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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5463579" data-attributes="member: 58197">Actually, I'm playing a role-playing game the way they've been played for decades. In every RPG I've ever played, the rules correspond to specific in-game elements. (There are a tiny handful of exceptions, such as XP, which very seldom come up during actual play--XP is mostly used during chargen and between sessions, not at the table.)Now, the way the rules represent those elements is abstracted--this is understood. A grab mechanic does not and cannot encompass every possibility of what might happen when you try to take hold of something, and the DM is expected to improvise as necessary to keep the rules in line with in-game reality. Nevertheless, it does represent a specific action, that of physically seizing a foe. When I as a player announce, "I am grabbing the toad," it is understood that I mean both the grab mechanic (Strength attack versus Fortitude) and the physical act of grabbing hold. If the Strength attack hits, then my PC has physically seized the toad.I said "successful grab." I attacked with Strength. I hit toad-monster's Fort. The toad is grabbed. I now wish to dispose of it, permanently, before it turns back into a big nasty monster.I am using my imagination here. I am imagining that I have grabbed a toad. I am now imagining all the things I could do with a grabbed toad, and popping it in a bag of holding or tossing it off a cliff seems perfectly viable. But there's no rule for that, so the DM will have to improvise... and if the improvised mechanic is as easy as it logically ought to be, this trick would be a trivial, reliable way to dispose of a powerful foe.If I am now expected to use my imagination to find ways to make sure these ideas don't work--all in service of preventing any action outside the scope of the rules--then I'm just playing a wargame with pretensions, and I could get the same result much more quickly by dispensing with the pretensions and treating the whole thing as the abstract tactical exercise it is.</blockquote>

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