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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8830018" data-attributes="member: 29398">Not ditch as such, but yes, I have gone through and rewritten every 1e spell, tweaking and fixing and adding rulings as I went.  The impetus for this was that I wanted to put them online, which meant typing them all in anyway (optical character readers being a waste of time), so I figured I might as well fix them all - and add and delete a few - while I was at it.Yes.  Monsters are monsters.  A Beholder can do its thing with its innate abilities and I don't mind at all.But the write-up for "Elf" in the MM gets tossed and replaced with the write-up for "Elf" in the PH, as that applies to all Elves.  Ditto for the other PC-playable species (which in my game remain mercifully few).If it works for the NPC it should work for the PC, and vice versa.  What's so bad about this concept?Hyperbole aside, characters are not omniscient but DMs are - or should be.There seems to be some snark here.  Letting it pass.Man, you've got the exaggeration meter dialled to eleven today. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Kind of, yes.  I'd say it comes across more as you're advocating for in-setting change by fiat; which may be on a whim or may have loads of careful planning behind it.  Either way, it's hell on the players.It crumbles, to some extent, if something new comes in without a good in-fiction explanation; because what's coming in "new" - let's say a new class - was in theory always there...and thus should always have been just as choose-able in the past as it is now.  That it wasn't chooseable due to not existing yet means that when players chose their characters' classes earlier they were denied an option today's players now have.  So, for a new class, a reasonable in-fiction explanation might be that members of this class are all new to this world, having just got here rescued from their own world that was in process of dying*.  That does, however, really constrain the possible backgrounds for any characters in that class, and ensures that every one of them is a stranger in a strange world.It's the same rationale that leads me to dislike the designated hitter in baseball.  Pitchers hit for themselves just fine for 75+ years, no reason they can't still do so; and the presence of the DH somewhat invalidates baseball's older records as it's not the same game now.  However, if the designated hitter had been a part of the game since day one I wouldn't have a problem with it.* - I've in fact used this in an old campaign: I'd banned Monks but some players wanted them back, so I redesigned them from the ground up and then a PC party did the off-world rescuing to get them available for play.No, they're not; but ideally I-as-DM am.  "Ideally" obviously has to give way to practicality at some point, but when in doubt I'll always try to err on the side of having too much info to hand rather than too little.So, to follow the theme of taking things to eleven, by this if I cast Fireball and you cast Fireball we should get totally different outcomes: I get a sheet of green flame 100 feet away and you get something resembling a flame-thrower shooting from your hands.  Then tomorrow when we both cast Fireball I cause the pond to freeze while you summon a BC Transit bus.I mean, I love wild magic as much as anyone, but if magic is never predictable the wildness would lose its appeal (and probably get pretty dangerous!) in a hurry.</blockquote>

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