NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 3628797" data-attributes="member: 2020">Probably.    Decide on a rulesset that you and your players are comfortable with.  Then stick with it.  Remember that you and your gaming group are *friends.*  You are there to have *fun.*  Take these into account as your primary two considerations when deciding on the rulesset, and thereafter.  If you must change the rulesset, do it for the advantage of your players.  Make your players happy.  That is what you are there for.    Ok, think of Knightmare Chess.  It's like chess, except you have cards, and you don't know what the cards are, but each and every card changes the rules in some way.  Adapt that to D&D.  You don't know all the rules.  You never will know all the rules (unless you buy all the books, memorize every page, and keep up with all the errata ... a feat that would make a Star Fleet Battles or I.C.E. veteran green with envy.)  Your players will never know all the rules.  And heck, the rules are subject to interpretation.  Always were, always will be.  So ... play Newbie.  Don't stop play to research rules.  Just decide on the fly.  (Don't know what that feat does?  Take your player's word on what it does!  Even if that means the moon is made of green cheese.  I'm serious!!)  Treat all these books like cards in the Knightmare Chess game.  You don't know what they'll say or throw at you (they may just throw a Frenzied Berserker or Feat Master at you!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  ) but you'll find out, right?  Hehe, yes you will.  And have fun doing it ... after all, it's your sacred duty as DM to create all those monsters and settings so the players can trash, kill, crush, tear, devour, destroy, annihilate, exterminate, obliterate, and otherwise mess everything up.  Only artifacts and relics are immune ... until a Mordenkainen's Disjunction comes along and eliminates them too.  And remember that what comes around, goes around.  If your players trash your monsters with some hideous, fiendish new tactic, use it back!  Don't like that Irresistible Spell Feat (+4 spell levels, removes all saves) ... throw it on the PCs.  Don't let YOUR monsters be push-overs.  Revenge is sweet!  Make em cringe, make em cower, make em know your monsters are out for some PC butt!  (It's an illusion, of course - you have no intention of killing the party ... but don't let THEM know that!)  Never let the rules slow the game down.  If someone is making a mistake ('my sword is +2, and +3 against djinn ... I get a +5 then, right?  Uh ... wait, that's a natural 19-20 for crits, which means it's +19 or +20?  So my sword is +39?  Ok, I'll go with that ...') then let it pass until there is a moment to correct it ('that's a +2 sword, meaning it's +2 BAB.  It's +3 BAB against djinn.')  Never let the rules slow you down.  If you don't know, wing it.  If they get upset, wait until they have to DM and find out what kind of difficult job it is!  If you limit the group to core rules, against NPCs and monsters with access to extra rules, then they should be stronger in *some* way to compensate (that might mean higher level.)  Why not just let the core group have access to all the neat rules the NPCs and monsters have access to?  Or, limit the NPCs and monsters to the core rules?  Unknown.  I doubt anyone knows the answer to that question (since it would require years of playtesting to find out, and many of these rules are quite new.)  Must it be balanced, though?  If you use it all, it balances out by default (a balance of inbalances, my favorite kind of balance.)  If you would prefer, use only a *certain set* of rules, across the board.  That would be balanced.  Or, balance out stronger PCs against monsters with new and wild rulessets (or vice versa.)  Or, anything that is fun.  Whatever is fun, should be the first choice.  I don't know.  It is possible your players aren't trying their best.  It is possible your players aren't able to adapt to the new rules as well as you.  It is possible your players are expecting one kind of module (say, thinking module) where you are throwing another kind at them (say, hack and slay.)  It is possible your players aren't cooperating, or perhaps they don't even understand how to cooperate properly ... because they are unfamiliar with the full abilities of their characters.    Or it is possible your players are underpowered, underleveled, or lack the rules your monsters use, and thus they need strengthening or you need to weaken your monsters.  Just musing.  Edena_of_Neith</blockquote>

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