Fighters Jumping on Dragons

[DSMatticus]

Stubbazubba, I'm going to list each analogy you posted and give you two options, and you're going to choose which option you think best describes the reason it's a "bad" analogy.

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.
1) A hefty bag falling 12 stories won't split up and splatter everywhere, so the comparison is invalid.
2) HEHE THAT'S GROSS *GIGGLE*

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.
1) Jeopardy coming on at 7:30 instead of 7:00 isn't really that weird, so the comparison is invalid.
2) I'll give this one to you, since the humor actually is in the disparity between how weird those two things are, and weirdness is specifically the property being compared.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.
1) Nose hair doesn't glisten when it is moist, so the comparison is invalid.
2) HEHE THAT'S GROSS *GIGGLE*

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
1) Maggots don't pop when fried, so the comparison is invalid.
2) HEHE THAT'S GROSS *GIGGLE*

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
1) Everyone notices the missing period on Dr Pepper cans, so the comparison is invalid.
2) Well that's not gross but it's still silly so HEHE *GIGGLE*

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
1) Underwear in a drier don't stick together, so the comparison is invalid.
2) HEHE UNDERWEAR *GIGGLE*

If you answered 1 to any of those except the freebie I gave you you're an idiot. After trying to make the point that Kaelik's analogy was a bad analogy because the comparison was invalid, you listed five examples of joke analogies in which the comparison is absolutely valid and the humor stems entirely from the usage of absurd imagery which does not in anyway invalidate the analogy. I just watched you kick the ball into your own goal five goddamn times. You're running up the score like fucking Kobe at this point. (Psst, this is also a bad joke analogy, in that you actually are running up the score, and the humor stems entirely from the fact that unlike Kobe you are running up the wrong score).

[MGuy]

So, terrible rape analogies and accusation of logical fallacy aside, this is fundamentally an argument about whether or not jumping on the back of dragons to stab them with swords is stupid or not, right?

Could we maybe move the argument back a layer and expand on that? I'm not yet persuaded one way or another on that point. On the one hand, it is something that feels appropriately in genre and Shadow of the Colossus was a great game.

On the other hand, dragons are smart and terrifying and frankly jumping on a giant monster and staying there sounds really hard under most circumstances.

It's clearly a pretty subjective Rule of Awesome kind of thing, right? Which side should rules fall on.

Well, without the whole fight over how kaelik's rape analogue:

I've given no opinion on whether it should be hard or easy. My opinion is that for one, the rule for that kind of interaction should exist because it is genre appropriate and such a common thing that people who both do and don't know the rules either want or assume the rule exists. Second I believe it should scale. Low level you can try to ride bulls then griffons and eventually dragons. Whether or not a dragon is strong and smart enough to get you off of them thereafter I have not weighed in on but the act of getting there should be modeled and scaled.

Frank basically doesn't disagree with this (which is why I don't know what he's on about).

Lago feels the idea is stupid without phlebotinum (he doesn't feel the same of other existing 'imposible' features that aren't tied to phlebotinum) and says that if it were a rule he wouldn't have a problem with it but seems dismissive about making a rule for it in the first place (cause slippery slope).

kaelik is obsessed with the fact that a dragon should be able to peel you off because reasons. I'm not sure if any one has actually said anything specifically against that and instead confused his position with people not being able to latch on in the first place. I think that bit of confusion mostly because of him bringing it up for no reason.

[nockermensch]

So, at what CR and ride skill should halflings be allowed to forcibly mount half-orcs?

I'm not comfortable having this situation at my table.

[Whipstitch]

Just bringing things full circle, my man.

[Stubbazubba]

Shiritai:

Yeah, you're a fucking liar. Here's what Kaelik actually said:

If you want to make an attack, that is fine, but making an attack is different from staying something.

Only then does OgreBattle bring up the Tome rules, as a counterpoint, because in Tome they are not actually different. Lucky for Kaelik, the odds are just out of reach for a Fighter to casually stay on a dragon, so he then proceeded to pretend like that was his point the whole time. But he comes back to his true feelings:

Just like you don't want your game to have rape, I don't want my game to have forced dragon riding. Not because forced dragon riding is exactly like rape in all possible respects such that I literally can't tell the difference, but for the actual reason I said, which is that my personal preferences are opposed to the inclusion in a game.

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.

He says why he doesn't want dragon-riding in the game, and it's not because the grapple rules don't allow it, it's because it makes him uncomfortable, like Baptists and gay marriage. [And that comparison is apt because both of those preferences are arbitrary and stupid and you and I both know they are arbitrary and stupid, so when I compare those two preferences, I'm comparing apples to apples, instead of comparing rape to dragon-riding, which are dissimilar except for the fact that Kaelik decided to compare them to each other.]

DSM:

Thank you for proving my point. The only reason you are confused and think Kaelik is making sense is because you honestly can't tell the function of an analogy. Either you don't know or you are deliberately ignoring the whole reason analogies are used in the first place.

One of the cardinal rules of writing literature is "show, don't tell." But the point of what you "show" is not literally the physical descriptions, it is what those descriptions indicate about the internal world of the characters. Instead of writing, for instance, "He was angry," you write, "He pursed his lips and clenched his fist as that vein in his neck throbbed," because that tells you that "he's angry" in a way that you experience, not just understand. Now if I was stupid like you, I would write an analogy like "His fist was clenched like an armadillo rolled up to protect itself from predators." And you would call that a perfectly valid comparison, because both things are clenched tightly, but you'd be an idiot and no one would know what you were trying to say when you wrote that. Because the armadillo imagery is about fear, where his fist is about anger. It's a bad analogy that misses the actual point entirely, despite the physical similarity of the compared things. A good test for an analogy is if you wrote out the underlying thing like "He clenched his fist" and the analogy "An armadillo rolls up to avoid predators," and ask yourself if they both convey the same underlying idea independently, because that is the actual point of the analogy. If it doesn't, it is a bad analogy.

Now let's go back and correct your work, because right now I can't award any points:

"McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup."

See here, the point is not to get you to register that yes, McBride fell and exploded because physics, the point here is the gruesome scene of someone falling to their painful and messy death, presumably in terror. Describing that with a Hefty bag filled with soup doesn't evoke any of the same ideas, and in fact it evokes the exact opposite; it is common, household stuff, innocent, light-hearted even. The gravity of the moment is undermined by the imagery chosen, so the analogy doesn't work (unless this is a meta thing where that's the point, but that's not usually the case, and in fact can't be the default case or the device would lose it's effectiveness). The imagery matters.

"Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze."

You are reading what is supposed to be a description of an attractive woman. The comparison to the nose hair, again, evokes none of that, and in fact evokes the exact opposite, undermining the entire description. You do not get "Oh, she's pretty," from this, you get "Her hair's moist, got it." Which is a bad analogy because that is not the point.

"The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease."

Hailstones leaping from pavement means that hail is falling pretty hard and might even be dangerous; maggots fried in hot grease are not a threat, so there's no indication of danger or even urgency. The analogy fails to convey what it needed to convey by focusing on the surface visual and missing the point.

"The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can."

Here, no one cares that this person is gone, and that's supposed to be a sad commentary on how little he mattered to anyone. But the period being gone is not a sad commentary on how the period doesn't matter (because it's not sad), it just happens to also be missing and unnoticed. Again, the surface similarity misses the point of the comparison and would confuse a reader. Though this one is closest to being appropriate.

"His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free."

Thoughts tumbling in head indicates confusion or perhaps a huge revelation that he's struggling to process. Underpants in a dryer does neither of those. In fact, it is so harmless and so devoid of emotional drama that it seriously undercuts the actual scene that's going on. What, do you honestly believe that the point is the physical way in which his thoughts are tumbling? Thoughts don't actually tumble, DSM.

That is why they are all bad analogies, you illiterate imbecile. Because analogies serve a purpose that is more than the mere surface visual. Just because two things behave similarly doesn't mean they are both equally appropriate to make a point. That is why Kaelik invoking rape as a justified thing to ban is a bad analogy to banning things that are actually in the genre that he just doesn't like. Because if it were a good analogy it would mean that he is using similar things to describe similar qualities. Justifying a ban on rape is quite dissimilar from justifying a ban on genre-appropriate things, they evoke different feelings and different concepts entirely; one is an IRL justification that rape is presently disturbing in the abstract, but the other justification is that it offends Kaelik's WSoD, a completely dissimilar reasoning and relationship to the subject being banned. That is why I said he did compare them in the structure of his argument, because that is actually how analogies work. You are just too ignorant to understand that.

Edit: You're in luck, Kaelik doesn't get it, either.

"You eyes are blue like the ocean." Very rarely means that your eyes are a liquid that covers 75% of the earths surface.

Indeed, but it also doesn't mean that your eyes are blue, it means they're beautiful, possibly endless, like the ocean. Unless they don't know what color their eyes are and you're just informing them to be polite, I suppose.

[TheFlatline]

So, at what CR and ride skill should halflings be allowed to forcibly mount half-orcs?

Why does everything always come back to rape?

Edit- Beaten to the punch ah well.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Lago feels the idea is stupid without phlebotinum (he doesn't feel the same of other existing 'imposible' features that aren't tied to phlebotinum) and says that if it were a rule he wouldn't have a problem with it but seems dismissive about making a rule for it in the first place (cause slippery slope).

If you're going to make a mechanic like that, you need a mechanic that would let Spider-Man, Servant Rider, or Hercules be able to do that dragon crap. In the interest of streamlining and saving space it'd be abstracted with level and/or feature-modified check. Simple, right?

However, what happens in the very likely case that some VAH is able to with some combination of luck or Scooby Doo plans or just plain unforeseen rules manages to clear the bar set at the height of Spider-Man? I mean, it happens. Sometimes the halfling commoner manages to bull rush the frost giant. In that case, who gives a shit? It's a nonsensical but acceptably rare result. So general rule is sound enough that when something like this happens you can just shrug, use some mind caulk, and move on with the game.

However, if I was, in the absence of pre-existing rules, asked by a player of a halfling commoner the results of their plan to bull-rush a fire giant without any phlebtonium I would go 'lol no'.

See how this shit works?

[DSMatticus]

See here, the point is not to get you to register that yes, McBride fell and exploded because physics, the point here is the gruesome scene of someone falling to their painful and messy death, presumably in terror. Describing that with a Hefty bag filled with soup doesn't evoke any of the same ideas, and in fact it evokes the exact opposite; it is common, household stuff, innocent, light-hearted even. The gravity of the moment is undermined by the imagery chosen, so the analogy doesn't work (unless this is a meta thing where that's the point, but that's not usually the case, and in fact can't be the default case or the device would lose it's effectiveness). The imagery matters.

"Yes, McBride exploded like a hefty bag filled with soup exactly like the analogy said. But the analogy is flippant about someone's death, so it's actually wrong because reasons."

HAHAHA NOPE

You are reading what is supposed to be a description of an attractive woman. The comparison to the nose hair, again, evokes none of that, and in fact evokes the exact opposite, undermining the entire description. You do not get "Oh, she's pretty," from this, you get "Her hair's moist, got it." Which is a bad analogy because that is not the point.

"Yes, the woman's hair glistened like wet nose hair exactly like the analogy said. But the analogy is set up to parallel cliche descriptions of attractive woman and then hits you with something gross, so it's actually wrong because reasons."

HAHAHA NOPE

Hailstones leaping from pavement means that hail is falling pretty hard and is dangerous; maggots fried in hot grease are not a threat, so there's no indication of danger or even urgency. The analogy fails to convey what it needed to convey by focusing on the surface visual and missing the point.

"Yes, the hailstones leapt around like maggots popping in hot grease exactly like the analogy said. But hail is dangerous and maggots aren't, so the analogy is actually wrong because reasons."

HAHAHA NOPE

This is similar to the Hefty bag example, in that no one cares that this person is gone and that's supposed to be a sad commentary on how little he mattered to anyone, but the period being gone is not a sad commentary on how the period doesn't matter (because it's not sad), it just happens to also be missing and unnoticed. Again, the surface similarity misses the point of the comparison and would confuse a reader. Though this one is closest to being appropriate.

"Yes, the politician is gone and unnoticed exactly like that period. But politicians are more important than punctuation, so the analogy is actually wrong because reasons."

HAHAHA NOPE

Thoughts tumbling in head indicates confusion or perhaps a huge revelation that he's struggling to process. Underpants in a dryer does neither of those. In fact, it is so harmless and so devoid of emotional drama that it seriously undercuts the actual scene that's going on. What, do you honestly believe that the point is the physical way in which his thoughts are tumbling?

"Holy shit, I can't even fucking read. The analogy is actually making and breaking alliances like underwear in a dryer, and I'm sitting here bitching about how thoughts don't tumble."

"Wait a minute. Holy shit, even if I could read that would be stupid, because it's a broad rejection of paralleling descrptions of physical objects with descriptions of non-physical concepts. I must be thick as a fucking brick."

Can't even laugh, too sad.

tl;dr "Kaelik used the r-word casually, and that means everything he says is wrong because reasons and I don't have to engage with what he actually said. I'm so good at this."

tl;tl;dr;dr "i'm tone-trolling and you can't stop me!!1!"

[violence in the media]

Edit: Lago's right, he has consistently at least said that he would not autofail an attempt if there were explicit rules, just that he would if there weren't explicit rules AND the person requesting the attempt did not have some sort of special quality that would allow him to hang his WSoD on. I still think that's grognardy and unfair, but it is not anywhere near the extreme position that Kaelik is apparently successfully passing off as perfectly defensible.

Why do you guys keep ignoring the part I added in bold there? Lago's been pretty consistent about that caveat as well, and it isn't an unreasonable one.

Forget about catering to the PCs for a moment and imagine if a player wanted to have an NPC hireling/follower/etc. attempt this maneuver. The game has no rules for this sort of thing and the NPC clearly has no mystical heritage, special qualities, or game mechanical numbers to support such an undertaking--what chance of success do you assign the player? What chance of success do you assign any random dude with no particular justification for why he should succeed? Do these chances improve if the NPC is an Initiate of the Grappling God, 2/3rds demon, or partially infused with an air spirit?

Here's another way to think about it. A player says, "I hit him with my sword." Do you just say, "Okay, you do."? Or do you ask them to justify that statement with a roll plus their attack bonus? You don't get to ride the dragon in the same way you don't get to stab it if you can't beat it's Armor Class. All Lago appears to be advocating is cutting out the roll when he knows the player in question does not have a sufficient attack bonus (justifiable special quality) to hit the foe (ride the dragon) in question.

You want the MC to come up with rules that don't exist, on the spot, and that allow you a reasonable chance to succeed. And the only thing you're willing to contribute to making this happen is the fact that you "cleverly thought of this stunt" after watching Willow last weekend. This is absolutely the "DM's girlfriend" special treatment category.

[MGuy]

Lago feels the idea is stupid without phlebotinum (he doesn't feel the same of other existing 'imposible' features that aren't tied to phlebotinum) and says that if it were a rule he wouldn't have a problem with it but seems dismissive about making a rule for it in the first place (cause slippery slope).

If you're going to make a mechanic like that, you need a mechanic that would let Spider-Man, Servant Rider, or Hercules be able to do that dragon crap. In the interest of streamlining and saving space it'd be abstracted with level and/or feature-modified check. Simple, right?

However, what happens in the very likely case that some VAH is able to with some combination of luck or Scooby Doo plans or just plain unforeseen rules manages to clear the bar set at the height of Spider-Man? I mean, it happens. Sometimes the halfling commoner manages to bull rush the frost giant. In that case, who gives a shit? It's a nonsensical but acceptably rare result. So general rule is sound enough that when something like this happens you can just shrug, use some mind caulk, and move on with the game.

However, if I was, in the absence of pre-existing rules, asked by a player of a halfling commoner the results of their plan to bull-rush a fire giant without any phlebtonium I would go 'lol no'.

See how this shit works?

I'm assuming you're asking me if I care if somehow some untrained dudes are able to accrue enough circumstantial bonuses to pull off something above their weight class. No. Not really. If there are some kind of circumstances that allow for them to get those kind of numbers you're describing I wouldn't need any extra mindcaulk, beyond whatever I use to justify the rules that allow for it. If I 'were' to be worried about it then that seems like something I would handle by approaching how bad ass the bonuses people can just pick up without trying hard are.

Other than that I am familiar with your position for not allowing it without 'magic' or whatever else you need to personally allow it. I'm not going to even try to argue with you over that. I don't know why you keep bringing it up (at least to me) because one of the first things I said when you brought it up at first was that it should just be a general rule.

[Stubbazubba]

See here, the point is not to get you to register that yes, McBride fell and exploded because physics, the point here is the gruesome scene of someone falling to their painful and messy death, presumably in terror. Describing that with a Hefty bag filled with soup doesn't evoke any of the same ideas, and in fact it evokes the exact opposite; it is common, household stuff, innocent, light-hearted even. The gravity of the moment is undermined by the imagery chosen, so the analogy doesn't work (unless this is a meta thing where that's the point, but that's not usually the case, and in fact can't be the default case or the device would lose it's effectiveness). The imagery matters.

"Yes, McBride exploded like a hefty bag filled with soup exactly like the analogy said. But the analogy is flippant about someone's death, so it's actually wrong because reasons."

HAHAHA NOPE

You are reading what is supposed to be a description of an attractive woman. The comparison to the nose hair, again, evokes none of that, and in fact evokes the exact opposite, undermining the entire description. You do not get "Oh, she's pretty," from this, you get "Her hair's moist, got it." Which is a bad analogy because that is not the point.

"Yes, the woman's hair glistened like wet nose hair exactly like the analogy said. But the analogy is set up to parallel cliche descriptions of attractive woman and then hits you with something gross, so it's actually wrong because reasons."

HAHAHA NOPE

Hailstones leaping from pavement means that hail is falling pretty hard and is dangerous; maggots fried in hot grease are not a threat, so there's no indication of danger or even urgency. The analogy fails to convey what it needed to convey by focusing on the surface visual and missing the point.

"Yes, the hailstones leapt around like maggots popping in hot grease exactly like the analogy said. But hail is dangerous and maggots aren't, so the analogy is actually wrong because reasons."

HAHAHA NOPE

This is similar to the Hefty bag example, in that no one cares that this person is gone and that's supposed to be a sad commentary on how little he mattered to anyone, but the period being gone is not a sad commentary on how the period doesn't matter (because it's not sad), it just happens to also be missing and unnoticed. Again, the surface similarity misses the point of the comparison and would confuse a reader. Though this one is closest to being appropriate.

"Yes, the politician is gone and unnoticed exactly like that period. But politicians are more important than punctuation, so the analogy is actually wrong because reasons."

HAHAHA NOPE

Thoughts tumbling in head indicates confusion or perhaps a huge revelation that he's struggling to process. Underpants in a dryer does neither of those. In fact, it is so harmless and so devoid of emotional drama that it seriously undercuts the actual scene that's going on. What, do you honestly believe that the point is the physical way in which his thoughts are tumbling?

"Holy shit, I can't even fucking read. The analogy is actually making and breaking alliances like underwear in a dryer, and I'm sitting here bitching about how thoughts don't tumble."

"Wait a minute. Holy shit, even if I could read that would be stupid, because it's a broad rejection of paralleling descrptions of physical objects with descriptions of non-physical concepts. I must be thick as a fucking brick."

Can't even laugh, too sad.

tl;dr "Kaelik used the r-word casually, and that means everything he says is wrong because reasons and I don't have to engage with what he actually said. I'm so good at this."

tl;tl;dr;dr "i'm tone-trolling and you can't stop me!!1!"

Are you seriously doubling down on your own illiteracy? That is cute. In an embarrassing, toddler walks out of bathroom with no pants on to exclaim "I went potty!" way.

I mean, you're mistaking my mention of the obvious intent of a phrase like "your eyes are blue like the ocean" for tone trolling. You literally think that only serves to inform someone what color their eyes actually are. You are unironically defending literal textbook examples of bad analogies as perfectly good ones in public.

You want to talk about literary devices, but it's a futile exercise because you're some kind of literary autistic that can only operate on the level of denotation and insists that connotation = tone trolling. You don't get literary devices, I get it, you don't understand what separates a good analogy from a bad one. You are your own parody at this point, completely ignoring actual and obvious meaning when it is shown to you in a hopeless and hilarious effort to "prove" that you have any clue what you're talking about. You don't.

I'm not offended at Kaelik saying rape, or even using it as an example of something. We talk about rape here all the time, especially in regard to social systems and Apocalypse World. It's not a big deal. No one is tone trolling here, and none of my examples are about the tone being upsetting. You just have like a 4th grade reading level, that's all.

Edit: I've engaged with what Kaelik has said far more than he's engaged with what I've said. Nice quotation marks around that strawman.

[Stubbazubba]

Note: I tried to edit this in the bottom of the above post, but even with no tags around it, it ended up inside the spoiler. Apologies.

Edit: Lago's right, he has consistently at least said that he would not autofail an attempt if there were explicit rules, just that he would if there weren't explicit rules AND the person requesting the attempt did not have some sort of special quality that would allow him to hang his WSoD on. I still think that's grognardy and unfair, but it is not anywhere near the extreme position that Kaelik is apparently successfully passing off as perfectly defensible.

Why do you guys keep ignoring the part I added in bold there? Lago's been pretty consistent about that caveat as well, and it isn't an unreasonable one.

Forget about catering to the PCs for a moment and imagine if a player wanted to have an NPC hireling/follower/etc. attempt this maneuver. The game has no rules for this sort of thing and the NPC clearly has no mystical heritage, special qualities, or game mechanical numbers to support such an undertaking--what chance of success do you assign the player? What chance of success do you assign any random dude with no particular justification for why he should succeed? Do these chances improve if the NPC is an Initiate of the Grappling God, 2/3rds demon, or partially infused with an air spirit?

Here's another way to think about it. A player says, "I hit him with my sword." Do you just say, "Okay, you do."? Or do you ask them to justify that statement with a roll plus their attack bonus? You don't get to ride the dragon in the same way you don't get to stab it if you can't beat it's Armor Class. All Lago appears to be advocating is cutting out the roll when he knows the player in question does not have a sufficient attack bonus (justifiable special quality) to hit the foe (ride the dragon) in question.

You want the MC to come up with rules that don't exist, on the spot, and that allow you a reasonable chance to succeed. And the only thing you're willing to contribute to making this happen is the fact that you "cleverly thought of this stunt" after watching Willow last weekend. This is absolutely the "DM's girlfriend" special treatment category.

No, it's not. In an area where there are no rules to guide you, there are no rules to guide you, it's not like you can figure out "Look, you just don't have enough BAB to hit," (although a 20 would always hit). If that were the case, yes, obviously, just say no and make them figure out something else. But when there is no BAB to compare, when there are no rules involved, and this is a level-appropriate enemy, it doesn't seem weird at all that a level-appropriate DC would actually be one that a character of that level could in fact hit. This is typically true of attacks, saves, etc., why would it not be true here?

I mean, if the dragon was supposed to be particularly difficult to do anything physical to then I could understand, but that would have to be called out as a characteristic of the enemy, not inherent in the character making the attempt. And to my knowledge dragons aren't typically highly regarded for their hand-to-hand or wrestling ability. Or the flipside could be true; that one quality of your character is that he's particularly weak. In that case I might say sorry, no chance, think of something else. But between a Cleric and a Fighter of equal level, I see no reason that one can jump and hang onto a level-appropriate dragon much better than the other. Again, in an area without rules. If your grapple rules handle that and say no, then you are not in this scenario to begin with.

I guess my WSoD is just looser than Lago's. Maybe I just haven't seen enough stupid scenarios to be more strict about it. But I can't see the justification for saying it's off the table. Difficult? Sure, but unless the rules tell me it's impossible, I'll let you try to defy some odds. You still have to roll, I'm not handing out automatic success just for asking, but whatever a level appropriate "Very Hard" DC would be, I'd stick it to that. And that's not making up a new rule for something, that's something I would have for pretty much anything the rules don't cover; for an average character of this level, is it super easy, easy, medium, hard, or super hard? Are there any particular qualities about this character/task that would shift it up or down? That's got to be something you can just improvise, or else all the results of things outside the rules will be binary yes/no.

[DSMatticus]

I mean, you're mistaking my mention of the obvious intent of a phrase like "your eyes are blue like the ocean" for tone trolling.

See here, the point is not to get you to register that yes, McBride fell and exploded because physics, the point here is the gruesome scene of someone falling to their painful and messy death, presumably in terror. Describing that with a Hefty bag filled with soup doesn't evoke any of the same ideas, and in fact it evokes the exact opposite; it is common, household stuff, innocent, light-hearted even.

Your argument is that analogies can be invalid because of their tone. You are tone trolling. Except instead of understanding that that's a logical fallacy and trying to slip it under the radar anyway, you're embracing it as an axiom like some sort of super idiot who has transcended the boundaries of logic and reason and achieved maximum stupidity in dimensions ordinary humans cannot even perceive.

Your argument is that you can't say a man exploded like a hefty bag full of vegetable soup because death is serious and tossing bags of food off a building is silly.

Your argument is that you can't say that rain makes a woman's hair glisten like snot-covered nose hair because hair glistening in the rain is poetic and snot-covered nose hair is gross.

Your argument is that you can't you can't say hailstones bounce like popping maggots because hail is dangerous and popping maggots aren't.

Your argument is that you can't say forgotten politicians are like punctuation on Dr Pepper cans, because a person being so unimportant that the absence of their presence goes entirely unnoticed is sad while a punctuation mark being so unimportant that the absence of its presence goes entirely unnoticed is funny.

Your argument is 0% about the logical content of any of these analogies and 100% about how you don't like seeing these particular things being juxtaposed with one another. Your actual fucking argument is that the truth value of the comparisons made by these analogies has nothing to do with their validity and everything to do with how they make you, stubbazubba, feel when you read them. We know this is your actual fucking argument, because when pressed to defend why people exploding like bags of soup was a bad analogy you responded by telling us it didn't matter if it was true or not because one is Serious Business and the other isn't and clearly you can't compare Serious Business with not Serious Business.

Your argument is terrible. It is the rejection of pesky things like truth and meaning in favor of an attempt to divine knowledge from the contents of your own asshole, and it turns out that the contents of your asshole are a foul poison that destroys minds and turns men into drooling idiots. Oops.

[Gnorman]

The rate at which Den threads spiral from "potentially productive discussion about game design" to "caustic squabbling about technicalities, laden with obscenities and the spectre of sexual violence" never ceases to amuse me.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I have no idea why you're so hung-up on that level-appropriate argument. Why should level-appropriate mean in of itself that a character should do what's not on your character sheet? Magneto can't beat the Daredevil in a non-powered fist-fight just because he's much more powerful (and would certainly be much higher level) than him. Merlin can't non-magically pick a Wal-Mart brand key lock just because he can shrink a dragon mouse-sized with a wave of his hand. Goku can't seduce a sexy (but erotically coquettish) Namekian hunk just because he can made the planet explode.

But between a Cleric and a Fighter of equal level, I see no reason that one can jump and hang onto a level-appropriate dragon much better than the other. Again, in an area without rules.

You're joking, right? Please tell me that you're joking.

On the off-chance that you're not joking, replace 'cleric and fighter' with, say, Harry Potter and Colossus. Just mentally replace those two characters and think about what you said again.

Mundane characters can skydive down to a person that is free-falling and potentially catch them before they hit the ground. Spiderman and Superman are just really good at that and aren't even likely to fail. It doesn't mean that Keanu Reeves' Stunt Person doesn't have the skills to succeed 50% of the time. The game (IMHO) is better when you try to figure out how to make it work and allow players to try.

No. Actually, they don't. They seriously don't unless they're like up at a few thousand feet, well above any skyscraper. Air resistance would be the only thing that affected terminal velocity and in the 10 seconds it would take to hit the ground and as a technologically unassisted mundane you would have no way of catching up.

I mean, it's a fucking common thing in action-adventure fiction. I bet it's even an article on TVTropes. But anyone with even a passing knowledge of physics knows that such a stunt would be impossible. Not improbable like having a few thousand bullets miss like you're a Stormtrooper, but impossible. Nonetheless, a lot of DMs will let you attempt this stunt anyway despite having to break internal and external consistency to do so.

And this is why an appeal to genre tradition is one of the most bullshit arguments you can ever make when it comes to running or designing a TTRPG. It has all of the rhetorical and intellectual heft of fresh marshmallows.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Far as I know, most of the actual dragon climbers are grognards posting on grognard forums. What might be played Devil's Advocate for is having to use rule zero to deal with the fact that dragons take a huge dragon dump on non-fullcasters. And thanks to the fans crying "NOOOO! WEEABOO FIGHTAN!" or "WARNING! FIGHTER DETECTED POSSESSING NICE THING!" if someone manages to hurt a dragon with something other than a daily refresh ability, Paizo doesn't seem to be in any hurry to rectify the situation.

It would be nice to use the abilities on your sheet to slay the dragon, but first there need to be dragon-slaying abilities on your sheet.

[Shiritai]

No, it's not. In an area where there are no rules to guide you, there are no rules to guide you, it's not like you can figure out "Look, you just don't have enough BAB to hit," (although a 20 would always hit). If that were the case, yes, obviously, just say no and make them figure out something else. But when there is no BAB to compare, when there are no rules involved, and this is a level-appropriate enemy, it doesn't seem weird at all that a level-appropriate DC would actually be one that a character of that level could in fact hit. This is typically true of attacks, saves, etc., why would it not be true here?

I mean, if the dragon was supposed to be particularly difficult to do anything physical to then I could understand, but that would have to be called out as a characteristic of the enemy, not inherent in the character making the attempt. And to my knowledge dragons aren't typically highly regarded for their hand-to-hand or wrestling ability. Or the flipside could be true; that one quality of your character is that he's particularly weak. In that case I might say sorry, no chance, think of something else. But between a Cleric and a Fighter of equal level, I see no reason that one can jump and hang onto a level-appropriate dragon much better than the other. Again, in an area without rules. If your grapple rules handle that and say no, then you are not in this scenario to begin with.

Are you really meaning to say that fighters do, in general, level-appropriate things? And that fighters and clerics can, in general, overcome the same challenges? A cleric can likely fly, gain a climb speed, gain super-strength, and a bunch of other things that would be helpful for not being tossed off a dragon. A fighter better hope he wore his boots of dragonstriding that day, and you know what? If he did, I bet no one would have a problem with him walking all over that dragon.

And to my knowledge dragons aren't typically highly regarded for their hand-to-hand or wrestling ability.

Also this. In most iterations of D&D, dragons are hand-to-hand beasts. Also they'll literally eat adventurers alive. Those are not favorable conditions for grappling!

[Shady314]

I mean, it's a fucking common thing in action-adventure fiction. I bet it's even an article on TVTropes.

Of course.

[PhoneLobster]

I think all in all this thread does a very good thing of demonstrating two things.

1) The anti-fighter hand wringers are bat shit fucking crazy
Seriously. "Guy on back of dragon GAME RUINED!". That crazy.

2) The we-are-regretably-forced-not-to-let-fighters-have-nice-things-because-of-other-peoples-crazy-demands-totes-true hand wringers ARE the fighters-cant-have-nice-things lobby
Lago and friends constantly hand wring about this "mysterious" hateful lobby of gamers they hate, but nevertheless MUST satisfy by not letting fighters have nice things.

But when it comes right down to it, they aren't talking about some invisible silent majority of lost grognards twisting Lago's arm. It is, and always has been Lago and the hand wringers themselves who are the ones making the demand that fighters can't have nice things.

And yes. That demand is up to and including "Guy on a dragon? GAME RUINED!".

[Username17]

Oh, man. I am licked. Guys, I've been soundly thumped here. You'll have to carry on without me.

Remember when you agreed to walk away? That was awesome. You should walk away. Because literally every time you write something in this thread I respect you less. Your discussion of analogies is so bad that I'm honestly incapable of parsing that as the work of a reasonable person. I mean seriously, saying it is morally objectionable to use an analogy comparing aspects of blood and soup? Are you stupid? Is that supposed to be for real?

Your descriptions of the positions of Lago and Kaelik were built on a foundation of lies. And when people called you on it, repeatedly, you just kept doubling down. You made fake quotes of people and then tried to "remind" people that the fake quotes you made up were things that other people had really said!

How do you think you have any credibility in this discussion? If this keeps going, how do you think you will have any credibility in any future discussion?

-Username17

[zugschef]

The point of this thread has long left the road of a discussion and entered the realm of doing whatever is necessary to convince oneself that the opposition is dumb; and that includes and doesn't stop with strawmanning and false quoting. Happens way too often that people's egos become more important than the topic and reason and logic itself.

People have posted endless walls of text endlessly and i'm sure they don't even know themselves what they've actually said or not.

I'm totally sure that nobody actually thinks that characters shouldn't be able to jump on a dragon's back period. And i'm also sure that nobody in this thread actually thinks that captain hobo should be able to do it. Even if someone finds a quote of someone which says exactly that.

[Red_Rob]

Mundane characters can skydive down to a person that is free-falling and potentially catch them before they hit the ground. Spiderman and Superman are just really good at that and aren't even likely to fail. It doesn't mean that Keanu Reeves' Stunt Person doesn't have the skills to succeed 50% of the time. The game (IMHO) is better when you try to figure out how to make it work and allow players to try.

No. Actually, they don't. They seriously don't unless they're like up at a few thousand feet, well above any skyscraper. Air resistance would be the only thing that affected terminal velocity and in the 10 seconds it would take to hit the ground and as a technologically unassisted mundane you would have no way of catching up.

I mean, it's a fucking common thing in action-adventure fiction. I bet it's even an article on TVTropes. But anyone with even a passing knowledge of physics knows that such a stunt would be impossible. Not improbable like having a few thousand bullets miss like you're a Stormtrooper, but impossible. Nonetheless, a lot of DMs will let you attempt this stunt anyway despite having to break internal and external consistency to do so.

And this is why an appeal to genre tradition is one of the most bullshit arguments you can ever make when it comes to running or designing a TTRPG. It has all of the rhetorical and intellectual heft of fresh marshmallows.

I think this is the crux of the issue. When you actually think deeply about the body strength and physical dexterity needed to hang onto and climb a giant, moving, scaled intelligent adversary it seems that this would be impossible, right?

Well, guess what? Giant insects wouldn't be able to breathe due to the size limits of tracheal breathing systems. Giants would break their legs walking due to the inverse square law. Harpies would need a sternum that projected 6 feet in front of their body to provide the thrust needed to fly. Fantasy games break the laws of physics in a hundred genre-appropriate ways. In a Fantasy game genre-appropriate trumps realistic 9 times out of 10, otherwise you don't even get past the first random encounter.

Complaining that Conan riding a Dragon is an example of Captain Hobo is doing a disservice to one of the core themes of Fantasy gaming - that larger than life heroes can perform seemingly impossible actions to triumph over evil. So yes, a Fighter needs the stats and abilities to pull it off and yes the game should support such actions mechanically - but just because a character doesn't have an explicit powersource by level 5 doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to perform in-genre actions.

Now, at higher levels this applies less and less. Enemies that explicitly require magical abilities like Flight or Fire Immunity to overcome are more common and the scope of the game has changed. But at lower levels, raining on a players parade because "Physics LOL" when every other aspect of the game breaks physics to one degree or another would come across as hugely dickish to my mind.

[tussock]

I'm totally sure that nobody actually thinks that characters shouldn't be able to jump on a dragon's back period.

Like nobody actually thinks that science doesn't work or that the world is only 4000 years old or that one particular god is real and everpresent (and I can only type this because God wills it and it's part of a test for some religious person reading it).

Oh, no, wait, people actually do believe all sorts of really weird and obviously wrong and harmful bullshit. The actual rules in 3e D&D, for instance, don't let you jump on a Dragon's back, or jump higher than your own head for that matter (in 3.0).

Comparing the desire for action heroism in a heroic action game to the desire for explicit descriptions of sexual violence, and imagining that contributes to any argument ever, those people be batshit insane, on this particular point. But please, everyone, do continue.

Anyway, we all agree the game needs a rule for riding big monsters against their will, because they get a turn too and can squish you or throw you then. Obviously not everyone on some days of the week, but y'all should.

The main trick seems to be not breaking the game when the dragon tries to ride you, though given what the typical dragon can do instead by full attacking it's likely not a problem in that particular case. Also, their CR is too low, well known thing.

[PhoneLobster]

I'm totally sure that nobody actually thinks that characters shouldn't be able to jump on a dragon's back period.

Why don't you actually try asking.

That was largely the point of easily half the thread, "does that hold even for shadow of colossus" was pretty much asking that question, and the answer given repeatedly to that by at least one poster was actually, in short, yes it holds in all circumstances, period.

So yeah. You want to charitably put words into peoples mouth and pretend they aren't saying stupid stupid things about not jumping on dragon's period that's nice.

Now, get them to say it. A simple clear one sentence clarification that they don't believe that stupid thing.

A single sentence they could have used to back down 6 pages ago after they said the fucking stupid thing in the first place.

A single sentence you might get from SOME parties involved, but you will NOT get from all of them, and specifically not from certain key posters.

edit: and to charitably clarify, if your captain hobo example is intended to mean some hypothetical position like "all characters should always have some chance of riding all dragons" or something similarly extreme, then no, I am not signing up to something that stupid.

I don't think anyone else has either, indeed a lot of people disagreeing with the stupidity of the whole "no dragon riding ever" thing HAVE ruled it out repeatedly, and been explicitly ignored on that.

But unlike you I'm not going to charitably put words into the mouth of even people I agree with in an attempt to pretend they are reasonable. They might very well hold stupid opinions, or make stupid claims. Nothing about disagreeing with "no dragon riding or I walk" automatically makes you a sane or smart person, its just that anyone who agrees with that is stupid.

[deaddmwalking]

The rate at which Den threads spiral from "potentially productive discussion about game design" to "caustic squabbling about technicalities, laden with obscenities and the spectre of sexual violence" never ceases to amuse me.

Setting aside for a moment whether it should be supported or not, I have thought about how I would support it in a 3.x game.

To explain my reasoning - you could make an argument for a number of skills to be potentially relevant, but skills don't scale well with opposition and therefore don't really make a good baseline. Further, there's really nothing stopping a commoner (or expert) from being better at any skill test than a Fighter (because Fighters get crappy skill lists and very few skill points). If we posit that 'martial characters' are likely better than non-martial characters at holding on to a dragon (or other beast) it looks like BAB is a good mechanical feature to hang this on.

We also don't want 'auto-success' or 'auto-fail' situations, so it can't be 'if you have a BAB of x you can do y'. We want this to scale with opposition.

Grappling uses BAB as an element, so this looks like the best place to start. However, if I could pin my opponent by beating them in a grapple check, that is in all ways superior to holding on to them. If I make it a straight normal grapple maneuver, it'll never be used and it doesn't really support the image I have in my mind.

Let's talk about the image in my mind. I used to have a cat that climbed people. It would often sit on my shoulder while I walked around. It didn't impede me in any real way (ie, I wasn't grappled), but the cat couldn't easily do anything except move with me. So it looks like I'm wanting a situation where the character 'riding' the dragon is considered grappled, but the creature he is riding is not.

Improved Grab looks a little like the opposite of what I want. If you're a kraken, you can make a Grapple Check with a -20 penalty and your opponent is considered grappled, and you're not. Since the 'grappled condition' is pretty much a bad thing, and the 'not grappled' condition is better in every way, I think this could work in reverse.

Our VAH can make a Grapple Check with a +20 bonus. If he succeeds, he is considered grappled and his opponent (the dragon) is not. While 'holding on' he moves with the dragon and can make no movement of his own. He's denied is Dexterity bonus to AC, he can't attack with anything but light weapons, etc. Like Improved Grab, I'd say you can only do this to a creature that is one or more size categories larger than you (if you hold onto someone the same size as you are, they're going to be impeded no matter what).

Looking at the Young Adult Blue Dragon (CR 11) with a Grapple check of +28, it looks like our VAH of appropriate level has a decent shot at 'holding on'.

The only real benefit it provides him is that he can continue to use melee attacks while the creature flies around - that and it could look cool. The dragon would have to take some actual actions to remove the VAH, but if he's smart, he'd probably tend to ignore the worthless grub hanging on to him and take out the cleric and wizard first. But ultimately, something like that would work the way I think it should. I've seen lions clinging to an elephant's back in a similar way and it seems about right.