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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 3026532" data-attributes="member: 12037">Ourph, you can't tell me what I think. I know what I think, and you're wrong about what I think.No metagame thinking is required. There is no in game reason to think a lever would be trapped in and of itself. You seem to approach it as if it is obviously trapped. But, here's what happens in game:PCs think it's kind of suspicious.PCs check it for traps.PCs find that there is no trap.They've had their suspicions and they've found that their suspicions were unfounded. I see no reason to make the following leap, for the PCs, that they must for some reason take extra careful precautions.Here's an example of something that happened in a game I was running.The PCs were exploring somewhere that had undead in it. They're level 10. They came across two large undead creatures. Now, according to the description, the Players knew that the undead were devourers, a CR 11 enemy with death attacks, and that there were two of them making the situation even worse.But, none of the PCs had ranks in Knowledge (religion), so the PCs just saw two more large undead things. They had no real reason to think that these were any more powerful than the large zombies they had fought earlier. So they attacked.It seems like you would argue that they were metagaming. They knew that it was dangerous, but they trusted in the DM to use level-appropriate encounters? That's not true. They were doing the opposite of metagaming. They knew that they had little chance to survive the encounter (two of them died to death attacks), but their PCs didn't know that so they attacked.This is the essense of what I'm saying. The PCs can't go on the logic that the Players have, that the dungeon is a construct of the DM and there are certain cliches like trapped levers out there. They can only approach the situation with what they as PCs know.Now, if they had seen lots of trapped levers in the past, then they would have a reason to be fearful, just like if the party in the example had fought devourers before or had someone with Knowledge (religion) to tell them that. But, we don't know.I would think that a game with trapped levers as the norm would not be a generic D&D game. I don't think this is wrong, as the majority of votes have been "unfair" so it at least seems to me that a large portion of posters here on ENWorld (a board with lots of long time players) don't use lots of trapped levers everywhere.Therefore, it is not even remotely metagaming to pull the lever.</blockquote>

Verification