Random roleplaying musings

[cartesiandaemon]

Armour ClassEmblematic of 5e reducing the spread between low and high level is something I noticed in the monster manual, armour class is even flatter than other stats, that first level players are generally fighting monsters with AC 12-15, 20 might be possible for something fragile but really hard to hit. But the highest AC in the whole thing is

Comments

[ilanin]

Personally, I would say that if you want players to be fighting in the cinematic mode rather than the realistic one, then if you are running DnD you are using the wrong tool for the job; there are plenty of cinematic systems, so why are you using a simulationist one? I think it's a reasonably good heuristic that if your system doesn't contain rules for something your players want to do in, say, every other fight, then it's the wrong system for what you're trying to do.

There's nothing wrong with realistic fighting scenes, and they can, in fact, be some of the best-done fight scenes in heroic fiction - the duel on the Pattern from The Hand of Oberon springs to mind (Roger Zelazny, being an actual fencer, wrote fencing between even superhuman combatants realistically, and very well). Proper use of cover and terrain is still a lot of fun and very dramatic, and if people are supposed to be fighting in that mode then that's part of the game contract and "you can't", or, rather "you know better than to try" is perfectly good as an answer

[cartesiandaemon]

if you want players to be fighting in the cinematic mode rather than the realistic one,I'm not sure that IS what I'm saying. I think a roleplaying system is a combination of several things, notably: a shared expectation of what's possible (driven by a combination of "how it would really work" and "how it works in shared-knowledge of appropriate fiction"); a set of tactical choices; and telling a good/dramatic story