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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wicht" data-source="post: 6204740" data-attributes="member: 221">I don't think that this is obvious at all, unless you mean something other than what you are actually saying.  Why can I not, in an urban adventure, place traps, obstacles, and treasure just as I would in a dungeon?  And I most certainly can plant clues in an intrigue play that the players must use their abilities to uncover, same as in a dungeon...While I can ad-lib things (isn't my chief talent as a DM, but I can do it), I much prefer to plan contingencies in advance to advance the plotline (assuming there is one) and such contingencies should most certainly take into account the actual abilities of the PCs (or if doing it commercially, the potential abilities of anyone that might play through the adventure.This gets to a sore point with me about assertions some in these parts are making... namely that I (or some others) are constantly seeking to assert DM fiat in an attempt to nerf, weaken or otherwise thwart spellcasters.  I take a little bit of umbrage at that, firstly because its not actually the actual contention, and secondly, because I try my best not to write or DM that way. In point of fact, when writing adventures, it is lazy design to try and limit player abilities in order to not have to deal with them. This is not to say that some writers or DMs don't attempt this route, I am certain they do. Now, there might be times when an adventure should have elements that prevent or thwart one particular avenue of reconciliation or completion, not to be a pain, but to force players to stretch and think outside the box, as it were. But by and large, challenges should be designed with the full capabilities of the PCs in mind.If I can make an appeal to personal authority, I wrote and cowrote the module Coliseum Morpheuon, which is a high level PFRPG module (and well reviewed too), so I know somewhat of designing for high levels (indeed all the actual adventure writing in that book is my work). When writing the module, it was a design guideline that there was to be no attempt to try and nerf any ability in any encounter but rather each encounter would demand that high level characters would have to utilize absolutely everything in their ability to overcome the challenges. I think, regardless of level, this is a good design principle. Do the players have access to fly? Then rather than try to prevent the players from flying, the designer should try and incorporate challenges in which flight might sometimes be necessary. Do the players have access to mind-reading. Then the DM should create challenges which require the PCs use this. Now I can see someone saying that such a philosophy only makes the spellcasters more central to game play, but its not so. Rather it assumes that spellcasters are one facet of what a group has access to and thus incorporates it. Likewise good adventure writing should include tracking opportunities, locks to pick, foes that are better fought with a sword than a spell (certain constructs for instance), undead for the clerics to have fun with, diplomacy opportunities, plenty of knowledge checks (including engineering, local, and nobility), swimming opportunities, climbing opportunities, and the like.  That is a good adventure design includes a wide variety of challenges and if done right, then it is true that the casters might use spells to overcome some of them, but it is doubtful any wizard or cleric will have spells suitable to overcome all of them at the same time. And when the spellcaster does not have the right spell, the fighters and rogues are always going to be there to pick up the pieces.Now, that being said, a couple of other things...1) Player does not know if a sword is magical. 2) Player cast detect magic. 3) Player learns the sword is magical. That's normally how I preconceive that situation as unfolding, but I am willing to allow that, as you feel a good DM should have no preconceptions about these things you might have some notion that it could unfold differently.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Well, thats not 100% accurate, but I can mostly agree that a good DM should stay within the framework of the rules as much as possible and not try to cheat the players of fairly won or earned knowledge. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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