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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Helldritch" data-source="post: 8436557" data-attributes="member: 6855114">A backstory must be plausible and doable from the character's perspective. Outlandish achievements will just be met a stern no. Both from me and the other players.1) Priest, Archmage, Wizards, Warpriests and so many others in various other books (all official 5ed) and even in some other books. You know that the spells in the stat block can be changed don't you?2) Define high level? 5th level? Only an explosive runes is necessary and 200 gold from the treasury of a baron for one cell/prison where you might have suspicion that a person can either lock pick or casts spell is more than enough. Not that much of a deal. 3) And so far, any setting made by WoTC, recent or not pretty much have high magic in them. Be it Greyhawk, The Realms, Spell Jammers, Planescapes (there it is off the roof), Krynn (yep, even there it would be feasible). Especially with the mind set that in 5ed, almost every class can cast spells. In other words, I do not truly care about homebrew when discussing rules as anything can be changed.No I am not truly using modern mind set. Just logic.Heck, If I were a sexist macho and saw an angry woman blast a dragon with a mere flick of her fingers, you can bet your shirt that I would treat her with all respect and deference any man or whatever male is due. And with magic, you never know who can really use it. Danger level in fantasy is high and people are usually quite polite unless complete morons. In a world where someone can kill you just for the way you look at him/her, you quickly learn the value of politeness and a bit of etiquette. This is one of the defining thing in my games. Observers are often surprised at how polite even potential foes are. You simply do not know how powerful the one in front of you is and how this person will react to a slight or perceived sligth. See the above for an explanation.You know that in medieval times, women were much more respected than in the Renaissance? Yes, the might makes right was still there. But women were much more combative and a knife can be easily hidden. Add magic (arcane or not) and D&D is a lot less sexist than many might think. Many women were expected to fight alonside the men in case of invasion. Especially in Nordic countries. But also in others where women could yield bows and arrows. Renaissance brought some sexists habits and defining roles for women (and add in religion) that put women on the back seat for quite a long time. It is fortunate that these times are over.But in a high fantasy world, that turn of event probably never happened. Heck, Iggwilv in Greyhawk was one of the most famous women, and she is not a gentle "demoiselle" in distress. Far from that.Were we not talking about a corrupted official? I doubt that a corrupted official is lawful good...Maybe for you they do. For me, not necessarily so.I do not allow races outside PHB so... Yep, desecrating a body is a bad thing. 100% agreeing with you there. But we were talking about a corrupted evil sheriff...The goal is to keep things rolling.Here are two examples that happened in the current campaigns (I have two)Players made an enemy of a powerful mage (read here, higher than they are).That mage uses Arcane Eye to spy on the players. The passive perception of the best player is too low to notice the Arcane Eye on the spot (darkness, darkvision, so passive perception is at -5). So the players are unaware of the Arcane Eye. As they move, so does the eye.Now what would happen if I asked a player to roll a perception check (and in these case I would call for the best skill to roll or would use the position of the players).You will get a: "I wanna check too" but no one is aware. No one. But if you deny a roll, you might get a wave of protest for nothing and thus slow down the game.Now, using the prerolled result, I get a 19 for the players, add in his skill, remove 5 for darkness and darkvision and guess what? The player noticed the Arcane Eye. He made a deception roll to appear unaware and to warn the other players as to what was happening. His roll succeeded (not that he could know) and he started to feed false information to the wizard spying on them.A roll was avoided and it led to a great moment where the players knew that the false information would give them an edge against the evil wizard. When the wizard was counterspelled by the party's wizard, I played the surprise because the evil archmage was convinced that the players did not have access to counterspells.Second exampleThe scout is in a cavern (again) and there is a hidden goblin. Both passive perceptions are too low to make one notice the other. The player notice that there are two exits to the cave and decide to stealthily move toward one. The scout is unkowingly moving toward the goblin  and he rolls low (stealth checks are always made in advance, whether there is something or not). The goblin's passive perception is sufficient to notice the players but the player is still unaware of the goblin. The goblin starts moving toward the other exit to warn the tribe.Now in a game, if the GM asks the player to roll perception; this will put the player into paranoia mode and thus the party. Not so in my games.I took the next prerolled result for the goblin it was a 15 and the next one after that for the player. It was 7 or 8, low enough that the goblin stayed unnoticed. It is only when the goblin started to run (thus throwing all caution to wind) that the players knew that a goblin was warning the tribe of their attack. They cursed that damn rule about darkvision and disadvantage on perception and proceeded to retreat...All other rolls are made in the open. In front of everyone and players have access to the record after the game and know what was used for what. All rolls are used in the sequence they are written. It can be bad or good. But so far, I do not use these very often. The only advantage of doing this is to reduce the roll fest that asking for one roll usually brings at a table. It might not be for everyone, but it works at my table and those of 7 of my players that are DMs too as they too started to use that method. You might be surprised at how fair it is and when used properly and honestly, it reduces a lot of argument for rolls and whatnot. Strangely, the most recent player never even asked to see the sheet. He knows me enough to know that I would not cheat and he wants to keep everything a surprise. My other players use the sheet as a hint of what might have happened while they were unaware... At our Friday Night Dungeons, a few people are surprised by the method just as you are. Once they see it in action, all doubts are thrown to wind. Try it. It works quite well.</blockquote>

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