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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6865624" data-attributes="member: 996">'Gaming the DM' is perhaps the most potent form of powergaming there is.  Game with the same people for decades and the pendulum could swing back and forth between players having the DM's number (and 'acting with confidence' because they know exactly which plot hooks to go for, which to be careful around, and which to avoid, how to declare their actions to assure success, etc etc, etc), the the DM getting wise and throwing them curves for a while...And, yes, a game - like D&D - that absolutely requires a DM - can safely assume/require a good enough one, if only in the sense that bad play experiences are the DM's fault.He came right out and owned the 'powergamer' label.  And, yes, 3e is beyond ideal for the dedicated optimizer/powergamer.  It is choice-rich in the extreme, enthusiastically paying the price in complexity to provide all those choices, and provides lavish 'rewards for system mastery.'A virtue of necessity, perhaps?Always a good idea to some degree in a status-quo 'sandbox' style. I'm more familiar with 1e advice than 2e, not recalling 2e being all that different.  The idea, though, that the DM should set himself above the players both in imaginary authority over the world and, particularly, in rules-knowledge and 'player skill,' seems to be what he was getting at, and 5e strikes me as compatible with that philosophy, though with overruling the rules taking the pace of maintaining a mastery 'lead.'If?  In that case, the DM overrules the mechanics to get the desired results.Yes, more so than you can probably easily imagine, and Yes, of course.  And gotchyas, musn't sell gotchyas short for keeping AD&D challenging.Though a player did take Sage of Ages in one Epic mini-campaign I ran, I can't say I noticed the issue.  Then again, failing knowledge skill has never struck me as terribly helpful/important, I quite like that in 5e I can just forgo any such pointless randomness and just deliver the desired exposition via the character with the best skill as a matter of course.Only if you're going to run with the system open and above board.  If you can overrule it at whim, you can deal with such 'broken' bits case-by-case, as best fits your campaign at the moment.  So if the fighter with Sharpshooter is wildy under-peforming at some range of levels, you can back off on countering the effectiveness of his feat and let him have a few moments in the sun, for instance.You can always do stuff to build them up.  The weapon renouncing monk's party faces the occasional rust monster.  The ancestral shortsword is possessed by an ancestral spirit and gains slowly-increasing magical properties.5e has opportunities for the DM to make ruling notwithstanding the rules built-in right down to its most basic resolution system.</blockquote>

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