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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Negflar2099" data-source="post: 7140399" data-attributes="member: 65944">I agree with what's already been said. DMs are free to decide what is and isn't allowed in their games but once they've opened a door (which she/he did twice, once by allowing you to play a variant human and once letting feats be part of the game) it's really bad form to try to close it again. I get the DMs frustration (I've seen lucky and alert both be, not abused necessarily, but lets say used very well) and it's frustrating, but the truth is that all feats pretty strong and thus variant human is pretty strong race choice. And as a DM I like that a lot. I get sometimes frustrated when nobody is playing a human just because I like to think of my games as stories and movies and tv shows and no book, show or movie would have an entire ensemble cast without a single human (well if there is one I haven't seen it). It feels strange, but that's my hang up. In any case I like that there's an incentive for taking human. And I like that choosing between boosting an attribute or taking a feat is a hard choice. I like those sort of hard choices. If feats were weak (or not allowed) then that choice disappears. Plus, as others have pointed out, being frustrated that you can't beat the players (however you phrase that) represents a very DM vs Player attitude, which is a problem. Look at fictional characters. Nothing can confuse or surprise Sherlock Holmes. That's his whole thing. If you want to play that character (by taking the Observant feat and the Alert feat maybe) who am I as a DM to say no? Plus why would that frustrate me that I can't surprise him? That's what makes him a great character. Trying to take that away because I can't think of a challenging encounter that doesn't involve surprise wouldn't speak well for my abilities as a DM. I have a player with the Observant feat right now. He has a 21 passive perception. I know that barring a crazy well hidden trap or stealthy character he's going to be able to figure out every puzzle, find every trap, and spot every enemy and that's fine. That means I just have to build encounters that play off of his Sherlock Holmes-ness by dropping hints and observations that I wouldn't otherwise drop and if I want to challenge him (or the other players) I have to have harder puzzles or more straightforward enemies (I'll be taking lots of inspiration from the BBC Sherlock show). It took me a long time as a DM to realize that it's not me versus my players. It's all of us versus boredom. As long as everybody's having fun we're all winning.</blockquote>

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