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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alex319" data-source="post: 5307451" data-attributes="member: 45678">As I see it, there's really at least two separate questions being asked in this thread:1. Should the 4e rules be changed (either in an official update, or through house rules) to better model "reality"?2. Does it make sense to override the rules a lot during the game in order to fit with the DM's/player's conception of what is "realistic" in the situation?There are several different considerations involved that have been invoked as a justification for one side or the other:Believability:This is whether or not the players and DMs think that what is going on in the world makes sense for the genre. For this justification, it is not clear whether or not "realism" enhances believability. First of all, players can easily disagree on what the parameters of the genre are - just look at this thread and all the discussions about "heroic fantasy" versus "classic sword and sorcery". So anything that makes it more "believable" for one person can just as easily make it less "believable" for another person if they are starting from a different baseline. Another issue is the situation in (2) above where a player thinks that something will work a particular way and plans for that, but the DM has a different conception of what is realistic and so vetoes it. This is probably less "believable" because in real life people usually do know in a general sense what their capabilities are.For instance, let's say that a player is facing a dragon and is on the edge of a 100 foot cliff. The player realizes he is unlikely to beat the dragon, but knows he has enough hit points to survive the fall, and jumps off the cliff to escape. The DM says it's not realistic to survive such a big fall, and kills the character without rolling for damage. This is actually LESS believable, because in "real life" the character probably wouldn't have had such a dramatic misconception about his chances of surviving.But overall, there may not be any way of resolving this issue because it's fundamentally subjective, since it is all about the players' reactions to the information.Consistency:This is whether or not what happens in the game world follows a self-consistent set of rules. This is important because it allows players to predict the results of their actions. For this idea, if you are doing (1) above that does not affect consistency. "Swarms can be grabbed just like regular monsters" is a self-consistent rule, and "All swarms are immune to grab" is also a self-consistent rule. As long as you pick one in advance and stick with it you are fine. However, if you do (2) a lot then that actually makes things LESS consistent. For example, let's take the example above about jumping off a cliff. If you were to auto-kill the character then, you would have a system where "The hit-point system is an accurate model of injuries, except when the DM arbitrarily decides it isn't." Same thing with grabing swarms: if you change the rules in the middle then you have a system where "The combat rules are an accurate model of combat, except when the DM thinks that a given power won't work and vetoes it."Fairness:This is whether anyone feels like they're not being given a chance to participate, or they're being denied something that they should have. Being fair doesn't necessarily mean that everyone has to have equal power in all situations, just that everyone has a chance to participate and nobody feels "gypped out" of a power they should have. If you do (1) above, it doesn't necessarily have to affect fairness because players know in advance, so they can plan around it. (Of course, this assumes that such planning is possible. For instance, in the example of 3e rogues vs. a dungeon full of undead with no traps, the only way to "plan around it" is to not play a rogue, because pretty much all of a rogues' unique stuff has to do with traps and sneak attacks.) In fact it could even increase fairness if the restriction of a power in one situation makes it so that someone else has a chance to shine, or if the "realism" comes in the form of adding an option rather than taking one away. However, if you do (2), then it can easily decrease fairness because a player thinks they should be able to do something, but then can't.In the grabbing swarms example: If you were to tell the players in advance that all swarms are immune to grab, then players who wanted to build a grappler fighter would know to make contingency plans for fighting swarms. If you didn't, then a player creating such a fighter would assume that the powers would still work fine against swarms (a reasonable assumption, since the rules say they do and you didn't tell them anything else), build around that, and then get frustrated when his assumptions are violated and it's too late to make any changes.Another important caveat is that for some reason it tends to be only martial classes that get the "realism treatment." There's all sorts of threads about how martial dailies work, whether you can grab swarms, how Come and Get It works, how fighter marks work, and so on, but I haven't seen anything criticising arcane or divine classes and powers for not being believable. Which is surprising, because I can think of lots of "rules/fluff inconsistencies" with arcane or divine powers as well.For instance, if divine powers are granted by the gods, and there are particular rules about how many times a day you can use a given power, that means the gods must be keeping track of when you use each power in order to know whether to give you a power when you call for it at a specific time. If this was actually how the fluff worked, such information could be used in other ways: "According to Erathis' records, my client used Lay on Hands on Korvak Hammershield of Springhaven at 7:32 P.M. on the evening of the murder, so there's no way he could have been at the tavern in Fallsgrove at the time the murder took place."</blockquote>

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