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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6988000" data-attributes="member: 42582">I answered this in the post to which you replied: the shared fiction matters to resolution. That's what makes it a RPG.For clarity I'll repost my concuding paragraphs on that point:if the participants in the game (i) think it would be interesting for the game to have (say) a hill giant who can knock enemies prone when it hits them with its club; and (ii) think that they would rather have this be regulated by the mechanics rather than just something the GM gets to make up (eg because they think the latter wouldn't necessarily be fair to the players); then (iii) they might prefer monster design that gives the hill giant that mechanical capability. This desire, by these imagined RPGers, could arise whether, in their game, the rulebook entry for hill giants had 1000 words or prose, or 10. And it won't be solved by paying more attention to those words of prose, be they few or many. "Monster lore and flavour text" is completely irrelevant to it. It's an issue about whether or not the mechanics of the game support the creation of the fiction they want in the fashion that they want.I'll add: looking at the INT and WIS scores of a hill giant, or at what is said in the flavour text to motivate it, won't help these D&D players who want it to be possible, in the fiction, for a hit from a hill giant's club to knock you flat.</blockquote>