Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brian Gibbons" data-source="post: 4042284" data-attributes="member: 7369">There are two very different situations being mangled and merged together here:- Situations where NPCs are able to do things that PCs cannot.- Situations where events happen in a manner different from the way they would happen if PCs were involved, but the GM wants the events to be seen as normal.The first is easy.  A spell works differently when an NPC cast it?  He researched a variant, or made a pact with a demon, or is under some other high-level magical effect or...The extraordinary can always be extraordinary.  As long as you don't go to the "A wizard did it!' toolbox too often, that's fine.The problem is when the GM wants the extraordinary to be ordinary.A man described as an experienced fighter of many years falls off his horse and breaks his neck?  Perfectly fine, so long as there's an explanation--perhaps he was under a curse, or he wasn't really an experienced fighter or he was in ill health or that wasn't what really happened and the witnesses are lying/mistaken.  Or, maybe you've changed the rules so that this is the way the world works in your campaign (e.g., falling damage is done with an open roll, with 6's re-rolled, so even a small fall can kill you).It's when you want there to be no explanation, that this is simply an ordinary event for NPCs (even though it doesn't work that way for PCs), that a potential problem develops.Players have a very narrowly-constrained view on the totality of the campaign world.  Their grasp on what is possible is largely shaped by the rules.  If that is suddenly invalid, and the rules provide no guidance on what is and is not possible, that you risk severe loss of immersion.That's not necessarily fatal to your campaign, of course.  It just means that your players will lose interest in game-based mysteries and cease trying to deduce what's going on in a campaign, because they've lost any reference points for what is and is not possible.It is theoretically possible to replace that sense of the possible with a strong tie to realism simulation (i.e., things work the way they do in the game world they do in the real world), but that's likely to be problematic unless your game is incredibly non-combat focused.</blockquote>

Verification