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What does it mean to "Challenge the Character"?
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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7603859" data-attributes="member: 97077"><p>I think [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] establishes a good line here: The player is free to draw upon hard-won knowledge to inform how he or she has the character act. The limit is when the player is not acting in good faith and has, as you suggest above, read the module and presumably didn't tell anyone. I think a player not being forthcoming about this many people would consider rude or worse. But sometimes my players replay my one-shots to try out a different character or approach with a new party. It can work just fine even with perfect knowledge.</p><p></p><p>But anyway let's say that the player does say "earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage" then says he or she wants to go Ye Olde Magick Shoppe to buy some scrolls or <em>thunderwave</em> for the party wizard to use. You know as DM that THESE earth elementals have no particular vulnerabilities to thunder damage. Let's up the ante and say that the characters have never encountered earth elementals before. Let's go one step further and say the character is an Int-8 barbarian. What do you do here as DM? Does the character go buy the scrolls or do you invalidate the action declaration?</p><p></p><p>I'll add that you are incorrect about my views on the player determining things about a character's past during play. Here I'm stating what the rules support, not what I personally do. Read upthread and you will see me make several statements about my preferences in this regard. What I'll not say is that the rules of the game support that preference (or yours). Every table has to figure this out on their own. (This was, by the way, the answer I gave that you said was "clear as mist" and wanted to move past.)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I have no issue with a player playing a character that doesn't know something the player does. That's up to the player. My issue has always been the DM <em>requiring</em> the player to do so.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That depends on the context. I don't understand the first question. The second could be done through a knowledgeable NPC, and I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to get the correct information into the PCs' hands. Not to mention - <em>the smart play is to act on assumptions only after verifying them</em>.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That sounds like a few problems at play to me, mostly having to do with personalities and how the group deals with conflict resolution. What appears to kick things off is that the player acted on an assumption without verifying it first. But the DM bares some responsibility here as well by failing to describe these vampires as somehow distinct from others. Then there's an issue with how the players move forward on action declarations as a group and how they resolve conflicts. This can't be laid entirely at the feet of the person wanting to attack the vampires and frankly there are plenty of characters that might credibly do that even if the player knows something is off about <em>these </em>vampires.</p><p></p><p>This is a situation with multivariate issues. To lay it at the feet of just one thing looks a lot like confirmation bias to me.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Seems like a blanket statement to me that is easily disproved by a single example.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7603859, member: 97077"] I think [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] establishes a good line here: The player is free to draw upon hard-won knowledge to inform how he or she has the character act. The limit is when the player is not acting in good faith and has, as you suggest above, read the module and presumably didn't tell anyone. I think a player not being forthcoming about this many people would consider rude or worse. But sometimes my players replay my one-shots to try out a different character or approach with a new party. It can work just fine even with perfect knowledge. But anyway let's say that the player does say "earth elementals are vulnerable to thunder damage" then says he or she wants to go Ye Olde Magick Shoppe to buy some scrolls or [I]thunderwave[/I] for the party wizard to use. You know as DM that THESE earth elementals have no particular vulnerabilities to thunder damage. Let's up the ante and say that the characters have never encountered earth elementals before. Let's go one step further and say the character is an Int-8 barbarian. What do you do here as DM? Does the character go buy the scrolls or do you invalidate the action declaration? I'll add that you are incorrect about my views on the player determining things about a character's past during play. Here I'm stating what the rules support, not what I personally do. Read upthread and you will see me make several statements about my preferences in this regard. What I'll not say is that the rules of the game support that preference (or yours). Every table has to figure this out on their own. (This was, by the way, the answer I gave that you said was "clear as mist" and wanted to move past.) I have no issue with a player playing a character that doesn't know something the player does. That's up to the player. My issue has always been the DM [I]requiring[/I] the player to do so. That depends on the context. I don't understand the first question. The second could be done through a knowledgeable NPC, and I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to get the correct information into the PCs' hands. Not to mention - [I]the smart play is to act on assumptions only after verifying them[/I]. That sounds like a few problems at play to me, mostly having to do with personalities and how the group deals with conflict resolution. What appears to kick things off is that the player acted on an assumption without verifying it first. But the DM bares some responsibility here as well by failing to describe these vampires as somehow distinct from others. Then there's an issue with how the players move forward on action declarations as a group and how they resolve conflicts. This can't be laid entirely at the feet of the person wanting to attack the vampires and frankly there are plenty of characters that might credibly do that even if the player knows something is off about [I]these [/I]vampires. This is a situation with multivariate issues. To lay it at the feet of just one thing looks a lot like confirmation bias to me. Seems like a blanket statement to me that is easily disproved by a single example. [/QUOTE]
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