D&D 5E Is it houseruling to let a torch set fire to things?

[FrogReaver]

Curious bystabdard here. I thought legalese was written in such ways not because a list was exhaustive or Inexhaustive but in order to remove any possible ambiguousness?

Look, I told you I didn't want to get drawn into this. This is why. If you make a sweeping, unarguably wrong point, the best course of action is to just concede it. You can concede it with grace, you can concede it with humor, or you just go, "Yep, my bad," (that might be the best way!) and you move on.

There was no debate here. The statement that there is no general principle in statutory English that lists and descriptions are exhaustive is not just incorrect, it's the opposite of true. The general principle that I just listed is not just a general principle, it's probably the very first principle (or one of them, at least) taught in every single class on statutory construction, legislative purpose, and even basic contract law. It's not even a general principle- it's one of the most basic principles. It is a principle so basic that most of the people get the gist without knowing the Latin. So basic that most people intuitively understand what a residual clause is ("or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another" is an example of a residual clause that gets a lot of legal action) before they understand the technical meaning. For that matter, most people intuit why the phrase "included, but not limited to," is standard legal-ese.

Now, allowances can always be made for people that misspeak. I do it all the time! Of course, if called on it, I need to correct myself. Now, as a general rule, there are good ways to do this, and bad ways. Allow me to illustrate how I would have handled it-

"Well, of course that's correct, and I shouldn't have written that. Thanks for the correction- I got carried away when I was writing about natural language. That said, I personally subscribe to Karl Llewellyn's duelling can[n]ons!"

See! There, you are able to (1) concede a lost point, (2) inject a little levity, and (3) signal to anyone who cares that you actually know what you're talking about by both incorporation through reference and knowing wordplay.

However, when you attempt to (poorly) shift the terms of the debate to an area that you believe you are familiar with, it ends up only (1) betraying your lack of familiarity with the overall subject matter, and (2) showing that you aren't interested in any of the matter being discussed, but only in "winning," - which is a strange thing, indeed, since this is a forum dedicated to, you know, D&D.

So, I could continue, but what's the point? I tried this twice before - you have your views, and you are welcome to them. I would say that for people that understand what's going on, your attempts to try to "overawe" people to your point of view are not well taken, and I will remind you again of the following question from Kagan, J., "Did your office ever consider just confessing error in this case?"


Anyway, I wish you the best of luck convincing other people that your ideas that are not in the RAW are, in fact, the RAW, and I wish @Maxperson the best of luck at convincing other people that his idiosyncratic definition of houserule is correct.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[FrogReaver]

Read it. Don't really see the correlation. Thanks for trying though.

(Edited, because why get involved?)

I'll leave you with this-
https://casetext.com/case/mayor-v-wedding

Good times.

 

[seebs]

If the fireball spell said ". . . and it damages nothing else" that would be true.

Gricean Maxims.

The words are there to communicate something. There is no reason for the spell description to state anything about damage to items if it just wants to say items can be damaged, because we already have the fire rules. That it goes out of its way to identify some items as affected means it doesn't affect other items. After all, if they intended it to affect worn or carried items, they could have just removed words. People don't usually add words without the intent to change meaning.

 

[Downlowd]

How is this a thread? Can one fire cause another? Please tell me no one is actually serious about this question.

I mean, I've seen threads on various sites about whether or not a bear can grapple, even after the term BEAR HUG was introduced. I don't see why there can't be idiots out there who think fires can't start more fires without having to argue over it for a dozen pages.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[billd91]

Sounds like we're arguing about 4e's powers again. Ultimately, this comes down to a question of whether the powers and spells and whatnot are defined to be simple and clearly defined for everybody at the table or whether they can go beyond the specifics of what is written even if it gets messy and there is table variation. 5e, emphasizing rulings not rules, suggests the latter while 4e (and trends in WotC's development of D&D in general), to me and other people in that aforementioned thread about whether fiery powers could ignite things, suggested the former.

 

[RevelationMD]

I mean, I've seen threads on various sites about whether or not a bear can grapple, even after the term BEAR HUG was introduced. I don't see why there can't be idiots out there who think fires can't start more fires without having to argue over it for a dozen pages.

... a dozen non-flammable pages no less.

 

[pemerton]

I thought legalese was written in such ways not because a list was exhaustive or Inexhaustive but in order to remove any possible ambiguousness?

Legalese is frequently ambiguous or otherwise contentious in its interpretation.

There are various rules of thumb that get applied, but they fall well short of general principles. Context is always important, and when reading a document the most consistently important context is the rest of the document. When we turn to the D&D SRD, the presence of p 87 is highly relevant to the interpretation of the rules for spells, and the effects that they might have on objects.

Gricean Maxims.

The words are there to communicate something. There is no reason for the spell description to state anything about damage to items if it just wants to say items can be damaged, because we already have the fire rules. That it goes out of its way to identify some items as affected means it doesn't affect other items. After all, if they intended it to affect worn or carried items, they could have just removed words. People don't usually add words without the intent to change meaning.

There can be any number of reasons for particularly calling out some items: to create an exhaustive list (but then what would be the point of p 87 of the SRD?); to establish that, in respect of certain objects, the GM does not have the discretion that p 87 would otherwise confer (this strikes me as the most reasonable reading); to tell us something about ignition, which otherwise isn't a concept that figures in the rules for damaging items.

Plus there is the broader context of making sense of the fiction. Do the rules for fireball really imply that, on a field of goblins burned to death by a fireball spell, not one of them has any damage to his/her clothes? And what about ice? Is a fireball able to set alight to flammable objects but unable to melt ice?

EDIT: Not to mention that Gricean Maxims, which are predicated upon actual communicative intentions, are contentious in their application to written texts with multiple authors. There's a good chance that the spell text and the p 87 text were authored by different people, with their content settled at different times. Working out their total implications and consequences isn't about discerning a particular speaker's communicative purpose, but about making sense of the directions they give to various game participants, in the context of a game that is meant to generate a reasonably coherent shared fiction among those participants.

If a player says (in character) "I inspect the goblins for cause of death," is it within the spirit of the game to say the fireball killed them all from heat exhaustion while leaving their clothes unsinged?

 

[Maxperson]

Plus there is the broader context of making sense of the fiction. Do the rules for fireball really imply that, on a field of goblins burned to death by a fireball spell, not one of them has any damage to his/her clothes? And what about ice? Is a fireball able to set alight to flammable objects but unable to melt ice?

The rules don't imply that at all. They state it by eliminating worn items as being damageable.......without a house rule anyway. As for the ice, that's up to the DM to rule on and to enact that new rule consistently in the future.

EDIT: Not to mention that Gricean Maxims, which are predicated upon actual communicative intentions, are contentious in their application to written texts with multiple authors. There's a good chance that the spell text and the p 87 text were authored by different people, with their content settled at different times. Working out their total implications and consequences isn't about discerning a particular speaker's communicative purpose, but about making sense of the directions they give to various game participants, in the context of a game that is meant to generate a reasonably coherent shared fiction among those participants.

The bolded is irrelevant. Without proof that they are written by two different people, and further proof that they didn't collaborate together, we have to treat the rules as they are written. 1) specific beats general, so the fireball rules trump any other object damaging rules, and 2) the inclusion of what fireball specifically damages automatically excludes everything else.

If a player says (in character) "I inspect the goblins for cause of death," is it within the spirit of the game to say the fireball killed them all from heat exhaustion while leaving their clothes unsinged?

Yes, since that's the rule. However, it's also within the spirit of the game to enact house rules when the rules result in something you view as silly, so feel free to house rule that the clothes are fried.