Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3385472" data-attributes="member: 2067">Really? It isn't? Then what is game design, if not making a reasonable, common sense judgment about the effect of a character's actions (and then expressing that judgment as a game design element)? Whenever the DM has to make up a rule to cover a situation, he's doing on-the-fly game design, and the more rules base you have, the more likely you are to not wildly diverge from it when you catch one of the outlying scenarios. :shrug: It's the reason *I'm* a good DM. If the complexity of the advancement rules weren't in there, taking into account class abilities, hp, ac, attack bonuses, magic equipment, etc., I would have a tendency to chuck monsters at the party that are too difficult just because they are cool and dangerous (because I'm a sucker for an epic monster battle). With the amount of different campaign settings I run, having the solid rule base allows me to diverge from it and know my repercussions. I know that if I change the demographic assumptions and make it so that there's only one metropolis on the moon in my setting, and no other towns bigger than a small city, I'll need to provide for high-level adventurer's needs myself, rather than allowing the campaign rules to accommodate them. My desire to run short, fast-advancing campaigns over long, steady ones would be thwarted, as well. The current complex rules give me what treasure the character will need by the next level to be considered truly at the next level's power. Simpler rules of "give them whatever you feel works" would result in PC's that are too weak for their level, because my gut says giving someone an entire treasure award for their level after a single adventure is "too much" (when it isn't).I'd be an entirely worse DM with less structured rules (and have been...my 2e DMing days were pretty abysmal, even though 2e was hardly "rules light").</blockquote>

Verification