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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 7661120" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!Sorry to be a nit-pick here, but all of the rules are up for the DM to decide. That's the DM's job. Not the rulebooks. If the rules say that Class X gets +1 to hit Orcs, it's still up to the DM to decide if that applies... even if the PC's are all fighting Orcs. Of course, the vast majority of the time the DM goes with what the rulebook says (otherwise nobody knows what game they are playing), but the end result is the same; every rule is up to the DM. The RAW are all, ultimately, RAI weather the players like or or not.First, if a game crashes to a halt for more than a minute for any rules-based reason, it's the DM's job (not the rulebooks) to come up with a ruling and keep the game flowing. No rule system can predict what will happen during every game session. Rulebooks are finite; if there are no rules for building a large Galley, the game will "come to a halt" and the DM will have to make some sort of decision on the fly. Now, building a Galley is a lot less likely an occurrence than using Stealth, I'll give you that. However, the principle is the same; as soon as it happens once, the game pauses, the DM thinks about it all, the players give input to how they want it to work, and a ruling is made. In both cases, it's ultimately up to the DM.I think this first point is the one where you and I disagree. I see "we, the designers, know there's too much variation, so we're leaving it mostly up to the DM" as a good design decision. If they had a page and a half of modifiers, of yes/no situations where stealth was used and what the base DC's were, etc.... then my game (and I'd bet that most others) would be halting FAR more often then once, that's for dang sure! I'd hear "But the rules say...", and "But in the book...", every time I made a ruling that modified or otherwise went against what was written in the game. As a DM, having to justify every little change or ruling I make at the table makes the game no fun to run for anyone. It becomes a game of "lets all pretend we are in a fantasy world, and then argue about it!". <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Heavens help us if someone "built" their character around the expectation of some rule/feat/class combo and then when he tries to use it I say "Uh, no. That's definitely not gonna fly in my campaign, sorry.". The length of the halt would be quite long, and likely result in harsh feelings, and an uncomfortable tension for the rest of the game (or even whole campaign). It's better, IMHO, for a player to be building his character, encounter a rule that may or may not work the way he's hoping, come to me, the DM, and ask, and then find out how I'm going to deal with said combo. Everyone is informed, nobody is surprised by something, and the game never gets halted because of it.Second, in your last paragraph, you said you are perfectly happy informing your players what adjustments to rules are. I'm not seeing a real difference between "Here is the RAW, and here is my ruling" and "There is no real RAW, and here is my ruling". The only difference I can see is that in the first place you are dileberately going against what is written, so you kinda have to inform the players or they may be upset (and rightly so) when you "spring" some different rule than they were expecting... but in the second place you are not going against any defined rule, so when your players find out how you are going to interpret Stealth, they will be neutral on the whole matter at worse, and quite excited about it at best (depending on what they think of it).Obviously our experiences differ, but in my 34+ years of DM'ing experience I've come to find that it's FAR easier to give stuff to the players than it is to take stuff from them. "Here are the rules I'm not using and here are the rules I'm changing" leads more towards a negative vibe than "Here are some new options and different rules for some things not covered" leads more towards a positive vibe. Players, like the DM, are all playing D&D because they like to use their imaginations as a group, sit around as a group, and laugh and have fun as a group. When the RAW become "part of the group" and have as much say as anyone at the table...well, again IME, it's never a good thing. Best to leave RAW as they were meant to be...guidelines for the DM and players, and a last-ditch chance for a group of adults playing Let's Pretend around a table on a Sunday evening. <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=":)" />^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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