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<blockquote data-quote="TiQuinn" data-source="post: 9389964" data-attributes="member: 4871">It’s going to vary by table and DM. Obviously you get to decide going forward that you won’t play with him any longer knowing now how he applies it.And we never will have a formal definition because it’s something that has been adopted by the community and is similar to rule zero.It’s as I said - a bad call perhaps by a bad or inexperienced DM. I think “rule of cool” is when a player argues for an impossible or unlikely action on the grounds that it would be something cool within the greater story as it’s happening in the game. It’s an appeal to the DM to use rule zero in the player’s favor. Most of the time it should still require a roll. I’ll give you an example of my favorite “rule of cool.” Our group was fighting a bunch of mercenaries and it was a difficult fight with one PC down, and a bad guy who was doing a good amount of damage from some cover reloading a heavy crossbow. For whatever reason, the DM said that the bandit was using a hand winch and was knocking the bolt into place. The party’s thief (yes, it was 2e) was going before him but was not in range to really attack. He asked if he could use his chime of opening to cause the bolt mechanism to release prematurely, basically causing the guy to lose a turn reloading. Should a chime of opening be able to do that? You can argue the mechanism is a lock of sorts…maybe? Definitely not what was envisioned in the description of the magic item. But it was clever, concise, and tactical and the DM decided “that’s also just cool.” Guy misfires, goes “oh crap”, tries to reload again and the party’s fighter takes him out next round.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TiQuinn, post: 9389964, member: 4871"] It’s going to vary by table and DM. Obviously you get to decide going forward that you won’t play with him any longer knowing now how he applies it. And we never will have a formal definition because it’s something that has been adopted by the community and is similar to rule zero. It’s as I said - a bad call perhaps by a bad or inexperienced DM. I think “rule of cool” is when a player argues for an impossible or unlikely action on the grounds that it would be something cool within the greater story as it’s happening in the game. It’s an appeal to the DM to use rule zero in the player’s favor. Most of the time it should still require a roll. I’ll give you an example of my favorite “rule of cool.” Our group was fighting a bunch of mercenaries and it was a difficult fight with one PC down, and a bad guy who was doing a good amount of damage from some cover reloading a heavy crossbow. For whatever reason, the DM said that the bandit was using a hand winch and was knocking the bolt into place. The party’s thief (yes, it was 2e) was going before him but was not in range to really attack. He asked if he could use his chime of opening to cause the bolt mechanism to release prematurely, basically causing the guy to lose a turn reloading. Should a chime of opening be able to do that? You can argue the mechanism is a lock of sorts…maybe? Definitely not what was envisioned in the description of the magic item. But it was clever, concise, and tactical and the DM decided “that’s also just cool.” Guy misfires, goes “oh crap”, tries to reload again and the party’s fighter takes him out next round. [/QUOTE]

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