NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5984215" data-attributes="member: 42582">Basic D&D talks about the rules as guidelines. I don't recall if it says that the GM (as opposed to the group in general) has special authority to change them. It certainly doesn't imply that the GM can suspend them at will.Gygax's AD&D talks fairly insistently about the virtues of the published rules, including the effort that has gone into testing, balancing and standardising.The idea of disregarding the action resolution mechanics "in the interests of the story" comes out in 2nd ed AD&D, and is picked up again in the 3E DMG, and in the 4e Rules Compendium. (It's not in the 4e PHB - the RC changes the relevant bit of text, in my view in a retrograde fashion.)In Gygax's DMG he canvasses fudging to keep a PC alive when the player has played well and the dice still come up badly - but even then, cautions against it. This is different from 2nd ed AD&D in two ways: (i) the caution, and (ii) the rationale - not story, but rather ensuring that skilled players aren't nevertheless punished by bad luck.The 4e DMG says this:Rolling behind the screen lets you fudge if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you might want to change the second critical hit to a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t do it too often, though, and don’t let on tha t you’re doing it, or the other players feel as though they don’t face any real risk—or worse, that you’re playing favorites.That seems closer to the Gygaxian than the 2nd ed rationale for fudging, or maybe some mix of them. Other than the RC passage, the 4e rules don't go more broadly into the idea that the GM might suspend the action resolution rules. I think the game takes for granted that the published rules work!</blockquote>

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