Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rex Blunder" data-source="post: 4152969" data-attributes="member: 60850">The OP is not using the "rules aren't physics" statement in its most usual form, which I think is causing confusion."Rules aren't physics" isn't usually invoked to cover areas where there are no rules for a situation, or the rules don't make solid predictions (like his incorrect example about no rules for healing npcs). This example got us all off on the wrong track."Rules aren't physics" is invoked for situations where there ARE rules about things, and the rules  DO make solid predictions about the universe, and the predictions break verisimilitude.3.x Examples: -Raise dead is available to sufficiently high-level clerics, therefore rich nobles and royalty can never die prematurely.-Falling damage is low, and caps out, therefore powerful heroes and monsters can regularly cascade off cliffs like lemmings to save travel time.-20th level wizards can solo dragons, therefore there are no dragons and there are a bunch of super-rich wizards.-The nature of teleportation and attack spells means that castles are not a good form of defense, and armies are easily slaughtered by wizards and monsters. Therefore a pseudo-medieval high fantasy world should have no castles and armies.All of these situations are caused by EXISTING game rules, not lack of game rules. There's never a situation where, as the OP said, "players don't know what will work and what won't". The problem is, everyone knows how things work according to the rules, and the way things work is stupid.That's the problem "the rules aren't physics" is usually invoked to respond to. In other words, the rules are how things work for the PCs. However, offstage, things work generally the way we'd expect them to work (kings die, heroes don't jump off of cliffs, there are dragons and armies and castles).</blockquote>

Verification