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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 4826941" data-attributes="member: 44797">It almost sounds as if you are arguing in your DM's favor, now.  The core books support this viewpoint.  The PHB page 68 says "Favorable or unfavorable circumstances weigh heavily on the outcome of a bluff.  Two circumstances can weigh against you: the bluff is hard to believe, or the action that the target is asked to take goes against its self-interest, nature, personality, orders, or the like."So I wouldn't let game mechanics bully me around too much.  If the guard was told "no halflings on penalty of your life," then I wouldn't even allow a roll.  Or perhaps I'd allow the roll but discard the result.  Or perhaps I'd give the roll a 50 points more difficult DC -- the kind of thing perhaps the gods or epic level characters could pull off.The DMG page 30 also supports you -- and the DM mentioned in the original post, somewhat.  It says, "For extremely favorable or unfavorable circumstances, you can use modifiers greater than +2 and less than -2.  For example, you can decide that a task is practically impossible and modify the roll or DC by 20."I'm not saying your DM was right about everything, but the idea that the DM adjudicates things and gets to say something is super-difficult to disbelieve?  That's in there.  Core rules say he can play with core rules.It's funny, because I was about to use some of those DCC modules as an example of how I handle this stuff.  Sure, the DCC modules get some stat blocks wrong.  But one thing they get right is to deliberately go outside the mechanics of the game to develop a story.  For example, the module "Into the Wilds" opens with the local royalty having a long-cursed bloodline that eventually kills every heir to the throne.  In addition, the curse was made by what appears to have been a warrior-type.  D&D 3.5 edition core books provides no mechanism for this.  If the players wanted to replicate the effect, they would have a miserably difficult time doing it.  Yet, the curse exists, as-is, in this module.  One of the modules in the DCC compilation "The Adventure Begins" contains an artifact that automatically, without save, kills every NPC level 5 or higher, in the entire world.  There is absolutely nowhere to find that artifact in the core books.  There are no rules for how it operates, except for what you read in the module itself.  These things are totally made up, and the DM has to wing it when enforcing these things.Regarding the D&D comic, The Order of the Stick, there are tons of rules lawyers who post on the forums, complaining that it's not possible for the cartoon characters to do certain things within the rules.  But one of the problems that continually trips up these guys is that Rich (the guy making the comic) will often have custom material that he made up for it -- for example, the "Snarl" is unknown to D&D books.  There is no known stat block for it.  Also, the "soul splice" effect that he showed in the last 30 or so comics was completely made up.  People would try to argue about how it worked -- "the rules say this or that" -- only to have Rich pop into the forum and say, "It's my custom thing that works how I say it works, whether that's OK for you or not."  And then that's how it was.I provide those examples as what I personally follow when I am working on my own games.  I typically never have any core rulebook monster operate as the core rulebook suggests.  Everything is custom, even if I'm just tweaking the HP or something small.  I follow rules -- I typically put a post-it note that outlines the modifications next to the stat block, so that I can stick to my changes, for better or worse.I have had it backfire.  I'm running the Cage of Delirium module right now (haunted house) and I'm running it with the optional Unhallow effect, as I thought "ha ha, that'll make it tougher to beat these undead."  But the cleric in our group is evil and commands/rebukes undead instead of turning them... and the Unhallow effect helps him.  Well, tough luck for me.  He got to waltz through a couple tough combats.  Lucky him.Anyway, the point is that if I were the DM mentioned in the original post, I wouldn't even name the illusion effect in place.  It's isn't programmed, isn't permanent, isn't in the spell list in the PHB.  It's custom, and it works in a way that reacts appropriately to someone hacking at the head of the vampire.  That way the players cannot backseat drive or "armchair DM" the game.  I might not even ask the players to roll to disbelieve, or at least I wouldn't tell them if they failed.  (The rolls would happen, but usually I ask for a series of rolls from each player before the game starts -- 2 listen checks, 2 spot checks, a couple other things -- and then I secretly apply them when the time comes.)  That way the player isn't cued to think, "Oh, I should metagame now."So I think the DM was probably right to try to make the effect work the way he intended it to work.  But it was a mistake to try to drive it from the rules, a mistake to name the effect for the players, a mistake (maybe) to let them know they were doing Will saves to disbelieve, and a mistake to dictate after that.  Instead, I would have simply made the illusion behave either appropriately or inappropriately as the players did things.  If they metagamed, I'd probably pull the rug out from under them, and tweak expectations.  If they played in character, I'd probably work to give them in-game rewards that matched how they operated their characters.</blockquote>

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