Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8392339" data-attributes="member: 70468">It depends. For mechanics that originate from or interact with the players’ character sheets, I try to be as transparent as possible. I don’t think it’s worth slowing down the game to hide the AC of enemies or difficulty of skill checks. The players will intuitive it eventually anyway. There are some exceptions though. I usually don’t outright say that monsters take reduced damage. It’s usually implied by the way the blow is described.If we’re learning a game, and there’s a question of how something works, I’ll take a moment to explain what is happening. For example, when we first started playing 5e, and I ran Lost Mines of Phandelver, the players were worried about the thugs in town because they did two attacks. They assumed the thugs must be really high-level fighters (since we were coming from Pathfinder where NPCs typically were built like PCs). I took some time to explain how things work in 5e, and that cleared things one.One area where I typically don’t reveal mechanics is when it comes to GM-side mechanics. I’m not going to reveal the results of my random event checks. I don’t use player-known hexes in our hex crawl. The players know how far away something is (“it’s north about 9 hours through the forest and over the mountain”), but they are not privy to how I track progress. I’m running Worlds Without Number, so that also goes for the faction game. The result of that will manifest in the game world, but they won’t know mechanically just how that came about (though if any are interested in how the faction game works in the abstract, I’m happy to explain it).The issue I have with the OP’s situation is the rules-lawyering being directed at the DM. The creatures have to be built this certain way because that’s how it works for the PCs. I assume a conversation has been had explaining how monster design works in D&D. If not, having one should clear up any misunderstandings about how creatures and NPCs work. Even if you keep certain things secret or close to the vest, it behooves you as a DM to be willing to talk about how the game works (in an appropriate context, which is usually but may be in the middle of battle).If the disruptions continue in spite of trying to address the player’s concerns, then that’s probably something that needs to be discussed with the group (to see if it’s bothering anyone else) and the player (to see if some kind of compromise can be struck). It could be that the player is just a really bad fit for one’s style, but I’d hesitate to take drastic action if everyone else is cool with it.As for what’s on the players’ character sheets, I like to review them because my players have a habit of making mistakes. Like not having all the skill points, feats, or other things they should have. This was particularly bad when I was running Pathfinder 2e because that system is pretty tightly tuned, and several of my players had missed things. <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😒" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f612.png" title="Unamused face    :unamused:" data-shortname=":unamused:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /></blockquote>

Verification