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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5496132" data-attributes="member: 2011">First off, what is a metagaming power? The powers are what they are. Are you talking about extending the power to do something that it is not supposed to do?If so, why would you want to open Pandora's box of possibly unbalancing the game because someone thought of a cool thing to attempt that his powers or skills do not actually allow?Using a skill example instead of a powers one, if my PC can use Acrobatics to jump from wall to wall up an alleyway ot the rooftops easily once, then it becomes problematic when the player starts using Acrobatics to solve every Climb problem in the future. Even when a pit is supposed to be difficult to get out of, the player will expect that he can use Acrobatics to do it, just like the previous dozen times he has tried it.There is an Athletics skill for Climbing. Acrobatics shouldn't be used for it. Nor should Acrobatics be used for Swimming.It is unfair to the player who purchased Athletics for his PC to allow a different PC to use Acrobatics to Climb.The same should often be done with powers. Extending the effects of powers or disallowing powers because of a narrative reason should be extremely rare and done with a bit of caution.Also, why should this be a group activity even if it were to be allowed? Why isn't it the responsibility of the player who is attempting the metagaming activity to state what his PC is doing instead of a group mind consensus of how to entitle every player to get away with whatever hairbrained idea that pops into his head?And there are several reasons to not require a narrative fit for any normal power or skill:1) Consistency. With a no narrative element required clause, the rules play the same every time. Players get comfortable that their powers and skills work as advertised.2) Ease of use. Not every player is a narrative genius. It is much easier to play the game with "I do Come and Get It" than "I jump up on the balcony pretending to lose my balance, as the enemies start to swarm me because of the weakness, I quickly recover and slice them all across the throats and drop them.". Requiring actions to have a narrative element and penalizing the player in some way if he cannot come up with a good narrative approach or does it poorly is too restrictive.3) Balance. The designers attempt to balance the powers. When players are allowed to modify the game on the fly by merely coming up with a cool narrative, it shifts the balance of the game towards those imaginative players who are capable of taking advantage of it.That's not to say that any given player or group of players cannot attempt whatever they want their PC wants to try using whatever narrative elements that they want, but the DM should be careful to change the rules over it. Nor should the players be required to create narrative elements when the PC is just swinging a sword. If the player wants to use Come and Get It, let him.If I as a DM have the BBEG protected behind a group of his allied NPCs and a player attempts to have his PC scale a wall and dive down behind those foes to get to the BBEG to attack him, there is no way that I am going to prevent him from trying that. He might succeed, he might not. But, I'm not going to say "You can't do that" because my storyline indicated that the PCs should not yet fight the BBEG.The player doesn't have to create a major justification on how he is doing something. The more detail he gives me, the better I understand his idea and the more reasonable of a difficulty that I will assign it. But he doesn't need a major narrative justification to try something, nor will I prevent it if it impacts the storyline in a way that I did not anticipate.But if the player does try something unusual, it will for the most part follow the rules or be pretty darn close. You want your PC to put his dagger in his teeth, jump off the balcony to the chandelier, grab it with both hands, swing across the room on it, drop down in front of the BBEG, pull out his dagger and stab him, I'm going to assign actions to these things, require dice rolls for some of these actions, and let the player know how much of it he has been able to accomplish this round. I'm not going to allow him to put 5 actions into a 3 action round, just because it is narratively cool.</blockquote>

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