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<blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8573680" data-attributes="member: 93670">The gm was not forbidden from making use of the GM's friend* &amp; there were even examples in the dmg of it being used for penalties that make things more difficult based on the fiction of the gameplay described.&nbsp; Outside of specific abilities of characters &amp; magic (items/spells) pretty much anything a player might want to do with it depended entirely on the GM deciding a bonus type and the GM deciding if that action would give anything at all, that's hardly &quot;entirely player facing&quot;.&nbsp; It absolutely stacked if the bonus types were different, if you had two of the same bonus type &amp; they were not circumstance bonuses they tended to not stack.&nbsp; That sort of&nbsp; simplification to empty the GM's toolbox of even optional tools in favor of PCs that just need their tour guide to provide life support for The Main Character is a symptom of the same shift thatthe GM not being able to make much use of magic items to affect balance &amp; dangle (dis)incentives embodies.&quot;encounter math&quot; through CRs has been a thing for a few editions with some of those editions still having room for substantial GM influence through magic items &amp; gear, 5e may have tweaked it, but it's certainly not a new tool added to a GM's toolbox.* edit: Yes it didn't exist prior to 3.x, but I never claimed otherwise</blockquote>

[QUOTE="tetrasodium, post: 8573680, member: 93670"] The gm was not forbidden from making use of the GM's friend* & there were even examples in the dmg of it being used for penalties that make things more difficult based on the fiction of the gameplay described. Outside of specific abilities of characters & magic (items/spells) pretty much anything a player might want to do with it depended entirely on the GM deciding a bonus type and the GM deciding if that action would give anything at all, that's hardly "entirely player facing". It absolutely stacked if the bonus types were different, if you had two of the same bonus type & they were not circumstance bonuses they tended to not stack. That sort of simplification to empty the GM's toolbox of even optional tools in favor of PCs that just need their tour guide to provide life support for [I]The[/I] Main Character is a symptom of the same shift thatthe GM not being able to make much use of magic items to affect balance & dangle (dis)incentives embodies. "encounter math" through CRs has been a thing for a few editions with some of those editions still having room for substantial GM influence through magic items & gear, 5e may have tweaked it, but it's certainly not a[I] new[/I] tool added to a GM's toolbox. * edit: Yes it didn't exist prior to 3.x, but I never claimed otherwise [/QUOTE]

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