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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 5758950" data-attributes="member: 386">1. I like that, it's interesting.2. That's a lot of questions for the rules to answer.  In my experience you don't need to answer all of those questions; one simply defines how magic works in general (a feature of the tone, setting, genre, and themes of your game), producing principles from which one can extrapolate answers without having to answer an infinite list of questions.3. 4E is not oblivious to fictional positioning.  I think it has more effective rules than any previous edition of D&D for adjudicating ad-hoc actions that arise from the fiction.  It does have some other problems regarding fictional positioning, though.4. I find it interesting that you think answering those questions will cause all sorts of problems.  I personally find that many more issues crop up when the game book tries to answer all conceivable questions.  Anyway.  My answers to your concerns are:a) that's what it means to be a DM; you have to make judgement callsb) making creative contributions means that you're going to be judged by your peers; you can't avoid it, so deal with itc) given that any answer is going to lead to ever more elaborate explanations for strange corner cases, I think it's better to explicitly state that the group has the authority to change those answers (or devise their own elaborate explanations)d) that's why you have the DM make the judgement callsMy preferred way to approach things is to get something like what we have in 4E right now, then tell the players that they have to "flavour" it; that will answer some questions about Vicious Mockery.  If it is a "magic word" (in 4E that would be in Supernal) that represents the idea of mockery, then the target wouldn't need to understand it or be concious at all; but you would have to be able to speak, so stuffing a rag into your mouth would screw up the spell.</blockquote>

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