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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lonely Tylenol" data-source="post: 4737760" data-attributes="member: 18549">I like to let the players win.  All the time.  They like it too.For example, when a player takes a tiefling character, and gets fire resistance as a racial feature, the DM might be tempted to avoid targeting that character with fire attacks.  The wizard uses Ray of Frost on the tiefling instead of Scorching Burst.  The fire resistance becomes worthless, and the player loses.  If the DM hits him with a Scorching Burst, suddenly the player is winning in a small way.  He is pleased with his choice of character, and feels good about reaping the advantages he has sown.The fighter has an ability that only works when something shifts next to him.  If I never make anything shift, because I know about the ability, then his ability is much less fun.The party is looking for a secret mind flayer lair under the city.  The DM had planned for them to go back into the sewers where the illithid's minions had attacked them and track them back to the lair.  However, the party gets the charismatic rogue to ask around among the lowlife thugs at bars to find out if they know anything.  Do they know anything?  I sometimes play a game called Donjon, in which a successful roll allows the player to narrate the outcome.  The standard example is a "find secret doors" roll.  If you're in a room, and you succeed at that roll, there is a secret door.  It's up to the GM to figure out where the door leads to.I use this strategy extensively.  On a successful Streetwise check, they can dig up the information.  I didn't know that the thugs knew anything about the mind flayer, but I can improvise on their roll to fill in the story.  The player who chose Streetwise as a skill wins.  When they get to the lair, they might try to find a back way in, to avoid the guards.  On a successful Dungeoneering roll, they discover that there's a collapsed tunnel that they could dig out, granting them the chance for a surprise raid.  I didn't put the tunnel there until they made the roll.  The guy who took Dungeoneering wins.I tend to give players narrative control without the players even realizing they had it.  When they attempt something unexpected, I try to roll with it, by giving it a chance of success.DMing advice columns always try to tell you to put in things for every character to do.  If you have a bunch of combat monkeys, put in big, tough things for them to fight.  If you have a sneaky group, let them sneak.  But I can't always think of everything.  So if someone wants to try to use their abilities to do something cool, I let them do it.I also agree about "gotcha" abilities.  It's no fun when you move next to a monster only to find out that doing so was a really, really bad idea.  Does it have threatening reach?  Does it have an aura?  These things should be obvious.  This is not to say that monsters shouldn't have surprising abilities.  If you have an attack that makes a zone of flickering black energy, you don't need to say what will happen if you enter the zone.  It's obvious that it will suck.  But when the bugbear strangler grabs a PC, you should mention that he's holding him up like a human shield, so that the other players know what will happen if they try to hit him.  Or what will happen if they don't attack the paladin that marked them.Likewise, you should point out that a creature has resistance, but not necessarily what kind of resistance.  And if a creature has a vulnerability, don't bother to mention it until it takes that kind of damage unless, of course, the PCs figure it out with a skill check.</blockquote>

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