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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ferghis" data-source="post: 5145729" data-attributes="member: 40483">I don't think this would be a reasonable player's request. A lot of the responses here have addressed how to prevent this, and I respect them, but I sincerely think that this is an unlikely scenario, at least among the people I choose to game with. If you have this problem, you have other problems.This seems fair.I'm not sure how this addresses my first point. Are you saying that they can have interrupted series of potentially useful Total Defense actions outside combat?You misunderstand me. I'm simply saying that it's unfair, not that the DM doesn't get the final call. The DM is the final arbiter etcetera etcetera. But the DM's decisions are not automatically fair. This one kinda stinks. I'm not saying I'd walk away from the gaming table because of this: far from it. It just smells bad.It's an abstraction, sure, but it still refers vaguely to certain specific actions. You can't refluff cleave to say that you just bought a ticket to Bolivia. The abstraction still has an in-game counterpart that must be somewhat coherent and beleivable within the game environment. I think every single poster here agrees on that. I'm afraid that I've somehow given the impression otherwise. Let me clarify, again, that I would not play with anyone that assumed that to be the case.I'm crystal clear that (a) you (and others) don't think folks can use total defense all the time, and (b) you would allow players to take total defense out of combat, but those actions wouldn't have any effect in combat. Le me know if I've missed something. But that's not how the game action works, is it? As I wrote above, there is no such requirement on the action. Nothing says "you must have a general idea that people might be attacking you to use Total Defense." You can have your character take a total defense action even if it is an uncontested fact that nobody intends to attack your character. The only requirement we're imposing, here, is that the characters must be in a combat situation. Or are you houseruling something else? Unless you have some other houserules that restrict these actions, this still fails to address the point you quoted. Why should a character in-combat be able to have better defenses than an equally alert and ready character out-of-combat?As I said above, I don't dispute that fact.I disagree. By limiting a character's actions out of combat, the DM is restraining character action. This restarint becomes more emphasized when a DM limits when a combat encounter can begin. That's unfair. It's not at all like saying players are being unfair for deciding their character's actions.Seriously? I'm not sure I understand. It sounds like you are saying that the negative impact on the game is that these actions would not advance the plot, and therefore should not be allowed. I guess you can take that position, and forbid all player actions that are unlikely to advance the plot, but I don't know anyone that plays that way. Or maybe that's not what you're saying, Draco. Maybe you're just saying that the negative impact on the game is that it wastes real time, but you're vetoing these actions for other, unrelated reasons. Still, the time wasted does not sound like enough reason to ignore the "say yes" policy that DMs are supposed to have, at least to me. As I said several times throughout this thread, I don't think anyone should be able to take Total Defense or Ready Actions all the time.</blockquote>

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