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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6243215" data-attributes="member: 5143">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.Given a dragon of this size likely has 15-20 foot tall legs and a 10 foot tall neck, assuming it was "just standing there with its neck at a relatively neutral posture" it's head would be about 30 feet in the air unless it was laying on the ground and bending its neck downward to put it on the ground next to the PCs.  Even then, the angle you'd see into its mouth would let you see only a couple feet in before the angle of its neck would be too steep to see further in.Not that this part of the discussion really matters.  You ruled that they could see in.  Things like this really are up to the DM since there's no rules for it.  I think it's a silly rule, but well within your rights.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.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.To me, the right call is not to use a CR 24 dragon at all.  Instead, you say "Alright, they are level 9 characters, they meet enemies that are close to their level so that when they fight them they have a chance to succeed.  I want to use a dragon, but I'll use a CR 12 dragon.  It's hard enough that they won't be able to kill it outright and there will be a good fight...but easy enough that the PCs are likely to win should they choose to fight."  That way the PCs can now choose what action they'd like to take and all the actions are valid...without breaking the rules.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.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.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.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.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.We completely destroyed the adventure.  It was so easy that we finished the whole thing an hour early and we barely took damage.  The difficulty of one of the encounter was entirely dependent on a creature with Reach 4 who could make an Opportunity Attack against each PC once per round since the entire room was threatened by the creature while there was a deadly mist chasing the PCs around so they had to keep moving.  Our DM had absolutely no idea how Reach worked or Opportunity Attacks.  His lack of knowledge of the rules ruined the game for me since it wasn't fun to win so easily.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.You can have that same spread of encounters without using monsters that are 15 levels above the PCs.  When I used an APL+5 encounter against my players, they'd be super scared, they'd be pulling out all the stops.  They'd use every spell they have and likely one PC would still die.  They'd have to bring him back to life but they'd feel like they accomplished the nearly impossible.  It was obvious that I didn't give them the win, they'd EARNED it.A rule that's been passed down from DM to DM in my area(and likely stated in a couple of Dragon Magazine articles on how to keep a reoccurring villain alive) is: If you want your NPCs to survive, never let the PCs see them....ever.  If the PCs can see them, they'll likely come up with a way to kill them.  Though, if you do let the PCs see the enemy, then the enemy must always have an escape route.  If you don't follow those rules, you pretty much WANT the PCs to kill your NPC.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."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).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.I don't plan adventures on the fly.  I'm horrible at improvising.  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.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.I went in expecting to run the adventure I had planned.  Instead I got an adventure where nothing interesting happened.You obviously were perfectly fine running a game where your CR 24 dragon died in one hit like a chump.  That was the game you wanted to run.  I wouldn't want to run a game where that was possible.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.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.It could be argued that if you did so, you would be stopping a player who was simply thinking outside of the box(that box being the setting of D&D and the character creation rules of D&D) and expecting that player to go with you or walk.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.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.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.</blockquote>

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