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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lyxen" data-source="post: 8392518" data-attributes="member: 7032025">Let's not confuse everything. What was rolled to hit is not necessary (I know the AC ballpark, see it more precisely if I need to), the damage type is just part of the description, so it's just the damage.As for asking a save, of course I need to describe the effect and tell the kind of save and the result, just as above. But it's certainly not detailed.It's not choppy at all if you do it simply with nice description, although it's also due to our "no talking during someone else's turn"  rules.Our players don't find them confusing, what can I say ? The fire giant slams his flaming hammer at you, you take 19 damage plus 10 fire. It's already a not so simple case, how confusing is that ?What can I say, maybe we pay more attention to combat, maybe we are better at memorising things, who knows ? And we have run all levels, so it's not a question of complexity.And then, after a few years playing together (and some of us have been playing together for 35+ years, and the whole of 5e) maybe it's always clear. And maybe, because no-one interrupts and nitpicks, it also easier to provide simple and clear descriptions. The end result, it works really well for us.And just have a look at Critical Role, it's simple and descriptive, almost nothing technical and everyone is having fun. I can't do the voices as well as Matt, but I can run a combat just as smoothly.Technically fairly is not our objective in the game. Our objective is fun and story.And if all these things are true about the DM, why needle him about technicalities when he is just trying to help you tell a good story ?So yes, it never happens at our games that players are not polite to the DM, but if anyone were to be impolite to me, I would just show him the door.Does the player have any right to know it's a hunter's mark ? In general no, it's just an accurate shot. So why waste time ? Moreover, it really depends on the roll, so some attacks with hunter's mark are going to be puny anyway,Not ours. In 5e, except when it's a huge battle combat is usually well under one hour, sometimes just a few minutes using Theater of the Mind, and it's certainly not in the weeds. It's the excitement, and the fear, and the triumph that matters.Good for you and if your players like it. Just pointing out that it's not the only way to play, you can play really well using completely different ways of thinking.Even if it might interest them, their characters have even less reason to know the information. Why provide it to them ? And at our tables, people are not interested in anything delaying someone else's turn, they'd rather that it swings back to them. Even if you delay 10 seconds on each player, it's still a full minute wasted for every player until their turn comes again.Trying to leverage technical information that the character does not know about to play tactically better is trying to get an edge on the system, so it's by default competitive.And again, if someone is telling a great story and is making grammar mistakes telling it to me, I will not stop his story to point out the mistakes. Not only is that extremely rude, but it's also silly as it's much better to enjoy the story.D&D is perfectly set up to tell slice of life stories, you know. Not everything has to be on the knife's edge. Just read books of watch movies of the genre, this is what we are trying to emulate while playing.Do we absolutely have to speak only about the subject of the thread ? I came in and mentioned trust. Obviously, when there is lack of trust, someone thinks about the reasons for it. But fine, if you don't want to discuss cheating, let's leave it out of the equation, it does not matter that much.You are the one putting arbitrary values here, but what I count as minor is anything that does not break suspension of disbelief in the player, and that threshold is completely dependend on the player.Once more, no. Please explain what, in the rules, prevent the DM to decide that monster does just this ? Not only is there absolutely nothing in the rules about this, but on the contrary the rulebooks themselves tell you exactly what I told you, the DM does what he wants, decides which if official rulings are in play or not, and can do whatever he wants.Once more, nothing forces the DM to decide anything in advance, whether it's deciding the rules, the abilities of a monster, what triggers things, etc.Obviously, if a DM abuses this, and presents an inconsistent world that is not fun, the players will leave quickly. But, compared to what you stated above, I've had quite a number of cases where monsters were completely invulnerable because the players had ignored many clues about their invulnerability, and actually had to flee because there was no victory to be had that day.And when they learnt about it, they did exactly like all heroes do in the books/movies of the genre, said "what idiots we have been" and set up to correct their mistakes.And when I create a custom monster that does not play by the rules, I don't apologise or explain things in advance, I just let my players discover it and react, just like what happens in books/movies.Remember, the rules are just approximations of the way the world behaves in standard cases. But in some cases, the world is stronger than the rules, and the story matters more than rules. Just because the DM does not play by these approximations does not mean that he is cheating. He can't cheat, he literally makes the rules.</blockquote>

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