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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 6680211" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!  I'm with a few others here... just make it up and be done with it. If your "problem player" starts to get all huffy, calmly look him in the eye and say; "Really? You want to play by RAW only? Are you sure? I mean, we can, but that means I use all rules logically available for the bad guys too...". I've actually done that once, about 15 or so years ago when I was 'breaking in' a new player. He decided, "Yes! By the rules so there are no surprises!" (or something to that effect). I could see the look of bemused...terror?... on the faces of some of my other long-term players. Anyway, the next session had a TPK within the first hour. When the 'problem player' started to get all indignant on how I "cheated" or "wasn't fair", I told him he was the one who decided to go balls-to-the-walls RAW. I then happily told him how and what the bad guys did, and why. Basically, after the PC's destroyed a large, valuable resource/operation, they paid a cleric to cast Spell X and Y. Then paid a [specific Race/Class/Magic-Item combo] NPC to follow and gather physical 'evidence' from them (bits of hair, clothing, jewelry, coin they spent, etc). Next, the bad guys simply used Special Ability Q, with Magic Item T, so that they could get Effect Z. Ergo... TPK with virtually ZERO chance of player character survival.I "reset" the campaign to the previous day. The problem player sheepishly said, I kid you not, "Ok. I get it now. Lets just play what's fun over whats in the rules." (or something pretty close to that). I've never had a problem with that player since. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Y'see...that player of question in your group doesn't quite "get" the scope of the DM's powers and responsibilities. Personally I attribute this to 3.x/4.x/PF as far as "D&D" is concerned, but that's a for a different debate. He's seeing it from his perspective, where he doesn't have all the info on who the bad guys are, what they can do, or what they want to do; he's thinking along the line of "Well, I don't know where he's hiding, so he shouldn't know where I'm hiding", and "He doesn't know I have Magic Item B, so he can't have anything to counter it", and so forth. He's ignorant of just what the NPC actually has and is capable of. This sort of mentality is taken to the side of him basically treating and thinking of the DM as "just another player who runs the monsters". He needs to be 'woken up' to the fact that the DM is not just another player; the DM has a vastly different "job" than the players, and, thus, he has vastly different tools at his disposal... and one of those tools is the provision to just "make $#!^ up" if it would be cool and fun for the campaign.^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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