D&D 5E Player angry about enemies climbing rope with Rope Trick

[Vaalingrade]

Given that most of the other challenges and bad things - level drain, item destruction, etc. - aren't in the game any more, what's left other than death to put fear into the PCs/players?

Not... doing that?

 

[Fanaelialae]

D&D is a high magic game by default, given the massive amount of risk free player facing magic. In fact, D&D works terribly in any attempt I have seen to have the world be low magic, because the world isn't set up to challenge people who break the laws of reality more often than they poop. The low level of plot busting spells like invisibility, detect thoughts, etc, says that magic counters should similarly be common. Otherwise you skew the balance even more in favor of the characters with superpowers vs the mundane chumps.

It's high magic for player characters. That doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the world is similarly high magic.

I'm perfectly fine with the balance being somewhat skewed in favor of the PCs. I'd say that's intended. It's literally them against the world. The PCs will face dozens of encounters in the course of a campaign, and they're expected to have a realistic chance to win most (if not all). They're essentially the protagonists. There are plenty of ways to make the game interesting and challenging without having casters and magic be commonplace.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with playing a campaign where magic is commonplace. Just that it's not my style and not everyone plays that way. I don't agree that it's the assumed style of D&D, anymore than my preferred style is.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Monsters knowing stuff is fine, but would those monsters have known this if it weren't woodshed time?

 

[dave2008]

Given that most of the other challenges and bad things - level drain, item destruction, etc. - aren't in the game any more, what's left other than death to put fear into the PCs/players?

The party I'm running right now (5th-ish level, 1e variant system) have gone through three adventures and into a fourth without a single death - this is, I think, an all-time survival record for our crew. But because I have other nasty things I can do to them I-as-DM don't feel like they've been cakewalking during that time: between those three adventures there were two level drains (and easily could have been many more!), two limbs lost, and at least one character was on the wrong end of a major aging effect.

Failure to accomplish their task is the #1 challenge in almost all our adventures. Death can be a reason for a failure, but definitely not the only one.

 

[Fifth Element]

Given that most of the other challenges and bad things - level drain, item destruction, etc. - aren't in the game any more, what's left other than death to put fear into the PCs/players?

Tyranny? War? Mothers-in-law?

 

[Fifth Element]

Monsters knowing stuff is fine, but would those monsters have known this if it weren't woodshed time?

Putting it very succinctly.

 

[Mort]

Monsters knowing stuff is fine, but would those monsters have known this if it weren't woodshed time?

Yeah, I don't have a problem with the OP scenario EXCEPT that it seemed to be done to teach a lesson. Any DM doing anything "to teach the players a lesson..." is de facto bad in IMO.

Edit: Going to add, not a bad DM but it's bad (DMing) to do anything to "teach the players a lesson."

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Monsters knowing stuff is fine, but would those monsters have known this if it weren't woodshed time?

Agreed 100% on the woodshed issue.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Can we stop and marvel at the fact that this is The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Two and we're having a discussion based on the term 'taking someone to the woodshed'?

And how it's actually supposed to be 'behind the woodshed'?

And how it is to my great trauma that I know the correct 1930's euphemism for child abuse?

A least he didn't make him 'cut his own switch'.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

In fairness, we don't know how much starch the Ranger had left at this point, as in would a 50' jump have killed him outright? It might have been the best of two bad choices for him to stay up there and fight.

You're absolutely right.

But if it was actually a 50 foot drop than I will make the criticism that using a standard 50 foot rope for the spells "length of rope up to 60 feet" is strictly amateur hour. The first thing my own gloomstalker ranger did when he got Rope Trick was cut a ten foot length of nice silk rope and tie some knots into it for easy climbing. Way more convenient.