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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3776581" data-attributes="member: 2268">Nothing bad for you if you prefer it that way. But since we're here to discuss from our respective points of view, and since from my point of view that kind of roleplaying is like building a house from the roof down instead from the foundations up, it's why I may sound like it's a "bad thing" to me.Nope, no dispute here from me. Just was trying to get a grip on those examples you provided, and the underlying reasoning. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Basically, and that covers both sides, the whole argument that is threaded throughout this thread is more concerned with metagame effects on the game, the concern that metagame thinking can cause weird behaviour in characters because the players treat them like playing pieces on a Monopoly board with extended abilities, and the effect the differences in frequency those abilities might have in 4E metagame thinking and hence on the weird behaviour of the characters.The point to me, and it's mixed in different current threads, like the "Rules first, roleplaying second" one here, or the "Thespian acting vs. Immersion" thread over in General, is that the rules and the metagame effects they have seem to be of a bigger importance for many posters here than the fact that people might want to play a character with a personality, goals, and a certain behaviour that stems from all that.And I'm not talking about trying to play amateur thespian on the table, or screwing up the game with the sole excuse that "it was what my character would have done". Also, I'm aware that D&D has its roots in wargaming, but that doesn't mean roleplaying considerations should be totally left out of the discussion just because it can't be put into numbers. That's why I was a bit confused by your 3rd example...simply because it sounds, to me, like a paper tiger, something that looks possible on paper, looking at the possible effect of metagame thoughts on character behaviour, but that I'm pretty sure wouldn't pop up with most of my players, and not with myself either (that goes for this weird and in my experience highly hypothetical 9 - 9.05 phenomenon, too). Even assuming I'm a 5th level wizard, and the murderer of my father is a 3rd level fighter, and I'm all out of spells...the question for me is more if not following because I'm out of spells is in line with the character personality.Frankly, rules (even in D&D) are a frame, or a skeleton. They are not what drive the in-game decisions, but what makes the consequences of those decisions possible. They are what should step in the background, and let the game proceed forward. That's something that for some reason gets pushed aside in most of these discussions, handwaved away as "individual playstyle" and apparently not important enough to be viewed as part of either problem or solution.No reason why you shouldn't. The question is if a game should derive its rules by following the gaming priorities of those who potentially might play it, or if it should derive its rules from what it is supposed to do by design, and then get chosen by players because it supports their specific preferences. But that cannot be resolved, otherwise we'd not have posts that either go "If you don't like the new edition, nobody forces you to play it, your old edition won't go up in flames" or "If you don't like the old edition, nobody forces you to play it, there is tons of games out there that support your wishes much better".Bottomline is, we all love D&D and would like it to support "our" style of playing, at least, which won't work, because one game can't be 4 million different rulesets at the same time. Gah, and now you got me rambling, posting at 1 AM is simply a bad idea. I just want to say that just because some rule (or rules change) might or might not have a certain effect on the game, it doesn't mean that this effect can be countered by nothing else but rules either, and it would be more fruitful to compare metagame issues alongside with roleplaying experiences, instead of handwaving those out of the picture with an "everybody here knows how to roleplay". <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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