Loose Lips
Players love planning. Laying blueprints out on the barrel head, spending literal hours arguing contingencies, and then watching as their just-crazy-enough-to-work shenanigans come fruition is the cornerstone of whole RPG genres. (Looking at you there, Street Samurai.) But buried within this play loop is an important practical question: Is the GM listening in?
From a practical perspective, it makes sense for the guy behind the screen to know the party’s plans. He can begin plotting out antagonists’ reactions, making for more nuanced anti-burglary obstacles and engaging castle defense strats. If they go for the sewer entrance, then the duke’s torturer might raise the alarm. If they drill for the cash vaults, then the casino’s seismograph might pick them up. That kind of forewarning can help with pacing when it’s time execute on the plan. It can also make for more believable / competent villains when the “super-intelligent” eldritch being has the foresight to realize, “Hey, what if they just fly to the top of my keep?”
Of course, there’s a very real downside here. If you’re a player, giving your GM a chance to invent countermeasures runs counter to your interests. After all, would the torturer or the seismograph have existed if your GM hadn’t been listening in? It may be an adversarial mindset, but it can be tough to escape: If the GM knows our plans, that gives him a chance to mess them up!
The principle goes beyond breaking and entering and heisting though. Even if a GM attempts to “be good,” playing his monsters’ characterfully and not making the most optimal decision based on overheard info, simply moving monsters around the field presents a moment-to-moment challenge.
“OK you guys,” says the table-talking Sorcerer. “Try to herd the orcs into the hall, then get clear. Ima do like I do.”
“On the orcs’ turn,” says the GM, “They draw their bows and stand 25 feet apart. As trained warriors who have battled mages before, they would obviously know to minimize the risk of AoE spells.”
On the other hand, it’s not necessarily all about screwing over players. There’s also a very real advantage to planning within earshot of your GM. As the arbiter of “brilliant plan” vs. “dumb idea,” a GM can interject with common sense objections that PCs would know to consider: You would realize that dispel magic cannot destroy the artifact. Given his political stance, you don’t think the vampire prince will ever consent to ally with the werewolves. Players can take this sort of thing on board and adjust plans accordingly.
The basic question is whether the advantage of a well-informed GM (pacing, ease of play, and a more thought-out world) outweighs the possibility of un-fun metagaming on the GMs’ part. It also raises the thorny question of whether or not a GM can be guilty of metagaming. Is it fair to overhear players’ plans and adjust the dungeon accordingly? What if you use use scrying magic / spy networks to suss out the PCs’ info? How do you answer these questions in your own game? Sound off in the comments with your tales of surprised GMs vs. overly prepared ones!
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I have to wonder why the vampires aren’t just wrapping up in big cloaks like Nazgûl, instead of swimwear…
Heyyy, is this the famous Beach Dungeon?! 😀
THE SCRIPT
TITLE: Loose Lips
TEXT: Never plot out loud. The dungeon is always listening.
PIC: Paladin has his hammer out, back to the wall beside a door SWAT-team style. Sorcerer stands in a similar pose opposite him, sunglasses on. On the other side of the door, a couple of vampires are furiously applying SPF 100 to one another’s pasty backs.
DIALOGUE:
Paladin: Now remember: The second I boot down the door—
Sorcerer: Hit ‘em with the daylight spell. Got it.
SCROLLOVER: PSA: The daylight spell doesn’t affect vampires. You’d need the much higher-level sunbeam. You may now refrain from pointing this out in the comments.
BLOG: When the GM can hear your plans.
THE CONVERSATION
Laurel: How am I supposed to show a sunscreen bottle at this scale? You have four characters and two different rooms!
Colin: I dunno. Maybe give one of the vamps a line about ‘get my back.’
Laurel: I’m still not sure that’s enough to sell the idea of sunscreen.
Colin: Hmmm… What else makes a good visual shorthand for suntan lotion?
Clearly they should have had some pool equipment. To use in the pool that dungeon obviously has.
ARGLEBARGLE!!
What, do you expect them to use an outside pool like peasants? Do you expect them to not enjoy a good pool party?
I imagine it’s a creepy pool full of blood, since they might have issue with normal water and want to keep to that whole ‘bathe in the blood of the innocent’ theme.
I had to double check the hover text because I was sure I had read differently, but… damn. 5e Daylight isn’t sunlight, either. Fucked up.
If I have any solace in this life, it lies in preempting the rules lawyers.
A friend of mine, who was a CoC GM, once taught players this lesson. They were D&D players, and their usual GM was pretty laid back with the whole plotting and listening in thing. So in this CoC adventure they were in this Mid-Western town, and they were being stopped by the Sheriff on the street. In true D&D style, they started plotting how to taken him down. Until the GM said: The Sheriff is arresting you. What?! Why?! Well, you’ve been plotting assault, and possibly even murder (of the Sheriff!) right in front of him! But that discussion was out of game! Nope, you did not say that, so it’s been said, and now you’re on your way to the county jail.
Ok, that GM should have at least given them a warning that he doesn’t allow out-of-game discussion like that before hitting them with in-game repercussions. Both for fairness and because now the in-game story really doesn’t make any sense.
Why? I mean why should he have given that warning? Call of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game, and he, as the GM, can expect people to play their roles. If, and when, they want to talk out of character, or in character to each other while others are present, they can just tell the GM that they are respectfully asking the Sheriff, that they would like to have a small private conversation.
I do realize that this is all depending on the gaming style prevalent at your table, but in our group(s) we all know that having an out of character (tactical) talk is always preceded by an announcement that you are going to do so. Also, if it where a combat situation, you would not have the luxury of time to have such a talk anyway. And as this was a situation where the sheriff was asking a perfectly normal question, the act of trying to kill him was uncalled for, and would also have f*ed up the in-game story.
I will conclude that it was very much a case of mistaken expectations on both sides of the screen, and also the players eventually were totally ok with the decision, after they came to understand the different nature of Call of Cthulhu role-playing versus (A)D&D murder hoboing.
You might be interested in this offering from the “rejected scripts” pile.
Title: Eavesdropping
Text: Guard thy tongue in mixed company.
Pic: A worm’s eye view. Team Bountyhunter are in a huddle and looking down at the viewer. A pissed off looking lizardfolk shaman is also in the huddle.
Dialogue:
Magus: I did some snooping. I think the lizardfolk shaman is our true enemy.
Inquisitor: Then we strike first. Subdue if we can, kill him if we have to.
Ranger: nod nod
Lizardfolk Shaman: I’m standing right here you assholes.
Scrollover: Magus: “Um, excuse me? This is a private conversation. Rude.”
I solve this by planning my contingencies in advance; I am a big advance planner (my next campaign is not due to start for another couple of months, and I already have two overfull ring-binders of material pre-prepped), so I tend to write in most villains regular counter-measures and defensive strategies well in advance. Most of my adventures are “set up the problem, leave the players to choose a strategy” so these counter-measures might be the perfect foil for their plan, or utterly irrelevant (or even actually help the players, due to the villain countering something they aren’t doing, and leaving a massive opening).
As far as monster overhearing plans go, I work on the assumption that we only really get to witness a small part of the characters lives; we (mostly) skip over the evenings sat by the camp fire or in the tavern, and long days on the road, to get to the fun stuff. Therefore I figure that a lot of the in-game planning that occurs is not so much happening ‘in the moment’, but is more flashing back to one of those long evenings which the party probably spend discussing tactics for basic situations, and running through the occasional training manoeuver. Imagine it more like a sports match; the players all know what “play 42” means, because they have been drilling it in training for weeks, so they don’t need to spell it out in front of the orcs faces. I do suspend this rule when the party come up against something new and completely unexpected – they are going to have to discuss what to do about that eldritch abomination in front of its face, since they couldn’t possible have planned for it (and besides, it can probably read their minds anyway, so no need to keep tight lipped!), but its entirely fair that any competant party is going to have a “dragon strategy” in place for the day they finally come up against one.
I’m sure you’re an excellent planner. For me however, this is more of an aspirational strategy. I find that I always overlook something obvious. My players rarely do.
I don’t mind if the countermeasures turn out to be irrelevant. But it bugs me when the aforementioned super-intelligent BBEG misses something as simple as “what if they skip the dungeon and fly up to the boss chamber?”
An important think to note about dragons: They have lots of hits dice, high int and wis scores, and perception is a class skill for them. By the time you’ve buffed up and fought the first wave of minions the dragon at the back of the map probably knows your go-to tactics, a good portion of your spell selections, and probably what you ate for breakfast.
In 5e they also have Blindsight and can make perception checks as a legendary action. Sneaking up on a dragon is very hard.
What are some good ways aside from scrying for dragons to gather intel on the good guys?
Fly over. RAW in 5e you have up to 2 miles of visibility in clear weather outside, which means the dragon can watch the party from way up in the sky as they go about their adventuring. Given their passive perception is over 20, they can probably see a great deal from a great height.
This also gives opportunities for foreshadowing, by giving your nature-type PCs a chance to realise that ‘hey that bird’s a weird shape, and been hanging around a for a few days’.
Not a bad reason to make some outdoorsy adventures.
How about dungeon contingencies? Can’t exactly fly over in a 10′ cavern.
Some of them also have a fun habit of polymorphing into more innocuous forms. You know that NPC you rescued from bandits a couple of days ago? Yeah…
Minions often do the trick.
Having a squad of plucky/elite Kobolds do your bidding as scouts, spies or alarms helps. They’re sneaky, loyal (depending on how much they revere the dragon) and expendable, and offer the PCs a chance to foil said spying if they catch on to them.
As a GM I try my best to not change things based on the players planning just because I can hear it out of character. I find that it tends to discourage doing so, and that I dislike the weird adversial gaming about trying to hide planning from me that it can encourage.
This also because sometimes someone might actually be able to overhear and react (say a hidden spy), and that should A) be special and unusual and B) whether they can do so should be decided by how well the characters can hide their planning from the NPC in question in the circumstances they are in, not from how well the players can hide it from me around the table.
This “in-universe approach” does however mean that the Orc/fireball example is very different to me. Unless you have some way of secretly communicating (telepathy, a shared language that the orcs don’t know), then they are just as capable of hearing your plan and instructions as your party members.
They probably have less intimate an understanding of what “do like I do” means, but it doesn’t take a tactical genius to realize that if the enemy want you clumped togetter in the hall and their allies away from you, then that’s not what you want to do. There’s still room for them to not pull out the perfect counter (maybe they are still clumped togetter, but not in the hall and not away from the other PC’s, having feared some kind of wall trapping them instead of a fireball). I find that variety is good here.
Monster psychology is an X factor in this example. Orcs aren’t exactly what I think of when I think strategy.
Still, I like the possibility this opens up for bluffing a more powerful spell.
“Get out of the way, everyone! I’m going to activate that scroll of meteor swarm that I totally have!”
That reminds me of my favorite table tale of using the “unshielded discussion” format against the monsters. The PCs spread word among the opposing army about the ENORMOUS SPHERE OF ANNIHILATION they supposedly have, announce loudly to “prepare to launch the sphere,” then use a catapult to fling a pebble with darkness 10′ radius cast on it into the midst of the enemy forces. — A disorganized rout ensues.
chef’s kiss right there. 🙂
If the PC’s take either of these opportunities I’d count it as a wild success.
I’m of the opinion that the DM needs the help, like you say, it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense for the hyper intelligent mind flayer to get blindsided mid-fight by some shenanigans
Also as a DM, there’s a lot going on under the hood and a bit of time to prepare for schemes can make the whole session run smoother with pre-prepared responses rather than the play dragging to a halt while your poor beleaguered DM tries to figure out what the heck to do now.
I might be biased since I’m the internal DM but it always sticks in my craw when my players come along with their lastest oh so clever plan and I have to tear up my session notes to accommodate their craziness.
#mood
Also, my “internal DM” has devil horns for some reason. 😛
Can your internal DM pull off a Grinch grin?
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6c/9a/16/6c9a1685eeb2c5d346743b679a6dbedd.gif
Unfortunately this all depends on how the GM reacts to your planning. I once played with a GM who would specifically target the plan that the players made. So we would have a Watch on the town gate, and that Watch would just wave people and carts (with barrels) through. The moment we are in those barrels, suddenly everything would be searched. That is not fun, and also inconsistent within the setting he just described.
That is exactly the kind of un-fun metagaming that I worry about.
But by the same token, if “the sound of explosions from the cellars” is going to be a thing, it’s nice to have a little time to consider how the NPCs will react.
Sunburst does what you want better, Sorcerer, as a sunny type of fireball. It also (in)conveniently blinds everything in range, and hits allies indiscriminately, meaning it fits your ‘That Guy’ theme.
Don’t tell Paladin that, he might not let Sorcerer cast it.
I don’t think we have to worry about Paladin retaining spell knowledge.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/un-prepared-casting
I feel like this comic was an excuse to draw vampires in swimsuits.
It was an afterthought, I swear!
So you’re saying there won’t be a follow-up in the Patreon comic?
I explicitly did not say that.
I made the mistake once, to assume that the Daylight spell actually affects vampires. Better yet, I did manage to convince my DM about it too. Suddenly my Driftglobe became priceless in Barovia…
In Pathfinder, there are feats (Magic Trick) that lets you turn daylight into actual daylight.
I feel like this falls on the more excusable end of [see scrollover text here: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/literal-magic ].
I mean, if Sorcerer took the Magic Trick (Daylight) feat, he could have access to this, rendering the tactic valid:
Burst of Sunlight (Spellcraft 6 ranks or worship deity with Sun domain): You can reduce the duration of your daylight spell to 1 round, causing the spell to radiate the equivalent of pure daylight for the purpose of affecting creatures that are damaged, destroyed, or are otherwise affected by such light.
Though it’s far more likely he took the one that lets him get ‘creative’ with fireballs.
https://aonprd.com/FeatDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Magic%20Trick
Generally speaking, I think the sword swings both ways often enough that I rarely have to consider metagaming as a GM. Did they come up with a fantastic solution to trivialize an encounter? Sure. That happens.
But if nothing else, in the land of limitless imaginations, players will imagine limitless obstacles to stand in their way. Obstacles that may or may not now actually exist because yes, yes that makes sense.
…Never thought it would be so difficult to get into a theatre’s dressing room, but sure. Let’s roll with that. : P
Had a great one last night. 150 mephits fighting each other, literally filling 10 squares and blocking the hallway’s exit. After the PCs realized that the mephits were summoning reinforcements, making this weird blockade self-renewing, they cast antimagic field on their artifact flying carpet and just flew through the melee, popping summons out of existence as they went. Gave my player Inspiration for that one. However, as this was a Pathfinder game, they’ll have to wait until we play 5e to cash it in. 😛
Ima need the story on this one.
I was thinking it would be a short one, but then I got to writing it out a bit. Hope it ain’t too long.
In the floor of the dressing rooms, there’s a secret passage leading to a hidden vault. Nobody of note knows about it, including the stuck-up noble who owns the place. The players would like to keep it that way, as they plan on entering the vault.
Sooo, they need a way in. They first case the joint and learn that there are a few ways in, including a few safety exits in the back-back. The party buys a ticket to the show, meets up with one of the main actresses, who is pretty friendly and accepting of the party(they are all Aaracockran and tend to stand out).
The patroness of the theatre is largely disinterested and low-key awful as a person. She’s nobilitity, and the theatre never really was her anyways. They try to ingratiate themselves with her, but she’s not interested. They aren’t noble, she doesn’t care.
Local Greater Noble, Lady Weck is also in attendance. She patronizes the local paper and turns up the judgement up to eleven in the gossip column she hand writes. Super-asshole. I included her as a joke, as she’s more or less been a recurring background character ya just gotta love to hate.
Anyways. They see the show. I panic improvise because I somehow didn’t think they wouldn’t want to go to the theatre to actually watch a show. Probably not the best planning on my part. Lady Weck hated the show, starts writing things down, and leaves. Bringing this up to the theatre’s patroness gets her flustered, but she endures. They watch as the the whole cast, or at least most them, go to the lobby after the show to meet the audience as the traffic jam outside hits a crescendo. This creates an opportunity.
They hatch a plan. That’s right. It’s Lady Weck. All they have to do is fabricate a good review of the show in the papers. The joke becomes the plan as they see Lady Weck preparing to roll off in her carriage. They see her pass of a sheet of paper to a courier. The courier goes to the paper as the party follows from the shadows. The cleric decides to try to forge a new article, one that puts a more positive spin on the show and the theatre. The bard disguises himself and successfully impersonates Lady Weck as he successfully passes off the forged article… Except that the article is poorly written and looks nothing like her handwriting. It gets printed, but needless to say the new article wasn’t exactly going to ingratiate them with the noble who runs the theatre.
…Anyways. Most of that whole mess was all improvised based on their actions. They probably could have just pulled weight with the noble. They’ve got enough political clout. They probably could have befriended the actress pretty easily. Breaking in at night? There might be a pair of guards, but that’s nothing against the might of the party’s capable rogue. Instead they chose a relatively bonkers plan that didn’t play to any of their strengths in order to take a sort of petty revenge against a woman who mostly just exists as a meme.
Conclusion? They still don’t know how they are going to get inside. I don’t know how they are going to get inside. I’ve accepted this. Some parties can’t get through a door, some can’t get into a theatre. It’s the eternal struggle. : P
Althoooough. I’m not as familiar with Pathfinder. Would an antimagic field disable the carpet? That’s still a pretty brilliant way of handling the situation, so I’ve got to hand it to them regardless. ^.^
Normally anti-magic field suppresses all magic, including magical items. But artifacts are special and have an exception in the spell (along with literal deities), to reflect that specialness.
Personally I think it should only be major artifacts rather than all artifacts, but it isn’t, possibly to save on word count, possibly as a leftover from earlier editions where that distinction wasn’t a thing.
(not that there’s anything indicating that the carpet wasn’t a major artifact anyway).
Interesting! When you put it that way, it makes sense.
In my own campaign, I run with the idea that certain sentient weapons exist. Mr. Stabby of Handbook of Heroes fame would fall under that book. : P
If a weapon like THAT were to enter a 5e Antimagic Field, I’d rule about the same, since the upgraded powers aren’t coming from something quite… Dead? One could construe it as a sort of living force, something that defies magic in order to remain in existent.
Buuuuuut, that’s just me. I could totally see it the other way too.
I can think of another comic relevant to this “how do we get in the theater” business:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dithering
Sounds like they had fun though, so I’d call it a win. 🙂
Ehh, not quite. My players are willing to go out on a limb with a sketchy plan at the drop of the hat! Which, since our sessions often run a bit shorter, is perfectly fine by me.
There’s a line, I think, between the GM adjusting an adventure when the players come up with something obvious that the villains should have prepared for (using daylight on fantasy vampires, using a truck to smash down the gates) and when the players come up with something genuinely unexpected (using a truck on fantasy vampires). In the first case, coming up with something on the fly that counters (but ideally doesn’t negate) that plan is completely acceptable.
In the second case, you should try to think of if there are any good reasons nobody expected it (say, the moat around the vampire castle, or the vampires being strong enough to save teenagers from being hit by motor vehicles) and throw those up as obstacles, but if the players came up with a really good idea…let them have their fun. It’ll only get them so far, and they’ll probably have to deal with the obstacles they skipped in some fashion on the way out anyways.
If the players keep coming up with multiple unexpected solutions that your infiltration missions…maybe ask if the players want to play a different game. Or get some online advice on building better heists.
So the litmus test is whether or not an antagonist really should have thought of a contingency? I can get behind that.
There was one time where the PCs were preparing to break into a casino, and I made a great show of leaving the room while they worked out their plan, so when my basic security measures utterly ruined their scheme, they couldn’t cry metagaming.
My basic security measures ABSOLUTELY ruined their plan. It was great.
Did they not think to case the joint and discover the security measures?
Oh, they were casing the joint when they got caught. The thing that ruined their plan was surprisingly mundane – they were hoping to identify the manager, then wait outside until he went home, kidnap him and get further information there. But it turned out that he had a room he stayed in at the casino itself, which messed up that idea.
The thing that turned it from a disappointing recon mission into a terrified retreat under fire was the fact that they didn’t realize that after the crooks who ran the casino had raided the PCs’ home base and kidnapped an NPC, the crooks would be on high alert for retaliation specifically by the PCs. The PCs did put on disguises while casing the joint, but they weren’t very high-effort for the most part, so security saw through them, especially after an upstairs guard reported seeing a door open and close by itself (thanks to an invisible PC). Once they had reason to believe that the PCs were in the building, it took no effort at all to pinpoint which “customers” fit their profiles. (Though the Bard’s disguise and bluffing were good enough that security initially overlooked him.)
The real fun, however, was after the PCs fled and returned the next day to just kick down the door and take everything by force, only to find the place closed and all of the money and vital documents relocated to another hideout. Nothing irritates players quite like enemies who won’t stick around to be murdered.
DAMN YOU, BASIC SECURITY MEASURES!
I never hide my plans from my GM. I’m far more likely to give them a thorough heads up on my plans, so that they’re not totally blindsided and have time to tell me if it’s IC viable/work out what’s actually there, ect ect.
I do think this depends somewhat on how you play, though. My groups are all very much collaborative and I trust my GM not to stomp on my idea just because they can.
That’s the important bit for my money. It doesn’t matter if there’s something obvious that the players are missing. What matters is whether or not the GM thinks there’s something obvious that the players are missing. Finding that out early can make a plan more viable.
Do they have anything to worry about from the Daylight spell? (since it does not produce Sunlight – unless that is different in another D&D Edition?)
I will refer you to the scrollover text.
But Colin the daylight spell doesn’t affect vampires. You would need a much higher-level sunbeam spell 🙁
Also no Alt-text can stop me pointing plot-holes. Especially when vampires on swimwear are involved 😛
Vampires in swimwear should really be a calendar on my wall.
Who doesn’t want to have a sexy calendar of Count Von Count on his desk? 😛
Maybe a vampire converted characters sexy calendar could work for the other handbook 🙂
By the way nice tattoo the vampire got. Fitting of what Oracle and Barbarian will need to do with Sorcerer once his plan fail miserably 🙂
Damn you for making me google that:
https://www.deviantart.com/ar-en-es/art/Count-von-count-Sexyme-street-849206910
XD
Where is cleric that can cast blind when you need one? 😛
I can usually improvise a reaction to whatever the PCs are doing, so I don’t exactly need to listen-in on their plans, but it can help.
I don’t typically listen to their plans and think “How can I thwart this?”, but rather “How can I make it as entertaining as possible when they pull this off?”
I think it’s good if the bad guys aren’t just dumbfounded when the PCs’ plans go off, but have good lines to respond with, and planned retreat paths, because I knew this would amount to running away from the PCs, and had time to think of how the bad guys would try to do that.
Nothing quite like the old villain’s escape kit: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/npc-s/?=%2F%2F/#The_Villains_Escape_Kit
I’ve had my share of PCs gutting the night’s plot to KO the big-bad first: flying to the top of the tower or literally catching the wizard in his bath. In the first instance, I decided the villain did not know that beings in this world could become birds (and so was as unprepared as I was for a party with the animal shapes spell on a scroll). In the second, I reasoned that for all his vaunted intelligence, the evil wizard had no reason to believe anyone could have found his new lair, the PCs hadn’t set off any alarms, and the villain’s ego wouldn’t let him be paranoid enough to check the perimeter before taking a soak in the jacuzzi. Some dungeon-savvy delvers and one stone shape later and the evil sanctum sanctorum now had a back door.
My reasoning is that there’s a balance–for every time that I give the undead a few extra hit points so that there is something left for the last-in-the-initiative-order sorcerer to disrupt undead at and feel like a part of the team, there’s another time that I surreptitiously add yet another squad of archer gnolls in the darkness to punish the group for dawdling in the entry chamber or steamrolling what was supposed to be a tough encounter.
This sounds like the “lawful good” version of GM metagaming. You’re trying to create a narrative experience rather than defeat the PCs in an agonistic sense.
WAIT DAYLIGHT ISN’T ACTUALLY DAYLIGHT!?!?
Did that get changed recently or did everyone in my Curse of Strahd group miss that key point in the description? FML… We’re gonna die.
OK… On that depressing note, let’s get to your question. I would say it depends. In a longer running campaign against a reasonably smart enemy, there is no reason why the BBEG wouldn’t be making special precautions against the group. In Pathfinder APs and many D&D modules like Curse of Strahd, you’re up against enemies who have both the intelligence and the resources to prepare themselves specifically against the party. Whether they’re scrying on the party, having invisible spies follow them around, or are just that smart and experienced, it’s reasonable for them to have prepared against specific strategies that the party has employed in the past or openly discussed in front of the DM/GM. In my completed Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign, a certain asshole necromancer who kept escaping from my party confronted us again and was put up a wall of force right before we entered the room. Our ranger had prepared Named Bullet on one of his arrows and fired it at him as soon as we entered the room. The GM had already decided that the necromancer would do this before hearing about the ranger’s plan and could only wince in sympathy as the really cool idea that the ranger had been putting so much stock into was completely countered by accident.
I have Critical Role to thank for this one (spoilers I guess):
https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Briarwoods#Dalen.27s_Closet
The uproar over Mercer’s handling of daylight was the thing that put me wise to this issue.
Yeah, that’s a bit of an oopsie on Matt’s part. I haven’t listened to much of Campaign 1 (find the audio quality distracting in the early episodes), but I’m not surprised that they made that mistake (considering my CoS group also made the same mistake without noticing I can’t judge).
I think a big part of the problem is the name of the spell. Similar to Chill Touch, it’s extremely deceptive and gives players the wrong idea of what to expect from the spell.
Yeah it does. There’s quite the continuum between, “What do you mean I can’t use prestidigitation to give the dragon a heart attack?” and, “What do you mean daylight isn’t actually daylight?”
Somewhat unrelated to this comic – being the vampire/werewolf ‘abomination’ she is, how does Gestalt react to sunlight or moonlight (full or otherwise) respectively?
I realized too late that Gestalt was “supposed” to be in this comic instead of the vamp twins. Oops.
We will accept this error if you provide free swimsuit/beachwear Gestalt to compensate.
Vampire pool party…. We can workshop this!
“Oh yeah. Now I remember why we didn’t invite Gestalt to the pool party.”
https://media.tenor.com/images/c9ae8c2bf585f1b1a9783bc864d1a26f/tenor.gif
Gestalt (plus Magus, Eldritch Archer?) would probably have issue with sunscreen too, given the fur covering. What’s worse than wet fur? Grease-coated fur.
I dunno about that: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9dghOljNcaU/TLylPvhvJCI/AAAAAAAABQA/zOrXIrmm2uM/s1600/Color9.jpeg
Hmm, does Gestalt suffer the whole ‘have to count spilled rice’ weakness? Would spilling a bag full of hundreds of bouncy-squeaky-balls make her vampiric/canine weaknesses clash, as with Magus and her laser weakness?
She has to count the whole bag of spilled kibble.
I’m my experience, you’re better off letting your GM know what you’re planning to do, regardless if they’re dickish enough to metagame to counter your plan. Because the alternative, not letting your DM know, won’t save you from the same dick DM who’ll just pull something out of their ass to counteract your well thought plan, and it may just confuse and disrupt a decent GM who didn’t consider the possibility of the party’s more harebrain scheme.
A bad GM will fuck you over regardless if they know or don’t know, they just might have a slightly more thought out reason why they screw you. But a bad DM who doesn’t know your plan and doesn’t like getting outsmarted by their players will just pull a rocks fall card and wank themselves for “outsmarting” the party because they added things the players can’t counter or just arbitrarily added to make things more difficult. And they usually say something like “oh yeah they were there all the time, but you as characters wouldn’t know that”.
Is there ever a good reason for “oh yeah they were there all the time, but you as characters wouldn’t know that”.
When you’re a shitty DM and need to make up an excuse for making an encounter more difficult.
Daylight is a spell that was consolidated into the “Light line” of spells in my system (others being Dancing Lights, Light, Sunbeam, etc.). Check out SF’ Holo image and flight spell for how it was handled. Basically I was making more spells like those.
Also, Daylight was also one of the first spells to gain a boost effect that actually let it be treated as daylight if you expended a number of mana (inspired by resolve).
Lit.
I told you I would be posting some of my stuff here :).
I’m still working on making the system as a whole into one consolidated document. Will post it on a later comic!
You can do it! Encouragement! Genuine support from the community! Etc.!
If a GM does that to me, I’m out. Burn-the-character-sheet out.
I wouldn’t want my GM applying suntan lotion to my back either.