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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8690798" data-attributes="member: 4937">It's a very important concept because if you don't get it then you can go around making a lot of statements that aren't true.  For example, you could claim that D&D "purists" like me don't like charisma added to damage, or forced movement, or warlords removing conditions.  And none of that is in fact true.  I like on some level all those things but I require an explanation for why it works, and that explanation has to be casually realistic and therefore the explanation will have some limitations.  Like sure, you can make an attack that forces an enemy to move, but the the bigger the opponent is the less far you are likely to move them (if it all) because casual realism says that no matter how you are pushing something, if it is big and heavy it won't go as far.  This means that you can take pretty much any mechanic and make problematic or non-problematic versions of it.For example, you could have a mechanic that allowed you to add your charisma bonus to damage and I wouldn't be bothered if it gave nods to casual realism.  Suppose I had a mechanic like "Master Elvish Blade Dancer: You've trained in the mystic art of elvish blade dancing, allowing you to kill with beauty and grace.  When making melee attacks with a light or graceful bladed weapon you can add your charisma bonus to to the attack damage".   Leaving aside questions of balance, notice what that doesn't say.  It doesn't say your strength doesn't matter.  A strong elvish blade dancer is more dangerous with weapons than one that isn't strong, and a weak elvish blade dancer while still more dangerous than other weak characters is still hampered by their lack of strength.  It might not be a good idea for balance reasons to add the above mechanic but it doesn't harm for me casual realism the way a mechanic that let you straight up replace strength with charisma, because... how does that work?  You probably could come up with a mechanic but it would be strained or it would probably heavily lean toward 'well everyone and everything is magic all the time'.    Likewise, I have no problem with being able to remove conditions just by yelling out instructions, but they have to be the sort of conditions where yelling out instructions or encouragement could conceivably remove the condition - problems of morale, problems of mind altering magic, problems of clarity, or whatever.  But if you can't easily explain why yelling out the instructions or encouragement removed the problem because the problem was of physical nature, then you are harming casual realism.  Maybe the instructions could help of a physical nature, allowing the target some advantage on their actions when trying to deal with them, but certain things can't be shouted away without again appealing to magic.</blockquote>

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