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<blockquote data-quote="Runestar" data-source="post: 4806888" data-attributes="member: 72317">Just curious - as a DM, were there ever situations where you felt that having full and perfect knowledge of everything in the game was more of a burden/hindrance than a boon?Before you defend by saying &quot;I am the DM. It is my job to know everything that is going on.&quot;, let me elaborate.Let me use this 3e scene as an example.Say a lv17 party is facing a balor. One of its myriad of SLAs includes power word: stun. How might you, as the DM, decide who to target with it? You know fully well how many hp each player has, and who would be the most drastically affected by it. But would that be seen as being too metagamey, if the PC with the least hp (say the wizard) got zapped by it? The balor is extremely intelligent, and it does not seem impossible that he can deduce who has the least hp...Conversely, I would feel stupid going out of my way to target the barbarian with it, knowing fully well that I had wasted a standard action doing zilch, just to prove that I am not metagaming.Some of you may rebutt with &quot;The players should trust that the DM is fair and doing the right thing&quot; or &quot;Then stop using it - the balor has many other powers worth spamming anyways, like blasphemy&quot;. Still, I am interested to know your input. Assume you were dead set on using power word. What might you have done, and would you have faced any repercussions in your group for doing so? Or am I simply thinking too much?But personally, I felt that I would have been better off not knowing the players' hit points at that instance. Then regardless of how well or poorly power word: stun fared, I can't be guilty of metagaming. I don't have to bother rationalizing my choice to the players or to myself, and the game would just go on.Your thoughts?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Runestar, post: 4806888, member: 72317"] Just curious - as a DM, were there ever situations where you felt that having full and perfect knowledge of everything in the game was more of a burden/hindrance than a boon? Before you defend by saying "I am the DM. It is my job to know everything that is going on.", let me elaborate. Let me use this 3e scene as an example. Say a lv17 party is facing a balor. One of its myriad of SLAs includes power word: stun. How might you, as the DM, decide who to target with it? You know fully well how many hp each player has, and who would be the most drastically affected by it. But would that be seen as being too metagamey, if the PC with the least hp (say the wizard) got zapped by it? The balor is extremely intelligent, and it does not seem impossible that he can deduce who has the least hp... Conversely, I would feel stupid going out of my way to target the barbarian with it, knowing fully well that I had wasted a standard action doing zilch, just to prove that I am not metagaming. Some of you may rebutt with "The players should trust that the DM is fair and doing the right thing" or "Then stop using it - the balor has many other powers worth spamming anyways, like blasphemy". Still, I am interested to know your input. Assume you were dead set on using power word. What might you have done, and would you have faced any repercussions in your group for doing so? Or am I simply thinking too much? But personally, I felt that I would have been better off not knowing the players' hit points at that instance. Then regardless of how well or poorly power word: stun fared, I can't be guilty of metagaming. I don't have to bother rationalizing my choice to the players or to myself, and the game would just go on. Your thoughts? [/QUOTE]

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