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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7517957" data-attributes="member: 37579">Look harder. Every RPG ever has to deal with actions not covered by the rules. And in the absence of rules, DMs arbitrate based on acceptable realism. Typically cinematic. The "does this feel real?" test. Asking "would seeing a character do this in a movie break my immersion or seem implausible?" If someone asks if their character can do something, it's DMing 101 to think "is this physically possible?"  You really don't NEED a giant long list of everything a fighter physically capable. You can look at their abilities and decide if they can do a chin-up or not. Seriously. Have you ever seen any rules describing if a character can perform a chin-up? Seems like something that occurs in adventuring. Because you don't need rules for that. You know it's physically possible. You might even be able to do it yourself. I tend to think of this in terms of the Die Hard movies. Several of the things McClane does in the first three Die Hards would have killed him. But it was close enough to reality that it didn't shatter immersion. You didn't look at it and go, "oh, that's BS. He'd be soooo dead." But then you watch other action films and something happens and it's just so ridiculously implausible you have to actively force your brain not to rebel. (Y'know, like in Die Hard 4 and 5.)If the fighters in my game want to do something that feels like something McClane could do in a movie, then I don't need hard rules telling me it's humanly possible. Because it's self evident. So much so, you're apparently doing that without even noticing. Contrast this with magic. Magic breaks the laws of reality. You need to define what magic can or cannot do. If I say we're playing in an RPG based on a famous book series, then that establishes if a character can just casually snap their fingers and light a candle. Can someone effortlessly magic a candle alight? If it's something like, oh, Dragonlance then the answer is "yes"... IF the character knows the appropriate cantrip. If we're playing a game based on The Witcher then also yes, as Geralt can light campfires pretty easily. If we're playing in a game inspired by the Kingkiller Chronicles then "no" as magic is sympathetic and creating even a small fire requires the caster to have a sympathetic link expend their own heat to ignite the flame. Magic very much needs to be defined.</blockquote>

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