I Hate Bards

[jbear]

I wasn't going to reply to this as others had put in their arguments and interpretations which I agreed with, however...

For those (including Iconik, Hi! *wave*) saying they don't understand where the hostility for this player comes from, look at the title of the thread: "I hate bards". It starts off on a negative slant right there, because it's not "Need a rules interpretation on a bard power" or "Need help with a rules call" or "Need help with a troublesome player"... it states in very strong speech "I hate bards". It implies there's a huge problem that's very disruptive.

As for the LoE on the target and whatnot, one thing people haven't brought up (amazingly, I think about every other angle was covered!) was if the bard needs line of effect on his ally to teleport him (which I can't see why he wouldn't? It's not like the power was creating a zone, and even if it was, the worm would protect him from that zone), he doesn't know where in the worm the other character is. How can you teleport something if you can't see it or don't know where it is? One can argue, "Well, it's maaaagic", but as another poster pointed out, it opens the door to a lot of abuse later on down the road. The teleportation rules do not cover teleporting another creature, only personal movement.

So, in cases where it's kind of open to interpretation, what I would have done as a GM was evaluate the situation. If it was dire, or a tough encounter, I would have ruled in favor of the player. If it was not dire, I would have ruled against it.

yes the OP's first post certainly attempted to paint the player in a negative light.

He backtracked fairly quickly on that in his following posts.

Just because someone posts about what they consider a troublesome player, others are still able to judge for themselves. I didn't really see anythin that the OP described the Bard to be doing as either 'troublesome' or to be the equivalent of a 'dick-move'.

As for the second issue: The end corner of the victim's bright red cloak was snagged between the purple worms teeth which the Bard of course spotted when the worm opened it's big mouth to burp. Assuming, given the quality of that fine cloak, that it was still attached to its wearer, the rest from there was childs play for someone as multi talented as the bard to resolve

I agree with Shin Okada, in so far as this is definitely not something explicit enough to be poopoohed with the wave of a hand, and 'end this pointless discussion now' type phrase. I'd quite like to understand how this works better myself, 'cos if this came up in my game I wouldn't have a clue if I was interpreting the rules correctly. Not that I would make my judgement based on the rules necessarily, not when things got so hairy, but if I'm going to bend and break (as a DM) the rules, I like to be aware of when I'm doing it.

For me it is very relevant that the Purple Worm has a feature that explicitly states that it blocks line of sight and effect when it swallows its victim. If the player was clever enough to explain how one could get around this obstacle, then I'd let it fly, move on and then have the Purple Worm swallow the Bard

 

[Saeviomagy]

That first post really makes it seem like everyone os not having a good time, even if they latter posts do.

A player using a skill check to skip an encounter the rest of the group really wanted to do does sound like a "dick" move to me.

I don't get why the party couldn't have just hunted the beetles down regardless if they were that desperate for an encounter.

Or pick a fight with the locals in a bar. Or go hunting pigs. Combat isn't exactly hard to find.

 

[Gradine]

In a game that uses XP (most of the D&D I play these days doesn't bother), all the PCs gain XP at the same rate and level up at the same time. Individual awards for PCs come in a form other than XP.

Every group I have played with has followed the "and now everyone levels up" style of "divvying experience."

In spite of this, our Star Wars D20 GM used to always give out 100 XP here or there for clever problem solving or quality roleplaying. Yeah, it was completely useless, but it was still a fun, neat little bit of "candy", to quote another post.