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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 813529" data-attributes="member: 177">Fair?  Cheating.  Hm.  Well, here's my thoughts...First off, I think that some basic knowledge of lycanthropes is going to be pretty common in most game worlds.  Perhaps this one is different, of course.  But in most worlds, to say that a 2nd level fighter would know nothing is incorrect.  Heck, most of us real people, who live in a world without the beasts, know that normal weapons don't hurt werewolves even when we are children.  Even folks who don't play RPGs know that you need silver to hurt a werewolf, and a vampire needs a stake through the heart.  It's no secret.Now, imagine a world in which the critters actually existed, and where stories would be told constantly, not just because they are stories, but because people need to know this stuff to live.  It would still be no secret, unless lycanthropes were extremely rare beasts.  Given that, it's not cheating or unreasonable for a cleric to cast Magic Weapon upon seeing a critter that matches the basic lycanthrope description.  Nor is it then cheating to say to the DM, "Hey, are you sure we aren't hurting them?"  DMs are human, and sometimes slip up. What may not have been fair is failing to make sure that the players and DM were in the same boat as to what constitutes "common knowledge".  It's the DM's job to set that up, and he ought to do it beforehand.  It would not be fair to allow them to set out with an incorrect assumption of what they should know.  Perhaps, even more importantly - it's poor adventure design to toss the PCs into a trap from which you don't provide a reasonable escape or chance at victory.  It's okay to provide challenges the PCs cannot overcome, but you're supposed to give them a clue.  Throwing things at them that they cannot deal with, and can't reasonably avoid is roughly equivalent to randomly droppng 16 ton weights on party members.</blockquote>

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