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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6096179" data-attributes="member: 4937">No it's not.  Because you've expressed frustration over the fact that you wasted time on the plan.  Well, arguably all bad plans are a waste of time.  The issue here is that you thought you had a good plan, but in the game that actually happened and in the game that I'm proposing, the plan didn't work out how you liked - so you are here complaining about it.The part that is relevant to the situation.  But, let's keep in mind what the real goal, the real challenge as you think of it was - get past the choke point in the dungeon that the Grell commanded.  That's going to be intensely relevant later.Maybe because it knows that if humans escape, they - like Tuskan Raiders - tend to come back in greater numbers.  Which is of course what is actually going to happen and what actually happens in 99% of these situations in every campaign that has ever transpired, so its not like its an unreasable assumption.  It's the standard trope of humans.  "An Imperial Probe team.  It's a good bet the humans know we are here now."   Or maybe because it just doesn't like being disturbed.   Maybe the Grell was just a sage among its kind looking for a place where it could have a bit of peace and quiet.  Remember, you yourself suggest that its perfectly fine for it to set up defenses and the like so its not like you are suggesting its wrong to react, you just don't like how it reacts.Right.  Because completely removing the threat represented by the Grell and allow access deeper into the dungeon is the response that screws over the players the most?  By what standard?  I think it's really instructive to consider what you consider 'screwing over the players' is actually arguably the thing that above all else makes things immediately easier for them.   It screws over the players how?   Let's get this really straight once and for all.   It has been your consistant stance all through out this thread that D&D is about a contest between the DM and the players.  It has been your consistant stance that the DM presents the players with challenges and the players try to overcome those challenges, and one side or the other 'wins' and then the losing side tries to 'win the next time'.   Antagonism is the very thing you are advocating.  It's nothing at all to do with my game.  In my game I'm rooting for the players and I want them to do awesome and it rocks when they do cool things and no one suffers PC's death more harshly than I do as a DM.  It hurts me when PC's die.  I love it when players triumph using some cool trick.  Moreover, I'm rarely trying 'challenge' my players.   NPC's don't gain levels in reponse to players getting more powerful.   The guards in the bad guys lair stay the same level regardless of what level the PC's are.  You'll never find guardposts of 10th level fighters in my game because I need them to challenge the players.   Challenge is created by player's stepping up to new problems or goals.  There is always challenge to find somewhere in any sort of varied and rich fantasy world.   But really its up to the players to decide whether 'challenge' is one of their goals.Fundamentally what you are asking for destroys the enjoyment of a game.  If you keep breaking emersion like that, if the Grell always stays behind waiting to get killed by the PC's renewed assault, then there is no value to your success.   There is no achievement.  There is no triumph.   Because you know that the DM is just arranging things to let you 'win' by your own definitions of win every time.   If you collapse what you call the simulation and I call the in game world so that it works according to a bunch of metarules about player desires and such, there is no game left.   There is no exploration under that circumstances.   There is no challenges under those circumstance.   I guess there is potentially a narrative, but you don't need any sort of simulation rules to participate in the creation of that narrative because you've fundamentally thrown the simulation out the window.  So what do you need combat rules for, "the players are first"?   What do you need hit points for?   What do you need any of this rules for simulating things if simulation isn't important?   What I see is your stance of "The players are first, and the simulation is unimportant" is cover for wanting to be presented with the illusion of a simulation, and the illusion of challenge, but really just wanting the DM to rubber stamp and validate all the signals you keep talking about.I'm perfectly happy being 'surprised' by the players.  It appears that 'the players' arent' happy being 'surprised' by the DM.   Though, again, I maintain all these things are as old as dirt.   Any DM surprised by using dust of disappearance to negate a gaze attack, a tactic so common that it was coded into video games of the early 80's as an expected usage of invisibility magic, or a player suprised by a monster that runs away haven't been playing very much.</blockquote>

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