Celebrim said:
You seem to have misinterpreted my previous comment as "disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing" instead of "deciding to let something lie rather than go on a warble on the forums when it's clear neither side is going to budge"
But since you mention an explicit example as being a clear case of how we're on the same boat: 'fraid not.
(1) The rules you claim don't acknowledge the illogic of this situation, erm, do. Or at least, since glass has a hardness of 1 and adamantine hardness 20, it wouldn't be without some recource within the rules to analyse it: as well as fitting in with a certain degree of physics. This is not the same thing at all as saying a door can't be broken, full stop, because it's made of Plotanium.
(2) If you don't like the idea of a 20th level character escaping from a room barred by an adamantine door using merely a wine glass, then arguably you shouldn't be playing high level D&D, where this sort of illogical act is the least of your worries. I'm reminded of some of the DCs in the epic level handbook for stuff like "standing on clouds".
(3) This whole example, to be frank, seems to be a bit of an extreme and not much related to the discussion I though we were having, much like your example of the unbreakable sword. The initial post was about a player who didn't like that an encounter was made more difficult by "breaking the rules" and cutting off all the traditional, logical courses of action
without really any explanation: the cold damage that isn't resisted by any spell in their arsenal or the darkness that isn't dispellable by anything, unless you leap through the one hoop the adventure writer has deigned to provide you. He's talking about breaking the RAW for no purpose but to shaft PCs, "challeneing" them by basically playing a different game to the one they expect.
There was a letter of complain in Dungeon when they revised The Mud Sorcerer's Tomb to 3.5 and included the old "list of spells that don't work" therein. I think that it's clearly not just silly ol' me who thinks that this sort of thing isn't entirely cricket, and certainly something that a published adventure shouldn't be encouraging. Like Mouseferatu said way back on page one, maybe, maybe I'd let it slip if it sort of fit the plot: but all too often, it comes across to me as a lazy way to make something challenging by removing PC powers instead of using them. That's something that most adventure writers will tell you is not something you should be doing for the most part.
And I'm afraid that has to be the last I say on the matter, for as I said, it's clear this can only keep going in a rather pointless circle. You go kill off some players by counting to 10 in the Tomb of Horrors, and I'll let them take 16d6 damage, reflex DC 23 for half, and I'm sure we'll both have plenty of fun with our respective TPKs. ;-)
