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<blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 7322038" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!Druid: &quot;Ok. I turn into a spider and go down the corridor&quot;DM: &quot;The corridor goes about 30', then it....uh, what are you doing?&quot;Druid: &quot;Huh? Just drawing the map&quot;DM: &quot;How?&quot;Druid: &quot;What do you mean?&quot;DM: &quot;You're a spider. You don't have opposable thumbs, let alone a piece of paper and a pencil. You can't draw a map.&quot;Druid: &quot;...oh...crap... I guess I turn back into myself and go back out to the party&quot;.Problem solved.I see new-ish DM's fall into a kind of &quot;the game rules allow...so...&quot; mentality. Can't blame them, really. Most newbie DM's grew up with video games as their basis for &quot;RPG reality&quot;. In a video game, you frequently hit &quot;M&quot; to bring up a map of where your character is and this map is perfectly drawn/scaled and doesn't actually exist &quot;in the game world&quot;. Well, with RPG's, that shouldn't fly (unless you're playing some kind of game that has something like that...sci-fi, for example).My suggestion is when something pops up that has you pause and go &quot;Hmmm...that seems....powerful&quot;. Stop and try and think of the situation from the PC's perspective, and then think how the character would be able to do whatever that thing was/is. In the Druid case...as soon as he starts to map (or anyone else at the table; they aren't there, remember?)...think of how they'd be able to do that. Even if the PC's are using magic...say, Telepathy...what and how things look from a spider perspective is probably VASTLY different from that of a human/demihuman. I mean, to a human, 30' is a dozen or two steps. To a 1&quot; spider...hell, it probably can't even 'see' more than a foot, and that's being generous! Having the DM say &quot;Ok, you are on a vast plane of stone, to your right is another plane of stone, the wall, that goes on for as far as you can tell&quot;. A particularly cruel DM would pull out the Wildness rules and consult the chances for getting lost while on the Plains. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />&nbsp; (Yeah...I might do that... lol!).IMHO, the druid is better off turning into a rat and hoping he isn't captured and eaten (well, 'killed'). At least then he'd have a more 'normal array' of senses and sense of scale. There's still the whole &quot;drawing a map&quot; problem though, so using wildshape to get a sense of particular threats is a better idea...mapping, not so much.^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pming, post: 7322038, member: 45197"] Hiya! Druid: "Ok. I turn into a spider and go down the corridor" DM: "The corridor goes about 30', then it....uh, what are you doing?" Druid: "Huh? Just drawing the map" DM: "How?" Druid: "What do you mean?" DM: "You're a spider. You don't have opposable thumbs, let alone a piece of paper and a pencil. You can't draw a map." Druid: "...oh...crap... I guess I turn back into myself and go back out to the party". Problem solved. I see new-ish DM's fall into a kind of "the game rules allow...so..." mentality. Can't blame them, really. Most newbie DM's grew up with video games as their basis for "RPG reality". In a video game, you frequently hit "M" to bring up a map of where your character is and this map is perfectly drawn/scaled and doesn't actually exist "in the game world". Well, with RPG's, that shouldn't fly (unless you're playing some kind of game that has something like that...sci-fi, for example). My suggestion is when something pops up that has you pause and go "Hmmm...that seems....powerful". Stop and try and think of the situation from the PC's perspective, and then think [I]how[/I] the character would be able to do whatever that thing was/is. In the Druid case...as soon as he starts to map (or anyone else at the table; they aren't there, remember?)...think of how they'd be able to do that. Even if the PC's are using magic...say, Telepathy...what and how things look from a spider perspective is probably VASTLY different from that of a human/demihuman. I mean, to a human, 30' is a dozen or two steps. To a 1" spider...hell, it probably can't even 'see' more than a foot, and that's being generous! Having the DM say "Ok, you are on a vast plane of stone, to your right is another plane of stone, the wall, that goes on for as far as you can tell". A particularly cruel DM would pull out the Wildness rules and consult the chances for getting lost while on the Plains. ;) (Yeah...I might do that... lol!). IMHO, the druid is better off turning into a rat and hoping he isn't captured and eaten (well, 'killed'). At least then he'd have a more 'normal array' of senses and sense of scale. There's still the whole "drawing a map" problem though, so using wildshape to get a sense of particular threats is a better idea...mapping, not so much. ^_^ Paul L. Ming [/QUOTE]

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