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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eldritch_Lord" data-source="post: 5869155" data-attributes="member: 52073">To each his own.  I like to make a distinction between purely "screw you, players!" monsters like rust monsters, mimics, trappers, lurkers, brown mold, and the like and ecology monsters like delvers, gelatinous cubes, and such.The dichotomy there is one between necessity and choice.  There will always be some situation somewhere that isn't covered, because a ruleset simply can't cover every possible eventuality, and that's perfectly fine.  That's exactly where a ruling is desirable.  However, cases where the designers explicitly say "Make this rule up, DM!" where the rule is not campaign-dependent (like basic combat mechanics) or cases where people respond to criticisms of the vagueness of specific rules with "Eh, the DM can fiat something" are not fine.  That's designer laziness in the former case and contradictory design goals in the latter case.  I've only been harping on the latter case here.Definitely.  Many of the DM horror stories I've seen on the internet could be solved with a page or two in the DMG explaining railroading (and why not to do it), good rulings (and how and when to make them), and similar.The specific mechanic in question is one that says you can taunt someone who threatens you to such an extent that they'll be mad enough to only attack you with weapons, but not taunt someone to the extent that they'll only attack you with spells and only move towards you, and not taunt anyone out of weapon reach at all.  It's that fine-grained control, rather than something general like "Pick a target, they must make a Will save or act offensively towards you to the exclusion of your allies to the best of their ability," that makes it seem like a wacky form of mind control rather than actual taunting or goading.</blockquote>

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