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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6878504" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.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?</blockquote>

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