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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertliguori" data-source="post: 4034042" data-attributes="member: 47776">Professor Phobos, the reason many of us play D&D specifically is that the rules of D&D create a set of assumptions many of us find interesting.  We know that the D&D rules stop describing people in our world past about level 6 or so; this is a selling point for us.And this is why having rules and keeping to them is important.  You find the idea of humans that can bathe in lava snaps you out of your immersion in the game world.  This is well and good; you can avoid this element simply by not creating representations of humans with this capacity in the game world, or optionally make use of one of the many supplemental rules for magma damage.I don't like the idea of mechanically representing a character that should, according to the known rules of the game, be able to swim in lava, then die (with no save) simply because the GM thinks that lava should be super-extra-killy compared to the dragonfire I waded through last week.  If it breaks your suspension of disbelief for heroes to be able to survive such abuse, cap  level advancement at six.Another question for you: Which is more realistic, Vanican magic or psionics?  The answer, of course, is neither; both magic systems reflect something that does not exist in reality.  The XP system and its real, tangible noticeable effects in the game world likewise does not have a real-world analogue, but claiming that it is an abstraction misses the point; although what exactly XP are is nebulous, their effect is as well-defined within the game universe as fire.You do not have a clear idea how it is or why it should be that after a lifetime of adventuring, you should achieve superhuman levels of toughness and capacity.  This is well and good.  I, myself have no idea how it is or why it should be that Superman's Kryptonian metabolism can convert yellow sunlight into superhuman levels of toughness and capacity, but within the context of Superman comics, I don't claim that Superman's powers are an abstraction; he actually can fly, despite flight being conventionally impossible.The world of comics contains rules and assumptions that (obviously) do not hold true in reality.  This is not generally a problem; to enjoy the story, we internalize the new rules, accept them, and judge the world based on its consistency to its own internal reality, as opposed to ours.  It bothers some people to recognize that their gritty fighter or streetwise rogue turned into Achilles or Gyges a few levels back, and that superhumanism has been thrust upon them.  However, this is the way D&D universes work; expecting otherwise is like killing Superman in an auto accident.If you communicate beforehand that your world does not contain high-level characters of any stripe, that fifty points of damage are enough to kill any humanoid target guaranteed, and so forth, and then proceed to play in this gritty, dangerous setting, then this is good and interesting.  This is making a rule.  But deciding that a fall should be capable of killing a high-level knight in adventuring condition with full HP is making a ruling, which contradicts the existing rules and the internal reality set up by the games.  A high-level knight is, as we from Earth would understand it, about as human as Superman; he has a similar level of protection from harm, and if he's taken Power Attack, can also be inhumanly destructive.  (His, however, is ablative; enough damage will start to kill him, and beat him down to his last few HP and throw him from a horse, and he may well break his neck).If you start from the inherent assumption that the world is low-magic, high-pulp adventure, with two-fisted (or two-sworded, or sword-and-shielded) adventurers questing after priceless relics and defeating bands of evil villains, then this is fine.  You probably don't need to enumerate that the party shouldn't expect to be playing Artificers, or crucians, and you probably don't need to mention that the party level will be capped somewhere before "Wait for the evil god to finish manifesting, then beat him into submission with our bare hands." becomes a viable strategy.  This is all well and good.  But D&D does not contain these assumtions from default; relying on them to be shared without explicitly communicating it will result in bad juju.</blockquote>

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