Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DamionW" data-source="post: 2697572" data-attributes="member: 18649">First off DonTadow, I want to say i personally don't see anything wrong with well made DM puzzles like the orb example.  That's just me, but I do understand Kamikaze's point, as I'll get into.  Second, if you want to talk about stats with several meanings, look at CHA.  The PHB describes CHA as: (Emphasis mine.)To me, this laundry list of traits rolled under one stat seems unwieldly.  It precludes an effective, yet obnoxious and ugly sorcerer, or a born half-orc leader.  If you look at any race with a CHA penalty, all of the reasons that they give for the penalty have to do with how they're perceived by others in a social setting.  Take dwarves.  They're justification for having a CHA penalty is that they're "gruff and reserved."  What does that have to do with not having a forceful personality?  So, most of the examples people give on here about other stats encompass multiple facets of a character are not far fetched.  Even CHA has both Bluff, a skill describing how their perceived in a social situation, and Use Magic Device, a skill describing how effectively you can force your will upon an item.So, while I say that I personally like puzzles, I agree with Kamikaze in that just because I as a player may not have a solution, that should not preclude my character from knowing how to go forward, even if I don't have ranks in Knowledge (puzzles).  This line of thinking results in limiting a player's ability to develop their characters in my opinion.So, if I create a concept for a Gnomish tinkerer, with a high Int and Wis scores because he likes puzzling around with machines and puzzles and things, why should myself, the player not recognizing the significance of your clues impact him?  To say you're not going to give him a boost to solving a puzzle because you want me to come up with the solution in front of you is limiting me from exploring the tinkerer character's potential as an esoteric, non-combat oriented genius.That's just the way I see it.  As I talked with you in the roll-first/describe-first thread, a player should give you enough descriptions to develop a resolution mechanism, as Voadam puts it.  Beyond that, you need to give the player enough credit for his character design to let mechanics take it the rest of the way.  Saying, "I make an intelligence check to solve the puzzle," IS as bad as saying "I roll a STR check to kill the orc."  It doesn't define the resolution mechanism in sufficient detail for you to adjudicate the result as DM.  However, saying "I make an intelligence check to determine if the colors red blue and green have anything to do with the symbols I saw in the other room," is a sufficiently defined mechanic resolution to prompt an actual response from you.  You saying, "No, Jim, I want you to figure that out for yourself," is just prompting him to not put points into Intelligence.  Instead, at least give him the idea that "You're pretty sure you've seen those symbols describing different elven colors," as an example of a successful Int check spurs them on.This is long-winded, I know, but I feel it's important to encourage DMs to appreciate players who choose to design characters with powerful mental stats equally to those who design characters with high physical stats by letting them succeed in combat.</blockquote>

Verification