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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 7602493" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I read what you wrote. The DMG says you should work with character backstories before the game, allowing things to fit where they can. During the game the player is going against expectations by trying to add to their backstory, but that may be fine, or it may not be. It depends on the table and the temperament of the people involved since it doesn't involve the rules in any way. As solid as mist that is. With your assertions of characters thinking what the player decides, and always being right in that regard, then if the character thinks Francis exists, then the player thinks Francis exists, because they must be right about what their character is thinking. I'm sure it is more nuanced than that, but you seem very much in-line with wanting as little divide between character and player knowledge as possible. Yep, this all lines up with how I understand your position. Though, I find it amusing you added in the part about not needing to know an earth elementals vulnerabilities to cast Thunderwave. You are completely correct, of course, but there are other ways to utilize a character's knowledge. For example, buying scrolls of Thunder damage spells in preparation of a battle involving lots of earth elementals under the assumption of them being vulnerable to that damage. Of course, "assume at your own risk, I as the DM can and will change anything in the game" but that is a separate thing from what is being discussed. I'm talking to multiple people, but when I posted the original bit addressing iserith, you responded with your own points. Then, you have been looking at my points and calling them out as though the answer is obvious, but if you look at some of the other responses, they are not obvious to all the people I'm discussing with. I'm not dragging you into this, you quoted me first and decided to get involved with the discussion. I'm just trying to help you understand that my arguments have been crafted because of certain assumptions, and that if you don't share those assumptions it might seem strange I have to make these arguments at all. Okay, fair enough. In your post you made it sound as though at your table you expected your players not to act upon information in the MM without having to have first made a roll at some point to determine that knowledge. I agree that separating that knowledge is difficult if not impossible. It rarely comes up at my table, and people are generally more concerned with avoiding resistances and immunities that exploiting vulnerabilities, so the few times people do know something, it is a minor effect. However, I am a person who gets bugged by inconsistencies in stories, so if your character has knowledge about how mindflayers are created, despite being a poor street rat with no encounters with anything more arcane than a magic lantern, I'm going to wonder how you came by this explicit and detailed secret knowledge. It will bother me, simply because it alters your story and would seem out of place. Even more so if it happens to be a major world secret that the players previously had to struggle and fight to learn. Yeah, I'm fully prepared to work with the player and have some give and take in these areas. Players can add some details to the game world, I can throw in some minor surface feelings to the PC. I'm not going to run roughshod over their characters, but if the player has established, let us say a child, and then as part of a magic trap playing on a character's fears, I'd feel perfectly fine saying something to the effect of "With dawning horror you realize that the figure being strapped to the rack is [insert npc name here]". Yes, I'm telling the player how their character feels, but I'm working with what we have previously established. And myself and the entire table is going to be a little taken aback if their reaction to their kid being strapped to a torture device isn't some form of horror.</blockquote>

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