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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6732240" data-attributes="member: 97077">It's only cheating at your game, perhaps. Character and player knowledge are not necessarily different. Sometimes they are the same. Even if you as DM opt to establish what characters know, you cannot (at least according to the rules) determine what they think or try to do.So if a player says his or her character thinks that rakshasa are vulnerable to piercing weapons wielded by good-aligned characters, then that is what the character thinks. If a player has his or her good-aligned character attack that rakshasa with a piercing weapon, then that is what the character does. The DM may only narrate the result of the adventurer's actions. Again, according to the rules. You may play the game differently and that's okay.Of course, there are a couple of simple methods for challenging players who have knowledge of a monster's vulnerabilities that do not rely upon you telling others how to make decisions for their characters. First, you can change the monster's stat block - nice and easy. Perhaps it's slashing weapons wielded by neutral characters that best harm a rakshasa. Alternatively, you can leave the stat block as-is, but make using the knowledge difficult or dangerous. Maybe the rakshasa's throne room is infused with magical smoke from an evil hookah which imparts disadvantage to the attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws of good-aligned creatures. Or instead of that, damage from slashing or piercing weapons wielded by a good-aligned creature causes the rakshasa's fiendish blood to spill onto the ground and form into 2d6 lemures.And naturally, I recommend that all of these things be telegraphed to the players before things kick off with the rakshasa so that they aren't viewed as a "gotcha."I'm not so sure about that. I think plenty of DMs like to say what a character thinks including some in this thread.You're welcome to call that "cheating" if you like, but it only applies to your game, and I think it definitely falls short of surreptitiously reading the DM's notes. Of course, I wouldn't necessarily care about that either. I create challenges that don't rely upon player ignorance or feigned ignorance to be difficult and fun. I've run one-shots multiple times for the same players at their own request so they can see how things turn out with different groups and characters. It's always been fun and challenging. The player gets to decide how the character reacts to the NPC's attempt to intimidate him or her, yes. "Being intimidated" is saying how the character acts and thinks.</blockquote>

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