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<blockquote data-quote="Jonny Nexus" data-source="post: 1773254" data-attributes="member: 14664">Yes, that is a good point. I suppose though that I would feel that you have to draw a distinction between the rules and what I'd term &quot;flavour/setting&quot;.An example:The rules say that to make an attack you roll a d20, add your attack bonus, and if it exceeds or equals your opponent's AC then you've successfully struck them. They then do the same to you.However, if I was writing up an attack as a descriptive account (in a storyhour for example) I would not write: Thargar approached Haden - who merely stood motionless before him - lifted his axe, and then bought it crashing down upon Haden's armour. Haden staggered back a pace under the force of the blow, waited until Thargar had assumed a stationary stance, and then swung his axe at Haden's motionless form. No, obviously, I'm not going to write that - because the D&amp;D combat rules are not intended as a detailed or realistic description of what actually occurs in the game world during a combat. Instead, they are there simply to provide an abstract description of the results of a combat. The underlying assumption is that the imagination of both the GM and the players will be used to &quot;fill in the gaps&quot;. (i.e. If a player rolls a good attack that still turns out to be a miss - just - because the opponent has a high AC, the GM might say, &quot;You axe swings straight down upon his shoulders, but he dances nimbly to one side leaving you swiping at empty air&quot;).The point:I'd say that the magic item rules are (or perhaps should might be more correct, if a tad arrogant) merely an abstract representation of the effects of magical items. But that doesn't mean that you can't add the flavour on top.Personally, I hate the idea of someone just saying, &quot;Oh, this is a +2 vorpal sword&quot; or &quot;this is a +1 ring of protection&quot; because it's just reducing magic items to the status of commodities (and I accept that it's probably me that's out of step here, because in typical D&amp;D game worlds, magic items probably are commodities).To me, a magic item should - &quot;in-character&quot; - have merely a name and a description (&quot;This is the Ring of Elronna... it is said that it shall protect any who wear it from harm) with the actual rules description being very much &quot;out of character&quot;.But I guess this comes down to the level of magic you want in a game (ubiquitous versus exotic) and as is probably obvious, I'm in the &quot;exotic&quot; camp.&nbsp; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jonny Nexus, post: 1773254, member: 14664"] Yes, that is a good point. I suppose though that I would feel that you have to draw a distinction between the rules and what I'd term "flavour/setting". An example: The rules say that to make an attack you roll a d20, add your attack bonus, and if it exceeds or equals your opponent's AC then you've successfully struck them. They then do the same to you. However, if I was writing up an attack as a descriptive account (in a storyhour for example) I would not write: [I]Thargar approached Haden - who merely stood motionless before him - lifted his axe, and then bought it crashing down upon Haden's armour. Haden staggered back a pace under the force of the blow, waited until Thargar had assumed a stationary stance, and then swung his axe at Haden's motionless form.[/I] No, obviously, I'm not going to write that - because the D&D combat rules are not intended as a detailed or realistic description of what actually occurs in the game world during a combat. Instead, they are there simply to provide an abstract description of the [I][B]results[/B][/I] of a combat. The underlying assumption is that the imagination of both the GM and the players will be used to "fill in the gaps". (i.e. If a player rolls a good attack that still turns out to be a miss - just - because the opponent has a high AC, the GM might say, "You axe swings straight down upon his shoulders, but he dances nimbly to one side leaving you swiping at empty air"). The point: I'd say that the magic item rules are (or perhaps should might be more correct, if a tad arrogant) merely an abstract representation of the [I][B]effects[/B][/I] of magical items. But that doesn't mean that you can't add the flavour on top. Personally, I hate the idea of someone just saying, "Oh, this is a +2 vorpal sword" or "this is a +1 ring of protection" because it's just reducing magic items to the status of commodities (and I accept that it's probably me that's out of step here, because in typical D&D game worlds, magic items probably [I][B]are[/B][/I] commodities). To me, a magic item should - "in-character" - have merely a name and a description ("This is the Ring of Elronna... it is said that it shall protect any who wear it from harm) with the actual rules description being very much "out of character". But I guess this comes down to the level of magic you want in a game (ubiquitous versus exotic) and as is probably obvious, I'm in the "exotic" camp. :) [/QUOTE]

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