Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Serge" data-source="post: 337245" data-attributes="member: 4049">I agree with the gist of what you're saying.  However, I think PCs should have the means to research and learn about apparent mysteries within a rpg.Case in point.  Two of us in our gaming group take turns DMing.  The last time we played, the other gentleman DMed.  For a while, we had been running into this Gnoll NPC who exhibited some decidely odd and interesting abilities that in no way corresponded with the core-classes.  While I was admittedly curious and did muse a bit about what class make-up this hairy bastard had, I didn't feel as if I was missing out on something or that the DM was "cheating."  In the end, some of the characters were allowed to do a little bit of research and discovered that the character was part of a special order that taught special things (a new PrC).  This special order, largely made up of evil folks, was far removed from where our characters were from, so our characters didn't know anything about it until we gathered some information from observation and conducted research.  Now, some players, before all of this came to light, were whining about the appearance that our DM (and myself on regular occassion) does not provide PCs with ready access to all information about all aspects of the game.  Not only is this attitude wrong with regards to our case (as the example above illustrates), it is also an attitude that tends to stem from people prone to meta-game/power-game, and to short-sighted rules-lawyers.  These types bring to a game their external player knowledge that infects their ability to be objective PCs.Another example.  The last time I gamed, my PCs ran into a Death Knight and a high level Cleric.  The Death Knight, whose stats I've had for some time, always had an immunity (of sorts) to divine healing magic, knowing that the casting of such a spell could destroy him.  The PCs, of course, didn't even know the guy existed much less knew of this special defense he had.  They decided to attack the two off the cuff after scrying them.  The PCs teleported in, and one of the fighters has an artifact (this is a EL 20 party) that allows him to cast heal 1/day.  He used the power on the Death Knight and saw no effect.  Of course, he was expecting something since it was the first time this ability could be used and seemed a little put-out that it didn't.  Simply put, the PCs had no reason to know about the Death Knights defense because they never did any research on it, were not from an area where there were legends associated with it, and did not notice anything unusual about the Death Knight to denote this special defense.  (They still destroyed the Death Knight.... although the cleric miracled him back).Anyway, I don't think PCs should go into a game expected to know every spell cast, or know the weakness of every monster.  Although I don't do this regularly, the other DM routinely adjusts Monster Manual monsters, and spell descriptions to ensure that PCs (including myself) have to actually use our characters to determine what's going on.  I admire and respect this.  I'm not certain all players do.</blockquote>

Verification