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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D'karr" data-source="post: 926874" data-attributes="member: 336">Man, this thread is still going on?  Well, since I was the one that started asking the questions about the whole timing situation and since Fusangite asked for others opinions of how people would have done it differently.  I guess I'm going to have to explain how I would have done it differently and still kept it to four minutes for donning armor.The first thing that I'd like for people that will obviously disagree with me to do is to go read my first few posts.  At the beginning of this thread I agreed with Fusangite.  Heck as far as running the encounter I still agree with him.  Ruleswise he still did everything by the book.  As a matter of fact when someone argued about the application of Haste I argued in favor of Fus.Where I obviously disagree with Fus is in style.  And that is all a matter of opinion.  To demonstrate my point I will use a very succint quote from Monte Cook and a quote from the DMG.  Both quotes which I tend to agree with more and more as I see these discussions carry on and on about how this rule or that rule  needs to be applied.  Meanwhile a sort of disregard for the fact that this is a game and it should be fun for most of the people involved has crept in.  If that is not the primary reason for playing then why play at all?That quote can be found at Monte's Site under the DM's Only archive.First of all I'll clearly state that the reason I disagree with the application of the "letter" of the rules is that it became obvious, early on, that almost half of the player's would sit out the whole night.In my view that is just plain unfun and clearly not part of the equation for my definition of a game.  As a DM I much prefer to have my player's involved even if their PC's are for some reason not involved.  Heck, if I know a PC will be out of commission for a long time (dead or unconcious, away from the party, etc.) I'll have the player run a few NPC's or monsters.I view my role as DM to be the provider of the fun.  That might be where my contention with this whole line of resoning lies.  If I'm not doing that (providing a fun game), then I feel I have done the player's a disservice.  Playing D&D in my campaign is not just my game.  The player's are obviously a big part of the game.  If half my player's had to sit out the critical combat of the night because they made a "stupid" decision I'd try to find what went wrong.Why?  Because I'm the DM.  I'm the provider of the fun.  If I stick to the "letter" of the rules just to keep my players from getting to the critical combat (one that took 10 hours to prepare in this case), where is the fun in that?  I believe Fus started this thread to get two questions answered.  The rudeness of the player has already been answered.  The other part is what keeps this discussion going.  Did he do anything wrong?Three players (almost half the party) obviously decided to put armor instead of joining a combat.  A combat of which to this point they were not aware.First of all let's look at the metagaming that is obviously occuring at all levels here.  The guy that goes and gets the Duke went there because the other players were obviously not going to come to the combat.  That is blatant metagaming.  Should the party that was putting on armor have assumed that they had all the information about the encounter and sped off to the tower?  That would have once again been an even worse case of metagaming.  If they decided to stay because they were afraid of the vampires, of which they knew nothing about, then that is more metagaming.  Take your pick I'm not going to address the metagaming issue any further.How would I have fixed it and still kept it down to 4 minutes?All of them hear an explosion.  The unarmored ones decide to investigate.  The others decide to put on armor and join the rest when they are done.  Up to this point there doesn't seem to be any obvious level of metagaming.My first question as DM would be; why start counting rounds now?  Is it really important?  In the DM's view it obviously was.  This is where we disagree.  I would have not counted rounds at this point.  They were irrelevant.  That would have been my first change.  I know it's going to take four minutes to put on armor.  Let the clock run down as much as possible to get all the player's involved.  This was the first opportunity to let the armored ones get involved sooner rather than 40 rounds later.The ones heading over towards the explosion start moving.  Do I really need to count rounds?  Not in my opinion.  Just say it takes 30 seconds to a minute to get there.  Keep the clock running down.  I have 3 minutes to go.They arrive at the scene.  The scene gets described to them.  How long does that take?  Let's say that it took 10 game minutes to describe the scene.  Why does this assessment phase have to be near-instantaneous?  Keep the clock running down.  Arbitrarily estimate that assessing the situation took 2-3 minutes.  I will err on the side of caution and call it 3 minutes.  Is that in any way wrong?  Is it unreasonable?  Is it an unfair characterization that it will take 3 minutes to figure out where the Vamps are and what exactly they are doing.  Now I only have 30 seconds of armor donning to worry about or another 30 seconds for the rest of the group to get there.  Depending on how I counted time at the beginning.Now start the combat clock.  In either case the armor donning PC's arrive a bit later.  In most cases they will not miss the whole combat and still stay involved.  Best case scenario they arrive in 30 seconds (5 rounds later) worse case scenario they arrive in one minute (10 rounds later).Was that an unreasonable way of handling that encounter?  Did it break any of the rules?Not only did it not break the "letter" of the rules; by far I think that it accomplished the "spirit" of the rules much better.Maybe I'm wrong but I prefer to keep my players involved.My questions to those that so vehemently agree that it was the players' fault and that they should have sat the encounter out, that they should pay the consequences, ride the pine, warm the bench, etc.  I digress, the questions are:Would you as a player like to sit out a whole game night because your PC is playing within what you believe to be his character?Would you enjoy doing it because you made a stupid decision?Would you like sitting it out if your PC was obviously not aware of the situation?I personally don't like going to a game where I get to sit out the whole night while the rest of the party is in combat.  For any of the reasons mentioned above.  Maybe that is just me.As a DM I try to avoid these situations.If the purpose of the encounter was to teach the players that armor is a crutch and that they should have been heroic and carried on without their equipment; how does awarding them with any XP for this encounter promote that agenda?</blockquote>

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