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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 4152875" data-attributes="member: 54710">Absolutely.  I don't believe at all that the rules are the physics of the world, but I agree that a certain level of consistency is necessary.  But just because you have a certain level of consistency, doesn't mean that the GM is a total slave to the rules.  The rules describe how things generally work, but don't cover weird corner cases.  A GM can reasonably say that Whirlwind and Great Cleave work as described, but simply not allow the swarm of a 1000 rats trick.  Why?  Because we are not computers, and GMs can apply their reason to the specific situation without having to design a general rule every time an exception comes up.  Take the falling rules.  I think most of us agree that falling does an unrealistically low amount of damage in general, although we can find examples of real-life people surviving incredible falls.  To the extent to which falling was designed (as opposed to just borrowed from 1E), it is a deliberate light touch mostly because most people don't want fully healed characters dying from level-appropriate falls.  So, as long as your PCs are only falling by accident or as the result of desperate decision, those rules work pretty well.  PCs fall - and you don't kill them.  But, as soon as your players get it into their heads that these are the immutable physics of the world, you can get weird situations where a PC plan involves *deliberately* jumping off a 100 foot cliff with no magic (i.e. I grapple the evil wizard and jump - don't worry I'll survive).  For many of us, this violates our sense of verisimilitude and wouldn't expect the rules to support such an outlandish scheme.Similarly, in my last campaign, the PCs the same type of monsters appeared in encounters from level 6 (in 2E) all the way up to level 15 (in 3E).  When they first met these creatures, they were deadly and would be well modeled as elites in 4E terms.  After a few levels, these creatures were significant threats, but the sort of thing the PCs expected to handle (regular monsters in 4E terms).  Towards the end of the game, a single PC fighter could expect to fight a dozen of these guys and get back to the game (weak minions).Now, a level 5 elite, a level 9 regular monster and a level 17 minion are all worth the same number of XP, but they have pretty different stats.  The higher level monsters have higher ACs / attacks, while the lower level monsters with better "ranks" have more hp and a wider variety of maneuvers.  That's because you want a level 17 minion to be able to hit a level 17 party, but you want him to be easy to manage as a GM because there will be many in the battle.  You want low hit points, because these monsters are fun partially because you can run through them quickly.  In contrast, you want a level 5 elite to have a chance of missing the level 5 party, but you want a lot of hit points (for a satisfyingly long fight) and you want either multiple or AoE attacks so the creature can occupy several PCs at once.If I were running that game again, I would give different stats to the same creature, depending on the level of the PCs.  From a pure physics standpoint, this doesn't make any sense at all.  (I can justify it by saying that monsters fight differently depending on who they are facing, but this is a justification - not a rationale.)  But it will produce a much better game experience because the monster rules will better reflect the role of that creature in the particular combat at hand.Of course, the "rules are not physics" argument doesn't solve *every* problem.  We all want consistent rules for common combat situations.  But it is a reasonable response to someone suggesting a "bag of rats" exploit.  Just because there is a loophole in the rules doesn't mean that you can expect the GM to allow you exploit it.(For a real-life example of this, take a look at the legal history of Grokster.  Their whole business plan was based on a "bag of rats" legal defense.  See how it worked out for them.)</blockquote>

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