Fighters Jumping on Dragons

[zugschef]

I'm seriously disturbed that Frank and K obviously endorse people to tell stories about rape.

[nockermensch]

I'm so triggered by this thread right now.

[erik]

I'm seriously disturbed

No argument here.

[Stubbazubba]

2) I actually didn't compare dragon climbing to rape at all. I compared dragon climbing in a game to rape of a character in game. That is kind of a huge fuck off difference, because while rape is always terrible, rape of a character in a game can be okay

I'm going to give you the huge benefit of the doubt and assume you did not mean rape generally in the first part of the bolded sentence, even though that is what you said, because obviously the second rape here would just be a sub-set of the first. You appear to be attempting to say rape IRL.

But this helps clarify things a lot. It means DSM was wrong about you not making any comparison to any actual quality of rape. You are comparing rape in a game to dragon-climbing in a game.

as long as people know in advance that that is the kind of story they are going to tell, and all agree that they want to play that game.

This is actually really important, because the default assumption of any fantasy genre is that rape is not on the table (GoT being the exception, not the rule). So yes, such a clear disclaimer would be warranted, and it would be inconsiderate to surprise people with a rape scene. Similarly, another default assumption in most fantasy fiction is that mundanes can and do pull off things like climbing on dragons or even besting them (see the Hobbit, etc.). You may find it contrived and dumb, but it is undeniably the default mode of fantasy stuff. So if you're not going to allow it in your game, you should make your players aware of that before they create mundane characters and you then surprise them with powerlessness.

because rape scenes in your game is not rape.

IRL.

I said it makes me uncomfortable and I want to leave the room. It does make me uncomfortable, and I do want to leave the room. Notice that wanting to leave the room does not mean I literally get up and run out of the room, and I, as I strongly implied, would actually be more anxious to leave if there was a rape scene in the RPG.

Actually, no, nothing you said implies that you treat rape differently than dragon-climbing. You went above and beyond to compare dragon-climbing to Vincent Baker's rape fetish in almost every sentence where you talk about it. You never, not once, not for a single word, differentiated the two. You deliberately intertwined them as closely as possible in a huge rhetorical mistake for which we have now spent two pages watching you and DSM and Imp try to explain what you "really meant."

[Username17]

How much fun is it when a character, ready to try
an amazing and heroic deed, is told, “You can't do that because it's
against the rules.”
Players should be allowed to try whatever they want - especially if
what they want will add to the spirit of adventure and excitement.
Just remember

I'm having such a hard time believing that anyone here is calling Gygax out as too soft, that I sincerely hope Kaelik and Lago can reclaim their accounts from the Trollnards who have sussed their passwords.

The point is that the "Bend Bars/Lift Gates" system was bad. Telling people they had a 7% chance to do "amazing shit" was dumb. It was dumb when you succeeded and it was dumb when you failed.

No, people should not be given a tiny chance to do ridiculous things and no actual abilities. Because that leaves them out in the cold in failure town most of the time and produces small but real chances of things going cartoonish and stupid with no warning whatsoever. That was a bad mechanic that was created by a sadist who liked to encourage people to fail like the stuntsmen in Jackass and also a surrealist who liked pointless incomprehensible bullshit to happen for no reason.

People should have actual abilities that do actual things and have real chances of working such that the players have real narrative agency. If you cling to a Dragon it should be because you have a real ability that gives you the Edge against them despite the fact that they have a lot more BAB than you do, and not because the MC said "Fuck it, why not?" for no reason at all. And not because you had a tiny chance of invoking Munchhausen reasoning and made your bullshittery roll.

This isn't super hard to grasp. And as usual, the Fighter fappers are flinging around straw men and mouth diarrhea.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

In the quoted portion from dead's post dead was talking about dismissing riding an unwilling target, something one would expect to come up "alot" by his words. kaelik then claimed, very specifically, that that sentiment was exactly as tyrannical as not covering rape in the rules. So to be clear, this is what I started with. Now you're claiming that kaelik didn't make a statement likening a simple maneuver like the one being discussed to rape? Whatever excuse you wanna 'ok' for him pulling that gem out of his ass is whatever but he was very clear that the existence of such a maneuver made him feel disempowered and uncomfortable [which was how he made the leap from rape]. So let's be clear that yes, he was very much drawing parallels between rape and 'X'.

There is not a single piece of this post that is not weapons-grade bullshit.

1) Deaddmwalking claimed that because Kaelik would tell players no if they attempted to do things neither the rules nor their abilities allowed them to do, that made him an iron-fisted tyrant of a GM (separately, there is an argument seeded through the thread about how the rules actually handle colossus climbing and about how plausible staying on an antagonistic dragon actually is). It's this "type of outright dismissal" that offends deaddmwalking, and this is the exact part of deaddmwalking's post that Kaelik quoted.

2) Kaelik did not liken the act of colossus climbing to the act of rape. That is not a fucking thing that happened. Kaelik brought up rape as a counterpoint to the above, in that rape is something 99% of GM's will say no to and despite that no one here would start screaming "HOW DARE YOU. STOP OPPRESSING MY PLAYER AGENCY. GIVE ME BACK MY RAPESCAPADES!" The point is not subtle, nuanced, or even complicated; saying no does not actually make you an iron-fisted tyrant. There are completely justifiable reasons to say no. And then Kaelik's very next paragraph is a big rant about how he thinks colossus climbing is stupid and shouldn't be in the game so he wants the answer to be no (I give no fucks about Kaelik's taste nor your's, so I'm not going to comment on that).

3) No, Kaelik did not connect the two things because they are both disempowering and uncomfortable. Kaelik connects the two things in the way his post very obviously connects them, see above, and then also described how he found VAH stunts (specifically colossus climbing) disempowering. And you are assuming by disempowering, he means "victim of rape" sense, instead of the "player agency stomped on" sense, because you are being a strawmanning asshat. Because you do not understand how analogies work, and you think comparing masturbation to nose-picking means talking about jerking off with your fingers up your nose.

And yes, if you let the fighter cast color spray because the fighter's player says "well, my character's been watching the wizard do it for weeks now. Certainly he deserves a shot at it, right? What's the roll?", that is disempowering. Stealth class features that you beg the DM might let the fighter do things, but they are inherently disempowering to the experience as a whole because they diminish the meaning of the choices that players make regarding their character. Now, you could argue the distinction between MTP stealth class features and codified rules for proper stunts and observe that many of Kaelik's complaints don't apply to the latter, but I don't think I've seen anyone do that. Just a bunch of herp about rape.

@Stubbazubba, the exact same shit goes for you. Also I don't think you fucking know where you are. You could make a bingo game out of denners threatening to leave (or flip) a table over seemingly trivial things. This is the stupidest fucking possible place for your "who would storm off over something so minor; he clearly must have meant it was rapey to him" objection. I refuse to believe counterexamples did not pop into your head all on their own as you were typing that post. They sure as fuck popped into mine while I was reading it.

[MGuy]

DSM, you realize that kaelik has already doubled down on his position as it is right? Like, the fuck do you think you're adding by doing your best to recast what he said when he's already come back, stamped his feet, made the connection himself again?

[deaddmwalking]

People should have actual abilities that do actual things and have real chances of working such that the players have real narrative agency. If you cling to a Dragon it should be because you have a real ability that gives you the Edge against them despite the fact that they have a lot more BAB than you do, and not because the MC said "Fuck it, why not?" for no reason at all. And not because you had a tiny chance of invoking Munchhausen reasoning and made your bullshittery roll.

This isn't super hard to grasp. And as usual, the Fighter fappers are flinging around straw men and mouth diarrhea.

-Username17

Fighters suck. There's nothing I've said in this thread to imply that a wizard wouldn't have a better chance of successfully riding an unwilling dragon that a Fighter. The point is not that there should be some bullshittery that will justify it for a fighter. The point is that any action involving real world physics should be possible given the right abilities and equipment.

It has been observed earlier that the opposite of Lago and Kaelik's position is not that Fighters should be allowed to succeed on this task because of DM Pity - instead that any non-zero chance based on actual abilities is preferable.

But of course, you knew that, otherwise you wouldn't have included a rule for it in Tome.

[Stubbazubba]

Look, people, yes, Kaelik very much compared the qualities of rape to the qualities of dragon-climbing, in the very structure of his argument. Deaddm was shocked that Kaelik would ban any mundane from clinging to a dragon, and said such a ban - based on nothing but arbitrary preference - is tyrannical because it is arbitrary. Kaelik then tried to equate his arbitrary preference (which he knows flies in the face of the genre where knights fight dragons and win all the time) with a ban on rape. A ban on rape is justified for reasons so obvious they don't need to be repeated. A ban on fighters even attempting to climb up a dragon is not just "nowhere near the level of rape" different, it's "flies in the face of the genre expectations" different. And as an arbitrary ban with no reasoning besides realizarm underneath it, yeah, it's not the same thing as banning rape.

Smart governments regulate firearms pretty strictly. There are obvious reasons to do this. An arbitrary regulation would be a regulation on, say, yoga pants. Sure, there is some neckbeard justification for why you could regulate yoga pants, but that doesn't mean that you get to equivocate and say "Look, regulating yoga pants is justified because regulating firearms is justified." The justification for the one doesn't just transfer over to the other.

This is Kaelik's argument, though: Because a DM can ban rape (and no one thinks this is wrong), clearly we should all be OK with whatever arbitrary ban the DM wants, like knights climbing dragons.

The only way that argument makes any sense on its face is if there are some similarities in the actual qualities of rape and knights climbing dragons. The structure of the argument is a direct comparison of qualities, and everything about the way Kaelik framed it and said it indicates as much. Only now is he walking back from that and trying to minimize what he said, making it just that sometimes bans should be OK, but that is missing the point of what deaddm said in the first place, at least as much as Kaelik now says everyone missed his point.

Edit:

No, people should not be given a tiny chance to do ridiculous things and no actual abilities.

And not because you had a tiny chance of invoking Munchhausen reasoning and made your bullshittery roll.

No one has brought anything like this up since Orion did in one post on page 2. Who are you even talking to?

[Omegonthesane]

Well I already don't want Kaelik as MC after he went out of his way to cockblock Baali resurrection in After Sundown,

WTF are you even talking about?

Since you ask, I was referring to the time when, while prepping for running PbP After Sundown on these forums, you decided arbitrarily that some splats and not others were allowed to have their evil minions perform their power ritual, even knowing that this shat on the concept that one of your players had explicitly walked in with.

[ishy]

It has been observed earlier that the opposite of Lago and Kaelik's position is not that Fighters should be allowed to succeed on this task because of DM Pity - instead that any non-zero chance based on actual abilities is preferable.

Here is what Lago said:

Y'see, what separates Naruto and Goku from being able to fight a dragon by jumping onto it is that they have narrative justification for it. We can buy Goku, even comparatively low-level and young Goku being able to ride a dragon because not only is he super-strong as a little kid but he can ride on a fucking cloud and do crazy stunts. Low-level Naruto is a little bit harder to buy, but after we've seen him ride a giant frog, stick to the underside of a tree branch, and walk on water he has enough narrative bullshit to justify the stunt.

The fighter concept is: anything a commoner can do + stab/shoot someone in the eye.
In my experience many people will agree that riding an unwilling, angry, gigantic dragon is not going to be something that a commoner can just pull off. I mean, fuck, even in anime where people go to dragon riding school, they feel the need to give everyone magic powers, make their dragons life partners and still show that if the dragon doesn't want it, everyone who tries to ride them against their will is going to die.

Thus fighters shouldn't be able to do it. Because if they could, it would violate their low-level concept. Shitting on the concept of one character, shits on the concept of everything in the world.
Solution: don't pretend fighters can play outside of low levels / make fighters an NPC class / hand the fighter some magic items (say boots of dragon-climbing)

[deaddmwalking]

A 6th-level anything should have a chance to ride on a dragon. Fighter is still a low-level concept - not because they don't have a chance to hang on to a house-sized lizard for 6-12 seconds (they should) but because that is probably the most useful thing they can hope to do.

This is not about Fighters not being shit - they are. This is about shutting down 'low-level stunts' because the idea of a fighter is offensive. And that's a bad reason. Because if the Fighter can do it, so can [potentially] everyone else in the whole world (including commoners). And obviously, if everyone in the world has a chance to do it, it is a task based on abilities that everyone has access to (has thumbs). Now, whatever the check is (less than 93), not everyone will be able to make it. But if you're smart enough, or strong enough, or skilled in wrestling enough (BAB), some combination of features is going to take this task from 'completely impossible' to 'possible'. And if you get enough of those features, you're going to get it to 'reasonably likely to succeed'.

In any case, determining what those factors is or should be does not involve a blanket 'this is an impossible task and therefore you cannot do it'. At the very least a half-way decent GM will say 'it doesn't look like you could do it currently. You'd need to roll a 23 on your d20'. The player could then say 'if I get a +8 to Strength will that help'? Because whatever that DC is based on is going to involve stats somewhere, may involve skills, and may involve combat capabilities.

To put it most simply - the DC to ride an unwilling dragon is less than infinity. To claim that a particular character cannot do it without explanation for why is bad GMing. It shuts down the whole concept without giving the character something to strive for.

Further, I've heard 'people aren't sticky and that's why they can't do it'. If that's the only barrier, anyone can 'gather enough bullshittery' to make it possible by becoming 'sticky' - like with slippers of spider climb. If all the objections can be overcome, it isn't impossible. So the clear answer is lay out what the minimum qualifications should be based on the opponent, not 'I don't like fighters so NO.

[ishy]

So the clear answer is lay out what the minimum qualifications should be based on the opponent, not 'I don't like fighters so NO.

Yes. Thus fighters can't do it, not because people don't like them, but because they can never meet those minimum qualifications (without magic items). And real classes can. At level X.
Though without a description of how hard it is supposed to be, different people will imagine it'd require different 'minimum qualifications'.

[DSMatticus]

DSM, you realize that kaelik has already doubled down on his position as it is right? Like, the fuck do you think you're adding by doing your best to recast what he said when he's already come back, stamped his feet, made the connection himself again?

Because that did not fucking happen. Try to quote Kaelik saying that, and I will show you a dishonest asshat full of fail.

[PhoneLobster]

... and I will show you a dishonest asshat full of fail.

Wait... so what have you been doing all thread already then?

[deaddmwalking]

So the clear answer is lay out what the minimum qualifications should be based on the opponent, not 'I don't like fighters so NO.

Yes. Thus fighters can't do it, not because people don't like them, but because they can never meet those minimum qualifications (without magic items). And real classes can. At level X.
Though without a description of how hard it is supposed to be, different people will imagine it'd require different 'minimum qualifications'.

The whole point of contention was 'just no'. There were no exceptions granted for magical items. In fact, Kaelik continues to insist that anyone jumping on a dragon anywhere for any reason will have him wanting to leave the table.

That's insane. Dragon Surfing shouldn't be a specific ability - it should be derived from character abilities. Jumping is inherently a low-level ability. Even Fighters can do it. Balancing is something anyone could potentially do. This is low-level stuff - the kinds of things Hobbits might dom

[Red_Rob]

No, people should not be given a tiny chance to do ridiculous things and no actual abilities.

I think the disconnect here is that no-one has suggested that the Fighter be allowed to suddenly decide to fly, or "learn to cast spells by watching the Wizard" or anything so extreme. The suggestion was that the Fighter player decides to hang on to a larger monster and stab it while it runs / flies about. This is perfectly in genre and justified by the Fighters already defined exceptional combat abilities (High BAB, Feats, Edge as appropriate) but the suggestion was enough to cause Lago and Kaelik to lose their shit.

Something the anti-Fighter crowd need to realise is that up to about level 6 a VAH is supposed to be a supported concept. Yes, at level 10 you should be Goku, but at level 5 you can still be Conan and have that be a defensible life choice. If you deny even pedestrian moves like hanging onto larger enemies to the VAH what exactly are low level characters even supposed to do? Just auto attack all day long?

[Kaelik]

@RedRob, if you aren't going to read the thread, maybe don't post in it. EDIT: That wasn't directed at your most recent post, which was actually pretty fine, but the one where you quoted rules we had already talked about, and discussed and issues that we also already addressed.

This is the one part that doesn't make any sense. If my character chooses to attempt to jump on the back of a flying dragon (or a roc, or a griffon) this in no way implies that I have reduced the scope of action for other characters. Not only could they also jump on the back of the flying dragon, they could do any other action that they otherwise might do.

So DeadDM, you are a chess master. You have dedicated your life to playing Chess. And you set up the greatest Gauntlet you can imagine, of the best chess players in the world, and Deep Blue. Then, you play them, and beat them. And then when you walk over to be interviewed about your great accomplishment... The interviewer asks you how it felt to beat two 5 year olds in Garry Kasparaov costumes and the beginner bot oh a windows 95 chess program.

Would you feel disempowered? Yes? FUCK YOU.

When you trivialize and shit on the opposition by making them pathetic bitches, you trivialize everyone else in the party facing those obstacles. There is even a fucking name for it, it is called Captain Hobo, and we have talked about it before. You declaring that your hobo can easily master and subjugate a fucking dragon by the sheer act of jumping on it and clinging on no matter what the dragon does because fuck pussy dragons can't do shit to you trivializes everyone else who fights the dragon.

Whether you're personally uncomfortable with it or not as a basis for rejecting it is a strange position to take

No, it is literally the only possible position to take. If you are designing a game, you should design it to do the things you want the game to do. If you DM a game, you should DM the game that you want to run, and if you play in a game, you should play the game the way you want to play it.

There is certainly room for compromise with other people designing/running/playing in the game, but there is very fucking obviously no other start point other than your own personal preferences.

I don't yet understand whether you're rejecting the entire concept of grabbing a hold of an unwilling creature larger than yourself (which has been demonstrated as something that happens in real life with weasels, but numerous additional examples are available) or specifically just 'dragons'. If it is limited to 'dragons', your primary justification seems to be that dragons are 'smarter and stronger than you'. If that is not true, is dragon riding suddenly okay?

I strongly suspect that Ride is not a very good fucking mechanic for this ever under any circumstances. There are just too many fucking differences to this to me.

I am not objecting to the concept of grabbing a hold of an unwilling creature, I specifically suggested grapple rules as a thing you could do to a dragon. But there is a huge difference between the kinds of opposed checks that grapple creates, and people's insistence on this shitty idea that they should get to ride a fucking dragon because they are level 6 is fucking stupid.

There are really only one question here: how do you draw the line between possible and impossible?

I actually don't draw that line. I think people's obsession with the concept of just sitting on a dragon and riding it so hard it can't get you off is bad for reasons based on my personal preferences. I also think people are trivializing specifically dragons in a shitty way, and that even if you did like that concept, you should have to be at least several CR higher than the Dragon you are attempting to force ride.

[MGuy]

... and I will show you a dishonest asshat full of fail.

Wait... so what have you been doing all thread already then?

Yea, whatever. This is going on two pages now. I did the quotes. DSM can reimagine them and what kaelik himself came back and said however he wants. I'm not sure what 'gotcha' moment he's waiting on but if kaelik's own words confirming that he is likening dragon riding (in game) to rape (in game) isn't going to convince him nothing at all I am going to say is going to convince him.

[shinimasu]

Given the potential size of dragons it's not hard to imagine it would be possible for a human to cling somewhere the dragon could not easily reach. Humans are on average smarter, stronger, and have more tools at our disposal than the common house fly but if it decides to run laps up and down your spine that becomes something of a problem. You could roll over onto your back to kill it, but so could the dragon roll over on the human. Clinging to the dragon shouldn't be the main concern here it should be "what does the dragon do once it notices the fly on its back?"

If the DM allows the initial leap of faith they'd also be fine to require prolonged checks to avoid being shaken off. If the player specifies a certain body part it would be easy to warn them (or just have it happen if you feel spiteful about the maneuver in the first place) that the dragon can reach them there and will grab them.

If the player is leaping on to a moving dragon from a great height then they'd probably take fall damage to represent tumbling on to hard fast moving and sharp scales. However it's a lot easier to cling on to a moving surface than a lot of people are making out here. You can find videos of idiots car surfing, once you have a grip inertia takes care of the rest.

My point being I'm not sure why leaping onto the dragon was singled out as the point of contention with this scenario. Even if a player leaps on to and maintains their hold on a dragon, there's no guarantee they'll be able to do anything even once every other turn. People brought up shadow of colossus as an example of "small thing climbs bigger thing and stabs it" but even in a game specifically designed around climbing big things and stabbing them to death you spend 90% of fights just holding on, trying not to die, and doing very little actual stabbing until you get them where it counts. Which can take quite a while.

[Stinktopus]

@shinimasu:

The problem is that any monster that you can board, walk around on, and hide in, is more of a specialty dungeon than a creature belonging in the Monster Manual. The Death Star is not following the same rules as an X-Wing.

If I were trying to do something like Shadow of the Colossus in D&D, the "creature" would be divided into "rooms" with encounters like "reflex save to avoid getting swatted off," "climb check to hang on to hair," and "short combat against monstrous fleas."

D&D creatures interact with the players in defined ways. "Climbing" onto a Huge Dragon is a grapple check. People don't grapple dragons because they mathematically can't win.

People who can't make a character that effectively grapples dragons then stomp their feet and pout. They then demand that they should be able to go full Crocodile Hunter on the dragon, despite not having needed stats or abilities, just because they have ranks in Ride and cool story to tell.

[DSMatticus]

I'm not sure what 'gotcha' moment he's waiting on but if kaelik's own words confirming that he is likening dragon riding (in game) to rape (in game) isn't going to convince him nothing at all I am going to say is going to convince him.

Well, I was hoping you'd chop a specific quote out of one of Kaelik's posts, and I'd respond by quoting or bolding the surrounding couple of sentences that make it obvious you were quote-mining and then call you a dishonest asshat full of fail. Instead, I'm going to have to settle for reminding you you can't into analogies.

"Cecillia Gimenez is a failed artist, like Hitler." When you read that, do you think I am accusing Cecillia Gimenez of a restoration attempt so terrible it put eleven million people in concentration camps? Do you think I am saying that I feel the same way about Cecillia Gimenez's shitty restoration of the Ecce Homo that I do about the atrocities of Nazi Germany? Or maybe, just maybe, do you think I am saying that Hitler was a failed artist, and that Cecillia Gimenez is a failed artist? "Littering is a crime, like murder." When you read that, do you think I am trying to make a poignant statement about how tossing cans out your car window is killing the planet? Do you think I am saying that I think people should get 25 to life for dropping their cigarette butts on the ground? Or maybe, just maybe, do you think I am saying that littering is a crime, and murder is a crime?

Analogies are not statements of equivalency. They are limited scope comparisons, and the scope in which Kaelik brought up rape is completely unambiguous (it is a thing GM's are justified in saying no to and people don't want in their game). All of your rape simulator/"you're literally fucking me right now" bullshit is just that - bullshit. That was not the reason Kaelik brought up rape, and that is not the point Kaelik made by bringing up rape. Deaddmwalking accused Kaelik of iron-fisted tyranny for being outright dismissive of players asking to attempt a thing, and Kaelik quoted that exact part of deaddmwalking's post and responded by pointing out something that 99% of GM's are going to be outright dismissive of without anyone shouting iron-fisted tyranny over.

It's not difficult. It's not complicated. It's not open to interpretation. You're just an asshole who subscribes to the "people say what I want them to have said, how else am I supposed to win arguments?" school of thought. You could not help yourself from the low-hanging fruit that is "lol rape simulator," and now that you've taken that fruit you're trying to defend yourself with shit like "well, Kaelik did say it was disempowering and uncomfortable. Clearly, if you think something is disempowering and uncomfortable, you think it is as disempowering and uncomfortable as rape for the exact same reasons as rape. Duh. Brb, there's a rock in my shoe and it's raping my foot."

[shinimasu]

Analogies are not equivalencies but the degree of severity still matters.

Saying "getting teabagged in a FPS is like having someone rub salt in a papercut" gets across your intent clearly in that getting teabagged and having salt in a wound are painful but ultimately brief and harmless experiences with no lasting damage.

Saying "getting teabagged in an fps is like someone putting my balls through a wood chipper" means you are saying being teabagged is similar to someone inflicting a debilitating and ungodly horrific permanent scar upon your person. When you make this analogy people may rightly think you were overreacting to the offending action.

No one would have had a problem with Kaelik's analogy if they had said for example "I find dragon riding to be as offensive to my gaming sensibilities as a DM forcing a player to be kidnapped as a plot device because it would be cool" I doubt anyone would have said anything.

Instead they said "I find dragon riding to be as uncomfortable to sit through as simulated rape" which is what I believe people are taking issue with. Instead of saying salt in the wound they said balls in a wood chipper which was so severely out of left field given the subject being discussed that it appears to have completely derailed the thread.

[Kaelik]

Analogies are not equivalencies but the degree of severity still matters.

The severity only matters if you make it part of your analogy.

Instead they said "I find dragon riding to be as uncomfortable to sit through as simulated rape" which is what I believe people are taking issue with. Instead of saying salt in the wound they said balls in a wood chipper which was so severely out of left field given the subject being discussed that it appears to have completely derailed the thread.

Here is the thing. I never said "as uncomfortable" as anything. I said "We can all agree that outright No to this is acceptable because your personal preferences are not for that game. Having established that this is a permissible justification, I claim that I can apply the same justification to my personal preferences."

This basically amounts to:

Kaelik: If P then Q. P. Therefore Q.
Shin: Okay yeah.
Kaelik: If P then Z. P. Therefore Z.
Shin: No wait, I don't agree. I think your logic is wrong because Z is like, a totally different letter way later in the alphabet, so I don't know that Modus Ponens applies to letters later in the alphabet!

No one would have had a problem with Kaelik's analogy if they had said for example "I find dragon riding to be as offensive to my gaming sensibilities as a DM forcing a player to be kidnapped as a plot device because it would be cool" I doubt anyone would have said anything.

Except that they totally would have said "IT IS TOTALLY COOL AND GENRE APPROPRIATE FOR CHARACTERS TO BE FORCIBLY KIDNAPPED! I KNOW BECAUSE I READ BOOKS AND WATCH MOVIES WHERE THIS HAPPENS! AND ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN MOVIES IS TOTALLY OKAY TO INCLUDE IN COOPERATIVE STORYTELLING GAMES!"

Or at least, I strongly suspected they might, which is why I chose an example that everyone could agree on.

[TiaC]

Something the anti-Fighter crowd need to realise is that up to about level 6 a VAH is supposed to be a supported concept. Yes, at level 10 you should be Goku, but at level 5 you can still be Conan and have that be a defensible life choice. If you deny even pedestrian moves like hanging onto larger enemies to the VAH what exactly are low level characters even supposed to do? Just auto attack all day long?

Well, at level 6, the dragons you'll be fighting aren't much bigger than you. In fact, the only core dragons that hit large size by CR 7 are red and gold. At that point, grapple feels like the right mechanic, because it's made for holding other creatures. Of course, the CR 7 red dragon has a +24 grapple mod, but a specialist can beat that. I could see some sort of "grapple, but you get a free hand and it doesn't count as grappled" rule. Possibly with partial cover if you're in the right spot.

Now, this looks like a pretty stupid tactic to use, as whatever you're fighting will kill you, but there's all sorts of stupid tactics that the rules don't encourage. E.g a lot of people like the idea of Buster Swords, but they're a dumb idea, so you eat -4 to hit for +2 damage.

Actually, let's look at another common idea used by the crowd described here. These players will try to invent gunpowder. I have heard the story of players who wanted to do this with no justification at least four times. However, it is a dumb idea and a GM should just say no.