Know Thy Enemy: The Narrative C*ck Block

Recently, I was reading on the wizards community forums and a question got posed that got me thinking: "How do you make sense of knocking prone a Gelatinous Cube?"

I've heard this argument before, mostly as a way of claiming that 4E has issues with its mechanics because "logically" a limbless, shapeless creature would not be able to be "knocked prone." In the same vein I have also heard (at my own tables no less) that a mindless undead creature should "logically" be immune to all fear effects, or that a halfling rogue shouldn't "logically" be able to daze a giant.

All of these issues stem from the same enemy - The Narrative C*ck Block. Basically, this enemy will nerf your character choices because in our world (AKA, "IRL", Earth, Real Life) such things seem very close to plausable, but still seem impossible. Or on the flip side, this enemy can rear his ugly head because some author somewhere said that it shouldn't work. But really, this issue stems mostly from certain game elements having misleading names, or those names being taken too literally. But to me, the biggest problem with this enemy is that it sits really close to a game-play virtue: verisimilitude.

It is sometimes hard to tell when verisimilitude is taken too far and turns into a Narrative C*ck Block. But basically, when a player (or DM) begins making up narrative reasons for a character's (or monster's) mechanical abilities to not function as expected - you've taken verisimilitude too far.

In past editions, and in fact in many other systems, the designers attempt to give individual mechanical definitions to all the possible things that could happen in a situation. This system can lead to either bloated rule sets or to the players having to create new rules for each situation. Neither, I'd like to point out, is an "incorrect" way to play and can carry their own rewarding play experiences.

However, 4E took a different route. Instead of attempting to model reality with slightly different rules for each scenario, the designers took a more abstract route. They created a set of "conditions", or generic negative mechanical packages, that could be applied to a creature. These conditions were given names that would correspond to a narrative situation in which they would mostly likely apply to. In this way, a single condition could be applied to a wide variety of situations in which a similar set of mechanical penalties could be utilized. Plus, its more evocative to say prone, rather then "Condition Set 14."

So for the condition of "prone" you've got to look at it as a condition that imposes a -2 penalty to attack rolls; grants adjacent enemies combat advantage, and imposes a -2 penalty on ranged attacks made against the target, instead of "the creature is laying on the ground."

It is a bit of a shift. But when looked at in this light, it makes sense that a power would be able to apply a -2 penalty to a Gelatinous Cube, allowing adjacent allies to gain combat advantage against it, and impose a -2 penalty to all ranged attacks against it. This is called, in game terms, making it "prone" for ease of use. And this can be said of any condition, or other game element.

So, to make sure you don't push your games verisimilitude into Narrative C*ck blocker-y - don't get hung up on the name of a game element, look at what that game element does and dust off your imagination! You can come up with a narrative way to explain all those mechanical penalties!

Sure, you really can't make a limbless, amorphous blob fall flat on its face. But the same attack that may do that to a humanoid creature, when employed against an ooze, might just make the creature jiggle violently, slowing its movement and making it easier to hit up close, and harder to hit from far way, until it takes a move action to stop the jiggling of course!

The important thing to remember is that you shouldn't penalize your players (or yourself) for taking a mechanical element, because it doesn't immediately "make sense" to you how it could "logically" work. Or if you are going to, make sure to tell your players in advance - so they can weigh that mechanical option against other, less situational options.