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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 447963" data-attributes="member: 5890">My explanation to the troll problem?Trolls are fairly common. They are also fairly scary. Tales of groups who faced trolls would probably be quite common. I doubt many of these tales would leave out the bit where they consider their enemy dead, and he comes back to life, so the second time round, they burn the corpse.Most of the critters in the MM are old-style fairy tales. I know that there were a lot of them that I knew of, way before I started D&D. I also know that I don't live in a society where telling tales of monsters is a huge part of the culture. I'd expect the average peasant would have heard a great many monster tales if monsters truely existed.Apparently, that's why they don't have a knowledge:monsters skill - because you'd then need to create rules to limit how much the players knew about the monsters.Next up - metawargaming. Is it too much to believe that the characters spend some of the many, many hours of their lives which are not roleplayed discussing their tactics as an adventuring group? I'd suggest that if you have a serious problem with it, then you point the party bard/mage towards the 'message' spell.The problem comes when players/characters who are not present at a scene influence the scene. Typically this happens during negotiations - the character doing the negotiating is played by someone who is not particularly suited, and the other players feel the need to interject.I have invented a system for dealing with this sort of stuff.Physical stats and skills are wholly represented by game mechanics, and thus are simple to adjudicate.Mental stats and skills are far more difficult. Would the character with 18 wis and 18 int REALLY light a match to see what the funny smelling gas is, just because the player said so? On the side of the DM, this is made a little easier - the DM can roll some metagaming into his game in order to have his bad guy's a bit more prepared. However the players don't have that option.I'd suggest that a player can get advice from the other players IF their character's appropriate stat or skill is higher than the character of the player giving advice.I'd also suggest limiting discussions like this to instances where the player asks for advice.This way, the smartest, or most charismatic, or wisest character has a brains trust of players to draw on. He will typically be able to have the best ideas etc. The thickest, most offensive and most foolish character won't. Even if the most foolish character occasionally has a good idea, the smartest character will have more good ideas than him.</blockquote>

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