What to do with semi-opinion questions in dnd-5e?

Question

I am a little uncomfortable with some dnd-5e questions. I would guess what I am going to address in this question might be an issue with any other RPG which is still in the process of being updated/improved, but I will restrict myself only to dnd-5e; as it is the most obvious example on the site at the moment.

Please have a look at the following Q&A: Can a weapon be both adamantine and silvered?

The question is reasonable, but the answer is bothering me. The core point of the answer is that there is no current rule which is inhibiting the silvering process to be applied to adamantine weapons. But there is a difference between saying "no rules forbid this" and "yes it can be done".

Now I feel part of the reason why we, the answerers, equate the above two statements is the stance of D&D 5e designers themselves. They try to maintain that the rules are all encompassing, in the sense that if something is not expressly forbidden, it should be doable. However, this is such a bold statement to make: a couple of gaming books cannot cover the laws of an entire fantasy multiverse, the answers to some questions are better left to the gamers themselves. (See this question as a 'trivial' example of why we don't expect that the rules are meant to cover everything about the gaming world, such as basic real-world optics.) One must accept that some things are bound to have been missed by the game designers.

Note that it appears that they themselves occasionally reinterpret the rules as they see fit, but strangely there appears to be a culture of encouraging everyone else to follow RAW strictly. (When I say everyone else, it is really the community here at rpg.se, as I do not follow any other forums.)

Let me illustrate my point with two concrete examples:

1. https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/629526633683103745 See how Mike Mearls himself implies that the auras of multiple paladins do not stack, but how he is "diplomatically" corrected by Jeremy Crawford. It seems obvious to me that the two of them think (or thought) differently on the topic.

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWOsPhKNyPk#t=27m20s See how Jeremy Crawford is "retracting" the possibility of true polymorphing creatures to magic items.

I don't know if anyone else is bothered by this. I feel that if the answers were given in the style of "nothing RAW bars you from doing that", the site would become "more neutral". I just want to know what people (particularly the older residents of the site who might have experienced these sort of things in other games) think. If enough others think similarly, is there anything that can be done to encourage the more neutral style?

Answer 1

As a matter of principle — in terms of what the site is for, how it's been designed, and how it works in practice — we cannot legislate how people answer questions. The minimum and only standard that an answer has to meet is that it be on-topic.

We have different (and complex) standards for questions, but these don't and can't apply to answers. The idea is that if the question is fine then the answers will be too, so we make sure questions are good, and then being on-topic for a good question is all that constrains the answers. This allows more answers to compete more freely for votes, in a marketplace of ideas.

(Besides which, due to that aforementioned design, there is no effective way to enforce an idea of how answers "should" be written, even if the community decided to try.)

That is not to say that we can't encourage answers to be done a certain way, but we can't do it legislatively from meta consensus or moderator fiat. Encouraging answers to be more like what we individually think they should be is the province of voting. We each only have one vote per post, so that influence is limited — but that's by design. Individual opinions aren't what the system cares about, but rather the aggregate of voters' opinions.

So to discourage what you think are bad answers, downvote; to encourage answers that are better constructed and considered, upvote.

On the idea of objectivity/neutrality

There is no special value to neutrality of answers here. To the contrary, we expect answer-writers to actively argue for why their answer is right. How they do that is the answer-writer's prerogative, and we do no prescribe that they do it in any particular way; we definitely don't require or expect some kind of neutral phrasing or (worse) prescribe neutral content. Answer writers can write the answer they want to write.

Regarding objectivity, we don't require that either. We do expect that answers that make statements of fact to support those statements (if those facts need support) with citations or experience (or citations to others' experience). This is a substantial difference from what people mean when they say “objective”. Subjectivity is acceptable here, especially when supported by direct experience that their answer worked. We want answers to contain the judgements of game experts, especially when those judgements are more practically valuable than a commentary-free recitation of what the rules say.

What SE requires is that an answer be well-written and supported; SE does not require that answers are neutral or objective.

Answer 2

It's not a matter of either / or

It's both.

But there is a difference between saying "no rules forbid this" and "yes it can be done".

The difference lies in the attitudes and philosophy of the people playing at the table, and the GM. It is beyond this game system's intent to micromanage that issue further in this particular system. Other game systems may have a codification along the lines of "If it doesn't say you can, then you can't" but the D&D 5e game system does not.

It is left up to the discretion of the DM and for that matter the whole table's general approach to the game. Each instance of D&D 5e is somewhat different from each other instance. That's by design.

Therefore, either form of the answer is appropriate if properly supported by evidence and reasoning.

Answer 3

If I understand correctly, this is roughly the shape of what you saw: A question was about a grey area in the rules, where the rules appear to permit a thing, but don't explicitly permit it, but don't explicitly forbid it either. Someone answered "yes you can do the thing"; you think that affirmative confirmation was a bit much and would prefer to say "the RAW doesn't forbid doing the thing".

We can't & shouldn't really prefer one or the other though. One person's “yes, you can use Jump to jump up and get a rope” is another person's “yes, you can silver an adamantine weapon.” The same thought and logic process goes into both: it seems reasonably within the bounds of what's permitted, you're doing normal unremarkable things, and the rules don't forbid it.

Imagine if you were asked not to say “you can use Jump to jump and grab a rope” but instead “the RAW doesn't say you can't use Jump to jump up and grab a rope.” You'd be stunned, right? It doesn't need wording like that, does it? Well, it's probably the same thing for the person saying you can silver an adamantine weapon. (D&D has a lot of grey areas, and I hope we agree it would get tiring both to read and write if we presented all our treatment of them as negations of fact, instead of just suggesting you can do it.)

Statements of “you can do the thing” and “RAW doesn't say you can't do the thing” are both valid and have their place. It's subjective judgement when we should use one or the other. The first is used more when it seems perfectly fine and we have no doubts; the second is used more when it seems like it shouldn't be working that way, or is stretching incredulity, or we're just exploring what the rules say without seriously saying it should work that way, and we usually see an implicit or explicit “but...” attached to it. Things you have doubts about, and which stretch incredulity for you, don't necessarily do the same for the person writing that answer however.

Vote your conscience, and if you think the answer is really stretching things then downvote it. If you think you can provide actionable feedback, do so.

Answer 4

But there is a difference between saying "no rules forbid this" and "yes it can be done"

Is there?

It seems to me that equating or not equating these two phrases is a personal judgement. The fact that your personal judgement came down on the other side from the poster(s) personal judgement doesn't invalidate the answer. It just invalidates it for you and those who agree with your judgement, those who agree with the poster(s)' judgement will have no problem with the answer.

Vote accordingly.

Answer 5

On top of what @SevenSidedDie has said about answering in general, I want to say something about the answer you are speaking about in particular, and similar answers too.

It is indeed a pretty popular opinion that if rules don't explicitly prohibit you from doing something, you can do it at GM's descretion. If rules give you an option (coating your weapon with silver) and don't restrict it, it is not restricted until your GM says so.

You are right saying this:

a couple of gaming books cannot cover the laws of an entire fantasy multiverse, the answers to some questions are better left to the gamers themselves

When you ask about the game's rules here on RPG.SE, you get an answer about what the rules say. When you ask if using some option provided by the rules in some way is possible, you get an answer if rules directly prohibit such a usage or not.

If your GMing style is strict, or if you simply don't like the option being used in such a way, you can still prohibit it on the grounds that it is not explicitely allowed. The rules and the information in them that you find reinterpreted here on RPG.SE is a mere starting point for you to work with.