So essentially, your arguement is, that you'de rather fill in that blank entirely yourself, rather than have the developers do so for you? I mean, I dont think thats a bad arguement per-se, but it just seems a bit dodgey that you'de want to allow the game to have this flaw, just to make up for it yourself. But sure, I can see a certain merit to it. My point just is, that that fundamentally and inevitably, will lead to creating less evocative mechanics. The more broad you make your focus, the less interesting and evocative you need to make your mechanics as a result, is basically my arguement.

What we've been debating here isn't my sole reason for saying that Pathfinder/DnD is a shitty roleplay. Theres a bunch of things. Another very key aspect of the game, that just abselutely ruins it for me, in terms of roleplay, is that fucking leveling system.
My character wants to become a stronger person, he lifts weights for 7 months. Does it at all effect my strength? Nop! My character wants to become smarter, maybe get a bachelors degree, he enrolls in a university for a year. Does it effect my ranks in skills? Nop! How do I accomplish these things? I go out and kill 7 Fucking Kobolds, and gain level 4...
And then theres the fucking combat system. "Ok, we're clearly outmatched, we need to fight dirty! I wanna beg the wizard for mercy, and when he least expects it, stab him right in his soft wizard heart, right through his soft wizard robes!". Can I do that? The first part, yes, the second part, Fuck No , because despite being a frail old idiot, protected by nothing but cloth, the dude is still level 10 and has like 50 HP atleast which I'm not gonna be able to 1-hit, despite doing something that should realistically murder his ass. And come to think of it, I cant even say "I wanna stab him in the heart", because targetet attacks aren't part of the fucking core system!

I know I've complained alot about Pathfinder/DnD in this thread, but honestly, its mostly because people praise it so much around here recently, seemingly unaware of where the game falls critically short. I still think its a fine game, but if you want to roleplay, you're honestly better off useing my aformentioned example with a paper and a pen...

Or, if you legitimately catch a villain so completely off-guard, and your DM is cool like me, maybe you get a coup de grace even though he's not technically helpless, or just says the fuckers buckles over and dies when you gut him with your dagger or sword.

Trouble is, no Wizard you'd actually have any beef with would be likely to fall for something like that dumb and transparent without you spending a lot of time earning his trust or just killing him in his sleep. If he's level 10, he's probably had people (or things) try to kill him before. He has some knowledge, a little luck, and some grit from being so experienced, to be able to avoid blows that might otherwise kill him, which is what HP represents and not how much blood or meat is in your body. When you get hit for 49 out of your 50 HP, you didn't necessarily get impaled and miraculously survived. You probably took a bad hit to the shoulder that means the next hit is invariably going to be either entirely fatal, or enough to break through your defenses and inner reserves to knock you the fuck out.

Well, yeah. I want to have a bevvy of flavorful mechanics I can fit into my world or another world, without having to worry about re-flavoring a lot of setting-specific things like prestige classes that are built around specific things in a specific setting. When I want to have that, I'll look it up in a book or a wiki or read a novel about it. Again, I rarely use the generic setting. I didn't use Core 4E for 4E, and I don't use Golarion for Pathfinder. In my Star Wars Saga Edition game, I used a Star Wars era not strictly covered in the books, that of the Old Republic MMO. SWSE has a lot of flavorful, setting-appropriate suggestions and descriptions, but it is likewise aware that its setting is variable, that there's many eras of Star Wars you could set your campaign in. Hell, some folks made a hack where they modified the SWSE rules to emulate fucking Mass Effect. A book doesn't need setting materials to make a suite of mechanics exciting or cool. Established setting details are, like everything else a publisher puts out, guidelines to help you along, not necessarily required reading.

Anyway, if a character lifts weights for 7 months, or a character goes to school and learns a great deal and takes on challenging research projects, they would both gain XP as long as they were challenged and they somehow overcame those challenges. There's tons of high-level Wizards out there who never went on a single adventure in their lives. Thing is, having your mind and body tested by gauntlets of traps, hordes of monsters, and the plots of villains is much more challenging and therefore much more rewarding. Also, the game assumes you're doing things like studying and training in your down time to sort of crystallize what you've learned and discover how to apply it. But, yeah, if you pull a Goku/Vegeta and just work out in a really dangerous way for a while and survive, you could probably level up eventually. But, nobody else at the table likely wants to do that. Unless roleplay or something else story-related is going to happen, why would you even WANT the ability to sit at home and work out? That's not cool or heroic, and it's not a story unless somebody talks to you while you're working out or you internally monologue and your character develops. The game just assumes your character knows how to train her body in her off-hours and that you do so to keep in adventuring shape.

As for the level 10 Wizard, well, it'd be supremely difficult to ever convince him you genuinely wanted to give up and then hang out afterwards, but let's say you did. He's a powerful Wizard, and can therefore probably prepare an Extended Mage Armor for the day, giving him the invisible equivalent of a chain shirt for a duration of 20 hours. He also likely has a Ring of Protection and possibly an Amulet of Natural Armor to further increase his AC. Even if you take him by surprise, taking his Dexterity out of the equation, he's basically wearing the equivalent of a non-magical suit of plate mail or better. That's not even taking into account the other spells he probably cast to defend himself either before you arrived or while you were talking and begging for your lives. So, even if you pulled this whole thing off, you might not actually hit him. But, let's say you did. He's denied his Dexterity to AC, so if you're a Rogue you can Sneak Attack him, if you're a high Strength warrior of some kind you can Power Attack and still hit even at a large penalty. If you're a Cleric you might cast say Slay Living and get something like 12d6+7 damage on a touch attack that would ignore all but that Ring of Protection. If your group is using the massive damage rules and anybody hits the Wizard for at least 50 damage, he has to make a Fortitude save or die. If not, and you've gained his trust so thoroughly, you could wait until he goes to sleep and coup de grace him for an automatic critical hit that he has to roll a very high Fortitude save against or die.

Again, you're effective trying to come up with a bunch of patchwork, in order to make the system work. Nowhere in the books does it say study and training will increase your level, and why would that even make sense? So because I studied physics for three years, that qualifies me for a level in Wizard? For the extra health and feat, too? Where the hell did that come from? Useing the level system as it is, barely makes any sense, but rewarding experience for study barely does either. Its a stunted and very gamey system, that does serve to make the game more fun, but simultaneously more unrealistic and a worse roleplay.
Same can be said for your example with the Wizard. Nowhere does it say that I am allowed those automatic crits or coup de grace, so you're effectively trying to patchwork on a system that fundamentally ignores the realism of being stabbed. Even your example of "wait untill he sleeps" is an unrealistic shitfest. Say he sleeps, and I somehow manage to sneak up on him. I'm a level 1 peasant, with a really shitty 1d4 dagger. I slit his throat. I'll be doing around 8 damage, if I'm lucky. He is very likely to still make that fortitude save, so he just survived being stabbed in the throat in his fucking sleep. Realism! Roleplay! Immersion...! GONE!
Still explain to me, how his experiences with taking a blow will going help him not die from being murdered in his sleep, because the only logical conclusion, is that HP is abselutely how much meat and blood is in your body...
I know that as the system is written, thats not what it is, but these coup de grace rules are in direct conflict with how HP is otherwise repressented...

You can gain XP without fighting kobolds, because you don't even necessarily have to kill kobolds to gain the XP they're worth. You gain XP by overcoming challenges in some way, such as simply avoiding them through stealth and proceeding on with the dungeon. That's simply a fact of the system. You can be a level 2 Commoner who does nothing but farm, earning XP by overcoming the challenges of being a farmer, like working hard all year and bartering to get a good price for your crops. There's level 5+ Wizard NPCs who've never gone on a single adventure in their lives, but over time their studies and successful experiments earned them enough XP to get to that level. Extra Hit Points (again, not really "health") and extra feats or class features represent you putting together what you learned. You got a little luckier, a little more skilled at avoiding perils like exploding potions, particularly difficult and volatile magical item crafting, or called creatures that got a bit rowdy. Hence, more HP. You figured out some more arcane tricks and took Empowered Spell, or learned to be a little more diplomatic and intimidating when speaking with your apprentices and took Persuasive, etc.

Unless the Wizard is wearing his Cloak of Resistance +3 to bed, which would be very uncomfortable, he's looking at a base Fortitude save of +3. Maybe he's got a 12 Constitution and has a total of +4 Fort. With 8 damage, he's staring at a daunting DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than . If he rolls high, he lives, and either awoke and moved with startling swiftness to avoid the brunt of the slash, or is gripping his throat to staunch the bleeding of the bad but not mortal gash in his throat, and has time to take a turn and get the healing potion he keeps under the pillow he doesn't use and drink it. That's not even DM fiat or rules fudging. If something isn't killing you, your body is more or less whole. If you have 20 HP and somebody hits you for 21 with a greatsword, unless your Constitution is 1 that sword did not just cut off your arm or head, though you are bleeding out your life blood because you're at negative HP and therefore considered dying.

Anyway, in the end, the rules are merely guidelines, and are intended only to provide arbitration of the zany shenanigans magical weirdos get up to. The books encourage DMs to bend and break these guidelines as they see fit. Maybe the reason that Wizard grabbed a healing potion instead of simply vaporizing his attacker is because I, the DM, decided that his neck is literally split open and he's taking bleed damage every round. But, hell, this fucking peasant somehow got through every single trap and ward the Wizard had in place to prevent this very situation. Maybe he just deserves to auto-fail that save because one of my crazy-ass players rolled a really lucky peasant.

*DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than 35% chance of success.

So effectively, what you're saying is, that having a level creator included in your game, justifies the actual game itself being somewhat vapid? Because thats what I'm hearing. All the cool shit you just mentioned above, is something you and your mates made up wholecloth. The book did nothing for that. That situation is entirely equivalent to somebody making a marvelous mod for a game, useing the included software, and then somebody else goes and praises the game for its merits based on experiences with that mod. You abselutely cannot use those experiences as evidence. I'm a rather creative individual. I could come up with a compelling story useing nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a pen. I could also run that story as a roleplay, useing ad-hoc systems which I also create entirely useing this blank paper and pen. Should I now use that, to assert that this blank paper and pen facilitates immersive roleplay equally as much as a game like Shadowrun?
No. No I should not. My immersion and/or enjoyment of the story I create useing the paper and pen, is entirely divorced from that paper and pen. It did it help me in any way, acting only as the medium with which I express that story. Pathfinder/DnD has the precisely same role here as that paper and pen. It did not in any way help you shape your creative stories, unless you used some of the additional material, to which the lore is relegated.
A sufficiently creative individual will be able to create immersive stories ex nihilo, the atmosphere isn't there to help out the immensely creative. Its there to help out the less creative, and also to make reading the book feel less like reading a maths textbook and more like being actually immersed in a roleplay. I never read through the book start to finnish, because its not very entertaining to do. The book is simply too dry for that.

So, in other words, you don't need the game books to tell you how to have a good time and construct a narrative. You can easily do that yourself. Hence, I don't need that to be in the Player's Handbook or DMG.
I'm not saying books that include setting details are bad, or that the handbook helped me create the funeral scenario. What I am saying is that the players and GM can work together to make the game a narrative experience. The rules just help arbitrate success and failure in adventure or combat scenarios. Yeah, Shadowrun and many other games exist where the handbooks are rife with setting details and such, but those games are often written with that synergy in mind, and don't have multiple settings that the rules could feasibly be used for. D&D wasn't built that way, but that doesn't make it a "shitty roleplay." They give you the rules so you don't have to read the book all the way through. Less time reading, more time creating and playing. Different strokes for different folks.

So essentially, your arguement is, that you'de rather fill in that blank entirely yourself, rather than have the developers do so for you? I mean, I dont think thats a bad arguement per-se, but it just seems a bit dodgey that you'de want to allow the game to have this flaw, just to make up for it yourself. But sure, I can see a certain merit to it. My point just is, that that fundamentally and inevitably, will lead to creating less evocative mechanics. The more broad you make your focus, the less interesting and evocative you need to make your mechanics as a result, is basically my arguement.

What we've been debating here isn't my sole reason for saying that Pathfinder/DnD is a shitty roleplay. Theres a bunch of things. Another very key aspect of the game, that just abselutely ruins it for me, in terms of roleplay, is that fucking leveling system.
My character wants to become a stronger person, he lifts weights for 7 months. Does it at all effect my strength? Nop! My character wants to become smarter, maybe get a bachelors degree, he enrolls in a university for a year. Does it effect my ranks in skills? Nop! How do I accomplish these things? I go out and kill 7 Fucking Kobolds, and gain level 4...
And then theres the fucking combat system. "Ok, we're clearly outmatched, we need to fight dirty! I wanna beg the wizard for mercy, and when he least expects it, stab him right in his soft wizard heart, right through his soft wizard robes!". Can I do that? The first part, yes, the second part, Fuck No , because despite being a frail old idiot, protected by nothing but cloth, the dude is still level 10 and has like 50 HP atleast which I'm not gonna be able to 1-hit, despite doing something that should realistically murder his ass. And come to think of it, I cant even say "I wanna stab him in the heart", because targetet attacks aren't part of the fucking core system!

I know I've complained alot about Pathfinder/DnD in this thread, but honestly, its mostly because people praise it so much around here recently, seemingly unaware of where the game falls critically short. I still think its a fine game, but if you want to roleplay, you're honestly better off useing my aformentioned example with a paper and a pen...

Or, if you legitimately catch a villain so completely off-guard, and your DM is cool like me, maybe you get a coup de grace even though he's not technically helpless, or just says the fuckers buckles over and dies when you gut him with your dagger or sword.

Trouble is, no Wizard you'd actually have any beef with would be likely to fall for something like that dumb and transparent without you spending a lot of time earning his trust or just killing him in his sleep. If he's level 10, he's probably had people (or things) try to kill him before. He has some knowledge, a little luck, and some grit from being so experienced, to be able to avoid blows that might otherwise kill him, which is what HP represents and not how much blood or meat is in your body. When you get hit for 49 out of your 50 HP, you didn't necessarily get impaled and miraculously survived. You probably took a bad hit to the shoulder that means the next hit is invariably going to be either entirely fatal, or enough to break through your defenses and inner reserves to knock you the fuck out.

Well, yeah. I want to have a bevvy of flavorful mechanics I can fit into my world or another world, without having to worry about re-flavoring a lot of setting-specific things like prestige classes that are built around specific things in a specific setting. When I want to have that, I'll look it up in a book or a wiki or read a novel about it. Again, I rarely use the generic setting. I didn't use Core 4E for 4E, and I don't use Golarion for Pathfinder. In my Star Wars Saga Edition game, I used a Star Wars era not strictly covered in the books, that of the Old Republic MMO. SWSE has a lot of flavorful, setting-appropriate suggestions and descriptions, but it is likewise aware that its setting is variable, that there's many eras of Star Wars you could set your campaign in. Hell, some folks made a hack where they modified the SWSE rules to emulate fucking Mass Effect. A book doesn't need setting materials to make a suite of mechanics exciting or cool. Established setting details are, like everything else a publisher puts out, guidelines to help you along, not necessarily required reading.

Anyway, if a character lifts weights for 7 months, or a character goes to school and learns a great deal and takes on challenging research projects, they would both gain XP as long as they were challenged and they somehow overcame those challenges. There's tons of high-level Wizards out there who never went on a single adventure in their lives. Thing is, having your mind and body tested by gauntlets of traps, hordes of monsters, and the plots of villains is much more challenging and therefore much more rewarding. Also, the game assumes you're doing things like studying and training in your down time to sort of crystallize what you've learned and discover how to apply it. But, yeah, if you pull a Goku/Vegeta and just work out in a really dangerous way for a while and survive, you could probably level up eventually. But, nobody else at the table likely wants to do that. Unless roleplay or something else story-related is going to happen, why would you even WANT the ability to sit at home and work out? That's not cool or heroic, and it's not a story unless somebody talks to you while you're working out or you internally monologue and your character develops. The game just assumes your character knows how to train her body in her off-hours and that you do so to keep in adventuring shape.

As for the level 10 Wizard, well, it'd be supremely difficult to ever convince him you genuinely wanted to give up and then hang out afterwards, but let's say you did. He's a powerful Wizard, and can therefore probably prepare an Extended Mage Armor for the day, giving him the invisible equivalent of a chain shirt for a duration of 20 hours. He also likely has a Ring of Protection and possibly an Amulet of Natural Armor to further increase his AC. Even if you take him by surprise, taking his Dexterity out of the equation, he's basically wearing the equivalent of a non-magical suit of plate mail or better. That's not even taking into account the other spells he probably cast to defend himself either before you arrived or while you were talking and begging for your lives. So, even if you pulled this whole thing off, you might not actually hit him. But, let's say you did. He's denied his Dexterity to AC, so if you're a Rogue you can Sneak Attack him, if you're a high Strength warrior of some kind you can Power Attack and still hit even at a large penalty. If you're a Cleric you might cast say Slay Living and get something like 12d6+7 damage on a touch attack that would ignore all but that Ring of Protection. If your group is using the massive damage rules and anybody hits the Wizard for at least 50 damage, he has to make a Fortitude save or die. If not, and you've gained his trust so thoroughly, you could wait until he goes to sleep and coup de grace him for an automatic critical hit that he has to roll a very high Fortitude save against or die.

Again, you're effective trying to come up with a bunch of patchwork, in order to make the system work. Nowhere in the books does it say study and training will increase your level, and why would that even make sense? So because I studied physics for three years, that qualifies me for a level in Wizard? For the extra health and feat, too? Where the hell did that come from? Useing the level system as it is, barely makes any sense, but rewarding experience for study barely does either. Its a stunted and very gamey system, that does serve to make the game more fun, but simultaneously more unrealistic and a worse roleplay.
Same can be said for your example with the Wizard. Nowhere does it say that I am allowed those automatic crits or coup de grace, so you're effectively trying to patchwork on a system that fundamentally ignores the realism of being stabbed. Even your example of "wait untill he sleeps" is an unrealistic shitfest. Say he sleeps, and I somehow manage to sneak up on him. I'm a level 1 peasant, with a really shitty 1d4 dagger. I slit his throat. I'll be doing around 8 damage, if I'm lucky. He is very likely to still make that fortitude save, so he just survived being stabbed in the throat in his fucking sleep. Realism! Roleplay! Immersion...! GONE!
Still explain to me, how his experiences with taking a blow will going help him not die from being murdered in his sleep, because the only logical conclusion, is that HP is abselutely how much meat and blood is in your body...
I know that as the system is written, thats not what it is, but these coup de grace rules are in direct conflict with how HP is otherwise repressented...

You can gain XP without fighting kobolds, because you don't even necessarily have to kill kobolds to gain the XP they're worth. You gain XP by overcoming challenges in some way, such as simply avoiding them through stealth and proceeding on with the dungeon. That's simply a fact of the system. You can be a level 2 Commoner who does nothing but farm, earning XP by overcoming the challenges of being a farmer, like working hard all year and bartering to get a good price for your crops. There's level 5+ Wizard NPCs who've never gone on a single adventure in their lives, but over time their studies and successful experiments earned them enough XP to get to that level. Extra Hit Points (again, not really "health") and extra feats or class features represent you putting together what you learned. You got a little luckier, a little more skilled at avoiding perils like exploding potions, particularly difficult and volatile magical item crafting, or called creatures that got a bit rowdy. Hence, more HP. You figured out some more arcane tricks and took Empowered Spell, or learned to be a little more diplomatic and intimidating when speaking with your apprentices and took Persuasive, etc.

Unless the Wizard is wearing his Cloak of Resistance +3 to bed, which would be very uncomfortable, he's looking at a base Fortitude save of +3. Maybe he's got a 12 Constitution and has a total of +4 Fort. With 8 damage, he's staring at a daunting DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than . If he rolls high, he lives, and either awoke and moved with startling swiftness to avoid the brunt of the slash, or is gripping his throat to staunch the bleeding of the bad but not mortal gash in his throat, and has time to take a turn and get the healing potion he keeps under the pillow he doesn't use and drink it. That's not even DM fiat or rules fudging. If something isn't killing you, your body is more or less whole. If you have 20 HP and somebody hits you for 21 with a greatsword, unless your Constitution is 1 that sword did not just cut off your arm or head, though you are bleeding out your life blood because you're at negative HP and therefore considered dying.

Anyway, in the end, the rules are merely guidelines, and are intended only to provide arbitration of the zany shenanigans magical weirdos get up to. The books encourage DMs to bend and break these guidelines as they see fit. Maybe the reason that Wizard grabbed a healing potion instead of simply vaporizing his attacker is because I, the DM, decided that his neck is literally split open and he's taking bleed damage every round. But, hell, this fucking peasant somehow got through every single trap and ward the Wizard had in place to prevent this very situation. Maybe he just deserves to auto-fail that save because one of my crazy-ass players rolled a really lucky peasant.

*DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than 35% chance of success.

But, was it more powerful than the scene from the campaign where the rules are largely divorced from setting details? Hardly. Even if the Pathfinder or 3.5 PHBs had setting details, neither of their core settings are Forgotten Realms, so they would be pretty much useless for my campaign, anyway. The soul is invested in a game by the players and the GM, and to a much lesser extent by the setting in which the campaign takes place.

So effectively, what you're saying is, that having a level creator included in your game, justifies the actual game itself being somewhat vapid? Because thats what I'm hearing. All the cool shit you just mentioned above, is something you and your mates made up wholecloth. The book did nothing for that. That situation is entirely equivalent to somebody making a marvelous mod for a game, useing the included software, and then somebody else goes and praises the game for its merits based on experiences with that mod. You abselutely cannot use those experiences as evidence. I'm a rather creative individual. I could come up with a compelling story useing nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a pen. I could also run that story as a roleplay, useing ad-hoc systems which I also create entirely useing this blank paper and pen. Should I now use that, to assert that this blank paper and pen facilitates immersive roleplay equally as much as a game like Shadowrun?
No. No I should not. My immersion and/or enjoyment of the story I create useing the paper and pen, is entirely divorced from that paper and pen. It did it help me in any way, acting only as the medium with which I express that story. Pathfinder/DnD has the precisely same role here as that paper and pen. It did not in any way help you shape your creative stories, unless you used some of the additional material, to which the lore is relegated.
A sufficiently creative individual will be able to create immersive stories ex nihilo, the atmosphere isn't there to help out the immensely creative. Its there to help out the less creative, and also to make reading the book feel less like reading a maths textbook and more like being actually immersed in a roleplay. I never read through the book start to finnish, because its not very entertaining to do. The book is simply too dry for that.

So, in other words, you don't need the game books to tell you how to have a good time and construct a narrative. You can easily do that yourself. Hence, I don't need that to be in the Player's Handbook or DMG.
I'm not saying books that include setting details are bad, or that the handbook helped me create the funeral scenario. What I am saying is that the players and GM can work together to make the game a narrative experience. The rules just help arbitrate success and failure in adventure or combat scenarios. Yeah, Shadowrun and many other games exist where the handbooks are rife with setting details and such, but those games are often written with that synergy in mind, and don't have multiple settings that the rules could feasibly be used for. D&D wasn't built that way, but that doesn't make it a "shitty roleplay." They give you the rules so you don't have to read the book all the way through. Less time reading, more time creating and playing. Different strokes for different folks.

So essentially, your arguement is, that you'de rather fill in that blank entirely yourself, rather than have the developers do so for you? I mean, I dont think thats a bad arguement per-se, but it just seems a bit dodgey that you'de want to allow the game to have this flaw, just to make up for it yourself. But sure, I can see a certain merit to it. My point just is, that that fundamentally and inevitably, will lead to creating less evocative mechanics. The more broad you make your focus, the less interesting and evocative you need to make your mechanics as a result, is basically my arguement.

What we've been debating here isn't my sole reason for saying that Pathfinder/DnD is a shitty roleplay. Theres a bunch of things. Another very key aspect of the game, that just abselutely ruins it for me, in terms of roleplay, is that fucking leveling system.
My character wants to become a stronger person, he lifts weights for 7 months. Does it at all effect my strength? Nop! My character wants to become smarter, maybe get a bachelors degree, he enrolls in a university for a year. Does it effect my ranks in skills? Nop! How do I accomplish these things? I go out and kill 7 Fucking Kobolds, and gain level 4...
And then theres the fucking combat system. "Ok, we're clearly outmatched, we need to fight dirty! I wanna beg the wizard for mercy, and when he least expects it, stab him right in his soft wizard heart, right through his soft wizard robes!". Can I do that? The first part, yes, the second part, Fuck No , because despite being a frail old idiot, protected by nothing but cloth, the dude is still level 10 and has like 50 HP atleast which I'm not gonna be able to 1-hit, despite doing something that should realistically murder his ass. And come to think of it, I cant even say "I wanna stab him in the heart", because targetet attacks aren't part of the fucking core system!

I know I've complained alot about Pathfinder/DnD in this thread, but honestly, its mostly because people praise it so much around here recently, seemingly unaware of where the game falls critically short. I still think its a fine game, but if you want to roleplay, you're honestly better off useing my aformentioned example with a paper and a pen...

Or, if you legitimately catch a villain so completely off-guard, and your DM is cool like me, maybe you get a coup de grace even though he's not technically helpless, or just says the fuckers buckles over and dies when you gut him with your dagger or sword.

Trouble is, no Wizard you'd actually have any beef with would be likely to fall for something like that dumb and transparent without you spending a lot of time earning his trust or just killing him in his sleep. If he's level 10, he's probably had people (or things) try to kill him before. He has some knowledge, a little luck, and some grit from being so experienced, to be able to avoid blows that might otherwise kill him, which is what HP represents and not how much blood or meat is in your body. When you get hit for 49 out of your 50 HP, you didn't necessarily get impaled and miraculously survived. You probably took a bad hit to the shoulder that means the next hit is invariably going to be either entirely fatal, or enough to break through your defenses and inner reserves to knock you the fuck out.

Well, yeah. I want to have a bevvy of flavorful mechanics I can fit into my world or another world, without having to worry about re-flavoring a lot of setting-specific things like prestige classes that are built around specific things in a specific setting. When I want to have that, I'll look it up in a book or a wiki or read a novel about it. Again, I rarely use the generic setting. I didn't use Core 4E for 4E, and I don't use Golarion for Pathfinder. In my Star Wars Saga Edition game, I used a Star Wars era not strictly covered in the books, that of the Old Republic MMO. SWSE has a lot of flavorful, setting-appropriate suggestions and descriptions, but it is likewise aware that its setting is variable, that there's many eras of Star Wars you could set your campaign in. Hell, some folks made a hack where they modified the SWSE rules to emulate fucking Mass Effect. A book doesn't need setting materials to make a suite of mechanics exciting or cool. Established setting details are, like everything else a publisher puts out, guidelines to help you along, not necessarily required reading.

Anyway, if a character lifts weights for 7 months, or a character goes to school and learns a great deal and takes on challenging research projects, they would both gain XP as long as they were challenged and they somehow overcame those challenges. There's tons of high-level Wizards out there who never went on a single adventure in their lives. Thing is, having your mind and body tested by gauntlets of traps, hordes of monsters, and the plots of villains is much more challenging and therefore much more rewarding. Also, the game assumes you're doing things like studying and training in your down time to sort of crystallize what you've learned and discover how to apply it. But, yeah, if you pull a Goku/Vegeta and just work out in a really dangerous way for a while and survive, you could probably level up eventually. But, nobody else at the table likely wants to do that. Unless roleplay or something else story-related is going to happen, why would you even WANT the ability to sit at home and work out? That's not cool or heroic, and it's not a story unless somebody talks to you while you're working out or you internally monologue and your character develops. The game just assumes your character knows how to train her body in her off-hours and that you do so to keep in adventuring shape.

As for the level 10 Wizard, well, it'd be supremely difficult to ever convince him you genuinely wanted to give up and then hang out afterwards, but let's say you did. He's a powerful Wizard, and can therefore probably prepare an Extended Mage Armor for the day, giving him the invisible equivalent of a chain shirt for a duration of 20 hours. He also likely has a Ring of Protection and possibly an Amulet of Natural Armor to further increase his AC. Even if you take him by surprise, taking his Dexterity out of the equation, he's basically wearing the equivalent of a non-magical suit of plate mail or better. That's not even taking into account the other spells he probably cast to defend himself either before you arrived or while you were talking and begging for your lives. So, even if you pulled this whole thing off, you might not actually hit him. But, let's say you did. He's denied his Dexterity to AC, so if you're a Rogue you can Sneak Attack him, if you're a high Strength warrior of some kind you can Power Attack and still hit even at a large penalty. If you're a Cleric you might cast say Slay Living and get something like 12d6+7 damage on a touch attack that would ignore all but that Ring of Protection. If your group is using the massive damage rules and anybody hits the Wizard for at least 50 damage, he has to make a Fortitude save or die. If not, and you've gained his trust so thoroughly, you could wait until he goes to sleep and coup de grace him for an automatic critical hit that he has to roll a very high Fortitude save against or die.

Again, you're effective trying to come up with a bunch of patchwork, in order to make the system work. Nowhere in the books does it say study and training will increase your level, and why would that even make sense? So because I studied physics for three years, that qualifies me for a level in Wizard? For the extra health and feat, too? Where the hell did that come from? Useing the level system as it is, barely makes any sense, but rewarding experience for study barely does either. Its a stunted and very gamey system, that does serve to make the game more fun, but simultaneously more unrealistic and a worse roleplay.
Same can be said for your example with the Wizard. Nowhere does it say that I am allowed those automatic crits or coup de grace, so you're effectively trying to patchwork on a system that fundamentally ignores the realism of being stabbed. Even your example of "wait untill he sleeps" is an unrealistic shitfest. Say he sleeps, and I somehow manage to sneak up on him. I'm a level 1 peasant, with a really shitty 1d4 dagger. I slit his throat. I'll be doing around 8 damage, if I'm lucky. He is very likely to still make that fortitude save, so he just survived being stabbed in the throat in his fucking sleep. Realism! Roleplay! Immersion...! GONE!
Still explain to me, how his experiences with taking a blow will going help him not die from being murdered in his sleep, because the only logical conclusion, is that HP is abselutely how much meat and blood is in your body...
I know that as the system is written, thats not what it is, but these coup de grace rules are in direct conflict with how HP is otherwise repressented...

You can gain XP without fighting kobolds, because you don't even necessarily have to kill kobolds to gain the XP they're worth. You gain XP by overcoming challenges in some way, such as simply avoiding them through stealth and proceeding on with the dungeon. That's simply a fact of the system. You can be a level 2 Commoner who does nothing but farm, earning XP by overcoming the challenges of being a farmer, like working hard all year and bartering to get a good price for your crops. There's level 5+ Wizard NPCs who've never gone on a single adventure in their lives, but over time their studies and successful experiments earned them enough XP to get to that level. Extra Hit Points (again, not really "health") and extra feats or class features represent you putting together what you learned. You got a little luckier, a little more skilled at avoiding perils like exploding potions, particularly difficult and volatile magical item crafting, or called creatures that got a bit rowdy. Hence, more HP. You figured out some more arcane tricks and took Empowered Spell, or learned to be a little more diplomatic and intimidating when speaking with your apprentices and took Persuasive, etc.

Unless the Wizard is wearing his Cloak of Resistance +3 to bed, which would be very uncomfortable, he's looking at a base Fortitude save of +3. Maybe he's got a 12 Constitution and has a total of +4 Fort. With 8 damage, he's staring at a daunting DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than . If he rolls high, he lives, and either awoke and moved with startling swiftness to avoid the brunt of the slash, or is gripping his throat to staunch the bleeding of the bad but not mortal gash in his throat, and has time to take a turn and get the healing potion he keeps under the pillow he doesn't use and drink it. That's not even DM fiat or rules fudging. If something isn't killing you, your body is more or less whole. If you have 20 HP and somebody hits you for 21 with a greatsword, unless your Constitution is 1 that sword did not just cut off your arm or head, though you are bleeding out your life blood because you're at negative HP and therefore considered dying.

Anyway, in the end, the rules are merely guidelines, and are intended only to provide arbitration of the zany shenanigans magical weirdos get up to. The books encourage DMs to bend and break these guidelines as they see fit. Maybe the reason that Wizard grabbed a healing potion instead of simply vaporizing his attacker is because I, the DM, decided that his neck is literally split open and he's taking bleed damage every round. But, hell, this fucking peasant somehow got through every single trap and ward the Wizard had in place to prevent this very situation. Maybe he just deserves to auto-fail that save because one of my crazy-ass players rolled a really lucky peasant.

*DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than 35% chance of success.

Yes, precisely! Pathfinder/DnD is literally nothing but a soulless heap of mechanics, which is simultaneously what makes it such a great game and such a shitty roleplay.
That was literally my one and only point, from the very beginning...

I'm inclined to disagree. Mechanics and setting don't have to be intertwined in the handbook for the game to provide good opportunities for roleplay. Though, it is nice to have flavor text, which Pathfinder provides in abundance. Is a game really soulless if it gives me the tools I need to create a tricky scoundrel who fights dirty, both in flavor and mechanically, and has a prestige class that emulates the training of an assassin which I can then tie to an assassin's guild in the setting in which I'm playing as part of the character's backstory of an old, pragmatic hired killer seeking redemption for his callous life and on the run from the guild? I don't need the Player's Handbook to tell me how to create an interesting character, nor do I need the Dungeon Master's Guide to tell me how to tell an interesting story, though DMGs often have very handy advice for storytelling and rules arbitration in general. I establish that the guy fights dirty to give himself opportunities to shank motherfuckers, take feats that support this like Dirty Fighter and Improved Dirty Trick, and play him like some kind of fantasy version of Liam Neeson in Taken. Knowing that he's an assassin for the Shadow Thieves of Amn isn't really necessary to make that character a fun character to play or roleplay. Telling the DM he's trying to quit the business does help create plot hooks. But, again, it could work in just about any setting with an organization that has assassins.

Roleplay isn't even really about having a backstory intrinsically tied to the setting, though that can certainly help. Adventurers often defy the norms of the societies that birth them, are often divorced or otherwise exiled from mainstream society, and have a subculture of their own comprised of reckless, crazy folks who delve into forgotten ruins. Roleplaying D&D is about telling a story, which I can easily do just knowing that my character is a barbarian estranged from his clan who lived in the wild as a savage and learned to wrestle wolves and bears with his bare hands, who also has a strange affinity with spirits of ice and will eventually take the Frostrager prestige class. I can play that character day-to-day and make him this really strong, dumb teenager who doesn't really understand civilization but kinda likes all the amenities thereof, and make his background, the whos and wheres of it all, largely secondary to roleplaying his character.

Recently, my campaign had a player's character die. This is a party that is really close, they've been through thick-and-thin and own an inn/keep together. A funeral was held, and several characters, both PC and NPC, gave eulogies. The Barbarian kid I mentioned above, who follows the party on their adventures, was openly weeping. We at the table were all tearing up a little. We didn't need the PHB to have a ton of setting details for that to happen.

In a Dresden Files FATE game where I was a player, the handbook does include setting information, but mostly in a general sense that establishes what fey are and such, but most of the meat and potatoes of the setting is going to come from the Dresden Files novels. I made a character that was a half-fey, a changeling, which I already knew existed from one of the novels, and my GM and I worked out that frost giants were a kind of unseelie fey, so he was half frost giant. Anyway, after a whole, big thing where he had to duel a fire giant changeling for the sake of his family's honor, while he was distracted fighting this guy some black court vampires showed up en masse and the party's Warden (a wizard who polices magic) had to sacrifice himself to do a big spell powerful enough to kill all of the vampires at the same time. My character was pissed that he couldn't help save his friend because of his family's bullshit, so he made the Choice to become fully human and walked away. It was pretty powerful. (Cont.)

But, was it more powerful than the scene from the campaign where the rules are largely divorced from setting details? Hardly. Even if the Pathfinder or 3.5 PHBs had setting details, neither of their core settings are Forgotten Realms, so they would be pretty much useless for my campaign, anyway. The soul is invested in a game by the players and the GM, and to a much lesser extent by the setting in which the campaign takes place.

So effectively, what you're saying is, that having a level creator included in your game, justifies the actual game itself being somewhat vapid? Because thats what I'm hearing. All the cool shit you just mentioned above, is something you and your mates made up wholecloth. The book did nothing for that. That situation is entirely equivalent to somebody making a marvelous mod for a game, useing the included software, and then somebody else goes and praises the game for its merits based on experiences with that mod. You abselutely cannot use those experiences as evidence. I'm a rather creative individual. I could come up with a compelling story useing nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a pen. I could also run that story as a roleplay, useing ad-hoc systems which I also create entirely useing this blank paper and pen. Should I now use that, to assert that this blank paper and pen facilitates immersive roleplay equally as much as a game like Shadowrun?
No. No I should not. My immersion and/or enjoyment of the story I create useing the paper and pen, is entirely divorced from that paper and pen. It did it help me in any way, acting only as the medium with which I express that story. Pathfinder/DnD has the precisely same role here as that paper and pen. It did not in any way help you shape your creative stories, unless you used some of the additional material, to which the lore is relegated.
A sufficiently creative individual will be able to create immersive stories ex nihilo, the atmosphere isn't there to help out the immensely creative. Its there to help out the less creative, and also to make reading the book feel less like reading a maths textbook and more like being actually immersed in a roleplay. I never read through the book start to finnish, because its not very entertaining to do. The book is simply too dry for that.

So, in other words, you don't need the game books to tell you how to have a good time and construct a narrative. You can easily do that yourself. Hence, I don't need that to be in the Player's Handbook or DMG.
I'm not saying books that include setting details are bad, or that the handbook helped me create the funeral scenario. What I am saying is that the players and GM can work together to make the game a narrative experience. The rules just help arbitrate success and failure in adventure or combat scenarios. Yeah, Shadowrun and many other games exist where the handbooks are rife with setting details and such, but those games are often written with that synergy in mind, and don't have multiple settings that the rules could feasibly be used for. D&D wasn't built that way, but that doesn't make it a "shitty roleplay." They give you the rules so you don't have to read the book all the way through. Less time reading, more time creating and playing. Different strokes for different folks.

So essentially, your arguement is, that you'de rather fill in that blank entirely yourself, rather than have the developers do so for you? I mean, I dont think thats a bad arguement per-se, but it just seems a bit dodgey that you'de want to allow the game to have this flaw, just to make up for it yourself. But sure, I can see a certain merit to it. My point just is, that that fundamentally and inevitably, will lead to creating less evocative mechanics. The more broad you make your focus, the less interesting and evocative you need to make your mechanics as a result, is basically my arguement.

What we've been debating here isn't my sole reason for saying that Pathfinder/DnD is a shitty roleplay. Theres a bunch of things. Another very key aspect of the game, that just abselutely ruins it for me, in terms of roleplay, is that fucking leveling system.
My character wants to become a stronger person, he lifts weights for 7 months. Does it at all effect my strength? Nop! My character wants to become smarter, maybe get a bachelors degree, he enrolls in a university for a year. Does it effect my ranks in skills? Nop! How do I accomplish these things? I go out and kill 7 Fucking Kobolds, and gain level 4...
And then theres the fucking combat system. "Ok, we're clearly outmatched, we need to fight dirty! I wanna beg the wizard for mercy, and when he least expects it, stab him right in his soft wizard heart, right through his soft wizard robes!". Can I do that? The first part, yes, the second part, Fuck No , because despite being a frail old idiot, protected by nothing but cloth, the dude is still level 10 and has like 50 HP atleast which I'm not gonna be able to 1-hit, despite doing something that should realistically murder his ass. And come to think of it, I cant even say "I wanna stab him in the heart", because targetet attacks aren't part of the fucking core system!

I know I've complained alot about Pathfinder/DnD in this thread, but honestly, its mostly because people praise it so much around here recently, seemingly unaware of where the game falls critically short. I still think its a fine game, but if you want to roleplay, you're honestly better off useing my aformentioned example with a paper and a pen...

Or, if you legitimately catch a villain so completely off-guard, and your DM is cool like me, maybe you get a coup de grace even though he's not technically helpless, or just says the fuckers buckles over and dies when you gut him with your dagger or sword.

Trouble is, no Wizard you'd actually have any beef with would be likely to fall for something like that dumb and transparent without you spending a lot of time earning his trust or just killing him in his sleep. If he's level 10, he's probably had people (or things) try to kill him before. He has some knowledge, a little luck, and some grit from being so experienced, to be able to avoid blows that might otherwise kill him, which is what HP represents and not how much blood or meat is in your body. When you get hit for 49 out of your 50 HP, you didn't necessarily get impaled and miraculously survived. You probably took a bad hit to the shoulder that means the next hit is invariably going to be either entirely fatal, or enough to break through your defenses and inner reserves to knock you the fuck out.

Well, yeah. I want to have a bevvy of flavorful mechanics I can fit into my world or another world, without having to worry about re-flavoring a lot of setting-specific things like prestige classes that are built around specific things in a specific setting. When I want to have that, I'll look it up in a book or a wiki or read a novel about it. Again, I rarely use the generic setting. I didn't use Core 4E for 4E, and I don't use Golarion for Pathfinder. In my Star Wars Saga Edition game, I used a Star Wars era not strictly covered in the books, that of the Old Republic MMO. SWSE has a lot of flavorful, setting-appropriate suggestions and descriptions, but it is likewise aware that its setting is variable, that there's many eras of Star Wars you could set your campaign in. Hell, some folks made a hack where they modified the SWSE rules to emulate fucking Mass Effect. A book doesn't need setting materials to make a suite of mechanics exciting or cool. Established setting details are, like everything else a publisher puts out, guidelines to help you along, not necessarily required reading.

Anyway, if a character lifts weights for 7 months, or a character goes to school and learns a great deal and takes on challenging research projects, they would both gain XP as long as they were challenged and they somehow overcame those challenges. There's tons of high-level Wizards out there who never went on a single adventure in their lives. Thing is, having your mind and body tested by gauntlets of traps, hordes of monsters, and the plots of villains is much more challenging and therefore much more rewarding. Also, the game assumes you're doing things like studying and training in your down time to sort of crystallize what you've learned and discover how to apply it. But, yeah, if you pull a Goku/Vegeta and just work out in a really dangerous way for a while and survive, you could probably level up eventually. But, nobody else at the table likely wants to do that. Unless roleplay or something else story-related is going to happen, why would you even WANT the ability to sit at home and work out? That's not cool or heroic, and it's not a story unless somebody talks to you while you're working out or you internally monologue and your character develops. The game just assumes your character knows how to train her body in her off-hours and that you do so to keep in adventuring shape.

As for the level 10 Wizard, well, it'd be supremely difficult to ever convince him you genuinely wanted to give up and then hang out afterwards, but let's say you did. He's a powerful Wizard, and can therefore probably prepare an Extended Mage Armor for the day, giving him the invisible equivalent of a chain shirt for a duration of 20 hours. He also likely has a Ring of Protection and possibly an Amulet of Natural Armor to further increase his AC. Even if you take him by surprise, taking his Dexterity out of the equation, he's basically wearing the equivalent of a non-magical suit of plate mail or better. That's not even taking into account the other spells he probably cast to defend himself either before you arrived or while you were talking and begging for your lives. So, even if you pulled this whole thing off, you might not actually hit him. But, let's say you did. He's denied his Dexterity to AC, so if you're a Rogue you can Sneak Attack him, if you're a high Strength warrior of some kind you can Power Attack and still hit even at a large penalty. If you're a Cleric you might cast say Slay Living and get something like 12d6+7 damage on a touch attack that would ignore all but that Ring of Protection. If your group is using the massive damage rules and anybody hits the Wizard for at least 50 damage, he has to make a Fortitude save or die. If not, and you've gained his trust so thoroughly, you could wait until he goes to sleep and coup de grace him for an automatic critical hit that he has to roll a very high Fortitude save against or die.

Again, you're effective trying to come up with a bunch of patchwork, in order to make the system work. Nowhere in the books does it say study and training will increase your level, and why would that even make sense? So because I studied physics for three years, that qualifies me for a level in Wizard? For the extra health and feat, too? Where the hell did that come from? Useing the level system as it is, barely makes any sense, but rewarding experience for study barely does either. Its a stunted and very gamey system, that does serve to make the game more fun, but simultaneously more unrealistic and a worse roleplay.
Same can be said for your example with the Wizard. Nowhere does it say that I am allowed those automatic crits or coup de grace, so you're effectively trying to patchwork on a system that fundamentally ignores the realism of being stabbed. Even your example of "wait untill he sleeps" is an unrealistic shitfest. Say he sleeps, and I somehow manage to sneak up on him. I'm a level 1 peasant, with a really shitty 1d4 dagger. I slit his throat. I'll be doing around 8 damage, if I'm lucky. He is very likely to still make that fortitude save, so he just survived being stabbed in the throat in his fucking sleep. Realism! Roleplay! Immersion...! GONE!
Still explain to me, how his experiences with taking a blow will going help him not die from being murdered in his sleep, because the only logical conclusion, is that HP is abselutely how much meat and blood is in your body...
I know that as the system is written, thats not what it is, but these coup de grace rules are in direct conflict with how HP is otherwise repressented...

You can gain XP without fighting kobolds, because you don't even necessarily have to kill kobolds to gain the XP they're worth. You gain XP by overcoming challenges in some way, such as simply avoiding them through stealth and proceeding on with the dungeon. That's simply a fact of the system. You can be a level 2 Commoner who does nothing but farm, earning XP by overcoming the challenges of being a farmer, like working hard all year and bartering to get a good price for your crops. There's level 5+ Wizard NPCs who've never gone on a single adventure in their lives, but over time their studies and successful experiments earned them enough XP to get to that level. Extra Hit Points (again, not really "health") and extra feats or class features represent you putting together what you learned. You got a little luckier, a little more skilled at avoiding perils like exploding potions, particularly difficult and volatile magical item crafting, or called creatures that got a bit rowdy. Hence, more HP. You figured out some more arcane tricks and took Empowered Spell, or learned to be a little more diplomatic and intimidating when speaking with your apprentices and took Persuasive, etc.

Unless the Wizard is wearing his Cloak of Resistance +3 to bed, which would be very uncomfortable, he's looking at a base Fortitude save of +3. Maybe he's got a 12 Constitution and has a total of +4 Fort. With 8 damage, he's staring at a daunting DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than . If he rolls high, he lives, and either awoke and moved with startling swiftness to avoid the brunt of the slash, or is gripping his throat to staunch the bleeding of the bad but not mortal gash in his throat, and has time to take a turn and get the healing potion he keeps under the pillow he doesn't use and drink it. That's not even DM fiat or rules fudging. If something isn't killing you, your body is more or less whole. If you have 20 HP and somebody hits you for 21 with a greatsword, unless your Constitution is 1 that sword did not just cut off your arm or head, though you are bleeding out your life blood because you're at negative HP and therefore considered dying.

Anyway, in the end, the rules are merely guidelines, and are intended only to provide arbitration of the zany shenanigans magical weirdos get up to. The books encourage DMs to bend and break these guidelines as they see fit. Maybe the reason that Wizard grabbed a healing potion instead of simply vaporizing his attacker is because I, the DM, decided that his neck is literally split open and he's taking bleed damage every round. But, hell, this fucking peasant somehow got through every single trap and ward the Wizard had in place to prevent this very situation. Maybe he just deserves to auto-fail that save because one of my crazy-ass players rolled a really lucky peasant.

*DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than 35% chance of success.

I didn't say the players were disallowed, I said they are unlikely to. Most people dont even buy the setting books.
As somebody who has played both World of Darkness and Shadowrun to a reasonable extend, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it wouldn't be pointless to include the atmosphere and setting in the core books. Even if you wont use most - if any - of it, it provides some immensely good ideas and gets you into the proper mindset for the game.

Shadowrun is a setting and rules system in one, they're meant to go hand in hand. The setting and rules are included in the same book. That's fine. That's not how D&D is structured. D&D is a general rules system that is then used or amended for the purposes of simulating a setting.

What I've done is set my campaign in a specific world and provided details about that world. I don't need the Pathfinder SRD or Player's Handbook to do that.

Yes, precisely! Pathfinder/DnD is literally nothing but a soulless heap of mechanics, which is simultaneously what makes it such a great game and such a shitty roleplay.
That was literally my one and only point, from the very beginning...

I'm inclined to disagree. Mechanics and setting don't have to be intertwined in the handbook for the game to provide good opportunities for roleplay. Though, it is nice to have flavor text, which Pathfinder provides in abundance. Is a game really soulless if it gives me the tools I need to create a tricky scoundrel who fights dirty, both in flavor and mechanically, and has a prestige class that emulates the training of an assassin which I can then tie to an assassin's guild in the setting in which I'm playing as part of the character's backstory of an old, pragmatic hired killer seeking redemption for his callous life and on the run from the guild? I don't need the Player's Handbook to tell me how to create an interesting character, nor do I need the Dungeon Master's Guide to tell me how to tell an interesting story, though DMGs often have very handy advice for storytelling and rules arbitration in general. I establish that the guy fights dirty to give himself opportunities to shank motherfuckers, take feats that support this like Dirty Fighter and Improved Dirty Trick, and play him like some kind of fantasy version of Liam Neeson in Taken. Knowing that he's an assassin for the Shadow Thieves of Amn isn't really necessary to make that character a fun character to play or roleplay. Telling the DM he's trying to quit the business does help create plot hooks. But, again, it could work in just about any setting with an organization that has assassins.

Roleplay isn't even really about having a backstory intrinsically tied to the setting, though that can certainly help. Adventurers often defy the norms of the societies that birth them, are often divorced or otherwise exiled from mainstream society, and have a subculture of their own comprised of reckless, crazy folks who delve into forgotten ruins. Roleplaying D&D is about telling a story, which I can easily do just knowing that my character is a barbarian estranged from his clan who lived in the wild as a savage and learned to wrestle wolves and bears with his bare hands, who also has a strange affinity with spirits of ice and will eventually take the Frostrager prestige class. I can play that character day-to-day and make him this really strong, dumb teenager who doesn't really understand civilization but kinda likes all the amenities thereof, and make his background, the whos and wheres of it all, largely secondary to roleplaying his character.

Recently, my campaign had a player's character die. This is a party that is really close, they've been through thick-and-thin and own an inn/keep together. A funeral was held, and several characters, both PC and NPC, gave eulogies. The Barbarian kid I mentioned above, who follows the party on their adventures, was openly weeping. We at the table were all tearing up a little. We didn't need the PHB to have a ton of setting details for that to happen.

In a Dresden Files FATE game where I was a player, the handbook does include setting information, but mostly in a general sense that establishes what fey are and such, but most of the meat and potatoes of the setting is going to come from the Dresden Files novels. I made a character that was a half-fey, a changeling, which I already knew existed from one of the novels, and my GM and I worked out that frost giants were a kind of unseelie fey, so he was half frost giant. Anyway, after a whole, big thing where he had to duel a fire giant changeling for the sake of his family's honor, while he was distracted fighting this guy some black court vampires showed up en masse and the party's Warden (a wizard who polices magic) had to sacrifice himself to do a big spell powerful enough to kill all of the vampires at the same time. My character was pissed that he couldn't help save his friend because of his family's bullshit, so he made the Choice to become fully human and walked away. It was pretty powerful. (Cont.)

But, was it more powerful than the scene from the campaign where the rules are largely divorced from setting details? Hardly. Even if the Pathfinder or 3.5 PHBs had setting details, neither of their core settings are Forgotten Realms, so they would be pretty much useless for my campaign, anyway. The soul is invested in a game by the players and the GM, and to a much lesser extent by the setting in which the campaign takes place.

So effectively, what you're saying is, that having a level creator included in your game, justifies the actual game itself being somewhat vapid? Because thats what I'm hearing. All the cool shit you just mentioned above, is something you and your mates made up wholecloth. The book did nothing for that. That situation is entirely equivalent to somebody making a marvelous mod for a game, useing the included software, and then somebody else goes and praises the game for its merits based on experiences with that mod. You abselutely cannot use those experiences as evidence. I'm a rather creative individual. I could come up with a compelling story useing nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a pen. I could also run that story as a roleplay, useing ad-hoc systems which I also create entirely useing this blank paper and pen. Should I now use that, to assert that this blank paper and pen facilitates immersive roleplay equally as much as a game like Shadowrun?
No. No I should not. My immersion and/or enjoyment of the story I create useing the paper and pen, is entirely divorced from that paper and pen. It did it help me in any way, acting only as the medium with which I express that story. Pathfinder/DnD has the precisely same role here as that paper and pen. It did not in any way help you shape your creative stories, unless you used some of the additional material, to which the lore is relegated.
A sufficiently creative individual will be able to create immersive stories ex nihilo, the atmosphere isn't there to help out the immensely creative. Its there to help out the less creative, and also to make reading the book feel less like reading a maths textbook and more like being actually immersed in a roleplay. I never read through the book start to finnish, because its not very entertaining to do. The book is simply too dry for that.

So, in other words, you don't need the game books to tell you how to have a good time and construct a narrative. You can easily do that yourself. Hence, I don't need that to be in the Player's Handbook or DMG.
I'm not saying books that include setting details are bad, or that the handbook helped me create the funeral scenario. What I am saying is that the players and GM can work together to make the game a narrative experience. The rules just help arbitrate success and failure in adventure or combat scenarios. Yeah, Shadowrun and many other games exist where the handbooks are rife with setting details and such, but those games are often written with that synergy in mind, and don't have multiple settings that the rules could feasibly be used for. D&D wasn't built that way, but that doesn't make it a "shitty roleplay." They give you the rules so you don't have to read the book all the way through. Less time reading, more time creating and playing. Different strokes for different folks.

So essentially, your arguement is, that you'de rather fill in that blank entirely yourself, rather than have the developers do so for you? I mean, I dont think thats a bad arguement per-se, but it just seems a bit dodgey that you'de want to allow the game to have this flaw, just to make up for it yourself. But sure, I can see a certain merit to it. My point just is, that that fundamentally and inevitably, will lead to creating less evocative mechanics. The more broad you make your focus, the less interesting and evocative you need to make your mechanics as a result, is basically my arguement.

What we've been debating here isn't my sole reason for saying that Pathfinder/DnD is a shitty roleplay. Theres a bunch of things. Another very key aspect of the game, that just abselutely ruins it for me, in terms of roleplay, is that fucking leveling system.
My character wants to become a stronger person, he lifts weights for 7 months. Does it at all effect my strength? Nop! My character wants to become smarter, maybe get a bachelors degree, he enrolls in a university for a year. Does it effect my ranks in skills? Nop! How do I accomplish these things? I go out and kill 7 Fucking Kobolds, and gain level 4...
And then theres the fucking combat system. "Ok, we're clearly outmatched, we need to fight dirty! I wanna beg the wizard for mercy, and when he least expects it, stab him right in his soft wizard heart, right through his soft wizard robes!". Can I do that? The first part, yes, the second part, Fuck No , because despite being a frail old idiot, protected by nothing but cloth, the dude is still level 10 and has like 50 HP atleast which I'm not gonna be able to 1-hit, despite doing something that should realistically murder his ass. And come to think of it, I cant even say "I wanna stab him in the heart", because targetet attacks aren't part of the fucking core system!

I know I've complained alot about Pathfinder/DnD in this thread, but honestly, its mostly because people praise it so much around here recently, seemingly unaware of where the game falls critically short. I still think its a fine game, but if you want to roleplay, you're honestly better off useing my aformentioned example with a paper and a pen...

Or, if you legitimately catch a villain so completely off-guard, and your DM is cool like me, maybe you get a coup de grace even though he's not technically helpless, or just says the fuckers buckles over and dies when you gut him with your dagger or sword.

Trouble is, no Wizard you'd actually have any beef with would be likely to fall for something like that dumb and transparent without you spending a lot of time earning his trust or just killing him in his sleep. If he's level 10, he's probably had people (or things) try to kill him before. He has some knowledge, a little luck, and some grit from being so experienced, to be able to avoid blows that might otherwise kill him, which is what HP represents and not how much blood or meat is in your body. When you get hit for 49 out of your 50 HP, you didn't necessarily get impaled and miraculously survived. You probably took a bad hit to the shoulder that means the next hit is invariably going to be either entirely fatal, or enough to break through your defenses and inner reserves to knock you the fuck out.

Well, yeah. I want to have a bevvy of flavorful mechanics I can fit into my world or another world, without having to worry about re-flavoring a lot of setting-specific things like prestige classes that are built around specific things in a specific setting. When I want to have that, I'll look it up in a book or a wiki or read a novel about it. Again, I rarely use the generic setting. I didn't use Core 4E for 4E, and I don't use Golarion for Pathfinder. In my Star Wars Saga Edition game, I used a Star Wars era not strictly covered in the books, that of the Old Republic MMO. SWSE has a lot of flavorful, setting-appropriate suggestions and descriptions, but it is likewise aware that its setting is variable, that there's many eras of Star Wars you could set your campaign in. Hell, some folks made a hack where they modified the SWSE rules to emulate fucking Mass Effect. A book doesn't need setting materials to make a suite of mechanics exciting or cool. Established setting details are, like everything else a publisher puts out, guidelines to help you along, not necessarily required reading.

Anyway, if a character lifts weights for 7 months, or a character goes to school and learns a great deal and takes on challenging research projects, they would both gain XP as long as they were challenged and they somehow overcame those challenges. There's tons of high-level Wizards out there who never went on a single adventure in their lives. Thing is, having your mind and body tested by gauntlets of traps, hordes of monsters, and the plots of villains is much more challenging and therefore much more rewarding. Also, the game assumes you're doing things like studying and training in your down time to sort of crystallize what you've learned and discover how to apply it. But, yeah, if you pull a Goku/Vegeta and just work out in a really dangerous way for a while and survive, you could probably level up eventually. But, nobody else at the table likely wants to do that. Unless roleplay or something else story-related is going to happen, why would you even WANT the ability to sit at home and work out? That's not cool or heroic, and it's not a story unless somebody talks to you while you're working out or you internally monologue and your character develops. The game just assumes your character knows how to train her body in her off-hours and that you do so to keep in adventuring shape.

As for the level 10 Wizard, well, it'd be supremely difficult to ever convince him you genuinely wanted to give up and then hang out afterwards, but let's say you did. He's a powerful Wizard, and can therefore probably prepare an Extended Mage Armor for the day, giving him the invisible equivalent of a chain shirt for a duration of 20 hours. He also likely has a Ring of Protection and possibly an Amulet of Natural Armor to further increase his AC. Even if you take him by surprise, taking his Dexterity out of the equation, he's basically wearing the equivalent of a non-magical suit of plate mail or better. That's not even taking into account the other spells he probably cast to defend himself either before you arrived or while you were talking and begging for your lives. So, even if you pulled this whole thing off, you might not actually hit him. But, let's say you did. He's denied his Dexterity to AC, so if you're a Rogue you can Sneak Attack him, if you're a high Strength warrior of some kind you can Power Attack and still hit even at a large penalty. If you're a Cleric you might cast say Slay Living and get something like 12d6+7 damage on a touch attack that would ignore all but that Ring of Protection. If your group is using the massive damage rules and anybody hits the Wizard for at least 50 damage, he has to make a Fortitude save or die. If not, and you've gained his trust so thoroughly, you could wait until he goes to sleep and coup de grace him for an automatic critical hit that he has to roll a very high Fortitude save against or die.

Again, you're effective trying to come up with a bunch of patchwork, in order to make the system work. Nowhere in the books does it say study and training will increase your level, and why would that even make sense? So because I studied physics for three years, that qualifies me for a level in Wizard? For the extra health and feat, too? Where the hell did that come from? Useing the level system as it is, barely makes any sense, but rewarding experience for study barely does either. Its a stunted and very gamey system, that does serve to make the game more fun, but simultaneously more unrealistic and a worse roleplay.
Same can be said for your example with the Wizard. Nowhere does it say that I am allowed those automatic crits or coup de grace, so you're effectively trying to patchwork on a system that fundamentally ignores the realism of being stabbed. Even your example of "wait untill he sleeps" is an unrealistic shitfest. Say he sleeps, and I somehow manage to sneak up on him. I'm a level 1 peasant, with a really shitty 1d4 dagger. I slit his throat. I'll be doing around 8 damage, if I'm lucky. He is very likely to still make that fortitude save, so he just survived being stabbed in the throat in his fucking sleep. Realism! Roleplay! Immersion...! GONE!
Still explain to me, how his experiences with taking a blow will going help him not die from being murdered in his sleep, because the only logical conclusion, is that HP is abselutely how much meat and blood is in your body...
I know that as the system is written, thats not what it is, but these coup de grace rules are in direct conflict with how HP is otherwise repressented...

You can gain XP without fighting kobolds, because you don't even necessarily have to kill kobolds to gain the XP they're worth. You gain XP by overcoming challenges in some way, such as simply avoiding them through stealth and proceeding on with the dungeon. That's simply a fact of the system. You can be a level 2 Commoner who does nothing but farm, earning XP by overcoming the challenges of being a farmer, like working hard all year and bartering to get a good price for your crops. There's level 5+ Wizard NPCs who've never gone on a single adventure in their lives, but over time their studies and successful experiments earned them enough XP to get to that level. Extra Hit Points (again, not really "health") and extra feats or class features represent you putting together what you learned. You got a little luckier, a little more skilled at avoiding perils like exploding potions, particularly difficult and volatile magical item crafting, or called creatures that got a bit rowdy. Hence, more HP. You figured out some more arcane tricks and took Empowered Spell, or learned to be a little more diplomatic and intimidating when speaking with your apprentices and took Persuasive, etc.

Unless the Wizard is wearing his Cloak of Resistance +3 to bed, which would be very uncomfortable, he's looking at a base Fortitude save of +3. Maybe he's got a 12 Constitution and has a total of +4 Fort. With 8 damage, he's staring at a daunting DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than . If he rolls high, he lives, and either awoke and moved with startling swiftness to avoid the brunt of the slash, or is gripping his throat to staunch the bleeding of the bad but not mortal gash in his throat, and has time to take a turn and get the healing potion he keeps under the pillow he doesn't use and drink it. That's not even DM fiat or rules fudging. If something isn't killing you, your body is more or less whole. If you have 20 HP and somebody hits you for 21 with a greatsword, unless your Constitution is 1 that sword did not just cut off your arm or head, though you are bleeding out your life blood because you're at negative HP and therefore considered dying.

Anyway, in the end, the rules are merely guidelines, and are intended only to provide arbitration of the zany shenanigans magical weirdos get up to. The books encourage DMs to bend and break these guidelines as they see fit. Maybe the reason that Wizard grabbed a healing potion instead of simply vaporizing his attacker is because I, the DM, decided that his neck is literally split open and he's taking bleed damage every round. But, hell, this fucking peasant somehow got through every single trap and ward the Wizard had in place to prevent this very situation. Maybe he just deserves to auto-fail that save because one of my crazy-ass players rolled a really lucky peasant.

*DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than 35% chance of success.

I didn't say I was charging silently, but I think the GM let me have my sneak dice for badass points. I did sink a ton of points into sneak and hide in order to compensate for all the penalties.

Your DM made the right call, I think. I mean, if the dragon was fucking asleep, it hasn't acted yet and is therefore flat-footed even if your noisy plate mail woke it up.

Btw, bonus points for being a Shadowbane Inquisitor. It and Frostrager are my absolute favorite prestige classes for making unorthodox fighting styles like sneaky Paladin and unarmed Barbarian possible.

Lawful Neutral you knew what I meant

Like you said. It gives guidance. It doesn't make you better. It guides you to be better, but the amount of skill she gained was far fetched. Can you name any part in the other movies where something like that happened?

The thing is they aren't universal. The simple fact is that the same tactics can't be used in every weapon. That's my whole point. Her skill with her staff is completely irrelevant to her skills with a lightsaber. The only universal thing they share is that they are weapons and you swing them and that's boiling it down a lot. You still can't use them the same way so again, skills with the staff would not affect her skills with the lightsaber. She is used to swinging with a staff. She is not used to swinging with a lightsaber. fighting effectively is not the same as just swinging whatever weapon you have.

Like I said above, the force doesn't make you better by boosting your abilities(except for things like jumping and running). It guides you so you can do them better. It's an aid, not a magic thing that magically boosts all your abilities/skills. It doesn't take control of you to make you better. It just guides you. That's why saber duels last as long as they do. Both duelists can use the force to predict where the next blow will be so they can block it. Remember in Ep I when Obi-wan was watching Maul and Qui-gon fight? He knew what was going to happen and was getting worried. You could plainly see it on his face. What similar feats have Luke and Rey achieved? Luke was always a great pilot and the force helped him do more. It didn't give him the skill to be a pilot. He was already one to begin with. Luke never gained some ability magically in a matter of seconds. The closest he came was with the training droid and that isn't even comparable to what Rey did.

It totally does make you better. I've already pointed out several instances where characters either did things they had no training in doing, or were able to do things that were otherwise impossible. Rey was able to pull her Falcon maneuver to give Finn a clear shot without any knowledge of Finn's line of fire. She knew exactly when to cut the engine and flip the ship so that the turret would be able to shoot a moving target. How does that not make her a better pilot? How does being able to block attacks Luke could not block before not make him a better swordsman? It is in fact an aid that magically boosts your abilities. It lets you run faster, jump higher, react to danger you didn't know was even there, lets you hit things harder, see things your naked eye can't see, communicate telepathically with animals and convince them to help you, makes you shoot more accurately, swing a sword more quickly and more precisely. The entire premise of the Juyo form is to let the Force control your muscle memory almost completely, and as a result your attacks become blindingly fast, your footwork so quick you can take opponents unaware as though you were flanking them, and your blade can hit hard enough to shatter every bone in their body in addition to having their shoulder sliced. A Dark Side warrior can literally become stronger and tougher by summoning a magical Force rage.

There's even mechanics in Star Wars tabletop RPGs for using the Force to roll skills you're not normally good at, use your Force skill in place of other skills (such as using Use the Force for Pilot checks instead of the Pilot skill), and get bonuses to rolls that might be low and result in total failure. It's a longstanding aspect of the franchise, such that multiple rules sets have been written to emulate it mechanically.

And, in regards to the weapon point, I understand what you're saying, and agree that, yes, not everything you learn with a staff applies to using a sword. But, what I'm saying is that not all of what you learn with a staff is entirely irrelevant. You even see in the movie that she's clumsy and unpracticed when fighting Kylo. She almost always goes for a lunging stab when attacking as though she were prodding at his defenses with a spear or staff, and tries to make sweeping parries that would work better with the extra leverage of a staff. The Force guides her and gives a limited amount of competence when she summons it, and allows her to defeat a crippled opponent. That's all. She didn't do anything particularly spectacular.

Isn't he also in love with Death?

He was. They've kinda put the whole Death, Deadpool, Thanos love triangle story under a tarp.

Madly, it's the main reason he doesn't just live the sweet life with all the money he's made. He wants do die doing something meaningful.

Kylo was damaged, but that does not excuse his ass being handed to him when he had the upperhand through most of the fight and then suddenly started to lose. That kind of transition would happen gradually, but instead it happened when she closed her eyes.

My whole point was that just because she is good with her staff does not mean she is automatically good with a lightsaber(something she has never held before). They are entirely different weapons that require entirely different tactics to use them. Do you not see that? You don't automatically become good with a sword just because you used a staff. You are used to the staff and never touched the sword so you don't know how to use it properly or effectively. Her skill revolved around her abilities with her staff. Her staff is different than a lightsaber. You can't use your skills with a staff on a sword. They are too different. We both agree that they are different weapons. You can't use them the same way with the same effect. You can't swing a staff the same way you would a sword. You would cut yourself(in half if it was a lightsaber). The ways you use each weapon are very different. Go watch Maul fight. He fights how you fight with a staff and Obi-wan and Qui-gon fight how you would with a sword. Now try picturing that whole fight if they had swapped weapons. It couldn't be done. A sword is more versatile with how you can swing it. How am I not providing any explanation? I've been telling you exactly how they can't be used the same ways so skills with one can't transition to the other.

Trained people can be vulnerable, but it's usually not while in combat. He had the upperhand. He was winning and then she closed her eyes and instantly turned the battle around. You also just agreed with me that weapons have different ways they need to be used to be the most effective. What I'm saying is that skills with a weapon that is used differently than a sword are not magically transferred. If you are good with a staff then you are good with staff like weapons. A sword is not like a staff. The sword would not be familiar so your skills with the staff could not be transferred. All your skills are with the motions and abilities of the staff. The sword can't be used like a staff so those skills are useless.

I never said Rey was a master with her staff. I said she was familiar with her staff and never used a lightsaber prior to that battle, but she somehow knew how to use one effectively against someone trained in dueling? Most people can pick up a sword and know how to use it, but against someone who actually is skilled in it? You'd get your ass handed to you. You go pick up a stick and go to some guy who is some fancy kung fu sword guy and ask for a sparring match. You will be beaten pretty quickly.

The force doesn't "make you a better ___" exactly. The force lets you know more from your surroundings and will even tell you what is about to happen next. It doesn't give you the skills. It guides you. It doesn't take control of your movements. Rey knows how to defend herself with her staff. Like we both said, a staff is a very different weapon than a sword. It has very different ways of using it. She is used to defending/fighting with a staff, not a sword. That does not mean you automatically know how to defend/fight effectively with other weapons. If you master using a certain type of sword, those skills won't transfer to something like a spear. They are just too different to use the same skills.

She closed her eyes and summoned the Force to her aid. A powerful ally, the Force is. It can do the impossible, give the underdog the guidance they need to defeat a superior opponent. It happens time and again in the franchise.

I acknowledged the weapons are different and are used differently. All I ever said was that the basic mechanics of melee combat have some universality. The anatomy of the weapon you're using can obviously affect how you attack or block, but the basics of that, swinging your weapon at an opening and move a weapon in the path of your own openings, the kinesiology has some universality to it than anybody familiar with melee combat could more or less figure out. They wouldn't necessarily be pulling anything complex or masterful, but they might be passable enough to not die immediately. That's all I was saying, and that's exactly what happened in the movie.

The Force does make you better. It helps you, guides your actions. A novice can do things that they shouldn't be able to do by letting the Force flow through them. Luke and Rey have both achieved similar feats, as I've described.

Anyway, let's just drop this. We're obviously not getting anywhere, here.

Like you said. It gives guidance. It doesn't make you better. It guides you to be better, but the amount of skill she gained was far fetched. Can you name any part in the other movies where something like that happened?

The thing is they aren't universal. The simple fact is that the same tactics can't be used in every weapon. That's my whole point. Her skill with her staff is completely irrelevant to her skills with a lightsaber. The only universal thing they share is that they are weapons and you swing them and that's boiling it down a lot. You still can't use them the same way so again, skills with the staff would not affect her skills with the lightsaber. She is used to swinging with a staff. She is not used to swinging with a lightsaber. fighting effectively is not the same as just swinging whatever weapon you have.

Like I said above, the force doesn't make you better by boosting your abilities(except for things like jumping and running). It guides you so you can do them better. It's an aid, not a magic thing that magically boosts all your abilities/skills. It doesn't take control of you to make you better. It just guides you. That's why saber duels last as long as they do. Both duelists can use the force to predict where the next blow will be so they can block it. Remember in Ep I when Obi-wan was watching Maul and Qui-gon fight? He knew what was going to happen and was getting worried. You could plainly see it on his face. What similar feats have Luke and Rey achieved? Luke was always a great pilot and the force helped him do more. It didn't give him the skill to be a pilot. He was already one to begin with. Luke never gained some ability magically in a matter of seconds. The closest he came was with the training droid and that isn't even comparable to what Rey did.

It totally does make you better. I've already pointed out several instances where characters either did things they had no training in doing, or were able to do things that were otherwise impossible. Rey was able to pull her Falcon maneuver to give Finn a clear shot without any knowledge of Finn's line of fire. She knew exactly when to cut the engine and flip the ship so that the turret would be able to shoot a moving target. How does that not make her a better pilot? How does being able to block attacks Luke could not block before not make him a better swordsman? It is in fact an aid that magically boosts your abilities. It lets you run faster, jump higher, react to danger you didn't know was even there, lets you hit things harder, see things your naked eye can't see, communicate telepathically with animals and convince them to help you, makes you shoot more accurately, swing a sword more quickly and more precisely. The entire premise of the Juyo form is to let the Force control your muscle memory almost completely, and as a result your attacks become blindingly fast, your footwork so quick you can take opponents unaware as though you were flanking them, and your blade can hit hard enough to shatter every bone in their body in addition to having their shoulder sliced. A Dark Side warrior can literally become stronger and tougher by summoning a magical Force rage.

There's even mechanics in Star Wars tabletop RPGs for using the Force to roll skills you're not normally good at, use your Force skill in place of other skills (such as using Use the Force for Pilot checks instead of the Pilot skill), and get bonuses to rolls that might be low and result in total failure. It's a longstanding aspect of the franchise, such that multiple rules sets have been written to emulate it mechanically.

And, in regards to the weapon point, I understand what you're saying, and agree that, yes, not everything you learn with a staff applies to using a sword. But, what I'm saying is that not all of what you learn with a staff is entirely irrelevant. You even see in the movie that she's clumsy and unpracticed when fighting Kylo. She almost always goes for a lunging stab when attacking as though she were prodding at his defenses with a spear or staff, and tries to make sweeping parries that would work better with the extra leverage of a staff. The Force guides her and gives a limited amount of competence when she summons it, and allows her to defeat a crippled opponent. That's all. She didn't do anything particularly spectacular.

I dont agree. A player has to make a character equally as much as the storyteller does and that character has to both be one of the most interesting characters in the story, as well as fit into the setting. If all such information is relegated to books the player isn't likely to have acess to, the PC is likely to not fullfill either of these things as well as the NPCs that the storyteller creates. Do you really want that? For the NPCs to be far more interesting and fitting to the story, than the PCs?

The atmosphere and part of the setting, can easily be woven into the mechanical crunch of the thing, in a way that makes the mechanics more memorable and interesting, without being intrusive. Of course the setting should also have its own section, but the two dont need - and in fact, shouldn't - be entirely divorced from one another.

Players aren't disallowed from looking at setting materials. As long as they're not looking at the stat blocks for major NPC villains too closely, in the even I might use them, they can look at whatever they want. I almost never use an entire adventure path or campaign as written, and instead write my own. I work with players, and encourage them to write backstories that tie them to the setting I can use.

Regardless, when I say the Player's Handbook is not meant to cover the cultural impact of magic, I mean that is because the PHB is meant to be setting-neutral. It's the baseline abilities and spells the players have access to, so including a ton of setting info in there would largely be pointless, as it would go unused in many cases. The campaign I'm currently running in Pathfinder rules is set in the Forgotten Realms, not Golarion, so Paizo's setting info is largely useless.

Of course, I also ban resurrection magic from being used by mere mortals in the first place. Such things are the purview of djinn, devils, angels, and gods. The FR novels, even ones about extremely powerful Clerics, completely discount resurrecting characters with divine magic as an option, so I do the same.

I didn't say the players were disallowed, I said they are unlikely to. Most people dont even buy the setting books.
As somebody who has played both World of Darkness and Shadowrun to a reasonable extend, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it wouldn't be pointless to include the atmosphere and setting in the core books. Even if you wont use most - if any - of it, it provides some immensely good ideas and gets you into the proper mindset for the game.

Shadowrun is a setting and rules system in one, they're meant to go hand in hand. The setting and rules are included in the same book. That's fine. That's not how D&D is structured. D&D is a general rules system that is then used or amended for the purposes of simulating a setting.

What I've done is set my campaign in a specific world and provided details about that world. I don't need the Pathfinder SRD or Player's Handbook to do that.

Yes, precisely! Pathfinder/DnD is literally nothing but a soulless heap of mechanics, which is simultaneously what makes it such a great game and such a shitty roleplay.
That was literally my one and only point, from the very beginning...

I'm inclined to disagree. Mechanics and setting don't have to be intertwined in the handbook for the game to provide good opportunities for roleplay. Though, it is nice to have flavor text, which Pathfinder provides in abundance. Is a game really soulless if it gives me the tools I need to create a tricky scoundrel who fights dirty, both in flavor and mechanically, and has a prestige class that emulates the training of an assassin which I can then tie to an assassin's guild in the setting in which I'm playing as part of the character's backstory of an old, pragmatic hired killer seeking redemption for his callous life and on the run from the guild? I don't need the Player's Handbook to tell me how to create an interesting character, nor do I need the Dungeon Master's Guide to tell me how to tell an interesting story, though DMGs often have very handy advice for storytelling and rules arbitration in general. I establish that the guy fights dirty to give himself opportunities to shank motherfuckers, take feats that support this like Dirty Fighter and Improved Dirty Trick, and play him like some kind of fantasy version of Liam Neeson in Taken. Knowing that he's an assassin for the Shadow Thieves of Amn isn't really necessary to make that character a fun character to play or roleplay. Telling the DM he's trying to quit the business does help create plot hooks. But, again, it could work in just about any setting with an organization that has assassins.

Roleplay isn't even really about having a backstory intrinsically tied to the setting, though that can certainly help. Adventurers often defy the norms of the societies that birth them, are often divorced or otherwise exiled from mainstream society, and have a subculture of their own comprised of reckless, crazy folks who delve into forgotten ruins. Roleplaying D&D is about telling a story, which I can easily do just knowing that my character is a barbarian estranged from his clan who lived in the wild as a savage and learned to wrestle wolves and bears with his bare hands, who also has a strange affinity with spirits of ice and will eventually take the Frostrager prestige class. I can play that character day-to-day and make him this really strong, dumb teenager who doesn't really understand civilization but kinda likes all the amenities thereof, and make his background, the whos and wheres of it all, largely secondary to roleplaying his character.

Recently, my campaign had a player's character die. This is a party that is really close, they've been through thick-and-thin and own an inn/keep together. A funeral was held, and several characters, both PC and NPC, gave eulogies. The Barbarian kid I mentioned above, who follows the party on their adventures, was openly weeping. We at the table were all tearing up a little. We didn't need the PHB to have a ton of setting details for that to happen.

In a Dresden Files FATE game where I was a player, the handbook does include setting information, but mostly in a general sense that establishes what fey are and such, but most of the meat and potatoes of the setting is going to come from the Dresden Files novels. I made a character that was a half-fey, a changeling, which I already knew existed from one of the novels, and my GM and I worked out that frost giants were a kind of unseelie fey, so he was half frost giant. Anyway, after a whole, big thing where he had to duel a fire giant changeling for the sake of his family's honor, while he was distracted fighting this guy some black court vampires showed up en masse and the party's Warden (a wizard who polices magic) had to sacrifice himself to do a big spell powerful enough to kill all of the vampires at the same time. My character was pissed that he couldn't help save his friend because of his family's bullshit, so he made the Choice to become fully human and walked away. It was pretty powerful. (Cont.)

But, was it more powerful than the scene from the campaign where the rules are largely divorced from setting details? Hardly. Even if the Pathfinder or 3.5 PHBs had setting details, neither of their core settings are Forgotten Realms, so they would be pretty much useless for my campaign, anyway. The soul is invested in a game by the players and the GM, and to a much lesser extent by the setting in which the campaign takes place.

So effectively, what you're saying is, that having a level creator included in your game, justifies the actual game itself being somewhat vapid? Because thats what I'm hearing. All the cool shit you just mentioned above, is something you and your mates made up wholecloth. The book did nothing for that. That situation is entirely equivalent to somebody making a marvelous mod for a game, useing the included software, and then somebody else goes and praises the game for its merits based on experiences with that mod. You abselutely cannot use those experiences as evidence. I'm a rather creative individual. I could come up with a compelling story useing nothing but a blank sheet of paper and a pen. I could also run that story as a roleplay, useing ad-hoc systems which I also create entirely useing this blank paper and pen. Should I now use that, to assert that this blank paper and pen facilitates immersive roleplay equally as much as a game like Shadowrun?
No. No I should not. My immersion and/or enjoyment of the story I create useing the paper and pen, is entirely divorced from that paper and pen. It did it help me in any way, acting only as the medium with which I express that story. Pathfinder/DnD has the precisely same role here as that paper and pen. It did not in any way help you shape your creative stories, unless you used some of the additional material, to which the lore is relegated.
A sufficiently creative individual will be able to create immersive stories ex nihilo, the atmosphere isn't there to help out the immensely creative. Its there to help out the less creative, and also to make reading the book feel less like reading a maths textbook and more like being actually immersed in a roleplay. I never read through the book start to finnish, because its not very entertaining to do. The book is simply too dry for that.

So, in other words, you don't need the game books to tell you how to have a good time and construct a narrative. You can easily do that yourself. Hence, I don't need that to be in the Player's Handbook or DMG.
I'm not saying books that include setting details are bad, or that the handbook helped me create the funeral scenario. What I am saying is that the players and GM can work together to make the game a narrative experience. The rules just help arbitrate success and failure in adventure or combat scenarios. Yeah, Shadowrun and many other games exist where the handbooks are rife with setting details and such, but those games are often written with that synergy in mind, and don't have multiple settings that the rules could feasibly be used for. D&D wasn't built that way, but that doesn't make it a "shitty roleplay." They give you the rules so you don't have to read the book all the way through. Less time reading, more time creating and playing. Different strokes for different folks.

So essentially, your arguement is, that you'de rather fill in that blank entirely yourself, rather than have the developers do so for you? I mean, I dont think thats a bad arguement per-se, but it just seems a bit dodgey that you'de want to allow the game to have this flaw, just to make up for it yourself. But sure, I can see a certain merit to it. My point just is, that that fundamentally and inevitably, will lead to creating less evocative mechanics. The more broad you make your focus, the less interesting and evocative you need to make your mechanics as a result, is basically my arguement.

What we've been debating here isn't my sole reason for saying that Pathfinder/DnD is a shitty roleplay. Theres a bunch of things. Another very key aspect of the game, that just abselutely ruins it for me, in terms of roleplay, is that fucking leveling system.
My character wants to become a stronger person, he lifts weights for 7 months. Does it at all effect my strength? Nop! My character wants to become smarter, maybe get a bachelors degree, he enrolls in a university for a year. Does it effect my ranks in skills? Nop! How do I accomplish these things? I go out and kill 7 Fucking Kobolds, and gain level 4...
And then theres the fucking combat system. "Ok, we're clearly outmatched, we need to fight dirty! I wanna beg the wizard for mercy, and when he least expects it, stab him right in his soft wizard heart, right through his soft wizard robes!". Can I do that? The first part, yes, the second part, Fuck No , because despite being a frail old idiot, protected by nothing but cloth, the dude is still level 10 and has like 50 HP atleast which I'm not gonna be able to 1-hit, despite doing something that should realistically murder his ass. And come to think of it, I cant even say "I wanna stab him in the heart", because targetet attacks aren't part of the fucking core system!

I know I've complained alot about Pathfinder/DnD in this thread, but honestly, its mostly because people praise it so much around here recently, seemingly unaware of where the game falls critically short. I still think its a fine game, but if you want to roleplay, you're honestly better off useing my aformentioned example with a paper and a pen...

Or, if you legitimately catch a villain so completely off-guard, and your DM is cool like me, maybe you get a coup de grace even though he's not technically helpless, or just says the fuckers buckles over and dies when you gut him with your dagger or sword.

Trouble is, no Wizard you'd actually have any beef with would be likely to fall for something like that dumb and transparent without you spending a lot of time earning his trust or just killing him in his sleep. If he's level 10, he's probably had people (or things) try to kill him before. He has some knowledge, a little luck, and some grit from being so experienced, to be able to avoid blows that might otherwise kill him, which is what HP represents and not how much blood or meat is in your body. When you get hit for 49 out of your 50 HP, you didn't necessarily get impaled and miraculously survived. You probably took a bad hit to the shoulder that means the next hit is invariably going to be either entirely fatal, or enough to break through your defenses and inner reserves to knock you the fuck out.

Well, yeah. I want to have a bevvy of flavorful mechanics I can fit into my world or another world, without having to worry about re-flavoring a lot of setting-specific things like prestige classes that are built around specific things in a specific setting. When I want to have that, I'll look it up in a book or a wiki or read a novel about it. Again, I rarely use the generic setting. I didn't use Core 4E for 4E, and I don't use Golarion for Pathfinder. In my Star Wars Saga Edition game, I used a Star Wars era not strictly covered in the books, that of the Old Republic MMO. SWSE has a lot of flavorful, setting-appropriate suggestions and descriptions, but it is likewise aware that its setting is variable, that there's many eras of Star Wars you could set your campaign in. Hell, some folks made a hack where they modified the SWSE rules to emulate fucking Mass Effect. A book doesn't need setting materials to make a suite of mechanics exciting or cool. Established setting details are, like everything else a publisher puts out, guidelines to help you along, not necessarily required reading.

Anyway, if a character lifts weights for 7 months, or a character goes to school and learns a great deal and takes on challenging research projects, they would both gain XP as long as they were challenged and they somehow overcame those challenges. There's tons of high-level Wizards out there who never went on a single adventure in their lives. Thing is, having your mind and body tested by gauntlets of traps, hordes of monsters, and the plots of villains is much more challenging and therefore much more rewarding. Also, the game assumes you're doing things like studying and training in your down time to sort of crystallize what you've learned and discover how to apply it. But, yeah, if you pull a Goku/Vegeta and just work out in a really dangerous way for a while and survive, you could probably level up eventually. But, nobody else at the table likely wants to do that. Unless roleplay or something else story-related is going to happen, why would you even WANT the ability to sit at home and work out? That's not cool or heroic, and it's not a story unless somebody talks to you while you're working out or you internally monologue and your character develops. The game just assumes your character knows how to train her body in her off-hours and that you do so to keep in adventuring shape.

As for the level 10 Wizard, well, it'd be supremely difficult to ever convince him you genuinely wanted to give up and then hang out afterwards, but let's say you did. He's a powerful Wizard, and can therefore probably prepare an Extended Mage Armor for the day, giving him the invisible equivalent of a chain shirt for a duration of 20 hours. He also likely has a Ring of Protection and possibly an Amulet of Natural Armor to further increase his AC. Even if you take him by surprise, taking his Dexterity out of the equation, he's basically wearing the equivalent of a non-magical suit of plate mail or better. That's not even taking into account the other spells he probably cast to defend himself either before you arrived or while you were talking and begging for your lives. So, even if you pulled this whole thing off, you might not actually hit him. But, let's say you did. He's denied his Dexterity to AC, so if you're a Rogue you can Sneak Attack him, if you're a high Strength warrior of some kind you can Power Attack and still hit even at a large penalty. If you're a Cleric you might cast say Slay Living and get something like 12d6+7 damage on a touch attack that would ignore all but that Ring of Protection. If your group is using the massive damage rules and anybody hits the Wizard for at least 50 damage, he has to make a Fortitude save or die. If not, and you've gained his trust so thoroughly, you could wait until he goes to sleep and coup de grace him for an automatic critical hit that he has to roll a very high Fortitude save against or die.

Again, you're effective trying to come up with a bunch of patchwork, in order to make the system work. Nowhere in the books does it say study and training will increase your level, and why would that even make sense? So because I studied physics for three years, that qualifies me for a level in Wizard? For the extra health and feat, too? Where the hell did that come from? Useing the level system as it is, barely makes any sense, but rewarding experience for study barely does either. Its a stunted and very gamey system, that does serve to make the game more fun, but simultaneously more unrealistic and a worse roleplay.
Same can be said for your example with the Wizard. Nowhere does it say that I am allowed those automatic crits or coup de grace, so you're effectively trying to patchwork on a system that fundamentally ignores the realism of being stabbed. Even your example of "wait untill he sleeps" is an unrealistic shitfest. Say he sleeps, and I somehow manage to sneak up on him. I'm a level 1 peasant, with a really shitty 1d4 dagger. I slit his throat. I'll be doing around 8 damage, if I'm lucky. He is very likely to still make that fortitude save, so he just survived being stabbed in the throat in his fucking sleep. Realism! Roleplay! Immersion...! GONE!
Still explain to me, how his experiences with taking a blow will going help him not die from being murdered in his sleep, because the only logical conclusion, is that HP is abselutely how much meat and blood is in your body...
I know that as the system is written, thats not what it is, but these coup de grace rules are in direct conflict with how HP is otherwise repressented...

You can gain XP without fighting kobolds, because you don't even necessarily have to kill kobolds to gain the XP they're worth. You gain XP by overcoming challenges in some way, such as simply avoiding them through stealth and proceeding on with the dungeon. That's simply a fact of the system. You can be a level 2 Commoner who does nothing but farm, earning XP by overcoming the challenges of being a farmer, like working hard all year and bartering to get a good price for your crops. There's level 5+ Wizard NPCs who've never gone on a single adventure in their lives, but over time their studies and successful experiments earned them enough XP to get to that level. Extra Hit Points (again, not really "health") and extra feats or class features represent you putting together what you learned. You got a little luckier, a little more skilled at avoiding perils like exploding potions, particularly difficult and volatile magical item crafting, or called creatures that got a bit rowdy. Hence, more HP. You figured out some more arcane tricks and took Empowered Spell, or learned to be a little more diplomatic and intimidating when speaking with your apprentices and took Persuasive, etc.

Unless the Wizard is wearing his Cloak of Resistance +3 to bed, which would be very uncomfortable, he's looking at a base Fortitude save of +3. Maybe he's got a 12 Constitution and has a total of +4 Fort. With 8 damage, he's staring at a daunting DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than . If he rolls high, he lives, and either awoke and moved with startling swiftness to avoid the brunt of the slash, or is gripping his throat to staunch the bleeding of the bad but not mortal gash in his throat, and has time to take a turn and get the healing potion he keeps under the pillow he doesn't use and drink it. That's not even DM fiat or rules fudging. If something isn't killing you, your body is more or less whole. If you have 20 HP and somebody hits you for 21 with a greatsword, unless your Constitution is 1 that sword did not just cut off your arm or head, though you are bleeding out your life blood because you're at negative HP and therefore considered dying.

Anyway, in the end, the rules are merely guidelines, and are intended only to provide arbitration of the zany shenanigans magical weirdos get up to. The books encourage DMs to bend and break these guidelines as they see fit. Maybe the reason that Wizard grabbed a healing potion instead of simply vaporizing his attacker is because I, the DM, decided that his neck is literally split open and he's taking bleed damage every round. But, hell, this fucking peasant somehow got through every single trap and ward the Wizard had in place to prevent this very situation. Maybe he just deserves to auto-fail that save because one of my crazy-ass players rolled a really lucky peasant.

*DC 18 Fort save or die, a less than 35% chance of success.

Every DM I've had created their own world, at best taking elements from the books. That's what I've always thought they were for, inspiration, rather than adoption.

Sure, but as it stands, Pathfinder/DnD barely gives you anything to be inspired by.
Theres no atmosphere in the books. Its just a bunch of mechanical crunch. Its a mighty fine bunch of mechanics, but thats all it is. A bunch of tools and parts you can use to make something yourself. Kinda like the Level Creators that some computer games comes with.

You realize there's like, novels, right? Produced by Wizards of the Coast? Incredibly in depth lore to the origin and history of essentially everything?

I do. Have you read any of them? I sure haven't and neither have anyone in my group, nor indeed anyone I ever talked to.
As I said elsewhere, essential parts of the setting, the entirety of the lore, shouldn't be relegated to books that the average player is unlikely to ever see. That would be like having literally no spoken dialogue in a game like Skyrim, and instead relying on the player to pick up and read those books thats shattered around, if they wanna follow the story or understand the setting. Sure, they have the option of doing that, but how many people do you think would realistically do that?

All I'm hearing is "I'm unwilling to look in to the lore so it basically doesn't exist"

Fine. If thats what you wanna hear, go ahead and delude yourself. It isn't what I said, but if thats what you desire to understand, then you're very welcome to misinterprid what I said. You being unwilling to acknowledge - or even adequately understand - my position, does not invalidate it.

If I've misinterprited you, and this isn't just a snide attempt at being a cheeky cock, then I'll gladly explain my position in more detail.

I wasn't being a cheeky cock. You're complaining that the crunch books don't contain fluff and dismiss the fluff books as unnecessary, but somehow this is someone elses fault.

Did I ever use the word "unnecessary"? No, I did not. I dont think they're unnecessary, dont put words in my mouth.
I said that the average player is unlikely to ever read them. Not only because these books are rather expensive, but also because the majority of players are only tangentially interested in things that needn't nessesarily have a direct impact on their characters. As with my example of Skyrim, just because players have the option of seeking out this additional lore of their own volition, it doesn't excuse its complete absence from the core books.