Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8288867" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Excellent post! Of course, this being the internet, I am contractually obligated to nitpick one tiny thing out of all the other, great stuff you said.I don’t agree that most good DMs necessarily come up with systematized heuristics. Certainly many DMs do, and many of them are good. But many of them are bad, and many good DMs stick to ad hoc, case by case adjudication.Take your Silence on a Swarm of Bats example (and set aside the fact that the rules of 5e at least are actually quite clear on what happens in that scenario). Is the game really better served by ruling “no effect” simply because the DM uses that heuristic consistently, than it would be to rule based on their (possibly incomplete) understanding of bats? I don’t think so. Heuristics like this can be useful, but they can also be inflexible. I think it’s a good DM who recognizes when to employ heuristics and when to go with ad hoc rulings.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8288867, member: 6779196"] Excellent post! Of course, this being the internet, I am contractually obligated to nitpick one tiny thing out of all the other, great stuff you said. I don’t agree that most good DMs necessarily come up with systematized heuristics. Certainly many DMs do, and many of them are good. But many of them are bad, and many good DMs stick to [I]ad hoc[/I], case by case adjudication. Take your Silence on a Swarm of Bats example (and set aside the fact that the rules of 5e at least are actually quite clear on what happens in that scenario). Is the game really better served by ruling “no effect” simply because the DM uses that heuristic consistently, than it would be to rule based on their (possibly incomplete) understanding of bats? I don’t think so. Heuristics like this [I]can[/I] be useful, but they can also be inflexible. I think it’s a good DM who recognizes when to employ heuristics and when to go with [I]ad hoc[/I] rulings. [/QUOTE]

Verification