Is this fair? -- your personal opinion

[takyris]

An in character justification doesn't change the fact that the attitude the player has is colored by metagame thinking. Sure if a PC has to pull the lever, then the Monk should probably do it.

Okay.

The fact that the Monk's player is approaching the situation with the attitude of "Potential trap? No problem. I'll step up and pull the lever. That's my job!" is totally based on his knowledge that he's playing a game and that the game follows certain guidelines.

A) Please quote me the line that shows that that was the monk's attitude.

B) No. It's based on the fact that the party is essentially a paramilitary unit or task force of people with specific skill-sets. If you're a military team in the jungle and you come to an abandoned shack, you know which guy to have check for booby-traps, which guy to have listen and look around for an ambush, and which guy to have kick open the door after everyone else has done the best that they could. That's not metagaming. You're the one who equates "Knowing the strengths of each team member" with "Only looking at the rules."

Nothing about "being heroic" indicates that you have to be impatient or incautious.

Bull.

Totally subjective, and no way we're ever going to agree on that one, I suspect.

To you, my kind of heroic sounds stupid.
To me, your kind of heroic sounds bland.

That'd be the lion's share of what it all comes down to, I think.

 

[Ourph]

In a heroic game, there's only so much time I want to spend summoning monsters and asking them to pull levers for me. I'd happily do that garbage if I'd taken on "The Lair of Trappy McTrapster, Master of Traps", but if every useable object in the dungeon was like that, I'd find a new group.

In other words, if you found yourself in a group where the in-game environment was frustrating, you'd find a new group where the in-game environment was based on metagame considerations more closely matched to your own. Yes?

Your assumption that knowing the degree of danger implies that one is metagaming by using the exact numbers doesn't hold up. I don't need a tape measure to decide whether it's safe to jump from a given height. I don't need a vision test to figure out which of my friends is the best at scouting when we play paintball. And if I've been watching a friend find and disable traps in life-threatening situations for awhile now, I don't need a rated score of her abilities to know that if she takes her time, there's not a heck of a lot she can't find.

"Not a heck of a lot" doesn't equate to zero though, and the argument so far has been that after the Rogue searches and finds nothing the correct assumption should be "there are no traps". The only way you get from "not a lot" to "none" is by application of metagame thinking (i.e. running the numbers).

 

[silentspace]

The point of using a proxy is not to find out whether the lever is trapped or to find out what the effects of the trap are..

I never said that.

AFAIC there is no "supposed to".

If survival is not one of your goals, either as a character or as the player, then you're playing a completely different game than me.

 

[takyris]

In other words, if you found yourself in a group where the in-game environment was frustrating, you'd find a new group where the in-game environment was based on metagame considerations more closely matched to your own. Yes?

Yep. As would you. Somehow, I suspect that after one or two sessions of watching everyone else swashbuckle while you complained that there could have been traps and insisted that we should have talked to the Mistress of Souls from fifty feet away with a bullhorn in case she was a disguised banshee, you'd ditch my group and find something else.

Mileage. Vary. Very Very Vary.

The only way you get from "not a lot" to "none" is by application of metagame thinking (i.e. running the numbers).

Or logically looking at how the area was laid out. I survived everything else without too much trouble, and I got the big thing I wanted to get, which was presumably guarded by the biggest baddest stuff the guy making this place could come up with. Why should something so much deadlier be slapped on some little deal on the side?

 

[ThirdWizard]

In other words, if you found yourself in a group where the in-game environment was frustrating, you'd find a new group where the in-game environment was based on metagame considerations more closely matched to your own. Yes?

Let me phrase that a different way: If he found himself in a game that forced him to metagame or die, he'd find another group, because he doesn't like to metagame.

 

[Someone]

See my remarks to silentspace above. I don't care about proving the existence of a trap, all I care about is not getting my character killed. If the goal is to open the secret door and it's possible that pulling the lever opens the door then I'll find some way to pull the lever while putting my character at the minimum risk possible. I don't care whether there is or is not a trap. What I care about is that the trap is a possibility and if there are ways to avoid the possible risk pulling the lever represents I'll take advantage of them.

That´s fair.

My point about negative data is simply that you can never prove with a Search check that no trap exists, so (from my perspective) acting as if a Search check is absolute proof relies on the metagame knowledge that "taking 20" plus "challenges appropriate to level" equates to proof positive that a trap isn't present.

You can never prove that a trap doesn´t exists; it´s impossible. You can´t also prove that you have a monkey on your shoulder, or that your character won´t die. "Proof" means 100% cretainty. The most you can do is to be really, really, really sure that there´s not a trap; some people here think that given the circumstances, it´s a safe bet that there are no traps on the lever, and that losing time tieing ropes, or spending resources summoning monsters or whatnot is a bit foolish.

They (we) are not thinking that the monk should be able to whithstand any trap because they must be of the apprpiate CR. They think that it´s very unlikely that there´s a trap in the first place. Not impossible, but the risk is very small.

However, if the risk exist, why take it, as you say? wouldn´t it be better to not take it at all, and use the rope? Actually, we take such risks daily; we use cars that can crash, and eat food that could be poisoned. We take risks that we could avoid daily when we think that the risk involved is minimal, even when we could die as a result.

 

[Ourph]

To you, my kind of heroic sounds stupid.
To me, your kind of heroic sounds bland.

That'd be the lion's share of what it all comes down to, I think.

I would completely agree. Different perceptions about what is "normal" for the game and different tastes are the main issues here. I would note, for the record, that I don't think of your kind of heroic as "stupid". It's just that I see that heroic stereotype as a single facet of heroism rather than the complete spectrum.

 

[Ourph]

I never said that.

Then I must be misreading the part of your post that I quoted, because I thought I was directly answering a question that you posed.

If survival is not one of your goals, either as a character or as the player, then you're playing a completely different game than me.

If you think I'm not interested in character survival, you're definitely misreading my response.

 

[silentspace]

Then I must be misreading the part of your post that I quoted, because I thought I was directly answering a question that you posed.

If you think I'm not interested in character survival, you're definitely misreading my response.

Seems you've misread mine as well.

 

[Ourph]

Yep. As would you. Somehow, I suspect that after one or two sessions of watching everyone else swashbuckle while you complained that there could have been traps and insisted that we should have talked to the Mistress of Souls from fifty feet away with a bullhorn in case she was a disguised banshee, you'd ditch my group and find something else.

I think you're missing the point of my comment. If you're switching to a group where the in-game environment matches your preferences because the metagame considerations like appropriate challenges and what type of behavior constitues "heroic" are more in line with your own; it demonstrates that all in-game "logic" is really based on metagame expectations. So the argument that in-game logic alone justifies a response to the lever (in either direction) can't be valid. All in-game assumptions are based at some level on understandings between the players and DM about how the game will be run and how the DM will construct the game world.