this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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People desperately need to understand that mechanical rules are there for balancing and taking them so painfully literally just isn’t necessary.
You only get one unarmed attack on the dice, but if you want to say you did the damage in two or three hits instead of one then go for it, it literally does not matter. You can even say you missed one attack and them wound up for a sneaky second one!
Follow the rules for number related things and roleplay and tell a story for being cool related things.
As DM, I'll have you roll the dice, tell you if it succeeded or not, and then have YOU describe what happens based on the roll.
But with this particular thing, it's not really about the story. It's the player trying to maximize their bonuses so the dice will be more favorable. In which case, sure. You can dual wield your hands. But you're still taking a penalty with your off-hand unless you have the feat that removes it. You ever try to punch someone with your non-dominant arm? You definitely take a penalty IRL, unless you're ambidextrous.
... and this is why I don't play D&D. It's all abstract. It's more like a board game than an RPG.
[Obviously, this is just my opinion, and it's subjective, and it's probably wrong. But, we are where we are.]
In what way? The die tell you success rate so you can’t just say “I succeed at everything” and you use your creativity to bring it all to life.
Your comment as written, especially with the clear example in my first comment, reads like “I’m not creative enough to work within the system”. I’m guessing that isn’t your point but I’m not sure what else to read it as.
You have to abstract something for a game, though. So are you saying you want it less abstract in that you want less of it to rely on dice (and thus more role playing), or do you want it less abstract in that you want more crunch and mechanics for, like, pooping?
I was more thinking about the abstraction of things like character classes and levels. "I'm a knight and can only more in L-shapes." or "I'm a seventh level human." That's what I mean about it being more like a board game than an RPG. Compare "I'm a third level barbarian" to, eg, Call of Cthulhu and "I'm a pilot who was a POW in WWI which is when I picked up fluency in German." One of those is a potential character, the other is just a playing piece.
There are other games with fewer mechanical rules where you can go crazy with this kinda stuff. D&D is one of the most mechanically crunchy ones out there