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If an NPC is telling the truth, what's the Insight DC to know they're telling the truth?
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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7596182" data-attributes="member: 6779196"><p>Because they have a possibility of failure and consequences for failure. I don’t mean to come off accusatory here either, but... how is this only striking you now? Haven’t we been discussing this for the past 100 pages? Wasn’t the fact that checks always have consequences your primary objection to my way of running things?</p><p></p><p></p><p>You have demonstrated that you have direct experience with your style of DMing. You have also demonstrated such difficulty in understanding the goal and approach style, that it did not seem likely to me that you had any experience running a game that way. Not wanting to assume, I asked for clarification.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Right, but if you’re the GM, you’re the one who decided that this chandelier is liable to break for a reason that the character has no way of boing about. Your reasoning for not telling the player that the chandelier might fall if they try to jump on it is that their character couldn’t know that. But their character <em>could</em> know that, if you hadn’t designed the challenge in such a way that they couldn’t. I’m sorry, but to me that feels like a gotcha. If your players are cool with you setting up challenges this way, that’s awesome, but personally, as a DM, I would not feel comfortable doing that.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Not really. “Dangerous magical disturbance” could mean a lot of things, and assuming it means “magic explosion” could be dangerous, if it actually means “will summon a random creature from a random plane of existentence,” for example. You might make preparations for an explosion like taking cover or quaffing a potion of fire resistance or something, and then find yourself dealing with a Marid or something instead of what you expected to happen. And that’s kind of the point of the method. You’re dealing with the consequences of your decisions, instead of the consequences of a poor dice roll. I, as a player, would find it to be a much more satisfying experience having to fight that Marid after having expected a magical explosion than taking a magical explosion after not having known what to expect might happen as a result of my failure on an Arcana check to disrupt a ritual circle. The former is my own fault for not having investigated further to confirm my suspicions. The latter is just an unpredictable mishap that occurred as a result of a crappy dice roll.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I’m sorry, but that does not sound at all like the argument you were making. Permenton said: </p><p></p><p></p><p>To which you responded:</p><p></p><p>Prompting me to ask for clarification as to whether or not you had personal experience with (i) and it not leading to (ii), and:</p><p></p><p>The thrust of your argument seems to me to be that the character’s “have no way of knowing”, therefore the players shouldn’t know either. And I voiced my disagreement with the premise that the characters have no way of knowing - in the magic circle example, it should be pretty obvious to anyone who lives in a world where magic circles are a thing that messing with them can lead to negative results, and that’s all the players need to know to satisfy (i). In the chandelier example, the character’s would absolutely be able to make a reasonable guess that the chandelier wouldn’t support their weight, unless you as DM are actively hiding the information that might lead them to that conclusion, such as by deciding that it looks perfectly sturdy, but the beams are rotten, and that rot is not immediately apparent.</p><p></p><p>If your argument was that “sometimes it’s fun to not know that an action might have negative consequences,” then you’ve not made that clear at all. Personally, I would not find that fun. But if you do, I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong. Just wouldn’t be the game for me.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 7596182, member: 6779196"] Because they have a possibility of failure and consequences for failure. I don’t mean to come off accusatory here either, but... how is this only striking you now? Haven’t we been discussing this for the past 100 pages? Wasn’t the fact that checks always have consequences your primary objection to my way of running things? You have demonstrated that you have direct experience with your style of DMing. You have also demonstrated such difficulty in understanding the goal and approach style, that it did not seem likely to me that you had any experience running a game that way. Not wanting to assume, I asked for clarification. Right, but if you’re the GM, you’re the one who decided that this chandelier is liable to break for a reason that the character has no way of boing about. Your reasoning for not telling the player that the chandelier might fall if they try to jump on it is that their character couldn’t know that. But their character [i]could[/i] know that, if you hadn’t designed the challenge in such a way that they couldn’t. I’m sorry, but to me that feels like a gotcha. If your players are cool with you setting up challenges this way, that’s awesome, but personally, as a DM, I would not feel comfortable doing that. Not really. “Dangerous magical disturbance” could mean a lot of things, and assuming it means “magic explosion” could be dangerous, if it actually means “will summon a random creature from a random plane of existentence,” for example. You might make preparations for an explosion like taking cover or quaffing a potion of fire resistance or something, and then find yourself dealing with a Marid or something instead of what you expected to happen. And that’s kind of the point of the method. You’re dealing with the consequences of your decisions, instead of the consequences of a poor dice roll. I, as a player, would find it to be a much more satisfying experience having to fight that Marid after having expected a magical explosion than taking a magical explosion after not having known what to expect might happen as a result of my failure on an Arcana check to disrupt a ritual circle. The former is my own fault for not having investigated further to confirm my suspicions. The latter is just an unpredictable mishap that occurred as a result of a crappy dice roll. I’m sorry, but that does not sound at all like the argument you were making. Permenton said: To which you responded: Prompting me to ask for clarification as to whether or not you had personal experience with (i) and it not leading to (ii), and: The thrust of your argument seems to me to be that the character’s “have no way of knowing”, therefore the players shouldn’t know either. And I voiced my disagreement with the premise that the characters have no way of knowing - in the magic circle example, it should be pretty obvious to anyone who lives in a world where magic circles are a thing that messing with them can lead to negative results, and that’s all the players need to know to satisfy (i). In the chandelier example, the character’s would absolutely be able to make a reasonable guess that the chandelier wouldn’t support their weight, unless you as DM are actively hiding the information that might lead them to that conclusion, such as by deciding that it looks perfectly sturdy, but the beams are rotten, and that rot is not immediately apparent. If your argument was that “sometimes it’s fun to not know that an action might have negative consequences,” then you’ve not made that clear at all. Personally, I would not find that fun. But if you do, I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong. Just wouldn’t be the game for me. [/QUOTE]
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If an NPC is telling the truth, what's the Insight DC to know they're telling the truth?
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