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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5525260" data-attributes="member: 996">While free to, they should be under no compulsion to do so.  Just as players cannot use a change they make in the flavor text of their power to alter the mechanics of that power, the DM should not use the flavor text of a power to alter it's mechanics, either.Doing so is unfair and unneccesary, and only of value if the DM wishes to persecute a given player, power, class and/or source.Ah.  Yes, I think there's a lot of experienced DMs here.  While I don't run long campaigns anymore I DM'd (or 'GM'd other games) quite alot.  You do get very accustomed to iterpreting rules and what the player is trying to do with them.  I think part of what's going on with this issue is that DMs are used to doing that, but that 4e doesn't /need/ it the way D&D used to.  Like jumping from a car with not just a manual transmission, but a choke and maybe a hand-crank, to a modern car with auto-everything, you find yourself worrying about things you don't really need to take care of anymore.In prior eds (and, for instance, in 4e rituals) flavor text or 'fluff' were intertwined with rules, and often inextricable from them.  As a DM, you had to draw a line on a case-by-case basis between what a spell (or other ability, but most often a spell or magic item) implied it might be able to do, and what was reasonable within your campaign, taking into account both game-balance and verisimilitude (in whatever proportion you prefered).In 4e, specifically with powers, the mechanics were fairly well balanced and clearly stated, and the flavor text was separate and explicitly doesn't determine the details of how the power works.  (That's how I got sucked back into the, a couple of you were going on about how weird it was that people got this impression that fluff and rule were separate - I just had to chime in and point out that PH1, p55, spells just that out, for Powers.)You don't /need/ to have an ongoing give and take with each player, making judgement calls on what his character should or shouldn't be allowed to 'get away with,' on a round-by-round basis.  You /can/ - you can still put your automatic transmission in low gear or turn off your cruise control when you really want to - but you don't need to.OTOH, when dealing with rituals, the old mind-set is going to come in a lot more handy, since they're written more like old-school spells.  A bit vague without such tightly-defined mechanics and without a clear line between them and fluff.  Similarly, some powers may have a Special or Requirments line that gets into something a little less pat than the usual language of powers, and, again, our experience making interpretations and calls on the fly will be of help to us.But, for something straightforward like a power that pulls enemies towards you before you make the associated attack rolls, or knocks opponents 'prone,' there's no issue and no need.  Trying to make an issue of it is like pumping your anti-lock breaks.</blockquote>

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