LostSoul, as always thanks for the interesting and engaging replies!
There's a way of playing the game that puts the weight on the statblock and removes it from the fictional content. Here are some examples:
Before I get to the examples, let me say that I agree with this, but that's also why in my earlier post I raised the issue of what actually counts as "fully playing the game"? If you take page 42 of the DMG seriously, and also the text for the Acrobatics skill in the PHB (to which I first had my attention drawn by your suggestion that a Rogue dive into the maw of a purple worm to rescue a swallowed magic-user - great stuff!), then playing the game
requires having regard to the fictional context. Play which has regard only to the stat block, and which therefore disregards p 42, and which privileges Athletics over Acrobatics as a skill (because the Athletics rules have stats in them), can ignore the fiction, I agree.
Maybe the game is to some extent incoherent in its rules - presenting such tight stat blocks that they create a strong reason no to depart from them (hence your desire to rewrite parts of the game to expressly create the lacuna for GM input), but also presenting open-ended fiction-first rules like p 42 and Acrobatics.
Of course, even if p 42 and Acrobatics make the fiction matter in some cases, they don't make it matter in all cases. Which brings me to the examples, and some thoughts on them.
A black pudding can't squeeze through cracks under doors because the rules for squeezing say they can't; since ogres can't do it, neither can the black pudding.
This is an interesting one. The rules for Oozes describe them as "amorphous", and the flavour text for Ochre Jellies says that they can slip under doors and pour through narrow cracks, and that they can't climb steps, but none of this is reflected in the stat block - whereas other stat blocks do give special squeezing powers (like Larva mages). And while the PHB rules for squeezing give the GM a lot of discretion for Medium or smaller creatures, this is not the case for Large creatures like Jellies and Puddings.
On balance, this seems to me to be a case of poorly written stats, where the stats don't give full effect to the desingers' intentions. Alternatively, it could be that the keyword "ooze", in describing oozes as amorphous and giving them special squeezing privileges, hasn't quite said everything that it should have about oozes going under doors and the like. Either way, I'd have no problem letting a black pudding - "like a massive pool of tar" - slide under a door. And I don't think my players could really accuse me of breaking the rules in doing so.
The only way to disarm someone is to bring them to 0 hp or have a power that explicitly says the creature is disarmed, even if you are standing on the weapon or you can control the creature's mind.
This one I'm not sure about. I don't see why a disarm isn't possible under p 42, or using domination. I've followed the Dominate and Disarm thread, and on the whole am more sympathetic to those who think that it is permissible (after all, "drop held item" is a free action - PHB p 289 - that can be performed at will). The real solution seems to me to be permitting the creature or PC who is disarmed in this way to perform non-power manoeuvres based on DMG p 42.
Come and Get It pulls creatures into bad positions regardless of any fictional considerations - archers jump off fortified towers or drop prone.
Aegeri has replied to this to an extent, but I agree that it is an issue. The fighter PC in my group has this, and narrating it is not all that straightforward. I'm still thinking about ways of handling it.
An ogre isn't level 8 because it's big and strong and raised to fight; it's level 8 because it's level 8. It could be level 1 or level 30; the fiction doesn't map
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if one of your goals is to explore the world, you probably won't want to raise or lower the levels of monsters (save where world-appropriate - e.g. young and the infirm), while if you're playing a game focusing on "premise" you probably will want to raise or lower monster levels in order to provide appropriate adversity while getting the colour right.
I'm mostly in the latter camp - monsters are colour, and I adjust levels if I have to. However, part of the colour I am looking for in my campaign is "the story of D&D", and that puts limits on how far you can vary levels - eg once you're paragon you're not really meant to be dealing with orcs anymore, unless they're from Gruumsh's plane!
While I agree with you that 4e can be used for a variety of play goals, when it comes to monster level I think the most natural way of making sense of the level system in 4e is that it does, by default, push games into the story of D&D.
I always saw 4E as more "squishy" than other people, I think - like letting PCs use Intimidate as an attack action to deal HP (psychic) damage, or letting PCs use Dominate to disarm. I don't think either view is explicit or even implicit, but there is a big dividing line in terms of how people approach the game.
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You could even go other places - Does it make sense that you can heal someone with a kind word? Does the relationship matter?
Each DM can answer those questions in their own way.
On all these issues I've been too influenced by your posts back in the early 4e days to have an independent view! I don't think I've yet had a PC use Intimidate to do psychic damage, but I've had a PC use Religion to get combat advantage against a Wight. I haven't thought about using Diplomacy to heal, but that's a very interesting idea - I think the relationship should matter, affecting the DC (moderate vs hard). The action would have to be a standard one, to preserve action economy balance. To balance it against healing powers, I think that the PC using diplomacy might have to take some psychic damage if the attempt fails - they are gutted as they realise the relationship doesn't mean the same thing to the other person, or at least doesn't have the same power to drive them, as it does the would-be healing PC.
This means that the DM has to make principled decisions, not relying on fiat (i.e arbitrary decisions), based on whatever metagame goals the group has.
In my view the biggest gap in the 4e rules is advice on how to use p 42, and the skill challenge rules more generally, to achieve various play goals in various contexts - and in particular, how these parts of the game are meant to interact with the combat mechanics. It's the absence of that sort of material that (for me, at least) gives the biggest feeling of incoherence of the sort I talked about above.
