The Unbeatable Trick

[coyote6]

I've seen it, in a couple of varieties.

In GURPS, one player had a PC that always either slashed for the throat or stabbed for the eyes. It was effective, but it was boring. Bored me and other players; they would do (or try) all sorts of neat tricks, combinations, etc., doing a fair impression of an action movie; then it was "slash for the throat" or occasionally, "stab for the eyes". It was a struggle, but eventually, the PC learned to feint.

Then it was "Feint, then slash for the throat/stab for the eyes."

 

[Ariosto]

Some folks seem to have in mind a different Tenser's Floating Disk than the one with which I'm familiar, but it's a bit vague ... especially the part about its being an "unbeatable trick".

For every measure, there is a countermeasure. Even if Action X cannot be prevented directly, getting to Position W in the first place might be discouraged by the likelihood of Consequence Y.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

There is only one truly unbeatable trick, and that involves bribing the DM with pizza and beer.

 

[Cyronax]

In one 3e adventure we summoned a celestial squid to set off a glyph with harm in it. Doing so saved us, but we felt so awful looking at the miserable creature squirming on the floor near-death, we decided to never use that trick again.

I believe our comment at the time was "This is not our finest moment."

That's actually a great test of a heroic PC. A wizard who slaves his summonings frequently isn't a good guy in most cases, IMO.

Its that lack of compunction that brings forward the idea of an 'unbeatable trick.'

C.I.D.

PS - Another related topic would be the ability of the players to accept that some of their more intelligent enemies would prepare for their PC's big tricks. I remember an old 3.X campaign where the NPC villain employed spies in a good temple to help track the party's movement to great advantage and it became a very contentious topic amongst our group.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Look at it this way:

Once you've dropped the PCs in a pit enough for them to think up a counter to falling into pits, you've used that incarnation of the pit enough. Next time (or the next dozen times) such a pit comes up, you can just say "right, you use the trick to get over half-a-dozen pits" and move on.

Once your PCs have opened a trapped door in a dungeon 4 times, and are now searching every door, you don't assume that they don't search a door simply because they don't say they do: just assume that door searching happens, and roll it when there's a trap. Done.

Things become passe. Once the party can conjure enough transportation to move at huge speeds, overland encounters with, say, wild pigs are going to become passe. They're done. You're finished with the bit of the campaign where that matters and you can move on to new things. Once they can fly, it's no use crafting an encounter that involves crossing a river or a canyon. Once they can teleport, travel encounters go out the window almost entirely except when they're unusual enough that they don't.

That said, there's one or two areas where a trick makes enough of the game yesterdays news that as a DM you cannot keep up. Repeatable infinite damage combos with little chance of failure, for instance, obsolete almost all combat. Since D&D is a game about combat, that's a bit much, so obviously a rule change to remove the tactic is necessary. But outside of that, you can generally let the players do what they want: the onus is on you as DM to think of things that challenge them, and skip through or alter the boring bits.