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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ruleslawyer" data-source="post: 1948498" data-attributes="member: 1757">I have to express amazement at this attitude. I've been DM-ing for 17 years now, and while I've tried to stick closely to the RAW, I also have thought it simple prudence and good gaming to make appropriate house rules or rules corrections from time to time. That includes spells. Is it really a point of pride to abstain from changing or banning problematic or unworkable spells? I can't imagine why for three reasons:1) The designers can't be exactly on point all the time. There's a reason why D&D spells have been changed through editions or in errata. Some of them just don't work. I think of 1e tempus fugit, 2e stoneskin, and 3.0 harm, time stop, polymorph, miasma, and several others.  Nor does everything get caught with each edition change. I'm still unhappy with disjunction, gate, and a few others.2) Gaming style. Some DMs don't like particular magical capabilities being easily available. I myself am less than fond of easy teleportation, for instance. Some spells may even be completely inappropriate for a particular gaming style (raising and resurrection magic in some games, for instance).3) Why bother with a contrived solution to a problematic spell that stretches suspension of disbelief when you can just get rid of, or substantially changing, the spell? I particularly abhor the mutually-assured-destruction approach to spells like disjunction, for instance, or the tactic that callls for balancing gate's ruinous might with role-playing restrictions ("Well, every creature you gate will find a way to return to you with its allies and take revenge!") I'm not innocent of this myself; in 2e, when stoneskin was such a problem, I made an entire adventure out of a diamond-dust shortage! Anyway, I don't tend to ban spells, per se, but I do change them around a bit. I tend to use the spell lists from Arcana Unearthed and add on my favorite "iconic" D&D spells; in particular, I think that call outsider and portal to another plane are a far superior alternative to gate.</blockquote>

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