Can I make up random stuff as a DM?

[Draven]

i as a dm make stuff up on the fly during gameplay partially because i played in a campaign with a charecter who likes to think of off the wall things to say and do. our dm in this campaign wrote down all of his story and she had the ability to totally mess with it within five minuets. i have found that in dming with charecters of this nature that you have to figure things out on the fly.

 

[BOZ]

Hey, just wanted to get peoples opinions. How bad is it to just change the rules in D&D to make interesting (at least to me) monsters and encounters.

do it.

 

[MonkeyDragon]

Of course! Everything's better with a unique twist on it. In particular, my players have always loved it when something a little silly gets plunked into an otherwise serious game. One of the most popular being the witch that tried to eat them and beat the rogue halfway to unconsiousness with the Ugly Stick. A +1 club that deals 1d4 Cha. He kept the stick afterwards and it was his favorite toy. Or when we needed a lighthearted session and the house they were hired to exterminate was full of monsters from the munchkin monster manual.

Plus, sometimes messing with the rules or inventing monsters, spells, items, etc is downright necessary. I know a gamer who's a notorious rules lawyer and mole. Plus he KNOWS the rules inside out, when it suits him. Since I'm not so sharp on the RAW, I'm gonna have to be inventing things to keep him on his toes if he plays in a game of mine.

So go for the inventing! It makes things more exciting.

 

[Grazzt]

Hey, just wanted to get peoples opinions. How bad is it to just change the rules in D&D to make interesting (at least to me) monsters and encounters.

Tiew

Not bad at all. Do it. You are the DM. So long as everyone has fun....bend, cut, break, do whatever you want to the rules (which should be deemed more as a set of guidelines than rules actually).

 

[Tiew]

You raise a good point Gez. In my game however the PCs are exploring a land that was invaded by a crusading army 10 years before. The empire defeated the army but many of the crusaders have fled and hid throughout the countryside. The paladin (or ex-paladin if you prefer) was one of the crusaders and how he's constantly on the run and in hiding. Having had his reason slightly befuddled by the shock of the defeat and his new lifestyle he is just basically a bandit who comes out and kills the occasional random person on the road that he detects as being evil. He does this because his identity is wrapped up in being a warrior against evil and he won't stop even when it would make a lot more sense.

I thought he might make an interesting travel encounter... We'll see if I use him though.

Thanks for the advice everybody. Glad to see I'm not the only one who messes with the rules sometimes. I'll try to be fair and consistent about it though like you have said.

 

[Gez]

If you read the spell description for Detect Evil, it is vague as to whether the user is detecting Alignment or intent.

It doesn't detect intent.

However, it doesn't detect strictly alignment, either.

A LN, TN, or CN cleric of a LE, NE, or CE god would register on detect evil. And with a strong aura -- much stronger than that of a LE, NE, or CE warlock of the same level. Heck, a paladin of an evil god, if such a thing were to happen, would register as both strongly good (being a paladin) and strongly evil (being a divine spellcaster of an evil god).

In Eberron, which drops the One-Step rule, a good cleric of an evil deity (like a NG cleric of the Blood of Vol that believes in the "quest for freedom from mortality" aspect of the BoV's dogma) would register as evil, despite being himself of good alignment.

Finally, any undead, no matter what the alignment -- actually evil, just neutral, or even good -- is detected as well.

In fact, detect evil would be more aptly named as detect suspicious beings.

 

[darktalon]

In answer to the original question: half of the fun of DMing is the creativity aspect. The rules as written should support this, and when they don't just make stuff up and run with it. Always works for me.

 

[philreed]

For instance I had the idea of an encounter with and ex-crusader paladin who's gone a little bit crazy and been cursed by and evil god. He's running around desperatly detecting evil and slaying it, but the evil diety he crossed has detect evil is actually detecting good and his smite evil is actually smiting good. I would think this would be roughly the same power as a paladin of the same level, so a fair encounter, but the fact it drastically changes the rules of D&D might make it unfair to my players.

You could grab the Paladin of Slaughter or the Paladin of Tyranny from Unearthed Arcana.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

You raise a good point Gez. In my game however the PCs are exploring a land that was invaded by a crusading army 10 years before. The empire defeated the army but many of the crusaders have fled and hid throughout the countryside. The paladin (or ex-paladin if you prefer) was one of the crusaders and how he's constantly on the run and in hiding. Having had his reason slightly befuddled by the shock of the defeat and his new lifestyle he is just basically a bandit who comes out and kills the occasional random person on the road that he detects as being evil. He does this because his identity is wrapped up in being a warrior against evil and he won't stop even when it would make a lot more sense.

I thought he might make an interesting travel encounter... We'll see if I use him though.

Thanks for the advice everybody. Glad to see I'm not the only one who messes with the rules sometimes. I'll try to be fair and consistent about it though like you have said.

Very interesting travel encounter.

Personally, going by RAW D&D as opposed to an alignmentless variant, I'd have this cat be an actual fallen paladin. Just a feat-shorted fighter with some skills. He's obviously a sad, deluded fellow. Why not have his delusions extend to whether his Smite Evil and Detect Evil work?

He can still be a formidable combat challenge for the PCs if he's quite a bit higher level than them, should it come to that.

In regards to the general question, I can and do flip out and change the rules all the time, because a GM has Real Ultimate Power.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

How bad is it to just change the rules in D&D to make interesting (at least to me) monsters and encounters.

I think it's a pity that this isn't made clearer nowadays.

D&D's a roleplaying game, so it's okay for the DM to break the rules. Really okay. In fact, the longer you DM for, the more rules you'll ignore.

You can tell people who've been roleplaying for twenty or twenty-five years by the fact that if they went through their rulebooks with a sharp knife removing all the ones they no longer use, and then actualyl wrote down all their house rules in one place, the house rules document would be larger.