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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6078376" data-attributes="member: 42582">You're right - Men & Magic (p 25) just talks about dice of damage in proportion to level. But it also refers to Chainmail, and in Chainmail (p 31) fireball is described as affecting "men or creatures". There is no reference to damaging objects in the fireball rules.That's not an objectin to OD&D or Chainmail - I think the game has always tended to specify damage and combat effects primariy by reference to creatures (the typical targets), relying on basic common sense for extrapolation to things like setting wooden towers on fire with a fireball.WotC made 3E using TSR staff - Monte Cook, Skip Williams among others.4e was made using 3E staff (eg Andy Collins).I think the discontinuities are not as great as you are implying.I think there is not much evidence of M:TG design on 4e - certainly, there are a number of ways presentation could be tightened (and Essentials goes backwards as far as presentation is concerned).As I said upthread, B/X and Chainmail - both of which long predate WotC - talk only about fireball damaging creatures. The assumption is that (i) creatures are the most common targets of attacks, and (ii) tables are capable of extrapolating that a huge ball of FIRE might set flammable things alight!I find the AD&D and 3E specification of fireball radically overdetailed, and in places counterintuitive. I prefer the B/X, 4e and Rolemaster approach (Rolemaster just tells you which attack table to roll on).There are many ways GMs can make errors or infelicities of adjudication - I don't know of any evidence that the detail in the AD&D fireball write up has struck major blows for better GMing!</blockquote>

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