The rules keep stealing my thunder!

[Oryan77]

Wow, this has been one of the best threads I think I've ever had on Enworld. Every single reply you guys have written me has been really good stuff. I'm getting a lot of good advice here. Thanks!

Maybe you need to change the tone of your games a little. Why are your players jumping for books to show you can't do something? That wasn't permitted in my games. If players wanted to argue or debate a rule, it was done after the game.

Exactly. That's a good idea that I might need to talk over with the group. Even if I completely screw up a ruling, at least during the game I would still get the enjoyment I was looking for and made the encounter as terrifying as I could. I'm always good at not wrongfully screwing players over. If I don't know the sunder rule exactly, then I'm not actually going to sunder the weapon even if I was legally able to. I'll just damage it bad so that I can get the rule right next time and it will be fair if I do sunder it later on. My motto is, if I'm using a pre-statted out NPC, I'm not going to insert specific abilities just so he can screw over the players more.

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?)

Disarming & tripping...yes, I gotta start doing that more often also. Like I said, I don't have a lot of time to preplan my tactics. So usually when I'm doing things like that it's a spurt of the moment idea. I tend not to sporatically give an NPC a feat or skill just so he won't receive an AoO for doing a tactic I just thought of. I've had DMs do that and it's annoying when NPCs always seem to be perfectly built & ready for every situation.

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,you want them to trust you enough to be loose with the rules and let them do the same.

I think that is sort of how it is. The players come up with character builds that eliminate any downside affect they might receive for performing an action. So then I also look for ways to exploit their character build every so often so they don't feel invinsible (which is what they are shooting for when optimizing their PC's). I don't constantly exploit their weaknesses or else it would be lame, so don't jump on that point & criticize me . But I'm realizing they may be thinking I'm 'picking' on their character personally now. Maybe it's the fact that I am finding weaknesses and trying to exploit them (with no success); perhaps that comes off as me picking on them & being adversarial.

Other people here have said that I'm still accomplishing my task of using challenging encounters and my players say that also. I think the problem is that I like the strategic part of combat as much as the players, but my strategies fall short due to things like what happened with sunder. The only reason an encounter is challenging is due to good rolls on my part, bad rolls on their part, & straight out brute force on my end. Anytime I try to be creative and have NPC's perform tactics, I fail for whatever reason.

So it's not that I'm trying to be adversarial by exploiting weaknesses, it's that I'm bored of the same old boring encounter brute-force routine and I'm trying to have fun myself by coming up with ways that I can use tactics like being able to get off a few AoO's, flanks, covers, concealments, compulsions, sunders, disarms, terrain advantages, ect ect (like the players get to do). And these darn players always have some rule that I didn't know about, spell, or feat that makes it so I can't pull off my brilliant tactic Maybe that is adversarial...but I'm doing it so I can have fun also, not to obliterate their characters.

And if you're just going to turn over the equipment lists of your NPCs to the players when they encounter them, you're not using what you have. If you just wouldn't have blabed about what kind of weapon your NPC was using, you could have rolled dice behind your screen all night, cackled evilly, and no one would have been the wiser. You went ahead and (apparently) told the players all about your NPC's equipment before they earned the right to that information.

Ya know, I understand gamers like to be critical on a DMs ability to DM, so all I can say to the comments that are targetting my DMing skills is that you'll just have to give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm not a complete goon.

It was a Kyton doing a sunder attempt with his chains. Magic items are rare in my campaign and they rarely encounter NPC's with even +1 weapons. That makes it pretty obvious that he's not wielding +2 chains so I was not worried about the players knowing that his chains aren't magical.

First fear, then rejoice?! And your'e not happy? How much control do you want? You got what you wanted from what I can tell. Are some DMs never happy?

Nope, I wasn't happy. It was a pale reaction. I was trying to get that player really involved in the scenario. It would have been more memorable to her if round after round she's nervously working with her teammates trying to play at the top of her game so her bow isn't destroyed. Then when they win the battle, they can high-five each other and talk about how she came close to losing something dear to her.

Instead, she gets scared for less time than it took for her to finish an action because a player finds the (errated) rule. Everyone smiles and she sighs and I'm left looking like an idiot and running another typical 'brute-force' encounter. It was still a fun encounter for everyone...I'm just failing at my attempts to make it more flavorful and fun for myself.

 

[ruleslawyer]

And it's even easier for them to steal it with sleight of hand.

No it isn't. Taking a weapon out of a person's hand uses an entirely different ruleset. We've had that conversation before.

 

[sniffles]

Ya know, I understand gamers like to be critical on a DMs ability to DM, so all I can say to the comments that are targetting my DMing skills is that you'll just have to give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm not a complete goon.

My thought when reading gizmo33's comment was that you're not a complete goon - you're just being too honest! The players I'm sure don't know that youre NPCs usually don't have any magic items. You could easily have just rolled some dice and ruled that the sunder attempt was successful, or at least threatening.

And I can't help thinking that if this player is so attached to her bow that she can't think what to do without it, then perhaps you ought to really sunder the bow, or at least put her in a situation where she can't use it. Sometimes it's fun for a character not to be a one-trick pony.

Nope, I wasn't happy. It was a pale reaction. I was trying to get that player really involved in the scenario. It would have been more memorable to her if round after round she's nervously working with her teammates trying to play at the top of her game so her bow isn't destroyed. Then when they win the battle, they can high-five each other and talk about how she came close to losing something dear to her.

Instead, she gets scared for less time than it took for her to finish an action because a player finds the (errated) rule. Everyone smiles and she sighs and I'm left looking like an idiot and running another typical 'brute-force' encounter. It was still a fun encounter for everyone...I'm just failing at my attempts to make it more flavorful and fun for myself.

Don't ask the players to look up rules for you during the game. Just rule, and then if you find out later that you were wrong, tell the players you'll do it differently next time. Looking up the rules not only ruined your fun for you, it probably also removed a lot of the tension you were trying to create for the players.

If you've got a rules lawyer in the group, tell him to keep his mouth shut during the game and leave his rulebooks at home.

I've played in games in which the GM fudges the rules a bit to add to the drama. It's fun as long as he allows the players to do that sometimes too. I've also played in games where no one was allowed to look up rules or reference books during the session, and it can be a great tool for making the game more exciting and keeping the players on topic. It just needs the players and GM to be cooperative.

 

[takasi]

Well doesn't that just suck haha. I just dl'ed errata for every book last week and stuck that DMG errata in the back of my book. I had no idea about that adjustment. Although I'm glad to see that change, it's just my luck that my original idea was spoiled

It doesn't sound like an original idea. Sundering weapons is pretty basic stuff.

Let's say you have a few zombies blocking the path on a spiraling staircase. A player wants to jump onto the banister to run past the mooks, run a little more until he's next to the necromancer boss, jump into a square that's both adjacent to the wizard but also in mid-air, pull the wizard into his own square (mid-air, i.e. several stories above a solid surface), snatch the wizard's spell components, drop the necromancer as they begin to fall a few feet down, cast feather fall, pull out his bow and then ready an action to hit the wizard if he casts a spell.

That's what a player says he "wants" to do. An ongoing issue I have with a few players in my group is they make conceptual declarations but then rely on me (or one of the rules lawyers in our group) to figure out what the mechanical declarations should be.

 

[gizmo33]

Ya know, I understand gamers like to be critical on a DMs ability to DM, so all I can say to the comments that are targetting my DMing skills is that you'll just have to give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm not a complete goon.

I absolutely do not think you're a complete goon. You could be a nobel-prize winning physicist for all I know. What I DO think I know is that you don't completely understand how to manage the information in a DnD game. This is not an issue of basic intelligence, this is an issue of experience and listening to other people's ideas, which is what I did. And so I'm trying to pass along what I figured out as a DM and what others told me.

It was a Kyton doing a sunder attempt with his chains. Magic items are rare in my campaign and they rarely encounter NPC's with even +1 weapons. That makes it pretty obvious that he's not wielding +2 chains so I was not worried about the players knowing that his chains aren't magical.

No, there's no obvious reason to think that the chains aren't +2 chains unless you're telling them that. At what point in the game are you giving the PCs statistical information about your campaign world and the likelihood of possession of magic items by NPCs?

As the DM, I thought your job was to primarly tell them what they experience in reaction to what their characters do. Unless your PCs have gone around and done a survey of every single NPC in the campaign, then for what reason would they conclude that the particular monster they're fighting, that looks like a Kyton isn't carrying a +5 chain?

Nope, I wasn't happy. It was a pale reaction. I was trying to get that player really involved in the scenario. It would have been more memorable to her if round after round she's nervously working with her teammates trying to play at the top of her game so her bow isn't destroyed.

You don't seem to understand how to apply the basic relationship between fear and information in order to achieve the desired result. It's not the rules that create fear, it's uncertainty. And telling them every scrap of information about the foe they are facing (or even acknowledging such information), is not helping your cause.

If I tell you that a tall, gaunt shadow is coming down the alley dragging some bloody chains behind it, that's got much better potential to be scarey than if I say "you see a Kyton with 44 hitpoints and non-magical chains walking towards you."

Instead, she gets scared for less time than it took for her to finish an action because a player finds the (errated) rule.

That rule did not give her in the information that she needed to conclude that her weapon was not in danger. Had you not given the players information that their characters could not have known, they would not have known they were safe until the battle was over.

Everyone smiles and she sighs and I'm left looking like an idiot and running another typical 'brute-force' encounter. It was still a fun encounter for everyone...I'm just failing at my attempts to make it more flavorful and fun for myself.

If it was a fun encounter for everyone, then how could you look like an idiot?

What I'm trying to say is that you don't have to man-handle the last 1% of the game that you're not in control of in order to create suspense and fear. 99% control, which you have, is plenty enough. I agree with your instincts that tell you that your players would resent you trying to control that last 1% anyway. That's usually how players are.

 

[Oryan77]

or at least put her in a situation where she can't use it. Sometimes it's fun for a character not to be a one-trick pony.

Yes! We're on the same page That was my intention when doing the sunder. She's a one-trick pony and I was trying to put her in a position where she has to think, "Maybe I need to change my tactics against this guy".

I just made a mess of it, as usual

 

[takasi]

Unless your PCs have gone around and done a survey of every single NPC in the campaign, then for what reason would they conclude that the particular monster they're fighting, that looks like a Kyton isn't carrying a +5 chain?

It's called "We kill it and identify its stuff."

If I tell you that a tall, gaunt shadow is coming down the alley dragging some bloody chains behind it, that's got much better potential to be scarey than if I say "you see a Kyton with 44 hitpoints and non-magical chains walking towards you."

Well if they are going to try to fight the thing they will figure out its mechanics at some point. If it's BS they will call you on it later. (How did it only have 44 hp but I couldn't turn it?) They're going to figure it out at some point, and that's where the rules should help define the story so it's fair (as opposed to the story defining the rules).

 

[IcyCool]

Let's say you have a few zombies blocking the path on a spiraling staircase. A player wants to jump onto the banister to run past the mooks, run a little more until he's next to the necromancer boss, jump into a square that's both adjacent to the wizard but also in mid-air, pull the wizard into his own square (mid-air, i.e. several stories above a solid surface), snatch the wizard's spell components, drop the necromancer as they begin to fall a few feet down, cast feather fall, pull out his bow and then ready an action to hit the wizard if he casts a spell.

It sounds like your player might enjoy playing Feng Shui.

 

[gizmo33]

Let's say you have a few zombies blocking the path on a spiraling staircase. A player wants to jump onto the banister to run past the mooks, run a little more until he's next to the necromancer boss, jump into a square that's both adjacent to the wizard but also in mid-air, pull the wizard into his own square (mid-air, i.e. several stories above a solid surface), snatch the wizard's spell components, drop the necromancer as they begin to fall a few feet down, cast feather fall, pull out his bow and then ready an action to hit the wizard if he casts a spell.

That's what a player says he "wants" to do. An ongoing issue I have with a few players in my group is they make conceptual declarations but then rely on me (or one of the rules lawyers in our group) to figure out what the mechanical declarations should be.

What I don't know as a player is (at least):
1. are those zombies quick-zombies or some other type of undead that could conceivably have a 28 for their initiative score?
2. How wide is the bannister? How slippery is it? No rules lawyer in the world knows the Balance DC check until you tell them that and rule out all other possible circumstance modifiers.
3. Is the adjacent, mid-air square occupied by the Necromancer's invisible familiar?
4. Does the wizard's spells require material components?
5. Are any of the areas that your moving through trapped?

There's just no way that even the weasiliest rules lawyer could possibly rule on any of these actions. Not only that, but there's not easy way to figure out the answers in any sort of definitive way. Maybe the invisible familiar just isn't in that square on that particular round, but maybe it is on the following?

Even following the most basic common-sense rules for perception, PCs should never be in a position to be certain about anything. And without 100% certainty, they're not in the position to make any rules judgements at all, all they can do is provide helpful information about what the rules say.

 

[timbannock]

I have to say that I had something similar happen.

Gave a demon the Mage Slayer feat. One of the players moved in and started casting, so they went to roll to Cast Defensively and I grinned wickedly and said "Oh no you don't!"

Then another player said "Hold on! You have Mage Slayer?"

Me: "Yes, actually. Why?"

Him: "You have to announce it to spellcasters. Says so in the feat's description."

Me: "Wtf, mate?!"

Talk about a lame rule. That's the same as the player's coming up against a new monster from Monster Manual 16 and me having to read its special abilities aloud to them so they don't make a tactical movement that would be disadvantageous to them. Is there ANY OTHER FEAT or ability that you have to ANNOUNCE to your players so they can avoid it?

The hell kinda rule is that?

It's actually one of the very few things in D&D that makes me just want to pick up GURPS or something. That's how much I hate that rule.

(Egad, maybe not GURPS, but the point still stands.)

Anyway, my solution: House Rule = Mage Slayer does not have to be announced. And if my players take it, I will NOT metagame the NPCs to "mysteriously know" they possess it. My group trusts me enough for that (and I'd probably forget their feats anyway...I have enough junk to keep track of on my side of the screen).