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The big difference is that the former is necessary while the latter is not. When things go in unexpected directions either the DM has to improvise or the session grinds to a halt. Very few of us (if anyone) would say that stopping the session is a desirable result here, thus improvisation...

I think they'd rather things never get to the point of my having to make that choice. :) In fairness, though, I really do think they'd prefer the impartial option were it to come to that.

I still use these sometimes, but as guidelines rather than straitjackets.

Feature, not bug. Never mind the players also get to inflict those high-variability things on their foes, and IME players love that part. Yet again, it comes back to the risk vs reward question.

Yes, it's fudging.

I've seen six wishes come from a single run-in with a Deck of Many Things (and four of them were largely wasted!). Let's be pessimistic and say each Wish knocks the mage back for the full 8 days. Retire the mage for a year, i.e. 365 days assuming an Earth-like calendar, put him in a care home...

If the PCs are going to win anyway then in that case I wouldn't change a thing: the crit happens and the character dies. As a group they still get that same feeling of triumph of having won a hard-fought victory, only that victory came at a cost. I'm referring more to a situation where three...

Just because it's fantasy doesn't mean it has to be fair. :) It comes back to the whole risk-reward question. 1e is designed as a high-risk high-reward system (and 5e, the opposite), and mitigating or removing the risks takes away much of the joy of earning the rewards. And it'd be tedious...

As player, I keep a track of hit point total each level e.g. 3,9,14,23,24,28 for the same reason, and as DM I insist the players do likewise.

I insist players keep old versions of character sheets for a far more pragmatic reason: it's inevitable there will be errors or omissions in the info transcribed from the old sheet to the new, and so the old one is kept as a reference. That's brilliant!

It's not necessarily that newer players really are fragile complainers, it's that the designers of D&D keep designing as if they're fragile complainers, which does nobody any good. ========= On the broader topic of level drain, keep in mind the game did have a baked-in means of at least...

If the DMG flat-out said "don't fudge, ever" then sure, the burden of proof would be on ER to back up his statement. But unfortunately, it says pretty much the opposite; and I think from that it's safe to assume there's a whole lot of 5e DMs* doing it, no proof required. * - much less clear...

Don't get me wrong - I've seen times when as a DM I want to bail the PCs' collective ass out of a jam, be it of their own making or mine, and I'm sure you've had similar moments. Fudging behind the screen, though, isn't the answer. Instead, make the bail-out obvious and put it in the fiction...

I stand to be corrected, but isn't it right there in the 5e DMG somewhere, that DMs can fudge if they need to? If yes, I'd (rather sadly) say that's proof enough.

Perhaps, but they're still a lot bigger (and the responses are, probably, a lot more varied) than what any of us could get just asking around among our own gaming community.

Indeed, this to a large extent isn't preventable. This, one the other hand, very much is preventable. Mechanics like that are IMO an abomination, along with any mechanics that can or do alter a die roll and-or the resulting fiction after the roll's result is already known (5e examples would be...

In his game it's quite possible some of the mages got to 18th level and thus able to hard-cast Wish, which makes wishes far more reliably available than having to rely on randomly-found devices or very good luck. And at that point, he'd need to put some limits on what wishes could do in...

It took until 3e for monsters - by RAW - to finally get proper Con bonuses to their hit points just like characters get. To me, it never made sense that they didn't - even more so given that in at least some cases they do get their strength bonuses to hit and damage and Dex bonuses to AC - and...

Just how I like it. :) This, too. High risk, high reward. Given that, the obvious people to have making these items are the intelligent undead e.g. Vampires, Liches, and so forth. Aging is utterly irrelevant to them, and if they're mage enough to make an item like this they're also mage...

It also depends on a table's expected pace of play. Even just a single adventure here can take us 5-10 sessions (i.e. 1-3 months), where it seems other tables might blast through the same adventure in 1-3 sessions. Agreed. "Railroad" isn't often seen kindly, even sometimes by those who do...