The rules keep stealing my thunder!

[Oryan77]

The other option, of course, is to just work on knowing the rules damn well.

I'm not too bad with the rules. I agree with what you said 100% and made an effort to be as good as I can be. I was never a rules guy but I learned that to run a smoother game, I need to be a rules guy.

My problem is with the really off the wall rules that come up maybe once a year. Things that our whole group finds out at once and says, "WTF, that's a random rule".

As in my example, my luck; I simply asked my players to figure out what a magic items hardness & HP are while I continue with the next initiative. He coulda found it in the PHB apparently, but he goes for the DMG and finds the sentence that's not even supposed to be printed in the DMG

So the rules thwart my actions even when the friggen book is wrong

 

[Set]

I wouldn't advice you to memorize the entire rules, eratta and all, since that's like *insane,* but it would be better to brush up on the specific plot point rules. In this case, you wanted to scare the character with a bow-sunder, and so your only 'mistake' was this;

I asked the players to find out the Hardness & HP of a magic bow for me while I moved on to the next initiative to keep the game moving.

If the whole point of the bow-sunder was to make the player go, 'oh noeess!' then you should have already figured out the HP / Hardness of her bow, and, ideally, executed the actual sunder action fast enough that she wouldn't have time to flip through a couple books and find out that the bow was actually pretty darn tough. A little flavor text, 'His axe grates up the length of your bow, failing to smash it, but shaving long curls of wood off of the edge. He snarls and readies for another attempt on the now-weakened bow!' Even if he only did a few hit points of damage and came nowhere near sundering the bow, it could look worse in the heat of combat (and would be easily patched up with a Mending spell or something after, since the bow wouldn't be broken, only slightly damaged).

You don't have to know every rule ever. But if you plan on having the Ogre attempt to Bull Rush the Fighter into a pit, it's best to look up Bull Rush in advance. If it's just 'Ogre encounter A' and you don't have anything special planned, then it doesn't matter. Write down their AC / hit points / BAB on little cards and send them in to die.

 

[Oryan77]

wouldn't have time to flip through a couple books and find out that the bow was actually pretty darn tough

It's nice to imagine that that's how it would work out, but my experience with playing with lots of different gamers is that as soon as the DM attempts something as nasty as sundering a magic item...every player at the table scrambles for his books to try and figure out a reason why the DM can't do it.

So even if I did plan to sunder before the game, brushed up on my sundering rules, and figured out the hardness & HP's....by that initiative, players will have books in hand with eyes scanning the text. It may be 3 rounds later, but eventually a player would have said, "AH HAH! Right here in the DMG on pg 222 it says that you can only break magic weapons with equally powerful magic weapons!" And then they'll throw a fit about my ruling and argue that it's unfair for me to allow the bow to be damaged yadda yadda yadda. Even if I sundered the bow and the players don't read the rules during the game; after the game they will read them on their own time and complain later in the week that I wrongly destroyed a magic item.

Don't get me wrong, my players don't nit-pick the small stuff. Sundering a +2 Legacy item isn't small stuff. So I can understand why they'd want to double check my ruling even if it is annoying.

I would never have thought to look at the errata if Hypersmurf didn't point it out.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Unfortunately for you Oryan, sundering a WoL is almost impossible. I don't have the book in front of me so I am going from memory (always a bad idea! ) but I am pretty sure that you need to use a WoL in order to sunder a WoL. :\

Olaf the Stout

 

[billd91]

So you couldn't sunder the bow in the end. So what? You got the player freaking out and that's enough. Why would the guy attacking her know they wouldn't be able to sunder a weapon of legacy? They wouldn't. They'd make the attempt and then wonder why they were unable to break the bow as they went down.

 

[Lanefan]

As in my example, my luck; I simply asked my players to figure out what a magic items hardness & HP are while I continue with the next initiative. He coulda found it in the PHB apparently, but he goes for the DMG and finds the sentence that's not even supposed to be printed in the DMG

You're a different breed of DM than I am, that's for sure. If a player at my table started reading the DMG in mid-session, for any reason, there'd be some big-time trouble...

Rule 0.1: The DMG is OFF LIMITS to players!

Lanefan

 

[Vegepygmy]

You're a different breed of DM than I am, that's for sure. If a player at my table started reading the DMG in mid-session, for any reason, there'd be some big-time trouble...

Rule 0.1: The DMG is OFF LIMITS to players!

Your "Rule 0.1" is my "Warning Sign 0.1" for DMs I Don't Want Running My Game. If my consulting the game's rules bothers you, I figure it's almost certainly because you don't know them well enough (and are too insecure to admit it).

 

[I'm A Banana]

"AH HAH! Right here in the DMG on pg 222 it says that you can only break magic weapons with equally powerful magic weapons!"

...and in *that* situation, I say: "Yes, you're absolutely right. Kinda makes you wonder what kind of villain can staff his minions with +2 legacy sundersticks, don't it? Just imagine what kind of sunderstick *he* wields..."

...and I quietly start adding +2 to attack and damage rolls. And give the BBEG a way to manufacture these items that, of course, the PC's can dismantle...

 

[Kahuna Burger]

I'm not sure you have so much an issue with the rules as an issue with different expectations of the player/DM relationship. Your players seem to percieve you as an adversary, and since you obviously have all the power, they look to shield themselves as best they can with the rules that constrain your power. You don't want to be their adversary, you want them to trust you enough to be loose with the rules and let them do the same.

IMO, the solution to this issue is a simple out of game conversation with your players, and trusting their suspension of disbelief and roleplaying abilities not to cause some some of amok time when they discover you are ok with the PCs winning. Institute an action point/stunt type of system or just agree to the "if you can make it sound cool you can try it" rule.

Do not respond to players who don't trust you with obvious and punative retcons or rules changes, unless you enjoy that lack of trust and wish to see it grow. Respond with communication on why they can trust you to provide a fun game for everyone.

 

[The Lost Muse]

Just a note, it's often easier to disarm a pc than to sunder their weapon, and then the party has to recover it. (And why didn't your sunderer not have improved sunder?)