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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 607831" data-attributes="member: 5171">Hey, sorry to be gone so long, this thread drifted off my radar.My points, or what passed for my points while making these vicious and slanderous accusations, were these:1) I completely agree that a player who slows down combat is bad, regardless of reason, and the player should be dealt with.2) However, I didn't feel that the Zapster's post was attempting to solve (1).  I felt that his post was attempting to come down on a hypothetical player who was trying to be effective in combat.I'm open to disagreement on this, but here's my interpretation of the rules:If you allow a wizard to strategically place his fireball, you should allow your fighter to know what AC he's aiming at after the first few strikes. No, the fighter does not mystically get a vision of AC27 floating in the air over his foe's head, but the fighter DOES figure out how tough that armor is, how quick and agile his enemy is, and whether or not any of the fighter's strikes have been deflected by invisible barriers.  In real life, that fighter would have enough visual clues to figure out how hard he should risk swinging without making it impossible for him to connect meaningfully with his enemy.Heck, I can tell you for a fact that it works that way in martial arts sparring -- after less than thirty seconds, I can tell whether I should be doing quick light jabs or thundering heavy kicks on the guy based on whether he's going to be able to block or get out of the way.  Although in sparring, I'm trying not to actually HURT anyone... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />My argument here is really that you shouldn't put the fighter's player at a disadvantage because he can't actually SEE the fight and pick up the minutia. I believe that knowing your enemy's AC is reasonable after, say, three rounds or five attacks. And if the player has put in the necessary research and math time beforehand to figure out the best possible scenario, good for him. It's no different than a player researching a wizard's spell selection in his spare time. (And again, just so that we stop clobbering the straw man, NO, I wouldn't let said player stop the game for five minutes to flip through the PHB and figure out the best spell, just like I wouldn't let the fighter's player spend five minutes figuring out his best attack option.)3) All of that really just applies to a stupid monster who has few different attack options. What's good for the PC is good for the monster, and I completely agree that an intelligent opponent might change his tactics to throw off the fighter.  That's an equally valid result of people knowing whether or not they're getting hit, and I'd applaud a fighter who, for example, saw that he was getting pummeled by an opponent's power attack and switched grom Greatsword+Power Attack to Longsword + Shield + Expertise in response. The only caveat I'd throw out there is that, in fairness to the attacker, you say something like, "The enemy fighter switches to his shield and longsword, and his next strikes are light and fast -- he's concentrating on parrying after the drubbing you just gave him."What I objected to was not Zappo using that tactic, but the manner in which Zappo phrased it.  Zappo was not saying, "An intelligent monster might do this to throw off the tactics of a fighter who thinks he's found the best attack method."  Zappo said, "I do  this to throw off my players."  I object not to the tactic, but the use of the tactic to defeat the player, rather than the PC.Or, in other words, if Zappo has his cunning swashbuckler use that tactic, that's great, but if he has an Int:6 Ogre go through three different kinds of shields and possibly fight defensively, that's metagaming to one-up the players, which is just as obnoxious and detrimental to game enjoyment and balance as someone taking five minutes to figure out their action for that turn.It's possible that I misinterpreted Zappo's post or read too much into it, but that's what I got.  I didn't get, "Here's a tactic for dealing with someone who takes five minutes to do the math."  I got, "Here's a tactic I use to mess up anyone who tries to fight effectively, even if they did all the math beforehand."  Please correct me if I'm wrong.-Tacky</blockquote>

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