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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7613273" data-attributes="member: 6775031">This gets back to the variability between tables. I think we can all agree that players should avoid making foolish decisions, and that when they do make a foolish decision, the danger should be proportional to how foolish the decision is. Taunting an enemy is usually foolish, but taunting an ogre has lower stakes than taunting a dragon or taunting a god.Is it foolish to try and disintegrate a giant skeleton, if it doesn't show any special signs of intelligence or weird magical properties? That's going to vary from table to table. Certainly, you could subject the skeleton to a battery of non-invasive magical tests to discover its powers, before you try anything on it. Of course, if it is just a mindless undead, then you will have wasted both time and spell slots while it goes about its rampage unimpeded. Given the information at hand, the latter course of action seems far more foolish than the former; and the fact that the former course resulted in instant and irrevocable death, is not consistent with the level of foolishness I would typically expect to yield that outcome.Wandering down a hallway while poking every tile with a chicken that's strapped to the end of a ten-foot-pole may seem like a wiser course of action than just walking down the hallway like a normal person, but does the world really work in such a way as to warrant that level of caution? As the DM, you have control over all of the background variables (like geology, wild magic phenomena, and the economy of death traps) to determine which concerns are reasonable and which ones are just paranoia. As a player, I would certainly hope that the world doesn't work in such a way that the chicken stick becomes a reasonable course of action.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7613273, member: 6775031"] This gets back to the variability between tables. I think we can all agree that players should avoid making foolish decisions, and that when they do make a foolish decision, the danger should be proportional to how foolish the decision is. Taunting an enemy is usually foolish, but taunting an ogre has lower stakes than taunting a dragon or taunting a god. Is it foolish to try and disintegrate a giant skeleton, if it doesn't show any special signs of intelligence or weird magical properties? That's going to vary from table to table. Certainly, you [I]could[/I] subject the skeleton to a battery of non-invasive magical tests to discover its powers, before you try anything on it. Of course, if it [I]is[/I] just a mindless undead, then you will have wasted both time and spell slots while it goes about its rampage unimpeded. Given the information at hand, the latter course of action seems far more foolish than the former; and the fact that the former course resulted in instant and irrevocable death, is not consistent with the level of foolishness I would typically expect to yield that outcome. Wandering down a hallway while poking every tile with a chicken that's strapped to the end of a ten-foot-pole may seem like a wiser course of action than just walking down the hallway like a normal person, but does the world really work in such a way as to warrant that level of caution? As the DM, you have control over all of the background variables (like geology, wild magic phenomena, and the economy of death traps) to determine which concerns are reasonable and which ones are just paranoia. As a player, I would certainly hope that the world doesn't work in such a way that the chicken stick becomes a reasonable course of action. [/QUOTE]

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