Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 3489178" data-attributes="member: 5143">It does give him MORE control.With minis, the DM has control over the creatures stats (and maybe his die rolls if he rolls behind a DM screen).Without minis he has control of all of the same things as with minis PLUS he can now change distances between objects, arbitrarily decide whether someone has cover or not, and add in or remove obstacles from round to round, and decide what the players see.With minis, you can look at a map and say "Ok, I'm 30 feet away from the enemy, I can make it there this round".  Without minis, the DM may decide you are 50 feet away this round.  I've actually seen distances between things change from round to round (and even from player to player), and not because the DM was purposefully making it harder or easier, but simply because he forgot what number he said 5 minutes before hand.Plus, miscommunication happens all the time just because people view things differently.  For example:Player: "We hide in the alley on opposite sides of the streets and pull out our bows ready to ambush them when they get in sight."DM: "Ok, they are in sight, and they take attacks of opportunity on you for using your bows on them."Player: "What?  We're in the alleys, hiding!"DM: "The street is 5 ft wide and the alleys are 5 ft long.  You should know all streets in the country of BLAH are narrow and the buildings small."Player: "We didn't know that!"DM: "Well, too bad, you said you were taking the action and you are!"There was a related discussion about this in a thread from a long time ago.  Basically, there are hundreds and hundreds of different "powers" in the game.  Some of the above are examples: Being able to decide a monsters hit points, deciding what ac the monsters have, deciding where the lantern is, deciding what dice to roll to hit, etc.Each "power" either falls into the DMs control, the Player's control, or the Rules' control.Using minis is just one way to move some "powers" from the DM to the rules.  Thus making it more "fair" since all of the players and the DM should be able to agree and understand the same thing more easily.You have to trust that a DM won't blatantly cheat or you are right, there's no reason to play.  However, I don't trust DMs to be perfect and never make a mistake.  If using minis, I know there are now 5-7 people looking at the movement to make sure none of the enemies move too far or double move then attack.  The DM is less likely to make a mistake.</blockquote>

Verification