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="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 2697998" data-attributes="member: 12037">That is totally unrealistic, in my mind. It would be like the military telling their officers the secret code to get around in their base, but then having a little note on the keypad with a crossword that, once solved, reminded them the code to get through the doors. It. Makes. No. Sense.I have a code to open the door to the garage here on a keypad. I do not put on the keypad a little reminder giving a hint as to the combonation that will unlock it. Do you know people that do this regularly? Organizations? Is this something that is seen anywhere in real life? This isn't steriotyping, this is me wanting an internally believable world. A world in which liches go to the trouble of making a puzzle that involves putting orbs into marked recesses makes no sense to me. He should put a secret door there, arcane locked and trapped, if he doesn't want people to go through.The Sphinx isn't asking riddles of people just to keep them from somewhere. If he wanted to keep them from somewhere he wouldn't let them pass when they got it right. Same with a puzzle. If it were really to keep people out, it wouldn't let them pass when they got it right. It would have no solution and keep adventurers out because they'd think they just can't solve the puzzle!It is, as far as I can determine, a purely gamist construct.Guard and protect by killing tresspassers, you mean? Lost themselves? They weren't placed there by the occupant, then. A puzzle is always placed by the occupant, so they don't relate to each other.PCs have built in ways of dealing with monsters that vary from PC to PC. Some are stealthy. Some are mighty. Some are persuasive. Also, there are many many mechanics for overcoming monsters built into the game. The Players have options that are well defined and expressly given in the rules. When faced with a puzzle, it is totally up to the DM's whim how the Players can procede. A puzzle cannot be bypassed. It cannot be forced. It cannot be persuaded. It can only be solved.[EDIT - rant on bad DMing puzzles]And why can't it be forced anyway? I mean, a door with a complex puzzle associated with it where the Players wrack their brains over how to get through? Why can't they just bash the thing down? It seems like there are always some kind of magical wards preventing anything from happening to the door. Then when the PCs try to disintegrate the wall beside it, it suddenly has the same protections. Blech.When the PCs try to do something unique, in these situations, it is almost always met with impossibility. Freedom of action is another reason I dislike puzzles.If you write something be sure to put something like that in it. Saying "It's okay to dimension door past the puzzle. It is using up resources, and is completely a valid way of overcoming an obstacle" would be a great help to many Players who are suffering under heavy handed DMs.[/EDIT - rant]I've never actually witnessed PCs gaining much through research on puzzles. I would, of course, but I don't use puzzles very often. A DM who is pre-dispositioned to liking puzzles probably wouldn't think it necessary or see it as "cheating" as rolls have already been called on this thread. Likewise asking NPCs for help might be seen by many DMs as cheating by trying to get a hint from the DM. Of course, if your DM has that kind of attitude, it is likely that you have more problems than overly difficult puzzle solving.Puzzles, in my experience, just lead to more frustration than anything else. All too often what the DM sees as the plainly obvious, the Players are totally lost on. "Easy" puzzles often turn out to be some of the most time consuming. You seem to handle puzzles better than most DMs. A commentary of some kind to give advice to the more heavy-handed or stingy DMs would probably be appreciated by the gaming populace. Unfortunately, the DMs who would most need to read such an article probably wouldn't.</blockquote>

Verification