Ignoring things that ignore the ignoring of...

[Thaluikhain]

Reverse hyperbole would be hypobole right

I pondered the use of the name "Hypoborea" for an extremely southern location the other day.

[Sashi]

By my definition a 200kg barbell isn't "immune to being picked up by toddlers" it's just heavy.

So if you had a protection system with ranks, like you have rank 1 fire protection that made you take no damage from fires of rank 1 or less, but full damage from rank 2 or greater, and so on, and then the game only ever has rank 1 fire, would this mean that a character with rank 1 fire protection isn't immune to fire?

If the game has rank 2 fires but nothing in the current encounter can deal rank 2 fire damage is the character immune to fire? No. They have rank 1 fire resistance and the game designer forgot to fully implement the fire damage ranking system, making rank 2 fire protection a trap option that nobody should spend real resources to get.

How about the inverse: a character with rank 1 fire protection but every source of fire damage in the game deals rank 3 fire damage. Is this character less vulnerable to fire damage than the character with no ranks in fire protection?

I know how to juggle three balls but not four. If I am currently juggling three balls then is the fourth ball "immune" to being juggled? If I set a ball down and pick the fourth one up did I "bypass" the ball's juggling immunity? If I set all four balls down in front of you can you point to the one ball I can't juggle?

The ambassador from Freedonia has diplomatic immunity and $10,000 in parking tickets. Dirty Harry pulls out his .44 magnum and shoot the ambassador, then shoves the tickets in the bullet hole. Did Harry bypass the ambassador's immunity?

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

...is the character immune to fire? No. They have rank 1 fire resistance and the game designer forgot...

The design intent. No. The presumed design intent changes the functional outcome for you?

I already said this was insanity.

What if they didn't forget. What if they did it intentionally?

Never heard of RAW by any chance?

[Sashi]

They didn't.

They didn't didn't. And let them explain themselves. Don't put words in their mouth.

Especially when those words take the statement I was critical of that was the conclusion of their point on "why Ignore X Immunity is wrong" and turn those words into a total non-sequitur only a babbling moron would end such a point with.

I did did:

If the new subsystem is implemented well, it probably won't even feel like layers of immunity and bypass. Done poorly, you basically just recreate the system you were opting out of (armor vs armor pierce vs mega armor vs mega pierce). Done exceptionally poorly, you begin to parisitize other subsystems (like DnD's tendency to overload the feat system with patch feats).

Mguy is exactly right, and you are the one who out words in someone's mouth.

[Sashi]

What if they didn't forget. What if they did it intentionally?

Then they intentionally made a bad system.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I did did:

Explain it. Properly. In your words.

Precisely how did you go from declaring Ignore Fire Immunity being somehow wrong, to defining a new meaning for immunity that drew a difference between Fire Immunity and Horse archers immunity to melee by its new definition alone. Then in one breath in the next paragraph run both down in the same scale of how obfuscating it felt to you from horse archers good, Ignore Fire Immunity bad, and ending up and the feat subsystem exploding because ???

Why is exploding the feat system there? If not an implied outcome of moving further along the not obfuscating enough to confuse you as much as you like in a form of poor mans slippery slope. Why does the feats system claim even appear at all on that scale?

Is your entirely argument genuinely just "bad rules are bad, I mentioned some, no relation" and at no fucking point did you actually even actually attempt to explain why my claim, that you said you were to be demonstrating was wrong, that Ignore X Immunity is fine, is somehow wrong in any way at all.

It was just the one you called medium bad on an unrelated list of Good (horse archer) to Very poor (feat systems exploding) and you didn't bother saying WHY it was medium bad. And feats systems exploding are just... there... and it isn't because you felt that's the ultimate outcome of not obfuscating the feels enough for you.

Because the only remaining bit of content even there to pry out from in between the nonsense is that you don't like Ignore X Immunity, because it "feels" like the thing it actually does and plainly says it does. Which is one of the worst "feels" arguments I have seen couched in some of the worst semantic waffle and "I didn't actually MEAN anything" backdowns I have seen. And even pretending the feels argument stopped before the exploding feats point does not explain why the exploding feat system is there.

Then they intentionally made a bad system.

So. Why did you say no first and attribute "good" intentions to the designer? Why do you STILL have to attribute bad intentions to them now? Why wasn't RAW ever an option for you?

What did you think you were doing there other than dishonestly trying to deflect the question?

Were you really just overwhelmed about your feelings about the intentions? Did someone not obfuscate enough?

[MGuy]

You are asking them why they included an example of a thing in the sentence where they talk about a thing. This not something out of the ordinary.

You are asking them why they are defining terms so that when they talk about them it is understood what they are referring to. This is actually something that is useful to discussions.

Sashi made the argument that the way you're arguing about [immunity] is so broad as that it can be applied to situations that, as they demonstrate, are not real instances of immunity. So Sashi provided a precise definition for this and then explained what they believe follows from there. You can either argue you have a better and more useful definition or argue about what naturally follows from that definition. You might even complain that Sashi didn't give an example of what it looks like when implemented 'well' and only provided examples of the bad kind. What no one needs is another posting screed about how Sashi's very clear posts were somehow too confusing or insane for specifically you to parse. I'm sitting here on the sidelines and can read, nothing they've presented here is hard to understand.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

You are asking them why they included an example of a thing in the sentence where they talk about a thing. This not something out of the ordinary.

Sentence hey. MGuy. The guy who can read.

And here is me thinking paragraphs mean anything. Topics mean anything. That the context of several sentences strung together means ANYTHING. That when you repeat the form of one sentence opening with the same words in the following sentence it conveys ANY continuity of meaning. That certain words at the beginning of a sentence CLEARLY refer to context directly before the sentence.

But now you are literally saying a sentence defines and justifies its meaning entirely internally that THIS fucking sentence.

"Done exceptionally poorly, you begin to parisitize other subsystems (like DnD's tendency to overload the feat system with patch feats)."

Is JUST a statement that a bad rule is bad and can appear in ANY post in ANY paragraph after ANY other sentences and that is fucking fine because you ACTUALLY said the words out of your mouth...

The thing in the sentence is in the sentence.

You fucking dumbshit scumbag. And your fucking dumbshit illiterate self referential argument that literally justifies every sentence ever placed anywhere in any context.

Your white knight tone trolling doesn't work when you pick shit like this and use justifications so flawed I could drive a truck through them.

Any sentence. In any context. Ever. FFS.

[MGuy]

I don't think you know how english works and no amount of abuse of capital letters is going to help you out of this one. You asked (really demanded an answer to) a question. "Why did you mention X?". You are given an answer "X is mentioned here to give an example of Y". Your reaction is not sensible.

I do not know what is wrong with you today but I think you should probably take a break.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I do not know what is wrong with you today but I think you should probably take a break.

You also project a lot when cornered.

[MGuy]

Alright. So one more try here. No. I'm not projecting. My day has gone fairly well and is about to end soon when I sleep in a few hours. I believe something is the matter with you because your responses to this have seemed unhinged. More so than normal. Effectively you're arguing that you're mad about a thing being mentioned and trying to centralize that as a thing you wish to argue about. You've demanded to know why it was mentioned and are insisting that I am not understanding what was being conveyed despite the fact that it is already confirmed that I had the correct interpretation the first time. So this isn't one of your usual things where you get mad that people are not considering all these abstract and tangential ideas about a rule. You, in these last few posts, are making the argument that you know better about what was posted than both myself and the person who made the post.

So when you say I'm projecting here, think about the position I'm coming from versus you here. I have not made an argument for or against what Sashi posted about. Everything I have posted in response to you was either correctly interpreting the post and further correctly interpreting the post. To be cornered here you would be implying that the battleground you've drawn for yourself is about whether or not I correctly interpreted what was said. That's already been decided. I was correct. You are the one, on the other hand, continuing to make this a 'thing'. I think I know why you're being like this but really it doesn't need to be this way.

Just take a step back and ask yourself a few important questions. "What are you doing here?" Presumably it's to convince someone of something. If so, "Why would you continue to try to convince me, or anyone, that I am wrong about a post the poster already confirmed I was correct about?" How does that, or any of the last few posts you made, even advance your position on the function of immunities? I don't think it does. It just looks like from my perspective you're trying to not really get nailed down actually engaging with the primary point Sashi made against you.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I have not made an argument for or against what Sashi posted about.

Oh for fuck sake just fuck off with your passive aggressive holier than though bullshit. You absolutely were taking a side on an argument. A stupid and deceitful side, and try very hard to defend a frankly malicious attribution of feats systems exploding to the act of daring to use an ignore X mechanic.

Just as the initial act was something I feel offended by because it is obvious fucking intellectual bankruptcy YOUR act of trying to defend it while demanding not to be held accountable for defending it is ALSO on it's bare face offensive.

What you have said, what you have done, is clear as day. And as usual, you think that you can just tone troll your way out of it.

That's already been decided. I was correct.

The guy you defended agreed that you were successful in defending him.

Then for good measure did not actually explain himself just in case it conflicted with your defense.

I don't rate that highly.

You apparently do. Or pretend to, in a manner that is again. Offensive to me in it's shameless stupidity.

Just take a step back and ask yourself a few important questions. "What are you doing here?" Presumably it's to convince someone of something.

And this is also what you do, every time you pull this shit and get called on it. Holier than though tone trolling as an argument.

And yet what are YOU doing here. You SEEM to be trying to convince ME of something.

It isn't working. But you don't hold yourself to your own (laughably fake) standard.

You don't ask yourself why your argument isn't working on me, and seems to be offensive to me. You just keep repeating it couched in heavier tone trolling passive aggression. And I told you what I find offensive. I told you before you even came in to defend Sashi. In fact you explicitly stepped in to defend the specific thing I found offensive.

And what have YOU created by your actions? A page of tone troll language waffle that mostly has allowed Sashi to walk away in the nonsense storm YOU chose to create and refuse to give up. Except of course Sashi just walked straight into more of their own self created insane claim pitfalls straight away anyway. (that must feel great for you in your position as white knight).

How have YOUR actions advanced my position? Any position of anyone's on anything?

When Sashi started arguing that different design intents led to different design outcomes did you shut the fuck up and let some actual content proceed? I mean, one trap option and a bad system are pretty fucking different, a point I assure you we WOULD have been discussing if not for you.

When they said MGuy is right that I was not wrong! did you then let them actually explain ANYTHING in their own words, you know so i could be convinced or so the argument could advance or did YOU immediately step in to white knight more waffle based on nothing?

How has that advanced Sashi's position of not liking the feel of rules that do what they say directly on the label? How has that advanced the cause of "And after Sashi's feelings about not enough obfuscation are hurt feats systems explode, no relation, promise"?

Have YOU achieved anything other than your usual tone trolling performative nonsense? Or did all you manage was to insert yourself into an argument you don't even have the spine to claim you are taking sides on while mostly just derailing it in some incredibly vain and empty attempt to posture as a do gooder?

Again.

[Kaelik]

I have not made an argument for or against what Sashi posted about.

Oh for fuck sake just fuck off with your passive aggressive holier than though bullshit. You absolutely were taking a side on an argument. A stupid and deceitful side, and try very hard to defend a frankly malicious attribution of feats systems exploding to the act of daring to use an ignore X mechanic.

PL..... The post doesn't attribute an exploding feats system to the act of using an ignore mechanic.

It's a statement about a bad kind of design. Earlier in the SAME SENTENCE it says you can have better versions of the same design. It is baffling that you have decided to spend the next 12 posts arguing about exclusively one throwaway line that isn't very interesting and doesn't actually even contradict your main claims in the thread prior to it being made.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

It's a statement about a bad kind of design. Earlier in the SAME SENTENCE it says you can have better versions of the same design.

Look. For fuck sake. Just read a whole paragraph and acknowledge that sentences link together, especially when you have a chain of them opening by referring to "Done Well/Done Poorly/Done Very Poorly". All referring back to the thing being done as whether or not Sashi feels sufficiently distanced from knowing that something is an immunity by a complex enough set of obfuscations. Passing through Ignore X Immunity, and when that is somehow taken further, resulting in "parasitized" feat like subsystems exploding.

This isn't rocket science. The claim being made was clear. Fucking insane. But clear.

[Kaelik]

The claim you believe was being made 1) is not part of or related to any other claim or argument being made, 2) and no one but you can see it.

It's definitely not clear. It's not there. You are willing it to be there because you want to be mad about every single thing someone types in response to you, but it isn't there.

Keep yelling about the other claims actually made in the rest of the post. I think the post is dogshit, but I'm not going to actually try to post about conceptual game design when the only thing that happens is infinite PL yelling, so I'm not going to go into it. But you could very easily have focused on any of the dumb things actually said instead of having an even stupider meta argument where you yell at everyone that this claim was totally made and every other person says it wasn't and no one even argues on the substance about any claim.

[MGuy]

Have YOU achieved anything other than your usual tone trolling performative nonsense? Or did all you manage was to insert yourself into an argument you don't even have the spine to claim you are taking sides on while mostly just derailing it in some incredibly vain and empty attempt to posture as a do gooder?

Have I achieved anything here? Doesn't seem so. Thing is, I tried. What you see as "do-gooder posturing" I really see as trying to be reasonable. Offering alternative, constructive, things to argue about for most is useful for offering them an 'out' of a hole they dug for themselves. On the other hand you've made no attempt to be reasonable or show that you are willing to argue in good faith here. You've accused me of white-knighting, posturing, projecting, being a scumbag, etc. You are mad that I have not taken a side in the face of you denying the very reality of what someone said. If these are your assumptions from the start it means you're are indeed being as bad faith as you are very often accused of.

[merxa]

if you begin with the assumption that nPL has a pathological need to never admit being wrong, it becomes much easier, at least for me, to still have beneficial exchanges.

[Aryxbez]

Neo Phonelobster Prime, In 500 Words or less, clearly, & concisely, what is your Main Argument(s) in regards to the main topic of this Thread? (As defined by the first post).

[Kaelik]

Neo Phonelobster Prime, In 500 Words or less, clearly, & concisely, what is your Main Argument(s) in regards to the main topic of this Thread? (As defined by the first post).

What on earth is the point of this post? If it is because you actually want to know the answer, I can't help but notice that you have picked the method most calculated to not produce that result.

[Sashi]

Explain it. Properly. In your words.

Sure.

Let's use some pseudocode to represent fire immunity:

Code: Select all

If FireImmune = True and AttackDamageType = Fire
Then Damage = 0

So we have a Pyromancer and want to give them the ability to damage fire immune targets. One way would be "Ignore Fire Immunity"

Code: Select all

If FireImmune = True
Then FireImmune = False

Another way would be to deal Radiant damage:

Code: Select all

If FireImmune = True
Then AttackDamageType = Radiant

This is where we are when we get to this quote from you:

In fact. Localized meaning is pretty much one of the values I had just used to point out that "X Immunity" and "Ignore X Immunity" is a better game mechanic than the recently proposed "solution" of the mechanically identical interaction described with "X Immunity" and "Radiance, Scintillating, Cryogenic...etc...".

Which, yeah, true. Treating the above pseudocode as a black box where the only thing you know is what damage type goes in and whether damage is dealt or not, both methods of immunity bypass are mechanically identical. But so what? We're not trying to implement immunity and bypass using the absolute smallest number of words. We're trying to have good and useful game mechanics. This becomes obvious when you get to the next step of having a fire elemental igore the ignoring of fire immunity:

Code: Select all

If FireImmune = False
Then FireImmune = True

What everyone else understands is that this is the natural consequence of a mechanic that just toggles the same variable back and fourth and the problem started at step 2 even though we didn't see it until step 3. That's not "elegant", that's the Argument Clinic sketch and you're John Cleese.

Now there are some cases where that's the "right" solution. Like in MtG where you have damage prevention versus "damage can't be prevented". But it doesn't mean it's always, or even usually, the best solution. In fact, I would call MtG a serious edge case when it comes to rules implementations. Most of the time what you want is a better, more robust starting system. Which is what everyone else in this thread is talking about when referring to Radiant damage. Not only does the radiant solution prevent infinite loops, but it also implies some kind of interesting elemental damage system beyond just "Fire damage yes" versus "fire damage no". If the elemental damage system is an uninteresting stub of worthless rules that's bad, but that's also a "bad rules are bad" tautology and why would someone intend to make bad rules. The intent is to have good rules about elemental damage that work well. To quote a great philosopher of game design:

Why do you STILL have to attribute bad intentions to them now?

My point about about horse archers is that your argument has simplified and abstracted things to a level that compresses horse archers to a function like this:

Code: Select all

If HorseArcher = True and AttackDamageType = Melee
Then Damage = 0

Which just isn't what anyone is talking about when they refer to the "horse archer problem". The horse archer is an emergent property of the tactical minigame, not a variable that players toggle off and on. Dealing with the horse archer means interacting with the entire tactical minigame, not just taking an ability that sets "HorseArcher = False". This is my point about "feeling like" layers of immunity. Even if the practical outcome of your tactical minigame is that horse archers are immune to melee damage and the solution is knocking them off their horse that probably won't feel like you're toggling the "horse archer" variable and the closer it approximates flipping the variable the worse your rules probably are. Maybe you've implemented your system poorly and everyone realizes that the tactical minigame has a second minigame layer of "deal with the horse archer". Maybe you've screwed up and the spellcasting system has been parisitized into a vehicle for casting "paralyze horse". Feats aren't the only system that can be parisitized, just obvious example of possibly the most parisitized system in any RPG ever.

That's all I'm saying. Immunity = getting to opt out of a minigame. If you implement anti-immunity as putting them back in the minigame that's not "elegant" or even really "immunity", it's a new, probably shitty, minigame that's basically just the hokey-pokey ("You put the fire damage in, you take the fire damage out...").

But maybe that's what it's all about.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Let's use some pseudocode to represent fire immunity

This is going to be good... i haven't worked, or coded, for decades now, but you know I'm a Computer Scientist right?

And your pseudo code. It kinda hurts. I'm not sure I can fully guess exactly what you are doing here but you seem to be getting something really fucked up in your understanding of what functions and variables are.

And it does come around and bite you on the ass.

I will overlook the single equals signs. Pretty sure some of the new street jive languages these days allow that sort of thing. I will even overlook the fact that these functions and variables just sort of exist and do not properly refer to target or attack objects in any obvious way. Though that really doesn't help.

Let's use some pseudocode to represent fire immunity:

Code: Select all

If FireImmune = True and AttackDamageType = Fire
Then Damage = 0

So we have a Pyromancer and want to give them the ability to damage fire immune targets. One way would be "Ignore Fire Immunity"

Code: Select all

If FireImmune = True
Then FireImmune = False

And this is where it starts to break down because of that.

Ignore Fire Immunity as discussed in this thread does not turn fire immunity off. It bypasses it.

Your code cannot do that. Because your first code fragment doesn't check attacks for any variables other than type and any values other than fire and fire immunity.

The correct way to write in Ignore Fire Immunity is actually to go back and CHANGE your first fragment to check for it. This would, among other things, make it more honest to the actual arguments presented on the thread.

But it would also demonstrate a better knowledge of good coding. When you need to add new functionality you can't just patch it with a piece of dirty new code, sometimes you have to go and change stuff.

And this IS a dirty piece of code that's broken your program.

Because you just fucking turned fire immunity off something Ignore X Immunity does not actually do. I will assume that despite the lack of attribution that wasn't a universal variable, but it's still not even good to do that on the target object alone. You don't even think to turn it back on again when you are done. You DO know that regular fire attacks still exist in the same game as ones with Ignore Fire Immunity right?

I thought attributing Ignore Fire Immunity exclusively to a universal passive that upgrades all of a characters fire attacks was enough of an offensive claim. This pseudo code technically describes something significantly more far reaching.

And from both an actual coding and a game rules perspective do you even grasp the timing issues you are creating here?

Another way would be to deal Radiant damage:

Code: Select all

If FireImmune = True
Then AttackDamageType = Radiant

And then it gets worse.

The Radiant damage "solution" that's been argued about all thread was a dual damage type solution. But you didn't add a damage type you changed it. Even if you got THIS bit of "pseudo code" right and represented it as an actual dual damage type your initial code would have made that NOT work the way the Radiant solution was presented because your code would ignore all damage from any attack with the damage type fire even if it also had Radiant.

To represent the Radiant damage argument properly you ALSO need to go back and rewrite your initial code fragment.

Changing the damage type was discussed only fleetingly before Radiant ever came up and had less that two much shorter posts dedicated to it.

But this pseudo code is STILL wrong. Because again, timing issues, only now it's not even a matter of "when are you turning this back to Fire?".

Now there is the issue of when are you turning it to Radiant in the first place. What IS this a code fragment of. The previous ones were I think meant to be representations of game rules in operation. THIS mixes up game rules in operation with someone deciding to activate their ability to change a damage type.

What you end up with is a code fragment that never actually changes the damage type of the attack UNLESS the target is immune to fire and in fact CANNOT change the damage type unless the target is immune to fire. And that is just weird.


This is where we are when we get to this quote from you:

Which, yeah, true. Treating the above pseudocode as a black box where the only thing you know is what damage type goes in and whether damage is dealt or not, both methods of immunity bypass are mechanically identical. But so what?

OK so. Why use pseudo code then?

We're not trying to implement immunity and bypass using the absolute smallest number of words.

And code doesn't precisely try and use the smallest number of words either. Real code WOULD check a whole bunch of variables on an attack while processing it and would easily account for both the Ignore X Immunity AND the Radiant dual type examples, which your code fails to.

Because real code uses longer or nested conditionals. Something your code desperately needs.

igore the ignoring of fire immunity:

Code: Select all

If FireImmune = False
Then FireImmune = True

You are going further than my claim that just one Ignore X Immunity is fine. That's OK I have also said two is probably fine too. BUT if you need to go HERE to prove your point and cannot do so otherwise, you concede that ONE layer of Ignore X immunity is fine.

But back to the code.

Again. This needs to be another tag/variable attached to attack. And it needs your initial code fragment to be further changed to accommodate.

Again Super Fire Immunity, does not turn on Fire immunity. It is it's OWN thing. It is part of your more complex conditional statement that you need go back and actually change.

If you want to represent Super Fire Immunity as some extra trait of regular fire immunity you can. But if you were writing that in code terms you would do that by changing Fire Immunity from a boolean to an integer and testing as such against a more complex Ignore Fire Immunity in your more complex conditional statement... Aaaand there you have the example Merxa made on page 2.

Which in coding terms is almost identical to just adding Super Immunity and Super Ignore Immunity tags and properly checking them, only it's better code because it is more easily extensible if you later decide to add in new layer of super immunity.

a mechanic that just toggles the same variable back and fourth

It doesn't toggle any variable back and forth. It is a tag on an attack that you check while processing damage. All of them are. In all the presented arguments.

Even in your pseudo code it doesn't toggle back and forth, because you forget to do the forth and just tog it the once.

That's not "elegant", that's the Argument Clinic sketch and you're John Cleese.

Code elegance and TTRPG rule elegance are two different things. Good thing for both of us because I now know you can't write elegant code, and frankly doubt if I can anymore either.

But elegant TTRPG rules? Immune to Fire and Ignore Fire Immunity as presented are rules which rather clearly communicate their full function to the average English speaking player in their titles Something the Radiant damage solution not only does not do, but has been defended as INTENTIONALLY not doing.

Now there are some cases where that's the "right" solution.

I've never defended Ignore X Immunity as the right solution for every TTRPG. I just defended it as a good one that would be fine to use.

If you want to have to tool in your system to SOMETIMES represent the "Hahaha I am immune to your fire" encounter and then SOMETIMES represent the "hahahaha I am able to damage you with fire ANYWAY"/ Then Ignore X Immunity is the most direct, transparent and efficient tool to enable those.
If for some reason you really do look at that fire immunity scene from Bastard and think "that looks like a player having too much fun with things, I had better make sure my system excludes all tools to achieve that, my game will NEVER be metal". OK. (Of course you would completely undermine that by using the Radiance method as an attempt to sneak the exact same scene into your game anyway).

But the point is those are FLAVOR decisions. There is nothing mechanically bad about Ignore X Immunity. It works very effectively and it's only consequence is that it literally does the thing it says on the can.

Most of the time what you want is a better, more robust starting system. Which is what everyone else in this thread is talking about when referring to Radiant damage.

Loading your system down with more damage type tags, then loading more damage types onto more attacks to represent bypass functionality without saying the words, is NOT a more robust starting system. It is a messier, more complex one. There might be reasons to do it, but avoiding the words "Ignore X Immunity" is not among those reasons. In fact, as I have previously mentioned, the Radiance "solution" does not even ward off the possibility of using that tag in conjunction with it.

Not only does the radiant solution prevent infinite loops

Stop right there. That's that thing again. You are attributing something to Ignore X Immunity that you aren't attributing to your preferred alternatives despite it being unrelated to either.

You haven't even mentioned infinite loops anywhere in this post except here, where it is an unsupported assertion applied only to one alternative.

You used pseudo code. You never generated an infinite loop with it. You probably should have tried that if that's the claim you want to make. Instead you generated potential timing conflicts and failed to represent any of the alternatives faithfully.

but it also implies some kind of interesting elemental damage system beyond just "Fire damage yes" versus "fire damage no".

Nothing about Ignore X Immunity has any bearing of how many different things X can be. Nothing about refusing to use Ignore X Immunity has any bearing on how many types of X there can be.

Choosing to REPLACE the functionality of Ignore X Immunity with additional damage types certainly implies more types of X. But if bypassing immunity is not interesting, then again it does not suggest the final number of types was a more interesting one and again implies that it in fact might not be.

So AGAIN you are attributing to Ignore X Immunity a bad thing that is unrelated to it (not having an interesting enough number of damage types in the system) and NOT testing your alternatives for that criticism.

I might even suggest that if you want you damage types to be "more interesting" you might want them to do more things and interact with more things. Like say. Ignore X Immunity. And that if they have less interactions, then just adding moar damage types might not be very interesting.

But that is as this too often boils down to, also a FLAVOR argument. If you ask how many damage types is interesting people will seriously honest to god give you numbers. Batshit, very personal, completely unfounded numbers. And except for the most insane of them. The majority of them would all be fine arbitrarily selected goals for your system. Even "not sure, I'll start writing up the things I want to represent and see where it takes me" is pretty ok.

My point about about horse archers is that your argument has simplified and abstracted things to a level that compresses horse archers to a function like this:

Code: Select all

If HorseArcher = True and AttackDamageType = Melee
Then Damage = 0

Oh god the pseudo code is back. Look. That might look to you like the same code fragment you tried to use to represent Fire Immunity. (Which if you might recall crashed and burned pretty badly).

But natural English and code are different. The code to represent horse archer needs to account for again, a complex conditional statement including a lot more variables.

But it outputs the result of no damage.

And, in the English language, if a character cannot attack you. You are immune to their attacks.

Nothing about the word immunity refers to subsystems in any way. Nothing about the word immunity in any way guarantees that that immunity continues to apply in all scenarios.

It IS however interesting to me that it is kinda how petulant children work. A lot of the "but it said I was IMMUNE" arguments in this thread give off a lot of "you poor baby" energy.

Which just isn't what anyone is talking about when they refer to the "horse archer problem". The horse archer is an emergent property of the tactical minigame, not a variable that players toggle off and on.

Odd that. It's like your pseudo code was a wild misrepresentation.

This is my point about "feeling like" layers of immunity. Even if the practical outcome of your tactical minigame is that horse archers are immune to melee damage

So. If when the practical outcome of the specific scenario IS immunity to melee damage... then you can say the words with me "THEN they are immune to melee damage".

and the solution is knocking them off their horse

No. If you COULD knock them off their horse they weren't in a scenario where they were immune. They are in a scenario where they are immune when melee guys does not have any such option. That option, gaining the ability to knock them off their horses, that itself is the equivelent of the Ignore X Immunity ability that you are grasping for here.

Fire Guy vs Fire Immunity guy vs Ignore Fire Immunity Fire guy
Melee Guy vs Horse Archer guy vs Knock Guys Off Horses Melee Guy

That's the comparison you are refusing to accept. And it's a comparison of outcomes, not how you get there. The real friends are NOT the journey we had on the way. Not for the plane English sentence "Horse archers are immune to melee".

... probably won't feel like you're toggling the "horse archer" variable

Feels arguments are only flavor related. And the "but I need more obfuscation" is not just flavor, its very subjective and absolutely damaging to discussions.

Because you can use "I need more obfuscation for my feels" pretty much on anything. Personally I can see straight through it when something turns up that beats me sufficiently in threat range (hello actually relevant terminology) that my guy can never fight back. What's your problem and why should I care? What about you liking it when YOU cannot realize that is happening to you has anything to do with damage type immunity mechanics?

You are literally boiling it down to not liking game mechanics that are not emergent results of other game mechanics or that give functional information transparently and up front.

But you can't have emergent game mechanics without other game mechanics. You can't have Horse Archers without a game mechanic that tells you your movement speed or attack range, and it very possible tells you that on its label.

And if I want to I can complain I don't like "Range 5" as a game mechanic because it doesn't obfuscate it's function enough for MY feelings.

Worse just about everyone who has made this feelings argument against transparency has been unable to stop themselves from making a complexity claim as well. You certainly did, and still are.

You can have your feelings argument, which I will dismiss on grounds of excessive subjectivity. But you cannot have it AND claim that simpler more transparent mechanics that are not the result of emergent complexity from much bigger sets of rules are MORE prone to the failings of inserting too much complexity into the game at the same time. Those are contradictory arguments.

If you need your obfuscation because something is too simple for you, you cannot ALSO eat your my idea is less complex cake too.

Feats aren't the only system that can be parisitized, just obvious example of possibly the most parisitized system in any RPG ever.

Hey look an appearance of the thing your post was supposed to be explaining.

You've given it a lot more context now. You've just gone through in detail. You've been saying you like the obfuscating feelings complex systems with emergent results give you. You've been riling against simpler more transparent mechanics.

Now Since sentences stand alone and paragraphs and context have no meaning we cannot say for sure why that sentence appears where it does, or what it could possibly mean that it, again, appears in an argument that seems to be saying "big complex systems good, simple transparent ones bad... then feats explode".

So maybe you need to clarify. Maybe in brief instead of after a bunch of pseudo code that will make even TTRPG games throw exceptions.

Are you saying that if you write your Immunity interactions like Ignore X Immunity you will be CLOSER to overloading feat systems than if you instead wrote those same interactions with the complexity that is needed to generate the horse archer?

You could even just quote that question and say yes or no.

If you implement anti-immunity as putting them back in the minigame that's not "elegant"

Aside from your redefinition of "immunity" you are now I think redefining minigame.

You have totally muddled it with subsystem when talking about horse archer, and you totally muddled both with a single mechanical interaction when you declared that ONE SINGLE LAYER of Immunity bypass consituted a subsystem (and now a minigame).

Not everything is a minigame. Not everything should be. Failing anything else. Your "minigame" needs to be built out of something and it cannot in fact be mini-games all the way down.

But again to clarify. You appear to have just also asserted that by virtue of meeting your very low bar to qualify as a minigame a thing cannot be "elegant". And by extension of your other claims, it also isn't efficient, or simple and if it is transparent that is bad.

So does that mean you are actually asserting that "minigames" CANNOT be elegant?

Or efficient. Or simple. And shouldn't be transparent?

That's certainly an "interesting" assertion (since words are up for redefinition).

[Sashi]

The irony here is that you just made a phenomenally bad faith argument but it doesn't feel that way to you because you obfuscated it through enough willful misinterpretation.

[MGuy]

In an effort to really trying to understand what this is for Sashi I do have a couple of questions. I don't know pseudo code so I won't really engage with that much outside of trying to derive what your actual point is. Before I ask let me check to see if I understand what the overarching argument you're intending to make actually is.

From what I'm understanding here what you are saying is that by reducing 'immunity', for the purposes of this discussion, to only refer to a binary toggle (one that only focuses on de jure immunity to a specific game element), you intend to eliminate circumstantial factors (that might de facto act as practical immunity without actually engaging in that binary) from the discussion. Mostly because it is not what people actually think of as real immunity when discussing a mechanic (or irl) and the inclusion of circumstantial factors leads to tangential discussions about game elements that are not specifically about the immunity toggle.

With this in mind you are saying then that an ability that gives immunity from a specific game element (in this case: fire damage) effectively allows a target with that immunity to not have to engage in that element but once direct immunity bypass is established then that simple opt out option becomes more complicated and is worsened by the existence of these immunity bypass abilities. You believe this because there are a number of existing games where once immunity bypass abilities became a thing it can lead to negative results. Your main argument for this is the, in your mind, doing this will likely lead to the emergence of numerous avenues for bypassing immunities. You also believe that most implementations then ended up being bad with only a few edge cases that ended up functioning.

On the other hand you believe that dual damage types bypassing this immunity is alright because it is not 'actually' bypassing immunity but instead getting through because it is comes with an additional different tag that is not stopped by that immunity. In the example case radiant fire damage would bypass fire damage immunity because of the radiant factor.

I can agree to the first bit for the sake of centering a discussion on a more narrow topic. Though I don't personally think that flying creatures = immune to melee myself when I'm thinking about an 'immunity' tag, I don't see a problem in pointing that out at the outset.

What I'm not sure about is what follows from that. Given that what I'm assuming your concern is (that the existence of fire immunity gives way to something like an arms race that complicates what would otherwise be opting out of engaging with a specific game element), how exactly is the use of dual tags much different than that in actual practice?

In the abstract I can agree that radiant part of the radiant fire bypassing fire immunity is different than straight up fire immunity, that difference would not be all that important to me effectively at the table. As a player, practically, I'd know that this is my bypass fire immunity button even if, strictly speaking, I'm just doing another type of damage.

My guess is that the immediate answer to that is the assumption that 'radiant' might also have its own set of relevant interactions with the game making it more interesting as a damage bypass just because of the potential. However, if we are going by what games have done in the past then using damage types as your example wouldn't help here because most of the time that's all it really is... A damage type. While there are ways you 'could' make that more complex, historically, that has not been the case. So practically, in game, it's essentially having one or two types of immunity bypass in the same ability. Whether or not this is the case I think any implementation of this would put a designer in the spot where they are heavily pushing their players to get the dual tags whenever possible which might be considered a worse outcome than just placing a fire immunity bypass on a few abilities. How would you avoid this?

[Sashi]

I don't know pseudo code so I won't really engage with that much outside of trying to derive what your actual point is.

Hey, congrats on being better with pseudocode than a computer scientist. The point of pseudocode is to be understandable, not compilable or to follow a specific syntax. PL snarking on it for not having C++ style logical tests (== instead of =) is straight-up asinine.

You believe this because there are a number of existing games where once immunity bypass abilities became a thing it can lead to negative results. Your main argument for this is the, in your mind, doing this will likely lead to the emergence of numerous avenues for bypassing immunities. You also believe that most implementations then ended up being bad with only a few edge cases that ended up functioning.

Incorrect. I do not believe immunity + ignore immunity is bad because it's been done poorly before. I even cited an example of a system (MtG) that has happily implemented immunity (prevent all damage) and  ignore immunity (damage can't be prevented). But I think it's also really important to recognize that M:tG rules are a state machine built to handle these effects and even then they are very careful to keep these exceptions to exceptions at a minimum (there is no "prevent damage that can't be prevented"), and I do think that's for good reason.

On the other hand you believe that dual damage types bypassing this immunity is alright because it is not 'actually' bypassing immunity but instead getting through because it is comes with an additional different tag that is not stopped by that immunity. In the example case radiant fire damage would bypass fire damage immunity because of the radiant factor.

I think it's okay because it's not an exception to an exception. The dragon is immune to fire damage but not fire+radiant. I deal fire+radiant damage, the dragon takes damage without my adding an exception of "immune to fire except when I feel like it" to their immunity. This is no different than if I dealt slashing damage to the dragon. Fire Immunity isn't an exception to slashing damage. Armor piercing isn't forcefield piercing. That is the most straightforward English interpretation of those effects.

I can agree to the first bit for the sake of centering a discussion on a more narrow topic. Though I don't personally think that flying creatures = immune to melee myself when I'm thinking about an 'immunity' tag, I don't see a problem in pointing that out at the outset.

The funny thing is that I thought I was making an absurd reduction. But, in fact, that is exactly what M:tG does. A flying creature is immune to being blocked by nonflying creatures. Giant Spider can block flying creatures. That's not an emergent property of flying speeds and attack ranges, just straightforward tag interactions. MtG even has a horse archer (reach, horsemanship) implemented through keywords and not emergent effects of movement and range rules. (yes, I did end up TVtropsing through the MtG fan wiki despite only ever being a casual player and having no itention to play the game in the future)

In the abstract I can agree that radiant part of the radiant fire bypassing fire immunity is different than straight up fire immunity, that difference would not be all that important to me effectively at the table. As a player, practically, I'd know that this is my bypass fire immunity button even if, strictly speaking, I'm just doing another type of damage.

Absolutely true. Part of the disagreement is how to handle and evaluate rules that are functionally equivalent. At this point PL has tried to defend "ignore X immunity" by using designer intent, ignoring design intent in favor of RAW, massively general solutions, tightly specific solutions, emergent mechanics, avoiding emergent mechanics, accomplishing something for flavor reasons, and ignoring flavor. Given all that, I want to address what I believe, is PL's thesis for defending ignore ignore ignore mechanics:

But elegant TTRPG rules? Immune to Fire and Ignore Fire Immunity as presented are rules which rather clearly communicate their full function to the average English speaking player in their titles Something the Radiant damage solution not only does not do, but has been defended as INTENTIONALLY not doing.

You insist that if you put "Fire Immunity" on a monster it is a shocking betrayal to ever discover fire they are not immune to, especially from a specialist fire wizard. To which I say first of all "You poor baby" and second of all it said "Fire Immunity" not "Fire Wizard Immunity" and third of all, most important of all, the ability that bypasses fire immunity should say "Ignores Fire Immunity" and ITSELF has localized meaning.

Got that? "Fire Immunity" is great because it communicates the full function in its title and you're whiny baby for expecting "Fire Immunity" to apply against fire attacks from fire wizards. Not only is it serious special pleading to ask that we accept the clearest interpretation of "Fire Immunity" is not "Immune to all Fire" but it's also self-negating, because "Fire Immunity" and "Ignore Fire Immunity" cannot both clearly communicate their full function at the same time, one of them must be incomplete despite PL trying to pretend they do with the whole "localized meaning" argle bargle. A rule that is negated in some circumstances by another rule cannot be self-contained. That is right up there with "The next statement is true" "the prior statement is false" as a self-evident paradox.

My guess is that the immediate answer to that is the assumption that 'radiant' might also have its own set of relevant interactions with the game making it more interesting as a damage bypass just because of the potential. However, if we are going by what games have done in the past then using damage types as your example wouldn't help here because most of the time that's all it really is... A damage type. While there are ways you 'could' make that more complex, historically, that has not been the case. So practically, in game, it's essentially having one or two types of immunity bypass in the same ability. Whether or not this is the case I think any implementation of this would put a designer in the spot where they are heavily pushing their players to get the dual tags whenever possible which might be considered a worse outcome than just placing a fire immunity bypass on a few abilities.

Absolutely true. But by PL's own criteria we can't discard the elemental damage system out of hand just because games often do it poorly. After all, I can't say Ignore X immunity is bad because feats suck (which I never said, but PL said I said, so I guess I'm pretending I said it) so we also can't say Fire+Radiant damage is bad just because DnD's elemental damage system sucks. Presumably, a really really well done Avatar: The Last Airbender RPG would super care about the difference between fire/lightning/lava attacks and dragons could be immune to fire but have to redirect lightning and be trapped by lava. A related question is that if the game system you're using is so bad at dealing with damage types why are you trying to make a pyromancer in it?

How would you avoid this?

I would avoid it by going back to the design intent, which is to let pyromancers deal with red dragons and fire demons by being awesome instead of by running away, but also not be able to kill fire elementals with fire. Possible solutions to that would be a) errata all the monsters I want pyromancers to be able to kill with fire to have fire resistance instead of immunity, and maybe give demons and red dragons immunity to "nonmagical fire" or something if I still need them to bathe in lava flows b) give pyromancers a completely different way of dealing with fire immune creatures. Animal empathy or turn undead but for fire types, lightning attacks, whatever c) just accept that pyromancers are boned if they meet an angry red dragon the same way they're boned when meeting an angry fire elemental, d) accept that I have made a game that is not conducive to pyromancers and don't push the concept by making a pyromancer class. e) Anything other than "Dark Schneider is so awesome he can kill Fire Demons using fire! How? Don't care, I decided he can so now he just can. #elegance"

What I'm thinking about is the difference between rules, emergent effects, and exceptions. That's what I really mean by "minigame" or "subsystem": a group of rules that work together to create an emergent effect. The question is what to do if your subsystem has an unintended effect? You can either tweak the rules, or make an exception to the rules. But what if your exception makes new unintended effects? Once again, you can either tweak that exception, or make an exception to the exception. But what if the exception to the exception has unintended consequences? More exceptions? My point is simple: one layer of exceptions to the rules is possibly okay as a stand-alone effect that does exactly what it says on the tin. But if you get unintended effects from your exception the solution is probably to reexamine your initial rules and/or tweak how your first exception works because evaluating a bunch of interlocking effects for their emergent outcomes isn't an exception to rules, it's just rules which you can put another layer of exceptions on.

[Foxwarrior]

The point of pseudocode is to be understandable, not compilable or to follow a specific syntax. PL snarking on it for not having C++ style logical tests (== instead of =) is straight-up asinine.

Toggling someone else's fire immunity back and forth during an attack is a really weird thing to do... Might be funny to discuss that sort of mechanic, but it almost nothing to do with piercing immunities.