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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4555556" data-attributes="member: 40961">Eh, I think this is really overselling the point. Like describing Magic Missile as a different effect every time, so long as it deals a set amount of force damage.  Yes, you could do this.  You could actually do this in 3e as well, though.  And the game doesn't require you to do it in order for it to play well. I'd put this a lot less stridently: There is a narrative in the game.  The PCs are trying to accomplish things, like hitting a foe in the head and making them see stars, or knocking them off their feet.  To give rules to these things the PCs wish to accomplish, various effects and damage types are defined.  To keep things from becoming bloated and unwieldy, these effects and damage types are somewhat simplified and standardized.  As a result, there is no perfect correspondence between the narrative and the rules for creating the various effects defined in the rules.  Corner cases are ignored.  Generalizations are made.   And then the DM is told to use his judgment to make sure things make sense in game, and is also given a general admonishment- tis nobler to creatively allow something than to deny it, so do your best to come up with ways for things to make sense, rather than just forbid them. Its not THAT different from any other RPG, when you think about it.  All of this basically happened in 3e.  The rules included more corner cases and details (like stability bonuses for four legged creatures, versus not worrying about such things), and the DMG wasn't quite as much into the whole "find a way to say yes!" thing, but... You still had the same underlying principles.  An effect like "prone" was a small list of status effects.  When you used an attack that rendered an opponent prone, those status effects were inflicted.  Sometimes it didn't make sense to inflict those effects on that opponent.  Sometimes the description "prone" didn't make sense on that opponent.  And sometimes the rules didn't answer what to do about that.  So when that happened, you went to the same place 4e goes- the DM figured out what to do.  And he could do it the same way that a DM in 4e does it- he could forbid the use of "prone" against that foe, or he could come up with a creative way to say yes. 4e might do this a little more than 3e.  It certainly has fewer rules for corner cases.  And it has a different ethos, maybe, in the DMG (I say this only because I don't remember the 3e DMG taking a stand on this issue, I may be wrong).  And perhaps there are more places you encounter corner cases, because there are more ways for martial characters to do stuff to their opponents, and that's usually where these things come up since magic is magic and no one questions it no matter what it does.   But to me this is a shift only in degree, not in kind.  So I'd be wary of overselling the OP's point.</blockquote>

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