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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Storm Raven" data-source="post: 2235392" data-attributes="member: 307">I mean, if you are just going to change the rules on a whim, why are you even bothering to play a game with rules? The rules are there to give predictability - so that the players and the DM can evaluate their options and decide which ones they want to choose, and understand the consequences of those decisions. Once you start nullifying the rules left and right by fiat, then you are essentially playing unfairly with the rules. Actions have entirely unpredictable consequences, because the DM is changing things as you go. If you choose to use a particular spell because of the effects it is supposed to have, and the DM (without telling you about the change) fundamentally alters the spell, then your ability to make reasonable choices has been eliminated, and you are better off getting this out in the open and simply playing "let's pretend" where everything is just made up on the spot.In this case, your players may start to wonder why they bothered to put ranks in skills like Knowledge: Arcana and Spellcraft if they don't give them any kind of insight concerning how magic works. Besides, in a D&D world, magic isn't that mysterious: it's a tool that is fairly well known given the volume of magic that gets slung about on a regular basis. Those who grow up in such a world should have as firm a basis on how magic works as the typical person today has concerning how to operate a computer. If you want mysterious magic, play another system.In which case he should have told the players up front about the rule change, and not sprung it on them mid-stream.In which case he should have made the NPC better able to survive in the first place, or had a contingency plan in place in the event the PCs killed him. If you don't want someone to encounter the possibility of death, don't put them in combat.In which case, once again, he should have told the players about the change up front.Like I said, If you change something, you should let the players know ahead of time. The characters generally aren't babes in the wilderness. They should have some reasonable idea of how effective their abilities are, and the player's only window onto how those abilities operate is the game rules. If you change the game rules mid-stream, then you are assuming a world in which people don't have any reasonable idea of what sorts of things they are capable of doing. I suppose you could play the game assuming the characters are mindless automatons with no self-evaluative capability, but that's an odd way of going about things.Actually, if you read what happened, he didn't. He ignored the rule, for no given reason other than he appears not to have wanted to be shown to be incorrect regarding the text of the spell.Actually, ignoring a minor rule is exactly what makes a DM a pig-headed jerk. If you alter things on the fly on a regular basis, the game degenrates in what Gygax was fond of calling a lottery. You don't have a game any more, you just have cowboys and indians, and people arguing over who shot who first. Altering the rules without notice is a breach of the play-fair implied contract between players and DMs.</blockquote>

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