and X uses per Y units of time are metagame abstractions/"dissociated mechanics" by trying to read into Mr. Alexandrian's method-acting terminology and pulling some guesswork out of my posterior. Rather, both of these are explicitly acknowledged by him as fitting into this category.

[Kurald Galain]

I corrected myself later in the post, that "dissociated mechanics" is a dysphemism referring to metagame abstractions.

Nope, that's not it either. First, it's not a dysphemism. Second, "metagame abstraction" is another tautology. Third, it is simply not true that every mechanic that relates to experience, leveling, and limited-use abilities is a disassociation.

More importantly, there's a big difference between an RPGs that contains a few disassociations if you look hard enough (which would be almost every RPG ever), and an RPG that has many clear and obvious disassociations all over the place (which is 4E, and maybe HERO).

[NoldorForce]

Nope, that's not it either.

Well then, what's your definition that's not just rephrasing Mr. Alexandrian?

First, it's not a dysphemism.

Right. Right. (All formatting below is from the source.)

To look at it from the opposite side, I’m going to make a provocative statement: When you are using dissociated mechanics you are not roleplaying. Which is not to say that you can’t roleplay while playing a game featuring dissociated mechanics, but simply to say that in the moment when you are using those mechanics you are not roleplaying.

If he's asserting that using such things isn't roleplaying, I believe that fits the definition of a dysphemism by virtue of presenting negative connotations about a presumably neutral concept (to paraphrase you).

Second, "metagame abstraction" is another tautology.

Explain how, then. People don't place negative connotations on "metagaming" for nothing.

Third, it is simply not true that every mechanic that relates to experience, leveling, and limited-use abilities is a disassociation.

I never said that, but I did note (as Mr. Alexandrian described) that many of them by his own assertion are "dissociated".

More importantly, there's a big difference between an RPGs that contains a few disassociations if you look hard enough (which would be almost every RPG ever), and an RPG that has many clear and obvious disassociations all over the place (which is 4E, and maybe HERO).

And I've got a bridge to sell you, because all the "dissociated mechanics" that axe-grinders will bring up from 4E are small and nitpicky things. Fate points in Fate, on the other hand, are such a central mechanic that people will talk about the "Fate point economy" when discussing how to run it. (Also check the example from Strike!, because all the stuff from 4E that fits this silly mold is a case of "am I evaluating this result properly?") In general, metagame currency is fast to evaluate but extremely useful to the players, so while it might be one thing it still casts a long shadow.

[Kurald Galain]

And I've got a bridge to sell you, because all the "dissociated mechanics" that axe-grinders will bring up from 4E are small and nitpicky things.

Frankly, if you're just going to attack people that prefer Chocolate Ice Cream while you prefer Strawberry Ice Cream, then I see no point in continuing this line of discussion.

So let's get back to some ridiculous rules!
In 2E D&D, if you attempt to punch or wrestle someone, you have to roll on an arbitrary table that shows whether you end up doing a hook, uppercut, jab, or something else; or a bear hug, throw, or kick when wrestling. Each of these has different results. If you have a certain kind of proficiency, you can move one line up or down on the arbitrary table, but you cannot actually decide to throw somebody.

[Max_Killjoy]

On the subject of "disassociated mechanics", perhaps this will help, perhaps not.

To me, it comes down to the difference between whether the reality* determines the rules, or the rules determine the reality*.

If a game has a set of "attack feats" that include:
* Legsweep -- "If you succeed, your target falls prone."
* Eyestrike -- "If you succeed, your target is blinded for X rounds."
* Headslap -- "If you succeed, your target is dazed for X rounds."

Now, in a situation where characters with those "attack feats" are fighting a levitating, featureless orb -- no legs, no eyes, no head -- where do you go with it?

"Rules determine reality" says "the power states that a successful attack has this effect, so that's that".

"Reality determines rules" says "how are you going to legsweep, eyepoke, and headslap a creature with no legs, no eyes, and no head?"


To me, 4E read like "rules determine reality".



* "the reality" referring to the in-setting, in-game "alternate reality", not "realism" or "the real world", so let's not derail into a "realism" discussion.

[goto124]

Normally, the levitating featureless orb will have its own set of special features that say "immune to legsweep, eyestrike, and handslap".

[Kurald Galain]

"Rules determine reality" says "the power states that a successful attack has this effect, so that's that".

"Reality determines rules" says "how are you going to legsweep, eyepoke, and headslap a creature with no legs, no eyes, and no head?"

Yes, that's a good way to put it.

Normally, the levitating featureless orb will have its own set of special features that say "immune to legsweep, eyestrike, and handslap".

Yes, but only in a "reality determines rules" game. Bear in mind that almost every RPG printed follows this mindset, so in that sense, it is indeed "normal". In a "rules determines reality" game, such as 4E, these features are intentionally absent.

[georgie_leech]

Then I'd say the problems are that (1) the class description doesn't make this clear, and (2) turning into animals is a common thing in fiction that players want to emulate, whereas "assuming an aspect" isn't really.

And that's fair. I just want people who don't like 4e to do it for what the game actually does instead of a misunderstanding.

[Arbane]

Feel free to name other games with disassociated mechanics. HERO appears to be one, but I've never seen it played myself.

"So... you've gotten better at lockpicking because we killed a bunch of orcs?"

[Max_Killjoy]

"So... you've gotten better at lockpicking because we killed a bunch of orcs?"

"No, I spent a little while in camp every night messing around with these 3 little locks I carry, until I figured out what I'd been doing wrong.'


XP or its equivalent is hardly the place to focus a discussion of "disassociated mechanics". Characters need some way to advance, and explicit or implicit practice is just as legitimate as forced "in the line of fire" failures

[Telok]

"No, I spent a little while in camp every night messing around with these 3 little locks I carry, until I figured out what I'd been doing wrong.'


XP or its equivalent is hardly the place to focus a discussion of "disassociated mechanics". Characters need some way to advance, and explicit or implicit practice is just as legitimate as forced "in the line of fire" failures

Well originally there were requirements to spend time training to increase levels, you didn't need post hoc explanations to cover a "WTF was that?" result from leveling up. Contrast that to low level 5e D&D where you zip through three or four levels in your first week of adventuring, maybe multiclass, get subclass abilities, and learn new spells and feats by sleeping after you kill enough kobolds.

Training? Don't need it. Whack a dozen critters and level up overnight.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well originally there were requirements to spend time training to increase levels, you didn't need post hoc explanations to cover a "WTF was that?" result from leveling up. Contrast that to low level 5e D&D where you zip through three or four levels in your first week of adventuring, maybe multiclass, get subclass abilities, and learn new spells and feats by sleeping after you kill enough kobolds.

Training? Don't need it. Whack a dozen critters and level up overnight.

Ouch...

Not sure where to even begin untangling that mess.

[Kurald Galain]

Training? Don't need it. Whack a dozen critters and level up overnight.

So what's your point, exactly? You don't like level-based systems? While that's a fine opinion and an interesting topic of debate, I fail to see how it relates to the discussion at hand.

[Milo v3]

So what's your point, exactly? You don't like level-based systems? While that's a fine opinion and an interesting topic of debate, I fail to see how it relates to the discussion at hand.

That even happens in systems that aren't level-based. It happens in nearly all systems were you can advance your character.