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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 4036150" data-attributes="member: 29398">A few things to note that in my view *should* be obvious but, it seems, aren't:1. NPCs do *not* walk around in the game world with little "NPC" stickers on their foreheads.  They interact with each other, and with the world, just the same as PCs do...even when the PCs are not around to see it or join in.  Having it any other way shatters believability (and consistency) beyond repair.2. The game rules (any edition) do not give enough information for a DM to run everything the game will ever throw at her; to do so would require a DMG about the size of the full Oxford Dictionary - though this might not be a bad thing.  So, any DM has to make rulings...be it on weather, pregnancies, wierd spell interactions, or whatever...and every time she does, the physics of that game world become a) a bit tighter, and b) probably different from any other game world.  But the DM has to be consistent!  If spell A interacts with spell B in manner Z once, it then *has* to do so for the rest of that campaign if the campaign is to retain any believability at all.  It seems this is where some people are having problems - DMs being inconsistent within their own games - and that is something that cannot be solved here.3. Limb loss, scarring, decaying skills of retired adventurers - all are things that are sometimes required by the story.  Putting in rules (or devices, or spells) that cause limb loss is relatively easy, with few if any knock-on effects; on-the-fly situational rulings can sometimes help too (example: once I DMed a game where a PC had almost total cover except for the hand she was using to hold the Wand of Lightning she was firing...some spectacularly bad rolling later she had hit herself with her own rebounding bolt and failed her save (nat. 1); I ruled that all the damage was to the exposed hand, rendering it a useless stump.  Amazingly, the Wand survived (nat. 20 on save).)  Putting in rules for scarring is even easier provided you're willing to take the time and build the tables that show how severe the scarring is, and where.  So just do it!  Decaying skills is a bigger headache that I've been trying to solve for ages...pretty much the only answer there *is* to make it up as you go along, and hope for the best.Lanefan</blockquote>

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