Is "you can, but at a penatly" the same as "you can't?"

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I said no. If you ask the DM, can my level 1 rogue jump over the castle, the answer would be no (barring anything crazy). If you asked, could my rogue, whose blindfolded try to shoot an apple out of the hand of a guy in the bar, I'd say sure, but you're probably at a penalty to hit, reflecting the difficulty of the task

I voted Maybe So? Basically because I agree with delericho's comments about magnitude of penalty.

I would say no to the player of the first level rogue asking to jump over the castle. But another DM might tell the player, "Sure you can. DC 100." That's the same as saying "no."

High DCs, high penalties, too great of risk to reward all can equate to "you can't" IMO. Not in every case. Definitely not in the reasonable examples provided by the OP.

 

[billd91]

"Maybe so" is, I think, too wishy-washy sounding an answer. I selected no, but would do so with caveats like the ones most other people are talking about. There's a break point where the size of the penalty effectively makes it a "can't" proposition or at least a "can but why bother?". Where that breakpoint is will depend a lot on the circumstances.

 

[OnlineDM]

As long as the penalty is interesting, it's not the same as saying no.

Marks in 4e are a great example. Early in my DMing career, I would always have monsters obey marks. Yes, they could attack someone else, but at a penalty. I figured that the PC doing the marking wanted the monster to focus on that PC.

I only later realized that half the fun of having a mark comes from getting to penalize your opponent when they violate it. It's fun and interesting.

As for opportunity attacks, I'll absolutely have my characters provoke them if it makes sense for them to do so. At last night's D&D Encounters game I had a bad guy provoke an opportunity attack in order to retreat, and one of the PCs in the game provoked an opportunity attack as well.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

People are generally bad at evaluating risks. This includes DMs. In real life, it is true, and not least of all because people inflate risks, get nervous, etc. due to real-life consequences being, well, real. In a game, you don't have that aspect, but you do have different intrepretations of what the risk should be--even if everyone at the table is good with probabilities.

So if Player A decides that doing X is a bad idea, it could easily be any of the following, or something else not listed:

• Good with odds and/or gaming the system - knows it's mathematically a bad choice.
• Bad at odds, but knows that it is often a bad choice, but doesn't see why this case is different.
• Doesn't trust or agree with the penalty applied.
• Misunderstands the nature of the potential consequences or rewards.
• Doesn't think his character would do that--perhaps because of or even in spite of some of the previous reasons in game.

There was an incident where a bunch of protesters got excited about the possiblity of high voltage lines causing cancer. A doctor pointed out that many of them had protested for days in direct sun, without adequate head gear or sun screen. Using the best case scenario for skin cancer and worst case scenario for high voltage, their increased odds of skin cancer from the this behavior was more than two orders of magnitude greater than the increased chances for cancer from the lines for a lifetime (if any). Even after this was publicized, it had marginal effect on the behavior. See also, golfing in a lightning storm, driving recklessly, etc.

The kind of thinking that produces such decisions does not magically end when one picks up a character sheet.

 

[Viking Bastard]

It's kind of like Attacks of Opportunity. I cannot recall a single time I've seen a player trigger an AoO. They see "I'll suffer an extra attack if I do X" and opt to do something else instead.

My players take OAs all the time in 4e; they see it as a fair risk. They were also perfectly willing to accept Disadvantages in the playtest for the same reasons, but anyone mention a "minus" to a roll and nooooooo... dismissed out of hand.

(Math is scary.)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It can be, if the penalty is so large that it becomes a bad choice.

I agree with a previous OP this was the problem of several 3E combat maneuvers - too costly without the feat, too effective with. So one has to be careful.

But sometimes the cost associated with a penalty can change. Normally, you really want to avoid taking any OAs. But sometimes, the risk of not taking the action that would provoke the OA is far higher. In that case, something being merely a penalty makes a big difference to something simply not being allowed.

Regarding 4E "Mark" penalties - maybe Wotc erred on the high penalty side a little too often. But it certainly ensured that these Marks worked.

 

[Janx]

But sometimes the cost associated with a penalty can change. Normally, you really want to avoid taking any OAs. But sometimes, the risk of not taking the action that would provoke the OA is far higher. In that case, something being merely a penalty makes a big difference to something simply not being allowed.

a 10th level fighter surrounded by rats has minimal risk of getting hurt by AoO if he pauses to text his girlfriend. Compared to the same fighter facing a CR10 monster.

AoO's simplest point is that if a PC doesn't focus on combat (digs in his pack) or moves wrecklessly, than he might get whacked. The lesson being, don't do that stuff unless you REALLY need to.

With things like marking (I don't play 4e, so I'm vague about it), it seems like the target doesn't necessarily know it is marked. But the player/GM does and makes decisions based on that. That seems a detriment, as [MENTION=90804]OnlineDM[/MENTION] points out that part of the fun is that the Markee suffers the penalty, not avoids the action.

It seems then that ignoring the penalty and taking the action (and suffering the penalty) would result in more varied, and fun behavior. A computer could of course easily determine actions and apply penalties independent of each other such that NPCs didn't know they were marked and that it was a bad idea to "do that"

 

[OnlineDM]

With things like marking (I don't play 4e, so I'm vague about it), it seems like the target doesn't necessarily know it is marked. But the player/GM does and makes decisions based on that. That seems a detriment, as [MENTION=90804]OnlineDM[/MENTION] points out that part of the fun is that the Markee suffers the penalty, not avoids the action.

For what it's worth, 4e actually specifies that creatures know when they're marked. The consequences of breaking the mark might not always be known (this gets into some disputed areas of the rules), but a creature knows that the dude in armor has called it out, or whatever the mark may be.

I originally wrote about this back in September, and I ultimately concluded that the most fun approach is for the DM to role-play the monster. An intelligent creature who has a good idea of the consequences of violating the mark (perhaps it has seen another creature get punished by this type of character) will weigh the cost and benefit of breaking the mark and then pick the best course of action. A dumb creature will probably just attack whatever seems best regardless of the mark - the squishiest-looking target, or the closest thing at hand, or whatever. But once that dumb creature gets punished, it will probably learn and go after the character who has it marked.

 

[Orius]

Penalties are not the same as outright forbiddence. There's a difference between telling a player "You can't do that", and "You can try, but you'll probably fail". The player is given at least the illusion of choice, and there is also the possibility, if remote, of success.

 

[Luce]

People are generally bad at evaluating risks. This includes DMs. In real life, it is true, and not least of all because people inflate risks, get nervous, etc. due to real-life consequences being, well, real. In a game, you don't have that aspect, but you do have different intrepretations of what the risk should be--even if everyone at the table is good with probabilities.

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Humor aside, I think part of the problem is that newer games have more highly observable worlds views(meaning the players know the odds). At level X your PC have predictable chance of completing Y action (be that an hitting with an attack, affecting a creature with a spell etc). High risk- high reward situations run against the commonly accepted views of balance game. So (in 3.X) getting an army of 400 commoners to attack the ancient dragon, in hope that at least one will get an instant kill (double 20) attack, is not valuable tactic.
In addition some of the "options" like Sunder had been found to be some what counterproductive. In this case reducing the parties treasure.