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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5294650" data-attributes="member: 5143">Rule 0 only works when you don't have a section in the DMG telling you how balanced the rules are due to years of playtesting and that although you CAN change the rules, you shouldn't.  It explains that players expect the rules to work a certain way and changing them without letting them know and discussing it with them can cause problems.3.0 and 3.5 both were worded in such a way as to say "Here are lists of things you can take and exactly what they do when you take them.  Oh....and incidentally, it's possible your DM says no to you taking one of them.  But unless they say otherwise, this is how the game works."This is in contrast to the way that 2e worked.  For instance, in 2e there were a list of magic items.  The book basically said "How you get these items is up to your DM."In 3e, you get a list of "You should give out X magic items each level, as well as X gold.  Magic items can be purchased for gold.  If a PC has the correct amount of gold they should be able to buy an item provided they are in a big enough city.  Here's how big a city needs to be to have magic items below a certain cost.  Oh, and these rules can be changed if you really want to.  But keep in mind these rules were playtested and are balanced and it's difficult to know long term what a change to the rules can do.  So be careful."And it was right.  Change what magic items cost and you can make one item much better than all the others.  Remove purchasing of magic items and then suddenly item creation feats become much, much more powerful.It's a matter of expectations.  Every player I've ever had in both 3.0 and 3.5 assumed they'd be able to buy the items they wanted for their character when they wanted as long as they had enough gold...and figured they would have enough gold since the guidelines for giving out gold gave them enough.  If I decided to change something and use rule 0 it was filled with complaining and rewriting people's characters since they were no fun(or at least less fun) for people to play when the default assumptions weren't part of the game.An example I always use is the time during our very first 3.0 game where our DM decided partway through our 4th or 5th session that he hated flatfootedness.  He didn't read the book very effectively before he started DMing and had no idea that people lost their Dex modifier to AC before they first acted.  He thought it was dumb and removed it.  Which immediately removed about 30% of the time my Rogue with Improved Initiative got to use his Sneak Attack and caused me to ask him if I could make a different character.</blockquote>

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