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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Herremann the Wise" data-source="post: 5323200" data-attributes="member: 11300">An interesting question for which I'll attempt a golfing analogy. I have a powerful golf swing (that got me down to a handicap of 7 once upon a time) but one that was not a perfect swing. At one stage, I wanted to get better so I went to see a particular golf pro who tried to make my swing more orthodox. Now while I tried this, my game literally fell apart. I perservered for a couple of months but my handicap started going backwards and so I went back to my old grip and swing and had to start afresh even with that (it did not warp me back to my old play and handicap overnight). Now, if someone suggests to me that I should change my swing and I'll become a scratch golfer, I just smile and say to myself, "I'm not going down that path again".Now while not a great analogy, changing my swing represents perhaps killing enemy NPCs for no purpose other than murdering them and taking their stuff. "He attacked me so therefore I'm entitled to kill him". Changing my golfswing set me back a heap; the only thing I learned was not to try it again - something that perhaps negative XP might mimic. In the end, I was just pondering the motives behind killing a threat that most likely does not need to be killed.Now this is a comment out of left field. I don't have a plot that is being derailed... can you please explain this one?This I think is a much better way of handling this situation rather than waving around what I term the "DM mallet of doom" (negative XP). Again though, this was not discussing a specific in-game situation as much as pondering why the only good enemy NPC is a dead enemy NPC for a lot of players? I further pondered the use of negative XP as a shock tactic to make the players think about what their characters were doing rather than following the usual pattern of kill and loot.This advice seems a little extreme. What on earth were you on when you wrote this?Best RegardsHerremann the Wise</blockquote>

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