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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7656495" data-attributes="member: 4937">You have so much wrong I don't know where to begin, starting with the claim that you are hearing me.   But, I was objecting to silence and the concealing of thought because I knew you weren't hearing me.   And "Thank you" is meaningless and conveyed no information.   It's no better than Biblo's breezy "Good morning".   I know you'll dismiss me without hearing or listening, so it's not a question of what I want.   What I want is your words, whether dismissive or not.  To begin with, the GM in the satire I wrote conveyed the very information you cite here in game.  So once again you are suggesting something I already agree with and at the same time failing to understand the point.  There was no question in anyone's mind whether a whole fleet of star destroyers could destroy a planet.  But, you would have the GM drop hints and nudges in the right direction until the Luke player was on the right track and had this affirmed out of character by the GM - the sort of behavior that just encourages more dysfunctional whining.  So you've actually shown exactly why I think the approach wouldn't work.Rather than refuting the all rest of your statements one by one, let's just stop here and settle this question using actual facts and reasoned argument.  You claim that it is false that favored terrain rules are a guideline.  You do so providing no evidence at all.   You claim this providing no reasoning at all.   You claim this despite the clear suggestion of the words themselves.   Fine.I happen to have the 2nd edition Monstrous Manual, copyright 1993, open in front of me.   I 'm turned to the first page of the text with the heading "How To Use This Book", and on that page is a section header for "CLIMATE/TERRAIN", and it reads, "CLIMATE/TERRAIN defines where the creature is most often found."   Most often is here a limiting qualifier that provides for exceptions to the normal, making these lines in the monster entries mere suggestions or guidelines.   They are particularly weak even as suggestions, because since they convey no information about process resolution and instead only setting information, they are by normal conventions things you'd expect DM's to fiddle with even if the text didn't specifically empower them to do so without even considering it a house rule.  (How could it be a house rule that Manticores also appear in forest, when the literal plain reading of the rules as written allows them to?)   So I think it safe to say on the basis of actual evidence that the "CLIMATE/TERRAIN" entry is most definitely a guideline.But what is even more interesting is that if we turn to page 246 of this same text, we find the 2nd edition entry for Manticore, and the first line of that entry after the name reads: "CLIMATE/TERRAIN: Any".   Feel free to verify that.  Further more, if we examine the ecology section of the entry it reads: "Ecology: Manticores are wide-ranging carnivores that have successfully survived in every region inhabited by humans, whether in the wilderness or underground."   This does nothing to overturn Hussar's recollection that somewhere Manticores are listed as primarily desert creatures, but does pretty much destroy the rest of your ... I don't even know what to call it.  It's not an argument.  It's not a rebuttal.  You'd actually have to have used facts for that instead of something like 'You're wrong'.   But among other things, examine that fact in the light of your rejection of my point 'j'.  First, it's not just a restatement of 'a', which can be shown in many ways but the easiest way would be to point out that 'j' could potentially remain true even if we'd resolved that 'a' was false.  If both were rules, it still wouldn't follow that the group had agreed to use this particular rule.  Your rebuttal that because they were playing AD&D2 the rule was implied to be in force falls not just because it isn't a rule, but because every rule from every supplement from AD&D2 is not necessarily in play just because they are playing AD&D2.   The Monstrous Manual itself was clearly not in play, or this particular bit of rules lawyering - stupid as it was - could have never held, since the description of the Manticore in the 2e Monstrous Manual makes it clear that Manticores can appear in any terrain even if it were true that the CLIMATE/TERRAIN entry was a hard and binding rule and not merely as the text says a suggestion.  I'm using straw men?  Even if it were true that I'd erected straw men arguments, which I deny, I at least have done you the dignity of trying to build an argument and substantiate it.  If my argument is made of straw, yours is no more than hot air.  Your declaration that my argument is made of straw is no more substantial than your declaration that "(a) is false".  Saying it is so doesn't make it so.</blockquote>

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