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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ColonelHardisson" data-source="post: 413973" data-attributes="member: 363">You're stretching in search of an argument. This is a matter of semantics, which, quite honestly, I would rather not discuss. I think any reasonable reader knows what I meant. The specific examples I gave were just that - examples, and off the top of my head at that. I'm sure that any number of unobtrusive bits of flavor could be devised. OK - the blue nimbus is faint, and only visible to the caster. The D&D rules are akin to a toolbox. They give a basic framework upon which to work. What you are failing to see or acknowledge is that the rules changes I'm talking about are in-game, and largely cosmetic, in the sense that they do not alter the basic framework of how the mechanics work in an actual dice rolling sense. Further, you also are ignoring - or at least downplaying - perhaps the most basic, most implicit rule within the game, the one that supercedes all the others - DM's discretion. This isn't just a "yeah, but..." type of thing that can be glossed over. It's the rule that is the landscape upon which the structures of the game are built. The DM is encouraged in the DMG, often explicitly, to customize his or her world. If this involves changing or adding rules - and I use that word very loosely for this discussion - then so be it. My specific point of contention is that these changes can be nothing more than descriptive, which obviates the need for massive changes of the framework itself. It's one thing to require characters to spend 5000gp to go to wizard school, and another to come up with a new magic system. There really isn't anything specific in the rules that says that players can take any class they want, in the sense that nothing supercedes their decision-making - only that it's possible. Again, DM's discretion is implicit - those classes or races can only be taken at the DM's approval. One of the most important aspects of D&D rests in this - DM's discretion is one of the cornerstones of the game. It totally permeates the game, to the point that it sometimes is ignored, like not seeing the forest for the trees.</blockquote>

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