The Logic (or Lack of) in D&D

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

I ruled that he might have items knocking together in the wind and making some noise.
Olaf the Stout

Plus you never know when a flying invisible character might bump into a migrating african swallow carrying a coconut by the husks...

 

[Glyfair]

In my game, the hierarchy for handling any situation is:

1. Common Sense.
2. Rules.

I don't think I'd have asked for a roll at all, in this situation. I definitey wouldn't allow elven boots to modify the roll. The rules are your servant, not your master.

My $0.02, for what it's worth...

However, commonsense is quite variable. For some reason many here are having issues with boots of elvenkind making you move quieter in the air. However, I'll wager few of them have problems with gauntlets of dexterity that make you dodge attacks easier, or gauntlets of ogre power that make a monk's kick attack more damaging.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

Heh...D&D works best whan you don't think too hard about it.

QFT

 

[AuraSeer]

In my game, the hierarchy for handling any situation is:

1. Common Sense.
2. Rules.

The problem with "common sense" is that it's not common.

A ruling that is perfectly reasonable to me might seem completely off base to you, and a third person might think we're both talking nonsense.

 

[Feldspar]

I think logically, giving him the bonus was the *least* you could do. It seems to me that the noises he could be making while flying - change jingling in pockets, spiked chain links rattling, etc - all exist on the ground are equally present when he's walking on the ground.

So, if the boots help to cancel those sounds on the ground then they should in the air.

The alternative, that the boots merely work to cancel/muffle the sounds of the footfalls implies that those footfalls create quite a bit of noise! At least +10 to a Move Silently DC check, if not more (if the boots don't fully muffle the sound). So if he's no longer taking those steps, because he's flying, he should get a big fat circumstance bonus.

 

[Feldspar]

In our old campaign, this sort of thing was always explained as "FM". F***ing magic. No further explanation was possible, or, usually, necessary.

The worst grade I ever got in college was in a signals class I aboslutely hated slash didn't understand - Frequency Modulation, as in FM radio, was always refered to by my friends and I as F***ing Magic.

Anytime they would start talking about e raised to the power of the square root of -1, my eyes would just start glazing over ...

 

[Agamon]

Just like Boots of Speed don't just make you walk faster, Boots of Elvenkind don't just make you walk quieter. I've never thought that hard about it, but it'd be a cool side effect to have the boots muffle the voice of the wearer somewhat.

 

[jmucchiello]

Plus you never know when a flying invisible character might bump into a migrating african swallow carrying a coconut by the husks...

I don't see how you could bump into a migrating African swallow, as they are non-migratory. Since I can't see the swallow, perhaps it'd be invisible, too. Still, you should see the coconut regardless.

 

[Nyeshet]

This just suggests to me that it should be a Cape (or Mantle) of Elvenkind - not boots - that grants a bonus to move silently (muffling the sounds of the body and its clothing, items, etc rather than muffling just the steps the feet make). Just as a Cloak of Invisibility would hide what was within it, a Cape of Silence would muffle what was within it.

Then it would all make a little more sense . . . .

But then it would not be D&D, in all its illogical "glory."

 

[hong]

The worst grade I ever got in college was in a signals class I aboslutely hated slash didn't understand - Frequency Modulation, as in FM radio, was always refered to by my friends and I as F***ing Magic.

Anytime they would start talking about e raised to the power of the square root of -1, my eyes would just start glazing over ...

Well, the square root of -1 is an imaginary number, and you can't see an imaginary number, so it's also invisible. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT DOESN'T EXIST!