Dissociated in 3E

[RobG]

I think that Evasion works as a magical (Su) ability.. a 'run between the raindrops' kind of thing. At that point though, you might wonder how the blinding quickness needed to dodge an explosion and take no damage wouldn't translate into something similar like dodging an attack from a weapon. Regardless, if its decribed as that badass of an ability it should probably be higher than 2nd level.

It would also work non- magically with a shield, a simple cover and skill ability. The two PHB classes that get Evasion dont know how to use shields though.

[Kaelik]

Definition of "disassociated mechanic": A game rule that Kaelik defends by saying, 'Don't ask how how it works; it just does!'.

So Magic Missile is disassociated?

Fuck you, learn to read. It's not disassociated if the character and the player make decisions on the same information. The Rogue knows he's so fucking sweet that he can dodge any fireball. The player also knows that he can dodge any fireball. That's not disassociated by definition.

[Username17]

Definition of "disassociated mechanic": A game rule that Kaelik defends by saying, 'Don't ask how how it works; it just does!'.

I honestly don't know why people claim to have trouble grokking this. An associated mechanic is one in which the choices and perceived cause/effect relationships are the same for the player as they are for the character. That's it.

Things like Evasion have no explanation, but that doesn't make them dissociated. Some people find powers like Evasion that have no rational explanation to be as or more damaging to immersion than dissociated powers. Others find them less. But they damage immersion in a different way.

A 3rd edition D&D Rogue can objectively negate fire damage as long as he can move. This is a fact that is observable in the game world and at the player's table. That's associated. There is no explanation of how that power fucking works, which makes it offend a lot of people. That is a separate problem. It is more of a problem of being incomprehensible to the player, as to the people living in the game world, that is how physics works. Similarly to how great falls do little to impede world leaders. It's not how our world works, but it is how their world works. And it's how the game works. So the character can logically make decisions based on how those things work in the world, and the player can make decisions based on how the rules work, and those will be the same decisions. Association! It's just... the physics of that are not explained to the player.

It is possible for a mechanic to be both explanationless and dissociated. That happens whenever an ability runs contrary to its own fluff. That causes major apoplexy in fans. A good example is the 4e Dark Sun version of Defiling. There is no explanation for why it passes over people who refuse to be your super best friend, and in character it isn't supposed to. So the fact that you can use it and not hurt the princess because she is wary of trusting you is both incomprehensible to the character and incomprehensible to the player. And that's really bad, since no matter whether the player is more divorced from the experience by making choices that are based on out-of-character information or by being confronted with mechanics that defy out-of-character description - the situation is about as bad as it can be.

-Username17

[VladtheLad]

Another pretty classic disassociated mechanic:
Armor makes you harder to hit and doesn't give any damage reduction.

[angelfromanotherpin]

God, now I'm flashbacking to the fucking Game of Thrones RPG. If you're a knight, you have a quality which gives you a 1/day defensive boost because you can 'draw strength from your commitment to the knightly virtues.' Even if your character (like many in the source material) routinely violates the knightly virtues. And they never describe what the knightly virtues are so it's not actually possible to know if either you or your character agrees with or disagrees with or upholds or violates them.

But also the mechanic is fucking dissociated because no character in the setting ever says or thinks 'Good thing he dropped fast, I can only be that committed once a day,' or 'Each day nobody antagonizes me, I feel like my commitment's just not pulling its weight.'

[name_here]

The ASoIF knightly virtues are hitting people in the face and raping every peasant women they meet then torching their farm.

[RobG]

The reason I think evasion is dissociative (word?) is that the player couldnt explain it but the character could. The rogue couldnt really learn how to do it, as a mundane (ex) ability, if he didnt know how was doing it.

Part of my point with this thread is to point out how good 3e was in regard to dissociation. I remember picking up the books for the first time and thinking "Wow, you can do anything you want and it all makes sense". The fact that, after ten years, I can still pick it up and find such a small number of things that dont make sense is a testament to how good the game really is.

Any more dissociation in 3rd? Ive gotta be missing somethinghere.

[Username17]

Any more dissociation in 3rd? Ive gotta be missing somethinghere.

Oh absolutely. If you go to the later materials where they start futzing around with 4e concepts, dissociative crap sneaks in every which way. We start with Action Points, which are a pool of awesome that is wholly unmeasurable in character and literally only kicks in when you really need it. The player can rely upon action points, but the character has no way of knowing that they even have them. Of even more dissociation is the Factotum's Inspiration pool. The Factotum does random crazy crap on a schedule that the characters in-world have no way to ascertain because it is based on arbitrary narrative divisions of the people sitting around the table.

Seriously, a Factotum walks into a room and he either has or does not have the ability to cast a spell at that time depending on whether the Dungeon Master started describing a new scene or not. The fourth wall literally determines whether his powers can be used. If the camera is following him into the next room as a tracking shot, he can't use a spell. But if the camera fades to black and comes back in on him on the other side of the door: spells are online. The character has no way of differentiating those two, because supposedly they aren't aware that the camera exists. But there it is.

Even in the original books, there are some ambiguous cases. The game can't decide if level is a tangible thing or not. If it isn't, shit like Soul Trap Gems are extremely dissociated. But if level is a tangible thing in the setting, then those things are no problem.

-Username17

[Vebyast]

But if level is a tangible thing in the setting, then those things are no problem.

I always assumed that it was. The "stronger than" "much stronger than" etc from Detect Alignment and Turning effects are tied directly and deterministically to level. A smart caster with a few apprentices could demonstrate the existence of discrete, ordered levels pretty conclusively with that information.

[RobG]

Action Points. Spot on. Always hated the damn things and every game Im in someone really wants to do Action Points.

Faith Points at least work a little better. Your God gives you a little help once in awhile. Then again, you probably shouldnt get to decide when to use them.

The Sliding Toward 4th period is something I tend to forget about, maybe I dont want to remember. I recall there being some of this in Comp Champion but dont remember details. Factotum is firmly in this camp too, it being Mearls work and all.

Maybe the Sorcerer having an overwhelming urge to collect bat guano would count.

[Just another user]

Well, I'm even less sure what dissociated mechanics are than I am about disassociated mechanics being more than a useless buzzword

Those words are synonyms, they mean exactly the same thing.

Evasion never bugged me at all. The character is just better at finding good cover to dive for, and perhaps messes with his outfit so it works better when he has to dive for cover.

Evasion can be weird narratively. Diving for cover or whatnot sounds good, except the ability works even on a flat, featureless plain. Heck, you could be floating in an absolutely featureless void (and if you lack a fly speed, be unable to move at all), have an arbitrarily large fireball detonate with you at the center, and still Reflex save for half/no damage. I guess you just dodge on a 4th axis or something.

the weirdest part is that you "dive for cover"... but don't move at all. You are still at the same point of that featureless plain or void, possibly even completely naked, but without being even just a little burned.

[angelfromanotherpin]

There's no mention of either diving or cover in the description of Evasion. It simply says 'can avoid even magical and unusual attacks with great agility.'

[Lago PARANOIA]

Even though I totally dislike how Action Points were implemented in 3E, d20 modern, and 4E D&D, I do like the idea behind Edge points from Shadowrun.

It's a lopsided stat (like most stats in that game) but I still found it really cool because it allowed you to have a nominally really lethal game while still having D&D-level survival rates as long as you were careful. And it didn't feel like too much of a hand-holding or authorial intrusion.

Disassociative? Yes. Cool as all get out? Hell yes. Showing that disassociative mechanics can work if done right.

[Lago PARANOIA]

There is no explanation for why it passes over people who refuse to be your super best friend

That's because making sure that players don't abuse it like the fucking rollplaying, story-hating munchkins they are.

I think that's mostly why people hate disassociated mechanics so much. There's no reason why it has to be, but in 4th Edition D&D especially it's become an all-purpose excuse as to why internal or external sense has to be sacrificed in the name of 'game balance'. I mean when they errata'd Come And Get It to a shift to a slide there was no reason for them to do that other than they wanted to prevent people from abusing enemy shift mechanics (which inexplicably triggers a lot more things than forced movement) - but it was such a ham-handed and lazy capitulation that people hated the justification for it.

Need a new game balance fix fast but can't be assed to think of a justification for the change? Just call it disassociated! The fanbase won't give a shit, they (like the game designers) just see the 4th Edition D&D game as an elaborate video game. And video games have been getting away with all sorts of stupid immersion-breaking shit in the name of gameplay for decades, so why can't we?

Fucking slackers.

[fbmf]

Evasion has never bothered me. It's an Extraordinary ability, which the RAW say aren't magical but defy the physical laws.

So you "Matrix style dodge" the fire that's all around you. Who gives a fuck?

Game On,
fbmf

[RadiantPhoenix]

Evasion has never bothered me. It's an Extraordinary ability, which the RAW say aren't magical but defy the physical laws.

You mean like Regeneration?

[Previn]

Evasion has never bothered me. It's an Extraordinary ability, which the RAW say aren't magical but defy the physical laws.

So you "Matrix style dodge" the fire that's all around you. Who gives a fuck?

Game On,
fbmf

When ever I see the evasion/fireball thing pop up, I always look at fireball instead of evasion. Sure, it's filling the area with flame, but it might not be uniform, so a save represents finding a sweet spot. Evasion just bumps that up to the next level with say a duck and cover in the sweet spot, or pulling your pack or cloak at just the right time. This clearly doesn't work for everything with evasion, but it does seem to make it a lot more associative in my experience.

Honestly it seems at least somewhat reasonable.

[Prak]

Yeah, fireball is just a brief emanation of fire, it's possible that this presents roughly the same issue to a rogue as a laser trip wire trap would, and so thy just bob and weave around short lived waves of flame.

On Action Points, I'm actually not entirely sure I would consider action points dissociative, because the character isn't making any choice, the player is saying "wait, lets see if that *doesn't* happen that way." and trying to affect causality/fate inside the game.

[Red_Rob]

The problem there is when the player says "I think we should do it, we have plenty of action points to spare" and the character says "I think we should do it because.... because... I.. feel lucky". It gets worse when action points recover at a set time, because then the characters can hold off doing things in game for no in-game reason.

Basically, if you were retelling the story of what happened later on, dissociative mechanics mean you have to jump out of an in-universe storytelling mode and start talking about game mechanics to explain what happened and why. That's as jarring as it sounds.

[Prak]

The problem there is when the player says "I think we should do it, we have plenty of action points to spare" and the character says "I think we should do it because.... because... I.. feel lucky".

I see no problem with this, seems perfectly in genre.

It gets worse when action points recover at a set time, because then the characters can hold off doing things in game for no in-game reason.

"Nah, man, not tonight. I don't like tonight."

Basically, if you were retelling the story of what happened later on, dissociative mechanics mean you have to jump out of an in-universe storytelling mode and start talking about game mechanics to explain what happened and why. That's as jarring as it sounds.

"The dragon almost scorched me, would have to, but I got lucky/pelor protected me/the timey wimey ball went wibbly wobbly and the resonance frequency of the dragon's fire was somehow held off by my mage armour."

[Red_Rob]

It gets worse when action points recover at a set time, because then the characters can hold off doing things in game for no in-game reason.

"Nah, man, not tonight. I don't like tonight."

Yeah, great well done. No mechanic is ever dissociated.

"Hey 4e fighter, how come you never get chance to use your Unstoppable Advance more than once a day?"
"Don't feel like it."

"Hey 3e weapon master, why don't you parry attacks with your sword?"
"I don't like to do that."

Dissociated means you cannot explain it in game. Refusing to explain it in game does not alleviate the problem.

[fbmf]

It gets worse when action points recover at a set time, because then the characters can hold off doing things in game for no in-game reason.

"Nah, man, not tonight. I don't like tonight."

Yeah, great well done. No mechanic is ever dissociated.

You never just avoid doing something in real life because "it doesn't feel right" or "you get a bad feeling"?

Game On,
fbmf

[fbmf]

Evasion has never bothered me. It's an Extraordinary ability, which the RAW say aren't magical but defy the physical laws.

You mean like Regeneration?

Yes, that's the example they give. If you have a point in bringing up Regeneration specifically...I don't get it.

A rogue's evasion ability and a troll's ability to regenerate are extraordinary abilities. <SNIP> Indeed, they do not qualify as magical, though they may break the laws of physics.

Game On,
fbmf

[Username17]

Evasion has never bothered me. It's an Extraordinary ability, which the RAW say aren't magical but defy the physical laws.

You mean like Regeneration?

Yes, that's the example they give. If you have a point in bringing up Regeneration specifically...I don't get it.

A rogue's evasion ability and a troll's ability to regenerate are extraordinary abilities. <SNIP> Indeed, they do not qualify as magical, though they may break the laws of physics.

Game On,
fbmf

The point is that neither of those abilities has a physical explanation using the physics of our world. It's not that those abilities are dissociated, they work exactly the same for the players and the characters and the characters can know that they work and explain how they work. It's that those abilities would not work in our universe because the laws of physics are different.

People get offended at Evasion and Regeneration for a completely different reason than they get offended at Action Points. People ask for a real-world explanation for Evasion and Regeneration and there fucking isn't one. On the other hand, Action Points drive a wedge between the player and the character because the character has no way to know that he has action points at all, let alone how many action points he has left.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Associated/Disassociated does not mean 'does it break our willing suspension of disbelief or not'. In fact it's trivially easy to come up with situations where a disassociated mechanic breaks WSoD less than an associated one. For example: Edge Point Burning vs. Evasion.

Disassociated mechanics, especially when they don't explicitly try to model some kind of storytelling convention, tend to break Willing Suspension of Disbelief more often than associated mechanics because of a break in story and gameplay, but not necessarily.