Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="tyrlaan" data-source="post: 4964022" data-attributes="member: 20998">What you're hitting on here, I think, is something you can find in a handy write-up of RPG design elements. I can't remember where I found the thing and I'm too lazy to ferret out a link, especially when I'm sure someone else will come in and post it up ;-)Anyway this smacks of what that write-up refers to as inferred or hidden rules. I think you're sights are on the target but you're missing the mark a bit.pawsplay already more or less covered this. Saying a 20 always hits (and a 1 always misses) bakes in the "hidden" rule that no defense is ever perfect and no attacker never makes a mistake.There's definitely an assumed rule in here. The problem here is I don't think the 4e rules actually have it baked in other than to say that you somehow know who your enemies are. I believe this is an assumed rule of the game table, a sort of unspoken social contract between players and GM. IMO, what my character sees as an enemy could change from character to character and possibly even from one circumstance to another. Maybe one character defines "enemies" as anyone that's not a PC while another says it's anyone that takes an obvious hostile action against him or an ally. While I agree that it needs to be a credible threat to be an enemy, there's still tons of wiggle room. I wonder if you could get around this issue by stating a spell that hits "enemies in <zone type>" instead means "pick as many targets as you want in <zone type>"? Tho perhaps I digress now...The hidden rule here is not just that such terms as good and evil are well defined but they are also universally defined. You need a cosmic Good and a cosmic Evil. To that end, villains would know they are evil, which can hurt certain villain character concepts. Alternatively, you could try to work with subjective good and evil definitions, but I'd expect that to lead to players feeling cheated.</blockquote>

Verification