D&D General Poll: As a player, I am always justified in pursuing every advantage I find, no matter what.

[Maxperson]

There seems to be a small percentage of players/DMs who really want fine detail, though not nearly as many as there were during D&D's Silver Age (as Grognardia calls it) during the '80s. I remember there being a Dragon magazine article for 1E going into minute detail on all the spell components, giving exact costs, fabrication times, % chances for finding them at a magic shop/guild, alchemist, temple, etc.

Found it. Dragon #81, December 1983. Living in a material world by Michael Dobson. I think it must have been reprinted in Best of Dragon, because I don't think I ever had the original issue. It stretches out over ten pages! Here's a summary of the system in use, from the end of the article:



This one goes super hard into "realism" / verisimilitude, and I remember being intrigued by it as a teenager. But most of the time I can't imagine wanting to spend this kind of time on it.

On the flip side of it, the Metamagic Components table in the 3e UA was fantastic.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I can't speak for others, but I enjoy melee martial characters (mostly monks) because of the risk associated with the playstyle, and the challenge of being impactful with a smaller toolkit.

Casting "I win" from 90 feet away just never really lit my fuse. It feels like cheating to me.

It's kind of funny, if casters were closer to equal in power to martials, I might actually be more interested in playing them.

I am on break this moment from game. Playing fiend patron blade pact. I would never go the EB route! I like getting in there! And with that DM is back!

 

[Maxperson]

The other is harder 'cause it's metagame in a way I don't like (not all metagame is bad, but some is.) Always showing paranoia and distrust without reason to so is off-putting. Yet other, similar thoughts may not bother me, e.g. "we know Ezekiel hates grimdark, so this situation has to have SOME kind of solution, we just need to keep looking and stay positive." Again, I'd prefer forthright, respectful discussion to deal with disruptive metagame thinking.

What if they sugar coated it a bit? Say they waited for you to have said wizard patron do something suspicious, perhaps even very subtle, but since they are looking for it, they seize on it as a reason to be paranoid.

 

[CleverNickName]

That's why Yoda was Sith.

COME ON, NO SPOILERS!

 

[Maxperson]

COME ON, NO SPOILERS!

Sorry man. I've already started down the dark path and to quote Yoda...

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

He loved his absolutes.

 

[lingual]

Depends on the table. If you are playing with a bunch of power gamers and a very challenging DM - the expectation could very well be that you power/meta game.

If you're playing with your kids or some rookies who are more into the role-playing aspect, it's kinda jerkish to be squeezing every bit of advantage out.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What if they sugar coated it a bit? Say they waited for you to have said wizard patron do something suspicious, perhaps even very subtle, but since they are looking for it, they seize on it as a reason to be paranoid.

Originally I wrote a reply to this but apparently it got eaten at some point and I never sent it.

Taking this seriously and trying to give full doubt benefits: it might work, but I'm still of a skeptical mind about this. That is, if you're on such a hair trigger that something "very subtle" makes the character prepare for full-on betrayal, that still sounds like pretty extreme paranoia. Sure, it's paranoia that waits for some kind of justification, but it still seems like an extreme response to small stimuli.

Now, trying to give benefit of the doubt, perhaps this is more mild than it seems. E.g., let's say the character is someone who doesn't trust easily to begin with, and takes that "very subtle" suspicious action as a sign to dig deeper. They go looking, and do minor preparations (e.g. counting coins to make sure everything is paid up correctly, keeping careful records of materials delivered and performing meticulous examinations of goods received.) They don't immediately leap to cutting the person out of their life as much as possible and making ready to be betrayed, but rather do work to determine whether there's grounds for their "very subtle" suspicions to be borne out. If that's the case....alright, I can probably deal with that, but the player and I may have a conversation later on about whether they are intentionally playing certain types of characters because they're being "DM genre savvy" as it were.

More importantly, if it really is that big a deal, I can always tweak things. Perhaps the Wizard is intending to betray the party, but their earnest good-hearted deeds endear them to her. Her suspicious activities thus become more her trying to pull out of her efforts to betray them. Then, the player playing the hyper-suspicious character can still gather all the clues, assemble a case, and blame the Wizard, and the party can explore a different story, hopefully one that will be more fresh and avoid such blatant predictability that the players could see it literally the instant they meet a new character.

However....that's gotten pretty far afield from the original example, at least as far as I see it. The original phrasing was, "[The DM] loves surprise face heal turns... I bet this wizard that is hiring us will turn on us better prep for that." I don't really buy that a player will be able to, as you say, "sugar coat" it with a veneer of roleplay without pulling it far enough away from the original phrasing that it's fundamentally a different beast. E.g., if the player simply thinks that to herself, and then has her character operate as a reasonable, sensible person within the confines of the story, it just doesn't sound like she could do the thing described, preparing for a "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" moment the instant after meeting their new employer.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

The answer is no. Reasonability is key.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

If I was playing Magic or Warhammer I'd say yes, but

• D&D rules simply aren't robust for this style of play, if you break the game it will be less fun
• D&D is a roleplaying game with no defined "win" condition. The game is about playing your character, if you can't achieve your character's goals in a way that makes sense for the character, then what's the point?
• The DM always has more orcs/beholders/pit fiends. Don't bring a knife to a star destroyer fight.