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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6105314" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Actually, he’s been very clear and repeatedly noted he expects the players can structure matters so they succeed.  But if your party has precisely zero riding skills, why would you think beast-mounted travel is a recipe for success?  Would you let the character with an 8 DEX and no ranks in riding or animal handling buy a warhorse and find it a highly useful animal because that is what the player envisions, or is there a requirement to invest the character resources to actually be good at something – that is, assist the player in buiilding the character who can benefit from that warhorse?  Without, perhaps, an immediate reason to search for those keys.  I would hope players are alert and astute enough to pay attention to what is going on around them, and assess whether there may be a broader picture.  “The livery on those bodies is the same as the Duke’s – should we dig a bit deeper”? I would know what resources the group has access to, and plan the scenario around that.  Just as, if there were an encounter I want your group to face, it would not likely be easily circumvented by riding on the centipede (which, as celebrim has repeatedly pointed out, isn’t as fast as you seem to believe, and is not a guaranteed “avoid all encounters” card.  Or I’ll put hooks in the city, just as I would if the players somehow missed something because they found a way around that I did not expect. Both he and I mentioned it as one possibility.  Will the mercenaries disappear if you encounter something on the way to the Grell, and vanish before you can open the door beyond the Grell’s former lair, or is it possible they will be useful in some manner other than the one you specifically anticipated?  Wasn’t your goal to get past the grell since he occupied a choke point, or is that another aspect which has changed since your earlier posts?  I know you had decided you also wanted revenge.I still have heard no response to the possibility the group succeeds off screen.  What if, after describing your plans, the GM simply states  “You recruit your powerful mercenary band, and head off for Vengeance on the Grell.  Your travel is easy as no one dares accost such a well-armed powerful band.  You arrive at the choke point and the Grell is easily defeated by your superior numbers.  Huzzah for Hussar and the Hirelings!”  You got your hirelings and your vengeance – NOW are you happy?  All resolved in almost no time at all and you didn’t even have to roll a single die.  Once again, your assumption the GM is out to screw over the players/characters rises to the surface.  I find most people who have such views are projecting their own approach on others.  Maybe that’s not the case here – I’ve never seen you GM – but your attitude that every other GM is either incompetent or a jerk is the reason I’ve commented on my own surprise you’re still gaming.  Many gamers have quit because of GM’s who exist to screw over the players, as that kind of game is typically not fun. Who says there is no chance the horse is lame if the player does do some work?  Only you.   I think the reason this rarely comes up in play is that it would be tedious to play out every shopping expedition, and the possibility every merchant has “screw the PC’s out of their gold for defective product” at the top of their agenda is both unrealistic and something that will get very old very fast.  If you “just happen” to buy a lame horse, there’s a definite issue of fairness (“why did I not get a chance to detect that?”, and if suddenly, for this one purchase, the GM starts focusing extra attention, the players are immediately aware that something is up. So when would it happen? Probably where buying the horse has ceased to be a mundane issue.  Perhaps the character has to get out of town in a hurry, and needs to get the horse without the watch noticing him, so he has to choose a less than reputable source and/or doesn’t really have the time to shop around.  That might merit playing out the horse purchase, and maybe the player misses the roll to identify the horse’s lameness and gets a poor animal fobbed off on him, making his escape even more difficult.  Or maybe those skill ranks invested in animal handling pay off, he picks up on the deception and leverages it to intimidate the seller into a good deal on a great horse. I think you know that either they are not, or that even if we are horrible GM’s out to screw the players at every turn (we must be, after all, as we are not Hussar) we will still deny it. In what way were you spotlighted by desert travel?  You grabbed the spotlight with the centipede solution, but I don’t see how the desert travel would spotlight you.  And I still have not heard how the other characters reacted to either the summoning or the desert crossing.    OK, since you are now asking for another straw man you could shoot down, maybe I look down at your Plane Shift roll and think “*#@% - 500 miles off.  I wanted them to get to the city, but now I need to figure out what to put between them and it to avoid a boring 500 mile travel scene, and make their failure fun, not just a slog.  Hey, the Ranger’s favoured terrain is ‘Desert’, and he has all those survival ranks, and those desert creatures would be in his favoured enemy slots. Let’s spotlight the Ranger for a while - he’s been pretty overshadowed for the last few levels, with none of his special abilities really being all that relevant.” Seems like a good reason for at least one player to want to play through the desert trek.  Most players, I find, want an exciting scenario, and aren’t too fussed over which comes first.  But then, my players are also used to multiple plotlines overlapping, so the possibility there’s a break in one storyline as another gets foreshadowed, moved forward or a short snapper gets dropped in the middle isn’t something they get shirty about.</blockquote>

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