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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4034971" data-attributes="member: 58197">To me, the rules do not dictate the physics of the world, but they do inform it.&nbsp; They are essentially &quot;good enough&quot; approximations.&nbsp; To draw an analogy with science, the rules in the books are Newtonian physics; not a wholly correct or all-inclusive model, but easy to work with and close enough to what's actually going on that in most cases you can just go with it.I would not be inclined to have a 20th-level king die from falling off a horse and breaking his neck, but that's more because I feel 20th-level characters are bad-ass enough that it's demeaning to kill them in such mundane ways.&nbsp; On the other hand, I would certainly have NPCs who've lost eyes or limbs in battle.&nbsp; That sort of thing just... doesn't happen to player characters (unless they choose for it to).&nbsp; They're lucky that way.For the apprentice wizard who botches a casting of planar ally from his master's spellbook, I'd think hard about the implications of allowing that--after all, it does set a precedent that a low-level caster can attempt a high-level spell and get some result, and it would be hard to justify why a PC wizard couldn't attempt the same thing.&nbsp; So I'd want to consider the possible outcomes and make sure that I was okay with PC wizards being allowed to try such stunts.&nbsp; (Of course, nobody says they have to have a chance in hell of succeeding, but they do have to be allowed to try.)&nbsp; It would be an implied houserule: &quot;A wizard with access to spells he's not high enough level to cast properly can still perform a totally botched-up casting of those spells, with highly unfortunate results.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 4034971, member: 58197"] To me, the rules do not dictate the physics of the world, but they do inform it. They are essentially "good enough" approximations. To draw an analogy with science, the rules in the books are Newtonian physics; not a wholly correct or all-inclusive model, but easy to work with and close enough to what's actually going on that in most cases you can just go with it. I would not be inclined to have a 20th-level king die from falling off a horse and breaking his neck, but that's more because I feel 20th-level characters are bad-ass enough that it's demeaning to kill them in such mundane ways. On the other hand, I would certainly have NPCs who've lost eyes or limbs in battle. That sort of thing just... doesn't happen to player characters (unless they choose for it to). They're lucky that way. For the apprentice wizard who botches a casting of [i]planar ally[/i] from his master's spellbook, I'd think hard about the implications of allowing that--after all, it does set a precedent that a low-level caster can attempt a high-level spell and get [i]some[/i] result, and it would be hard to justify why a PC wizard couldn't attempt the same thing. So I'd want to consider the possible outcomes and make sure that I was okay with PC wizards being allowed to try such stunts. (Of course, nobody says they have to have a chance in hell of [i]succeeding[/i], but they do have to be allowed to try.) It would be an implied houserule: "A wizard with access to spells he's not high enough level to cast properly can still perform a totally botched-up casting of those spells, with highly unfortunate results." [/QUOTE]

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