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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7585683" data-attributes="member: 42582">In the real world, some people who are exposed to fires survive. In adventure fiction this is relatively common - eg I just saw Quantum of Solace on TV and James Bond and friend escape a burning building surrounded by flames. And many a D&D character has been caught in a fireball, red dragon's breath, etc and yet survived.And there can certainly be authorial control over fiction involving fire - as that movie illustrates!Which is what my question asked: suppose that the fireball is not under the control of the character - why is that a reason that the player can't determine some of the consequences of an effect that was brought into the fiction as a result of his/her decision (ie to have his/her PC cast a fireball)?Or, to put it another way, what is wrong with director stance in relation to the consequences of fireballs?Once the spell has been cast, the fireball goes and explodes.  Nothing in the fireball daily says or even implies that the caster can make non-lethal fire.  What is non-lethal fire anyway?  It's absurd to even think that non-lethal fire exists.  The DM can add non-lethal fire into the game, but I would never do so.  I like a more realistic game than you do.But what in the spell says or implies that the caster can't control its effect on those who are caught in the flames, like Pyro in the X-Men?So does that mean that, in your D&D game, fireball and red dragon breath kill everyone in the AoE?If not, then that means your game has non-lethal fire too! Let's call the thing that happens in your game's fiction when a fireball fails to kill someone caught in its AoE X. Now, let's suppose that, in 4e, when a fireball doesn't kill someone, X is what happens to them.Why can't it be the character controlling the fire so that X occurs? Or, if it's not, what's objecitonable about the player specifying that the consequence of this fireball, for such-and-such a target creature, is X?</blockquote>

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