You're missing a step, perhaps it is tacitly implied, but I'm including it here for clarification purposes.
(ii) the DM agreed to the terms of the player
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You are right how dare I roleplay a NPC true to form.
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And yet, in 5e if a DM does not believe there is any uncertainty he has no need to call for a roll.
I feel it is unfair to blame the DM when these are the rules as per 5e, if anyone is to blame its WotC, right?
The attitude of the archbishop has nothing to do with WotC. It's the GM in your example who has decided that the archbishop cannot be influenced.
This topic was discussed (in the context of Traveller, but the principle is the same) in
this thread at the end of last year. My view is very similar to the one that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] stated in that thread:
You just want your tedious railroad rubbish to go elsewhere and you view your version of the situation as more important than anyone else's.
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Again, you're just disparaging someone else's contribution to try and get your way. This is about your desperate need for control of the fiction.
And as for evidence... there's no such thing as evidence. The boat being damaged is authored. What you're saying is that you want to author it, and you resent me authoring it, so now you want to have done it in advance and then give the players 'clues' so they can exploit it in the way you intended. Anything else and you lose control, and you can't handle it.
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Railroading isn't the players doing what you say. Railroading is the outcomes being the ones you've chosen. And you've done nothing but try to dictate outcomes and then pretend your words are more authoritative than anyone elses, including mine and the person actually running the game. Lame doesn't even begin to describe your approach.
There's a recurring notion in this thread - whether pertaining to NPC attitudes, or players' desires for their PC flavour/backstory etc - that the GM can't enjoy the game unless s/he is deciding what the story is. That is exactly what caused me to leave/end three games as per my first post in this thread.
I think this is narrow minded.
Perhaps the setting is during the time of the Godswar or Time of Troubles (Forgotten Realms) when all manner of faithful lost their access to the divine. As I said case by case basis.
Does the player of the cleric get told in advance that his/her PC is going to lose his/her class abilities during the course of the campaign?
And yet earlier (upthread) you mentioned that the DM talk to the player out of the game on the same basis.
That was in the context of someone thinking a player is wrecking the game. But no one's offered a reason why a player playing a cleric or warlock whose god/patron is happy with what s/he does, or playing a motorcycle-riding vampire, would wreck the game.
So, just to be clear, the player who turns down the motorcycle has to deal with the consequence of not having a motorcycle
If another player did not want a free no complication motorcycle and so his character was limited by walking speed, paying for busses, taxis etc and as such even if nothing else they got to do less due to complication issues from not having a vehicle to zip around on does giving that other player the worry-free motorcycle he asked for still seem nothing to worry over?
I haven't played very much V:tM, but my impression is that it's not a game of hard-knock scrabbling for the fare for a bus! If my PC's flavour is that I get about on my bike, and yours is that you caught the bus, what difference is that making in play? Is the GM going to say to you "No, you have to sit out this encounter because the bus was late!"?
Depends. Do they take a fight outside? Then the bike and all of the other things standing around as potential collateral have been reintroduced as complications.
D&D has almost no rules for "collateral damage" to surrounding objects. I'm not sure about V:tM, but I'd be surpised if it's rules in this respect are significantly richer.
I don't get the interest in suddenly activating such things
precisely because a player's PC has a bike parked outside.
Or maybe someone at the bar has has their suspicions raised by questions the PCs ask and doesn't want to be followed so they slash a tire, or is invulnerable to that too?
Whether an argument with someone at the bar puts the bike at stake would be highly contextual. How does the NPC even know which bike is the PC's? That seems pretty contextual too.
If being the motorcyle guy is your core concept, then it should account for something more than just getting from point A to point B.
Why? What's wrong with colour?
Color me confused but a core concept should be something fairly prominent for the character - not really something to be backgrounded. And that means it should be available for complications.
Why?
A fighter's default core concept, according to the 5e Basic PDF, is a master of deadly combat. Does that mean that a signficant focus of play should be whether or not the fighter loses his/her abilities (eg by being permanently maimed)? That's not been a traditional focus of D&D play. I don't see why a warlock or cleric should be different. To me, all this just smacks of GMs looking for handles to steer the players' play of their PCs.
Captain America is a shield guy, but he doesn't use it just for looking good in publicity photos.
In the Marvel Heroic RP, Captain America can't lose his shield permanently. The referee can spend a GM side resource to shut down the shield ability; the player can shut it down to gain a player-side resource. If shut down, the player can take an action to recover it; otherwise at the end of the encounter it is recovered automatically.
In the same RPG, the Punisher's Battle Van is (in mechanical terms) an ability that allows the player to step up combat or vehicle-related resources generated by spending player-side resources. The Punisher doesn't lose access to it - although in play certain adverse effects might be narrated as some temporary Battle Van-related setback.
if this were Mutants and Masterminds, there'd be a hero point in it for you because that's how complications work in that game
Likewise if it was Fate. Likewise for Captain America in MHRP, as I just explained. I don't know how recovery works in M&M, but does that system really allow Captain America's shield to be stolen so that the player just doesn't have access to it anynmore in the campaign?
If you want to be the dinosaur riding ranger as a core concept, fine. Just recognize that it's not going to give everyone a good impression and it can't go everywhere you might want to go.
There's a traditional mechanic for this in D&D - the reaction roll. On a bad roll, maybe the reason the villager's are unhappy would be the dinosaur. On a good roll, maybe the villagers have heard of this heroic dino-rider and welcome her/him!
Pick a deity with a particular portfolio and ethos, part of a cleric's core concept, and directly work against that and it'll be an issue. Pick a warlock patron, which determines your core magical powers, and directly work against its interests and, again, complications will ensue.
That's all uncontentious. What's being discussed in this thread is who gets to decide what counts as
directly working againt that ethos/interst?
The Sworn and Beholden section states that "A warlock is defined by a pact with an otherworldly being." A player backgrounding the prominence of their patron or its in-game control by the DM does not somehow erase that. The rest of the paragraph consists fundamentally flavor text suggestions meant for the player to consider the nature of the relationship. It does not even say in this section that the occasional services are determined by the DM. It's determined by their patron. "But the DM does serve as their patron!" Not necessarily. Working with the DM about the pact does not mean that the DM dictates the terms of that pact to the player. The player can easily determine the nature and frequency of those occasional services without requiring the DM to roleplay that patron as an in-game taskmaster.
"My archfey patron requires that I oppose both otherworldly abominations of nature and the opposing agendas of Queen Mab. As part of my pact, I can never wield cold iron nor can I knowingly speak falsehood. Everytime I increase in power [i.e., level up], I must prepare a new fey grove through which my patron can extend their influence in the world. And through this new arcane conduit, I shall gain my new power."
All of this could be established by the player (in cooperation with the DM) pre-play and without having the DM using the patron as an in-game sock-puppet.
100% this.