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Maxperson wrote:

Oh, right. My bad. I assumed that talking about reasons why a person would be in a position to be hit by a FUMBLE/CRITICAL FAILURE would be on topic in a FUMBLE/CRITICAL FAILURE thread.

Yes, that was a pretty foolish mistake to make since in D&D combat nobody can be out of position by more than 2.5 feet, given that everybody is standing in a five-foot square.

Moreover, Pat Tillman, having been killed by a sniper who mistook him for an insurgent, is not a good example of someone getting hit by a critical miss roll or being out of position. The person was trying to hit Corporal Tillman and did in fact hit his target. (His target just wasn't who he thought.)

So yes, your reference to Pat Tillman was atrociously misplaced. Your continued attempt to backpedal and pretend that Pat Tillman has anything to do with critical miss rules is astoundingly tactless.

Armor class is not an abstraction.

Wha?! Are you kidding me? Armor Class is every bit the abstraction as hit points because they are intimately related. Since in D&D, a "hit" doesn't represent an actual physical blow, there's no reason that plate armor and chain armor should have different AC, except that they abstractly convey the likelihood of preventing a combat-ending injury. The fact that Dexterity/Intelligence modifies your AC means that mishaps and slips absolutely are part and parcel of Armor Class (and Reflexes). Dextrous and Intelligent people are less likely to slip-up than clumsy, stupid people. That's why negative Dex modifiers also modify your AC (assuming your Intelligence doesn't compensate for it).

I can't believe you really think Armor Class is not an abstraction.

At best, you can say it's partially abstract.

That's a meaningless phrase. You can't be partially pregnant and you can't be "partially abstract". Armor Class is an abstract representation of a combatant's ability to avoid the physical blow that would otherwise take him out.

Yes. If you slip and go PRONE, you take an armor class penalty. Simply slipping does not give any penalties to AC.

You can't slip and go prone unless you stand on difficult terrain. Therefore minor slippages are accommodated in the physical ability to avoid damage altogether: that abstraction is called "Armor Class" and "Reflex".

do you think the DMs are too stupid to realize that a rule that only applies to the players and not the DM will create ill feelings?

What are you talking about? How is your statement responsive to what you quoted? (Hint: It's not.)

What D&D combat is or is not, has no bearing on whether or not players might want more(not total) realism in combat, or even fumble/critical tables that are not realistic at all.

Actually, the abstract nature of D&D combat has bearing on whether a justification for critical hit rules for "realism", "grit" or "depth" is sensible. Because D&D combat is expressly premised on an abstract method of conflict resolution, arbitrary inclusions of penalties does not make combat more "realistic". A 49% chance of surviving combat is no more or less realistic than a 51% chance. Difficulty is not realism, though many people seem to think that it is, often when using the words "dark", "gritty", "deep" or "realistic" to justify their inclusion.

Such people should stop making such fallacious arguments and just acknowledge that the reason they make natural ones more punishing than in the default combat rules is that they find it fun to make combat more difficult for the players. There's nothing wrong with that and at it has the added benefit of being an accurate description of critical miss rules.

Such things don't exist in D&D combat, because WoTC didn't put them there, and ONLY for that reason.

Simple declarative statements are no substitute for a reasoned supported argument. Nor does the random capitalization of words hide the fallacies inherent therein.

In other words, writing it doesn't make it true.

The fact that Dexterity is a component of AC and Reflex indicates that the ability to avoid minor mishaps has already been accommodated in combat rules. You are wrong to assert that accidents are not already a part of the abstract rules.

I've seen other games that did have them there, and they weren't designed to be utterly realistic, either.

Me too. And the ruleset as a whole determined the difficulty of combat. Were you to remove critical miss rules from a system designed to include them, you would be making combat easier for players. You still wouldn't be making combat more or less "realistic" in a game using an abstract method of conflict resolution.

Really, it's like rolling dice to see if a knight can take a pawn in chess because "realistically" every so often a pawn could kill a horseman. It may be fun to add a random element to chess, but it's not more "realistic". Same with D&D.

I have not misspoken on this subject yet.

Ah, declarative sentences, is there no fallacy you can't gloss over?