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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7849340" data-attributes="member: 996">RaW was a 3.x era/PF-offshoot obsession.Especially on-line.3e made so many changes in the favor of players, especially players into builds &amp; system mastery, that the impetus to insist everyone always use the Rules As Written was almost monolithic.&nbsp; And &quot;RAW&quot; was pretty debatable, so there was, well, a lot of debate about how the OneTrueRAW was necessarily the one that enabled this or that rock'n build.You still see hints of it, when someone will respond to a reasonable ruling with &quot;...but that would be a house rule!&quot;And, of course, the whole 5e warcry of &quot;Rulings not Rules!&quot; in the cause of DM Empowerment is a reaction against it. Is 5e still Exception-Based Design?&nbsp;&nbsp; 4e was very explicit about being Exception Based, and was rife with keywords, jargon, and precise phrasing that read like a technical manual, as a result.I don't really think 5e is that into it, though I guess it might still be an aspect, because well, OT1H, they more emphasized 'Modular' (which they also didn't deliver, but which is subtly different), and OTOH, and more to the point, exception-based design is a very rules-centric, even tight, design philosophy, while 5e is DM-centric and natural-language, so more loose. The rules are a starting point, the DM picks &amp; chooses options, authors variants, and makes rulings.&nbsp; He needn't parse rules &amp; exceptions to rules &amp; exceptions to exceptions, except in exceptional circumstances... he just makes a ruling.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7849340, member: 996"] RaW was a 3.x era/PF-offshoot obsession. Especially on-line. 3e made so many changes in the favor of players, especially players into builds & system mastery, that the impetus to insist everyone always use the Rules As Written was almost monolithic. And "RAW" was pretty debatable, so there was, well, a lot of debate about how the OneTrueRAW was necessarily the one that enabled this or that rock'n build. You still see hints of it, when someone will respond to a reasonable ruling with "...but that would be a house rule!" And, of course, the whole 5e warcry of "Rulings not Rules!" in the cause of DM Empowerment is a reaction against it. Is 5e still Exception-Based Design? 4e was very explicit about being Exception Based, and was rife with keywords, jargon, and precise phrasing that read like a technical manual, as a result. I don't really think 5e is that into it, though I guess it might still be an aspect, because well, OT1H, they more emphasized 'Modular' (which they also didn't deliver, but which is subtly different), and OTOH, and more to the point, exception-based design is a very rules-centric, even tight, design philosophy, while 5e is DM-centric and natural-language, so more loose. The rules are a starting point, the DM picks & chooses options, authors variants, and makes rulings. He needn't parse rules & exceptions to rules & exceptions to exceptions, except in exceptional circumstances... he just makes a ruling. [/QUOTE]

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