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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6425554" data-attributes="member: 5143">Since I've been gone a while and this thread has gone quite far without me, let me put my 2 cents in.I think the game needs a good balance between player power and character power.  I think that removing all power from one or the other will cause major problems.However, I stand firmly in the camp that believes all my original examples were clearly things that SHOULD challenge the players.  I understand different DMs will have a slightly different line than others, however.I think players should decide the strategy and actions of their players.  A die roll should never determine WHAT your character does(except in very specific cases like insanity or confusion magic).  A die roll should determine how WELL you do what the player has decided their character does.  That was my point at the beginning of the thread.  The player in question said "Tell me what my character should do.  I rolled well."  I think that regardless of in game statistics, the inevitable decision for what their character does should be left to the player.The other issue I first posted about was letting the dice be absolute.  The player in question liked to say "I rolled high, you have to give me everything I want."  Whether that was an Intimidation check that the player felt should make the thief immediately spill his guts and admit to everything or a Persuasion check to convince an insane king to change his mind.  The player felt the dice should solve everything for him.  I disagree with this.As an example from one of the adventures I ran.  There's a Dwarf who has been corrupted by magic to make him really paranoid.  He sees enemies everywhere.  The same magic corrupted half the clan.  The Dwarf in question gathered up all the people who were corrupted and formed a new Dwarven city a couple of miles away from the one they originally lived in.  All of them carried cursed items that would continually make them fall deeper and deeper into their paranoia and anger(that was the source of the magic).  The new Dwarven king was being influenced as well someone who was taking advantage of their paranoia by asking them to do things for them.  The original king asked the PCs to convince the leader of the new Dwarven city to come back and live in their homes again.The PCs went there and the player in question said to the new king "You are being unreasonable, there is nothing to be afraid of.  You should put down your cursed weapons, you have no idea how they are affecting you."  He then made a good roll(good, not great.  I think it was a 15 or something).I had the Dwarf king rant about how the PCs were obviously trying to trick him into giving up his better weapons so that they could attack and they'd be unable to resist the attack."The player got angry because "How are we supposed to negotiate with these people?  They aren't acting rationally.  This is stupid."So I said "Give me an Insight roll."  He got pretty high and I said "The items appear to be making them paranoid."He said "I know that.  That doesn't help me at all.  He won't listen to me."One of the other players said "Wait...I know, I tell the king that the representative that is sitting next to him and asking him to do things is tricking him.  She's been lying to him and abusing his trust.  She doesn't care about him at all.  She wanted him to leave the other Dwarves and to keep the cursed weapons as part of her ploy."So, I let that argument succeed automatically.  The king agreed to have a talk with the old king to negotiate moving back in and getting rid of the weapons.Now, it's easy to say that I was restricting player choice and railroading the players to come up with the ONE AND ONLY option to convince the king.  But, frankly, it was the only real argument that was going to work on a king who was magically paranoid.  Sometimes, there really IS only one option.  I'd probably also have allowed any other argument to work with a VERY high roll(like 20+).  However, I have the most fun when players get rewarded for good ideas that they came up with on their own.On a related note, since this thread was ALSO kind of just me complaining about one of my players...why stop now.This same player actually threatened to stop playing D&D entirely earlier this week(something he only said because he was angry.  He showed up for our Wednesday D&D Expeditions session).  He was playing a Warlock and he made a comment about how everyone got disadvantage against him because he was standing in his Darkness spell.  I pointed out to him that it wasn't true.  Darkness makes you blind which means you give advantage to everyone who attacks you.  They have disadvantage because they can't see you, but that cancels each other out.He said "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.  This game is dumb if that's the case.  I'm standing in darkness and people get no disadvantage to hit me."I said "Well, technically, they still have to guess which square you are in, so if they don't know then there's a nearly 0 percent chance they hit you.  But even if they know what square you're in, it kind of makes sense that the two cancel each other out.  They are firing blindly into the darkness but you have no idea the attack is coming so you can't even begin to get out of the way.  So, their chance of hitting is about normal again."He said "No....no, that's stupid.  That's extremely dumb.  I built my entire character around hiding in the Darkness spell so people would have trouble hitting me.  Now I'm going to have to change my character entirely to a different type of warlock just so I can see in darkness so that I can cancel out that penalty.  I might as well not play this game any more if this is the kind of stupid thing that happens."He also tossed a bunch of dice around in anger.  The tone doesn't come across well in text but he was REALLY pissed off.Which just kind of goes to show that the issue I'm dealing with having this player around amount to the fact that the player wants everything to go his way 100% of the time.  If I don't rule how he wants me to he gets angry and starts taking a fit.</blockquote>

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