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<blockquote data-quote="Yesway Jose" data-source="post: 5626747" data-attributes="member: 6679265">What if my character knows Hypnotism, the spell I love to hate. DM and I have agreed that outside of meaningful combat, the spell's applications are allowed to fully live up to its name. So I am using Hypnotism to influence the bouncer to let me into the club as a VIP, to make the shopkeeper believe that the gold crown is merely junk which he can sell to me for 1 copper, etc. My PC also has a great number of unmeaningful encounters, that is combats where I influence all the opponents to commit suicide (ie., using the spell in a non-official way and not receiving any XP).&nbsp;When I have meaningful combat, it is abstracted such that the Hypnotism spell is restricted to 2 mechanical results: move or attack another.&nbsp;Yet in my head, I know that the combat is abstracted such that in-game characters cannot explore the difference between magic in-combat vs out of combat. So I'm imagining that my wizard does influence the monsters to do all sort of things, but these are not made explicit by the mechanics.&nbsp;When the combat abstraction ends, I laugh and talk about how wonderful it was to make the monsters dance like chickens and kill themselves.&nbsp;The other players look at me and think I'm out of my mind.&nbsp;With the level of abstraction you're talking about and the kind of schism between association of mechanics to narrative in and out of meaningful combat, I'm surprised DMs and players are able to have a consensual narrative.&nbsp;It's like a rule that an encounter is won by a single die roll, higher die wins -- OK, now players narrate how you won.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Yesway Jose, post: 5626747, member: 6679265"] What if my character knows Hypnotism, the spell I love to hate. DM and I have agreed that outside of meaningful combat, the spell's applications are allowed to fully live up to its name. So I am using Hypnotism to influence the bouncer to let me into the club as a VIP, to make the shopkeeper believe that the gold crown is merely junk which he can sell to me for 1 copper, etc. My PC also has a great number of unmeaningful encounters, that is combats where I influence all the opponents to commit suicide (ie., using the spell in a non-official way and not receiving any XP). When I have meaningful combat, it is abstracted such that the Hypnotism spell is restricted to 2 mechanical results: move or attack another. Yet in my head, I know that the combat is abstracted such that in-game characters cannot explore the difference between magic in-combat vs out of combat. So I'm imagining that my wizard does influence the monsters to do all sort of things, but these are not made explicit by the mechanics. When the combat abstraction ends, I laugh and talk about how wonderful it was to make the monsters dance like chickens and kill themselves. The other players look at me and think I'm out of my mind. With the level of abstraction you're talking about and the kind of schism between association of mechanics to narrative in and out of meaningful combat, I'm surprised DMs and players are able to have a consensual narrative. It's like a rule that an encounter is won by a single die roll, higher die wins -- OK, now players narrate how you won. [/QUOTE]

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