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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 716995" data-attributes="member: 4937">"And, I have to add, I strictly separate player knowledge and PC knowledge. So, a player can ask me for a specifi item, but that does not mean his PC is actively seeking it, or even knows about its existence, so the PC will not find it strange when he stumbles upon it."Exactly.If you have a player seeking an object to round out his character, he has stopped playing his character and made bookkeeping into the game.  You've blown immersion all to heck.   Unless you are dealing with an experienced player that already knows how to play (in which case he probably wouldn't be doing this anyway), you are teaching all sorts of bad habits.  If a player told me that Sir Edvald wanted a +5 flaming holy sword, or even a +1 flaming holy sword, I'd have to ask how Sir Edvald knew what '+1' (a term with no in game meaning), 'flaming', and 'holy' meant and how he knew of the existance of such things.  I'd then have to ask why Sir Edvald was talking to the DM, or why the player felt the need to tell me how Sir Edvald felt rather than show me.  I'd have to tell the player that RP normally involved dialoge or at the least telling me what Sir Edvald did, not an out of character exchange leading toward acquisition of player power.   If the player told me that Sir Edvald was going to seek a master merchant in order to acquire a more puisant weapon, then we'd be getting on the right track but it almost certainly would not be a track that led directly to a +1 flaming holy sword or anything else so specialized.   Sir Edvald is not aware of his attack bonus or his average damage per round versus AC 20, or his hit points, or anything else that is just a abstraction of Sir Edvald.  The primary concern of the player shouldn't be keeping Sir Edvald's books so that his actions can be arbitrated in the game (important though that may be), but figuring out what Sir Edvald is concerned about and contributing the the RP.   Let the DM worry about the balance and what challenges Sir Edvald is capable of handling and whether or not Sir Edvald is well enough equipped to handle the challenges that the DM plans on having him face.One of the problems I have with third edition in general it is seems to have encouraged PC's to plan out thier character on a spreadsheet, and apparantly (and this I'm only now beginning to realize) that includes even the very equipment that they expect to own.  To me, that is the death of RP, the end of emmersion, and if that is all you want from your 'DM', a computer program will entertain you far better than I ever could.</blockquote>

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