The rules keep stealing my thunder!

[Nifft]

It's really your own fault for allowing anything of Legacy!

-- N

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

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?

Depends on your Knowledge (Religion) check. However, even an Int 6 barbarian can generally recognize that the mobs are zombie-ish. (Note that I presume a reasonable familiarity with how the world works on the part of characters, this affects my answer for 4 as well.)

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.

Balance DCs are relatively static, so any PC who's going to be able to pull any of this off in the first place is likely to do it very well.

3. Is the adjacent, mid-air square occupied by the Necromancer's invisible familiar?

Not likely. Very much possible, but not likely. It would certainly make for an interesting result. It is possible that the PC has See Invisible or True Seeing up. Then again, a PC with those up is unlikely to do something like this.

4. Does the wizard's spells require material components?

As the character is unlikely to be an idiot, he's likely to be at least somewhat familiar with how arcane magic works, including that most spells require material components. Perhaps if he nor anyone he'd ever met encountered a wizard before, but that's unlikely in most default settings.

5. Are any of the areas that your moving through trapped?

That does, of course, require the DM to say whether or not. But the player likely doesn't care.

Brad

 

[gizmo33]

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

What ever that is that's called that is only useful for stuff that's already dead. Once the Kyton is dead, then it would take some serious rules mangling to make the PCs afraid of it's sunder. It's hard to identify an item on a creature that's trying to kill you with it.

Well if they are going to try to fight the thing they will figure out its mechanics at some point.

No they won't. Most fights only last a few rounds. And even if it lasted till infinity, they have no idea what the DM is rolling for his monsters attack rolls. All they know is success or failure.

If it's BS they will call you on it later. (How did it only have 44 hp but I couldn't turn it?)

What made you think you couldn't turn it? You rolled your dice, you waved your holy symbol at the thing. You got a result but the conclusion was that the attempt failed - not being successful is not the same thing as not being able. What gave you the feeling that you knew enough about the situation to conclude that the DM made a mistake? Ever hear of an Unhallow spell? Can you imagine that stronger versions of the spell could exist? Are you sure that you weren't standing in a pocket-dimension of Hell that affected your chances?

The answer is that you don't know any of this unless I blab and tell you - or blab and tell you that it's not the case. And my role as a DM is not to tell you a bunch of stuff that your characters wouldn't know, or rule out a bunch of paranoid thoughts that are hopefully filling your mind. (And inevitably will if I just keep my trap shut and stick to telling you what your characters know.)

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).

They're not going to figure it out at some point unless you tell them as the DM, which is not your job - unless you want it to be, in which case you're just making the whole fear/suspense thing harder on yourself for no reason.

You don't know what kind of chains a particular Kyton is carrying in my campaign - even if I tell you that no Kyton encountered previously has ever had magic chains (which I have no reason to tell you). Even if you read, in a tome of dubious veracity, that Kyton's never carry magic chains. Even if you cast some 1st level identify spell on the chains later to try to figure out what they were.

There are a thousand things that you can't even think of that might be going on in any situation, and as a DM I am under no obligation to tell you any of them. Perhaps the chains are made of Gizmonium. Seems like a geology or arcane knowledge (or appraisal) skill check could have told you that, but do you know what the DC is for the check? If you fail the check, how will you know why you failed it?

 

[takasi]

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?

How is their initiative score important? You declare on your init. They could be holding their action, but that doesn't mean you can't declare the mechanics of what you're doing.

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.

They will when you describe it to them and ask them for a roll. Unless you are going to roll for them, which isn't very fun for them.

3. Is the adjacent, mid-air square occupied by the Necromancer's invisible familiar?

Again, not seeing the connection here. That has nothing to do with declaring what they mechanically would like to do in addition to the conceptual. (Can they do it in this round? What type of action is it? Can they still do it and grapple?)

4. Does the wizard's spells require material components?

Again, that has nothing to do with resovling the concept they want to achieve (getting the pouch).

5. Are any of the areas that your moving through trapped?

Again, that has nothing to do with resolving the mechanics of their declarations (as opposed to the result).

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.

Well of course PCs don't know everything that's going on, but they should be able to have a firm understanding, mechanically, of what they can DECLARE they want to do in any given round. And if they're smart, they will know when to call "shenanigans" if a DM is trumping the rules in favor of his own story.

 

[Oryan77]

What I DO think I know is that you don't completely understand how to manage the information in a DnD game.

You don't seem to understand how to apply the basic relationship between fear and information in order to achieve the desired result.

I thought your job was to primarly tell them what they experience in reaction to what their characters do.

telling them every scrap of information about the foe they are facing (or even acknowledging such information), is not helping your cause.

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.

That's exactly what I meant when I said, "Trust that I'm not a total goon". I appreciate your replies and I'm sure you're only trying to offer good advice. But all I'm getting from you is that you're criticizing my level of DM'ing and my understanding of how to DM players.

Obviously you weren't at the table and playing in the encounter. Obviously you don't know our campaign. And obviously you don't know the complete situation of what went on since I've only given a few general points here. I get the advice you're trying to relay to me and I appreciate it and am taking it into consideration. But by assuming that I'm a dopey enough DM to "tell them every scrap of information about the foe they are facing" is only going to waste your time by offering advice that won't benefit me since I'm not a dopey DM.

I don't give players any info about NPCs that will have any kind of affect on the situation. In this case, my goal was to make them nervous long term. My judgement call was to either continue with a sunder attempt that won't have any affect at all other than making the player nervous for about 30 more seconds of game time. Or, follow through with a full round attack that will threaten her life and make her nervous longer than 30 seconds of gameplay. I chose to go with the longer term affect and if that alerted them that his chains aren't +2, that is not going to have any affect on the game since logic would tell them anyway that he isn't weilding +2 chains.

They knew it was a Kyton and not "something that looks like a Kyton" because it had already performed Kyton special powers. It also wasn't the first Kyton they have encountered. Due to the (incorrect) rule, she would not have been worried by his sunder attempt because the players were already familiar with this NPC and would know his attempts are automatic failures rather than just him not bypassing Hardness.

If you don't agree with my judgement call, than that's fine. But it has nothing to do with my DMing skills and knowledge of how to DM "properly" as people love to point out to DMs online

 

[gizmo33]

Depends on your Knowledge (Religion) check. However, even an Int 6 barbarian can generally recognize that the mobs are zombie-ish.

Heck, a winter-wight with a wig is "zombie-ish". That doesn't tell me anything about what the creatures capabilities are in intercepting my sprint towards the BBEG. They could have been faking the slow shuffle thing. A cheetah doesn't always move at 60 mph.

Balance DCs are relatively static, so any PC who's going to be able to pull any of this off in the first place is likely to do it very well.

What do you mean static? Surfaces in a campaign world are static? Spilled oil in your campaign mops itself up? Railing repair themselves, and structurally weak places are auto-fixed? Nothing in the real world is static - why not use that as inspiration for a fantasy world?

Not likely. Very much possible, but not likely. It would certainly make for an interesting result. It is possible that the PC has See Invisible or True Seeing up. Then again, a PC with those up is unlikely to do something like this.

The funny thing about scaring people is that it doesn't have to be likely. If someone pulled a gun on you and told you he would squeeze the trigger but it "was very much possible but unlikely that the gun was loaded" you'd still have the bejeepers scared out of you. Fear is all about uncertainty.

As the character is unlikely to be an idiot, he's likely to be at least somewhat familiar with how arcane magic works, including that most spells require material components.

"Most" is irrelevant. Most, is not all, and as I said above, most is not good enough when you stand the chance of being wrong and getting killed. You don't know if you're facing a character that reqiures material components to cast spells or not until the DM tells you that you are.

Perhaps if he nor anyone he'd ever met encountered a wizard before, but that's unlikely in most default settings.

Agreed, but irrelevant since I'd have to first identify who a wizard is, rule out all possible other variants, creatures, and so forth. I'm not even sure that the so-called "wizard" that I see is not an illusion.

The point is that you can debate with me whether or not such things are "likely" in my campaign world, but you really don't know anything about it other than what I tell you, and if I conduct my campaign anything like the way real-life operates - you can never 100% predict any of the circumstances that you're facing just because you have a handful of past experiences.

And that doubt, mingled with the possibility of a horrible result, is the essence of fear.

That does, of course, require the DM to say whether or not. But the player likely doesn't care.

No, moving through an area does not require me to tell the player if it's trapped or not. It very well could be a timed device that doesn't activate for another 3 rounds. I'm only required to give the PC his character information would have, and ruling out everything that didn't happen or that his character doesn't know about never falls into that category.

Look, I can't sit on a "duh duh" moment for ever, hoping the players will be scared by what's behind the door. At some point they are going to open the door, see there is nothing behind it, and go on to the next moment of uncertainty.

However, I'm selling myself short as a DM if I tell the players "you see a door but there's nothing behind it" and then wonder why my players aren't scared or why my scenario is not dramatic. The DM just needs the will-power and experience not to present information to the players in the omniscient voice.

 

[IcyCool]

It's really your own fault for allowing anything of Legacy!

-- N

No no, of Legacy is fine. It's the stuff of Legend that you need to be careful about.

 

[takasi]

What ever that is that's called that is only useful for stuff that's already dead. Once the Kyton is dead, then it would take some serious rules mangling to make the PCs afraid of it's sunder. It's hard to identify an item on a creature that's trying to kill you with it.

But you will identify it. Whatever level os suspense you are trying to create will be diminished significantly if your players do not trust that you're running the game fairly. The rules say (which they don't but for the sake of argument let's assume they did) that you cannot sunder a +2 weapon without having a +2 or better weapon. A PC has a +2 weapon and it is sundered by a weapon. The PC picks up the weapon later and discovers that is WASN'T a +2 weapon. When he calls "shenanigans" don't you think that ruins the experience of "suspense" later on?

No they won't. Most fights only last a few rounds. And even if it lasted till infinity, they have no idea what the DM is rolling for his monsters attack rolls. All they know is success or failure.

You can figure out how much damage you're doing to it for the most part, and whether it is healing itself or whether the damage is effective or not. And if the DM doesn't want to provide this information then again he is losing that level of trust (see above) that allows a player to feel the suspense.

What made you think you couldn't turn it?

Because players know, metagame, what they can and can't turn as far as hit dice are concerned. If you fudge the numbers they will figure it out. Maybe not always, but once it happens you are going to lose that level of trust.

Ever hear of an Unhallow spell? Can you imagine that stronger versions of the spell could exist? Are you sure that you weren't standing in a pocket-dimension of Hell that affected your chances?

DM's that use these tactics are, IMO, poor adventure designers. If a DM can't play by the same rules the PCs have to (by arbitrarily raising a monster's turn ability for example) then I would not want that DM at my table.

 

[gizmo33]

How is their initiative score important?

Your initiative score doesn't mean anything until you compare it against your opponents. But maybe I'm confused about what you're saying.

You declare on your init. They could be holding their action, but that doesn't mean you can't declare the mechanics of what you're doing.

Definitely. If we're talking about the range of what a player can declare that he's doing then I've misunderstood you. I was trying to illustrate that there's no way that a player would know his chances of success/failure with certainty because he doesn't know all of the cirumstances.

They will when you describe it to them and ask them for a roll. Unless you are going to roll for them, which isn't very fun for them.

I'm not saying roll for them. Again, they don't know that they didn't fail a spot check to notice that there was some transparent slime on the bannister.

Again, that has nothing to do with resovling the concept they want to achieve (getting the pouch).

No, the OP was about the player not being afraid because he knew the rules, when I really thought that it was more a case of the DM telling the player too much information that his character would have no way of knowing.



Again, that has nothing to do with resolving the mechanics of their declarations (as opposed to the result).

Well of course PCs don't know everything that's going on, but they should be able to have a firm understanding, mechanically, of what they can DECLARE they want to do in any given round. And if they're smart, they will know when to call "shenanigans" if a DM is trumping the rules in favor of his own story.

No amount of intelligence in the world is going to tell you what the arcane knowledge check is for determining whether or not a chain is made out of Gizmonium. The players rarely have the information to call "shenanigans" if you stick to telling them only what their characters would know.

They very well might be on firm ground when determining what they want their actions to be that round, but they are in no position to know much more than general information about their chance of success/failure, or the NPCs chance of success/failure, which was my main point.

 

[billd91]

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."
<snip>

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?

<snip>

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).

By my reading of the feat description, they can tell their opponent has mage slayer when threatened by him. In the case of moving up to cast the spell, they'll only find out he's a mage slayer AFTER they're in his threatened space. They could elect not to cast, they could elect to take the AoO, or they could try to move out and cast... but since they'd then provoke an AoO for moving, you'd still get your AoO.