The Spirit vs the Letter

[Aaron L]

I guess I have to go with balanced, because I havent really had a situation where the letter didnt match the spirit of the rules.

I think. Im not too sure on what were talking about, honestly.

Situations of absurd abuse (bag of blind obolds great cleave, etc) have never occurred for me.

 

[Odhanan]

For me the spirit of the rules is what's important. Not the picky details themselves. But I try to strike a balance between the two, so that the whole set keeps some sort of consistency me and the players can rely to and use to base our judgments on. Or that would be free-style RP, not an RPG. I chose the "balance" option in the poll.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I tend to use law over letter. 3.5 is so mechanics driven that if you tend to rule on the spirit side of things often you are taking away from a feat or skill that is built in.

I agree about 3.x being mechanics-driven, but I'm firmly in the spirit camp, these days, which is one reason I've been looking into systems that give the GM more leeway (i.e. more of a judge and less of a rule-looker-upper).

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Spirit is more important but that doesn't mean you go around ignoring the rules either.

Isn't the spirit of the rule just what the rule was meant to be but failed to do?

 

[Aus_Snow]

I've been looking into systems that give the GM more leeway (i.e. more of a judge and less of a rule-looker-upper).

. . . such as? I know Monte Cook stated explicitly in AU/AE that that was the case therein. What other d20/OGL games are noticably weighted this way?

edit --- oops, I didn't realise you might've meant non-d20 too.

 

[was]

I use a 65% spirit, 35% raw approach

 

[ThirdWizard]

Most of the time the letter, because it is generally easy to fit a flavor onto the letter of the rules. Often I find that the "spirit" is in the eyes of the beholder, and usually straight up RAW works. In the cases where I dislike the RAW, I House Rule it instead of just ignore it.

I'm just as likely (or more likely) to disregard a spirit of the rules I don't like as RAW I don't like.

 

[shilsen]

What works for my game > Spirit > Letter

 

[Thanee]

3.5 is so mechanics driven that if you tend to rule on the spirit side of things often you are taking away from a feat or skill that is built in.

How is that?

The spirit of a rule is pretty much what the rule is intended to do. That cannot take away anything, other than something that shouldn't rightfully be there in the first place.

Bye
Thanee

 

[ThirdWizard]

The spirit of a rule is pretty much what the rule is intended to do. That cannot take away anything, other than something that shouldn't rightfully be there in the first place.

Personally, speaking from my own experience, I find that one person's spirit has nothing to do with the actual design's spirit but either a misunderstanding of the rules or a bias against the rules more often than not. The only time I think spirit should really come into play is when a rule is very badly worded (ie ray of enfeeblment) and when rules start to collide in obviously unintended ways (rogue wearing a ring of evasion). Otherwise, House Rule to your heart's content, but that doesn't mean they made a mistake.

Too often the spirit of the rules just means the way the person wants it to be. I don't think there are enough flubbs in the RAW for it to really come up that much. But, pershaps some examples would persuade me. I already listed two myself.