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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 2200812" data-attributes="member: 158">Here we may be coming into a philosophical difference. One poster here (LostWorldsMike) once said a while back, "Rules are for Players." By inference, a DM is not hard-bound to the rules as a player would be. It's a statement that I agree with totally - heck, I used to agree with NPC-only classes back in the days of 1st edition AD&D. From your statement, I'm gathering that you feel it's a "cheating the other players" issue if a DM does not follow the rules and make up completely statted NPCs for the game, and this paradox of "damned if you do and damned if you don't" because of the length and complexity of D&D stat blocks is what is causing the issue. Please correct me if I'm wrong about your feelings on the issue.For me, one cannot compare D&D to other games because there's a difference in control; in most board games a la Monopoly, there's a hard set of rules that all players follow equally; no player is different than any other. Because that's throwing the baby out with the bath water, to recall a phrase. The stats are how one interacts with the other players. The idea that a DM doesn't have to be completely internally consistent doesn't negate that - an opponent still has a set amount of hit points, ability points, spells, etc. that fall within its capable ranges - when they run out, they die or retreat same as anyone else.Just this past weekend, I had a conversation with a friend in another group about a similar issue. He had a mass battle planned in a game, and used several d20 rolls each round to simulate the macro-tides of the battle, as the PCs were getting involved otherwise. He found it was taking him a good bit of time doing this, and was not completely comfortable with handling it this way anyway. One of his group asked him, "why don't you just decide WHAT HAPPENS, instead of rolling the dice?" When he expressed dislike of that idea, the fellow player reminded him that he already has the idea of the outcome decided anyway if the PCs didn't intervene, so why go through the extra steps of rolling each round and just decide the whole way - especially since the macro-outcomes were irrelevant to what the PCs were doing anyway? My friend said that the difference in giving up that die-rolling was kind of new to him, but made sense. He doesn't wing things quite as much as I do, but maybe I can get him to come in and give his input on it. There may be a misconception here. I'm not talking about changing numbers on the fly - I'm talking about deciding the numbers either as or shortly before the battle is joined. They don't change (except to usually go DOWN from attrition. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />)...And the fact that we DON'T play D&D the same way is what makes the game fun for me - it's how I learn from other DM's - their styles, their tricks, and their skills they use to make their games fun. I credit half the DM skill I have to interacting with people on these very forums.</blockquote>

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