OOTS #1053 - The Discussion Thread

[Kish]

I have to wonder* why one would add extraneous words to a paraphrase. Surely if you're paraphrasing, the point is to take out all the unnecessary words to convey the same information. Right?

GreatWyrmGold, it looks to me like what you're calling a "counter" presupposes agreement with certain ideas of yours that I find incomprehensible. If you simply assert "people who are dead in way X are more dead than people who are dead in way Y" in response to someone who already said that they're both equally dead, no response at all is as polite as you can hope for by any reasonable metric.

*I do not, of course, actually wonder. But you know what I mean.

[Jasdoif]

I'm pretty sure any in-universe metaphysicists would disagree that the body is the important part, and even the ones that wouldn't would probably argue that searching for conventional life-signs is only applicable to a certain class of living beings (and not to treants, elementals, etc).

Oh, I'm pretty sure any in-universe metaphysicists in such fields would come up with dedicated terminology to describe what they're talking about, instead of trying to change the perception of the word "dead", or the perception of any other word which is in defined in the game rules.

I would, however, like to ask...wouldn't someone who died of negative energy or something else that doesn't leave wounds be less dead than someone who was mangled by death, and someone whose body was completely destroyed be even more dead?

No. When they're dead, they're dead; the state of the object that is their corpse has no bearing past that point.


Does a character with Constitution 6 have a smaller Constitution bonus than a character with Con 8? No, because neither character has a Con bonus, because by definition a bonus is a positive modifier. Below the point where their Constitution modifier is positive, they're all equal in the Constitution bonus department (at "not applicable").

It's similar for "dead": once you're dead, you're dead; and though there exist factors around being dead that spells/magic/etc. care about, the "dead" part is the same. Raise dead doesn't talk about "death-days" or "death-effected-death" because the time sent dead and the manner of death are not themselves attributes of "dead". A term that accounts those things could certainly be useful for discussion, but "dead" is not such a term.

There are in fact degrees of death, the whole "disabled at 0, dying at -9 to -1" encompasses them; but being "dead" is an endpoint on that spectrum.

[GreatWyrmGold]

GreatWyrmGold, it looks to me like what you're calling a "counter" presupposes agreement with certain ideas of yours that I find incomprehensible. If you simply assert "people who are dead in way X are more dead than people who are dead in way Y" in response to someone who already said that they're both equally dead, no response at all is as polite as you can hope for by any reasonable metric.

I'm looking over my last post, and the only counter I can see which comes close to that is the one that starts with "I would like to ask".

Oh, I'm pretty sure any in-universe metaphysicists in such fields would come up with dedicated terminology to describe what they're talking about, instead of trying to change the perception of the word "dead", or the perception of any other word which is in defined in the game rules.

When physicists determined how gravity works, did they "try to change the perception of the word 'down'"? How about for time, which science has discovered works nothing like our previous and common-sense perception? Does learning to distinguish between different yet seemingly-identical species of sparrow require you to first discard your perception of what a sparrow is? Did science need to change what they called gravity, time, etc, when they discovered how wrong their prior perceptions of those things were?
I don't understand this argument.

No. When they're dead, they're dead; the state of the object that is their corpse has no bearing past that point.

What if their corpse begins showing signs of life later?

Does a character with Constitution 6 have a smaller Constitution bonus than a character with Con 8? No, because neither character has a Con bonus, because by definition a bonus is a positive modifier. Below the point where their Constitution modifier is positive, they're all equal in the Constitution bonus department (at "not applicable").

I don't see the fundamental difference between a bonus and a penalty, though that might be because I don't see a fundamental difference between negative and positive numbers in general (as long as you're not trying to take square roots or something).

Raise dead doesn't talk about "death-days" or "death-effected-death" because the time sent dead and the manner of death are not themselves attributes of "dead".

"The rules for raise dead don't use new, clunky, and potentially-confusing terms to describe beings after their death. Therefore, all beings which are not living are dead to the same extent, even if the rules imply that creatures can be dead in different ways."

A term that accounts those things could certainly be useful for discussion, but "dead" is not such a term.
There are in fact degrees of death, the whole "disabled at 0, dying at -9 to -1" encompasses them; but being "dead" is an endpoint on that spectrum.

I've outlined a number of ways for dead creatures to have meaningful differences in state—and for parties with the means to care about death beyond who gets the late party member's boots, those differences are absolutely critical. But we can't classify them as subtypes of death, because...reasons.

[Jasdoif]

I don't see the fundamental difference between a bonus and a penalty, though that might be because I don't see a fundamental difference between negative and positive numbers in general (as long as you're not trying to take square roots or something).

This concept is kind of representative of the whole thing. Bonuses are positive modifiers, penalties are negative modifiers. A penalty isn't a bonus because a penalty is a negative modifier, which can't simultaneously be a positive modifier. Not seeing the fundamental difference between them is not seeing what makes the words mean what they mean.

Which seems to be exactly what's going on. When you say "Assuming we focus on the metaphysical state of a soul", you're already outside the realm that the word "dead" covers; And when you say categories of death are "not quantitatively indistinguishable", you're saying it's possible for dead people to more or less "dead" than other dead people. This is a world where even pure game abstractions like skill points are relevant enough to be known and recognized in-universe; the game definition of "dead" is going to be the one that's prevalent, and it's listed with the other "has it or not" conditions as well as the circumstances that cause said condition.

You could try making an argument that Durkon's not dead on account of his soul not leaving his body, I suppose...but Lirian and Dorukan's bodies are not Xykon's soul gem, and you're OK with thinking they're not "dead", so I think your use of the word is off base.

[Kish]

The concept that a bonus is never less than 0 is actually quite important to the D&D rules--several rules break down thoroughly if the reader doesn't understand that "add/multiply by your X bonus" is never supposed to result in a negative number. (When it is, they say "modifier.")

[GreatWyrmGold]

This concept is kind of representative of the whole thing. Bonuses are positive modifiers, penalties are negative modifiers. A penalty isn't a bonus because a penalty is a negative modifier, which can't simultaneously be a positive modifier. Not seeing the fundamental difference between them is not seeing what makes the words mean what they mean.

Yes, yes, bonuses are positive and penalties are negative. I'm not an idiot. I just don't see your point.

Which seems to be exactly what's going on. When you say "Assuming we focus on the metaphysical state of a soul", you're already outside the realm that the word "dead" covers; And when you say categories of death are "not quantitatively indistinguishable", you're saying it's possible for dead people to more or less "dead" than other dead people. This is a world where even pure game abstractions like skill points are relevant enough to be known and recognized in-universe; the game definition of "dead" is going to be the one that's prevalent, and it's listed with the other "has it or not" conditions as well as the circumstances that cause said condition.
You could try making an argument that Durkon's not dead on account of his soul not leaving his body, I suppose...but Lirian and Dorukan's bodies are not Xykon's soul gem, and you're OK with thinking they're not "dead", so I think your use of the word is off base.

Aside from asserting that I'm wrong and you're right, I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish here.

I'm getting sick of this entire goddamn "discussion". I'm trying to get myself to stop discussions which I'm getting sick of. So this is probably the last I'll say on the subject.

The concept that a bonus is never less than 0 is actually quite important to the D&D rules--several rules break down thoroughly if the reader doesn't understand that "add/multiply by your X bonus" is never supposed to result in a negative number. (When it is, they say "modifier.")

Such as...?

[Sakgeres]

Wrong bird. Both where the term comes from and what is done when you are flipping the bird is unrelated the the bird males have. Though, I should note the finger does represent the penis, it is unrelated to the term (they were apparently separate at one point. You used to make a noise similar to the sound a bird makes to express displeasure at something. They just became connected at some point).

Today I realised I was right I and I came here just to say that. That is strawman's argument and I wasn't talking about where the term came from at all but what it means in the current context. So there's that. That was the right bird.

[MultitudeMan]

Today I realised I was right I and I came here just to say that. That is strawman's argument and I wasn't talking about where the term came from at all but what it means in the current context. So there's that. That was the right bird.

Rise, my undead minion!

[Auguries]

Red Padlock Incoming in 3....2....