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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 3773755" data-attributes="member: 3192">I don't happen to believe thinking in rules vs. thinking in terms of the world is irrelevant.  In abstract, let's say your character's to-hit ability is a +3.  That is pretty good.  You know from playing the game that you get 3 more points on that d20 roll when you try and hit something.  Small things are harder to hit as are touch and armored.  But all that may mean nothing when it is a ring you're trying to catch on the end of your epee.  What are the rules for that in 3e?  Do you have any idea how difficult that might be?  What should the rule be to accurately represent the real world difficulty?See how that works?  Real world representation is the key.  Yes, it will be the DM and original game designer's interpretation of what best works, but as a Player you can always bring up how a 17 not hitting that small stone seemed very odd.   And the Ref might confer with you afterward about making the rule better.On the other hand, the Ref might agree with you, "very odd".  And all of a sudden you have to start thinking maybe something more is going on here than meets the eye.  So you start inspecting it.  Was it a glamoured hummingbird?  Did the Ref's description of what happened when you missed any clue?  Or is one going to attempt to rule lawyer the game from the player's seat?  I'm not saying "You all must play this way".  I'm suggesting that playstyles, like mine, may be obsolete in the next version of the game.  And I hope they aren't.  I have heard both encouraging and discouraging hints.IME, playing the game as a learning game means the Players can't jump ahead.  One can't pretend to know the whole of the time and space as Multiverse Emperor Eternal.  The world is learned as the Players/Characters explore.  This is a major part of the game for me.  This style includes magic and how it works.  How many iterations of magic are there?   Who's to say they work the same everywhere?  Even in our world few people claim to hold the absolute truth on anything.  And then it's normally in regard to the unprovable.  How I like to play neither the Players nor the Characters know the the absolute truth either. They can think they do, and get pretty darn close to a correspondence theory of truth, but it is always an in-character belief.  If a group were to start a high level game, then they would need to know what their characters knew prior to play.  That means a lot of knowledge read vs. played.Casting Detect Magic would allow a caster to actually learn what auras meant, for one.  Yes, it is possible your mentor told you what these meant beforehand.  But where's the fun in that?  Why bother exploring the world, if you already know what it holds? The point to remember here is: this is not a modern world.  Knowledge is rarely common, abundant, jointly agreed upon, or carelessly disseminated.  It's as much a treasure as the bouncing baubles that have auras.RE: PHBs.  As you describe them, I call those "Player's Character Sheets" and that is a great deal of what's on them.  Of course these exist for NPCs too.  Books.Relying on shared assumptions to all be true would rarely work.  Thankfully, the real world, IMHO, actually has a single truth to it.  A "reality" so to speak.  And it doesn't care about my assumptions about it.  In the game, the Ref's judgment and consistent application of the rules are the "game's reality".   Knowing that BASIC reality is generally as shared as your and I's beliefs about what "green" or "tree" means.  And judging in character how long a fire takes to burn is random.. and requires a roll.  So would anything that has element of assumption to it.  But trying to live without some assumption would be downright impossible.  Who knows if the PC's roll meant the Ref's answer was truthful anyways?</blockquote>

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