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<blockquote data-quote="DammitVictor" data-source="post: 8392087" data-attributes="member: 6750908">I'm pretty transparent about a lot of game mechanics... because I've seen a lot of things that are described as &quot;metagaming&quot; that are things that the player characters would obviously know, and describing the mechanic is a lot cleaner and more elegant than trying to describe it narratively. People who fight for a living know how much more abuse they can take, and how close their last attack routine came to hurting their enemy (hit points and AC); people who do a lot of jumping around have&nbsp; a pretty good idea of how high and how far they can jump.But the player in the OP was out of line. You told him how much damage he took, and what kind of damage it was. When he asked about the dice you rolled, you asked him for an Arcana check-- which, point blank, told him it was a spell-- demanded to know why he needed to roll an Arcana check for... something that you thought was worth an Arcana check. Knowing why you're rolling an Arcana check is pretty much always the reward for succeeding on an Arcana check.I mean, maybe he's a good player otherwise and one time like this doesn't really justify booting him. Maybe, yeah, everyone having a good time is more important than asserting your dominance as the Dungeon Master.But the appropriate response here, at minimum, is &quot;I've told you everything your character knows about the attack and the attacker. Either roll your Arcana check to learn more, or drop it and wait for your turn.&quot; I would very probably fail at phrasing it that politely, if it happened the way the OP described it... but my advice is usually a much better guide than my example.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DammitVictor, post: 8392087, member: 6750908"] I'm pretty transparent about a lot of game mechanics... because I've seen a lot of things that are described as "metagaming" that are things that the player characters would [I]obviously know[/I], and describing the mechanic is a lot cleaner and more elegant than trying to describe it narratively. People who fight for a living know how much more abuse they can take, and how close their last attack routine came to hurting their enemy (hit points and AC); people who do a lot of jumping around have a pretty good idea of how high and how far they can jump. But the player in the OP was [I]out of line[/I]. You told him how much damage he took, and what kind of damage it was. When he asked about the dice you rolled, you asked him for an Arcana check-- which, [I]point blank[/I], told him it was a spell-- demanded to know why he needed to roll an Arcana check for... something that you thought was worth an Arcana check. Knowing why you're rolling an Arcana check is pretty much always the reward for succeeding on an Arcana check. I mean, maybe he's a good player otherwise and one time like this doesn't really justify booting him. Maybe, yeah, everyone having a good time is more important than asserting your dominance as the [I]Dungeon Master[/I]. But the [I]appropriate response[/I] here, at minimum, is "I've told you everything your character knows about the attack and the attacker. Either roll your Arcana check to learn more, or drop it and wait for your turn." I would very probably fail at phrasing it that politely, if it happened the way the OP described it... but my advice is usually a much better guide than my example. [/QUOTE]

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