Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6976211" data-attributes="member: 29398">The answer for me is "some".Players need to know the basic rules: what dice to roll when and why, what all the various numbers on their character sheets represent, what a round is and what can usually be accomplished during one, what their spells and abilities (usually) do and - for spells - how they are cast and recovered, and so forth; along with what the game world bases its overarching physics on (e.g. can a player fall back on reality as a default or not when wondering how gravity affects something).Players really don't need to know but can if desired (and more or less eventually will, in all likelihood): the various combat matrices (to hit, saving throw, turn-control undead, etc.), rules regarding classes/levels/etc. they are not themselves playing, and so forth.Players don't need to know at all: anything to do with monster stats or abilities until encountered in the game (it's the Monster Manual rather than the DMG that really should be off-limits), anything to do with magic items other than those their characters own or have been exposed to or have heard of, and so forth - here, player knowledge should ideally reflect character knowledge as far as possible (though it never does)."Mother may I" is a feature, not a bug; if someone asks me-as-DM if something's possible it usually means they're thinking outside the box...a good thing even if the answer's "no" that particular time.  I find newer players who aren't yet hidebound by the rules - or knowledge of the rules - are best for this.And the way to keep the MM- and DMG-reading players on their toes is to change things.  The classic here is to change up dragon colours/abilities - greens breathe acid, reds breathe lightning, etc. - which characters in character may safely learn if they think to ask but will learn the hard way if their players are overconfidently relying only on metagame knowledge.  (in case anyone's wondering, I haven't done this to my dragons but it's common knowledge they - along with giants and a few other things - are way tougher otherwise than the MM would have them)Lanefan</blockquote>

Verification