Quote from: Kyle Aaron;360163If the rules are the entire basis of the game world's physics, on what basis does the GM make rulings?

They're not. But they certainly inform them.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;360163That said, Jeff should have consulted the rules to discover the exact damage done - there's generally extra explosive damage for "contact" range in most rpgs - and then had the player roll the grenade damage against himself.

But that wouldn't have led to the desired end. People don't discard the rules purposelessly. GM changed the way grenades exploded for a purpose - it didn't detonate on impact for a reason. The player took advantage of the change in a manner the GM didn't expect. The GM changed "reality" yet again to fix that. This isn't a rules issue or a roleplaying issue.

Seanchai

Quote from: jeff37923;360167I grok where you are coming from. The rules got in the way of role-playing because the Player assumed that his character would survive the grenade explosion. If he was unsure, or didn't think his character could have survived the grenade damage, then I sincerely doubt he would have had his character make the attempt.

Clearly -- he wasn't interested in making a heroic sacrifice. Or a significant sacrifice of /any/ kind, for that matter.

But in this case, I think it's not the rules that got in the way -- it's the player's expectation about how the rules would be applied which caused the disconnect.

Depending on how ambiguous the rules are about jumping on the grenade, this could be a rules issue or a player interpretation issue or some of both. In any event, if the player's expectation was different from the GM's (even if it seems like an unreasonable expectation), I'd still prefer to explain how the rules would be applied and let the player make his decisions based on clear knowledge of the outcome and the structure of the rules in-play.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;360163If the rules are the entire basis of the game world's physics, on what basis does the GM make rulings?

Generally, on the basis of what is consistent with the GM's concept of the game world. Which may or may not include "realism".

A fair question, I suppose.

I'll be honest, jeff's decision isn't what irks me. It's the approach and the mentality that irks me. The whole "the player is gaming the system and not really roleplaying" thing pisses me off.

Quote from: Elliot WilenGnomeworks, that's all fine unless the group tries to do something that's based on expectations arising from genre, realism, etc., but which isn't clearly supported by the rules. ... The problem is that in D&D, for example, it's not a credible threat. So what do you do?

I don't do that kind of thing, then, if the system doesn't support it.

In my mind, the rules are the physics of the world. The rules aren't a complete picture of them - obviously they can't be - but as a general rule, I don't make a ruling unless I have to.

The whole "crossbow in the back" thing simply doesn't happen in my setting, because it's not a reasonable thing to do. The tactic fails because of how the world works.

d20 fails to do a lot of things "right," in the sense that I don't agree with the kinds of things it does to the world you're using the system for. But I still hold by them, because that's what the physics say would reasonably happen.

QuoteDoes it mean that high-level characters have an exoskeleton?

No. It means that hit points (or VP/WP) are poorly-defined, and don't function very well in some cases. What exactly happens in this kind of scenario, I'm not sure - I'm not really certain how I'd describe what happens to the character in the event of landing on a grenade they're guaranteed to survive through.

But regardless of whatever word-jumble I come up with to describe it, it happens.

QuoteFurthermore as people have noted, human values like "bravery" or "self-sacrifice" are undermined when the mechanics tell an entirely different story of calculated expenditure of resources without risk.

So? I thought we were here to play a game where we kill things and take their stuff, not worry about highbrow concepts. [/tongue-in-cheek]

If you want these themes to be important, then quit using the wrong system for these things. Seriously. There are reasonable conclusions to reach from examining a system and figuring out how people in the world work and live if that's how the world works.

I'm sorry that d20 shot your desire for "bravery" or "self-sacrifice." Don't like it? Use a different system.

Isn't that exactly the point of the thread?

Quote from: Seanchai;360188I think it's rather the reverse: the elements of the rest of the setting determines how deadly the grenade is. A grenade, for example, isn't an odd man out, the one deadly weapon in an arsenal that only poses moderate challenges.

You could say, for example, that GMs have to roleplay the setting. Does an automatically fatal grenade fall in line with a setting that isn't exactly deadly? Nope? Then it's poor "roleplaying" on the GM's part.

I'd say it's equally poor roleplaying on player's part. Look, the player is making the assumption that they can smother the blast of a grenade with their body. Where are the rules that say you can do this? I doubt there are any. The player is extrapolating from real-world notions of how grenades and explosions work, i.e., that they emit shock waves and fragments whose force is distributed to objects in their path. Therefore if the path can be blocked by a character's body, the objects "behind" the character are protected. But to take things only so far is a selective approach; once you go down that road, one can further extrapolate that absorbing the full blast of a grenade (or 50%+ of it, with the rest going into the ground) should cause more damage than if you're a few feet away and thus subjected to a dissipated force and a smaller percentage of fragments.

If you were really playing by RAW, I doubt there would be any "smothering a grenade with your body"--to really follow the rules, the GM should just say that no matter what a given character does, everyone within X feet takes the damage specified by the system. In short the RAW argument undermines itself. IMO it does in many other similar cases.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;360210Where are the rules that say you can do this? I doubt there are any.

Cover rules + rules for firing into a melee. Characters can provide cover. Cover can protect against/block the blast radius of burst effects.

Seems like a rather straight-forward conclusion to me.

QuoteIsn't that exactly the point of the thread?

I don't follow.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;360204I'm sorry that d20 shot your desire for "bravery" or "self-sacrifice." Don't like it? Use a different system.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;360208Isn't that exactly the point of the thread?

Thank you, sir.  Case in point.

!i!

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;360210Look, the player is making the assumption that they can smother the blast of a grenade with their body. Where are the rules that say you can do this?

GnomeWorks pointed out some that seem to cover it. That's a pun - get it?

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;360210...one can further extrapolate that absorbing the full blast of a grenade (or 50%+ of it, with the rest going into the ground) should cause more damage than if you're a few feet away and thus subjected to a dissipated force and a smaller percentage of fragments.

The rules already address that, however. 4d6+1 in the square of origin, 2d6+1 plus a save for half damage outside of that.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;360210If you were really playing by RAW, I doubt there would be any "smothering a grenade with your body"--to really follow the rules, the GM should just say that no matter what a given character does, everyone within X feet takes the damage specified by the system.

Which would have been better than the ruling they got, in my opinion.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;360210In short the RAW argument undermines itself.

What RAW argument? There's an argument that, based on the rules that exist, the character's experience with the physics of said rules, and his experience in the Star Wars universe, he has a reasonable chance of understanding his chances of surviving on top of a grenade. But that's not a RAW argument per se.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;360237Which would have been better than the ruling they got, in my opinion.

Not for me -- I want to be able to take actions that aren't modeled by the rules. Rules are necessarily abstract and incompletely model the physical universe.

That's one key reason why games have GM's and something they add to the game.

Ruling that jumping on a grenade is much more lethal than being next to one (and doing everything you can to avoid being killed) is a completely reasonable call and something I'd expect my GM to make. If he /didn't/ I'd feel rather un-satisfied by the outcome of the game (especially if I wanted my character to make a heroic sacrifice and was told that -- nope... can't be done. Sorry. Rules say so).

I think that the only issue with this particular call was the missmatch of expectations (the player expected one mechanical outcome and the GM ruled another)... but I think one of the reasons GM'd games are popular is that people don't /want/ to have to have explicit rules for everything or a game that's so abstract that it doesn't even try to model physical reality.

Cheers,
-E.

Should the GM take into account the player's attitude (good or bad) when making a ruling?

Quote from: Soylent Green;360254Should the GM take into account the player's attitude (good or bad) when making a ruling?

I don't think so. If you start favoring people, trust begins to erode. And you don't get it back.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;360237GnomeWorks pointed out some that seem to cover it.

He may have; I don't know those rules so I can only speculate. I'd like to see what they really say.

QuoteThe rules already address that, however. 4d6+1 in the square of origin, 2d6+1 plus a save for half damage outside of that.

Indeed, my point is that someone is extrapolating from these rules to a more detailed model, based on real-world knowledge of grenades. If the same rule appeared regarding a magical attack or a gas bomb, you wouldn't necessarily assume it could be blocked/smothered by a person.

QuoteWhich would have been better than the ruling they got, in my opinion.

I agree with -E here. Otherwise you're headed in the direction of "that which is not explicitly permitted is forbidden". And that also "gets in the way of role-playing" IMO.

I am not overly familiar with the Star wars rules. Do they have a double damage for a critical hit?

If so it might be possible that you sau okay if you smother a grenade you will take double maximum damage. A critical hit because you could not get a better strike than the position the grenade would be if you dive on it and maximum damage because if a grenades random damage is based on how many of the fragments hit you then all the fragments are going to hit you.

Aside form that I wouldn't actually bother because I think the player is gaming the system totally.

The idea that the game world physics need to be totally governed by the rules and that a system with light sabres and FTL drives is inherently illogical does not fly becuase these things are internally consistent with the Star Wars universe. The idea that the game system is wrong for the sort of games that people who don't want PCs to jump on greanades is also wrong as the system is trying to emulate Star Wars and I bet that if Han Solo had ever jumped on a grenade and smothered it without a helmet, or a storm trooper breastplate then he would have died. His not dying would have broken the suspension of disbelief that needs to exist to create a tension and make you care. There is a quantum jump from not being hit by dozens of stormtroopers shooting at you to being hit by all of them but none of them actually hurting you.

Just saying

Quote from: Soylent Green;360254Should the GM take into account the player's attitude (good or bad) when making a ruling?

Absolutely. Roleplaying games are a social creative hobby. Players who are contributing socially and/or creatively ought to be rewarded. Doesn't mean unsocial and uncreative players should be punished, though - the lack of reward is punishment enough for most unsocial uncreative crybabies

Quote from: Soylent Green;360254Should the GM take into account the player's attitude (good or bad) when making a ruling?

If you treat everyone the same, you're a commie and we hate commies here.

But, more importantly players contribute in different ways and although rulings must be consistent it must not be so rigid that it does not take into account, the individual contributions of players. Now, I'm not saying that some players should be favoured over others just that, some rulings you as the GM make, knowing that you would have to take a different approach with another player.

Sounds vague, I know.

Regards,
David R