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<blockquote data-quote="Asmor" data-source="post: 5594764" data-attributes="member: 1154">Generally speaking, when it comes to divination, the future is not set in stone. In many cases, knowledge of the future changes the future (i.e. I see that I'm going to die tomorrow on my motorcycle; I take my car instead. Thus the motorcycle prophecy is now invalidated.*).To extrapolate from that even farther, the future's change is directly related to your own power to change it and the event's volatility. If you foresaw a tornado, there's not much you could do; that tornado's happening. On the other hand, if you walk into a casino having seen that a dealer's going to deal a blackjack on the fourth hand after 9pm to the third seat, your simply showing up changes everything. The dealer notices you, for example, as she's shuffling, she washes the cards ever so slightly differently, and the deck is no longer the same as it was in your prophecy.It's even more apparent in a game with dice, for example, since everything from the height they're dropped from, the air turbulence, their velocity, the way the thrower's holding his hands, etc will lend significant impact to the roll.So, in short, while this is of course all a matter of fiction, it really doesn't make any sense that a divination would even be able to predict the roll of a pair of dice the moment before you throw them.*And of course there's the whole &quot;you can't cheat destiny&quot; trope where, in my example, I'd still die in my car. But even then, the prophecy was invalidated. I saw myself die on a motorcycle, but I changed the future and died in a car). More interesting, to me, is the idea of a (literal) self-fulfilling prophecy, where your actions to avoid a prophesy directly lead you into it, exactly as was predicted. Not really the sort of thing that's feasible in D&amp;D, though, so it's stuck in the realms of traditional narratives.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Asmor, post: 5594764, member: 1154"] Generally speaking, when it comes to divination, the future is not set in stone. In many cases, knowledge of the future changes the future (i.e. I see that I'm going to die tomorrow on my motorcycle; I take my car instead. Thus the motorcycle prophecy is now invalidated.*). To extrapolate from that even farther, the future's change is directly related to your own power to change it and the event's volatility. If you foresaw a tornado, there's not much you could do; that tornado's happening. On the other hand, if you walk into a casino having seen that a dealer's going to deal a blackjack on the fourth hand after 9pm to the third seat, your simply showing up changes everything. The dealer notices you, for example, as she's shuffling, she washes the cards ever so slightly differently, and the deck is no longer the same as it was in your prophecy. It's even more apparent in a game with dice, for example, since everything from the height they're dropped from, the air turbulence, their velocity, the way the thrower's holding his hands, etc will lend significant impact to the roll. So, in short, while this is of course all a matter of fiction, it really doesn't make any sense that a divination would even be able to predict the roll of a pair of dice the moment before you throw them. *And of course there's the whole "you can't cheat destiny" trope where, in my example, I'd still die in my car. But even then, the prophecy was invalidated. I saw myself die on a motorcycle, but I changed the future and died in a car). More interesting, to me, is the idea of a (literal) self-fulfilling prophecy, where your actions to avoid a prophesy directly lead you into it, exactly as was predicted. Not really the sort of thing that's feasible in D&D, though, so it's stuck in the realms of traditional narratives. [/QUOTE]

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