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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ruleslawyer" data-source="post: 4018818" data-attributes="member: 1757">Exactly.I think there are two discussions going on here, actually. One is about the hard-core simulationist view that Professor Phobos mentioned. In that context, there are apparently a bunch of people who are concerned that if something isn't expressly spelled out in the rules, then it effectively doesn't exist for purposes of the game. For those people, making stuff up (like, say, assigning that pit fiend ranks in Profession [juggler] or, going further, giving the hobgoblin priest a few 1/encounter spells to reflect his mystical nature) is considered "house ruling"; I'd imagine that to be the source of the majority of "Just house rule it" comments you're encountering on these boards.The second is about actually changing the 4e RAW to make them work for you, and once more, I think others have already teased out what I'm getting from reading these boards: Namely, that the suggestions of "well, just house rule it to [x]" are largely being made in response to DMs who are unhappy with the changes *because they prefer certain specific things about 3e.* Personally, I think that's the best possible response to someone who doesn't like x or y particular thing about the edition change simply because they're wedded to an artifact of the existing edition. The other responses are to sympathize and agree (which is only possible if... well, you actually sympathize and agree) or to dismiss them as being needlessly "traditionalist" (which seems to get the goat of a lot of players of former editions around here).Right. But, if I could introduce some of the house rules from our campaign into Iron Heroes, repackage it, and sell it as Iron Heroes 2, I would... and that's part of the essence of being a developer, especially one working on a new edition of an existing game. You tinker with rules, jettison some subsystems, develop new ones, and write some flavor text... all with an eye to improving playability, enjoyability, and consistency. One's own house rules don't have to meet these criteria because all they really have to do is be acceptable to one's gaming group. In many cases, at least from what I've seen on these boards, house rules are intended to maintain a particular playing style... often one at odds with the developers' goals. So it's quite likely that if someone is beating the drum about an issue with the rules that's simply philosophically at odds with what the developers are doing ("I want slower level advancement!" "I want detailed per-day resource management!" "I want 1st-level characters to dread facing individual goblin footsoldiers!") that other folk will suggest a house rule as the solution.</blockquote>

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