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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6976922" data-attributes="member: 6775031">In my experience on both sides of the table, players become frustrated if they can't predict how the rules are going to be applied. Even if they respect the DM's right to adjudicate such situations, it affects their ability to engage with the game and the world, and a DM who needs to make such rulings frequently will adversely impact the enjoyment of the game for everyone at the table.Both 3E and 4E are presented in such a way as to minimize the need for DM adjudication, as a means of empowering the players by letting them know (with reasonable certainty) how events are likely to play out. That's why fighters have codified powers in 4E - so the players can easily understand the mechanics associated with the narrative and don't have to guess about what unknown logic the DM is operating from. Even though the book explicitly acknowledges that everything is subject to DM adjudication, and may not always work as advertised, it still sets up the expectation that it will generally work unless the DM takes positive action to override it.It always takes more effort to do something than to do nothing. It requires a greater amount of conviction to oppose the establishment than to go with the flow. You don't need a reason to follow the rules, but you need a reason to change the rules, and that reason needs to be strong enough to persuade you to put in the effort required to do so.If they really expected the DM to invest a lot of effort into adjudicating every power at the table, to carefully weigh whether or not it really makes sense in any given situation, then they wouldn't have bothered codifying all of the powers in the first place. Instead, they created a bunch of unique powers, and stated that it's perfectly fine for you to change the narrative associated with them as long as you didn't change their mechanical functionality too much. (Presumably, the altered narrative would then be used as a basis for the DM's adjudication on whether or not it still worked as written in any given situation.)</blockquote>

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