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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6175064" data-attributes="member: 17106">That's true. It's very explicit. But that really invites change. For example, it does make clear that there are no called shots, which IME has made everyone and their mother try their own variation of how to do called shots and injuries. It tells you exactly how far a 15 Jump check is (that's basically a physical law), but allows the DM to apply modifiers to a Jump check for favorable (or unfavorable) circumstances.To me, it's very important to keep this philosophy regardless of edition. The books are a guideline to help the DM make decisions, and a common language and set of expectation, but each individual situation is always adjudicated by the person in charge, not the rules.Doing so does require trust, and clearly, this is an issue for some people.On one hand, I can see where that's coming from. On the other hand, it is clearly a problematic idea. For one thing, all the classes shouldn't be equal. If we're out doing adventuring stuff and one guy plays a minstrel who channels the magic of music (bard) and one guy plays a mighty warlord who fought his way to leadership of the tribe (barbarian), I do not expect them to contribute equally. I'd be pretty insulted as the barbarian player if they did.For another thing, there are different types of games. If we're playing urban intrigue, the balance between druid, rogue, and fighter favors the rogue, makes the fighter sit on his hands a lot, and marginalizes many of the druid's abilities. If we're fighting battles in the wilderness, the druid becomes dominant, the fighter useful, and the rogue a supporting player. Context matters.The best interpretation is that any character should be good at the things he's supposed to be able to do. Trying to go beyond that has been...problematic.I found that the 3e rules (and later the improved PF rules) for these sorts of things encouraged people to try them, mostly against spellcasters. With the AoO not usually an issue and defenses weak, grappling a spellcaster is often feasible even for marginal combatants, and it's quite powerful. OTOH, most people respect martial opponents not to try that stuff, and they stick with things that are on their character sheet. To me, this is a good dynamic; tactically engaging and it feels natural.It is ambiguous.It's pretty clear that when you're using this clause, you need to make the check to know the monster's name or anything at all about it. However, "in many cases" does allow the DM some wiggle room. It's not really clear what those cases are. At best, everyone's going to interpret this a littler bit differently.Personally, I banned 4e.All true. That's where the Charop boards come in handy. In analyzing the balance of things that have some reason to be balanced.On the other hand, trying to analyze the balance of things that are inherently different (like bards and barbarians, or knowledge skills and diplomacy, or magic missile and charm person) is a fruitless endeavor. And when people go overboard on trying to do that, bad things can happen.True, but there's always the "DM's best friend" clause for adding a modifier to anything.I kind of approached that way at first. But then what I discovered is this. There are tons of specific little rules. Sometimes, people forget them. Occasionally, this causes problems, but usually it does not. The game experience is pretty robust.On the other hand, following the rules also occasionally causes problems, but also usually does not. It became clear to me that having a fun game that produced enough story that I could write down was a lot more important than trying to follow the rules. I'm more concerned with the outcome than how you get there.True, but that doesn't really discourage anyone from changing stuff, IME. The process is more along the lines of: "Let's try this vitality/wound system. Wait, how do cure spells work? Let's try this. Nope. Too powerful. Let's try that. Well, if Heal heals wound damage, shouldn't Harm cause the same amount of wound damage? Okay. Wait, that's crazy powerful. Let's say save negates on the wound. What about disintegrate?" Etc., etc. And then you try combining all of that with spell points.Bolded line is key here. You assumed the rules existed for a reason. I assume that reason was because some guy thought it was a good idea. Which is not nothing, but is not exactly gospel in my eyes either.I assume that whatever I come up with, even if I have no experience gaming and am doing so off the cuff with no rationale or study behind it, is better than what some game designer came up with. I'm probably brighter than they are to begin with, and my specific knowledge of my players and my situation and my desired tone is an almost infinite advantage over their perspective. The point of buying a book of rules is mainly to save the time it would take me to write my own.One of my early DMs for 3e essentially banned the rest of us from reading the DMG, because he didn't want us to know how things worked. So I learned the game initially without seeing those guidelines. Then, when we did all buy DMGs (in defiance, I might add), we saw all those guidelines for how a game "should" work. CRs, magic items by level, etc. etc., and immediately decided that they were BS and we could do better. The well-oiled machine was always in our heads, not the book, because we already knew what we wanted before reading that part.I've had a lot of confusing situations lately. For example, one character teleported above a flying enemy and wanted a full attack during his fall. I said no. Is there a rule to back that up? I doubt it. Don't much care, the right answer was clear enough on principle.I find that I do a lot of semi-random DC setting. The books often provide examples, but I tend to think that those circumstance modifiers really matter. And for some things (Diplomacy, for example), I do just ignore the rules and go with my gut. Are there rules lawyers out there? Sure. But that's the beauty of playing with one group. Over time, they realized that they had more fun by letting me make the number up rather than debating it.Maybe for organized lay. What I saw with 3e was that instead of everyone doing their own thing, everyone was doing their own thing but sharing it on the internet. Because that was still when the internet was just becoming universal. Before it was just about what one DM thought, but now people like me can go online and talk game theory. Which, if anything, emboldens us to make changes. I think that modern (i.e. post-2000) houserules have a lot more substance behind them, and are shared commonly between groups more often. Given what I see and what I read, I seriously doubt that massive houseruling has become less common.To me, D&D is a form of self-expression, and that expression happens through the DM and players creating as much of the experience as possible. I look at a DM's setting as an extension of his personality. If he uses a published setting, what does that mean? That he has no personality? Similarly, I look at his houserules as his directorial vision. If he doesn't have some clear and meaningful ones, what is his vision? To me, a DM without houserules would be like a director handing a bunch of actors a script and saying "go do that" without any further instruction.Obviously, I wouldn't do organized play. And even if I was forced to start a new group whole cloth, I would still approach a game the same way. Clearly, our perspectives are worlds apart; you can do the organized or RAW games because your entirely philosophy is geared towards it, where mine makes those things anathema. None of this is intended as criticism, merely as an illustration of how differently two people can approach the same game.</blockquote>

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