Armour Dilemma: Am I Wrong Here?

[Nail]

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The issue here is the talking, deciding and planning, which apparently took place in zero or near-zero time, to make things add up.

This is a real problem....

...but let's be fair: most of us (I'll raise my hand, at least) allow a wee bit of "near-zero planning time" into our combats. I keep it to a minimum, but I'm not about to be draconic about "keeping silent unless its your action".

 

[Caliban]

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Here it is, and it's a hard one: If some of the party members have the time to get up, investigate an explosion, decide what to do, go into the ducal palace, get past the guards, talk to the duke, and get back into a massive combat with some kind of idea of what's going on, then the other members of the party ought to have two minutes to put on armor.

The issue here is the talking, deciding and planning, which apparently took place in zero or near-zero time, to make things add up.

If you don't have anything to add besides taking a swipe at someone, just stick to being anal in the Rules forum, it seemed to work for you...

Speaking of taking swipes

I was pointing out the fallacy of your generalization of "every logical reason being given" when in fact, most of the reasons being given centered around emotion rather than logic.

And since you requested it, putting on plate or half plate armor takes 4 minutes, not two, and you have to have someone help you.

It's the nature of 3e that PC's tend to react very quickly, because the players can discuss actions for a minute or two before the PC's spend the six seconds it actually takes to do it.

The DM already admitted that he already allowed this type of meta-gaming to happen frequently in his campaign. So this time it worked against the PC's instead of for them. That's not the DM's fault.

 

[La Bete]

wow.

there has been some .... interesting viewpoints established here.

I wasnt going to reply to this, as most of the key points were done, but as the last few pages have become a smack-tha-fu, I had to chip in.

I think that fusangite was 100% in the right.

(1) The players (not characters, players) were clearly aware that they had a choice, and what the consequences were. They made that choice, and got the consequences - which in this case was sitting out what would have been a wicked combat.

(2) Consistency of application is key to a games believability. Either rules are applied as written, or they are not. Either way, stick to it. If I had been a player who had made a fighter type who wore lighter armour so I could sleep in it/don it hastily and the gm waived the armour penalty so a tank could get into combat, I'd feel gypped. Fusangite sounds like the players should know that the rules will be applied as per the book.

(3) The game is about fun - everyones, including the gm and other players. I agree that the "the GM is always right, is Gawd..etc" attitude impedes that. However the GM is (a) not always going to get it right, (b) has to look out for everyone, and (c) is not totally responsible for the players fun.

I'd like to stress this again. Whether or not the player felt that he was being done, it was his choice to sit it out and have no fun. There comes a time when you have to make your own fun.

(4) Options. The game is about options. This is not a binary decision - stay and put on all my armour or go to the combat naked.

The paladin could have put on the backup magic chain, and gone into combat with a reduced, but not totally nerfed (hate that term) AC.

The players could have come up with a wacky plan like " say, can an unseen servant assist with donning armour? how about multiple unseen servants?" etc. etc. Or something. Likely, if it wasnt something that directly contravened the rules, fusangite would have gone with it.

Or of course, they could have just put some of the armour one, and just waded in - or gone to the site of the combat, servants with the rest of the armour in tow, and evaluated the situation from there.

(5) The superman duke. Whats the problem?

-according to the rules, no problem.
-accorinding to the campaign, 12th level character goes to see duke 5 hours after talking to him about the V's, and sez "its all gone to pot, lets lay the smack down." duke flys back with sorcerer. sweet.

(6) Abuse. Everyone loses their temper sometimes. However, you need to nip this in the bud. I once backed down after a player harangued me in a campaign, and have regretted it since. You need to tell the player in private that you find it unacceptable. Its all about fun after all.

 

[Drezden327]

(snip) .....

In response to Drezden327,

The vampires were about 50% successful. They were able to kill and begin turning 70 of the 140 guards. Basically what happened was that the players generally won on one side of the building but the time it took for them to dispel all the walls and mind control spells, the vampires on the other size were left unmolested and were able to pull off most of their plan.

The vampires still aren't defeated but they took a very severe blow from the recently-reunified party in the following episode who stormed into the tower after them once the armoured characters arrived. They were able to destroy all the coffins and defeat the vampires who hadn't been defeated outside in the previous episode.

Episode 19: Battle outside the tower; 2 vampires, a few spawn are defeated; 70 troops are taken into the tower; 45 survive; 20 are killed by the duke; 5 are killed but don't get taken into the tower.
Episode 20: Armoured characters arrive and storm the tower with the advance party. They defeat all remaining spawn, kill another 4 vampires, destroy all coffins. The remaining vampires escape, coffin-less to their backup lair where a bunch of the vampires (and the master vampire) are still holed-up. The duke returns with his troops and seizes the tower from the characters. Priests arrive (as per request of the bard to the soldiers she freed to summon the city's priests). The priests begin performing rituals to prevent the 70 guards' corpses from rising as vampires.
Episode 21: The characters and the duke make a speech about teamwork. They then discover the duke is breaching his agreement with them to leave the tower intact until the commissioners from the Guild of the Magi arrive. After discovering and attacking his agent who is in the process of stealing scrolls, the characters spontaneously hatch a plan to assassinate the duke; they spend the rest of the episode pulling off the ambush and killing him. (With great ingenuity I might add -- I had not planned for the duke to die and was completely surprised by their plan which involved them using up a powerful magic item they'd been holding in reserve for the past 18 episodes (9 months of playing time).

..... (snip)

Good story, Fusangite. I think one reason the thread has lasted this long is because people were interested in the background encounter you had set up, well that, and the fact that gamers love to argue with each other ... ...

Anyway, considering things progressed just fine without the armored players, I think you acted just fine and that one player was really out of line - especially since you gave him full experience!! Anyway, glad to see things are back to normal in your campaign.

Drezden

 

[Elvinis75]

Thoughts

To sum up I think that the player could have been disarmed before the fight really got started by a simple sorry on your part that things turned out like they did and asking/discussing future options to avoid the problem(on group basis). At the end of each of my sessions I give a little bonus exp to the group if they discuss the things that went right/wrong, good strategies, bad stragedies, …etc. Based on the sessions that happened before this didn’t you see this coming. Did you consider the possibility that they might not run out with lesser armor or nightgowns? If you did it seems like poor planning out for a session that potentially keeps 3 of the 7, or was it 8?, players out of the fun? Forcing player to fight at a disadvantage is part of the game. Making it a choice between fighting against very bad odds or not play shouldn’t be. I guess that I’d mad if I sat there for nearly 10 hours doing nothing. I would have talked to you about it as a player instead of yelling but if your position was that it happens I would tell you that I have better things to do. Of course if you my friend, as it usually is in D&D, I would talk your ear off and exhaust all avenues be for this happened.

 

[buzzard]

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So, even though the encounter ended up not happening for a large part of the group you think that the encounter couldnt've been run better? I'm not denying it wasn't run by the rules - I'm just saying that the encounter would've been more satisfying for all participants with a little common sense (the Dukes reaction time seemed ridiculous) and loose interpretion of the rules.

In my mind the consistency of the rules aren't as important as running an enjoyable game. Being correct, right or realistic (terms used quite a lot in this thread) isn't as important as running a good game.

The problem here is that you are blaming fungasite for the actions of the players. He did not lock three players in a room bound and helpless. They chose to sit this combat out. Any claim that he is to blame for their actions is bunk.

Now you have been complaining (endlessly) that he set it up to be dangerous for those characters. BFD. They had the option of assuming risk or sitting out. They sat out. It's not like he had 100 vampires ambush them in their skivvies. You might have a grain to complain about in that case. However here, the players made choices, they were not railroaded. If you think that players should be coddled, well fine. Your Playskool game is probably lots of fun (and made of plastic with no sharp edges).

buzzard

 

[Numion]

I think that fusangite was 100% in the right.

So do many other people. Even I'll admit that he was right. Rules were known very correctly.

However, had the DM made an alteration to the encounter by improvising outside his seemingly rigid timetable, the encounter would've been more satisfying. Many people on this thread have interpreted this wrongly as meaning that I'd suggest that the encounter be altered to make it easier on the PCs. I'm not suggesting that. (Besides, the DM already made it easier to PCs by having the NPC Duke come to action much faster than a cop called thru 911).

I'm suggesting that the DM should've tried to play the encounter in a way that the PCs can reach the encounter in due time, instead of the NPC Duke. If sticking to the rules is of such importance, fine, they shouldn't be broken. The DM could've just made the vampires killing operation a bit longer (within rules, of course, communicating takes time), and made convincing the duke of right action a little longer. Voila, the rest of the PCs and the Duke arrive at the same time at the scene, and butt-kicking ensues. Not as easy to handle as the way he played the encounter, I'll admit.

But good DMing never is.

 

[Elvinis75]

damn I just lost half of what I wrote with a bad cut and paste

 

[Numion]

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The problem here is that you are blaming fungasite for the actions of the players. He did not lock three players in a room bound and helpless. They chose to sit this combat out. Any claim that he is to blame for their actions is bunk.

fusangite didn't expect his players to be this attached to their armours. Thats ok. DMs that expect all the strange things that their players do don't exist. Plain and simple.

All that is left is to decide what to do when players come up with some unexpected (probably stupid) idea. Do you improvise to make most of the situation, or do you stick to your original plan no matter what?

 

[buzzard]

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fusangite didn't expect his players to be this attached to their armours. Thats ok. DMs that expect all the strange things that their players do don't exist. Plain and simple.

All that is left is to decide what to do when players come up with some unexpected (probably stupid) idea. Do you improvise to make most of the situation, or do you stick to your original plan no matter what?

You let the people deal with the consequences of their actions. Period. Anything else is coddling. It has been stated (repeatedly) that he intended to teach a lesson about the problems of using heavy armor. He taught the lesson(though whether or not people learned is another issue). To have run it otherwise would have both nullified the lesson, and significantly changed the encounter. It was not a deathtrap.

I'm sorry, but he only has a responsibility to make the world act in a believable fashion based on the actions of the PCs. He does not have to warp things to compensate for their foibles(though bringing in the Duke was such an act of mercy, and of course people are complaining about that).

buzzard