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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 4841138" data-attributes="member: 3424">Before I tackle this question, I think I need to go back to the earlier question about the distinction between a tactic and an exploit. For mundane matters, the distinction seems fairly simple, at least in theory: if something is about as effective in the game world as it is in the real world, it is a tactic. If it is more effective in the game world than it should be in the real world, it's an exploit.Where this gets messed up in practice is that the real world often does not intrude directly onto anybody's game table. Instead, the real world is filtered through the perceptions of the various people involved in the game. The game designers will have one perception of how the world should work, and this is expressed as the core rules of the game. The DM will have another perception of how the world should work, and this is expressed through his house rules and other rulings. When a DM discovers rules (core rules or house rules) that turn out to be more effective than he thinks they should be, he tags them as exploits.Magic muddies the water further when it comes to fantasy games. Since there is seldom a real-world analogue for how magic works, designers and DMs can have vastly different ideas of how magic should work. Hence, there is even more scope for a rule that the designer thinks is fine to be considered an exploit by the DM, or for a DM's own house rule to have unintended consequences which he later feels to be an exploit.So, to answer the current question, there are some actions that will generally be considered good ideas, because most people have fairly similar perceptions of the world where they are concerned and would recognize them as good ideas. The actual degree of effectiveness within the game, however, will depend on the rules.</blockquote>

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