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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9228000" data-attributes="member: 29398">There's a (greatly in the minority, though I've DMed a few) number of players out there who, while they don't mind the principle of there being a challenge, get quite huffy it if-when by bad luck, bad planning, or bad design that challenge proves more than their characters can handle.&nbsp; Complaints about losing to bad design are fair enough, I get that; but if they lose due to bad luck or bad (or no!) planning on their part there's no excuse for complaint.Which means, yes: for those players, &quot;my actions matter&quot; and &quot;my character succeeds&quot; are pretty much synonymous.I've rearranged some of the quote bits below to batch related pieces together.To a gang of no-name bandits, knocking off a typical group of adventurers would represent one hell of a score if they could do it; so there's clear motivation there.&nbsp; The ultimate in high-risk high-reward banditry, that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Problem with that is that giving the players the DC (for anything, not just a persuasion check) also gives them meta-information their characters wouldn't know - to anywhere near that degree of accuracy, if at all - which IMO is bad GMing.What we're not told here is how much effort the players put into roleplaying their attempts to persuade the bandits to stand down, or whether they just started with &quot;We roll persuasion to talk them out of attacking&quot;.IME most players are like this, but as noted above there's a few who'd rather have the illusion of challenge rather than the reality.This doesn't match my experience, for the most part.&nbsp; Knowing the specific numbers isn't high on most people's agenda IME; a vague idea will often do, and even that's not always necessary - &quot;Never tell me the odds, kid&quot;.The 'WHY' something went the way it did either becomes obvious after the fact (e.g. you realized the wall was greased only after you started trying to climb it) or it doesn't (you couldn't persuade the bandits not to attack because they knew their evil overlord might be watching through a scrying device); and if it's not obvious I'm not going to give it away.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 9228000, member: 29398"] There's a (greatly in the minority, though I've DMed a few) number of players out there who, while they don't mind the principle of there being a challenge, get quite huffy it if-when by bad luck, bad planning, or bad design that challenge proves more than their characters can handle. Complaints about losing to bad design are fair enough, I get that; but if they lose due to bad luck or bad (or no!) planning on their part there's no excuse for complaint. Which means, yes: for those players, "my actions matter" and "my character succeeds" are pretty much synonymous. I've rearranged some of the quote bits below to batch related pieces together. To a gang of no-name bandits, knocking off a typical group of adventurers would represent one hell of a score if they could do it; so there's clear motivation there. The ultimate in high-risk high-reward banditry, that. :) Problem with that is that giving the players the DC (for anything, not just a persuasion check) also gives them meta-information their characters wouldn't know - to anywhere near that degree of accuracy, if at all - which IMO is bad GMing. What we're not told here is how much effort the players put into roleplaying their attempts to persuade the bandits to stand down, or whether they just started with "We roll persuasion to talk them out of attacking". IME most players are like this, but as noted above there's a few who'd rather have the illusion of challenge rather than the reality. This doesn't match my experience, for the most part. Knowing the specific numbers isn't high on most people's agenda IME; a vague idea will often do, and even that's not always necessary - "Never tell me the odds, kid". The 'WHY' something went the way it did either becomes obvious after the fact (e.g. you realized the wall was greased only after you started trying to climb it) or it doesn't (you couldn't persuade the bandits not to attack because they knew their evil overlord might be watching through a scrying device); and if it's not obvious I'm not going to give it away. [/QUOTE]

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