"I dive into the Bush of Burning Rashes"

[UltimaGabe]

Personally, although it's definitely possible to roleplay a tough character really well, it often stems (or leads to) metagaming.

One particular instance that really bothers me is one guy in my group. He's a Dwarven Fighter that's begun taking levels in the Armor Pugilist prestige class from Beyond Monks d20 (basically, it's like a Monk that specializes in defense- gaining Natural Armor, Damage Reduction, and gradual Fortification against Crits and Sneak Attacks. They also gain an ability where if an opponent misses their AC by 1, their weapon takes damage). Anyway, there was an adventure a long time ago (back when he was around 3rd or 4th level of this class) when he was trying to gather some information about a new drug that's been said to turn people into monsters... and he went to one of the worse parts of town, asking about it. Anyway, he wasn't being discrete about this at all, and one guy heard him talking about it, and so when he was about to enter a tavern, the guy came up to him and stuck a crossbow to his back, threatening to kill him if he found out that he wasn't for real (you know, making sure it wasn't some sort of sting operation or something).

Rather than act like anybody else would with a crossbow to his back, he (being a player with the mentality of the hero should always be heroic and all this crap) simply said, "Go ahead. Your arrow's just gonna break on my back."

I took this as an incredibly meta-gamed response. After all, he had damage reduction, and natural armor, and tons and tons of hit points, but nobody in real life would ever invite someone to shoot them, no matter what. For example, a 20th level Barbarian has hundreds of hit points and DR of 5/-. But no Barbarian, ever, unless the player was Metagaming, would go ahead and tell someone to try and stab him with a dagger. There's a point where you're being heroic, and a point where you're being a metagamer. This, in my opinion, crossed the line quite a bit.

 

[Pbartender]

I use the "Rule of Three".

"Seems dangerous. Are you sure?"

"On reflection that seems unwise and potentially harmful with no upside. Are you positively sure?"

"I hope you have you been planning what type of character you'd like to play next. Are you absolutely positive?"

I rarely get to three.

Yeah I usually do the same thing. Mine usually go something like...

ME: "Alright, you've made your way through the library full of animated books, though not without suffering an excessive number of paper cuts to every exposed part of your body. You now find yourself in front of a pit that is full of water and sharks and is 50 feet long, 20 feet deep and fills the entire width of the corridor."

PC: "I'll swim it."

ME: "Are you sure?"

PC: "It's not that far."

ME: "You do realize that sharks can smell blood in water, that you are carrying an awful lot of heavy equipment, and that you will be underwater the whole time."

PC: "In that case, I'll just let myself sink to the bottom, walk across and climb out the other side."

ME: "So let me get this straight... You are going to jump into a shark infested pool of water wearing 100 pounds of armor, weapons and camping gear. Tempt them with the blood of your fresh wounds. Stroll 50 feet through their feeding frenzy. Then you are going to climb a 20 foot high wall. And all this while holding your breath."

PC: "Um..."

By that time, I usually have the rest of the players helping me out.

 

[Philip]

Found the same thing... In our games we house ruled the save for fear/bravery effects to be the higher of Fort or Will. Found it fit with our mental image of the classes better. Thieves still run!

Thieves, thieves, what thieves?

Despite having gone through 3.0 and having arrived at 3.5 now, I'm still hearing about these pickpocketing dudes all the time! What splatbook are they from? Are they some kind of PrC?

 

[Dungannon]

Anyone else find the Title of this thread really naughty?

And here when I read the title I thought Clay had had another little "adventure" in his backyard, a la the AC ants.

 

[Lu Wei Fong]

Well it obviously depends on the character's personality and the reason they're doing it. Is it heroic motivation or self-interested? That's as complicatied as it needs to get I think. If it is an actual heroic act I would still require some minor save in order to go through with it, but only to represent that sometimes people's resolves do fail them. However, it would be a minor save at best, and I'd probably tip the dice if they failed; mainly because, well, quite frankly I haven't seen too many players who are terribly heroic, or at least non-self-serving. Of course I don't know that many players outseide of my city (and no offense intended to those I do know, they're cool people..... just cool people who'se method of making decisions is "what's in it for me?" )

 

[Brother MacLaren]

PCs get more of an opportunity to act heroic when the players don't know how much of a risk a given option is.
Frodo and Sam are placed in a nearly no-win situation. They are on a bridge, with little cover, and orc troops are coming up the road. What do they do? They jump over the side of the bridge. No idea how far down it is. Well, it's only a dozen feet and into a thicket, so they're fine. But that gutsy heroism is pretty cool.
Cinematic sensibility says that such heroic recklessness should be rewarded - especially if it is a way out of an otherwise no-win situation. If you as the DM really wanted Frodo and Sam to be captured for the next story, you could punish them for ruining your plan, or reward them for their nerve by letting them escape (and coming up with a new next story). I like the latter.
Some groups overdo the chess-game aspect of D&D, trying to cover all the angles and come up with perfect plans. I've been guilty of this too, but usually because of experience with DMs who don't reward the somewhat reckless heroism of action movies.