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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 6306726" data-attributes="member: 18">On the precise contrary, it absolutely is the rules as intended. What you suggest is completely bizarre and certainly not the intention. I guarantee that your 3E trio of Mearls, Tweet and Cook would agree with me, based on their various writings about DMing.EDIT - This is interesting because it takes us right back to the thread topic - the rules, in D&D, have not, generally, and particularly post-2E, been intended as a "simulation", but rather as a quite playable and functional game. D&D has been quite distinct from games that have gone down the path (some would say rabbit-hole!) of attempted simulation, tending to be less granular and more interested in workable approximations and playable, interesting systems than being "realistic" (HP and levels are perfect examples of this - neither is particularly realistic - both, especially the former, make the game very playable and enjoyable - HP, for example, prevent the sometimes-tedious but certainly realistic - in the broad sense - "death spiral" effect of many games). This is true of both 3.XE and 4E. PF attempts to tug 3.XE in a more simulationist direction with ultra-detailed rules on certain areas, but does so without much vigour or conviction.OSR D&D-related games, too, have focused more on interesting and atmospheric play structures, rather than any attempt to say, force players to make combat rolls to kill a deer.This isn't to suggest those who enjoy games which attempt a more simulation-y take are wrong, of course, it's a matter of taste, but I think it is pretty clearly wrong to suggest that, certainly post-2E, D&D's rules were written with the intention that you do things like play out, in detail, rabbit-hunting (as opposed to making it the appropriate result of a successful survival check in an area where rabbits are present and snares could be set, or rabbits hunted). Indeed, if we are to always give every living or unliving creature a roll against every threat, as Ahn appears to be suggesting, if snares were set, we'd be having to make perception checks for rabbits, then rolling to hit, then rolling to damage and so on (and would need stats for rabbits snares). Now that is, pun intended, quite the rabbit-hole!Fun for some, for sure, but not "rules as intended", which we are "breaking" by not following!EDIT EDIT: Further, that's not to say there's never a situation in which one might to use the combat rules to bring down a deer or the like (or even a rabbit) - it's just that it's not the default intention of the rules that in order to take a deer or the like, successful combat against it must be engaged in (indeed, pushing D&D's system like that often ends up with it in sketchy territory, where obviously physically possible things are mathematical impossibilities).</blockquote>

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