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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 5088973" data-attributes="member: 8863">Being hidebound and saying "No" also transcend edition.  The stereotypical old-school killer RBDM would never even deign to pick up a 4e book yet would do everything he could to make life difficult for players.  So no, this isn't a 4e problem, it's a DM style problem, if even that.I don't have a problem with Perkin's ruling.  I'm not familiar with 4e rules at all, but he clearly states that Darkfire targets creatures, not objects.  So therefore, it can't be used to melt ice.  Besides, if it's just 4e faerie fire it can't melt ice anyway, so I'd probably make a similar ruling. This also isn't a 4e thing.  Back in 2e, there were plenty of times in Sage Advice in Dragon where Skip generally encouraged a fairly strict reading of spells and a narrow application of them rather than getting creative with them, as a way of preventing rules laywering.  Similar advice was given in High Level Campaigns.  So this is thinking that the writers of the game have been working under for at least 15 years and prior to WotC getting the game.That what I suspected immediately when the jet of flame went off, they should find a way to point it at the door.Yeah, that's another RBDM approach, let the players waste resources.  For extra points, drop a random encounter at the worst possible time.  Though honestly, if I were DMing, I might very well let them waste their powers if I know they know better.  I don't like to RBDM per se, but I also don't hesitate to take advantage of really stupid PC actions either.  If they're less experienced players, I wouldn't actually say no, but explain that it wouldn't work or do any good.  I would assume that Perkins was giving them the benfit of the doubt here either because they're novice players (they are novices right?) or for the benefit of people watching the video.  Perhaps even more of the latter, as someone who is representing WotC here, he's giving an example of the DMing style they're trying to encourage I guess.Yeah, a lot of 4e naming conventions are highly unappealing, but I can understand the IP reasons behind it.  Generic fantasy can't be trademarked (as T$R learned the hard way).  These specific names can be tradmarked and harder to rip off.  I don't like some of the 4e name conventions I've read, but I suspect it's from the amount of stuff getting branded, probably it's not easy to have everything sound cool.Probably for the benefit of the players at the table and viewers.  I would assume Perkins knows damn well how the power works.</blockquote>

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