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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ranes" data-source="post: 6365410" data-attributes="member: 4826">Several poster have admitted that they would forget some or all of the SLAs and other features of creatures when running them. Does that make them bad DMs? I don't believe so but the answer to your question remains an affirmative. Is a DM who only looks at what's written in a stat block and bases the actions of a creature on that a poor DM? That was your assertion and I think it's tosh. Sorry. There are more things to good DMing than taking the effort to come up with more than what appears in a stat block. DMs who don't have time to do otherwise, just for example, can still be excellent DMs.Indeed. If I tell you I am a scuba diver, you can run with that and imagine all sorts of things about me. That's fine. If I tell you I'm a scuba diver who also speaks Navajo, that adds another dimension. You might have imagined I did. But when I tell you specifically, you have more to work with. You can still add or subtract but it's hard to suggest that my ability to speak Navajo makes me less interesting.Thanks for the tip.Agreed. But how would you know how I'd act, specifically how I'd respond to a native Navajo speaker if you knew only that I was a scuba diver? Yes, I know you could have just imagined that I might be a Navajo speaker, and that's great (whether I am or not, and sadly of course I'm not). But...Thinking outside the box means having an idea. And having ideas is both good and not always zero extra work. Sometimes, it's nice to already have some ideas to work with from the start, so that the ideas you then come up with don't have to emerge from a vacuum.</blockquote>

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