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Sounds like a bitch problem
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obligatory pathfinder fixes that pf2e has an action called recall knowledge that lets you roll to see if your character knows something about something. in this case, player could ask if trolls have any weaknesses, and roll a recall knowledge check using society (trolls are humanoid) and they might be able to learn about the trolls' fire weakness
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https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/37103/what-is-my-guy-syndrome-and-how-do-i-handle-itAh, okay then. Hadn't seen it in that phrasing before. Pretty stupid as an idea though. The issue is not that someone wants to follow diagetic character motivations, or even that someone else wants to play with a focus on successful combat encounters regardless of diagetic knowledge. It's that they both ended up at the same table. The DM fucked up by not setting expectations regarding the kind of table they were running. It is our duty as organizers of play to prevent these kinds of people from playing different games at the same table.
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That's why I always play half elves. I mean, they're like 60 to 80 years old. They have seen some shit. They have learned some shit. They've been in human society that entire time, even if they're only physically in their early 20s. Reasonably, I have enough local background knowledge to address myriad situations.slightly neurotic diviner who almost always knows what's optimal, and struggles between doing the obviously ideal thing or rejecting that and knowingly doing something suboptimal so they aren't just a puppet to the magic
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My tiny tortle sorcerer is obsessed with putting gems in his mouth. The DM knows this. The party knows this. It makes for some very funny conflicts"ooh, grape flavour"
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> Like I think stealth rolls should be hidden. You shouldn’t have an idea that you’re not hiding well. I don't have the players actually make the stealth roll until something opposes it. They're doing the best they can. Here comes the guard. Roll, please.That's how I did it when I DMed. On the off chance they need to make a check and I don't want to alert them I just use passive or roll for them.
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Oh, sure, you could absolutely make a case for your character accidentally stumbling on the right answer simply because fire is a good weapon, and a good roleplayer could use that to their advantage to metagame a bit more acceptably, but there's a difference between that and just automatically grabbing fire stuff because you the player know it's good against trolls.Yeah, this is the way. We just fought a Troll in a Pathfinder session I was in. I'm playing an Athamaru (fish person) new to dry land, so I don't have a ton of knowledge about stuff like fire. But the Druid hitting it with a fire spell, and the GM describing the way the Troll reacts is enough to naturally gain that knowledge on the spot. There are all kinds of reasons a character might not know even common monster weaknesses. I think doing this kind of metagaming is important, because it gives opportunities for specific characters to stand out. If you have a party member with monster knowledge, it's cooler for them to yell a warning, than it is for everyone to just act like they already know
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Ah, okay then. Hadn't seen it in that phrasing before. Pretty stupid as an idea though. The issue is not that someone wants to follow diagetic character motivations, or even that someone else wants to play with a focus on successful combat encounters regardless of diagetic knowledge. It's that they both ended up at the same table. The DM fucked up by not setting expectations regarding the kind of table they were running. It is our duty as organizers of play to prevent these kinds of people from playing different games at the same table.It's not just the GM's responsibility. All the players at the table should be having those discussions throughout play
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Eh, I know nothing about how to handle most dangerous animals, even ones that live in my area; I'd imagine that even in a world with trolls, regular people wouldn't know anything about them. If your character is a seasoned adventurer or monster enthusiast, sure, light it up, but if your backstory places you as the village baker for most of your life, running in with alchemist's fire at the ready seems a bit strange. Ultimately I'd consider it to be on the GM's shoulders - if the only way your group is going to survive the troll encounter is with fire, then put an NPC in the local tavern who warms newcomers of a troll in the area, recommending that they have a lit torch at the ready.You have other people to manage wildlife, often times, and are probably not likely to encounter said animals. If you are then you know to carry bear spray, for example. Now imagine you’re in a world where bandits on the road are threat you actually have to consider. Trolls might live down the road and your town sends out memos saying “if you see these signs, run, and if you absolutely must then fire is the only thing that will be effective.” It’s perfectly plausible, you just need to be the littlest bit creative/steal stuff like wildlife advisories from the real world. You don’t even need an NPC. My first character was a sorceror who didn’t know what he could cast but his will, muscle-memory, and being in certain situations brought it out of him. Any “puzzle fight” should have enough room for players/characters to realize there’s a problem and the discover the solution. You can’t _plan ahead_, maybe, but there’s no reason you can’t have one roleplay turn and then “get lucky” choosing a fire spell next to see what happens.
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Metagaming kills the game! I took some very silly decisions because that’s how I thought the character would behave. Only once did I regret it: I made too shy a character and that made for a boring trip. Usually, it was a lot of fun. Honorable mention: being flown away by an angry dragon that _I_ knew would be defeated soon without my character’s intervention, but my character obviously didn’t care. So they went >splat<. Worthy death at the end of a campaign!Tip for shy/annoying/cowardly/etc. characters is to make it a thing they overcome. My current character is just a lil’ guy who basically got possessed so he’s constantly scared shitless but he’s trying his best and I’m always on the lookout for opportunities to get him out of his shell or even just to feel like he has to say something whether he likes it or not.
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Ok, I'll throw my hat in the ring. **Metagaming is fine, actually.** Obviously, don't read the module you're a player in, but knowing to use fire on trolls is just basic game knowledge. It's ok to be good at the game, because it is a game. If you're playing dungeons and dragons, or pathfinder, or any other rpg that spends most of the pages on combat rules, then you're playing a tactics game. I like tactics games (I'm not good at them, but that's a separate conversation). I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to come up with a brilliant plan to do a thing, and then be told that I'm not allowed to do it because me figuring out the puzzle is metaknowlede. It is exclusively in the tabletop rpg space that being good at the game is considered a bad thing. It's in a similar vein that I hate tutorials in video games, especially when I'm being prevented from doing things that I already know how to do (because I've been playing games for multiple decades now and I have some amount of media literacy) for no other reason than the game hasn't taught me yet. So arbitrarily, I'm not allowed to use fire damage on the trolls until some npc tells me that trolls are weak to fire? That's asinine. If you want to play let's pretend with dice, that's fine. just be honest about the kind of game that you're running from the get go so I know not to join your table.
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Eh, I know nothing about how to handle most dangerous animals, even ones that live in my area; I'd imagine that even in a world with trolls, regular people wouldn't know anything about them. If your character is a seasoned adventurer or monster enthusiast, sure, light it up, but if your backstory places you as the village baker for most of your life, running in with alchemist's fire at the ready seems a bit strange. Ultimately I'd consider it to be on the GM's shoulders - if the only way your group is going to survive the troll encounter is with fire, then put an NPC in the local tavern who warms newcomers of a troll in the area, recommending that they have a lit torch at the ready.> Eh, I know nothing about how to handle most dangerous animals, even ones that live in my area; I'd imagine that even in a world with trolls, regular people wouldn't know anything about them. Debatable. You definitely know a Tigers greatest weakness, and a bears greatest weakness even if you don't know how to use them. >!Bullets!<
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That's why I always play half elves. I mean, they're like 60 to 80 years old. They have seen some shit. They have learned some shit. They've been in human society that entire time, even if they're only physically in their early 20s. Reasonably, I have enough local background knowledge to address myriad situations.
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Ok, I'll throw my hat in the ring. **Metagaming is fine, actually.** Obviously, don't read the module you're a player in, but knowing to use fire on trolls is just basic game knowledge. It's ok to be good at the game, because it is a game. If you're playing dungeons and dragons, or pathfinder, or any other rpg that spends most of the pages on combat rules, then you're playing a tactics game. I like tactics games (I'm not good at them, but that's a separate conversation). I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to come up with a brilliant plan to do a thing, and then be told that I'm not allowed to do it because me figuring out the puzzle is metaknowlede. It is exclusively in the tabletop rpg space that being good at the game is considered a bad thing. It's in a similar vein that I hate tutorials in video games, especially when I'm being prevented from doing things that I already know how to do (because I've been playing games for multiple decades now and I have some amount of media literacy) for no other reason than the game hasn't taught me yet. So arbitrarily, I'm not allowed to use fire damage on the trolls until some npc tells me that trolls are weak to fire? That's asinine. If you want to play let's pretend with dice, that's fine. just be honest about the kind of game that you're running from the get go so I know not to join your table.>If you want to play let’s pretend with dice, that’s fine. just be honest about the kind of game that you’re running from the get go so I know not to join your table. That is the game of DnD, Pathfinder, or really any other TTRPG. What it sounds like you want is war games. Go play that. Just because the only parts of the books you've bothered to read/remember are combat rules, does not make that the majority of the books. I feel like video games calling themselves RPGs have ruined entire swaths of people to what an RPG means. These are games about telling a story, not who can do the most damage. You sound like an awful person to have at the table. You aren't "being punished for being good at the game", I'd argue you actually aren't good at the game because you only care about or focus on one aspect of the game and ignore the rest of it. Stop looking at TTRPGs as video games, as a means to make big numbers go brrrrr, and (re-)read the core rulebook. You'll find a lot more of it than you are suggesting has nothing to do with combat when you aren't looking at it through a lens of "how to combat".
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Without looking it up, I'm fairly certain that Arcana, Nature, and maybe even Survival checks can all be employed to fill this "character knowledge" confirmation, and have always been used for this and more.
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in the remaster trolls have the humanoid trait, so they use society. GM can rule to change that, though. -
>If you want to play let’s pretend with dice, that’s fine. just be honest about the kind of game that you’re running from the get go so I know not to join your table. That is the game of DnD, Pathfinder, or really any other TTRPG. What it sounds like you want is war games. Go play that. Just because the only parts of the books you've bothered to read/remember are combat rules, does not make that the majority of the books. I feel like video games calling themselves RPGs have ruined entire swaths of people to what an RPG means. These are games about telling a story, not who can do the most damage. You sound like an awful person to have at the table. You aren't "being punished for being good at the game", I'd argue you actually aren't good at the game because you only care about or focus on one aspect of the game and ignore the rest of it. Stop looking at TTRPGs as video games, as a means to make big numbers go brrrrr, and (re-)read the core rulebook. You'll find a lot more of it than you are suggesting has nothing to do with combat when you aren't looking at it through a lens of "how to combat".
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Eh, I know nothing about how to handle most dangerous animals, even ones that live in my area; I'd imagine that even in a world with trolls, regular people wouldn't know anything about them. If your character is a seasoned adventurer or monster enthusiast, sure, light it up, but if your backstory places you as the village baker for most of your life, running in with alchemist's fire at the ready seems a bit strange. Ultimately I'd consider it to be on the GM's shoulders - if the only way your group is going to survive the troll encounter is with fire, then put an NPC in the local tavern who warms newcomers of a troll in the area, recommending that they have a lit torch at the ready.Id say that we don't know those things now because we live in modern technological times where you don't have to know those things to survive. If this was the middle ages and you were an adventuring type who could hold their own out in the wilds, you would almost definitely know all of those things.
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> Plenty of systems have something for that, often with a variety of options. I believe 5e has a similar rule, but it seems rare for players to have actually read the rules. I don't think D&D is especially detailed about this, but I don't know where the book is to check. I don't think they give DCs, where I wouldn't be surprised if Pathfinder 2e had a simple "target number is 8 + the creature's HD" formula with guidance on what to do for the range of possible outcomes.yeah in pf2 it's a level based DC, and if it's an uncommon, rare, or unique creature that will increase the DC also the skill to use for recall knowledge depends on the creature's trait: humanoid > society; animal > nature; dragon > arcana; abberation > occultism; etc though the GM can rule that you can use something else if they choose.
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Plenty of systems have something for that, often with a variety of options. A bookish Exalted character might roll Intelligence + Lore to remember having learned about the weakness to fire before. Or maybe Intelligence + Occult if the weakness is supernatural in nature. A combat-oriented character might roll Wits + War to deduce that fire is needed based on the knowledge of old battle reports involving trolls. Maybe even something involving Survival if they're familiar with a region trolls can appear in. A game with a flexible skill system has a lot of room for such things.oh so DnD does have that, but nobody knows about it. sick
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The person you're replying too explicitly said that not playing the game the way they do is fine, yet you're here telling them that they're playing it wrong and should play something else. That is psycho shit. Just don't play with each other.Wat? They absolutely are belittling people that play the game as it is written... You think "play let’s pretend with dice" is not meant in a derogatory way just because they said "that's fine" after? Even then followed up with basically "you won't catch me doing that". Their entire post is absolutely "yucking the yums" of everyone that doesn't play DnD as a combat only tactical board game.