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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7753558" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>In 4e a monster stat block tells you what its hit points are. These are calculated by a formula that factors in monster level, monster role, and monster CON.</p><p></p><p>There is no provision in the rules for changing the hp without varying one or more of those parameters. There are some tables that systematically reduce monster hp in the interest of expediting combat resolution, but that's not something the rules contemplate.</p><p></p><p>And going the other way - increasing a monster's hp without increasing other stats - is really changing its role (say, form standard to elite), and there's good reason, if doing that, to make other concomitant changes, such as upping its action economy to elite levels, giving an appropriate XP award for an elite, etc.</p><p></p><p>In 4e most monster damage is listed as a die roll plus adds. And the rules make no provision for standardisation, although it probably wouldn't do any harm for a GM to just calculate and apply averages.</p><p></p><p>As far as D&D rulebooks are concerned, the earliest time I know of that the rules gave the GM carte blanche to ignore dice rolls and dictate outcomes via fiat and fudging was in 2nd ed.</p><p></p><p>In Gygax's AD&D books, the role of the GM as arbiter is primarily amount managing the introduction of <em>content </em>when random rolls deliver undesired outcomes (I think I posted the relevant passages somewhere upthread). This makes sense in a game with a large amount of random content generation, some of which is meant to feed into the generation of challenges but which a GM is in a position to judge to be going too far in posing needless frustration (or, if we're talking about treasure placement, is going too far the other way in generosity). But when it comes to action resolution, the only example of GM arbitration that Gygax suggests is treating a death blow to the PC of a player who played well but gog unlucky as some sort of unconsciousness or maiming instead, and even there he stresses that the fiated consequence must take into consideration what the monster has done (ie won the combat vs that PC).</p><p></p><p>In Gygax's discussion of saving throws there is a brief discussion of the GM's authority to adjudicate the fiction (so eg being immersed in water helps with saving throws vs fireballs), and Moldvay Basic has a more extended discussion of this. But none of this is about fiating outcomes either - it's about adjudicating the ficiton in a system which is intended to make the fiction something the players engage with and exploit for advantage, and which doesn't have a generic resolution system. (Contrast, say, Burning Wheel, which does have a generic resolution system and in which the default rule is that if a player plays the fiction to advantage, s/he gets a bonus die - in that system, there's no need for some extensive GM authority to make up or tweak resolution systems.)</p><p></p><p>Nothing in early D&D rulebooks suggests that the GM has the sort of carte blanche that contemporary rule zero advocates content for. That is an artefact of later books reflecting typical 80s/90s RPG sensibilities. (The same thing is found in White Wolf's "golden rule".)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7753558, member: 42582"] In 4e a monster stat block tells you what its hit points are. These are calculated by a formula that factors in monster level, monster role, and monster CON. There is no provision in the rules for changing the hp without varying one or more of those parameters. There are some tables that systematically reduce monster hp in the interest of expediting combat resolution, but that's not something the rules contemplate. And going the other way - increasing a monster's hp without increasing other stats - is really changing its role (say, form standard to elite), and there's good reason, if doing that, to make other concomitant changes, such as upping its action economy to elite levels, giving an appropriate XP award for an elite, etc. In 4e most monster damage is listed as a die roll plus adds. And the rules make no provision for standardisation, although it probably wouldn't do any harm for a GM to just calculate and apply averages. As far as D&D rulebooks are concerned, the earliest time I know of that the rules gave the GM carte blanche to ignore dice rolls and dictate outcomes via fiat and fudging was in 2nd ed. In Gygax's AD&D books, the role of the GM as arbiter is primarily amount managing the introduction of [I]content [/I]when random rolls deliver undesired outcomes (I think I posted the relevant passages somewhere upthread). This makes sense in a game with a large amount of random content generation, some of which is meant to feed into the generation of challenges but which a GM is in a position to judge to be going too far in posing needless frustration (or, if we're talking about treasure placement, is going too far the other way in generosity). But when it comes to action resolution, the only example of GM arbitration that Gygax suggests is treating a death blow to the PC of a player who played well but gog unlucky as some sort of unconsciousness or maiming instead, and even there he stresses that the fiated consequence must take into consideration what the monster has done (ie won the combat vs that PC). In Gygax's discussion of saving throws there is a brief discussion of the GM's authority to adjudicate the fiction (so eg being immersed in water helps with saving throws vs fireballs), and Moldvay Basic has a more extended discussion of this. But none of this is about fiating outcomes either - it's about adjudicating the ficiton in a system which is intended to make the fiction something the players engage with and exploit for advantage, and which doesn't have a generic resolution system. (Contrast, say, Burning Wheel, which does have a generic resolution system and in which the default rule is that if a player plays the fiction to advantage, s/he gets a bonus die - in that system, there's no need for some extensive GM authority to make up or tweak resolution systems.) Nothing in early D&D rulebooks suggests that the GM has the sort of carte blanche that contemporary rule zero advocates content for. That is an artefact of later books reflecting typical 80s/90s RPG sensibilities. (The same thing is found in White Wolf's "golden rule".) [/QUOTE]
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