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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 2893418" data-attributes="member: 158">This idea started life as Odhanan's statement in a thread in the General forum, and germinated in my head into what might be a useful topic to many DMs. However, it seemed more "rulish", so I put it here.His point (and Vrecknidj's, one post later) was that some DMs get bogged down in the small stuff when running the game, not taking the overriding principles into account that the designers have striven to keep enforced amid the myriad rules supplements. I thought that stating out some of these in a single thread might be helpful for discussion, and having some of the "rules scholars" of the forums might help me hash out some of the trickier points.WHAT I'M NOT LOOKING FOR: Rules minutiae; what I'd trying to derive are some of the guiding principles that guided rules creation. I'm shooting for a bit of a moving target, and as a result there won't be many "wrong answers." Examples: --Things that boost save DCs as a whole should be relatively rare.Examples: altering archmage & red wizard prestige classes; altering spell focus and GSF; the feats for improving Pact Magic in Tome of Magic. --Things that give multiple actions should be curtailed and very limited.Examples: altering of Haste; Action Surge in Eberron requiring two action points; quicken requiring 4 levels higher.--Any class having more overall power than a D&D Cleric should be curtailed.Examples: statements from Mike Mearls on ENWorld about new class design goals at WotC.--When setting a skill DC, should rarely be higher DC than party level +15.Reason? This gives average group of four PCs with varied skills about a 50/50 pass/fail chance.-- BAB's are either 1 x lvl for classes that are primarily front-line warriors; .75 x lvl for everyone else; or .5 for types who solely cast and are poor in combat.Examples: The core classes, and all base classes released since 2003.I'm looking for similar meta-rules, so that a DM can run a little more loosely without looking up all rules, but also will not severely curtail his game. Letting crits stack, or not conducting a grapple completely accurately, or not getting the order of a readied action completely correct is not my concern here; Mainly, I'm looking for overarcing principles, the broader the better, along with examples to show where you can look in the rules to get the idea that this is a principle the designers keep sticking to.Feel free to offer counter-examples to someone's idea, but outright arguing won't be helpful in distilling the principles I'm looking to collect.Any help is appreciated.</blockquote>

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