Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6451832" data-attributes="member: 58197">As I've said elsewhere, there is a distinction to make here between rules that are open-ended and rules that are unclear.An open-ended rule is one which intentionally leaves details to the DM's judgement, to allow for situations more complex and nuanced than written rules can handle in a practical way. For example, the fireball spell says it ignites flammable objects, but doesn't say how to determine whether an object is flammable, or what exactly the effects of being ignited are. The DM is expected to take care of those details when they come up. That's an example of a rule which is clear but open-ended.An unclear rule is one which appears to have a definite intent in mind, but is written in such a way that one can't be sure what the intent is. For example, the evoker's Empowered Evocation ability says, &quot;You can add your Intelligence modifier to the damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast.&quot; It's not clear how that is supposed to apply to spells like magic missile (do you get +Int damage to each missile? to just one missile? for each target of the spell?). This is not a question you'd expect to adjudicate in play each time it comes up. It's not situational, either--any time you use magic missile, the issue will arise. This is an example of an unclear rule.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 6451832, member: 58197"] As I've said elsewhere, there is a distinction to make here between rules that are [I]open-ended[/I] and rules that are [I]unclear[/I]. An open-ended rule is one which intentionally leaves details to the DM's judgement, to allow for situations more complex and nuanced than written rules can handle in a practical way. For example, the [I]fireball[/I] spell says it ignites flammable objects, but doesn't say how to determine whether an object is flammable, or what exactly the effects of being ignited are. The DM is expected to take care of those details when they come up. That's an example of a rule which is clear but open-ended. An unclear rule is one which appears to have a definite intent in mind, but is written in such a way that one can't be sure what the intent is. For example, the evoker's Empowered Evocation ability says, "You can add your Intelligence modifier to the damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast." It's not clear how that is supposed to apply to spells like [I]magic missile[/I] (do you get +Int damage to each missile? to just one missile? for each target of the spell?). This is not a question you'd expect to adjudicate in play each time it comes up. It's not situational, either--any time you use [I]magic missile[/I], the issue will arise. This is an example of an unclear rule. [/QUOTE]

Verification