When in doubt, follow the rules

[Quasqueton]

I agree too, the mechanics are too complex to monkey with.

I don't see it that way. I see the written mechanics to be pretty well thought out and organized and balanced, and house ruling on the fly is often, well, not. Something may seem "wrong" or "bad" in the heat of a raging game, and you can't think of a good reason *not* to house rule against the written rules, but I've usually found the reason not to override the written rule when given more time or information on the rule.

Quasqueton

 

[The_Universe]

I don't think that the mechanics are too complex to change, I just think that changing a rule "on the fly" is generally not the best way to do it. You can make some interesting changes to the core rules of D&D without unbalancing the game - but you usually can't (or I usually can't) come up with such a rule while actively trying to run a game with less than a minute's thought.

 

[sniffles]

I don't GM - yet - but I'm thinking about it, so these kinds of discussions are very interesting to me.

I think sticking with the rules as written is certainly preferable to trying to keep track of a lot of house rules, especially if you play in several games with different GMs and everyone has different house rules. I'm running into that right now; I'm in two Forgotten Realms campaigns, one with a GM who sticks fairly closely to RaW and the other with a GM who loves to "tweak" the rules. I can tell when our characters in the second game start to get higher level (that game just started) that we're going to start comparing the two and seeing the first one as coming up short, because the 2nd GM let us have a lot of extras. Oddly enough, the GM of the first game is a player in the second one, and he loves tweaking the rules as a player, but not at all as a GM!

I was also involved for a number of years in a RuneQuest campaign in which the GM couldn't decide which edition of the rules to use, so he cobbled together 3 different editions and used the parts he preferred from each. That got very frustrating. Especially since the GM sometimes forgot which edition's rules he was using for a particular situation.

 

[Cheiromancer]

On the spot house rules can also make it look like the GM favors some players.
I was in one game where a number of the GM's on the spot house rules had the effect of making the his wife's character build more effective then other options. These included taking away the option to draw as part of a move action (she had Quickdraw) and saying that Spring Attack didn't negate AoO's caused by moving through reach (her's was the only tank fighter in a party that also had two light fighters). Whether intentionally biased or not, it definately created the appearance of bias.

Ah, yes. I thought I remembered this case.

Is this a case of GM bias, if so, what to do?

A good discussion of when house rules go wrong.

(Hey TheEvil; isn't it nice when someone remembers your posts? )

 

[Ace]

When in dount I follow the RAW and my house rules (one sheet) in D&D always--

One of the local DM's makes up rulings on the fly -- he says "I don't let the rules get in the way of the story" my reply "I am here to game not just to play your story" and I don't play with him --

if you play D&D3x (I give more slack with other games or older editions) use the RAW and your written house rules dagnabit

 

[TheEvil]

I agree too, the mechanics are too complex to monkey with. I don't have any flanking archers for sure...

I do not think that setting the number of free actions per round is a house rule.

While there is no specific rules on how many free actions can be taken per turn, so it isn't a house rule per se, but it is still making a ruling because of a situation that came out of a house rule.

(Hey TheEvil; isn't it nice when someone remembers your posts? )

It's so nice to be remembered! *sniff*
It does go to show that bad experiences stick with you. Here it is 6 months later, and I am STILL complaining about it...

 

[Andre]

The main reason to use a rules-heavy system like D&D 3.5 or the Hero System is that the rules will do a better job of keeping the game running smoothly than a long series of subjective on-the-spot GM decisions.

The problem is that while the system is rules-heavy, 3.x rules are incredibly unclear in many situations. Here's one thread on the protection from evil spell and what it protects against, using the RAW:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=133281

We're talking about a basic, 1st-level spell here and the designers can't make it clear and unambiguous. This has happened so many times with so many rules, oftentimes my group just picks an interpretation we can live with and don't bother researching further. Playing the game shouldn't require parsing words, figuring out what the "meaning of is is".

 

[John Morrow]

The problem is that while the system is rules-heavy, 3.x rules are incredibly unclear in many situations. Here's one thread on the protection from evil spell and what it protects against, using the RAW:

I wouldn't call it "incredibly unclear" overall, though I agree it could have been worded much better and is "unclear". I suspect that they wanted to exempt certain spells like Sleep, Command, and Hold Person from inclusion and include things like Psionics and made a mess in the process and a "Mind Control" subtype could have been useful. But I think it's easy enough to create a logical definition of "ongoing control" and "mental control" that can then be applied elsewhere.

We're talking about a basic, 1st-level spell here and the designers can't make it clear and unambiguous. This has happened so many times with so many rules, oftentimes my group just picks an interpretation we can live with and don't bother researching further. Playing the game shouldn't require parsing words, figuring out what the "meaning of is is".

While I personally haven't had that sort of problem happen very often (your milage varies from mine), I've found that figuring out what the "meaning of 'is' is" can be useful because once you figure it it, it generally produces answers that make sense and works across the board.

I'm not claiming that D&D 3.5 is perfect. But I do think it does a pretty good job of covering things.

 

[shilsen]

Something else that I've noticed is that changes for the sake of "realism" often add little of said realism, but remove playability.

I agree totally.

 

[Wombat]

It's not really the rule that matters, but rather the consistency in rulings.

If a rule gets bent in my game, it stays bent. That's the way of it.

And some matters get bent a lot because it just feels better for our story.

My group is not too hung up on particular rules, per se, because we have a deep love of telling an exciting story rather than turning our game into a boardgame session. OTOH, we try to stay as consistent as we can. So if Player A gets a rules break, Player B gets the same rules break. That's fair and, unlike life, games need to be seen as fair.