D&D 5E What DM flaw has caused you to actually leave a game?

[SkidAce]

"deleted post" ...nevermind....

But, I don't really have a dog in this hunt...

 

[pemerton]

The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions.

Does the adventurers denote the PCs or the players?

It's most naturally read as the PCs, given that the players of a RPG aren't doing anything especially adventurous. Which implies that when the GM narrates the results of those actions, it is already established, in the fiction, that some actions have occurred. Who establishes that? Presumably the players.

 

[pemerton]

Right. Targeted by magic missile, not damaged by magic missile. Once damage is narrated like you did in your example up thread, it's too late to use shield.

But being targetted by magic missile and being damaged by it are the same thing, in the fiction - because a magic missile automatically strikes damages whomever it targets. So if it's not time travel in one case, it's not time travel in the other either.

Whether the GM announces the targetting prior to rolling the damage, or does the two simultanesously, is simply a matter of table practice and what happens at the time - as [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has already indicated in relation to weapon attacks.

 

[pemerton]

All this shows me is that the 5e designers are just as capable of making mistakes as anyone else.

If your fiction is tightly coupled to the order of dice rolls made at the gaming table, then the mistake is on your end, not in the game rules.

Right. The game rules are what they are. They can be inconsistent, eg if one rule contradicts another with no apparent way for resolving the contradiction; but that's not the case here. The Shield spell not being liked by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] doesn't mean that it's a mistake.

I've been consistently arguing for blind declaration (e.g. that a spell such as Shield must be cast before the to-hit is rolled). The 'time travel' piece (e.g. waiting to cast Shield until you not only know you're hit but how much damage you'll take, so if it's just a few h.p. you can let it pass but if it's a heavy blow you can cast to undo it) is merely a subset of that argument.

That might be a statement of your preferences. It's not relevant to making sense of the 5e rules, though. 5e is not a blind declaration game.

 

[5ekyu]

But being targetted by magic missile and being damaged by it are the same thing, in the fiction - because a magic missile automatically strikes damages whomever it targets. So if it's not time travel in one case, it's not time travel in the other either.

Whether the GM announces the targetting prior to rolling the damage, or does the two simultanesously, is simply a matter of table practice and what happens at the time - as [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has already indicated in relation to weapon attacks.

Hypothetically, a creature could be immune to the MM damage and still be targeted by it, right? That creature could still react and raise shield, right?

 

[pemerton]

an NPC can't persuade a PC in the same manner without use of spell or magic to back it up.

Says who? This depends entirely on the system.

It's mostly true of 4e, but not completely.

It's not true of Burning Wheel, Marvel Heroic RP or Prince Valiant. It's only partially true of Classic Traveller (which applies morale rules to PCs).

if it doesn't work the same for everyone in the fiction then it doesn't work at all.

To me, this seems like an irrational principle. The mechanics happen in the real world. Characters in the fiction influence one another. PCs can be influenced by NPCs (eg in my Traveller game the PCs accepted an offer from a PC to carry some goods for her from one world to another). That the process of resolution is not symmetrical doesn't seem very significant. There are many asymmetries of that sort in RPGing. (Eg the GM can just narrate that NPC X kills NPC Y - and that is a very common feature of GM-established backstory - whereas as a general rule players can't do this.)

Taking one outlier example of a particular style of play from the 1e DMG and expanding that to an overall Gygax advocation of that style of play is a rather extreme stretch.

There is no that style of play. There are any range of ways of playing a RPG in which the players are allowed to establish some of the shared fiction.

I'm only pointing out that this claim that only the GM ever gets to establish fiction is not grounded in some foundational RPGing texts - it is not consistent with Gygax's DMG, nor with the 1977 (ie first) edition of Classic Traveller.

So far from being some sort of default, it is a departure.

What bits of fiction the players can establish is a different question, and that's where we could start to talk about various styles.

The freedom your players have to create/narrate content during play.

I don't play any games where players have that sort of power (beyond pretty uncontentious aspects of PC backgrounds).

Unless you're talking about outcomes of action resolution - but that's not what I would normally think of as freeform.

 

[pemerton]

Hypothetically, a creature could be immune to the MM damage and still be targeted by it, right? That creature could still react and raise shield, right?

Sure. Even a character not immune to Magic Missiel by default can rasie a shield spell if targetted by it.

But in cases where this doesn't happen, to target a creature is to damage it. Just as to hit a creature with a weapon attack is to damage it, as the 5e Basic PDf indicates (p 73, emphasis added):

You make the attack roll. On a hit, you roll damage, unless the particular attack has rules that specify otherwise.​

That last clause notes that there may be exceptions. But when one of those exceptions isn't operating, to be hit is to take damage.

Another illustration of the point about resolution, fiction and dice rolls: suppose a player declares an attack vs X using a non-magical weapon, and the GM knows that X is immune to non-magical weapon damage. The GM wouldn't be breaking any rule, or distorting anything in the fiction, by saying to the player, as s/he picks up the d20, "You needn't bother rolling - it's immune to your puny mundane weapon!"

That would not be houseruling the combat rules of 5e. (Or any other edition of D&D.)

 

[5ekyu]

Sure. Even a character not immune to Magic Missiel by default can rasie a shield spell if targetted by it.

But in cases where this doesn't happen, to target a creature is to damage it. Just as to hit a creature with a weapon attack is to damage it, as the 5e Basic PDf indicates (p 73, emphasis added):

You make the attack roll. On a hit, you roll damage, unless the particular attack has rules that specify otherwise.​

That last clause notes that there may be exceptions. But when one of those exceptions isn't operating, to be hit is to take damage.

Another illustration of the point about resolution, fiction and dice rolls: suppose a player declares an attack vs X using a non-magical weapon, and the GM knows that X is immune to non-magical weapon damage. The GM wouldn't be breaking any rule, or distorting anything in the fiction, by saying to the player, as s/he picks up the d20, "You needn't bother rolling - it's immune to your puny mundane weapon!"

That would not be houseruling the combat rules of 5e. (Or any other edition of D&D.)

D&D 5e embraces the concept of the rule working by means of GM rulings on the spot as a matter of course, so to me the difference between house ruling and just ruling is as nebulous as the table will accept or give a crap about. To me, the main difference is trivial unless the rule explicity changes or alters or counters in a meaningful way an existing rule.

In this case, if a Gm table-policy is "roll damage and attack at the same time" that GM must also explain how to handle the "on a hit" reactions and IMO should allow the decision to include the damage result - since its there.

But this also cuts for the "on hit" in that if your roll is a "crit" - do you reveal that - even if you do not roll damage.

Frankly, for me, i tend to err almost always on giving the player the most info possible when key decisions are being made - I myself loath blind guessing when it comes to what should be meaningful choices. So, for a MM vs shield, i would at the very very least give them the number of darts coming their. way - akin to also telling them "hit by a crit" etc. i could go either way on damage roll, but it would be done consistently across the board on any sort of "on hit" events.

 

[pemerton]

this also cuts for the "on hit" in that if your roll is a "crit" - do you reveal that - even if you do not roll damage.

Right. This was one of the possibilities I canvassed in a post upthread. It's a matter of table practice, taste, mood, how much the GM wants to taunt or be generous or whatever . . .

I myself loath blind guessing when it comes to what should be meaningful choices.

I tend to do my best to follow what seems to be the logic of the system. 4e tends to emphasise information for tactical choices; Burning Wheel tends to emphasise blind declarations - just to contrast two systems I'm pretty familiar with.

Even outside the specific context of 5e that you mention, I find it hard to credit these sorts of variations in practice as house rules.

 

[Maxperson]

Does the adventurers denote the PCs or the players?

It's most naturally read as the PCs, given that the players of a RPG aren't doing anything especially adventurous. Which implies that when the GM narrates the results of those actions, it is already established, in the fiction, that some actions have occurred. Who establishes that? Presumably the players.

You're still ignoring the rules, so I will repeat them.


1. The DM describes the environment.

2. The players describe what they want to do.

3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers' actions.

As you can see, all the players get to do by RAW is describe what they would like their PCs to do. They do not get to establish any actions in the fiction, only inform the DM of what actions they want to see happen and how those action should hopefully go. The DM then narrates the results which is when the actions get performed. An example.

Player: Olaf jumps across the stream. (description of what the player wants to do)
DM: Okay. It's a small stream and Olaf is strong, he clears the stream easily. (narration of the results, which includes establishing the action within the fiction)