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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6354748" data-attributes="member: 42582">This paragraph reveals it's own inconsistency.As you say, when I am playing a game it is numers on the character sheet that determine whether or not the fiction contains element A ("My guy is alive") or element B ("My guy is dead, killed by an orc"). The character sheet doesn't exist in the game. A number of the things written on the character sheet - eg player name - don't exist, nor represent anything, in the game.It is a further decision which is not mandated by the game rules, and which at least one edition of the rules - Gygax's AD&D - eschews, to decide that the hit point tally on the character sheet represents some ingame property of a character. It's your prerogative to make that decision in your game. I can tell you that in my game that decision has not been taken; and I think likewise at  [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s table.This isn't true either, without introducing additional premises which I don't accept.Here is a true counterfactual: if the players at the table declared certain actions, involving shooting blowgun darts into commoners; and if the outcomes of those declared actions were resolved using the combat mechanics; then the PCs in the gameworld might be able to formulate and even verify certain hypotheses about the gameworld.But the first antecdent of the counterfactual is not true in my game: the players have never declared such actions. Nor is the second antecedent of the counterfactual true in my game: the outcomes of those declared actions would not be resolved using the combat mechanics.Here is the relevant passage from the 4e DMG that explains why not (p 40):When a power has an effect that occurs upon hitting a target - or reducing a target to 0 hit points - the power functions only when the target in question is a meaningful threat. Characters can gain no benefit from carrying a sack of rats in hopes of healing their allies by hitting the rats. When a power’s effect involves a character’s allies, use common sense when determining how many allies can be affected. D&D is a game about adventuring parties fighting groups of monsters, not the clash of armies. A warlord’s power might, read strictly, be able to give a hundred “allies” a free basic attack, but that doesn’t mean that warlord characters should assemble armies to march before them into the dungeon. In general, a power’s effect should be limited to a squad-sized group - the size of your player character group plus perhaps one or two friendly NPCs—not hired soldiers or lantern-bearers.In other words, 4e is designed to be played treating common sense and genre sensibilities as a constraint on the deployment of the action resolution mechanics. It is not designed with the intention that the action resolution mechanics are a general theory/picture of how things work in the gameworld.Hence, if (contrary to my real-life expectations) the players in my game were to have their PCs declare the sort of "experiment" you describe, the combat mechanics wouldn't be used to resolve them - the commoners would simply be declared killed ("saying yes" rather than making the players roll the dice).If you treat the game mechanics as a model of ingame processes, then the experiments you describe can be performed. But at that point you are affirming as a premise what you were hoping to prove, namely, that the mechanics are a model of ingame causal processes.In other words, as I already posted upthread, the decision to treat the mechanics as a process is a choice. Even in RQ you could treat the mechanics as purely metagame if you wanted to; it's just that if that's how you wanted to play you probably wouldn't bother with RQ. Similarly, you could treat the 4e mechanics in a process sim way if you wantd to, ignoring the rules text that I just quoted. Though personally I'm not sure why you'd bother - there are much better process-sim games out there.</blockquote>

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