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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5498456" data-attributes="member: 2011">And nothing states that "Saying No" doesn't mean that one cannot qualify it, just like one can qualify "Saying Yes, but...".Player: "I want to jump off the 200 foot cliff and catch a branch 20 feet down."DM: "Are you sure you want to do that? Are you sure there is a branch to even catch?"Player: "Well, the DMG has a section on 'Saying Yes'."DM: "Uh huh. Good luck with that."The rest of the table laughs their butts off.The DM didn't actually say no, but he might as well have.An extreme example, but the point is that sometimes, the best thing a DM can do is basically say No and let the game move on such that the PC doesn't commit suicide (literally, or figuratively) or disrupt the game for the entire group.What's worse, the player having the PC committing suicide because the DM said "Yes, but it will be really hard to pull off" and the player didn't quite get that really hard meant basically impossible?Or the PC getting killed in combat?I'll give an example in a 3E game I was a player in once. I had a PC that had a lot of escape options (potentially important to the final outcome). That PC had a background of being a captured slave. The DM added quite a bit of violence to that background. The DM then had quite a bit of violence in the adventure within the middle of town where press gangs and mercenary foes hired to attack the PCs. After one such encounter, the PCs went to the headquarters of the mercenaries in town. There were two guards out front. There was nobody else in sight (also potentially important to the final outcome).We started talking to them and told them to take us to someone in charge (it was not a polite conversation) and they told us to go away. My PC had been trained over and over again in this campaign that violence was the answer to problems, so he pulled out his sword and killed the one guard and told the other guard to go get someone in charge. The DM suddenly had "dozens of mercenaries" coming out of the woodwork (out of the headquarters, from taverns down the street, etc.) as if their pagers all went off at the same time. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> Most of the party managed to flee, but without even running an encounter, my PC was "killed" and another PC who was sticking by my PC was "captured" (the player of that PC wanted to just waste these guys as well because they were the enemy as far as we were concerned, but my PC did it instead of his, so my PC was killed).To me, I was roleplaying my PC based on the scenario and his personality/background. To the DM, I was being disruptive in his game. But instead of "Just saying No" and stopping the game and explaining ramifications, the DM "Just said Yes" and allowed my PC to commit suicide.The player of the PC that stuck by my PC asked why we didn't actually run the encounter instead of DM fiat. The DM replied with "Running the combat is not worth my time", so although I wasn't too bothered about losing my PC before that comment, that ticked me off and I replied with "Well, this game is not worth my time" and I left and never returned. The DM could have run the encounter and my PC might have still died, but that's not the point. The point is that the DM could have averted the entire issue by just letting me know up front that this was the most likely response to such an action. Just say No.When it comes to the player having his PC do something really stupid, possibly because what the DM is explaining is different than what the player is hearing, "No" or "No but..." is sometimes preferable to "Yes but ...".</blockquote>

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