"Let's examine this apparently mundane rock."

[Kalendraf]

Along similar lines, I've seen parties spend countless hours searching for hidden doors or other things that aren't there. There's usually a couple of secret doors per adventure, but not always. And sometimes, the map seems to point to areas where there could be a secret area, but sometimes there isn't one there.

A smart party would probably just take a 20 and move on, but I've seen groups not even trust that. "There's got to be something there!" "Buff up his search!" Back when the buff spells were random, parties would repeatedly sleep and recast until they maximized their buffing and only then would they trust their search results. Random encounters help to move them along, but sometimes it's still hard to get them to take the hint.

I'm also very cautious in using puzzles with these groups for similar reasons. Sometimes they spend long periods of time examining things, even when a solution seems to be relatively straight-forward. "We don't want to make a mistake - we might only get this one chance! Is there any other way to interpret this? Putting the blue crystal on the blue stand seems too simple. It must be trap!" They wind up convincing themselves that a simple puzzle is somehow life-threatening, and then waste tons of time making sure that they don't set off the ultimate doom all the while wasting valuable game time.

 

[evileeyore]

They wind up convincing themselves that a simple puzzle is somehow life-threatening, and then waste tons of time making sure that they don't set off the ultimate doom all the while wasting valuable game time.

Wow my style of characters so wouldn't work with this group. I'd just snatch up the blue thingy and put it on the blue thingy and pray for a reflex save.

As in:

Then light flared around me. “C’mon, be a reflex save,” I prayed to whatever God might be listening. “Reflex!”--Iconics, Piratecat

That so summed up my favorite Elven Rogue character. That and "Bored Now". That was almost a battlecry...

TTFN

EvilE

 

[Altalazar]

Hey, the players are free to waste as much time as they want. If they are getting into it and roleplaying it, why the heck not?

And you can use it against them. I had a party that was pathologically inclined to pay lots of attention to the unimportant.

2/3 of the party was totally distracted in one combat by a simple "Polymorph Other" cast on a fish in a big river that turned it into a whale. So they spent many long rounds trying to figure out what to do with the whale that just sort of was there in the water - they went after imagined riders on the whale, and so forth. That isn't as bad as a rock being a distraction...

On another occaision, a puff of smoke was all it took to get them to decide they just had to rush in and "check it out" and then they got TPC (captured, save one)

 

[Djeta Thernadier]

We have a guy who became fascinated with a clay mug once. He kept it with him. The DM felt somewhat bad that it was just a mundane old clay mug, and so he gave it some minor magical quality (like 1d4 per day of healing when you drink from it or something).

We have spent time occasionally looking at doors, walls, statues, etc. that turn out to be just what they appear.

I prefer to be in a group who does this than a group who just goes for the obvious, though. Even if it's time consuming.

 

[SSquirrel]

everyone loves a good knock-down, drag-out fight with a now-animate statue.

Or better yet....a gazebo *grin*

Hagen