You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[Nigh Invulnerable]

DoD is based on Greater Invisibility, so any Save would be higher (16, minimum). But items based on spells don't always work the same as the spells themselves, and there isn't a Save listed for DoD. The authors probably didn't consider that anyone would ever find an offensive use for it. And, by the 3.0 rules, you could toss it as an area of effect, so you didn't need to meet the critter's eyes to use it.


I'd argue that it shouldn't have worked. The Alchemist's "bombs" are the equivalent to a Warlock's blast. That is, it's a prepare-and-fire ability, a "formulation" that doesn't depend on the availability of raw materials, and has no appreciable preparation time. (The Alchemist can prepare a "bomb", affix it to a crossbow bolt, load and fire that bolt, all in one standard action, which is faster than a trained crossbowman can fire an normal bolt.) So I'd probably rule that you shouldn't be able to accumulate such attacks and lump them together into a mega-explosion, any more than a Warlock can accumulate Eldritch Blasts into one massive Phaser array.

The Alchemist is, by many accounts, a broken class, a glass cannon type who can put out far more in a single attack than he could possibly survive himself. Letting him take his ranged attacks and start using them as land mines or time bombs, without some feat or power to account for the special use, would just be adding to the "broken".

That is, of course, my opinion only.

Whoa whoa whoa there, guys. The Alchemist in Pathfinder gets their level+Int modifier number of bombs per day, not "prepare at will". Feats can grant more, and the Alchemist really has no restrictions on making tons of Alchemist Fire in his down time, but only the class bomb feature causes significant damage.

OT: as a DM, I love when players come up with strange uses for items or unusual strategies that thwart my baddies in short order. Sure, it can sometimes create an anticlimax of an encounter, but those are almost more memorable than a drawn out conflict. I planned a seaside cliff lair for a manticore for my party. Once they located it, they waited til the manticore was not home, snuck inside and prepared an elaborate net and boulder trap. When the manticore came home, they simply dropped the net and pushed several boulders off the cliff, which dragged the manticore to a watery grave at the base of the cliffs. Instead of an airborn or clifftop missile battle, I got a drowned manticore and 4 unharmed PCs.

 

[MarkB]

And I would argue that if you never know the monster is there, then you can't get experience from it. Otherwise, you need to give PC's experience for all the dangerous rooms that they don't enter. That dungeon that they don't enter. They need all the experience points for not entering that one too. And that one over there. And certainly the one they didn't enter there.

That wasn't quite what I meant.

If an obstacle (whether a monster, or a gruelling physical challenge like crossing a desert, or a social challenge like an obstructive lackey) is placed between the PCs and their next objective, then finding a way past that obstacle instead of confronting and engaging with it head-on counts as defeating it - because its plot purpose was to hamper your progress, and you've found a way to progress past it.

I'm not talking about encounters the PCs never knew about - I'm talking about encounters they defeat through circumvention instead of confrontation.

 

[Celebrim]

That wasn't quite what I meant.

If an obstacle (whether a monster, or a gruelling physical challenge like crossing a desert, or a social challenge like an obstructive lackey) is placed between the PCs and their next objective...

I don't tend to place things with the purpose of them being obstacles. The castle's gate is guarded, not to be an obstacle to the PC's, but because in general castle gates are guarded. The desert is difficult to cross, because it's a desert, and the desert is there because at certain latitudes and in the rain shadows of mountains deserts tend to form. They don't have plot purposes per se. To a certain extent, I'm not really in control of the plot and I'm never in control of what role a particular thing will have in the protagonists story. Meaning is something that is largely created by the player. Likewise, since I don't think of these things as being problems specificly for the PC's, I also tend to not think of them as having particular solutions. It really doesn't matter to me whether crossing the desert is turned into a social challenge, or the PC decides to deal with the obstructive lackey by beating him into unconsciousness in a dark alley.

The same is to a large extent true of NPC's. I place them because someone like them should be there to be true to the setting. But I'm never sure what role they will have in the story until the players interact with them. The honorable nobel of martial bearing and a goodly heart I thought might become an ally, but instead he became through a series of mistunderstandings an enemy. The apprentice clerk who I thought might be a short term foil and appear in one scene, instead became a henchmen who has been one of the more important NPC's. The adventure that the players are on has always contained backup plans in case the players decide the villains are heroes and the heroes villains. It is hard not to make guesses at how the PC's will interact with NPC's, but it is a mistake to treat your guesses as facts or plot points and force them onto the story.

...then finding a way past that obstacle instead of confronting and engaging with it head-on counts as defeating it - because its plot purpose was to hamper your progress, and you've found a way to progress past it.

With all that in mind, I find the above statement just about impossible to parse to understand exactly what you mean by it. I tend to award full XP to full solutions to a problem - permenently breaking a curse, killing a dangerous foe, turning a foe into an ally, disarming a trap, etc. I tend to avoid only half XP to temporary solutions - successfully crossing a trapped room without detecting the trap, evading a monster through stealth or speed, driving a monster away without killing it, temporarily abating some magical problem - and then give the remaining XP when or if the problem is fully dealt with. I don't really care how you deal with a problem fully so that it can't or doesn't reoccur. In the case of a bureacrat or courtier that made it his mission in life to create problems for a PC, there are any number of permenent solutions to the problem - you can see that he loses his position or is jailed, you can intimidate him to the point he never dares thwart you again, you can discretely assassinate him, you can win him over and convert him to a loyal ally, and probably several other solutions that don't immediately occur to me. How much XP that is worth depends to me on not just how powerful the NPC is, but on how much interaction there has been and how obstructive the NPC has become. The NPC has to have risen past the stage of being a nuisance to have the same importance as something actively trying to kill you.

 

[MarkB]

I don't tend to place things with the purpose of them being obstacles. The castle's gate is guarded, not to be an obstacle to the PC's, but because in general castle gates are guarded. The desert is difficult to cross, because it's a desert, and the desert is there because at certain latitudes and in the rain shadows of mountains deserts tend to form. They don't have plot purposes per se. To a certain extent, I'm not really in control of the plot and I'm never in control of what role a particular thing will have in the protagonists story. Meaning is something that is largely created by the player. Likewise, since I don't think of these things as being problems specificly for the PC's, I also tend to not think of them as having particular solutions. It really doesn't matter to me whether crossing the desert is turned into a social challenge, or the PC decides to deal with the obstructive lackey by beating him into unconsciousness in a dark alley.

The same is to a large extent true of NPC's. I place them because someone like them should be there to be true to the setting. But I'm never sure what role they will have in the story until the players interact with them. The honorable nobel of martial bearing and a goodly heart I thought might become an ally, but instead he became through a series of mistunderstandings an enemy. The apprentice clerk who I thought might be a short term foil and appear in one scene, instead became a henchmen who has been one of the more important NPC's. The adventure that the players are on has always contained backup plans in case the players decide the villains are heroes and the heroes villains. It is hard not to make guesses at how the PC's will interact with NPC's, but it is a mistake to treat your guesses as facts or plot points and force them onto the story.

Fair enough, that's a matter of playstyle differences.

In many games, whilst the DM might not simply place a desert in a particular spot in order to be an obstacle to the PCs, he might very well place an objective of theirs on the opposite side of the desert they happen to be adjacent to, because he thinks that crossing that desert would be a challenging experience for them.

At that point, he has turned the desert into an obstacle for them to overcome.

 

[Hussar]

I tend to get up and walk away from the table when PC's take that attitude, and generally tell them I have no desire to be their DM ever again. I've got no desire to waste my time on that sort of anti-social BS. I gave that crap up in junior high.

Over react much? I was offering a point of view. Perhaps dialing back the hostility just a smidgeon might make this a bit more productive.

Wrong. The real reason that the checks are being made is because they are suitable to enriching the imaginary situation at hand, which is, "What would it be like to ride on the back of a gigantic centipede?" You see, what is really at stake here is the question not of whether I will allow propositions, because I will, but whether I will allow dictated outcomes - which I won't. I _love_ the solution of conjuring a giant centipede to cross the desert. It's evocative, fantastic, and memorable. But I want to take those strengths and dwell on the crossing itself, the difficulties both small and great and the ultimate (desirable) triumph resulting from the plan. Whereas the PC who gets 'shirty' really is the sort of ego gamer that wants to dictate to the DM not what he proposes to do but what actually happens, and believes the the DM exists only to validate his awesomeness by saying, "Yes, sir.", to whatever he imagines is the answer to a problem. I really have no desire to deal with a players emotional issues and the chips on his shoulder that he's bringing to the table because of past conflicts with other DMs. I have no desire to deal with the entire DM vs. players attitude that sees 'conjuring a centipede' as winning, that not only sees it as defeating the DM but expects the DM to see it as being defeated, and treats any attempt by the DM to roll with that situation and integrate it into the game play as the DM cheating the player out of their 'victory'. If that is the way you think, find a different table.

In other words, you are so attached to the "how" of the resolution of an event, that you cannot "allow" a player to bypass the challenge without then creating more challenges until such time as the player has sufficiently earned his reward.

What the heck does that mean? What do you mean 'rule against the party'? Is this a contest? And isn't, 'Make a skill check.', actually the ruling? In what sense is that 'against the party'? This is basic 'Say yes and roll the dice' DMing. And what is it that you percieve as being 'against the party' prior to the check being made anyway? See fundamentally there is the assumption here that DM's aren't impartial, that they are rooting against the players, and that the DM's fundamentally see there job as ruining the players fun where the players fun is described as dictating to the DM successful outcomes and recieving validation of their universal brilliance.

Quite easily and you said it yourself. You would enforce ride checks (which are only enforced in combat by RAW, but we'll ignore that for the moment) knowing that the party will almost surely fail them. If they tie themselves to the centipede, then you enforce Use Rope checks. Every single counter the group comes up with, you will simply add more checks until someone fails and the challenge is now sufficiently challenging.

I don't know. You tell me what you plan to do. Meanwhile, describe what you want to do, make a Use Rope check, and I'll note the concrete situation involved here - you are tied down to a gigantic scurrying creature - in case this concrete fact is relevant later either for avoiding difficulty or complicating a situation.



It is totally cool. As I said, I love it. In what way does it stop being totally cool if the drawf cleric falls off occasionally, or we role play out a situation where the centipede charges into and out of a gully and leaves the party grasping at antenna and legs to keep from sliding off? Do you think that I imagine those situations simply to create unnecessary difficulty? There is an implicit assumption here that if you'd conjured giant eagles, that I'd conjure a red dragon to 'counter' you and that somehow talking about skill checks is me taking frustration out on the players rather than me trying to make the game fun.

You wouldn't? You wouldn't enforce a series of ride checks until someone falls off? You wouldn't add in inclement weather, simply to add to the challenge, all the while pretending that it's all part of the "simulation"?

If you wanted to make the game fun, why not actually listen to the players when they hold up big neon signs saying, "We don't want to do this!"

Yeah, me too. Tell you what. Let's not game together ever.

Wow, snark much? Do you treat your players this way as well? Any dissenting opinion is immediately ejected from the game? I was simply elucidating a preference.

Sorry, you as a player don't get to dictate what my game is to me or to the rest of the players. If your so singularly engaged in one particular style of play that exploration, narration, thespianism, low drama, dungeon crawling, tactical gaming or whatever doesn't engage you to the point that you are going to get 'shirty' if we detour in gaming focus from your preferred style, then I consider you an inherently anti-social gamer that needs to go find a different DM and a less diverse group than I usually play with. Not only do I not want to do the same thing every session, but there is a good chance out of the six or so players at the table there is at least one that thinks exploration is the main attraction of the game and is relatively bored by combat, levelling up, or whatever you think the 'destination' is. And frankly, if you want to cross a desert with minimal interaction with the desert, you're much better off flying over it than tying yourself down to the back of a huge scurrying vermin. On the back of huge scurrying vermin is such intimate interaction with the desert that its the sort of thing that I would probably include as the means of crossing the desert in the first place. There are probably places somewhere in my world where hobgoblin guides run taxi services for travellers on the backs of giant beetles or something. It's the sort of thing I'd do because foot travel is mundane and insufficiently fantastic to spark players interaction and emmersion into the environment. They won't take the time to imagine the scene, to make a movie of the game in their heads, if I just have them cross a desert on foot. But in a caravan of giant beetles with colorful NPC's and giant centipede riding bandits, now that they'll imagine.

We didn't have the option of flying to be honest. No wizard or high level cleric in the party. The centipede was the best option that we had. But, presuming that I'm "anti-social" gamer because I don't want to deal with this one, specific situation is a bit of a stretch don't you think? Do you not think you might be over reacting here, just a smidgeon?

And the whole notion that the goal is to force a 'slog' is just bizarre. Everything that about D&D can be viewed as a slog if you are 'destination' focused. Oh, gee, must we get in a combat again? Oh, gee, another NPC to talk to. Must I role-play _again_? Oh great, a trap filled tomb. If all that is important is the destination, why bother playing? Just fill out what you want your 20th level character to look like and be done with it. The whole game is the journey. One of the inherent attributes of an PnP RPG is that it is open ended. There never is a destination. It's all journey.

Ah, now this is an attitude I do truly disagree with. RPG's might be open ended, but there are most certainly destinations. There are goals. There are things that the players want to accomplish. The journey is not the most important thing, IMO. The journey is just the time between doing things that are important to the players.

IOW, I'm sick to death of the "journey". I've been gaming way too long to enjoy wasting several hours of game time on oohing and ahhhing at the DM's imaginary world. I simply do not care. The world is just where cool stuff happens. Let's get to the cool stuff and the world can go hang.

Punished? You have a really strange notion of what being punished is. If the DM tries to emmerse you in the situation by making you think about the concrete realities of the situation, that's being punished? Most players I've had consider emersion to be something desirable in a session. Thinking about tying themselves down to a giant centipede and imagining the details of the journey makes the game more exciting and rewarding, and not less. On the back of a giant centipede scurrying over gravel beds, salt pans, giant dunes, dry gullies, and what not is generally a more rewarding experience to them than teleporting across the desert. Heck, you've got no clue. I'm the guy that when a player new to the game says, "I want my character to ride dinosuars that shoot lasers from their eyes." says, "Yeah, I think that would be great for the game. Keep in mind that sense you are first level it might be a while before you can acquire the laser firing dinosaur, but let me tell you how to build that character and make him interesting along the way to your goal." Being creative is not the problem I ever have with players.

Yes, I do consider withholding xp to be punishing. I do consider forcing unnecessary skill checks to be punishing. But, let's hold that thought for this next quote from your last post.

With all that in mind, I find the above statement just about impossible to parse to understand exactly what you mean by it. I tend to award full XP to full solutions to a problem - permenently breaking a curse, killing a dangerous foe, turning a foe into an ally, disarming a trap, etc. I tend to avoid only half XP to temporary solutions - successfully crossing a trapped room without detecting the trap, evading a monster through stealth or speed, driving a monster away without killing it, temporarily abating some magical problem - and then give the remaining XP when or if the problem is fully dealt with. I don't really care how you deal with a problem fully so that it can't or doesn't reoccur. In the case of a bureacrat or courtier that made it his mission in life to create problems for a PC, there are any number of permenent solutions to the problem - you can see that he loses his position or is jailed, you can intimidate him to the point he never dares thwart you again, you can discretely assassinate him, you can win him over and convert him to a loyal ally, and probably several other solutions that don't immediately occur to me. How much XP that is worth depends to me on not just how powerful the NPC is, but on how much interaction there has been and how obstructive the NPC has become. The NPC has to have risen past the stage of being a nuisance to have the same importance as something actively trying to kill you.

Right there. You are telling PC's that they should kill/destroy everything in their path or they will not get full reward. They evade a monster and only get half xp? Really? Isn't "evading the monster" the hallmark of old school play? Why would they ever evade the monster then? Why would they ever let a monster retreat?

This is what I mean by punishing players. You have basically staked out a territory in the game and said, "Thou shalt do what maketh me satisfied or thou shalt be punished".

I don't DM that way. The players do an end run around something? Fan-freaking-tastic. Full awards and I'll get them next time. I would never, ever occur to me to withhold xp simply because they didn't resolve a situation to my personal satisfaction. My ego is nowhere near that tied up in the game.

 

[Celebrim]

Over react much? I was offering a point of view. Perhaps dialing back the hostility just a smidgeon might make this a bit more productive.

Look, Hussar. It's not like I don't know you. We've bantered back and forth for like 10 years here. I know your peeves and your habits and your theories. I could probably go to every single thread on the front page of this forum that you are participating in and find comments about how DM's are all out to get you, how they've earned their terrible 'reputation', and how little trust one ought to put into them. And I'm telling you, that I had anticipated your declaration of how you'd get all 'shirty' (as you describe it), and I'm telling you and everyone else that I not only consider players getting 'shirty' unacceptable, but for this reason in particular it is unacceptable. And yes, I know that this is an irreconcible disagreement on this point, because as I hope to show - we aren't even speaking the same language about this. Our frames of reference are so different, that it is going to be impossible for me to communicate to you even what I think is going on in this scene. We might as well be two aliens trying to communicate to each other how they see color.

In other words, you are so attached to the "how" of the resolution of an event...

Wait, what??? Where have I been speaking about enforcing single solutions to a problem? Where in all my lengthy words have I insisted on the how of resolution? Do I even remotely sound like I've advocated linearity? In fact, I've brought up frequently examples of player actions that would actually successfully obtain exactly the result you claim to want - namely bypassing the desert entirely; for example, using teleport, or using a wish to get a djinni to carry you across the desert. Do you think I would thwart those also? Do you think I have a single solution provided? I don't even as much have decided whether the players 'ought' to be working against the villain in my current campaign or with him, since I designed the antagonist from the start to have certain sympathetic features. Do you think I'm going to force one or the other? Heck, if the PC's decide, 'To heck with it, let's just play pirate', that's fine too (though I don't think I could make being a pirate as interesting or deep without a few weeks heads up to prep that part of the sand box).

...that you cannot "allow" a player to bypass the challenge without then creating more challenges until such time as the player has sufficiently earned his reward.

Again, this concept of how a game works isn't even part of my mental considerations either in designing a game or in running a game. I don't look at things in terms of challenges and obstacles. I never create a challenge on the fly during a game, least of all to thwart, harass, or challenge players. I don't think of things in terms of rewards and punishments. Your entire description of what a game is is completely at odds with what I think a game is.

Quite easily and you said it yourself. You would enforce ride checks (which are only enforced in combat by RAW, but we'll ignore that for the moment) knowing that the party will almost surely fail them.

First of all, you are wrong. RAW makes it clear that while the most common means of generating ride checks are combat events (namely being struck by an attack) that any unexpected motion by the mount causes a ride check to remain in the saddle: "Stay in Saddle: You can react instantly to try to avoid falling when your mount rears or bolts unexpectedly or when you take damage. This usage does not take an action." Second of all, I would enforce them whether or not I expected the party to fail them. I enforce them not because of my knowledge or lack of knowledge of how many ranks in ride any one has, nor even out of a desire to see them fall. I enforce them because riding a beast is a difficult endeavor and I think that it is reasonable that the general proposition, "I ride a beast.", require a fortune mechanic in the same way any doubtful proposition is resolved with a fortune mechanic. Now, to the extent that I have any non-simulationist motivation for enforcing ride checks it is to direct spot light on to the players that have invested resources into the ride skill. In other words, if I don't enforce ride checks I consider myself to be cheating the players. Someone at the table probably has 10 ranks in ride and he has legitimate reason to wonder why he rides a beast no better than those with 0 ranks. If I was going to not enforce a riding mechanic, I would an utter cad to not make that clear to players during chargen or simply to remove the ride skill from the game.

Beyond that, you are utterly wrong again. The last ride check that came up in my game was that the players were riding on horses across the top of an earthen dam. There was a concrete spillway on the dam I had previously described, and thus there was essentially a 4' deep moat with running water and an algea covered slippery surface on top the dam that presented an obstacle. I didn't put the spillway on the dam to be an obstacle. I put it on the dam because dams have spillways. In fact, I'd never even considered the dam as an obstacle, as there was also a ferry in town for crossing the river. There river wasn't there to be an obstacle either. It was there because towns are often built along rivers, particularly if they are centers of the lumber industry. Now, in order to ride down this 'bank' and up the other side, I decided a DC 5 ride check was required. The Explorer made it with ease, as did the Sidhe thief. But the cleric did not, resulting in a spill for d6 non-lethal damage, and then the cleric getting swept down the spillway into the water at the base of the dam. I didn't do any of this to present an obstacle to using the dam as a bridge. I did this because I considered it the best description of crossing the dam. It was for 6th level characters a fairly trivial excercise. But it did produce the result of the normally rather radiant female cleric, coming up out of the water covered in slime and with a bruised ego, allowing some of the other characters to make japes at her expense. That however wasn't the intention either. I'm not steering anything to a particular result.

They tie themselves to the centipede, then you enforce Use Rope checks.

Well, duh. Any time my players tie anything to anything, they make a Use Rope check. As one of my players said, "Heck yeah I've maxed out Use Rope. It's like the most useful skill in the game." Now think about that. Use Rope got dropped out of cannon in 3.5 because it was deemed too narrow and useless. Yet in my game, players think it a very valuable skill. If skills aren't enforced, then I might as well remove them from the game so that everyone can play a spell caster. But again, I don't enforce use rope to that purpose, but because its a resolution mechanic for a doubtful proposition. Any time you propose a course of action where there is a price of a failure, I enforce a fortune mechanic. That is far and away IMO the most fair way to DM. I basically always say, "Ok, throw a dice." to any thing where there is a non-trivial chance of failure.

Every single counter the group comes up with, you will simply add more checks until someone fails and the challenge is now sufficiently challenging.

On the countrary, I don't think of propositions as 'counters'. There is no fight going on between me and the players. We aren't struggling for narrative resources. This isn't a nar game where we put stakes up explicitly or implicitly. And the same number of checks occur whether or not someone succeeds. Get this through you head: I'm never ever making difficulty. The difficulty is there or it isn't. If it isn't there, I never feel the need to make new difficulties. New difficulties will arise without me having to invent them.

You wouldn't? You wouldn't enforce a series of ride checks until someone falls off?

No, of course not. I'd probably narrate the journey with a couple of sentenses per 5 or 6 miles of travel, taking note of the changing landforms indicated on my map. When those land forms indicated that the player would either need to make a detour or else risk a path that might result in a ride check, whether gullies or cliffs or boulder strewn ground, I'd let the players decide whether to go around or through.

You wouldn't add in inclement weather, simply to add to the challenge...

Of course not. All weather is predetermined on a day by day basis prior to the game. Any inclement weather appears whenever it supposed to or doesn't appear at all if it wasn't indicated by whatever method I'm using to determine weather (lately, historical almanacs)

For example, this is the weather forecast for last weeks session:

Weather Forecast for Talernga
Bosky the 30th – 80F/71F, brisk wind from the south west
Bosky the 31st – 77F/63F, light wind from the north, brief thundershower in the early morning hours
Bosky the 32nd – 79F/59F, light wind from the south-east, afternoon thundershowers

It's the taken from the weather alamanc for Norfolk Virginia (equivalent latitude), from a prior year (2010 IIRC). That's the weather they get. I'm not going to change it, though given that one member of the party has taken the Disadvantage, 'Major Enemy (Nauti the Storm Lord)', I have explicit permission from my own rules set for actually doing that or something like it once a session. That however is another topic.

, all the while pretending that it's all part of the "simulation"?

Here we get to the heart of the problem. You are going to insist that my referee stance is entirely pretence. Fundamentally, the point of view you are offering is that I am liar and unworthy of trust. So much for your claims that I'm misunderstanding your hostility.

If you wanted to make the game fun, why not actually listen to the players when they hold up big neon signs saying, "We don't want to do this!"

Again, you don't get it. If you hold up a big neon sign in my game that says, "_I_ don't want to do this!" (again, stop speaking for all players as if everyone was on your team and had your point of view as a player), I will say, "Ok, go find another game." But beyond the simple point that I think it is unreasonable for you to determine what we do or don't do in a game, particularly given that I'm never going to compel players to cross a desert and presumably crossing the desert was their decision, you are wholly in the wrong to think that I would see a creative solution as being an attempt to bypass the game. From my perspective, seeing this creative solution, I would see exactly the opposite as the intention - a big glowing neon sign saying, "I'm fundamentally interested in the process of travel." or perhaps, "This creative solution has fundamentally turned what could have potentially been a boring slog that I might have chosen to make less important to my story, into something memorable and which we can and should dwell on." In other words, as I said earlier, what you think you are signalling is exactly the opposite of what I would have percieved you as signalling. Because frankly, the 'I want to opt out' is not something I ever expect players to signal, short of us dealing in a topic like torture or rape. The idea that a player would signal, "I want to opt out of adventure" simply wouldn't ever occur to me. Additionally, I would generally expect any sort of opt out signal to be made OOC, as in, "My dad just died IRL. Can I opt out of the story line where I'm searching for my dad for a while?" Any opting out that involves the whole group as in, "Let's hand wave the desert journey", should be made by group concensus.

Wow, snark much? Do you treat your players this way as well? Any dissenting opinion is immediately ejected from the game? I was simply elucidating a preference.

Dissenting opinion? You were being 'shirty' and you know it. Don't try to back down from that stance by pretending you were expressing an analytical viewpoint rather than being motivated by an emotion. You aren't 'offering an opinion'. You are expressing anger, dislike, and distrust. If you in the middle of a session start getting 'shirty' with me - something I haven't had happen from a player in the last 20 years or so - and you won't drop it, then yeah, we are likely to need to step outside for a private talk.

We didn't have the option of flying to be honest. No wizard or high level cleric in the party. The centipede was the best option that we had. But, presuming that I'm "anti-social" gamer because I don't want to deal with this one, specific situation is a bit of a stretch don't you think? Do you not think you might be over reacting here, just a smidgeon?

No, I don't presume you are an anti-social gamer because you don't want to deal with this one particular crossing of the desert. I presume you are an anti-social gamer because by your own statements you are likely to get 'shirty' with DMs and send them great big 'I want out signals'. And if that is the way you play, then believe me, from me at least you'll be let out.

Right there. You are telling PC's that they should kill/destroy everything in their path or they will not get full reward. They evade a monster and only get half xp? Really? Isn't "evading the monster" the hallmark of old school play? Why would they ever evade the monster then? Why would they ever let a monster retreat?

Well, old school, evading the monster meant 0 XP, quoting Gygax: "The judgment factor is inescapable with respect to weighting experience for the points gained from slaying monsters and/or gaining treasure." Yet people did it anyway. Tying XP directly to overcoming challenges and advancing the story is new school, not old school. Old school players didn't evade the monster to earn XP. They evaded monsters in order to not waste resources on things not directly tied to there goal. For one thing, looting was 50%-80% of your earned XP depending on the style of game played, and fighting a monster without signficant loot was often a poor proposition relative to the risk of character death. XP is withheld as relates to my judgement of the effaciousness of the solution. If the players bypass a monster by stealth or speed, the threat still exists. The monster is not vanquished, and may reappear to trouble them again. The same is true if they confront the monster and allow it to retreat. If on the other hand, they convert the monster to a valuable ally through some sort of social interaction - bribery, diplomacy, trickery, then that is worth a full reward. I don't do things that way because I have a particular method planned out. I do this because I don't want to turn evading the same monster over and over again into a means of cranking out infinite XP. I am, as Gygax observed, excercising my judgment in weighting the award. It's not a punishment. It's the inescapable and necessary perogative of the DM. It's not a punishment. It's an award. The 'old school' method would say no XP is necessarily earned via evading, tricking, or outwitting a monster. You also presume that I also don't have written down in my text, "500 XP is earned for getting the dingus." There. All solutions are valid.

This is what I mean by punishing players. You have basically staked out a territory in the game and said, "Thou maketh me satisfied or thou shalt be punished".

That just sounds insane. I don't even know how to respond to that, given that this notion seems to encompass as much as asking for a use rope check in response to proposing to improvising a harness for a monstrous centipede involves some hidden motivation on my part to punish players. I don't think you can even imagine what 'maketh me satisfied'. I ask how you get from a paragraph of me describing a half-dozen different solutions to a particular problem, all of which I offer up as equally valid, that I am in to 'narrow' rather than 'broad' scenes or that I have a particular single solution even in mind for a given problem? I rarely know what players are going to do. I try to prepare for multiple approaches, but even so I'm still surprised from time to time.

I don't DM that way. The players do an end run around something? Fan-freaking-tastic. Full awards and I'll get them next time.

I don't DM that way. I never think to myself "I'll get them next time."

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Some points I'd like to add to the discussion:

To use an example from WoW, things the players want aren't always good for them or the game. If the players got best in slot items in two weeks they'd definitely (Blizz has the statistics to back this up) get bored and lose interest. Likewise with D&D, simply skipping to the end of something can make the players feel bored. Luckily D&D is nowhere near as limiting as WoW is so there's always something the characters can do, but it often means they have to be creative and into the game instead of saying "I'm done. Give me something else, and it had better be good." Why even have a DM if you're just going to blow by anything the DM gives you anyway? And at that point, why even play the game?

D&D is at its best when all the players, including the DM, are cooperating to create an interesting story. It is at its worst when the players are working against each other and the DM, or the DM is working against the players, and it thus becomes a competition that no one can win unless everyone can learn to cooperate and be okay with each other.

 

[Hussar]

Some points I'd like to add to the discussion:

To use an example from WoW, things the players want aren't always good for them or the game. If the players got best in slot items in two weeks they'd definitely (Blizz has the statistics to back this up) get bored and lose interest. Likewise with D&D, simply skipping to the end of something can make the players feel bored. Luckily D&D is nowhere near as limiting as WoW is so there's always something the characters can do, but it often means they have to be creative and into the game instead of saying "I'm done. Give me something else, and it had better be good." Why even have a DM if you're just going to blow by anything the DM gives you anyway? And at that point, why even play the game?

D&D is at its best when all the players, including the DM, are cooperating to create an interesting story. It is at its worst when the players are working against each other and the DM, or the DM is working against the players, and it thus becomes a competition that no one can win unless everyone can learn to cooperate and be okay with each other.

Totally agree with this.

Well, duh. Any time my players tie anything to anything, they make a Use Rope check. As one of my players said, "Heck yeah I've maxed out Use Rope. It's like the most useful skill in the game." Now think about that. Use Rope got dropped out of cannon in 3.5 because it was deemed too narrow and useless. Yet in my game, players think it a very valuable skill. If skills aren't enforced, then I might as well remove them from the game so that everyone can play a spell caster. But again, I don't enforce use rope to that purpose, but because its a resolution mechanic for a doubtful proposition. Any time you propose a course of action where there is a price of a failure, I enforce a fortune mechanic. That is far and away IMO the most fair way to DM. I basically always say, "Ok, throw a dice." to any thing where there is a non-trivial chance of failure.

Hrm, you don't see the irony in this statement? Use rope was dropped because it was considered useless, but, in your game, it's used all the time. And you wonder why I'm questioning you about forcing skill checks over and over again until the players jump through enough hoops to make you happy.

The only reason they think the skill is important is because you're going to beat them around the head and shoulders with the punishment stick if they don't do what you want. "Ha ha, you don't have use rope, you can't tie a knot, you fail."

All the while you're patting yourself on the back about how true to the simulation you are being. Blech, no thanks. When the simulation only ever reacts in the most negative way possible, then that's not a simulation, it's the DM being a jerk.

In other words, as I said earlier, what you think you are signalling is exactly the opposite of what I would have percieved you as signalling. Because frankly, the 'I want to opt out' is not something I ever expect players to signal, short of us dealing in a topic like torture or rape. The idea that a player would signal, "I want to opt out of adventure" simply wouldn't ever occur to me. Additionally, I would generally expect any sort of opt out signal to be made OOC, as in, "My dad just died IRL. Can I opt out of the story line where I'm searching for my dad for a while?" Any opting out that involves the whole group as in, "Let's hand wave the desert journey", should be made by group concensus.

So, you completely misread the player, completely fail to understand what the player is signaling to you, and, even after the player has specifically TOLD you that he doesn't want to do something, it's still that player's fault and that player should simply shut up and play whatever you want to play. The fact that the rest of the group wants to get to their destination, and is perfectly happy skipping over the desert journey doesn't matter either. The player has somehow challenged your authority, and you are 100% wrong in your interpretation, but, it's still the player who is at fault?

Interesting approach to DMing there.

 

[PureGoldx58]

I think that the topic which was fun to read until hissy-fits were pitched, should continue. Insults have been slung around and Hussar has clear issues with GMs and provoking it isn't going to get this topic going any further. Act like mature human beings and stop bantering openly about it like children. If you disagree, debate it, if you are going to flail about, take it to PM.

 

[PureGoldx58]

Now,

Silly surprises I've pulled out of my rear:

We were in a cave made of natural stone and mud and we stumbled into a large room filled with Kobolds, seeing as how even weak creatures could eventually harm us I decided that turning the mud and stone of the ceiling into sand would qualify as a great way to escape...then I under-judged the amount of area I could effect (and how much sand that would be) and soon everyone was swimming in sand. The Kobolds suffocated rapidly and I split the party up, it was fun and even had challenging consequences.

Now that I think about it most of my choices have been combat and spell based that really all they did was kill something in a way that the spell wasn't designed around, Like creating a stone ramp in front of a motorcycle to ramp him into a stone wall I previously created, oh and killing a bartender accidentally and bringing him back as a halfling.