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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4041354" data-attributes="member: 42582">How do you deal with the coup-de-grace rules? A peasant with a small knife is actually more threatening (they can trigger a Fortitude save in a sleeping 20th level Fighter) than is a fall from horseback at full gallop. That suggests that these elites are not that blessed. It suggests to me that the immunity from horseback fall is more a mechanical glitch (as per the sleeping example) than a nod to the physics of the assumed gameworld.Hence the need for shared expectations among players and GM. Establishing those can displace that default (which is itself not something I fully concede).I do think that Prof Phobos had made a good point about coup-de-grace rules. They don't really run your way, do they? They suggest a somewhat unstable default.This example bumps into at least three problems:1) You are assuming that a consistent world is equivalent to one in which the mechanics are the physics. This has been denied by myself, John Snow and Prof Phobos at least.2) The coup-de-grace rules push against your example.3) The narrativist contention is that the action-resolution mechanics are a device for resolving PC adversity. So your example doesn't step outside the posited boundaries of those mechanics in any event.Well, if I was playing a game set in Middle-Earth I'd rely on LoTR as my measure. In the Oriental Adventures game that I GM, we rely on shared experiences of Jet Li films plus a few Samurai history texts as our measure - ambiguities are pretty easily resolved by discussion.In short, as Prof Phobos put it:</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 4041354, member: 42582"] How do you deal with the coup-de-grace rules? A peasant with a small knife is actually more threatening (they can trigger a Fortitude save in a sleeping 20th level Fighter) than is a fall from horseback at full gallop. That suggests that these elites are not that blessed. It suggests to me that the immunity from horseback fall is more a mechanical glitch (as per the sleeping example) than a nod to the physics of the assumed gameworld. Hence the need for shared expectations among players and GM. Establishing those can displace that default (which is itself not something I fully concede). I do think that Prof Phobos had made a good point about coup-de-grace rules. They don't really run your way, do they? They suggest a somewhat unstable default. This example bumps into at least three problems: 1) You are assuming that a consistent world is equivalent to one in which the mechanics are the physics. This has been denied by myself, John Snow and Prof Phobos at least. 2) The coup-de-grace rules push against your example. 3) The narrativist contention is that the action-resolution mechanics are a device for resolving PC adversity. So your example doesn't step outside the posited boundaries of those mechanics in any event. Well, if I was playing a game set in Middle-Earth I'd rely on LoTR as my measure. In the Oriental Adventures game that I GM, we rely on shared experiences of Jet Li films plus a few Samurai history texts as our measure - ambiguities are pretty easily resolved by discussion. In short, as Prof Phobos put it: [/QUOTE]

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