Dissociated in 3E

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:00 am

Right. They work on a charge mechanic because it's a fucking game and not a realistic depiction of small scale melee combat.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 6:26 am

Well then, Krakatoa, why did they put the martial characters on a charge mechanic rather than one of the several other resource management systems that have been cooking in the wings? You know, things like Rage Meter, Winds of Fate, Full-on At-Wills? Hell, I fucking hate power points both in implementation and principle but thematically they'd be a better fit for martial characters than discrete charges and they weren't too concerned about balance to begin with.

We all know the real answer as to why they did that was because they wanted to make the classes as uniform as possible. And I can sort of forgive them on that score, because one of the most popular fixes for underlying class imbalances is to make the structure uniform to prevent bullshit like the Sorcerer/Cleric. It failed miserably but I can forgive them on that score.

What I can't forgive is them putting martial characters on that arbitrary charge mechanic and then making them Vanilla Action Heroes. If instead of throwing sand in peoples' faces rogues did something like swap their soul with an opponents' or sicced their foes' shadow on them or teleport-dance-stabbed them then the charge mechanic would be forgivable despite all of its flaws.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 10:33 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What I can't forgive is them putting martial characters on that arbitrary charge mechanic and then making them Vanilla Action Heroes. If instead of throwing sand in peoples' faces rogues did something like swap their soul with an opponents' or sicced their foes' shadow on them or teleport-dance-stabbed them then the charge mechanic would be forgivable despite all of its flaws.

But... we can't have warriors who summon exponentially more allies every round, or rogues who can bribe a literal avatar of war to sit passively on the sidelines! That's too anime!

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 11:36 am

Krakatoa wrote:Right. They work on a charge mechanic because it's a fucking game and not a realistic depiction of small scale melee combat.

One, realistic doesn't mean a fucking thing. It's not realism. Troll regeneration is not realistic, but it is associated. The question is not, "does it make sense to you, the player?" The question is "does it make sense to the character in the game, that you are playing?"

Two, it's a roleplaying game. Well, no, it isn't, and that's rather the problem. 4e is a tactical combat minigame, and not a roleplaying game at fucking all. You can't roleplay around dissociated mechanics, because the role you are attempting to play, by design, has incomplete information about how to approach the situation. 4e combats are 100% unroleplayable. They can be described narratively, but they cannot be roleplayed because your character has no fucking idea what's happening and how he uses his own powers is a giant mystery to him.

Krakatoa · Post by **Krakatoa** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 2:28 am

DSMatticus wrote:Two, it's a roleplaying game. Well, no, it isn't, and that's rather the problem. 4e is a tactical combat minigame, and not a roleplaying game at fucking all. You can't roleplay around dissociated mechanics, because the role you are attempting to play, by design, has incomplete information about how to approach the situation. 4e combats are 100% unroleplayable. They can be described narratively, but they cannot be roleplayed because your character has no fucking idea what's happening and how he uses his own powers is a giant mystery to him.

And how the fuck is that any different than any other edition of Dungeons and Dragons? The 3.X Fighter doesn't know he's got so many Feats and that he can't Cleave or Power Attack without them, or why some fighters are really good at tripping but for others its a useless waste of a turn. In fact, characters don't even know they fucking have turns. Oh god, I just realized that the characters don't actually know anything about initiative or taking turns! My immersion is suddenly destroyed! Every edition of D&D is impossible to roleplay because nobody sits around and thinks, it's my turn to attack, and I have a Full Action and a Move action and then it will be the enemy's turn to hit me. How can I believe in the world when my character doesn't know his frequency of attack is measured by superimposed stats from a higher plane of existence?

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 2:58 am

Well the fighter doesn't think in terms of feats, they think in terms of abilities. So you say, 'my fighter can cleave because he has a feat', but your fighter says, 'I trained to flow seamlessly from one kill to the next'. Similarly they know they aren't good at tripping because they didn't spend their character time learning to do that. Remember also that the character's aren't taking turns, at least that's how I interpret it. All that action is taking place simultaneously, but we can't do that at the table because it would be a mess. It's like in a book when there are two plots going on at the same time and the book jumps back and forth taking one out and catching the other up. The events are happening at the same time but we see one set of events happen after the first because it's not possible to overlay them. As for stats, character's don't know they have 14 strength, but they probably do know about how much they can lift.

As opposed 4e powers which leave characters (specifically martial characters) wondering what's going on when they suddenly lose the ability to to use the skills when they should physically still be able to use their skills.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:11 am

There's plenty of crap that happens in the real world which real people can't explain. Sure, sometimes, it's willful ignorance, but it totally happens, and yet somehow most of us remain immersed in the real world, despite such gaps in our understanding.

Claiming that "there fact that are events in the game world which characters in the game world cannot understand and explain is a barrier to player immersion in the game world" is as nonsensical as the rest of the arguments surrounding associated and disassociated mechanics.

"Associated Mechanics" and "Disassociated Mechanics" are a couple of neologisms made up to express contempt for 4e and allow those expressing such contempt to use shifting meanings for those neologisms in order to avoid rebuttals to the specifics of that contempt in a way that using plain English to express the same contempt with statements like "Frequently the rules text for mechanics text runs at cross-purposes to the descriptive flavor text within the game" doesn't. Even the slightly older jargon of "The fluff often doesn't match the crunch" gets the same point across better, and at least in my humble opinion are valid criticisms of 4e.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:54 am

But it's useful to have a phrase for "The flavor text doesn't match up with the mechanical effect". It is useful even outside of dissing 4E. So there is a word for it. Until we enter a future of everyone using perfect Newspeak people will create concepts and then title them and if the titles have traction they will propagate. If you don't like the word don't use it. I find it tremendously useful and relatively easy to define. YMMV but there's really no reason for anyone to be up in arms over this.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 8:07 am

Personally, I agree with Dean. Dissociative is just a really helpful word for condensing those statements.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 9:25 am

Yeah, Darkmaster beat me to it. If you are asserting that characters could not possibly be aware that one character might have an ability that another might not in terms of the game world, you are saying very dumb things. One fighter trained to trip people. One trained to swing his weapon in arcs that cut multiple people at a time. Why do characters need to have read the PHB to possibly understand this fact about two different people?

Josh wrote: Claiming that "there fact that are events in the game world which characters in the game world cannot understand and explain is a barrier to player immersion in the game world" is as nonsensical as the rest of the arguments surrounding associated and disassociated mechanics.

This isn't about explaining the magical physics of the universe. If the sky turns purple, the characters can just say, "hey, the sky turned purple," and the fact that they don't know why it turned purple is totally okay. Characters don't have to know how troll regeneration works. Wizards don't have to explain the why of their magic, but they do have to be able to explain the how of it; "I sit down, prepare spells, then say things and wave my hands around and things happen." A wizard who doesn't know how his own spells work would make zero sense; how could he possibly not be able to describe how he uses his own spells? (Barring certain archetypes who accidentally use magic; and even they can describe how they use magic; "I dunno. It happens sometimes.")

You can play a character who knows zero things and everything he experiences is a fact he did not know before, and that's not a problem of immersion or dissociation. What is a problem of immersion or dissociation is when the mechanics do not produce experiences the character can learn from; e.g., when a rogue's abilities are fluffed as skillful feints and they are usable once daily, the rogue cannot 'learn' anything about the world from the results the mechanics produce. The rogue cannot learn about his abilities from the mechanics his abilities use. What the rogue knows about his abilities is completely different from what his abilities actually do. This is what we're talking about when we say dissociation.

You just acknowledged that this concept is a thing that exists ( "Frequently the rules text for mechanics text runs at cross-purposes to the descriptive flavor text within the game"), so is your only problem with this entire association/dissociation discussion that we're using words you don't like?

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:51 pm

RobG wrote:The 4e thread got me thinking of dissociated mechanics in 3e that bugged me a little. Three off the top of my head..

1 Evasion
2 5-foot steps (regardless of size)
3 The prohibition on two creatures in the same square

Never thought there were a lot. Can anyone think of more? Were they ever a problem for you?

I'm not sure if some of those really qualify; I have no difficulty explaining, say, why you can't move into the same square as a hostile creature without the use of special maneuvers.

However, the spell "Freedom of Movement" always bothered me in 3e for this reason. "Move and attack normally" is pretty much a metagame concept, and it's hard to come up with a flavor description of what's actually HAPPENING when you use freedom of movement that lets you, say, effortlessly escape solid fog, move better in water, move and attack perfectly fine in half your square size (crunched spaces), and cure a ghoul's paralyzing touch, but not say, slip through a door's keyhole or do anything to repel most attacks.

Chamomile wrote:Personally, I agree with Dean. Dissociative is just a really helpful word for condensing those statements.

That's pretty much how I see it, too.

RobG · Post by **RobG** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 10:26 pm

About Evasion.. a lot of people seem to have no prob with it and Im thinking that their conception of a fireball is different than mine. I picture it looking like it did in Baldurs Gate: a moving wall of flames that went out 20 feet. If it actually looked like tendrils of flame, or better yet, flaming shrapnel (sp?) then of course it makes sense.

If we're using the shrapnel image then we have 21 'reflex half' spells in the Phb and all the fire and lightning spells make sense when they are evaded, Cone of cold too, BBarrier, Sunbeam. I only see 2 that dont: Flame Strike (a pillar) and Sunburst (a burst of light). Maybe they should be 'fort half'.

Responces to other points when I figure out how to put multiple qquotes in a post.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 11:53 pm

Caedrus wrote:However, the spell "Freedom of Movement" always bothered me in 3e for this reason. "Move and attack normally" is pretty much a metagame concept, and it's hard to come up with a flavor description of what's actually HAPPENING when you use freedom of movement that lets you, say, effortlessly escape solid fog, move better in water, move and attack perfectly fine in half your square size (crunched spaces), and cure a ghoul's paralyzing touch, but not say, slip through a door's keyhole or do anything to repel most attacks.

Yeah, Freedom of Movement is probably not something characters can easily explain in game terms. When people ask a wizard how freedom of movement works, he probably gets irritated and rambles something about flux capacitors and 88 miles per hour. But that's still not really 'dissociated,' it's just really complicated and possibly even poorly understood. The character knows that when he casts freedom of movement water will part around him like air, webs will slide off him, other physical impediments just do not hold, his body will obey his command regardless of any debilitating injuries (fort-based paralysis and such), and his mind's ability to direct his body is absolute (will-based paralysis and such).

He has no idea why or how the spell does this, or even how one spell can do such an incredibly huge array of seemingly unrelated things. But he knows it does, so it's all cool.

RobG wrote:About Evasion.. a lot of people seem to have no prob with it and Im thinking that their conception of a fireball is different than mine.

It's not that the image of fireball is different, it's that the image of evasion is different. Evasion is potentially a physics-defying ability (the rules say it can be). Which means the character can move in such a way that even though the flames physically touch him and surround him, he is not harmed because he is smacking physics across the face with his class feature.

Example descriptions of super-ridiculous physics-defying evasions (that don't really fit in the typical image of a D&D game, but fit with the description of the ability):
1) The guy who cuts explosions with his hand. This would kind of work with monk evasion. He sees a fireball coming at him, and he chops the air and the fireball parts around him because of his awesome chopping abilities.
2) A character contorts themself temporarily until into 2dness and the explosion slips past them, leaving them unscatched. Works for people with escape artist, I guess?

But for the typical D&D game, you're probably best off just figuring on a guy who ducks and rolls so super-incredibly well that he can maneuver through fire fast enough that it can't effect him. That fits the D&D image best. And that's fine. It's just what the does. It's totally unrealistic and physics-defying. But the rogue knows he can do that incredibly unrealistic, physics-defying thing and that's just how his world works.

RobG · Post by **RobG** » Sun Dec 25, 2011 2:02 am

I think 'wall of flames' fireball and fireball makes sense. Evasion doesnt.

I think 'firework/ shrapnel' fireball and fireball makes sense. Evasion makes sense.

Cue, change conception of fireball.. Done.. Evasion not bugging me. Game slightly better for me. Thank posters helping make game better.

Edit: FoM- Ectoplasmic sheen surrounds me. Stuff slides off. I slide thru. Palms still dry. Cool.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Dec 25, 2011 3:34 am

You still just have the wrong conception of Evasion.

Fire requires heating you up. Rogues just spin in a circle so fast throwing their cape up that the air around them sweeps in a circle, absorbing the heat and flowing past them, taking no damage.

By changing the air currents with your movement, you simply don't let the wall of flames run into you.

Yep · Post by **Yep** » Sun Dec 25, 2011 3:46 am

DSMatticus wrote:Yeah, Freedom of Movement is probably not something characters can easily explain in game terms. When people ask a wizard how freedom of movement works, he probably gets irritated and rambles something about flux capacitors and 88 miles per hour. But that's still not really 'dissociated,' it's just really complicated and possibly even poorly understood.

"You see, disassociated mechanics are fine in 3E because they're not really disassociated! But in 4E they're so disassociated because I don't like them!"

He has no idea why or how the spell does this, or even how one spell can do such an incredibly huge array of seemingly unrelated things. But he knows it does, so it's all cool.

"It's disassociated, but since the character can think in out-of-game terms and automatically knows the limitations of the magic, it's all cool!"

Do you even read what you type.

It's not that the image of fireball is different, it's that the image of evasion is different. Evasion is potentially a physics-defying ability (the rules say it can be). Which means the character can move in such a way that even though the flames physically touch him and surround him, he is not harmed because he is smacking physics across the face with his class feature.

That's because physics isn't the game. Physics are boring and pointless when you're playing a game where giant lizard monsters fly around breathing fire, lightning, gas, and other assorted shit. You make rough approximations of some of the more important aspects, but trying to go beyond that is just asking for hilarity.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Dec 25, 2011 5:19 am

For fuck's sake, Yep, how can you still not understand what dissociation is? I'm going to make this as explicit as I can.

Mechanics are the game rules that players use to play the game. Fluff is the description of the world that characters interact with. Dissociation is when the mechanics and the fluff produce two versions of an event that are wholly incompatible with one another.

Freedom of Movement

Mechanic: The character becomes immune to any effect which impedes or hinders his natural movement. {List of stuff}
Fluff: The character slips through restraints (including grasping limbs) as though they weren't there, water parts for them like air, their body obeys their commands to move even if it is otherwise physically unable to, and any attempts to tamper with their mental ability to control their body fail.

The mechanics and the fluff are saying the same fucking thing. They are completely 100% compatible. Nothing in one leads to a different interpretation of events than the other.

Evasion

Mechanic: The character, provided he is not helpless, takes no damage on a successful reflex save from things that allow reflex saves.
Fluff: The character is so quick and nimble that they can stand in the center of a raging inferno and still avoid the flames.

Totally still associated; they lead to the same f'ing results. Compatible. Now, someone might personally have trouble imagining, "how the hell can you avoid getting burned by fire that is all around you?" and the appropriate response is "how the hell can you conjure fire from your fingertips? Oh right! This is a fictional world where even non-magical abilities routinely break our laws of physics! Your attempts to inject realism into this are pathetic and misguided."

Troll regeneration

Mechanic: Unless it's a special damage type, all attacks are nonfatal and they recover a certain amount of damage from them a around.
Fluff: Wounds from anything but that special damage type close before the players eyes.

Again, the mechanics and the fluff produce consistent results. In terms of the real world, you cannot even possibly begin to explain regeneration because it is violating conservation of mass and basically biologically impossible. It's ridiculous. But again, this isn't the real world so who cares?

4e rogue daily eyestab

Mechanic: 1/day, the rogue can stab his opponent in the eye.
Fluff: Through a series of clever feints, the rogue tricks the opponent into lowering his guard and then stabs him in the eye.

Wait, what? The mechanics and the fluff say totally different things. The mechanics say it's an ability usable 1/day, and the fluff says it's an ability usable through tricking an opponent. How does tricking Bob in the morning prevent the rogue from tricking Jim in the evening?

If you think any of the first three are dissociated, explain how the mechanics for the ability and the fluff for the ability are different.

Yep wrote:That's because physics isn't the game. Physics are boring and pointless when you're playing a game where giant lizard monsters fly around breathing fire, lightning, gas, and other assorted shit. You make rough approximations of some of the more important aspects, but trying to go beyond that is just asking for hilarity.

Note here: nobody is having this conversation but you. The entire point when I say "rogues can stand in the center of a fireball and not get harmed and that is associated," it is exactly because the world the rogue lives in is not our's. Nobody is trying to lay out a unified theory of D&D physics, but it is an observable fact of D&D land that rogues can stand in the center of a fireball and be unharmed, and the point is that our lack of an explanation for that does not make it dissociated.

RobG · Post by **RobG** » Sun Dec 25, 2011 7:00 am

Kaelik wrote:You still just have the wrong conception of Evasion.

Fire requires heating you up. Rogues just spin in a circle so fast throwing their cape up that the air around them sweeps in a circle, absorbing the heat and flowing past them, taking no damage.

By changing the air currents with your movement, you simply don't let the wall of flames run into you.

Hmm.. good point.. that would explain why you can Evade a Cloudkill.

Oh, it also explains Evading a Wall of Fire too..

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Dec 25, 2011 9:11 am

On Troll Regeneration: Bio-nanites. Troll cells are simply adept at taking the surrounding substances and rearranging particles into troll flesh.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Dec 25, 2011 9:11 am

I genuinely can't tell if you are being sarcastic by pointing to other things that are also just as subject to air currents as an excuse.

Also, you can't evade Cloudkill, for what it's worth, because it's Fort save.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 6:16 am

The rogue would have to move pretty damn fast...

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 6:32 am

DSMatticus wrote:
Freedom of Movement
Fluff: The character slips through restraints (including grasping limbs) as though they weren't there

No, it slips through SOME restraints, and doesn't do anything at all to many others.

water parts for them like air

No it doesn't, because then they would fall to the sea floor. Water is therefore resistant for some movements and NOT others.

their body obeys their commands to move even if it is otherwise physically unable to

Again, this is only sometimes true.

and any attempts to tamper with their mental ability to control their body fail

This is also only sometimes true.

In addition, your explanation doesn't cover some other things that Freedom of Movement DOES do.

So yeah, your fluff is inconsistent crap. In fact, your answer illustrates the aforementioned problem with Freedom of Movement.

However, I agree with your point that it's not the same sort of issue as the eye-stabbing thing. I'm pretty sure you can come up with a consistent fluff for Freedom of Movement, it's just a bitch about it

However, part of the reason it isn't the same sort of problem is simply because it doesn't *have* much of any flavor text to contradict. It just has an effect, which is defined along weird metagame lines that is tricky to assign fluff to compared to other spells.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 9:52 am

Most of the problems you're bringing up are about the mechanical interpretation of Freedom of Movement; i.e., "the mechanics of this spell are written really vaguely. WTF does it even do?" The list of restraints in the spell is intentionally non-exhaustive ("even under the influence of...", not "only under the influence of..."), so I believe it works on pretty much anything you would call a restraint, including mundane ones. The matter of what happens when a FoM character hits water is also pretty weird, but I think there's a FAQ somewhere which clarifies that swimming is considered normal movement. If the character fails their swim checks, buoyancy holds and the character sinks at the normal rate to the bottom. Walking is considered normal movement at that point, and the character can stroll across the bottom without problem. None of this means it's dissociated.

But coming up with fluff for FoM seems really straightforward. Once you figure out what it mechanically does (the task that seems to be the problem here), you can seriously just say those things verbatim when you're describing what happens to the character. A wizard can sit in a laboratory and play Freedom of Movement Houdini and take notes, and at the end his notes will come pretty damn close to mirroring the spell write-up. That's a perfect example of association; the mechanics are the fluff.

Though, you are totally right to point out that the lack of flavor text is a problem. It leads to some reality-bending edge cases. Imagine this example:
1) Put on manacles.
2) Cast freedom of movement (manacles do not come off).
3) Stretch arms out as far as possible to either side (manacles are not damaged).

That makes pretty much zero sense and it's not obvious how you would describe what the characters are seeing in that situation. And if you can't even describe what characters are seeing, dissociation is pretty much a given.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:21 am

DSMatticus wrote:That's a perfect example of association; the mechanics are the fluff.

Ignoring the bit where you kinda missed the point, by your reasoning quoted above, the solution to dissociated mechanics is to not write any fluff at all, because a mechanic is only dissociated if it contradicts existing flavor text. So eye gouge would be fine if only you hadn't read the flavor text. I'm not sure you've thought that perspective through...

My problem with freedom of movement isn't that it's vague, or that it doesn't have flavor text. It's that the function of Freedom of Movement is to negate a variety of, from an in-game perspective, seemingly unrelated effects that are related purely through a metagame concept of "normal movement," which is wonky enough that it actually makes technobabble that sounds anything like the technobabble people make up for other spells rather difficult. According to your very own stated version of FoM, it even makes it difficult to describe what your characters are seeing occur in-game.

DSMatticus wrote: Once you figure out what it mechanically does (the task that seems to be the problem here), you can seriously just say those things verbatim when you're describing what happens to the character.

No, you actually *can't.* You actually provide an excellent counterexample to your own statement in your post:

1) Put on manacles.
2) Cast freedom of movement (manacles do not come off).
3) Stretch arms out as far as possible to either side (manacles are not damaged).

That makes pretty much zero sense and it's not obvious how you would describe what the characters are seeing in that situation. And if you can't even describe what characters are seeing, dissociation is pretty much a given.

...Here you even say "dissociation is pretty much a given" even though above you said it was a perfect example of association. You can't have it both ways (it violates the second law of thought!).

Knowing how something works mechanically doesn't mean you can explain what your characters are seeing in-game.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 1:29 pm

Caedrus wrote:
DSM wrote:That's a perfect example of association; the mechanics are the fluff.
Ignoring the bit where you kinda missed the point, by your reasoning quoted above, the solution to dissociated mechanics is to not write any fluff at all, because a mechanic is only dissociated if it contradicts existing flavor text.

That was not a universal claim. Any spell whose mechanics can and do serve as their own fluff is by definition associated, but not all mechanics can serve as their own fluff, let alone do, and their association depends on the content of the matching fluff.

For example, two spell descriptions:
1) "The target door is unlocked." This is fairly self-descriptive. People are going to read that and think it's like knock and the door just unlocks itself. You could add different fluff (summons tiny imps in the lock to move tumblers?) to change this image, but if you don't add any fluff at all people already have an idea of what their characters are experiencing. This mechanic can serve as its own fluff, and if it does so it must be associated.
2) "The target is rendered prone." This is less so, because there are a ton of things like small ground tremor, vines, telekinesis, mind-affecting, compulsion, temporary slipperiness, so forth and so on. If you don't say something extra, it's not really at all clear what the characters are experiencing. This mechanic cannot serve as its own fluff.

Almost every feature of FoM is self-descriptive; if you want to describe someone who can mechanically attack or wade through water as though it were air, you can just say that and you have fully captured the situation without any inconsistences. Except for the one breakpoint we've discussed, it's very close to an example a la #1 where the mechanics can double as fluff.

Caedrus wrote:[The problem is] that the function of Freedom of Movement is to negate a variety of, from an in-game perspective, seemingly unrelated effects that are related purely through a metagame concept of "normal movement," which is wonky enough that it actually makes technobabble that sounds anything like the technobabble people make up for other spells rather difficult.

Normal movement is not a metagame concept. If you asked a character if he was able to move around normally at the moment, he could answer that question. If you asked him to list things that could stop someone from moving their body around properly, he would say things like "restraints, web, paralysis, {more spells}, moving through water, people trying to grab him, {etc, etc}." It would be pretty conceivable to get a list of impediments that nearly mirrors what FoM will work against.

There is a reason I tried to describe FoM's fluff as a bunch of different effects; that was my point. The way FoM protects you from grapples is probably not the way it helps you move in water. If you think that is somehow unbelievable, well... do you have a problem believing that someone would make Swiss Army knives, a collection of different tools used to perform separate but related tasks rolled into neat one package? D&D even has precedents for spells as a collection of related but different effects: see guards and wards or any prismatic spell ever.

The idea that a wizard would cook up a spell with the sole purpose of guaranteeing his ability to move freely is not at all strange or unbelievable, and the idea that he would build it like a giant collection of different effects to counter the various things that impede movement is not at all unbelievable either.