I find the conversation rather odd given that in 5e, everything amounts to being a magic power, so why do we pick on specific magic powers as "unrealistic" or "outside of RP". Consider for example the Alert Feat, you are magically able never to be surprised again for the rest of your life while conscious. Its basically Spidey Sense. Crossbow Expert allows you to ignore re-loading a weapon, Linguist? You suddenly know 3 languages. I mean none of these things are in the realm of reality, they are magic powers.. so logical explanations are not necessary. Pretty much all class abilities function under the same concept, even some skills are basically magic powers as well. Insight lets you read minds essentially.
You just have to accept it as is, its actually more damaging to try to DM fiat in some sort of requirements or logic into it, because if you do that, your players are going to start asking uncomfortable questions about how some of these other things can be logical and explained which is a whole other can of worms best avoided. You don't want to get into debates about how anything in this system can be explained with "logic", it can't hold up to that. Its a ultra abstracted, super high fantasy game, just let it be that, that's my advice.
You can RP those situations too. Surprise at understanding languages you didn't know before. "I've got a bad feeling about this." Most of the reasons why a person shouldn't RP in this thread actually gave reasonable, if brief, RP ideas as "proof" against having RP. But whatever.
I could be misremembering the OP, but what you are describing is role play after the feat to justify having it, whereas the OP was complaining that a PC doesn’t role play before the feat to justify taking it, such as Indicating that they are using their downtime studying to be able to Justify the linguist feat, or practicing archery to justify taking the sharpshooter feat
I find the conversation rather odd given that in 5e, everything amounts to being a magic power, so why do we pick on specific magic powers as "unrealistic" or "outside of RP". Consider for example the Alert Feat, you are magically able never to be surprised again for the rest of your life while conscious. Its basically Spidey Sense. Crossbow Expert allows you to ignore re-loading a weapon, Linguist? You suddenly know 3 languages. I mean none of these things are in the realm of reality, they are magic powers.. so logical explanations are not necessary. Pretty much all class abilities function under the same concept, even some skills are basically magic powers as well. Insight lets you read minds essentially.
You just have to accept it as is, its actually more damaging to try to DM fiat in some sort of requirements or logic into it, because if you do that, your players are going to start asking uncomfortable questions about how some of these other things can be logical and explained which is a whole other can of worms best avoided. You don't want to get into debates about how anything in this system can be explained with "logic", it can't hold up to that. Its a ultra abstracted, super high fantasy game, just let it be that, that's my advice.
You can RP those situations too. Surprise at understanding languages you didn't know before. "I've got a bad feeling about this." Most of the reasons why a person shouldn't RP in this thread actually gave reasonable, if brief, RP ideas as "proof" against having RP. But whatever.
I could be misremembering the OP, but what you are describing is role play after the feat to justify having it, whereas the OP was complaining that a PC doesn’t role play before the feat to justify taking it, such as Indicating that they are using their downtime studying to be able to Justify the linguist feat, or practicing archery to justify taking the sharpshooter feat
Which is fine for the ones where you can study, practice, etc for the feat. For the ones that you can't think of a way to "prep for" or that wouldn't have a logical explanation, you could still RP that the first time you use the feat to at least acknowledge that something had has happened. This could also apply for those moments where you weren't planning on taking a feat, but you decided that it was a better option at that time for whatever reason.
I'm also presenting this primarily as a rebuttal to people who seem to be saying that RP doesn't make sense for certain feats. The reality is that RP may not make sense for a particular player or play group, but RP opportunities will present themselves for those trying to find those RP moments.
If a player tries to take a +2 Strength ASI, but never role played their character lifting weights or using a crowbar or doing anything to boost their strength, is that a problem? Why should players have to role play what they need to do to "earn" a feat, but not have to role play what they would have been doing in order to become stronger, more dexterous, more intelligent, more charismatic, etc? How would you even role play what your character did to become more wise? Would you say to the DM "my Cleric saw lots of opportunities to do stupid things, but he didn't do them, so now he's more wise than he was before"?
I find the conversation rather odd given that in 5e, everything amounts to being a magic power, so why do we pick on specific magic powers as "unrealistic" or "outside of RP". Consider for example the Alert Feat, you are magically able never to be surprised again for the rest of your life while conscious. Its basically Spidey Sense. Crossbow Expert allows you to ignore re-loading a weapon, Linguist? You suddenly know 3 languages. I mean none of these things are in the realm of reality, they are magic powers.. so logical explanations are not necessary. Pretty much all class abilities function under the same concept, even some skills are basically magic powers as well. Insight lets you read minds essentially.
You just have to accept it as is, its actually more damaging to try to DM fiat in some sort of requirements or logic into it, because if you do that, your players are going to start asking uncomfortable questions about how some of these other things can be logical and explained which is a whole other can of worms best avoided. You don't want to get into debates about how anything in this system can be explained with "logic", it can't hold up to that. Its a ultra abstracted, super high fantasy game, just let it be that, that's my advice.
You can RP those situations too. Surprise at understanding languages you didn't know before. "I've got a bad feeling about this." Most of the reasons why a person shouldn't RP in this thread actually gave reasonable, if brief, RP ideas as "proof" against having RP. But whatever.
I could be misremembering the OP, but what you are describing is role play after the feat to justify having it, whereas the OP was complaining that a PC doesn’t role play before the feat to justify taking it, such as Indicating that they are using their downtime studying to be able to Justify the linguist feat, or practicing archery to justify taking the sharpshooter feat
I got the sense the OP was saying they weren’t doing any RP at all. And that there should have been atleast a minimal effort made to explain it.
If a player tries to take a +2 Strength ASI, but never role played their character lifting weights or using a crowbar or doing anything to boost their strength, is that a problem? Why should players have to role play what they need to do to "earn" a feat, but not have to role play what they would have been doing in order to become stronger, more dexterous, more intelligent, more charismatic, etc? How would you even role play what your character did to become more wise? Would you say to the DM "my Cleric saw lots of opportunities to do stupid things, but he didn't do them, so now he's more wise than he was before"?
Wisdom and wise was comes naturally occurring with getting older doesn’t it? In real life that is.
getting stronger, wouldn’t you get stronger if you walked everywhere carrying 100-200 lbs of armor or equipment? Isn’t that like wearing weight vests, or ankle weights, during daily activities which people do to get stronger?
i got to agree with Jhfffan. At how a lot of the arguments against this stuff are arguments against it made using the examples of exactly what the OP was talking about.
I find the conversation rather odd given that in 5e, everything amounts to being a magic power, so why do we pick on specific magic powers as "unrealistic" or "outside of RP". Consider for example the Alert Feat, you are magically able never to be surprised again for the rest of your life while conscious. Its basically Spidey Sense. Crossbow Expert allows you to ignore re-loading a weapon, Linguist? You suddenly know 3 languages. I mean none of these things are in the realm of reality, they are magic powers.. so logical explanations are not necessary. Pretty much all class abilities function under the same concept, even some skills are basically magic powers as well. Insight lets you read minds essentially.
You just have to accept it as is, its actually more damaging to try to DM fiat in some sort of requirements or logic into it, because if you do that, your players are going to start asking uncomfortable questions about how some of these other things can be logical and explained which is a whole other can of worms best avoided. You don't want to get into debates about how anything in this system can be explained with "logic", it can't hold up to that. Its a ultra abstracted, super high fantasy game, just let it be that, that's my advice.
You say spidey sense. A psychologist may say “paranoia” for the “alert” feat. Which could also be called Hyper-Vigilance, if it was the medical condition.
my understanding of proficiency Akins to “fluency”
you can know a language without being fluent in real life. And then work on your fluency via immersion, living in that language’s culture, or Rosetta Stone. So linguist can be looked at someone went from conversational in a language to fluent. Otherwise, how would you even know what Draconic or Dwarven or celestial or etc are. They’d all be “strange phonemes and lexemes you have never heard before” when described.
insight let’s you read minds practically.
so... you don’t know when someone is lying to you? You can’t tel if someone is acting strange before they shop lift? None of that makes sense to you?
you say “you just have to accept it as it is” but do you even know what it is you’re accepting? Your scope of understanding on a lot of the skills and abilities you referenced seemed very one track and limited in scope of how it relates to a high fantasy world, but forgetting how it can apply to normal reality. Even in a high fantasy world there’s normal reality.
using insight today. Is no different than using insight in 7th century England. Or in 2000 BC Egypt. Etc.
so why is insight now all of a sudden magically different because you’re in a high fantasy setting?
i get where you’re coming from of “just let it be” but when you bloviate a really long post with bad examples and flawed logic. It weakens the “just let it be”/“don’t over think it” point you were trying to make.
if anything I read through your comment and see it doing nothing but strengthening the Argiment about feats being misused. As I get the sense you are missing Alert. Missing any language you know. Missing your insight. Missing passive knowledge of the D&D world.
OP opened up a can of worms about what is being misused.
edit: sorry. 2nd last paragraph autocorrect changed misusing to missing.
Its a matter of time as well. I mean, a character can go from level 1 to level 4 in a matter of a few days in some campaigns.
I personally don't really have issue with it, you have to simply accept that D&D is a gamist system, its a deep abstraction, and neither the narrative or the mechanic want anything to do with realism and simulation. I think that is something old school gamers have trouble adapting to and I do get that part of it. In old school systems characters gain abilities and powers very gradually and though the system was also abstracted, realism was still a general target for a gaming group. I usually find people who have trouble with the deep abstractions of the system, are not having trouble with the system per say, but more with the lack of realism in the campaign and story which the system sort of brings to the foreground. But since the system mechanically is so heavily abstracted, you just can't get realism out of it.
Take for example the Alert feat that dictates that a character can never be surprised while he is conscious (ever again in his whole life.. period). That is a mechanical benefit designed for gamist reasons but competently lacks any level of realism. You just have to accept it as a gamist mechanic.
Its kind of the thing with modern gaming systems. Some are gamist but they try to maintain realism which usually means the gamist mechanics are subtle, others like 5e, just go full PC game mode working under the assumption that no one wants or cares about realism at all.
Alert feat example. See my above post about paranoia. Hyper vigilance. And other personality/mood disorders.
I do think you’re right about the concept of it being something older gamers feel more strongly about than newer gamers though.
I find the conversation rather odd given that in 5e, everything amounts to being a magic power, so why do we pick on specific magic powers as "unrealistic" or "outside of RP". Consider for example the Alert Feat, you are magically able never to be surprised again for the rest of your life while conscious. Its basically Spidey Sense. Crossbow Expert allows you to ignore re-loading a weapon, Linguist? You suddenly know 3 languages. I mean none of these things are in the realm of reality, they are magic powers.. so logical explanations are not necessary. Pretty much all class abilities function under the same concept, even some skills are basically magic powers as well. Insight lets you read minds essentially.
You just have to accept it as is, its actually more damaging to try to DM fiat in some sort of requirements or logic into it, because if you do that, your players are going to start asking uncomfortable questions about how some of these other things can be logical and explained which is a whole other can of worms best avoided. You don't want to get into debates about how anything in this system can be explained with "logic", it can't hold up to that. Its a ultra abstracted, super high fantasy game, just let it be that, that's my advice.
You say spidey sense. A psychologist may say “paranoia” for the “alert” feat. Which could also be called Hyper-Vigilance, if it was the medical condition.
my understanding of proficiency Akins to “fluency”
you can know a language without being fluent in real life. And then work on your fluency via immersion, living in that language’s culture, or Rosetta Stone. So linguist can be looked at someone went from conversational in a language to fluent. Otherwise, how would you even know what Draconic or Dwarven or celestial or etc are. They’d all be “strange phonemes and lexemes you have never heard before” when described.
insight let’s you read minds practically.
so... you don’t know when someone is lying to you? You can’t tel if someone is acting strange before they shop lift? None of that makes sense to you?
you say “you just have to accept it as it is” but do you even know what it is you’re accepting? Your scope of understanding on a lot of the skills and abilities you referenced seemed very one track and limited in scope of how it relates to a high fantasy world, but forgetting how it can apply to normal reality. Even in a high fantasy world there’s normal reality.
using insight today. Is no different than using insight in 7th century England. Or in 2000 BC Egypt. Etc.
so why is insight now all of a sudden magically different because you’re in a high fantasy setting?
i get where you’re coming from of “just let it be” but when you bloviate a really long post with bad examples and flawed logic. It weakens the “just let it be”/“don’t over think it” point you were trying to make.
if anything I read through your comment and see it doing nothing but strengthening the Argiment about feats being misused. As I get the sense you are missing Alert. Missing any language you know. Missing your insight. Missing passive knowledge of the D&D world.
OP opened up a can of worms about what is being misused.
You can rationalize pretty much any game mechanic, but the practical implementation of things like Alert don't make sense, as posted previously. Sure you can excuse it as Paranoia, but 100% of the time, at all times.. Physically impossible that at some moment in your entire life you might let your guard down?
And take the function of insight a polar opposite of something that works 100% of the time to something that is completetly unpredictable, you roll a d20, your opposed by a d20.. that is so swingy and random, it doesn't represent being good at it, in particular in a bound accuracy structure where for some reason how much adventuring and monster killing you do, determines how good you are at telling if someone lies or not? The disconnect is pretty high.
You can rationalize, I get that, but all that does is bring up these theoretical debates about realism and that's just not what D&D attempts to do or even cares about. Its not like the designers created the Insight mechanic and though "ok this feel realistic"... its there because all the skills work the same, because its a simple mechanic to remember because its not important enough to care about.
As a 5e player you can't scrutinize the system under a microscope of realism, not only because its not a simulationist system, but because it doesn't attempt to be realistic either. Sure you can rationalize it but why bother? Its a game that has made no effort to be realistic, why hold it to that standard.
I guess what I'm saying is that by trying to rationalize it like the OP is trying to, your opening yourself up to debate about the merits of the system and how realistic it is, when by design, no one actually tried to make it realistic. Its like complaining that a lemon is not salty enough.
You don’t understand the real life conditions of Paranoia, or Hypervigilance do you?
for the insight now using a d20 example.
so you can recognize any and all lies told to you? You can spot any and all shop lifters? Those people are doing varying degrees of deception vs your varying insight use from passive or more skeptical.
just as your skepticism is rising against me vi natural flow of this conversation. And mine of you.
are you one of the D&D designers? (I literally don’t know if you are) if you are, and that’s not how I sight was designed. Thank you, I would love to know how it was intended. If you are not, then you couldn’t possibly know what they had in mind when they designed it if they were going for realistic or not.
i look at the changes between each edition as D&D trying to be more and more realistic with each iteration, as best they can. While staying true to the fantasy setting. Even errata and UA and such do this too. Otherwise we wouldn’t have Gunslingers or Artificers. Which are basically people using more modern weapons and technologies in a fantasy setting period when such things weren’t there.
do you watch anime any? Dr. Stone would give you good insight (not the skill) to the technologies realistically feasible or not.
If a player tries to take a +2 Strength ASI, but never role played their character lifting weights or using a crowbar or doing anything to boost their strength, is that a problem? Why should players have to role play what they need to do to "earn" a feat, but not have to role play what they would have been doing in order to become stronger, more dexterous, more intelligent, more charismatic, etc? How would you even role play what your character did to become more wise? Would you say to the DM "my Cleric saw lots of opportunities to do stupid things, but he didn't do them, so now he's more wise than he was before"?
Wisdom and wise was comes naturally occurring with getting older doesn’t it? In real life that is.
getting stronger, wouldn’t you get stronger if you walked everywhere carrying 100-200 lbs of armor or equipment? Isn’t that like wearing weight vests, or ankle weights, during daily activities which people do to get stronger?
i got to agree with Jhfffan. At how a lot of the arguments against this stuff are arguments against it made using the examples of exactly what the OP was talking about.
Then should a Ranger have to role play why his character isn't getting any wiser if he's using his ASI/Feats for Dexterity, Sharpshooter, or Crossbow Expert and not increasing his Wisdom score? And should he have to role play how his character is walking around with all this armor and equipment and not increasing his strength either?
If it comes naturally, then it shouldn't be an optional increase.
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I could be misremembering the OP, but what you are describing is role play after the feat to justify having it, whereas the OP was complaining that a PC doesn’t role play before the feat to justify taking it, such as Indicating that they are using their downtime studying to be able to Justify the linguist feat, or practicing archery to justify taking the sharpshooter feat
Which is fine for the ones where you can study, practice, etc for the feat. For the ones that you can't think of a way to "prep for" or that wouldn't have a logical explanation, you could still RP that the first time you use the feat to at least acknowledge that something had has happened. This could also apply for those moments where you weren't planning on taking a feat, but you decided that it was a better option at that time for whatever reason.
I'm also presenting this primarily as a rebuttal to people who seem to be saying that RP doesn't make sense for certain feats. The reality is that RP may not make sense for a particular player or play group, but RP opportunities will present themselves for those trying to find those RP moments.
If a player tries to take a +2 Strength ASI, but never role played their character lifting weights or using a crowbar or doing anything to boost their strength, is that a problem? Why should players have to role play what they need to do to "earn" a feat, but not have to role play what they would have been doing in order to become stronger, more dexterous, more intelligent, more charismatic, etc? How would you even role play what your character did to become more wise? Would you say to the DM "my Cleric saw lots of opportunities to do stupid things, but he didn't do them, so now he's more wise than he was before"?
I got the sense the OP was saying they weren’t doing any RP at all. And that there should have been atleast a minimal effort made to explain it.
Wisdom and wise was comes naturally occurring with getting older doesn’t it? In real life that is.
getting stronger, wouldn’t you get stronger if you walked everywhere carrying 100-200 lbs of armor or equipment? Isn’t that like wearing weight vests, or ankle weights, during daily activities which people do to get stronger?
i got to agree with Jhfffan. At how a lot of the arguments against this stuff are arguments against it made using the examples of exactly what the OP was talking about.
You say spidey sense. A psychologist may say “paranoia” for the “alert” feat. Which could also be called Hyper-Vigilance, if it was the medical condition.
my understanding of proficiency Akins to “fluency”
you can know a language without being fluent in real life. And then work on your fluency via immersion, living in that language’s culture, or Rosetta Stone. So linguist can be looked at someone went from conversational in a language to fluent. Otherwise, how would you even know what Draconic or Dwarven or celestial or etc are. They’d all be “strange phonemes and lexemes you have never heard before” when described.
insight let’s you read minds practically.
so... you don’t know when someone is lying to you? You can’t tel if someone is acting strange before they shop lift? None of that makes sense to you?
you say “you just have to accept it as it is” but do you even know what it is you’re accepting? Your scope of understanding on a lot of the skills and abilities you referenced seemed very one track and limited in scope of how it relates to a high fantasy world, but forgetting how it can apply to normal reality. Even in a high fantasy world there’s normal reality.
using insight today. Is no different than using insight in 7th century England. Or in 2000 BC Egypt. Etc.
so why is insight now all of a sudden magically different because you’re in a high fantasy setting?
i get where you’re coming from of “just let it be” but when you bloviate a really long post with bad examples and flawed logic. It weakens the “just let it be”/“don’t over think it” point you were trying to make.
if anything I read through your comment and see it doing nothing but strengthening the Argiment about feats being misused. As I get the sense you are missing Alert. Missing any language you know. Missing your insight. Missing passive knowledge of the D&D world.
OP opened up a can of worms about what is being misused.
edit: sorry. 2nd last paragraph autocorrect changed misusing to missing.
Alert feat example. See my above post about paranoia. Hyper vigilance. And other personality/mood disorders.
I do think you’re right about the concept of it being something older gamers feel more strongly about than newer gamers though.
You don’t understand the real life conditions of Paranoia, or Hypervigilance do you?
for the insight now using a d20 example.
so you can recognize any and all lies told to you? You can spot any and all shop lifters? Those people are doing varying degrees of deception vs your varying insight use from passive or more skeptical.
just as your skepticism is rising against me vi natural flow of this conversation. And mine of you.
are you one of the D&D designers? (I literally don’t know if you are) if you are, and that’s not how I sight was designed. Thank you, I would love to know how it was intended. If you are not, then you couldn’t possibly know what they had in mind when they designed it if they were going for realistic or not.
i look at the changes between each edition as D&D trying to be more and more realistic with each iteration, as best they can. While staying true to the fantasy setting. Even errata and UA and such do this too. Otherwise we wouldn’t have Gunslingers or Artificers. Which are basically people using more modern weapons and technologies in a fantasy setting period when such things weren’t there.
do you watch anime any? Dr. Stone would give you good insight (not the skill) to the technologies realistically feasible or not.
granted.... this I can buy as “magic”
I have. And they quickly changed from 4e, which was not well received either mind you, to 5e.
[REDACTED]
Then should a Ranger have to role play why his character isn't getting any wiser if he's using his ASI/Feats for Dexterity, Sharpshooter, or Crossbow Expert and not increasing his Wisdom score? And should he have to role play how his character is walking around with all this armor and equipment and not increasing his strength either?
If it comes naturally, then it shouldn't be an optional increase.