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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SKyOdin" data-source="post: 5392991" data-attributes="member: 57939">Hussar, look, I have never been talking about baseline D&D assumptions and how they affect everyones campaigns. I have never been saying that you can't have a setting full of continual light spells if you really want to. I have just been saying that if someone doesn't want those things in their setting, it is quite easy to have it be the case.For the most part, I reject the idea that the D&D ruleset represents any kind of laws of physics or strict implied setting. They are nothing more than rules for running a game, which are very distinct from rules governing a setting. Permanent is a game rule, not a setting rule. What is permanent in the context of a game might not be permanent in the context of a setting. While game rules are roughly based on notions of how the laws of physics work in a setting, they also are too lacking and imprecise to themselves function as the rules that govern a world. It is impossible to create an internally consistent world given the rules of D&D and nothing else. You need to add something else in order to create an actual believable world. That added 'something else' is very malleable and open to interpretation.For one thing, D&D does not have a coherent magic system. It just has a list of effects that a magic system can produce. At no point does any D&D book explain the hows and whys of magic's inner workings. As such, magic is completely open to interpretation if someone wants to create actual setting rules for it. I could list out a half dozen different metaphysical systems that could be used whenever a wizard casts a fireball spell, each of which has different setting implications.If you look at a fire elemental, there is all kinds of room for different interpretations on what a fire elemental actually is. The D&D rules simply leave it that it is a semi-intelligent mass of fire from an inner plane or the Elemental Chaos. That tells us nothing about how it might be applied to the situations people try to apply it to. Some people interpret it to be a tame-able source of free, infinite energy. However, that interpretation has no direct basis in the D&D rules. It is simply one possible expression of the rules.As such, I don't think there is one rule in the D&D books that isn't heavily open to being reflected in numerous different story or setting forms.</blockquote>

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