Am I an unfair GM?

[dontpunkme]

Just curious how everyone else would rule on this one. First let me set up some brief intro to the situation:

I'm running a homebrew campaign and the party happened upon a cult of the Elder Elemental Eye. So they're in the cult's fortress and they get ambushed. The cleric casts wall of stone to wall off half of the enemies in a narrow hallway so the party can focus their efforts on half of the enemies then go attack the rest afterwards (or at least force them to take alternative movement only rounds but still buying time instead of getting outnumbered).

No problem, until 18 actions later (12 of which were enemies on the other side of the wall where I am having the cultists who were cut off by the wall circle around but doing it in plainview on the battlemat) when the party wizard decides he is going to forcecage the people on the other side of the wall. No line of sight or effect and complete metagaming, also, part of the forcecage will be broken by the aforementioned wall of stone. I verify with the wizard that this is indeed his plan of action and give him a chance to change his declared action (sidenote: when the GM says, "are you sure that's what you want to do?" and then after an affirmative asks you if that's your final answer, it usually means its a bad idea).

He goes ahead with the forcecage and I immediately rule the spell has failed due to no line of effect and the wall interrupting the area of the spell. Now mind you this player has been playing since the early 90's and 2nd ed days, played 3.0 and this isn't his first wizard (in fact, he's only had 1 non-wizard character since 3rd edition came out and probably 5 or 6 3.x wizards). He has the books and basically his response is that my ruling is unfair (Eric's grandma would not approve of his actual language) and that its not his fault that he doesn't know every rule (even though this is not the first time we've had los and loe discussions, the first time i let him take back the spell after explaining the rules). Also, this is not the first time I've had him not read a spell before casting it and then get upset with the results (he cast an evard's black tentacles centered 15 feet in front of him and was upset when they started grappling him).

So if you were the GM what would your ruling be? Was my ruling unfair? Was I being a terrible GM by not holding his hand (even though he's been playing this character from 4th to now 14th level).

 

[billd91]

I'd have told him "Where are you going to center the effect? You realize you need line of sight and effect to do it and you have neither through the wall?"

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

You were definitely right to not let it work, for starters. The fault is mostly the player's for trying to metagame. I think it would have been better if instead of trying to imply it was a bad idea, you just told him flat out, "You have no way of doing that." Or at least, "Can you show me how you have line of sight/effect?" People blunder, and while he was kinda being a jerk by using metagame knowledge to begin with, it doesn't change the possibility he just had a little metal slip. I tend to think of the PCs as fairly hyper-competent and superhuman (especially by the time they can use wall of stone/force) and in particular the wizard PC has a much higher int than the player could ever hope to. It also helps that while the player is plopping down to play for a few hour a week or so, the wizard is daily practicing and perfecting his art. So, I tend to assume if the player forgets an aspect of how his spell works, the character would not. I think you should have just told him it wouldn't work. I know you were trying to drop the hints strongly,but sometimes people are just clueless towards that stuff.

[sblock]I once ran an encounter in a large metallic cylinder of a room. I was careful to describle the various openings in the wall ~50 feet up, the size of both the opening they came through and the apparent exit (both about 10 ft across, if not less), and the fact the floor had plates of all slightly different heights. The "exit" was a hole going up in the ceiling, with a ladder hanging down from it WAAAY high up, with a thin 5 ft wide flat protrusion from the wall underneath it going all aroudn the perimeter of the room.

Anyway, despite all of this description, one of the PCs eagerly runs to the other side of the room towards the ladder...setting off the water trap. *sigh* 50 ft high of water later, they discover there were two Huge water elementals inside of the pouring water. They are level 6-8 at the time. The battle is near suicide, even with the 5 ft perimeter "land" I had provided, half the party ends up getting sucked into the elementals' whirlpool attacks. It takes over 3 combat rounds and the party near its death knell for someone to finally realize: "Hey, if we just leave, they can't really follow us!"

Ah, player stupidity can make the game so much more fun. [/sblock]

 

[s-dub]

I also would let the wizard attempt to do something else.

I alsways assume that the PC's are competent (unless they are CN, in which case I assume they are suicidal, jk).

It also helps to pull the pieces off the battlemat and guestimate how long it will take to loop around, then you can bring them in at just the right time (or too soon if the PC's are being slow)

 

[Holy Bovine]

So if you were the GM what would your ruling be? Was my ruling unfair? Was I being a terrible GM by not holding his hand (even though he's been playing this character from 4th to now 14th level).

Your ruling was completely fair. My ruling would have been exactly the same (and I can't believe no one else at the table said anything to him). If he decided to use vulgar language towards me he would have been promptly shown the door - probably with my footprint on his butt!

 

[frankthedm]

OP ruled the situation perfectly. Cutting a player some slack for an honest mistake is one thing, but IMHO such metagaming falls far outside an honest mistake.

 

[akbearfoot]

Knowlege:Arcana check to know the spell wouldnt work as he intended...before he cast the spell. Or you could have just told him "You dont know those guys are there, I expect you to act like it and do something else."


Force cage is a good example of spells people don't often understand correctly....A lot of people still dont realize it has a rediculously expensive material component....like a 2500gp gem or something(no book atm).

Metagaming is for the lose, but his lack of player knowlege shouldnt cause him to be punished.

 

[Vegepygmy]

Was my ruling unfair?

IMO, it depends on how consistent your rulings have been. If, in the past, you've let players "take back" their attempts to cast spells without LOE or on invalid targets, it would be inconsistent (and thus unfair) to suddenly not cut him any slack. On the other hand, if you've always enforced the rule (or you warned your players in advance that you wouldn't be cutting them slack anymore), then it was completely fair.

 

[azhrei_fje]

IMO, it depends on how consistent your rulings have been. If, in the past, you've let players "take back" their attempts to cast spells without LOE or on invalid targets, it would be inconsistent (and thus unfair) to suddenly not cut him any slack. On the other hand, if you've always enforced the rule (or you warned your players in advance that you wouldn't be cutting them slack anymore), then it was completely fair.

However, by the same token it is HIS character and he should invest some time into understanding the features of the class(es) he has chosen to play.

Overall, I'd say it was fair. And you might consider warning him that he'll be expected to know the spells in the future. My group has experience in telling me, "I'm going to cast ..." and then when the spell goes off (as in the case of a summon monster) I tell them they don't have LOE or LOS. In the beginning I was gentle with them, but not any more. And it has certainly helped our game. At least from my point-of-view.

 

[stevo the yak]

From your description it was handled perfectly.

A) Meta-gaming never pays. If they insist on doing things like this make stuff up. Next time show your npcs moving in exactly the opposite direction then they're actually going.

B) Know your spells. This is the most important rule for everyone who plays a wizard. KNOW YOUR SPELLS!