Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harzel" data-source="post: 7138721" data-attributes="member: 6857506">You've brought up an interesting situation of your own, so I don't want to derail your thread, but I feel your characterization of the advice given in the Quasit thread is unfair.  I only skimmed back through the thread quickly, but I didn't see any that really suggested shutting down the player entirely.  Instead most seemed to be suggesting either a) adjusting the game to be more in line with RAW regarding invisibility and the traits of quasit familiars; or b) introducing more varied challenges for the players.  In both cases, these would trim back the effectiveness of the quasit scouting somewhat from the way it was being played in that DM's game, but still leave it a very useful tactic.Anyway, sorry for the digression; back to your topic.From your anecdote, the first thought that strikes me is that when "the players approach is pretty much the worst thing they could have done", very likely they are working from bad assumptions, which generally means they have either inaccurate or too little information.  Maybe this is not along the main thrust of what you are thinking about, but did the PCs try to learn anything about the chieftain or the cult leader before confronting them?  Was there any way they could have done so if they had wanted to?  Did the guards give them any hints about what would happen if they just barged in?  Did the chieftain let them know he was getting angry before calling the guards in? (I don't mean, "You know when you speak to the cult leader instead of me, I feel angry.", more like, "When you are in Umbrang's house, you speak to Umbrang!  Otherwise, you leave!" <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=":)" />)Second thing is, maybe my imagination is failing me, but from what you have described, I have a hard time imagining how the PCs could have gotten a better outcome.  How could you have "gone with the flow" in a way that would have had integrity?  Even if they had not gotten thrown out, how was chatting up the cult leader a pathway to the success of their mission?  Really, it seems to me that the PCs are fortunate that the cult leader did not dispatch a large contingent of cultists to follow and murder them.I guess if you could have understood in the moment what assumptions the players were making and if those assumptions were 'fair' (for some definition of 'fair') based on their prior knowledge and efforts, then you could have altered your reality on the fly to reify those assumptions and let them proceed from there.  That seems like a reasonable general procedure.  But, as noted, I don't quite see how it could have applied in this case.</blockquote>

Verification