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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5623478" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yes.  However, all DM fiat is effectively house rules whether codified or not.  Mine has the advantage of being codified, which means my rules have the advantage of being knowable, reviewable, somewhat more unbiased in application, and generally less forcing than uncodified rules.  Rather than being, "The DM gets his way.", they are "The DM gets to decide the percentage chance that he gets his way."And they are therefore hypocrites?  Quibble over the term how you like, I think I understood your position well.   When I said you were trying to point out hypocricy, it was short hand for what you just stated.Well, I don't want the heroes to die because they slipped off the ladder either.  Frankly, I don't want the heroes to die whether its because of ladder slippage or dragon pwnage.  However, if I simply made the rule be, "You can't die", this would consequences that I wanted even less.Well, in practice, as does mine.   The chance that a PC would die from slipping off a ladder is tiny, so tiny that PC's could probably slip off ladders hundreds of times without killing themselves.  In fact, it might be some time before any of them did it and injured themselves.   But the chance of death is non-zero so long as the act of slipping off a ladder does at least 1 point of damage since the PC that so slips could already be injured.   Likewise, there is a chance that the PC's will die from a rat bite or pnuemonia or drowning in shallow water or a lucky shot from a kobold archer.   The chances of that happening are in fact quite low, because the PC's are very resource laded and the players very resourceful.   But it's not a non-zero chance. If I have a rule that says, "The PC cannot die except in a heroic manner", I might well be better off in a system that doesn't track hit points.As a player rather than a DM, I'm fine with off the cuff rulings.  No rule set is or can be complete.  However, I expect that when I'm in a similar situation the previous ruling will now constitute a body of what you might call 'common law' which I can weigh my decision on the basis of.   If the situation for example previously required me to roll a 15 or better on the d20, then I'll expect that of similar situations (as well as ideally easier rolls for less challenging situations and harder rolls for more challenging ones).   If something is possible, it stays possible unless acted on by an in game force.   If something is not possible, it stays impossible unless acted on by an in game force.Likewise, as a DM, whenever possible I prefer to have rules, because the act of applying an existing rule is less stressful (and speedier) than deciding how I should handle a proposition fairly in an off the cuff manner.Now, other people may have differing opinions.  They may expect far less consistancy and fairness from their DM if they are recieving some other quality that they value higher, or they may feel that making up rules is far harder than making up rulings.  Be as that may, I think that on the whole the sort of 'lazy by fiat' scene framing and scene resolution suggested by some while not 100% wrong is not 100% right either, and that there are better ways to do things.   It doesn't make you a bad DM to apply fiat scene resolution, but its something you ought to really think hard about before you do it, including thinking hard about whether you can get to what you want without breaking the rules and the player's expectations of fairness.</blockquote>

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