DM / Player problems

[MerakSpielman]

Except my sulky childish player is nearly 60 years old...

"What do you mean I can't cast Dominate Animal?"

"You can't see the animal. It's dark in there."

"But I know it's there. I can hear it. It will work."

"You can't target a spell at a creature unless you can see it."

"It says I communicate with its mind. I don't need to see it to do that."

"You need to see it to target the spell. I'll let you target it blindly if you want, but you have to randomly pick a square."

"No, I can target it. See? I communicate with an animal's mind."

Another player chimes in, "Can I change my action? Instead of readying an action to fire my bow I'm going to toss a torch in the cave so we can see it."

"Fine."

"So now I can see it?"

"Yes, you can target your spell at the dire bear now."

"OK, I cast Dominate Animal."

Roll. "It saves. You fail to establish a mental connection."

"Well I guess all my spells are useless then."

grrr.... She is the most stubbern woman I've ever met... You should have seen the time she insisted on burning her 2nd level spells to Wood Shape her staff into a pointy to kill a vampire, when there were wooden stools right there in the room. She refuses to study the PHB and tries to cast all her spells based on the short, one-sentence description of the spell on her character sheet printout (E-Tools).

 

[Tom Cashel]

"What do you mean I can't cast Dominate Animal?"

"You can't see the animal. It's dark in there."

"But I know it's there. I can hear it. It will work."

"You can't target a spell at a creature unless you can see it."

"It says I communicate with its mind. I don't need to see it to do that."

"You need to see it to target the spell. I'll let you target it blindly if you want, but you have to randomly pick a square."

Funny...your player sounds more reasonable than the 3.5 rules, from a common-sense standpoint. (Too bad 3.5 is a set of rules-by-committee designed to keep geeks from arguing, rather than a system to simulate anything non-gamers would recognize as common-sensical.)

But anyway...maybe "How are you going to dominate the animal if it can't see enough to be cowed by your dominant appearance? I mean COME ON!" would have worked better?