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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7013909" data-attributes="member: 16814">You usually need to do some work to show they're false, though.  Just yelling 'false' isn't enough, which is why I thought you playing a game.  No, you misunderstand me.  Dragons breath deals about the same damage as the dragon's 1 round melee routine.  If the dragon can't successfully melee and has to rely on breathing, the damage over time drops significantly.  Occasional breath weapons do not make up for an inability to melee.Wow, that last sentence is doing a LOT of work.  You just said exactly what I was saying you said, you just tried really, really hard to phrase it differently.  But, please, explain the actual difference between selecting monsters to offset a troublesome ability and not selecting monsters that help a troublesome ability be more effective?  It appears to me that the monsters selected will come from the same subset of things that work well against the ability, yeah?  In which case, your defense is semantic?And, if it's your 'normal' state, there won't be any disruption.  If, for instance, you normally select enemies for the players that are effective against cloaks of displacement and use limited melee routines, then there will be no distortion to your game if you continue it.  But, if you didn't do this before a cloak shows up, and start doing it after, then you have distorted your game because of the cloak.  I'm not discussing 'normal' as some hobby-wide benchmark, I'm discussing 'normal' as within the same game.  If you make changes to the way your world presents because of troublesome character abilities, you're engaged in the behavior I'm discussing.Of course you can make different choices, but the why matters.  If you're making new choices because that player with the cloak is impossible to hit and you add things to offset that, you are specifically reacting to change your game solely to offset that new ability.  New abilities shouldn't be offset, they should be incorporated.  If you find yourself making changes to offset an ability, you're just moving the problem around, not solving it.I believe you, but your suggestion to anyone who complains about a troublesome combination or ability is 'hey, you pick the monsters, what's the problem?'  When pressed you stick to the fact that picking the monsters is the DM's prerogative, and picking monsters to offset an ability is just fine, game as intended.  My point is that picking monsters to offset player choices is bad metagaming -- if there's a problem you find yourself offsetting, you need to deal with the problem, not move it into a different space and pretend you fixed it.  Picking monsters for variety is outstanding!  I highly recommend the practice.  Picking monsters because they work against specific abilities of your players is outstanding, if done sparingly.  I highly recommend the practice.  Picking monsters to work against a particular player ability you find problematic, but offsettable if you pick the right monsters isn't outstanding, it's hiding a problem better dealt with directly.  Because moving it to the monsters means that other players will now deal with the problem of your monsters selections.I've never seen you state this this way.  Not once, across three other thread that discussed this issue.  But, as much as I agree with that phrasing, you're still stating that the best way to deal with those consequences is inside the game, by changing post facto the baseline that the choice was made within.  That just moves the problem and allows you to pat yourself on the back for fixing a problem by moving it somewhere less visible.</blockquote>

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