Am I an unfair GM?

[dontpunkme]

In terms of rules, we generally go one time where the DM gives you a freebie, then you're SOL. I could have been gentler, but he even insisted on breaking out my radius template to show me exactly where he planned on centering it. Didn't turn out to matter anyway, we played the next encounter tonight and he died via the cult leader's destruction (he was upset and thought it was bunk when his nat 3 even with him heavily buffed didn't pass), but this wasn't retaliation. He had used spell theft on the enemy cleric to steal his unholy aura (he failed on the attempt to steal iron body, thank goodness which prevented the cleric from getting nuked round 1). Naturally, quite incensed the cleric hit him with destruction and well, wizard's don't fare well against that.

As far as our group, we've taken on a quite militaristic play style over the years. This is my beer and pretzels game for the most part, but we've long ago established to counteract that, people must have their plans in order when their turn comes in the initiative and are responsible to know how a feat/spell works and only need to reference the book if there's a specific question. Also, players are free to ask questions at just about any time or slide me a book with a question. But he's a consistent meta-gamer. The other players in the game almost always ask if their characters are aware of something if they're in doubt regarding character vs player knowledge (I've had the cleric's player tell me how badly he wanted to OOC, but not dismissal IC what were obvious demons due to failing knowledgelanes checks). Even then, typical responses from other players at any perceived metagaming is teasing of metagaming (which incidently was how the other players felt about the action).

Bovine: I couldn't show him the door, we were at his house.

As for the player, I'm not sure if I want to invite him to roll up a new character, his attitude generally sucks. If I do let him back, I am auto-banning him from spellcasting classes. Then again, from having played on the other side of the map, he was a pretty lame excuse for ever having a character that was useful (either storywise or combatwise).

 

[roguerouge]

I always use a skill check. Knowledge (arcana) would replicate that the wizard character would know the limitations of his spell far better than his player does. A DC 10+spell level is usually fine. If no skill fits, well, that's when wisdom checks come in handy.

 

[Arnwyn]

So if you were the GM what would your ruling be? Was my ruling unfair?

My ruling would be: "Your spell fails (no line of effect). Suck it up. PS - you're incompetent." (Because that's just how we work in our group.) Your ruling was perfectly fair. Period.

He has the books and basically his response is that my ruling is unfair

"Why?"

and that its not his fault that he doesn't know every rule

"And now you're learned yet another one."

By level 14 (after going from 4th to 14th), the hand-holding's over. As a DM, I, for one, have better things to do.

 

[taliesin15]

I have never used Forcecage as a player or adjuticated it as a DM, and even I know what the limitations of that spell is.

The player has absolutely no reason to say your ruling was unfair.

 

[Maldor]

your both incompetent in this situation he for not knowing the rules that regaurd his character and paying more attention to thev map. You for not describing the area better.

While a player might forget about a line on a map that he can see around the character would still notice the big wall thats 5 feet infront of him. blocking his LOS and LOE.

You basicly said that he tryed to throw a grenade though a concrete wall to attack the people he beleaves are on the otherside and it just slipped his mind that the grenade won't go though the wall. Right.

 

[NewJeffCT]

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.

I'd likely have done it similarly to this - have him make a Knowledge: Arcana (or Spellcraft) to see if he could pull it off. If he makes the check, I'd have told him that he had no line of sight and have no way of knowing where the bad guys are. For all the wizard knows, they could have all Dimension Doored or Teleported or Dimension Hopped to another location completely...

and its 1500 gp of ruby dust.

 

[pawsplay]

Very fair. Since he was basically pointing to an imaginary target area, since he was metagaming, he can hardly cry when the spell doesn't work. If he had been thinking tactically he would have understood the problem.

 

[dontpunkme]

It would have been quite hard to miss the wall, we used bendy dungeon walls for the stone wall. They're a good inch off the battlemat and he put the wire spell template so it was resting on the wall. Kind of hard to say he didn't notice the wall. But yeah, he has chronic problems with general idiocy. In the cleric fight that lead to his character's death, he knew the cleric had iron body on it, he rolled a spellcraft to determine the spell's effect, I passed him a PHB so he could determine the effects (and save me from reading a long spell entry). He proceeded to try Stunning Ray (if my memory serves me for the spell's name) and Power Word: Blind both while looking at the spell description for Iron Body.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

It would have been quite hard to miss the wall, we used bendy dungeon walls for the stone wall. They're a good inch off the battlemat and he put the wire spell template so it was resting on the wall. Kind of hard to say he didn't notice the wall. But yeah, he has chronic problems with general idiocy. In the cleric fight that lead to his character's death, he knew the cleric had iron body on it, he rolled a spellcraft to determine the spell's effect, I passed him a PHB so he could determine the effects (and save me from reading a long spell entry). He proceeded to try Stunning Ray (if my memory serves me for the spell's name) and Power Word: Blind both while looking at the spell description for Iron Body.

And I have a gestalt Warblade/Duskblade in my group right now whom I have to remind nearly every combat that you can't combine a standard action strike / charge action / standard action Duskblade class feature to weapon attack with a touch spell thingy; pick two. These are the actions he does almost every round, the fact he chronically forgets he can't combine them astounds me. But I'd just be adversarial and kind of a dick IMHO if I just robbed him of his action or a spell slot w/o getting to cast it in such a situation. He forgot, he's not trying to cheat, he's just air brained or something, and I know the rule so it's hardly a bother to just say, "you can't do all of that, remember?" Saves a lot of drama. Half the time another player even tells him before I can, saving me any trouble at all. I'm kinda surprised none of the other players spoke up if they were paying attention.

Judging by a lot of the responses so far, it seems many people are conflating the metagaming issue with the forgetfulness one. I said it was wrong of him to use that metagame knowledge. But that has no effect on whether or not you should save a player from wasting his action, spell, (and in this case it seems) a very expensive gem when he goofs. You already made it clear in the first post you were aware from the start of the LOS issue and it's not like it clicked after the fact and required a ret-con, it would have been the smallest of inconveniences to just point out why the spell couldn't work. I think metagaming should be confronted head-on. Just say straight out, "You don't know where they are." Or "explain to me your character's rationale for doing this." If you punish him for it, it will just breed resentment. Worse, the next time someone else metagames and you aren't punitive with them, he will be all over your case. Just...be consistent. If you think it's ok to punish people for metagaming instead of a more direct or diplomatic approach, stick with it in all future cases. If you think it's a player's fault if he forgets how something works, apply that to every incident, without exception. If you aren't consistent in doing these things, the players who suffered for it may well get (justifiably) upset about the (possibly only perceived) unfair treatment. All IMHO, of course.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I agree with the folks saying, "Even if the player doesn't know the rules he should know, the character knows the rules of magic."

Don't hint that it will fail by asking him, "Are you sure you want to do that?" Flat out tell him, "That won't work. One, you don't have line of sight or line of effect. Two, you're using OOC knowledge." (I'd probably also add, "If you keep using OOC knowledge, BTW, I will use your meta-gaming to screw you over, so stop." But I'm pretty blunt.)

BTW, IMO there is a place for asking, "Are you sure you want to do that?" It's when the character is about to do something well within the rules of both the game and the game-world, but nevertheless really, really dumb. E.g., "The chasm is 40 feet wide. You have a +15 total modifier to Jump. Are you sure you want to do that?"