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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6245052" data-attributes="member: 5143">That's why doctors tend to have you lean back and say "ah".  That particular sound opens the muscles in the back of your mouth more so they can see better with a light.When you speak, it does open and close repeatedly.  So, it certainly is possible to see in.  Though not really important.I don't.  I buy an adventure, it tells me what monsters to use and what the plot is.  I then tell my friends to make up characters of an appropriate level and I run the game.When I run Living Greyhawk or Living Forgotten Realms, I get handed an adventure that someone else wrote and I run it exactly the same.  Even when I have to run the same adventure 7 times like I did at GenCon a couple of years ago.The rules of D&D don't change because of the players at my table.  A wall of force doesn't work on a monster simply because the players at that table think it's cool.Yes.  That's the entire point of initiative.  The enemy can see you, you can see the enemy.  The roll determines who acts first.That's why in real life, if I walk up to a martial artist and go to punch him, he'll likely see it coming before it hits him and have me on the ground crying in pain before my punch ever got close.  It's likely he'd see the intention in my eyes even before I wound up since he's trained to fight.Unfortunately, the initiative section of the rules in both 4e and 3.5e are both poorly worded and hard to understand.  Initiative is one of the rules I've seen argued most often.No one scene makes a story, but one scene can ruin the tone of an entire story.  It's hard to take an epic seriously when it gets too silly, even for one scene.The Hobbit isn't a very serious book to begin with but I think it wouldn't be considered the class it is if Bilbo saw Smaug and then tripped over a coin and it caused a large gem to hop into Smaug's mouth and for him to choke to death.  Especially not after an entire book hyping up exactly how powerful dragons are and how the entire might of the Dwarves was unable to defeat him.True.  But it's fun to defeat the monsters without trying sometimes.  It irritates others because it feels horrible to win with no skill required.  These two goals are incompatible.  Whenever two goals are incompatible, the DM should be considering the rules and "fairness" for arbitration.  The game can't be 100% fun for everyone 100% of the time.  Sometimes you miss, sometimes your spell doesn't work, sometimes you die.  Especially if you try something ill advised...like trying to kill a CR 24 dragon when you're 9th level.  The player should be aware that it is suicide based on them understanding the rules.  If a player asked me to do this, I'd figure that they either have no knowledge of the rules of the game we're playing and I'd inform them OR that they were making a joke OR that they honestly wanted their character to die and were being a jerk to try to get the other players killed as well.The idea that they honestly expected me to agree with their idea wouldn't have crossed my mind once.How do you know the desires of the players if you've never met them before?  Also, what if one of them desires to do one thing and another desires to do something else?That's my point.  He thought he was a great DM and his DMing style likely would have worked fine for his own players.  I'm just saying that finding a DMing style that works equally well for ALL groups instead of just your home group seems like a better idea that catering specifically for them.I doubt someone in your group would break down in tears if you said no to their Wall of Force gag.Everyone has to improvise at least a little bit.  I find improvising too much makes a game feel...directionless.  Like the DM doesn't have anything planned and is making things up on the fly.  I'm waiting for the cool reveal of all the work the DM put into the adventure revealing that the villain was really the NPC that had been traveling with us the entire time...when he hadn't planned that far in advance.Depends on which people you ask.  There are definitely a faction of people who HATE this with a passion.  There are others who love it a lot.  I try not to plan TOO far in advance for this reason.  I have ran Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, however.  It goes from level 4 to 15.  I knew what the PCs would be doing when they got to level 15.  They'd be entering the last section of the dungeon and killing the boss.  I knew it would take them that long because there's no way they could gain access to the boss without the information and the key that they found along the way.  Which the adventure doles out at the appropriate time and place.  If players made an attempt to get around that time and place I'd likely say no.  The adventure wouldn't be very fun for them if they skipped to the end boss and died because of how high level he was.  It wouldn't be very fun for me either because I was really looking forward to seeing what they did when they encountered the cool traps and puzzles the adventure had planned for right before the final boss.  Not ever encountering those at all would make it feel like the adventure was kind of wasted.I'd also be careful with throwing around the word "most".  Your group likes your DMing.  However, it wasn't just me in this thread who thought that the ruling was kind of silly.  There are a lot of people who would not liked to have been in that game.No, I wouldn't have any problem with another DM rolling with this situation.  But it wasn't the game I wanted to run.  They were changing the world in unacceptable ways.  Infinite money made them cocky and annoying to run for.  These particular players would try to get away with anything if they could.  I had to tell them no to 90% of the things they suggested or they'd be ruling the world or the entire universe in no time.One of these players used to call me up and ask questions like "I know this armor isn't big enough for my character because I'm a giant monster...but could I get someone to make a custom suit of it so I can have all the powers of the giant monster race and all the powers of the most powerful power armor in the game?  Also, I want to be able to learn magic.  Can I just pick some spells and say I learned those from a wandering mage?  I know my class doesn't get spells, but I figured if it was part of my background you would make an exception."Even after I told him no, he'd spent an hour on the phone attempting to justify his ultra power gaming with story reasons.  He wouldn't accept no for an answer and would instead just try to negotiate.To tie this in with the theme of the thread, this is why I'm very interested in balance between classes and I think that rulings that disturb the balance between classes harm the game.  Because I need a set of rules to point at and say "No, the rules say you can't do that.  Please get off my back and stop demanding stuff your character doesn't get according to these rules."Of course you didn't.  That's why it was an analogy and not a direct quote of what happened.  The point here is that someone is asking for something that is not part of the game: "They'd like a plasma rifle" or "they'd like to kill a dragon with a wall of force".  You are saying you had to say yes because they thought it was awesome.  If a player thinks its awesome to have a plasma rifle would you allow that as well?  No, you wouldn't.Thus, my point was that every DM has a line that they won't cross.  You were berating me for not allowing PCs out of their "box".  I'm saying you won't allow PCs out of their box either, it's just a different sized box.  You're perfectly ok with wall of force killing a dragon with no saving throw or rolls.  I'm not because I believe that it's out of the genre of "heroic fantasy" in which heroes have to fight and fight hard while risking death in order to win.  An immediate death from a spell makes the game a different genre to me.You're saying that if someone sat down at your table and said "Hi, I'm a Jedi.  I carry a lightsaber and a Blaster Rifle and high tech armor that is better than the best armor in this world" that at least one of the players at the table wouldn't object and say "What?  Why is he allowed to be a JEDI in our D&D game?  That's stupid!" even if you allowed it as a DM?To us, allowing the use of the Wall of Force is a very similar thing.  It says that one player is allowed to do something that isn't allowed in D&D.  I'd definitely have a player saying "Why is he allowed to kill a dragon in one hit without rolling?  I'm a Fighter!  I don't have that power!  Wizards don't even have that power if we're following the rules!"It's WAY too easy to come up with a way to do that.  I pretty much expect players will come up with idea on how to get the water elemental out to the lake without blinking.  It's likely they already have a spell that will simply put the Elemental into the lake.I don't consider looking at a spell list and picking a spell to be creative or interesting.  It's a good idea, but not hugely creative.  I'll give them an advantage but that advantage needs to be in line with the power of the resource they expended.  A level 1 spell does not immediately kill a monster that would have taken 5 or 6 higher level spells to kill if done the "normal" way.Both of those rulings would make me have no fun.  Especially if my character was based around guns.  I'd argue that it was completely unfair to give my weapon this huge disadvantage unless I got a huge advantage to go with it.I'd also get kind of annoyed that a Wizard can use a level 1 spell to do the same damage as a couple of level 4 spells simply because the creature was a Fire Elemental.That creates an EXTREMELY unbalanced game.But if I was at the table would you rule differently because what matters is that your players have fun?</blockquote>

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