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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9183431" data-attributes="member: 6790260">It...doesn't have to? If it is in fact actually random, that is the function it serves. You don't decide that wandering monsters will happen. They might not. That's allWhy not? Doing something randomly because it is actually random vs doing something because you've decided it's what should be is the only meaningful difference between the two. A fair die is random (or, at least, as close as we can get). A loaded die is not random. Wandering monsters are random (or, at least, as close as we can get). Deciding to insert additional monsters is not random.The symmetry remains.I mean, fair, but from my perspective, one should call a spade a spade.I just do not know of any merits which cannot be replicated in full by methods that don't require such controversy. That's my key problem here. Anything you can do with this, you can do without it--and no, you don't always need prep to make it happen.Just because someone acts without malice does not mean that their choices are correct. It simply means that they are not trying to do harm. But it is quite easy--common, even--for someone to do harm while wanting to to good, believing they do good, convinced of the righteousness of their cause.The players, and in a more abstract sense, the DM. The players are being cheated out of actually playing a game that has rules; they are instead being treated merely as an audience that will witness the events the DM has prefigured. If events drift away, the DM will secretly push them back to where they're supposed to be. That is fundamentally what happens with "tricks" like this--it is, as that word implies, trickery. It is not simply a fiction, it is presenting a fictional world as though the choices and risks taken matter, when they don't. The DM can, and will, step in whenever and wherever they feel like.In the more abstract sense, the DM has cheated herself out of the chance to actually learn from the mistake--and to face the fact that she is human, that she cannot put up a front of perfection before her players. This power to secretly, and invisibly, correct any and all mistakes, which will thus be hidden from the players whenever it is used (because calling attention to it would, as all parties generally agree, be a bad move), is quite specifically the power to pretend that you never make mistakes.Simply for that reason and no other? Yes, I would say so. Because it means the party is being denied the connection between their actions and the consequences thereof. The DM is rewriting the world, dynamically, to blunt bad consequences and good consequences alike. The players are thus not actually choosing anything; if they had chosen well, the consequences they earned would be just as blunted as if they had chosen poorly. That's the whole thing here. The DM is actually writing both the world AND the consequences of the players' actions. When the DM writes the input AND the output...what, exactly, are the players doing? Witnessing. As stated.I don't know of any gaming community that would tolerate the developers actively meddling with their playthrough of the game in real time. Especially if they did so to make things easier for groups that were struggling and harder for groups that were stomping. The howls of unfairness, of coddling the unskilled and punishing the skillful, would almost be loud enough to hear from space.No, because it cannot happen while the player is actually in the fight itself. And, in general, because players (quite rightly) demand that developers list patch notes which at least explain in high-concept terms what things have been changed and how.If you've done any online gaming at all, you should already know that people get royally pisssed about "stealth" changes that don't get mentioned in patch notes but DO actually affect what their players can do or achieve. Players deeply hate that sort of thing, and yes, it is essentially treated as "cheating," albeit usually not referred to by that word. It is seen as a betrayal of trust between player and developer, which is the part of "cheating" that matters in this context. Consider, for instance, how Amazon Games put up a public test realm, a place meant to test and preview upcoming major gameplay changes...and then put in a bunch of unannounced, undocumented changes in the next major patch, "completely defeating the purpose of having a public test realm," as Josh "Strife" Hayes put it.Personally, I would say yes, absolutely. I'm honestly shocked to hear that they did this. Most players would be pissed to know that they didn't actually get the fight as designed, they instead got a fight much, much harder than designed purely for the theater of it. Do you have evidence for this claim? Because I've gone looking and can't find it myself, but perhaps I simply don't know the right phrases to put in Google. I would be genuinely, deeply shocked if this were actually a thing. Hardcore raiding players, in general, do not want such things. They want a win they feel they earned fair and square, and a fight which gets harder solely because they are doing well would ruin that.I mean, you're willing to call it shady. Why do shady things? That's literally what I'm asking. There are tools you can use which are not shady. None of the things you can achieve with such "shady methods" are only achievable that way. And, as I said, such open-book methods are not predicated on the idea of being absolutely perfect and never making a mistake. Some are less overt about recognizing the issue than others, but all of them play with their cards up, so to speak.I refuse to answer questions that are obviously facetious.</blockquote>

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