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That's the point under discussion, really. What the game world represents is that while a high-level fighter will die if you brutally stab him in the heart, this event is not possible while she has hit points remaining. If you start from the assumption that HP represent the inconstant nature...

A question for the narrativists in the crowd: How do you communicate and manage expectations of what could happen in-world? Say, for instance, you have one player who is an elf-fanboy. Say you have another player who is a tactics-fan. Say that you have a battle situation that you want to...

There aren't detailed rules for either pregnancy or weather; making them up ("Brelia is to the west of the mountains, so +5% to the rain table.") or even just making spontaneous rulings ("Yes, another dramatic storm begins to fall as the black-cloaked figure approaches the party. The God of...

You refine the rules, you don't ignore them. You look for precedent. For instance, you note that, under good conditions, the orc has a chance of critting with the dagger and causing 2d4+2xStr damage. Call it 5+6, or 11 damage. Under the 3.5 rules, that is plenty to kill the average person in...

Professor Phobos, the reason many of us play D&D specifically is that the rules of D&D create a set of assumptions many of us find interesting. We know that the D&D rules stop describing people in our world past about level 6 or so; this is a selling point for us. And this is why having rules...

The quick way around this is to world-build assuming that governments and institutions have access to characters of about 3th level reliably, and 5th level under dire circumstances, and that when a CR 10 challenge happens along, the government/institution will probably fall, or at least lose a...

I will avoid invoking Forge jargon as much as possible, but I now see the disconnect. Many of us consider everything that happens in the simulated universe provided by the rules both part of the game, and part of the story. We consider the ability of high-level characters to keep fighting...

You find existing rules that model something similar to the effect you're looking for. More importantly, you should note when you try to do something the game system is not designed to do. You want a character to die from falling off a horse? He's not high-level. You want a character to Call...

Why does one start from the assumption that it should be possible for a high-level knight to die of a broken neck? There is nothing in the D&D rules that suggests it should be possible; as reality does not have people who can survive brief immersion in lava, we can't cite real-world precedents...

I'm not seeing the issues mentioned. If you feel that it should be possible for a high-level fighter to die from falling off a horse, then falls from horses should be capable of dealing in excess of 50 damage. If you think that it should be possible to accidentally Call a 10-HD outsider with a...

Consider it this way: In 3.XE, past about level 4 or 5, characters stop having real-world analogues. It is not logical for a person to get solidly hit on the head with a greathammer and for it to bounce off. It is logical for a block of solid iron to take such a hit with only fractional...

I vote that we take a shortsword and stab you for comparison purposes. In the name of science. Optionally, we can set you on fire. As mentioned, there are any number of things that adventurers can do that should be fatal. I personally see it not as a weakness of the rules that they aren't; I...

One problem is that the skill is extremely rare that, once you wrap rules around it, you cannot gain mechanical advantage from; in edge cases, nearly every skill can be used by adventurers. The other is that D&D encodes several real-world assumptions into its rules, one of those assumptions...

3.XE was a step in the right direction; the use of monsters with ECLs as well as explicit class abilities to get monsters on your side. My hope was that since the rules encoded that, for example, druids could enlist the services of thoqqua briefly, that core material would being to operate...

Players defeat monster X. Players go and defeat monster Y, which hates monster X. Players go capture creature Z, who monster X cares about. Players say "Do the job for us, and we'll slay Y, and a bunch like him, and let you and Z go in a couple of levels when we can do the job ourselves...

Not should, can. You can drive nails into a wall with a screwdriver; it's just horribly inefficient. On the other hand, if you a presented with a puzzle where you can either quest for long months though much peril to acquire a hammer, or just use the damn screwdriver, it is not unreasonable to...

Allow me to elaborate on my point; before including winged, giant, or regenerating enemies, GMs should ask themselves "What would happen if the PCs could, at will, fly/be large/regenerate?" For instance, what happens when, in response to you introducing a group of trolls, the PCs manage to get...

We have seen it said several times that PCs and NPCs/monsters will be generated using different rules in 4E. In particular, we have seen references to simplified monster generation, where DMs will be able to simply pick a set of attributes for a monster to serve as an encounter (or part of an...

"I spend some of my eternal lifespan multiclassing. I cast Alter Self. Woohoo! I have joints again!"

If you're high enough on the food chain to get a Pit Fiend's attention, its a good guess there is not a PoL authority that could make a credible attempt at holding you. What you really need to be worried about is being buried in landslides or falling into volcanoes and such. (Mind you, when...