EL of this encounter -- my Players stay out

[gwythinn]

The two animals pulled until they completely ripped the portcullis off the wall. Then they tried to push the fallen portcullis out of the way. I ruled that the abjuration was still on the portcullis, and so this “summoned” the efreeti again. The PCs retreated from the room again.

Sweet. I stuff the portcullis into my bag of holding and leave. Every now and then I reach in and touch it to summon the efreeti to the target area, just to piss him off. If he ever shows up and tries to retaliate, I just touch the portcullis and *poof*, away he goes!

 

[Nail]

Sweet. I stuff the portcullis into my bag of holding and leave.

That's just the sort of thing we'd do as players as well. By the end of the campaign we had stacks of such (supposedly) "fixed" magic items in our fortress: Heads of a dragon statue, manacles of Dimensional Lock we ripped from the wall, obelisks of doom, etc. Great stuff.

And surprisingly common in published adventures.

 

[domino]

That's unfortunate thinking on their part. Tell them OOC to stop metagaming like that.

How is it metagaming?

"Hey guys, remember the last time we did something that summoned a critter to stop us, and it showed up again after we killed it? Maybe this is like that time."

Seems perfectly in character to me.

 

[Nail]

But because of an encounter with a guardian-type creature in another adventure in another campaign,

You missed the highlighted part, domino.

 

[Infiniti2000]

How is it metagaming?

"Hey guys, remember the last time we did something that summoned a critter to stop us, and it showed up again after we killed it? Maybe this is like that time."

Seems perfectly in character to me.

By "another campaign" I'm assuming it happened with different characters. I don't see how using character information across characters is not metagaming. It may be player conditioning, but it's definitely false experience.

 

[domino]

Ah. I did indeed miss the "other campaign" part of things.