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Message: <blockquote data-quote="uzagi_akimbo" data-source="post: 1748350" data-attributes="member: 15945">Still, not giving XP because you overcome an encounter by using your resources cleverly, instead of hacking your way through it ? So disabling a giant with Tasha's Laughter and then hacking to pieces the poor sod while he is laughing his head of is probably unchallenging too ( I mean, he cannot strike back, can he ? So where is the challenge ?), just like, neutralizing him with a "Hold Monster", or "Charm" one of their numbers to perhaps aid you against them ? Probably sneak attacking isn't especially fair either.....Unless you play a very specific type of campaign e.g. "we are the Barbarian Horde" or "Knight of Valour and Platemail - that us !" where such tactics do not fit the setting.Crivens ! Perhaps he runs an ok and fun campaign and is nice guy to be around,  but penalizing players just because they resolve encounters in a way not pre-planned by him is low, and just lazy. If he doesn't want encounters to run a particular way, he should design them to be "watertight" against something like that. You say he GMd for 10 years - so he shouldn't be a newbie anymore and have developed enough skill as to how to run and set-up and interesting encounter. And if he is bothered by the way one or another spell/effect will break his adventures ("Fly" can be a big bother, I admit ) , have him make up a house-rule for it, and tell the players in advance, so they can plan accordingly.But expecting players to "just take it on the chin", instead of being clever and coming up with a more efficient solution to fight something (which I would actually consider far more a teaching expereince - hence XP ), just to get the XP at all, is just abusive and mildly sadistic IMNSHO. Or he is cramped into a "do it the barbarian way" style of play.Whatever his actual reasons, it severely contradicts the DMG on XP allocation for overcoming or avoiding an encounter. And that rule is there for a reason, mainly to resolve the brainless 1st edition rule that you have to kill a monster to get XP from dealing with it - which was one of the main reason's AD&D tended to be overly "hack'n slashy". Because creative, and especially non-violent soultions just did not pay off for the PCs by the rules.I wonder how he would rule if you used conjuring tactics and let some (dispensable) monsters or animals fight for you while you shoot the monsters up from the second and third tier... give the XP to the summoned beasties, because they did the "hard work" ?In the original vein - another monstrosity with a deceptively low CR is the Hydra, a combat brute par execellence, where it is explained even in the MM itself, that the players are expected to not go toe-to-toe with it if they want to survive at normally appropriate levels. So hope your GM never finds out or is resistant to the not so subtle hint by the MM's designers......</blockquote>

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