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Hello and welcome to the Rules & Game Mechanics forum!
The purpose of this forum is to help figure out what certain rules and wordings of mechanics mean and how they might interact, giving as helpful an answer as possible to each other. Here are some guidelines and useful terminology to help you navigate rule discussions.
Some terms that might turn up:
RAW: Rules As Written. This is what the rules say as written in official documents. This is mainly what this forum is focused on discussing, and what those rules actually say. For the purposes of this forum, Sage Advice Compendium falls under RAW, especially when resolving debates on a reading of RAW from the books.
RAI: Rules as intended. This is the ‘spirit of the rules’ or what the author intended when writing, although RAI sometimes does not align with RAW. RAI is useful for when RAW is somewhat unclear and can help guide a DM to make their own best interpretations of a rule for their game.
RAF: Rules as Fun, also referred to as ‘Rule of Cool’ and ‘Rule 0’. This is a big part of making a ruling at your own table, where a DM can make a judgement based on their own players on what will enhance the game- rules shouldn’t get in the way of that! However in this forum, RAF isn’t going to be that helpful when folk are asking what the rules actually are.If you’d like to best discuss how to make your own ruling independently of RAW Homebrew & Houserules will help you out.
And first, before we get into anything else, let’s get one thing out of the way-
Sometimes RAW is silly.
D&D’s rules cannot account for everything and do not intend to. Sometimes RAW might result in things that don’t make much sense. For example, see the PHB (2014 & 2024 p.364 ) / Basic Rules (2014/2024) rules on High Jumping:
When you make a high jump, you leap into the air a number of feet equal to 3 + your Strength modifier (minimum of 0 feet) if you move at least 10 feet on foot immediately before the jump.
These are good rules that apply well to most PCs and creatures. But now let's have a look at a cat’s (2014) Strength score. Ooh, 3 (-4). So 3 + -4 = 0 minimum, which means cats cannot jump by the rules as written. (Note how the Cat (2024) now has a Jumper trait to fix this!)
Now let’s have a look at an Elephant (2014) which has a strength score of 22 (+6). Elephants can jump a terrifying 9 ft into the air. Fear them.
Now of course you might think this silly as cats are known to be great at jumping and elephants rather poor at it in real life. Yet this is what the rules say, so if asked on this forum, this is what we’d be obliged to inform you of. Of course, you can choose to simply not rule it this way in your own game and it'd be sensible of you to do so.
So remember that when someone is trying to inform you of what the rules say, this isn’t them saying that is how you must play it. They’re not trying to ruin your fun, prevent you using a cool idea, or convince you to terrify your players with elephants. They’re just trying to help explain what the rules say. However, saying that, for answers where RAW doesn’t seem to be the most helpful answer, focusing on it to the exclusion of all else will not be helpful either.
What is the role of RAI in a forum focused on RAW?
As noted, sometimes there is no clear RAW answer or a RAW answer that makes sense. RAI here can be very useful for guiding understanding of RAW and to help inform folk on how to make their best interpretation of RAW.
Sometimes we can have indicators of RAI, such as with our above cat example. The Cat (2014) cannot jump, but the Cat (2024) has a trait to fix that issue. RAI we can read that as cats are indeed meant to be able to jump in the game, even if in 2014 they couldn’t RAW. This will help inform a user on how to rule it in their game, RAW or not.
However RAI is also a little more subjective. Sometimes we’re relying on authorial intent or what we interpret as the spirit of the rules. This naturally means there is more space for users to have disagreeing takes on RAI. Which is perfectly fine, and people can share their different takes and ponder such. While we should avoid dipping into the realm of Houserules and Homebrew too much, saying how you think a rule is meant to be ran RAI is still allowed in this forum, but use best judgement for when you are deciding to move away from RAW to discussing how to houserule it, and so should move the discussion.
Can I use sources like public comments made by designers in these discussions?
You may, but make sure you’re noting it as such. Public comments by D&D designers, like the ones that the very helpful site Sageadvice.eu has gathered, can be very useful for helping glean RAI or offering advice on how to houserule something. However it is not always clear when a comment is intended to be a reiteration of RAW, RAI or just the designers own personal preference, as such these cannot be used as sources for RAW discussion or to resolve debates.
How do we know which version of a rule to use?
As 5th edition D&D evolved the rules have gained errata, updates and revisions.
Errata: In the case of errata, please use the most recent iteration of a rule. D&D Beyond’s rules automatically update, but other sites hosting the rules or your own physical books may not be up to date. You can check here to see a the list of errata.
New rules: Sometimes as new books come out they’ll offer a new rule that addresses something previously touched upon. For example, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything had a different set of rules for magic item creation to the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide, or the 2024 Core rules being a different set to 2014 Core rules. Or perhaps a user is using a Legacy version of a species and not the most recently published one. These options do not overwrite each other and users could use any. Try to keep in mind which books and versions the user asking the question is using. If they’re using a mix of rules that the game doesn’t account for (such as using parts of XGtE’s magic item creation rules and parts of the DMG’s) then that is going to be a houserule.
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ModeratorGuidelines summarised:
Hello and welcome to the Rules & Game Mechanics forum!
The purpose of this forum is to help figure out what certain rules and wordings of mechanics mean and how they might interact, giving as helpful an answer as possible to each other.
Here are some guidelines and useful terminology to help you navigate rule discussions.
Some terms that might turn up:
RAW: Rules As Written. This is what the rules say as written in official documents. This is mainly what this forum is focused on discussing, and what those rules actually say. For the purposes of this forum, Sage Advice Compendium falls under RAW, especially when resolving debates on a reading of RAW from the books.
RAI: Rules as intended. This is the ‘spirit of the rules’ or what the author intended when writing, although RAI sometimes does not align with RAW. RAI is useful for when RAW is somewhat unclear and can help guide a DM to make their own best interpretations of a rule for their game.
RAF: Rules as Fun, also referred to as ‘Rule of Cool’ and ‘Rule 0’. This is a big part of making a ruling at your own table, where a DM can make a judgement based on their own players on what will enhance the game- rules shouldn’t get in the way of that! However in this forum, RAF isn’t going to be that helpful when folk are asking what the rules actually are. If you’d like to best discuss how to make your own ruling independently of RAW Homebrew & Houserules will help you out.
See Sage Advice Compendiums’ ‘The Role of Rules’ as well.
And first, before we get into anything else, let’s get one thing out of the way-
Sometimes RAW is silly.
D&D’s rules cannot account for everything and do not intend to. Sometimes RAW might result in things that don’t make much sense. For example, see the PHB (2014 & 2024 p.364 ) / Basic Rules (2014/2024) rules on High Jumping:
These are good rules that apply well to most PCs and creatures.
But now let's have a look at a cat’s (2014) Strength score. Ooh, 3 (-4).
So 3 + -4 = 0 minimum, which means cats cannot jump by the rules as written. (Note how the Cat (2024) now has a Jumper trait to fix this!)
Now let’s have a look at an Elephant (2014) which has a strength score of 22 (+6). Elephants can jump a terrifying 9 ft into the air. Fear them.
Now of course you might think this silly as cats are known to be great at jumping and elephants rather poor at it in real life. Yet this is what the rules say, so if asked on this forum, this is what we’d be obliged to inform you of. Of course, you can choose to simply not rule it this way in your own game and it'd be sensible of you to do so.
So remember that when someone is trying to inform you of what the rules say, this isn’t them saying that is how you must play it. They’re not trying to ruin your fun, prevent you using a cool idea, or convince you to terrify your players with elephants. They’re just trying to help explain what the rules say. However, saying that, for answers where RAW doesn’t seem to be the most helpful answer, focusing on it to the exclusion of all else will not be helpful either.
What is the role of RAI in a forum focused on RAW?
As noted, sometimes there is no clear RAW answer or a RAW answer that makes sense. RAI here can be very useful for guiding understanding of RAW and to help inform folk on how to make their best interpretation of RAW.
Sometimes we can have indicators of RAI, such as with our above cat example. The Cat (2014) cannot jump, but the Cat (2024) has a trait to fix that issue. RAI we can read that as cats are indeed meant to be able to jump in the game, even if in 2014 they couldn’t RAW. This will help inform a user on how to rule it in their game, RAW or not.
However RAI is also a little more subjective. Sometimes we’re relying on authorial intent or what we interpret as the spirit of the rules. This naturally means there is more space for users to have disagreeing takes on RAI. Which is perfectly fine, and people can share their different takes and ponder such. While we should avoid dipping into the realm of Houserules and Homebrew too much, saying how you think a rule is meant to be ran RAI is still allowed in this forum, but use best judgement for when you are deciding to move away from RAW to discussing how to houserule it, and so should move the discussion.
Can I use sources like public comments made by designers in these discussions?
You may, but make sure you’re noting it as such. Public comments by D&D designers, like the ones that the very helpful site Sageadvice.eu has gathered, can be very useful for helping glean RAI or offering advice on how to houserule something. However it is not always clear when a comment is intended to be a reiteration of RAW, RAI or just the designers own personal preference, as such these cannot be used as sources for RAW discussion or to resolve debates.
How do we know which version of a rule to use?
As 5th edition D&D evolved the rules have gained errata, updates and revisions.
Errata: In the case of errata, please use the most recent iteration of a rule. D&D Beyond’s rules automatically update, but other sites hosting the rules or your own physical books may not be up to date. You can check here to see a the list of errata.
New rules: Sometimes as new books come out they’ll offer a new rule that addresses something previously touched upon. For example, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything had a different set of rules for magic item creation to the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide, or the 2024 Core rules being a different set to 2014 Core rules. Or perhaps a user is using a Legacy version of a species and not the most recently published one. These options do not overwrite each other and users could use any. Try to keep in mind which books and versions the user asking the question is using. If they’re using a mix of rules that the game doesn’t account for (such as using parts of XGtE’s magic item creation rules and parts of the DMG’s) then that is going to be a houserule.
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