Most Often, RAW is Simply Right

I'm on record as holding the opinion that if one decides to use rules for something, then you stick to and use those rules. By rules here I mean the written game mechanics + written house rules that add/modify or remove specifics from those rules (created after careful and deep consideration of the effect). One makes character decisions as they wish and the GM will make rulings where no rules apply, but the rules are the rules where and whenever they apply binding to both the player and the GM.

If someone doesn't like the result, they should play a game where they do and even go completely without mechanical systems if their tastes are that extreme.

I recently witnessed an  great actual play example of why I hold this opinion. It came up in my son's online campaign where RAW was overruled in the middle of a combat. Let's review it here.


System Background

The system in use (Age of Heroes) is rather detailed using a hexgrid, minis (actually the D20 virtual desktop in this case) and terrain. A combatant's position is important under the rules in a number of ways. It is a High Pace of Decision system where tactical error or advantage can quickly decide outcomes, thus what a player does and where his is when doing it is of prime importance in determining the outcome.

Terrain is important in the design and in play. It's key characteristic is that terrain is a constraint upon movement and attacking and those constraints defines its role in combat resolution.

The important RAW in this example is that firing missile weapons into melee combat is dangerous.

It's assumed that during the 6 second combat round the player's true position on the hexgrid (while defined) is in truth vague and it's easy for movement during melee to result in the wrong target being stuck. The reason or this vagueness is simple, we can't manage things in real time at the table top- so we manage it based upon a tiny 'time slice' which is further abstracted due to the fact that everything moves in initiative order. What is actually on the map is a tiny bit of the all that movement and events that happened in those six seconds. But it's used as a model for the entire turn because its all we have.

But (and this is really important) dice cover many sins, and their random nature holds all the things we don't directly account for, including exact position.

Such are the limits and joys of a table top simulation.

Lastly, RAW states that in this case any missile fire into their melee well have a 40% change of striking the wrong target. The RAW provides no exception to this.



Actual Play Result

The PCs had reached the root cause of some ritual murders plaguing the kingdom and engaged the evil villains in battle. The most powerful foe was a summoned creature of great size taking up 2 hexes on the battle map. A true danger to the PCs.

One PC was engaged with the monster by a pillar within the room. Another at some distance took aim with his bow and pointed out that his ally (the PC engaged in melee with the monster) had full cover from the pillar (which would normally prevent line of sight and thus range fire that *directly* targeted him), but that the monster had 1 hex clearly in line of sight. Thus the player desired the GM to overrule the RAW concerning firing into melee and rule that the PC could not be hit, but the monster could.

The GM agreed. The analysis struck him as reasonable at the moment and he went with it. I imagine most modern GMs would, even those that are normally RAW players.

Why He Was Horribly Wrong

• The GM ignored the abstraction contained in the game design and made the incorrect assumption that the PC's and snake's position was locked and fixed for the entire combat round.

If that was true (or rather assumed true), the rule for firing into melee would never apply in melee and should be reserved only for Close Combat (i.e. characters wresting in the same hex) as melee combatants always occupy different hexes an most often have different lines of sight . This is clearly not the case in the rules, they say specific that they apply.

Further, if one still insists on considering the locations 'fixed', case the ability of the PC to defend himself would be heavily constrained by his lack of motion vs. his huge foe. Very heavy negatives should have been applied to the character's defenses, but neither the rules (which know that location is vague) nor the GM (who decided location was fixed) called for such. Thus the overruling of RAW was clearly strictly for the PC's benefit- not that of the reality of 'fixed location'. It was at best, half considered.

• The GM altered the purpose of Terrain in the design, which should act as a hindrance to attackers (i.e. providing the monster with cover) and instead turned it into an advantage to the attacker.

 

It Had Horrible Results

In addition to causing the systems abstraction and simulation elements to fail as noted above, it had a number of negative mechanical and campaign results.

• It overpowered Missile Weapons. 

The game design provides missile fire with a number of significant advantages in RAW. Beside the obvious issue of being able to attack at range, they are also harder for most creatures to defend against and have a impressive ability to one-shot most targets on a well rolled attack. One of the offsets to these advantages was the firing into melee constraint. That constraint was removed granting even more advantage to already powerful option.

• It underpowered Large Creatures

The genre the game was designed for sees large creatures as large threats and the system as a point of genre simulation provides them with a number of advantages towards this end. This ruling however overturned that concept, making them weak against missile fire (which was already a weak point for them).

• It resulted in a easy unearned player victory

The Combination of both the above factors led to a quick and easy defeat for what should have been by the RAW a difficult and dangerous encounter with no danger to PCs.

• It Set Precedent.

The players will now expect similar rulings in the future. This will go beyond the permanent increase in missile weapon power and reduction in the danger of large creatures. They will expect similar logic in the future to apply to other areas.

Further the GM will likely (consciously or not) reduce his use of terrain in future battles to make things more even against missile users. This will make future battlefields more boring.

• Unintended Outcomes

The game design never considered this ruling and thus makes no allowance for it. As a result combat will from this point on progress with a element unknown to the system, and thus highly likely to be unbalancing in its final effect.

Conclusion

One last thing to note. Overruling RAW is almost always for player benefit as most players will scream bloody murder if the GM suddenly defeats their character in violation of the rules. Even if they don't, most GM will shy away from rulings against the players in any case, as most are not playing to 'defeat' them.

When added to game designs already biased towards player victory (most rpgs are, otherwise long ran campaigns by RAW would be impossible if every combat had a significant chance of player failure), the end result is a even easier campaign where the players have cheated themselves out both the challenge and the simulation the system offered.

So given all the above, why is overruling RAW so common?

Because the typical GM and player never stops to think about it. Until I pointed out the above, everyone in the group (which including three players from my own campaigns) thought they were being clever and that it was cool. They weren't, and it was wasn't. The real battle they bypassed on the other hand could have been.


Update: How it should have been resolved:

It was pointed out to me that I needed add this, i.e. it would be nice to know what the correct resolution would have been.


Basically the sequence of events needed to be played as written, and the problem would have been resolved without any of the issues above.

In short:

1. Use the Firing into Melee rule as written and determine the true target of the attack. This is required as the first step in any case as the GM needs to know who's defense and situational modifiers to apply- the ones that apply to the PC and the Creature are different.
2. Then resolve the attack using the normal rules and sequence.

Everything would have worked out.

• The abstraction would have remained intact.
• The PC would have been protected by cover from the attack, but his abstracted location still affected the outcome (i.e. there was still a 40% chance he got in the way) and the balance of Missile Weapons and Large creatures would not be harmed.

A person unfamiliar with abstraction might ask how he could get in the way and yet be protected by the pillar. Answering that fully is likely a good subject for an article on abstraction, but let's be simple and just go with the most common reason this would happen:

The archer was aiming for center of mass as is normal for ranged fire, and missed with the arrow going left towards the PC. If not for the Pillar, he would have been in serious danger from the stray arrow.

And as side notes:

Could the attacking PC have aimed for a specific part of the creature by RAW? Yes, but he didn't. Could he have taken some action to reduce the chance of hitting his friend by RAW? Yes, but he didn't.

Each of those options would have modified either the resolution itself, or the explanation of what really happened under the system's abstraction.