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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chzbro" data-source="post: 5428920" data-attributes="member: 83964">Sure. As I said, I can't speak to this specific player's temperament; I can only speak in gross generalizations and hypotheticals. If a player wants to be a jerk just to be a jerk, there's not a lot of advice that can fix that. But the guard came as a response to the roof. I'm not saying that's a bad or even unreasonable DM response, but there are other options (e.g. a fall through the roof that elicits a laugh) that would have never put the player in the position to swear to kill the guard in the first place.In other words, in any number of situations like this one, a reasonable DM "consequence" can be interpreted by a player as "punishment" (and in this case it kind of is). The player's response will often be to push back ("Arrest me? I'll kill you!"), and suddenly the whole session is off-track and contentious.Rather than assigning blame in a game I was not at, I think it's constructive to talk about ways to "defuse" the situation before it becomes a situation. I've been in the "arrested" situation before as a DM. It's not a good place to be. Your hands are tied too. If you let the players fight the jailers, you know they'll probably win (unless you cheat). And then they're outlaws. If you don't let them fight, you're taking away any choice they have in the game--no fun.It's good to avoid painting yourself into a corner. Bringing the law because a half-orc chopped through a roof is bound to end up in confrontation. He didn't murder anyone, so why put him on the path of confrontation (and in fairness to the player, anyone who thinks a hole in a roof is better than climbing down is likely to react to someone arresting him with a punch to the nose)? As DMs, we create the situation. How would I react to a player swearing to kill an NPC cop for doing his job? Well, since I put that cop there, I'd have to think long and hard about making him a dirty cop who's got bad intentions toward the party and was just waiting for an excuse to lock one of them up. It's not the right answer; it's just a possibility.I'm just saying that as the DM it's ALSO your job to make sure everyone has fun even if one person's idea of fun isn't the same as yours. I'm not saying you let one person's fun ruin everyone else's, but sometimes smiling and letting someone do something dumb for 5 minutes is better than spending the next 2 hours sorting out the realistic consequences.</blockquote>

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