Most animals have throat muscles that can close their throats so that water doesn't go down them when they go under water and so they can keep their stomach acids in their stomach without it pouring out. I would think there has to be some things in common amongst creatures that exist.
thanks for the biology lesson, I didn't know that... but what do doctors see when they shine that light in your mouth? I just assumed down your throat
The only reason you didn't have any problems with this ruling is because of how many rules you broke in order to make sure you didn't have problems and because your players lack of knowledge of the rules or lack of caring about XP and treasure. Basically, you had the perfect storm that allowed your mistake to go unnoticed. You decided to break the rules on XP, the rules on treasure, the rules on initiative, the rules on choking to death, and the rules on wall of force. Your players didn't care. Had even one of your players cared about the rules there would have been a problem. It likely would have ruined there experience and they could have had no fun.
wait if I had different players my game would run differently is news to who?? of cource every table sometimes even night to noight at the same table is different... DMs need to make the game fun FOR THERE PCS
It worked only because you had the type of players who don't care. To me, that's like saying "I ran out into traffic and leaped out of the way whenever a car was going to hit me. Luckily, because there was construction nearby all the cars were moving really slow. I managed to avoid all the cars and I had a great time. So I made the right call when I decided to leap out of the way." The right call was not to run into the traffic in the first place, it wasn't leaping out of the way of the cars. If it wasn't for the construction, you'd be dead.
or more like, "I run games my table likes...and that changes based on the table"
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That's not what the rules for initiative say. It also is a extremely unbalanced rule favoring the PCs. It means that at high levels they can generally beat most monsters without ever rolling for initiative. I'm beginning to see how your players are able to take on such high level threats without worrying.
so If I say "I punch the guard" you make me roll initiative?
If this situation happened in a book, it would be considered a comedy. In a Discworld sort of way. I'm not really looking for my game to be a comedy.
or a funny scene in an otherwise seriuse book... or who knows no one scene makes a story...
The DM is there to come up with the story. He's there to play the NPCs(and react intelligently). He's there to interpret the rules whenever there is confusion. He's there to come up with interesting situations to put the PCs into(that are fair, balanced, challenging, and follow the rules). He's there to interpret when people try out of the box things and try to sort out the "obviously cheating" out of the box actions from the "interesting but fair" out of the box actions. He's there to determine when to allow something and when it unbalances the game based on the rules already in the game.
I think he is a player who makes up the world and adventure and trys to move the game along in fun ways...
Running a game is easy. Running a game well is hard. I still make plenty of mistakes every game even though I've been DMing for 20 years now.
Agreed 100%
However, I've seen DMs who are used to their home group and the way they play get super flustered when DMing for more demanding players. A couple of GenCons ago I ended up at a table with a DM who obviously was used to house ruling everything and not looking up any of the rules. It was obvious to everyone at the table because he'd get at least one rule wrong each round of combat. We were playing in the GenCon Special for Living Forgotten Realms. These things are legendary for how deadly they are. You have to make sure to be on your A game when it comes to combat. You need to use your powers in the right order while simultaneously hoping the die rolls come out in your favor or you're going to have to pay for a Raise Dead at the end of the adventure.
I run at cons all the time and at my FLGS and for new people... the best way to run any table is to the desires of the players....
Though, it was readily apparent that he thought he was a GREAT DM who DMed for his friends all the time and they loved him. It's good to have a group of friends that love your DMing style. Don't lose them because you might not find any more like them.
so you didn't have fun... if you don't have fun it wasn't run well...
But beyond that, I assume you wanted him dead when you ruled yes to a spell working a different way than it was supposed to. It was just as easy to say no with no consequences at all:
You: "Yeah, the spell doesn't work that way, it can't be put into someone's throat"
Player: "Oh...alright. I don't do that then."
I had a whole adventure planed... it was ploted as A) PCs do what he wants (a fetch quest) or B they go fortify the town, and problably need to build an army to stop him... they said "Hey wait how about C and we do this..." and I rolled with it.
5 seconds worth of time, no changes to your planned adventure, no change to the fun your players would have had(assuming you already had fun things planned for them that didn't involve killing the dragon).
they ran and did completely different things then I planed.
Here's the rub. I don't disagree that the ruling was necessarily bad at your table. I am saying you have a table filled with "beer and pretzels" style players. I'm saying that making this ruling in the grand scheme of DMing is bad. Especially if you were DMing for players you'd never met before. I'm saying that even at your table another ruling would have worked fine.
yes if things were different they might of went different... so what it was an example of a one off joke everyone loved....
I don't plan adventures on the fly. I'm horrible at improvising.
oh, ok... I find that good DMs have to improvise all the time...
Mainly because I hate improvised adventures. They seem to lack a coherent story and seem shallow. When I plan an adventure, it needs to get followed...at least mostly. It can take some minor bumps and turns but when I spent the time to foreshadow the villain that the PCs were going to fight at level 15 when they were level 1....well, that foreshadowing is useless if the PCs find some way to avoid ever encountering the villain.
wait... you write level 15 at level 1 and if the PCs don't follow your railroad you punish them and make them... and you hate when they go away from your planed events??? WTF? you insult my DMing that most people enjoy and then come back with one of the most hated DM tactics ever...
So, when players decide not to engage with the game at all and instead hole themselves up in a building and decide never to leave, I decide that the game isn't the game I wanted to run. To me, it's the same thing as showing up to watch a movie called Thor and never having Thor show up or even have the movie be about him. You feel ripped off because you went in expecting Thor and got something else instead.
my games the movie title is made at the end not the beginning... maybe I planed thor but he died... so we got SIF...
I went in
expecting to run the adventure I had planned. Instead I got an adventure where nothing interesting happened.
then make interesting things...
You gave me an idea where the NPCs would be saying things like "See what you did to my adventure" or whatever it is you posted. The NPCs don't know anything about my adventure, they don't break the fourth wall. And they don't attack simply because I'm angry. It seems extremely contrived and bitter.
no I said run an adventure in there house for the game th PCs were making... you know what... I would have rolled with it and made a game you threw your hands up and rage quite... but you think me making a fun game would be bad DMING....
All DMs expect this. Some just expect different things and have different tolerances. If someone shows up to your game and kept insisting they had a plasma rifle and whenever you asked them when they did and they said "I shoot my plasma rifle at the enemies", it's very likely that you'd point out to them in short order that: 1. You were running D&D, 2. There are no Plasma Rifles, 3. Your character doesn't have a Plasma Rifle as you never agreed to give him one. If he kept saying it over and over again and refused to take no for an answer...it's likely that you'd either get frustrated at having to run the game for such stupid players and give up DMing...or you'd kick that player out of your group.
what??? your anology fails again... I didn't have someone jump genre...
By sitting down and playing a game, you all agree to rules. The rules create a box. Thinking outside of that box creates a situation nobody wants. We are just using a different set of rules.
um... not in my experience...
I view certain actions as going TOO far outside the box. Figuring out that water harms the Fire Elemental and luring him out into the lake to fight him? AWESOME. You thought out of the box and get an advantage.
I would go with that.... the fun is how you get him there...
Saying "I cast Create Water over the Fire Elemental...water puts out fire, the Elemental is now dead!" is approximately the same thing as playing a video game and finding a spot inside the wall where the last boss of the game can't harm you and then defeating him. Did you win? Technically. Did you win within the spirit of the game you were playing? Not so much.
all that matters is if everyone has fun... I would rule create water would do 1d6+caster level damage myself... but in a game with guns we once used create water to make the guns not fire (like they had been in the rain and soaked)...
