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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertliguori" data-source="post: 4036381" data-attributes="member: 47776">There aren't detailed rules for either pregnancy or weather; making them up ("Brelia is to the west of the mountains, so +5% to the rain table.") or even just making spontaneous rulings ("Yes, another dramatic storm begins to fall as the black-cloaked figure approaches the party.  The God of Thunder is apparently a sucker for drama.") is, indeed, one of the expected tasks of the GM.There aren't detailed rules for how to maim people, but there are solid rules for how it can't happen; people resist maim-equivalent injuries in combat with hit points.  The rules don't say that under certain circumstances, a sword blow can cripple or remove a limb, but they do say extremely clearly that if the target of the blow has enough hit points left, then the most that happens is a non-deadly flesh wound.  If you want to make it possible to hold someone down and cut their arm off regardless of how tough a bastard they are, there are rules for that, too; dying from a blow while helpless requires an insanely difficult Fort save (and surviving the damage).  It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that a blow that could sever a limb could also have opened a throat or rent an artery lengthwise, and therefore require any attack that could have been lethal (either in combat or CdG) to instead inflict a crippling injury.  This is consistent with the game world as presented.There are detailed rules for researching new spells, falling from horses, determining the absolute cost of magic items, or acquiring feats.  Ignoring any of them in some circumstances while enforcing them in others also leads to a horribly inconsistent game world.Some players (such as myself) flatly demand a consistent game world, or at least a game world that makes an attempt at consistency.  Absent cause and effect, there is (for me) no drama, and no reason to care about the narrative.Now, you get some interesting results when you apply this level of thinking to a set of rules that do not set out to simulate reality, or even reality plus this one magical effect.  The rules of D&D do not simulate a universe in which apprentice wizards can miscast a 2nd-level spell and call an efreet, or a fall from a horse can kill a mighty warrior at full health.  This means that magic isn't seen as something dangerous and forbidden, and stories about the dangers of apprentice-level magic are far more likely to involve casting Acid Arrow into a grapple than shaking the world.  On the flip side, it also means that our real-world tropes about heroism, natural leaders, chosen ones, ubermenchen, and the like are going to be taken and cranked up to 11 in-world, because there are people who can (and do) walk through fire, and more.  Our world has a set of challenges that we mentally label as impossible.  No one can fall 500' onto his head and live.  No one can defeat a tank with his bare hands.  No one can sneak past the guards surrounding Fort Knox, help herself to a few bars of gold, and then sneak out carrying them.  No one can, under experimental conditions, light themselves on fire for about a minute and then extinguish themselves, all without serious injury.  In the world that D&D simulates, it should not be said "No one could have survived that."  Instead, it should be said "Only a hero could have survived that."In D&D, heroism is a tangible, quantifiable, measurable attribute of a person.  It has nothing to do with their qualities as a protagonist; first-level anythings are not generally considered heroes.  They can be heroic; indeed, anyone has the potential to be heroic.  In fact, XP could well be seen as a measure of one's heroism; the farmer who faces down three orcs with nothing more than his pitchfork to give his family time to run and yet manages to triumph has just, in all likelihood, jumped into the realm of being an actual hero (that is, gained a class level).  This is a natural process in the world, and (for many) the single most enjoyable conceit of the heroic fantasy genre.  Ignoring that process by shuffling around what being a hero means cuts to the core of the genre for a lot of us.</blockquote>

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