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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 6514934" data-attributes="member: 49017">Can you prove that when magic is doing something more effectively than might it's not because the magic is being done by someone higher level than the someone doing the might? If not, then you're using the word verisimilitude to support your belief that's based on what you'd like to be rather than anything that counts as verisimilitude for anyone but you.If you've got 96 hit points to start with then the loss of 95 of them handicaps your ability to run marathons, fight, play the banjo and argue philosophy not at all. Sort of suggests that the physical injury involved isn't particularly significant.The fundamental argument here at least is that some people have bought into the idea that magic is fundamentally better than mundane, and that therefore anything which is done with magic can't be permitted to be done as effectively by other means. It's not a question of whether verisimilitude demands that magic do something; it's also that mundane must not do it at all, or mundane must do it less effectively at the same level. The necromancer may (perhaps must) be able to raise an army of undead; if that army of undead is matched against the army that the fighter may be allowed to raise, it's got to be better if the levels are the same, because verisimilitude can only be maintained if the privileged position of magic in their minds is acknowledged and supported by the rules. Since this position cannot be proved or disproved by anything outside the rules (because levels aren't a concept in the fiction that inspires the games) then any rules which don't support this have to be condemned as lacking verisimilitude and rules which support it have to be held up as agreeing with it. Since D&D has been published without design goals, an argument about how it's supposed to be run isn't going to change anyone's mind, no matter how many hundred page threads discuss it.</blockquote>

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