Whe I created my character, I had him purchase 50 feet of silk rope. Our party has used that rope to temporarily bind NPCs, and do other mundane things. All uses were temporary and the rope was never assumed to be left behind. It was also never specified that the rope had to be cut to any particular length for a task.
My question is this: Is rope ever expended when used for temporary binding or mundane tasks? Should it be cut to appropriate lengths for a particular task? Or is this considered trivial minutiae?
Best Answer
Typically, rope lasts forever.
Rules
There are no rules about ropes breaking on use, unless they are explicitly broken/cut.
In game
A rope is usually reusable, unless of course, you cut it to length. Though if you think about it, this can almost always be avoided, and the only reason you typically need to do this is if you
Look at the most common uses for rope:
Meta game
In D&D 3.X/Pathfinder, a silk rope costs 10gp, which is a "non-issue" from level 3 onwards, at the latest (assuming somehow normal wealth). It also has limited weight, carrying around multiple ropes in a Handy Haversack or Bag of Holding is very simple. Even without that, you will usually not suddenly need more than 50ft. of rope per character.
At this point, keeping track of whether or not you break or not break your rope is not only tedious, but also pretty pointless, since the "danger" is usually no problem at all (spare ropes, see above).
Special cases
Of course, there may be games where having a rope is a huge advantage, such as survival scenarios. In these cases, narrative rope-breaking may be beneficial to the story and is usually fair game.