Rules rules and more rules !


Gamer Life General Discussion

1 to 50 of 57 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>

What do you think is more important
Rules as written or
Rules as intended
Or maybe neither


8 people marked this as a favorite.

Rules As Work Best For You. Slavishly adhering to either RAW or RAI isn't worth the effort. Groups should feel free to interpret, ignore or make rules as they see fit; roleplaying is a social gathering, not a sport.

Sovereign Court

Rules as Intended provided you can come to an agreement what that intention was. After all, if a rule is a bit silly going literally but with some common sense you can make it work as it ought to, you ought to.

If there's too many people to be able to reach such an agreement (i.e. PFS), then RAW is the logical fallback.

Even then, there's often multiple ways to read the text going from extremely literal to slightly more "as intended to be read". The latter tends to work better because the rules aren't that tightly written. Trying to read them tighter than they are leads to weirdness.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Rules as contribute to fun.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Rules As Written Which I'll Ignore If It Bogs Down The Game.

Also, flagging OP for wrong forum, this isn't a rules question, best fit would probably be Pathfinder RPG Gen Disc.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Rules as written has no value. Rules as intended has value in that it provides what "should" be. But I'm ready to ignore anything if I don't like it. House-rules are my patches for those cases, to keep the exceptions consistent.

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Absolutely no one I've ever met uses RAW.

RAI is the basis for most every FAQ/Errata, so I don't see much lint in playing RAW devoid of RAI hints.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

There's no such thing.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Whichever lets me win at the game, duh!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Screw the rules.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

RAI.

RAI may be unclear, but RAW is outright silly or contradictory


1 person marked this as a favorite.
tony gent wrote:

What do you think is more important

Rules as written or
Rules as intended
Or maybe neither

RAW, always RAW.

Now if RAW is unclear we can switch to RAI, but as a last case.

Grand Lodge

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I'll take a healthy smattering of all three. I'll always favor a game that strikes a goo balance between fun and running smoothly, so the proportion of RAW/RAI/Other is in constant flux to achieve my goals.

-Skeld


I run RAIBGMWPD/D, that is rules as interprated by gm with prior disclosure/discussion. I believe this is close to RAI, but who actually knows the true RAI? I am happy to play at a friendly table with any RX, as long as I know what it will be.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

RAW whenever possible. Common sense is an illusion. If you're going to change something, let it be known in advance.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

In the English language, everything is subject to interpretation.

As stated many times by the developers, the rules are written with the assumption that common sense will be applied.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

House Rule first if you have one. See RAI below.

RAW second unless there's some glaring problem, like the thing not making logical sense or being unclear, or some other weird, unforseen issue.

RAI next, assuming you come to agreement on it. Then decide if it's officially a House Rule.

"Cuz the GM said so" comes last, to stop the endless bickering.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Writing is a means to convey intention. If you start from a position of needing to go straight to RAI you start from the assumption that the writer has failed to adequately do their job. You only need to go to RAI or fun when RAW fails, but RAW should be your first step.

I'm also not sure you can put RAW vs RAI in absolutes. It is always going to be a matter of degree - and one that will vary depending on the specific rules. While many are fine as is, some rules really cannot work without some additional interpretation.

The absolutely most important thing is finding out what works best for you and your group though. Where on that spectrum are you, as a collective, happy.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I would not say either is more important. Ideally, the rules as written will convey the proper intent(how the devs intended for the rules to work at the table).

If you are asking which is better to use at the table I will say that using something as it was intended, whether it is rules or some random tool is the better option in most cases.

If someone goes directly by the rules, and reads them in the most literal way possible the game does not function.

As an example, the magic section calls out "spells", and not supernatural abilities with regard to using magic and "aiming", so a literal reading of the rules would allow someone to say that SU's are not restricted by the same targeting rules that spells use.<---A poster actually tried to use that argument before. This could lead to things like an SU that causes one target to be confused to work on someone behind a brick wall.

Another example would be reach weapons doubling reach so a colossal creature can hold a reach weapon sized for a tiny creature and its reach would double simply because the rules do not say the reach weapon has to be sized for whatever is using it.

There are other examples, if someone wants to be pedantic enough about reading the rules.

Sczarni

1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. 3 people marked this as a favorite.

I'm a broken record everytime this comes up.

There is no such thing as "Rules as Written".

A rule is a concept created from the mind of a person or persons. It is an absolute with no range of variation. It exists purely as an idea, and has no physical form.

Writing is simply a medium for transmitting ideas. But, no matter the language, writing is inherently flawed, because reading is an interpretive activity. The writer and the reader have different opinions, biases and backgrounds that can skew their interpretation of written text.

"I'm running to the store real quick" probably doesn't mean that I'll be actually running, and "quick" is an indefinite velocity that culturally represents an equally indefinite amount of time. If I wished to communicate my idea more thoroughly, it would require more detail, more context, more words and take more time. I'm gambling that my short message conveys my idea adequately.

Pathfinder is no different. The Developers attempted to convey their ideas to us, the readers, via written text. But many readers can have a very large range of interpretations. To make matters worse, we have a forum with which to share, discuss and evolve those interpretations faster than the Developers can explain them. It's a recipe for disaster.

Religions, as another example, have the same dilemma. They begin with an idea, which an author attempts to convey to other readers, but as time goes by and cultural understandings change, you can end up with a very different "religion" than what you started with.

So the discussion shouldn't be "Rules as Written" vs "Rules as Intended".

It's purely "Text as Interpreted".


But what does it say.


Nefreet wrote:

I'm a broken record everytime this comes up.

There is no such thing as "Rules as Written".

...

So the discussion shouldn't be "Rules as Written" vs "Rules as Intended". It's purely "Text as Interpreted".

Fair enough. There needs to be a commonly agreed on starting point from which to hang these interpretations, though, and that starting point is what is written. That's RAW.

For the simple stuff, RAW is clear and absolute. You roll a d20 and your modifiers to make an attack, and you hit if your roll exceeds the defender's modified AC. A fireball does so many d6 of base damage, fills a certain area but doesn't "spread out" if set off in a confined space. And so on. Usually, RAW is just fine. We know it's just fine because we don't quibble over it for the majority of the game.

Where you go to RAI and interpretation is edge cases. Do people with the Blind-Fight feat have an advantage against a wizard using Mirror Image or Blur? The RAW says it's no use against Blink, but Blink is mechanically very different from Blur or Mirror Image. This isn't explicitly covered in the rules that I am aware of so the GM has to figure out what was intended with Blind-Fight.

You also go to RAI when someone starts their argument with "Well, technically..." because that's often a sign someone is trying to exploit the limits of written rules.

You have to have a common starting point that everyone can read and agree on or you won't get anywhere. RAW is where you begin.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

"Rules as written" is an illusion, based on an intersubjective interpretation of the text shared within a linguistic community. As one does not have access to the rest of that community when playing the game, it's entirely impossible to run a game this way. (FWIW, "Rules as Intended" presupposes we have some access to authorial intent, and that it matters and is no better.)

That is to say that meaning is not an metaphysical quality, words only have meaning within a specific intersubjective context. If you're within this context, this helps you. But what happens when you're actually playing the game and you, for whatever reason, do not understand what the rules in the text are trying to say.

There's really only two questions you should ask yourself when "what the rule actually is" happens to be unclear to you:
1) What interpretation will make the game more fun for my players?
2) What interpretation makes sense to me?

In the heat of a game, any interpretation of a rule that satisfies both criteria is fine. Questions about "how do these things interact" are fun to discuss on the forums when you're not actually playing the game, but it's a waste of time when you're actually playing. You just have to make a ruling and move on. Nobody wants to watch the GM flip through books or turn to google.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
PossibleCabbage wrote:
"Rules as written" is an illusion, based on an intersubjective interpretation of the text shared within a linguistic community.

Deconstructionist arguments are wholly unhelpful. I mean, sure, at its fundamental level we could all ask ourselves "What do we really mean when we say 'armor class'?" but I fail to see how that's going to move the game, or the discussion, along.

Practically speaking, unless you are playing with people who have an actual language barrier, written rules can be read and understood.

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

John Mechalas wrote:
written rules can be read and understood.

Whenever you have a RAW vs RAI disagreement in a thread, you still have two people using "RAW". One is using an interpretation of RAW to reject the other opinion (let's call it alleged RAI.) The other uses RAW with interpretations to get to their RAI version of RAW>

Both side are using "RAW" and coming up with different interpretations.


James Risner wrote:
John Mechalas wrote:
written rules can be read and understood.

Whenever you have a RAW vs RAI disagreement in a thread, you still have two people using "RAW". One is using an interpretation of RAW to reject the other opinion (let's call it alleged RAI.) The other uses RAW with interpretations to get to their RAI version of RAW>

Both side are using "RAW" and coming up with different interpretations.

That's kind of the point. Until you get to a point of disagreement then RAW is doing it's job. It's only when you get to a point of disagreement that you need to start looking at something other than the rules as written.


dragonhunterq wrote:
James Risner wrote:


Whenever you have a RAW vs RAI disagreement in a thread, you still have two people using "RAW". One is using an interpretation of RAW to reject the other opinion (let's call it alleged RAI.) The other uses RAW with interpretations to get to their RAI version of RAW>

Both side are using "RAW" and coming up with different interpretations.

That's kind of the point. Until you get to a point of disagreement then RAW is doing it's job. It's only when you get to a point of disagreement that you need to start looking at something other than the rules as written.

And this is why you have a GM. At some point, to keep the game going, if a disgreement can't be resolved the GM gets to make the call. That is their job. They are not an equal to the players during the game: their decisions are the ones that stick.

Think of the rules like the U.S. legal system. It's based on Case Law. You have the RAW, which are the rules/laws, and then you have the GM filling the role of a judge when there is a gap not covered by the law. The players can make their case, but in the end the GM makes the decision and if needed that becomes a precedent or house rule. Because the rules can't cover every scenario, and we can't expect Paizo or the players to keep track of an ever-growing list of errata and FAQ's for all possible issues.

It's not a perfect analogy, but it's one that works really well if everyone buys into it. It all starts with RAW, though.

Discussions on the forum about RAW aren't binding to my game or your game (unless Paizo takes a stand and makes it official), but they can help other GM's make their decisions in their games. It's all helpful information.


But doesn't it say in thr core rules that they are ment to be used as you see fit and you are free to change alter or ignore any rules that you want .
As long as everyone in the game knows what you have changed

Liberty's Edge

Rules as intended, balance, and good gameplay.

Rules as written for PFS.


John Mechalas wrote:
PossibleCabbage wrote:
"Rules as written" is an illusion, based on an intersubjective interpretation of the text shared within a linguistic community.
Deconstructionist arguments are wholly unhelpful. I mean, sure, at its fundamental level we could all ask ourselves "What do we really mean when we say 'armor class'?" but I fail to see how that's going to move the game, or the discussion, along.

Speak for yourself. My armor class of 42 proves that I am the Ubermensch.

Liberty's Edge

RedDogMT wrote:

Rules as intended, balance, and good gameplay.

Rules as written for PFS.

PFS actually follows something like;

'Specified rules as interpreted / rewritten by PFS campaign staff and all other rules as the individual GM interprets the intent to have been or whatever the GM feels works if there is no rule clearly covering it'

Community & Digital Content Director

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Moved thread and removed a post. Let's not bring heated real-world issues into game-centric threads.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm pretty old-school and believe in "rulings not rules." I have absolutely zero qualms about throwing out rules if they're getting in the way of the narrative.

These days, I'm mostly playing "rules-light" systems, like Dungeon World and FATE Accelerated, which mostly sidestep this question.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

The main difference between a "rule" and an on-the-fly adjudication/ruling is when it happens.

Or to put it another way, a rule is just an adjudication that was done ahead of time.

Say you get to a situation in your game, and a player asks how to resolve an action they want to perform. You, as the GM, come up with something, and play proceeds. Congratulations, you just "adjudicated" or "made a ruling". If instead you'd had the foresight to anticipate that type of situation (even if not that specific instance) and had made that exact same adjudication/ruling ahead of time and communicated it to the players, do you know what your adjudication would be called?

A rule.

The rules are just a collection of (hopefully consistent and well-thought-out) adjudications for the types of situations that are most likely to come up in a game. Using a rule and making your own ruling are basically the same thing, except that using the rule can be faster because people can know it ahead of time and not have to pause the game for a question-and-answer session. Thus, the whole point of rules is to save you the time of making rulings, because the rulings have been made ahead of time.

Let me reiterate:
The whole point of rules is to save you the time of making rulings, because the rulings have been made ahead of time.

Of course, if people don't know the rules and would therefore have to stop and look them up in order to follow them, then obviously the rules are giving you no benefit. Similarly, if folks have different understandings of the rules and would need to discuss them before moving on; or if someone's sense of balance/reasonableness (whether the GM's or the author's) is out of whack, making the rule appear to be invalid; then likewise they serve no purpose.

It's fascinating to come to this realization. When you realize that the only difference between rulings and rules is when the decision gets made and whose sense of game balance you're using, an interesting picture starts to come together when people talk about how much they do or don't like to adhere to the "rules".

That is, if someone says they prefer "rulings over rules", when the two only differ in that one is made now by the GM while the other was made ahead of time by someone else, that means that the person is literally just saying they prefer to make the call themselves in the moment rather than someone else getting to make the call ahead of time.

Kind of changes the color of the discussion, doesn't it?

It gets even more interesting when you start delving into the "why". Does the person have control issues, and needs to be the one making the call? Have they played so many games with poorly-made rules that they no longer trust the author's rulings over their own and feel they need to make the call themselves all the time in order to have a fun game? Are they unwilling/unable to learn the rules in the first place (for myriad reasons, both valid and not) and just want to make rulings themselves because it's easier for them? (You can ask similar questions in the other direction as well, but this post is already getting long.)

Anyway, the point is, it's truly fascinating to realize how many discussions and arguments actually come down to debating the relative merits of "rulings made ahead of time by a professional" versus "rulings made on the fly by me". I think if we all were to recognize and acknowledge that this is the real comparison, many of our discussions could be far more productive.


Rulings > Rules


A combination of the three. RAW for certain things, RAI for others, and homebrew where common sense is needed.


Jiggy wrote:

The main difference between a "rule" and an on-the-fly adjudication/ruling is when it happens.

Or to put it another way, a rule is just an adjudication that was done ahead of time.

Say you get to a situation in your game, and a player asks how to resolve an action they want to perform. You, as the GM, come up with something, and play proceeds. Congratulations, you just "adjudicated" or "made a ruling". If instead you'd had the foresight to anticipate that type of situation (even if not that specific instance) and had made that exact same adjudication/ruling ahead of time and communicated it to the players, do you know what your adjudication would be called?

A rule.

The rules are just a collection of (hopefully consistent and well-thought-out) adjudications for the types of situations that are most likely to come up in a game. Using a rule and making your own ruling are basically the same thing, except that using the rule can be faster because people can know it ahead of time and not have to pause the game for a question-and-answer session. Thus, the whole point of rules is to save you the time of making rulings, because the rulings have been made ahead of time.

Let me reiterate:
The whole point of rules is to save you the time of making rulings, because the rulings have been made ahead of time.

Of course, if people don't know the rules and would therefore have to stop and look them up in order to follow them, then obviously the rules are giving you no benefit. Similarly, if folks have different understandings of the rules and would need to discuss them before moving on; or if someone's sense of balance/reasonableness (whether the GM's or the author's) is out of whack, making the rule appear to be invalid; then likewise they serve no purpose.

It's fascinating to come to this realization. When you realize that the only difference between rulings and rules is when the decision gets made and whose sense of game balance you're using, an interesting picture...

I kind of agree, except that I think you have some baked-in assumptions which perhaps minimize some of the differences between the two (your 'hopefully consistent' comment, for example: I don't see much value in absolute consistency, if the price paid is lots and lots of situational modifiers I need to remember). I'm fine with "roll a ten or better to open the door" on the way in and "roll less than your strength to open the same door" the next day. Such things have no impact on my enjoyment of the game, but seem to really bug others.

As such, I think one of the (dis)advantages of rules over rulings is a matter of aesthetic preference (do you prefer consistency or minimal stuff-you-need-to-commit-to-memory?) I prefer having minimal headspace devoted to mechanics and am happy to pay the price of inconsistency in task-resolution - I just don't notice it.

It doesn't really change your 'rules are just rulings made in advance' view, but I think the "just" is perhaps misleading - there are significant differences between the two beyond the temporal, in my view. Or at least there are differences - the significance will depend on one's tastes in game design.


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Rules for* Fun**

*"For" being used as "which support the establishment of"
**Fun being an agreed upon quantity/quality among the group that doesn't infringe on anyone's enjoyment in the shared narrative.

In practice this ends up as somewhere between RAW and RAI. I like to use the rules as written for the most part, but when there's something that doesn't make sense (like natural armor in 5E not stacking with superior defensive training or magic) I'll refer to any rules as intended hints/statements from the writers and if those still make little sense I just houserule it.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Steve Geddes wrote:
As such, I think one of the (dis)advantages of rules over rulings is a matter of aesthetic preference (do you prefer consistency or minimal stuff-you-need-to-commit-to-memory?) I prefer having minimal headspace devoted to mechanics and am happy to pay the price of inconsistency in task-resolution - I just don't notice it.

Remember when I talked about possible reasons for someone to prefer "GM makes the call in the moment" over "author made the call in advance"? One of my example reasons was:

Earlier, I wrote:
Are they unwilling/unable to learn the rules in the first place (for myriad reasons, both valid and not) and just want to make rulings themselves because it's easier for them?

The preference you describe is exactly that: being unwilling to learn (all of) the rules and just wanting at-the-table rulings because they're easier. That's exactly what I was talking about in that paragraph. Especially in the case of Pathfinder, learning the rules well enough that they do their job of being quicker/easier than making rulings is something not everyone is interested in making the investment to accomplish, and that's a valid stance. I had things like that in mind when I wrote all that.

:)


Jiggy wrote:
Steve Geddes wrote:
As such, I think one of the (dis)advantages of rules over rulings is a matter of aesthetic preference (do you prefer consistency or minimal stuff-you-need-to-commit-to-memory?) I prefer having minimal headspace devoted to mechanics and am happy to pay the price of inconsistency in task-resolution - I just don't notice it.

Remember when I talked about possible reasons for someone to prefer "GM makes the call in the moment" over "author made the call in advance"? One of my example reasons was:

Earlier, I wrote:
Are they unwilling/unable to learn the rules in the first place (for myriad reasons, both valid and not) and just want to make rulings themselves because it's easier for them?

The preference you describe is exactly that: being unwilling to learn (all of) the rules and just wanting at-the-table rulings because they're easier. That's exactly what I was talking about in that paragraph. Especially in the case of Pathfinder, learning the rules well enough that they do their job of being quicker/easier than making rulings is something not everyone is interested in making the investment to accomplish, and that's a valid stance. I had things like that in mind when I wrote all that.

:)

Yeah, I appreciated that - I initially put in a "you said this and this is one example..." paragraph but the whole thing got a bit wordy. I wasn't really challenging your post as expanding on it. I do think your post provides a useful perspective.

I guess I was also querying the word "just" as missing something significant in identifying the temporal element as the sole distinguishing feature between the two, but it could well be I'm just (ha!) quibbling over semantics or nitpicking and not making any significant point.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Starbuck_II wrote:


RAW, always RAW.

Now if RAW is unclear we can switch to RAI, but as a last case.

No.

Even in PFS. ESPECIALLY in pfs, raw quickly makes the game inane or unplayable.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

BigNorseWolf wrote:
Starbuck_II wrote:


RAW, always RAW.

Now if RAW is unclear we can switch to RAI, but as a last case.

No.

Even in PFS. ESPECIALLY in pfs, raw quickly makes the game inane or unplayable.

Not if you're sufficiently proficient with it. Honestly, 95% of the time that I've seen people throw up their hands and declare "RAW" to be clearly in error and in need of being trumped by "RAI" or GM adjudication, they've either* been wrong about what was actually written (such as by not realizing that the SRD sidebar isn't actually in the rules, or by failing to understand some basic element of grammar, etc) or were forgetting to apply some other relevant rule (very common, considering the poor organization of the CRB), and a thorough and correct application of the published rules actually produced a clear and identifiable answer that people were simply missing.

For anyone willing to put in the time and effort to really gain a deep understanding of the rules, the rules really are something that can be followed without modification/houseruling 90% of the time.

Now, whether it's worth that time/effort is a different question entirely. Even so, it is incorrect to say that following the printed rules will immediately implode the game ("quickly make it unplayable", or however you want to say it). If the game completely falls apart that quickly when a group tries to follow the rules, it has more to do with that group's proficiency at doing so than with the rules themselves.

*EDIT: Remembered a third reason, which is that sometimes the rules produce a clear answer but the reader is just so certain that the result surely couldn't be that, therefore clearly the rules are in error, because everyone knows that the final result has to be this other thing.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Jiggy wrote:
For anyone willing to put in the time and effort to really gain a deep understanding of the rules, the rules really are something that can be followed without modification/houseruling 90% of the time.

That other 10% is a big doozy.

Quote:
For anyone willing to put in the time and effort to really gain a deep understanding of the rules, the rules really are something that can be followed without modification/houseruling 90% of the time.

Pretty much stating that anyone that disagrees with you hasn't.

Quote:
ow, whether it's worth that time/effort is a different question entirely. Even so, it is incorrect to say that following the printed rules will immediately implode the game

Because people look for, argue for, and deliberately TRY to find game breaking "it's raw" combos and then try to insist that a PFS dm has no choice but to follow "the raw" and.. wow no. It does not work that way even in PFS.


whenever I encounter something that has a 50/50 chance of being understood as it is written, 90% of the time I get it wrong.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

BigNorseWolf wrote:
Jiggy wrote:
For anyone willing to put in the time and effort to really gain a deep understanding of the rules, the rules really are something that can be followed without modification/houseruling 90% of the time.
That other 10% is a big doozy.

If it was enough of a doozy to make the game immediately unplayable, it couldn't be called a mere 10%. Genuinely rules-based, genuinely nonfunctional situations are exceedingly rare. I was being generous with my 10% off-the-cuff estimate.

Quote:
Quote:
For anyone willing to put in the time and effort to really gain a deep understanding of the rules, the rules really are something that can be followed without modification/houseruling 90% of the time.
Pretty much stating that anyone that disagrees with you hasn't.

Only if you assume that needing ammunition against disagreement is the only way I could come to that conclusion.

Alternatively, it could be because I spent years having dialogues like this:
Them: "There's no rule covering this situation."
Me: "Here's the rule you missed that explicitly covers this situation."
Them: "The rules produce X situation, so clearly we need to deviate from the rules."
Me: "Here's the rule you missed which explicitly keeps X from happening."
Them: "Look at this broken combo! RAW allows it!"
Me: "Here's the rule which explicitly denies your combo."

I mean, I've gone through this process literally hundreds of times. Meanwhile, in those same years, I've had like maybe a dozen or less situations where the rules truly didn't function. How long does that pattern have to continue before I'm allowed to suggest that maybe the bulk of the issues are from folks not identifying/comprehending the relevant rule(s)? Tell me, BNW, what's the threshold? Or is any insinuation of other people's ability to miss one of Pathfinder's bajillion rules going to always be considered an attempt to silence disagreement, evidence be damned?

Quote:
Quote:
Now, whether it's worth that time/effort is a different question entirely. Even so, it is incorrect to say that following the printed rules will immediately implode the game
Because people look for, argue for, and deliberately TRY to find game breaking "it's raw" combos and then try to insist that a PFS dm has no choice but to follow "the raw" and.. wow no. It does not work that way even in PFS.

Just like with the above, in my experience a large number of these situations are the result of the involved parties (both the player who built the character and the GM trying to stop it) not being proficient enough with the rules to realize that the build actually doesn't work (or doesn't work as well, etc).

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
tony gent wrote:

What do you think is more important

Rules as written or
Rules as intended
Or maybe neither

The last one.


Jiggy wrote:

Alternatively, it could be because I spent years having dialogues like I mean, I've gone through this process literally hundreds of times.

And I haven't? Because that's what your using as your entire argument here.

"The raw" as read for player advantage has a horrible track record of being the right interpretation in the long run, is often mutually contradictory or nonsensical: often RAI is picking between competing RAW interpretations.

Yes, the system is good. 90% of the system works, but the 10% of the system that doesn't need some patching and that's on the dm.

Ride by attack for example is dependent on which way north is and the exact angle of attack between the rider the defender and north... or you can just say guy on a horse do guy on a horse stuff.

You can carry a few dozen throwing shields and shoot off 7 of them per round. For added fun make them tiny sized and deal 1d2+strength damage 7 times a round for free.

You can intimidate people into being friendly at the range of your voice.

A klar is completely different than a spiked shield!

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

BigNorseWolf wrote:
"The raw" as read for player advantage has a horrible track record of being the right interpretation in the long run, is often mutually contradictory or nonsensical: often RAI is picking between competing RAW interpretations.

What? No. Just because someone claims their idea is "RAW" doesn't mean it actually is. It's starting to sound like you and I can both look at the same silly argument, and while you say "Well, they both claim RAW, and they're contradicting each other, therefore RAW is self-contradictory so let's go with RAI/common sense/etc instead"; I'm going and referencing the actual rules, verifying that neither of the two arguments accounts for all the applicable rules, and bringing in the citations that show the actual "RAW" answer.

If you (EDIT: the general "you") are just going to take everybody's word for it whenever they say their crazy idea is "RAW-legal", then you're not really qualified to comment on how (non)functional "RAW" is, are you?

That's part of what I've been getting at. If Player X isn't sufficiently well-versed in the rules, they might come up with a silly idea that they think is following the rules, but isn't. Then they'll present it to GM Y and say "This is RAW", which is of course wrong, but then GM Y is also insufficiently proficient with the rules to recognize that Player X is wrong about their idea being within the rules. Then you've got an argument between "But it's RAW legal!" and "RAI trumps RAW!", and then GM Y comes away from the experience thinking it was a case where "RAW" produced something silly and had to be abandoned, when in reality the thing that produced the silly combo was the failure to adhere to "RAW".

If you're not proficient with the rules, you can't always tell whether something is rules-legal or not. If you can't tell whether something is rules-legal or not, then you can't count it as an example for or against the rules producing silly situations. Therefore, any conclusion drawn based on those invalid data points will itself be invalid.

1 to 50 of 57 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Gamer Life / General Discussion / Rules rules and more rules ! All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.