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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8501263" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, 'wrassling' presumably means invoking some established grappling mechanics, so the fictional part here is really color, it isn't NECESSARY. In 4e terms you could simply say "I invoke the Grapple action" and saying "I wrassle him" seems more just an informal way of doing so. Actually here we have an objection to 4e that was common, I could wrassle a blob of jello (a slime) and 4e seems to expect that to pass muster, certainly many 4e players expected it to pass muster, fiction be damned! Other people rejected the WHOLE GAME claiming this was beyond the pale. In this case AD&D could be said to engage the fiction here, as it would be expected that the GM would reject an attempt to wrestle with, say, a Grey Ooze (in fact in that game I'd expect the outcome to be fairly catastrophic for my character!). I would interpret 'go to high ground' the same way, certainly in a game where the battlefield is mapped out and described, its a mechanical move action that results in a bonus on certain checks later on. It has a fictional color to it, but it is perfectly feasible for a player to simply describe the move as "I go from square X to square Y, accepting the 1 square movement penalty inherent in moving in a direction the map designates as uphill." Later the player can claim a bonus, called the 'higher ground bonus' due to his PC occupying a square that is labeled as higher. This all seems to reference only mechanics, though I agree it is highly suggestive of fiction.Now, presumably in any of these games, 4e, 5e, or even AD&D, if a wizard cast Icy Terrain (or something like that) on the square designated as 'slope' that might cause the GM to adjudicate, based on logic derived from the fiction, that such a move has become more difficult/hazardous/expensive/whatever. This is where the fiction starts to bear on the mechanics. In RPGs this is likely to always be a fuzzy line, because RPGs are pretty much meant to cover open-ended situations and thus cannot codify all these kinds of interactions. 4e is cool in that it has keywords, which if used well can help guide these sorts of decisions and make them more interesting and consistent (and suggest them to start with). At a bare minimum you can see this as a simplification. The AD&D flame tongue lists a specific set of creatures that are 'avian' which it gets +4 against, the 4e version simply adds a capability to do fire damage, which can thus trigger other rules, but could also allow the GM to extrapolate (Oh, this feathery creature is especially vulnerable).</blockquote>

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