Dms, dont you wish

[DragonLancer]

I have got a player who queries every call I make, mainly because its a situationly change that he's not aware of. It doesn't slow the game down that much, but I think unless your DM is new to the game and the rules, it behooves you to trust the DM during game and to raise it afterwards.

 

[maddman75]

When there's a rules dispute, we take a minute to check the book and I listen to the player's position. If it still isn't clear or we can't find the rule, I make a decision and we move on. My players trust me, and know that I'm out to provide a good story setting, not "screw over" their characters. 3e becomes so much easier when you realize there are so many variable modifiers that you can use no stat block at all, just make up numbers that sound about right and your players will *never* know the difference.

But that's the kind of game I run - we're not hung up on rules. Or balance, really. We're interested in telling cool stories. All else is secondary.

 

[Ourph]

No, the players should understand how poison works. They should know the consequences of failing or succeeding at a die roll. Some characters have the ability to modify a die roll be expending limited resources. If they don't know the consequence of the roll they cannot evaluate whether or not to use the limited resource. Should you take the bear's endurance potion after being poisoned? Well, if you are worried about making that second saving throw, maybe you should.

What does knowing how the specific mechanics of the poison rules work have to do with being worried about making your second saving throw and perhaps taking a bear's endurance potion?

The player already knows that poison requires a Fort saving throw and that bear's endurance will help with that.

The player already knows that poison causes "bad things" to happen.

The player doesn't need to know the DC of the poison, when the second save occurs or what "bad thing" the poison will do. That's metagame knowledge. The PC has no way of knowing that this particular poison will do ability damage, HP damage, paralysis, sleep, etc.

The DM should do an adequate job of explaining the situation in terms of IC knowledge and the player should make his/her decision based on the DM's description. A player who is depending on their knowledge of the rules of poison to make decisions is using info their character shouldn't have.

 

[Ourph]

Not to mention that players definitely should know when their character has taken 6 points of Constitution damage from poison - that's a significant percentage of any character's hit points. Same for Strength, Dexterity - and the mental stats, even more so! "You try to cast teleport but, uh, you can't."

"Why not?"

". . . you don't know. Your thoughts are muddy, which is something you have not noticed before now."

Blah.

A good DM will keep his players informed of what's going on with their character. It's much easier just to explain things in terms of rules mechanics, but the easy way isn't always the best way. In my experience, a DM who leaves the mechanics out of his descriptions as much as possible, and just describes to the players what their characters would be feeling/seeing/hearing/smelling/etc. provides a much better and more enjoyable game than one who simply says..."you lose 6 points of Con".

One of the reasons I WON'T run 3e D&D anymore is that this style of DMing is really difficult to pull off in a system with so many rules. In order for the game to run smoothly the players need to understand most rules almost as thoroughly as the DM. It takes a lot of mystery and excitement out of the game for me, both as a player and a DM.

For the record, when I'm running Basic D&D, I keep the PCs HP totals. They know what their healthy totals are, but once they've taken damage they have to rely on my description of what's happened to them and how they are feeling in order to make their decisions about whether to press on, turn back use healing resources, etc. That's the type of game I like to run and the players seem to really enjoy it. The other upside is that it's one less thing for them to keep track of during the game.

It sounds like you and jmucchiello would hate playing in that type of game. We're just looking at the DM/player roles from very different perspectives I think.