What was the worst example of meta gaming you've seen?

>>52762202
"I fly outside the temple to see what the rest of the Illithid city is doing"

An artificer who wasted a lot of time and resources building a car and other modern technologies instead of going on adventures with the rest of the party.

>>52762202
>Takes a flying familiar
>Never goes anywhere without sending the familiar to do a thorough inspection first.
Every time with this mother fucker. There's only so many times I can kill his bird before I start to look like the asshole.

>>52762292
fuck tiberius

Fire and trolls.

>>52762442
I never get this.
If trolls are common, would this not be common knowledge?

If course, if trolls are uncommonly rare, fuck those players with a cinnamon stick.

>>52762442
If something like THAT is the worst, you haven't seen a lot of metagaming.

>>52762362
How is that metagaming though?

Like, you may not think the tactic leads to a fun game, but it is a perfectly in character thing to do.

Probably in Fate Core, of all games

Which is naturally very very meta but there's always a point where you just need to stop

>>52762509
You didn't know? Player Characters all spend their formative years encased in one of those plastic sanitation bubbles, kept isolated from the rest of the campaign setting, their only link to the outside world a couple textbooks on whatever Knowledge skills they bought, otherwise they don't know a single thing about the wider world.

>>52762362
>>52762801
I sorta am struggling with a similar issue. Flying familiars seem very open for abuse but I don't want to punish him for doing what is arguable in character for him to do. Recently I've taken to ignoring it in descriptions and hoping he forgets (and he does sometimes, but I just want it to go away)

Reading my FUCKING GM NOTES JEFF!

>>52762362
>>52763111
If your campaign can be broken by a single familiar, that only speaks more to your incompetence as a DM, rather than any brokenness on the part of the player.

Just saying.

>>52763898
>Acting superior instead of giving those guys the help they were asking for
Well aren't you just a little ray of sunshine

"Hey should we get the (guy who has the crafting feat) to make (magic item that the character would never know know even exists)"

>>52762292
Lol Tiberius is the worst. Well, Marisha is now. But he was.

>>52764145
What, you want me to sugercoat the truth for a few bitches who are too chickenshit to play around the fact that a player is acting smart both in and out of character?

If you really want advice for how to deal with a player who has a flying familiar, assume that they're going to send their familiar in first to check an area for whatever and then just give them the info that they'd see based off of what their familiar sees. If this upset whatever you had planned to the campaign, realize that surprises only work if they're not expected and killing the familiar to protect whatever surprise you had in store is like calling for a spot/perception check for an empty room, even if they don't know that something is there, they're still going to assume that something is there because why else would the DM call for a check or kill the familiar in the first place?

TL;DR: Balance around players being smart, not around them playing along with your railroad.

>>52764287
Give us a concrete example, friendo. Right now you're just throwing out weasel words that sound good but don't actually help the fuckers out.

Surely someone with your godlike DM skills has a few anecdotes to fall back on, right?

>>52762362
I would take advantage of the fact that familiars in my favorite edition specifically can't hold elaborate or detailed conversations with their masters. Ten angry orcs gearing up and two innocent children playing tag both get reported back as "there are some people over there".

>>52762801
Depending on the exact situation it could be that he has no real reason to suspect danger other than "this is a game and there will be bad guys" rather than any in character reason

Scouting ahead is fine, but constant scouting at all times even when danger would seem unlikely makes your character paranoid

>>52764434
>Player sends familiar to check a room.
>Described what he sees thanks to the familiar
>Players make a plan based off what they see
>The rest comes down to roleplay and whether or not they pass the necessary rolls.
It's not rocket science friend-o.

>>52762202
>I don't allow you to do that thing we talked about after the game last week, regarding the evil artifacts.
>That's already done. We did it while you guys were fucking around in the antimagic field.
>No we talked about it in character on the way home.
>No. We told you, out of character, about what we already did with the gm, out of the room, while you were fucking with a different part of the dungeon.
>She then suddenly proceeds to pick fights with us and stalk us suspiciously for the rest of the campaign.

>>52764434
Best would be to assume they will be using the familiar. Flying familiars aren't so good at things like locked doors, so that's an option. A better option would be to have the familiar be captured, rather than killed, and used as a bargaining chip against the player since losing a familiar has very real consequences. Even better is if you get rid of spellbooks and make everyones familiar function as their spellbook (a la witch or familiar adept archetype), so that danger is ramped up even more.

>>52764498
its 100% okay to have a paranoid character. if the GM has a problem with it, or if it is interfering with group play, then thats a different story. this situation, like almost all situations, can be resolved by talking through it like adults.

> Making homebrew setting using dnd
> Friends very supportive
> Start laying out the history of races, cultures ect.
> Get cut off by friend asking about race I've never heard of
> Tell him I didn't plan for them
> He gives a decently long argument trying to get me to add them in to the setting because of how perfect they fit his character
> Check the race out
> Nothing about flavor lines up with his character concept let alone the setting
> They're mechanics just happen to be perfect for a meme build that would take advantage of plot elements of my setting I had let him know about a few months back thinking he'd forget

>>52764592
Some editions it doesn't have consequences, I think that's probably what they're referring to. I know in AD&D it fucks you right up, but if 5th you can just dispel and resummon them in about an hour or so.

>>52764465
Depends what edition they're playing in, and what game, but some allow the master to watch through the eyes of his familiar, so he can literally see it himself.

>>52764509
Makes the game a little dull after a while, don't you think?
No surprises, no ambushes, no unexpected reinforcements shaking up a battle plan.
I get that this 'super pure let the players do anything' game has its appeal, but after a while I find the players just end up settling into a routine that works for every encounter and then you've got to find ways to shake it up the the campaign starts dying.

>>52764653
how about try throwing in something the familiar cant detect? hiding units, perhaps invisibility if it has a particularly good perception.

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>>52762362
Have you tried not playing D&D?

>>52764668
I guess it all depends on the situation at this point. I don't know what the original guy's two exact issues were, but the things you've mentioned could definitely work.

>>52764676
>Have you tried replacing one flawed system with another flawed system?
That doesn't actually solve the problem, it just replaces it with a different one in a different system.

>>52764653
>Makes the game a little dull after a while, don't you think?
If the player being smart makes the encounter dull then the encounter wasn't all that exciting in the first place. Besides, stealth in D&D is so fucking simple to break depending on the edition that the only way you'll actually ambush anyone is if they manage to fail their individual perception checks.

Now, if the familiar reports back and says "oh, there's a dragon in the next room" and said dragon approaches their location, I can guarantee that it'll be more exciting that going "you're surprised, GOTCHA BITCH!"

>>52764712
If you tried not playing D&D you would realize that unlike D&D most systems don't have serious flaws of that nature.

>>52764653
As a GM you can always impose some sort of penalty, just as long as you state that upfront when before characters are made. Hell, you can even do it mid-game as long as it doesn't affect current characters. Example: in my games I started imposing a 20% XP increase for casting classes, and a 20% XP decrease for "support" classes as an incentive to have a more balanced party. I did this after my players had already made a character and let it applies to any future characters (past their first character) that enters the game.

Still, there's ways around familiars. Kill it every time, eventually the player will take the hint. Let it get captured. Put it in situation where it can't detect the threat. Make the location of the threat inaccessible for the familiar. I think there's even a charm familiar spell (at least in PF) where you can make a familiar abandon its master and work for you for a time.

>>52764741
I have
They do
By all means tell me some of these flawless systems, I'd be interested to hear them, they sound pretty good.

>>52764765
GURPS

so theres alot of people giving non-specific examples of stuff you can do to get around the familiar thing. lets give him a practical example.
your party is going through some ruins, theres some fancy magical item theyre going after and they heard the king of this long dead society had it around his neck. the party comes to a door, no idea whats on the other side. the rogue checks the door for traps, finds nothing. they listen at the door, hear nothing. they decide to send the familiar through the door to see whats on the other side. as soon as the door opens a little bit a skeleton rips it open and ambushes the party

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>>52764782

>>52764741
Every system is going to have some serious flaw to it. It's pretty much unavoidable in a game where you mimic real life, but add in super-powers/magic. It's impossible to simulate every situation that may come up in such a game and produce a ruling for it in a book/FAQ, so it comes down to GM discretion, and GMs can, and often do, fuck everything up - no matter how good they are.

>>52764786
I mean that's a bit of a wonky example, because that shit was going to happen regardless of whether they used the familiar or not and there was really no disadvantage to trying (which is part of the problem, the lack of threat to the PCs).

>>52764738
This guy made a potentially better point, about the familiar alerting enemies. Harder to justify when you're not in a dungeon though, or the familiar is something that wouldn't arouse suspicion like a bat or a mouse or something.

>>52764712
Most games don't have issues like D&D where a stupid flying familiar can derail a campaign. I say this as a dude who used spirits in ShadowRun and a ghost in WoD to scout out ahead for recon and didn't derail the campaign because the system already accounted for that possibility and gave legitimate reasons for why it's good but not necessarily the optimal decision.

>>52764795
Maybe but for some reason whenever stupid gamebreaking shit like this has come up for me it's been in a D&D game.

>>52764434
Well, give them a challenge to make it obsolete or usless. Like for example mazes that are in a constant state of change. Or make them track an illusionist and see how good that tracking goes. For example the familiar says that the bridge is broken over a river canyon, but really the destroyed bridge is an illusion over the real bridge and the party goes miles out of the way looking for a ford.

>>52762292
I'm unfamiliar, whats this about?

>>52764824
sure its not a perfect example, but its an off the cuff example of how you can design an encounter that the familiar won't derail

>>52763898
This. There are three kinds of information in a game:

>info players need to know
>info players cannot know
>info players can obtain by interacting with keyed objects in the environment

None of which should call for rolls

>>52764873
Not sure about him, but I find the main problem is that the familiar makes mundane dangers obsolete (pretty bad for a first-level spell)
Of course you can circumvent it by throwing magic at it, but I feel like you just end up with magical powercreep if you head down that path.

>>52764676
But playing fantasy Jackass is fun

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>>52764916
True but the in any case the bird has to make perception checks to. The familiar gives some insight to lay out, but is no means fool proof. Just through a series of bad perception checks the familiar could give some misinformation. It could lead to a missed ambush spot putting the party at a disatvantage. Terrain features missed like a fault line covered by trees that makes a party go miles out of the way causing them to get lost in the forest. What I am saying is if you rely on a familiar too much you can become extremely inconvenienced, and if it happens a handful of times here and there the player will probably deploy less.

>>52764987
Random encounters are the entire purpose to discourage excessively cautious and time-consuming play

>>52762202
The party that meets up randomly just all happens to be perfectly balanced with all the bases covered.

>>52764890
The other replies mention Tiberius, so I assume it's Critical Role (I've only seen the first episode though)

>>52765272
Making a party together is not metagaming it's common sense.

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>>52762292
> 1 5 0 0 m i r r o r s

>>52762330
If it's just a car, it's good
Because from then on you can have road trip adventures with the party

>>52765327
>Making a party together is not metagaming it's common sense.
Making a party together isn't metagaming, every one tailoring there character choices to fit the preconceptions of what a PC party is supposed to be like is, though it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a time of mategaming that is accepted and often times expected.

>>52762362
>mole people
>roll random encounter for hunters/aerial monsters/etc.
>takes days to leave and return
Just, make shit harder than "I send X and X tells me what's up"

>>52764592
>he familiar be captured
And how do you suggest they do that?

>>52765603
That's because PCs most of the time are specialists chosen for a task not some common fucks picked at random from the planet's entire population.

>>52765663
A natural predator sees it as lunch?

>>52765663
Are you retardedly suggesting that no one has the capability to catch a bird?

>>52765520
Can't have road trips if there is no roads.

Once our party had encountered a couple of regenerating creatures, we became accustomed to using acid or fire to ensure death.

Eventually, we pursued a bounty on a hydra, and I prepared flasks of acid during our time traveling to its lair. Is this metagaming, or just sensible character intuition at this point?

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>>52762362
>This player is so risk averse that he meticulously scouts ahead for traps and ambushes
>To convince him not to do this, I go out of my way to maim or kill his scout whenever possible

>>52765762
I should add that this would be the first time ever encountering a hydra, however upon hearing from our employer that it could regrow its severed heads, I took that as the queue to prepare against regeneration.

>>52765804
Nah, that's pretty sensible. If someone sending you to kill the thing mentions it, then it's reasonable that you got the info from then.

When it's bad is when the DM describes a large, green humanoid covered in warts, and a player springs for torches before they even see that it's regenerating and isn't just an ugly ogre.

>>52765706
I've played with multiple groups in 2e, HackMasters, 3.5 and Pathfinder with several different DM and find the opposite is usually true.

I'd be hard-pressed to remember the absolute worst, since there have been a few. One that sticks out to me right now is one from a ThatGuy in a session I GMed.

"You, [ThatGuy], and only you, hear a voice in your head, telling you in a faint, whispy voice..."

ThatGuy fucking repeats everything I say as I'm saying it, in character, to relay it to the others. Of course, his character is usually an blithering fool, but on just this occasion, he tries to be obnoxious in a way that is out of character. ThatGuy's since gone, so no need to advise me on that front, anyhow.

>>52764498
>Depending on the exact situation it could be that he has no real reason to suspect danger

nigger what

You send scouts when you don't know if there's danger. That's what they're FOR.

>>52762202
A player abusing the weight limit of telekinesis spell and way how magic was organised in the game we were playing, so he was basically sending entire cluster of iron nails at high speed toward enemies. Since each nail was under light weapon, it was dealing 1+STR damage and STR for telekinesis was 2. So a bucket of nails was dealing roughtly 150 damage to unarmored enemy in a system where average human has 26 HP. And due to the way how telekinesis was described, he could easily just direct those nails as he felt pleased, because the total difficulty penalty for doing so was neutraliesed completely by his skill and combination of perks.

All of it was based entirely on meta knowledge, since by in-game definitions, such feat of telekinesis would be an absolutely legendary deed and not a standard combat action, opening each encounter.

We ended up dropping the game and changing the system just to prevent this shit, as the guy just couldn't help himself (not to mention building entire character for this trick).

>>52763131
Don't leave them lying around on the table while you go the toilet Kyle. Hide that shit

>>52765890
That's the peril of hidden information, unless there's a compelling reason not to it's common sense to share it.

>>52764782
I used to believe the stuff about GURPS just being a meme, but it turns out that its fans really are deluded enough to really believe those memes.

>>52765967
What system was this

>>52766105
Witcher TTRPG

It's infamous for having few spells completely broken due to the way they are described and making the game unfun the very moment someone notices.
But even ignoring the "bucket of nails" problem, the telekinesis is perfectly capable of grabbing most of humanoid monsters (those not above roughtly 200 kg of weight) and turn them into piniata for rest of the party.

>>52766133
But that makes sense. Sorcerers in Witcher are basically superweapons that kingdoms have gone to war over, they're incredibly powerful and dangerous, anything dumb enough to get caught by telekinesis deserves to get slaughtered.

Sorcerers, dragons, high vampires, powerful spirits and seasoned witchers (read:Geralt and like 3 other people alive) are absurdly fucking strong. Witchers and sorceresses have a bit of a batman complex where they need time to prepare to be truly effective, an ambushed spellcaster can still get caught by an arrow through the eye and a Witcher without his blade oils, potions, bombs, or other tricks is just a crafty man.

>>52764890
>>52765288

In this instance, the player who controls Tiberius (named Orion) admitted in Q&A session sometime afterwards that he thought the show had gone to his DM's head. He believed his DM was trying to flex his muscles and was deliberately engineering a full on TPK by throwing a beholder at their party. Orion was convinced that there was no way for their party to defeat it by the book so he had his character avoid the fight and ditch his party.

In another instance when it was alluded to that the party would be going up against vampires his character suddenly became immediately and intimately knowledgeable about them (to be fair their table doesn't roll knowledge checks for monsters that often so idk). Tiberius sought out a priest to bless his container of infinite water which I assume is sometimes used as a component for spells. He made the assumption that once blessed any spell he used with the water generated from the container would become 'blessed' and give him bonuses against vampires forever. He didn't think to run this by his DM at all beforehand.

Last one I can think of is where out of the blue he commissioned a blacksmith to weld 5 or do daggers together splayed out on a metal ring to make a sort of throwing glaive. He argued that using a telekinesis spell it would allow him to make thrown attack (with spell bonuses) that attacked five times. Also didn't run that by his DM before going to the trouble of making it and being thoroughly evasive and obtuse over it.

Then there is the mirror thing >>52765355 mentions, and I'm not going into it because it is too fucking stupid.

>>52762202
Saying memes in character.

That would be myself, yesterday. Our lvl 6 party just got done killing a couple of minotaurs, two gargoyles and a barbed devil (not all at once, mind) and as we try to have a short rest, the GM has a cloaker try to eat the face of our warlock. Our cleric was absent for the game so I botted him and said, well he should cast beacon of hope. After we succeeded our wis save against the fear, the cloaker disengaged the fighter who had saved our warlock and went for my half health character. I had just healed myself with a potion for max because of BoH and then I had the cleric PC cast daylight, because I knew that would dispell the three illusions of the cloaker who was gunning for me. It also gave the monster disadvantage on every throw because of light sensitivity so it couldn't hit shit.

We mopped it up quickly after that.

>>52766259
But you see, I wouldn't mind if he made an actual "battle mage", since everyone knows how powerful the magic in the setting AND the game itself is.

Thing is - he instead played on meta-bullshit. In the same time I was running game with separate group and the only chick in it made a sorceress and played her straight - vain, spending tonnes of money on luxurious life and dragging rest of the party as her mercs, but also incredibly powerful as a magic user, with no meta bullshit and just having a powerful character by point distribution.

Meanwhile the TK-bullshit was entirely based on meta-knowledge of how penalties against mass-TK are counted, the weight ratio limit, the power of specific perks and how to lower penalties for complex spells. So on paper the character was a fucking joke college dropout, but in practice it was a one-trick pony min-maxing for absurdly powerful TK, entirely based on loopholes and description of the spell allowing this bullshit.

>>52766259
>a Witcher without his blade oils, potions, bombs, or other tricks is just a crafty man.
Not him, but this doesn't apply to the TTRPG in question. Witcher in it is always prepared and always perfectly capable of wiping out few humanoids in single turn if made by half-competent character and/or having a "high point" start for specific campaign.
Plus there are no bombs and oils outside vidya

>>52766262
I'm honestly really curious about the mirror thing now. I can't find anything on it and frankly I don't want to bother watching the series for this meme of a man.

If you're fighting an enemy your character hasn't fought before, and you know from out-of-game experience that it's vulnerable to fire, and your attack options are spells that do fire damage, acid damage, or necrotic damage, is it metagaming to choose the fire?

Assume all three are equally chosen in other combat. Is the only fair way to approach it to do a three-way equivalent of flipping a coin?

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>>52766062
As a Gurpsfag, I still only do GURPS meming because its fun, and because I need something to take the pain of forever-GM'ing away. I try to keep it to the GURPS-general, and I'm sorry if my fellow GURPS-fags doesn't.

Delusion and Insanity can be the result not just of excessive meming, but also as a result of a GURPS-gm unable to limit himself and focus. I speak from personal experience.

>>52766427
Me, I'd personally pick based on the environment.

If I was in a forest, I wouldn't pick fire because I wouldn't want it to spread. (Unless it's an evil forest and we're supposed to be getting rid of it or something, in which case fire away.)

If I was in a building or dungeon, I wouldn't use acid because I wouldn't want to damage up the floor in case any of the acid spills.

When in doubt I guess I'd pick necrotic, since there seems to be little room for unintended splash damage; I'm only specifically targeting the one (presumably living) thing.

>>52766062
Entirely depends on what you qualify as "GURPS is a meme" and "GURPS memes". I'm in similar situation as >>52766563 - I'm GMing GURPS for so many years with so little chances to actually play it. And I still say "GURPS" when people ask about game for running X, precisely because for how many years I've been running GURPS-based games and I know how flexible and easy to apply the game is.

Unless you mean the "GURPS is too complex" meme, then I can't help you, since I can't understand from where that meme even came from. For me the only complex part is the game running on imperial rather than metric and the fact it's in English, so it requires from me some serious effort to get players for non-translated game operating in non-familiar units.

>>52766427
>fire damage, acid damage, or necrotic damage
I avoid conundrums like these by having literally all my spells be fire damage spells. Because of course you should fight fire with fire. You should fight everything with fire!

>>52765789
kek, was thinking this myself. I play cautiously also, I prefer strategy and story over run of the mill combat so a scout doesn't seem at all broken.

>>52762362

> Have a mage in the employ of your BBEG / be the BBEG.
> "Some mysterious force prevents your familiar from functioning normally (memory loss / wings don't work / whatever the fuck)."

Then just add some 5 minute encounter right before the end where they destroy an obelisk or some shit that has been siphoning magic (also neat battle mechanic for that encounter) and preventing familiars from working right.

That's just off the top of my dome, i'm sure i could come up with a better, specific to this universe way to nip this in the bud.

Can you seriously not think of a way to handwave this shit away?

>>52765951

Do you have like a ferret or something in your pocket you send into your house, car, place of work every morning before stepping foot inside?

I mean, you don't KNOW if there's no danger there right? That's what scouts are for!

This happened in my party playing the phandelver campaign. My gf hosts and I play, first time for both of us by the way aking this more bullshit.

fighting venom fang, 2 players estimate the health of a young green dragon from experience and from monster manual. Everyone but me and the monk player literally counts the amount of damage everyone does each turn, preventing people from going next before recording the damage. It was a fucking joke and I really wish my gf just sent down an adult green to tpk us for that bullshit.

>>52762202
every fucking situation prior to roll a dice the cleric goes "WAIT, I CAST GUIDANCE"

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>>52766380
Basically, he was trying to pull the "Archimedes and the Burning Mirror" thing (despite it not being in character for him to be knowledgeable about such things), using a bunch of mirrors and one of the light spells, to instagib a bunch of vampires. Just like all the other times, it was something he didn't talk through with the GM or the rest of the group and got assblasted when Mercer tried to call him on his bullshit.

>>52762442
If that's a problem for you, then you're a shit DM.

Actually, let's be a little more general. If you have a problem with your players knowing monsters' statistics, you're a shit DM.

>>52766427
Yes, it's metagaming to choose the fire. It's also metagaming to choose anything but the fire. Or to decide you're going to do it at random. As soon as you have that information, you're making a decision based on the fact that you know the creature's weakness. So you might as well just pick the fire.

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>All these people complaining about players knowing monster stats.
>Not just adjusting stats, abilities and giving them funny hats to wear that makes them act and look different.

>>52767442
It's funny, because that's literally gm advice in the bestiary of my go to system. Hey, bump up some numbers if its an exceptional/older thing, bump them down if its wounded or young.

I personally like giving things abilities they normally wouldn't have, while making that information that could be gained in character to reward legwork.

>>52767442

I generally just make up bullshit like 'the kobold hucks acid' or 'the zombie pukes up a swarm of bugs'

>>52766930

A big pillar of salt with a druid in it, steals the brains out of familiars to have and hold them all forever. needs exorcism.

>>52767488

Added benefit, if you play it right it makes them think you like custom made a bunch of enemies rather than using monster manual statblocks.

>>52767442
>>52767488
>>52767526
If you're doing that then you might as well just make custom monsters to begin with. That way you'll have a coherent whole rather than a copy-pasted sprite comic-esque abomination.

>>52767585
It's considerably easier and more time saving to add a special attack to a pre-existing monster.

>>52767585

Or, just vary the monsters slightly enough so the players think they're dealing with custom monsters so they don't metagame, consciously or unconsciously.

What you're suggesting is hours of additional work on top of the time it takes just to put together the campaign / encounters together to begin with, just adding 1-2 special features is more than enough to quell the average 'problem' player in this regard.

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>>52763131
Who here /Steals DM's Notebook While He's Parking His Car/?

Absolutely DEVILISH

>>52766970
false equivalence
are you retarded?

>>52764676
That HAS to be a painting. Look at the beauty of that place ;_;

>>52765804
>>52765762
You're good. Pretty basic logic:
>if regenerates, kill it with fire/acid
>told that hydra regenerates
>ergo kill it with fire/acid.

I mean a 3Int/3wis Barb might not be able to think that far ahead, but most non-minmaxed people it'd be incredibly believable.

>>52767771
Joke's on u, I don't have a notebook

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>>52767771
Shitty DM for not blatantly leaving a decoy notepad to fuck with/tempt his players revealing who he can or cant trust and adjusting his fuckery accordingly

>>52767802

The way the guy complaining was saying it, the character uses his familiar to to scout and prep literally everywhere they go, diffusing any tension he might create as a DM.

You said you use scouts when you don't know there if there is danger or not, even when there is "no real reason to suspect danger," by that logic, literally any and everything should be scouted because you don't KNOW if there is or is not danger.

I'll admit it's hyperbolic to conflate roleplaying shit to real life, but you're practically saying 'any and everything at all times should be scouted.'

>>52767926
If I had a magic bird/ferret/lizard/whatever that I could talk to I would absolutely have it scout ahead of me everywhere, because why not? If anything it seems out of character for a person who has these tools available to choose not to use them.

>>52765840
Yet at the same time, wouldn't you say that it's a reasonable assumption that most things don't like being set on fire?

>>52767926
to be fair, I'm the kind of guy that if I forget to lock my front door and come back home to an unlocked door, I will straight up 5-point room scan every room in the building until I realize it was my goof.

>>52767977
>because why not?

Risk it dying? Risk the enemies preparing a trap if they can sniff out a magical familiar?

If i'm going to king dingdongs murder palace sure send the eagle, but not if i'm just walking down the street.

>>52767632
>>52767706
The problem is just adding a special feature will give you a shoddy, slapdash monster, and will fuck with the game balance unless you do it right. 5E has a whole system for how to value various features, and determine how dangerous a monster encounter is - doing it ad hoc is a good way to under-reward your players for the challenges you're putting them through.

Of course, the real problem is that you're solving a problem that only exists in your head, but at least with custom monsters you're not making the game worse by doing so.

>>52766970
Do you not?

>>52764782
That was hilarious anon, I can't stop kekking
>Perfect system
>GURPS
My sides!

>>52768026
If I had an eagle familiar I'd have it circling far above me all the time and reporting back if it sees anything unusual. It makes a lot more sense than having a giant fuckin' eagle roosting on your shoulder.

>>52764834
Its not a busted familiar problem though. Familiars aren't busted. The guy just has a shit interpretation of the familiar scouting

>>52762509
I do it this way
CR 5 and below, non-aberration or outsider monsters are common knowledge of the world. You don't know specifics about them but you know enough to at least know their names. Above that you gotta roll a relevant intelligence. Aberrations and outsiders of all types have CR 1 and down as well known.

>>52763131
But I'm the co-gm!
We trade off! Have you not been reading the notes I leave you? Is that why things have gotten so weird?

Fucking hell man.
I wonder how many other Jeffs are here.

>>52765272
Roleplay it better, dummy.

instead of
>You all meet randomly at the tavern
start with
>You were all hired for your skills to work as a team for X.
or
>Player X has spent days finding other adventurers to fit a special team.

Stop blaming metagaming for poor role playing.

>>52762839
Apparently we should take your word for it?

>>52762292
Appropriate answer for someone who has never played.

>>52765967
Thats not something I would personally consider metagaming because I believe a player could figure out "I have the ability to move things with magic, I could throw projectiles."

But this would be cooler as a moment of clarity in a boss fight as opposed to
>I'm hunting squirrels with a bucket of nails.

Your boy here doesn't sound like a fun guy to role play with still.

>>52767771
I had a GM end the campaign because of that. GM went off to the corner store to buy snacks, I went outside for some fresh air because GM had a tiny apartment. During that time one of the players uses the GM's computer and finds all his notes. When the GM gets back the one player is reeling off setting info and secrets to the other players. GM was calm ran the rest of the session, just asked us not to return as the game was cancelled after that.

>>52767442
my favorite thing to do is if a player knows a monsters weakness and tries to use it to his advantage, I just take the weakness and make it immune instead as a rare variant of the species.

>>52764595
It's 100% okay, if they actually roleplay the character as paranoid even when it's inconvenient.
>check every single room they enter, piece of furniture they use, and container for traps
>won't eat or drink anything they did not prepare themselves unless it's been tested for poison
>will try to sense motive and oppose deception against every single NPC they talk to and won't accept any quests without a heavy vetting proccess

>>52768291
>Haha! Your presumptions has caused this ordinary troll to become...a variant that's immune to fire!
>K, I throw acid on it.
>...
To say nothing on how meta-gamey it is to make a creature immune to a weakness arbitrarily just because the players know what its weakness is. Like would you run a M&M campaign where green kryptonite made Superman stronger instead of weaker?

>>52765272
You can find better ways to roleplay it than your party falling ass backwards into each other in a tavern or market square if you think a little. Perhaps they're all meeting because somebody hired them specifically, thus bringing them together. Maybe one's looking for adventurers to help and sees a party member win a brawl in a tavern. I don't know, use your imagination. It's roleplaying.

>>52766970
Well, exploring a dungeon != Going into my house.

Why wouldn't a seasoned adventurer try to get AS MUCH iformation on a possibly hostile place before going in?

Didn't some other fucker already say this?

>>52762362
Had a similar thing in my Stars Without Number campaign.

>be engineer in the space future
>humanity is reemerging into interstellar travel several hundred years after the Terran Mandate collapsed
>decide to invent some scouting drones
>use them to scout out everything
>gm kills them but I build more
>eventually he just decides that "drone technology has been lost"

I don't blame him, but in my defense, he WAS ragging us to be more tactical.

>>52768555
>I don't blame him, but in my defense, he WAS ragging us to be more tactical.
From personal experience, when a GM says "I want you to be tactical," he means "I want you to not be retarded but I want you to be just retarded enough to stay on the railroad and fall for the events that I planned for you to fall for."

All in all, they want to feel like the smartest person in the room and when you prove them wrong, they get butthurt and cancel the campaign, which is generally why I play disposable units so the GM feels good about killing someone off every other week.

>>52765967
Did you consider maybe ruling that a cloud of nails would be treated as something closer to a shotgun blast rather than dozens of individual weapons?

We have a player playing a rogue in our current group.

They're doing the stupid annoying thing where they stealth ALL THE TIME.

They frequently scout ahead, but if anything ever happens to us when they aren't there, they always mysteriously decide to return.

Same in towns/dungeons/etc. They'll stealth off somewhere for a solo jaunt and unless the DM literally plays out their WHOLE SOLO SCENE first, they'll return if something interesting happens to us.

They also do normal metagame stuff like read the monster manual during the game so they always know how to optimally attack. But honestly its the spotlight seeking that is the most annoying.

If you don't get why this is grating, you have to understand that unless they get their own solo scene, it plays out with them being in a quantum state where they can jump into any scene they think is interesting, because their character is unbeatable at stealth, tracking, and perception.

>>52765272
what exactly is unbelievable of people forming teams that are traditionally effective.

If anything, the characters should be completely anal about team composition. Would you risk your life going adventuring with 3 elf beserkers and a siege engineer?

>>52767926
>you said
i didn't say SHIT before that post.
but fuck, i may as well now: in an adventuring situation, where you're moving through unfamiliar territory, why the fuck wouldn't you have something scouting ahead?
it doesn't matter how safe you think it might be, it's always a good idea to have somebody or something looking out.
and it's pretty obvious that the situation isn't 'ordinary walking about a village buying groceries' because the dm's talking about fuckin' tension being drained - there ain't tension in resupplying, and if there is then you're even more justified in having a familiar check that everything's safe!

in short, are you retarded? do you have the brain damages?

>>52768925

Yeah honestly.

Who would fucking plumb ancient tombs without a cleric in a world where undead and curses are real and you can't travel down a normal road without potentially having to fight to the death with only medieval age medicine to rely on?

Then you'd want some combat trained veteran(s) to hold the line while the clerics did their thing.

And you'd want a specialist to bypass the tomb's traps and scout.

And a wizard because magic has incredible utility and without one a magical barrier can easily end your little trip.

AND WOOPS you just constructed the basic party operating purely on logic.

Fail to do that you'd get laughed out of every tavern as they toasted to your imminent death, much like a modern business would laugh hysterically if you planned a business trip to the Sahara without hiring guides and an interpreter.

>>52769007
> i didn't say SHIT before that post.

Well excuse me for thinking the guy responding with nocaps is the guy i responded to posting with nocaps.

> why the fuck wouldn't you have something scouting ahead?

Your scout could die. Your enemies could realize and prepare a trap for the dudes scouting their shit. Your scout could dull being on patrol 24/7 for any possible occurrence in every possible circumstance.

DMs an idiot for letting it get to this level / revealing this information in the first place, but given his example this guy just seems like a power gamer who has to know every facet of information lest he risk his precious OC fight an actual challenging, surprising encounter.

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>>52766796
>GURPS GURPS GURPS GURPS? GURPS GURPS!
Holy shit you people are deluded

>>52764782
Daily reminder that GURPS isn't a system, it's a toolkit for making your own system. You're the equivalent of someone responding to a question about what to make for dinner with "have you tried buying a Dutch oven?"

>>52765603
It's not metagaming, because it's not happening within the game setting.

>>52766262
You know, it seems any system with any form of telekinetic ability has SOMEONE trying to weld knives together to somehow count it as one attack that is multiple attacks.
I've seen people describe that exact same kind of thing in all kinds of shit for years.

"I saw a pair of women's shoes in your house, it must be that vampire we've been trying to kill. Brb, gonna get about a dozen guards and break down your door."

Does metagaming to intentionally have WRONG information count as metagaming?

>>52764614
What meme character were he going for anon!?

>>52765663
Bear traps.

>>52768654
As a DM, this is completely accurate.

I do try to get the players to think and act in an intelligent manner, but I usually also utilize whatever monsters or mooks I put on the battlefield as intelligently as I am able to.
And sometimes, if the players are winning too big, I have second / third waves of baddies prepared.

>>52766865
And that is why my vampire necromancer always has at least 5 bottles of alchemist's fire on him at any one time. Catapult is accessible earlier, and more useful, than fireball.

>ITT people arguing about whether or not it's okay for the Wizard to send his animal familiar to scout, even though there is a risk of it dying. But no one complains when a rogue does it.

>>52771317
Yes. Any time you do something based on information your character wouldn't have(like sticking together with the rest of the party to make things easier for the GM even when it would make more sense to split up, in-character) you're metagaming. As you can probably tell from my example, this is not always a bad thing. Metagaming is only bad if you're doing something that's either "unfairly" beneficial to your character(like spontaneously deciding to start hurling alchemist's fire when you first see a troll in a setting where trolls are rare and your character doesn't have appropriate knowledge skill or backstory to justify that knowledge) or otherwise disruptive to the game.

>>52772031
>rogues having animal familiars
>rogues being on equal footing with wizards anyway

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>walk into a new room
>"I take 20 on perception for traps!"

>>52766262
>the player who controls Tiberius (named Orion)
Why is it that every time I hear somebody talking about this show, it sounds like cancer? It can't possibly be that bad, and yet it comes off atrocious.

>>52772185
No, no, he's suggesting that your wizard should take the rogue as a familiar!

>>52772235
Because you're listening to people talk about the bad aspects?

I can wax poetic about the strengths of CR if you'd like that

>>52772230
Is that even allowed by RAW? You can only take 20 when there's no danger, which looking for traps wouldn't be because... y'know... traps.

>>52767442
>give a near defenseless monster the lowest form of self defense
>get called a cheater
That was one of many issues with that campaign and we pretty much dropped it a few sessions afterward.

>>52772531
that is whole another debate

>>52762202
A player of mine likes to take modern-day technology into the game.
Necromancer built an automated assembly line using skeleton workers. Also tried to replicate Deep Rot, argued he was inspired by Minecraft.

Dwarven engineer designed a treaded APC with a magic water cannon to quell riots. Also tried to weaponize a monochromatic light source by focusing and concentrating it into a single beam, that was a no-go.

>bird familiar can speak with other birds
>player bribes a bunch of birds with food to scout a huge radius around
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>52769965
>Implying this macro has any application for the game
Come on, anon, everyone knows that joke stopped being funny in 2013, and the guy who made the macro was a literal, clinical autismo, not just 4chan autismo.
He recently showed up in GURPSGEN with new batch of his autism and not even regulars could understand what the fuck was on his graphs

>>52769965
fuck am I looking at

>>52772185
>>52772288
No no, what I'm saying is, no one complains when the rogue scouts ahead and sees what there is to see, but if a wizard sends his spider/rat/bat/bird/whatver to do so, everyone loses their minds apparently.

>>52772779
If it helps feel you any better, I'm playing GURPS for 6 years and I have no idea either.
The only thing important about shotguns is the left top corner table: listing damage and other stats.

>>52762202
>On the road for several days between towns
>DM explains how the travel was quiet and uneventful, with only the occasional merchant or traveller passing by.
>Places the party's figures on the battlemat, draws the path and a small clearing ahead
>Narrates "ahead, you see the path pass through a small, roughly oval clearing, with just a pair of trees somewhere near the middle. It seems to be natural rather than purposely cleared. This might be the third or fourth such clearing you encounter on the trip."
>Rest of party immediately starts rolling perception checks
>One dives into the bushes and rolls for stealth
>Two insist we go around the clearing rather than through it
>All but me draw weapons
For fuck's sake, they are all experienced larpers, but somehow when they play tabletop they are the worst metagamers imaginable.

>>52773064
Nobody checked to see if you were going in circles somehow?
You know, because of the similarities?

>>52772518
Do so, please.

>>52773191
There wasn't a beaten elf slave there, so why would they?

>>52762509
>If trolls are common, would this not be common knowledge?
Because you are ignoring the rules of the game.
With basic knowledge checks, you know what something is.
It's weaknesses, however, come from exceptional knowledge checks, and are pointedly not commonly known. It's like the average person knowing that silver weapons are needed against lycans, not it is not actually common knowledge in setting, only to the players, which makes it meta.

>>52772802
There's actual danger for the player running up ahead to scout. Less so for the Wizard who just sends his pet bird to do it for him.

Not that there's anything wrong with using the resources you have available mind you. Scouting, like everything else, is just far easier and safer for the Wizard.

>>52773251
>Lycanthropes are a huge problem in the area.
>Scholars, Clerics and Monster Hunters wouldn't advise local populous of the fact that legends hold it that silver is anathema to the wolfmen due to its' spiritual connection to the moon.
k

>>52768144
This is a good system. I'm going to use it, thanks anon.

>>52773320
But what if the legends... were actually no more than legends?

>>52773415
>the Clerics were allied with the wolfmen the entire time, and spread false rumors about supposed "weaknesses" they had

>>52763111
>abuse
I think the word you're looking for is "use".

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>>52767911
This reminds me of how back in highschool we did a unit over espionage and information deception in WW2. When it came the day to take the test out teacher left out a answer sheet for the test on a desk. He left the room for a few minutes and in that time a bunch of the lazy kids in my class copied all the answers before he came back.

Hfw he told us after grading all the tests that the answer sheet was full of incorrect answers.

>>52773533
The madman.

>>52773192
Alright, I'll give it a shot...
Its got some excellent roleplaying
Mercer's world is (while a little uncreative) very fleshed out and immersive
Just everything Mercer does is pretty good shit, its quite a nice tool for getting some 'how to DM' demonstrations
A bit of a range on player RP levels, some are godlike, most are mediocre-good depending on how high your standards are. Overall it's probably the most entertaining part of the show though.
The community around it is well-meaning and friendly, although maybe a little too into reddit-tier slobbering the cast's infallible knobs.
With as much playtime as they've had, most of the characters are interestingly fleshed out with some nice personalities and quirks.
Some of the guests are pretty good too.
Probably repeated myself a few times there, that was basically just me rambling into the text box, but hopefully you get the picture.

>>52773064
Yes it's metagamy but it's just common sense to suspect somethings up in that scenario.

If your DM wanted an ambush it should have been Stealth vs passive perception and the scene set up after the result.

>>52767998
Mah nigga.

Also lock your doors, assbasket.

>>52773251
>what walks on four legs on the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?
>no, your character wouldn't know "man" is this answer.
>stop metagaming!

>>52773941
In that scenario I'm not even imagining an ambush. I'd be wary of having ended up in some sort of screwy magic loop and cautiously proceed onwards. Perhaps make a mark on the trees and look for it the next time you pass a similar clearing. I mean, there's just two trees. What could be hiding behind them? Spot checks are called for but diving into the bushes when you see a familiar piece of shrubbery is ridiculous.

>>52772230
>doing it wrong
You use search to find traps, and you do not search a room at a time, you search a 5x5 section of it.
Considering the room is 30x60, you are taking how long now to search the room?

>>52772779
It's the core mechanics for shooting a shotgun in GURPS. >>52772815
is lying because you'll also need to calculate the bonus (depending on how many times you've shot), then figure out how many pellets hit your target, then roll damage for each pellet, then subtract armor.

It's kind of ironic that each skill point for pure mathematics costs 4 times as much as each skill point for shotguns, but the rules for shotguns use more math than any game other than FATAL

>>52767212
Isn't that just treads?

>>52773320
>watch me ignore the rules that govern what you know about monsters to make a irl point :^)
So, anon, how about all the other "weaknesses" lycanthropes are supposed to have? The ones that irl exist in myriad folklore, but don't apply to D&D?
>>52774112
Naw, you are just an idiot, anon. Even then, puzzles are metagaming put to you by the GM.

>>52772691
I'd love to have the player haggle through his familiar with a flock of crows that demand better food for their scouting information, even when there's nothing they've scouted. Seagulls that lie about seeing groups of people just to get a food bribe. Pigeons that are just constantly cooing pooping idiots that don't even understand what they're supposed to do, but will still beg for food.

>>52772779
Shotgun rules. They're actually really simple in practice.

How many bullets does your gun fire at once? You get a +x from the table on the right based on that. For every multiple of Rcl that you hit by, you hit with an extra bullet (up to the max of bullets fired, of course, because hitting with more bullets than fired would be stupid.)

What range are they at? If it's beyond your guns 1/2 damage range, you only deal half damage.

It's split up as it is so you don't have to have different rules for using a pistol vs. using a shotgun vs. using a machine gun vs. firing 20 arrows at once because you're just that good at firing arrows vs. because you can throw five hundred fireballs per second from your fingers vs. etc.

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>>52762362
>decoy archetype raven familiar, looks and sounds exactly like me until struck
>use it to scout and talk to people I don't trust
>use it to confuse enemies in combat
>switch places with it any time I'm in any danger

You would've probably fucking stabbed me desu

>>52764765
Myfarog

Im really concerned about this since Im about to start a campaign where the players are Varangian Guard as magic comes back into the world after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Idea is that Greek monsters will start popping up, and rampaging around, as in the myths. Last thing I want is my players to see a mulit-headed dragon charging them, and immediately grabbing flaming brands, or Creating nooses of steel wire when the unusually large lion appears. Any ideas on how to limit this beyond just saying no?

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one day we found a magic hat on some badguy that makes anyone who wears it take a fort save

so then the party mage pays a guy to try it on

he dies and turns into the enemy we just fought again

so we kill him and take the hat again

the party rogue says "I go up to where that guy just died"

gm says "you don't know about that you aren't anywhere near there"

"okay I go to where it happened for a different reason"

"uh... okay"

"I ask everyone who's around about the hat murder thing"

"why would you think to do that? you have no idea that happened"

"umm... I ask if any crimes have been committed lately"

"wtf dude why"

"uh.. I ask about any current events"

"fine you learn about the hat murder"

later

"I sneak attack the mage for 20,000 damage"

"why dude"

"you murdered that poor guy you paid to try the hat on and my character is chaotic good. I have to bring you to justice"

"..."

fin

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>>52776963
>rogue walks up to some npc
>"CURRENT EVENTS"
>what
>"LOCAL LORE"
>what
>"SOME ADVICE"
>dude what
>"PACKAGE FOR CAIUS COSADES"
>I'm calling the police dude
>"GOODBYE"

>>52762330
this

I'm fucking tired of players inventing gunpowder in medieval settings

>>52777540
fuckin exactly everyone was like jesus fucking christ dude

>mage in a shitty homebrew with "make your own spells"
>magic missile-like spell that deals damage at distance
>adds illusion effect so that it looks like his arm has stretched and thrown a punch
>all this shit because he bought a straw hat
let him do it because made me laugh heartily

Almost anything in world of darkness once the players start to read the fucking lore

>>52777669
This so much. I would LOVE to run a WoD game full of people who know nothing about the setting.

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>>52777714
This is legit fun af to do with oWoD Hunter, I imagine it would be the same for whatever the nWoD version is too

>party of four
>one of the characters is betraying the party
>all the players know this, but we try not to metagame
>traitor player knows one of the other players is leaving early
>traitor spends time insisting that we split the party, and makes sure that he ends up with the guy who's leaving early
>as soon as that guy leaves, he announces that he defects to the enemy, and that the character that's with him can't stop him because the player isn't there
>also he goes back to our camp and steals everything even though there's fucking people guarding it
>spend more than half an hour talking him out of it
I don't get it, he always insists on his retarded inter-party conflict, but he never actually wants a confrontation. Hoping he won't be invited for the next campaign.

>>52777858
wow fucking hell that'd be an immediate ban from one of my games

>>52777652
I have more where that came from because we never took it seriously

>players get hand to hand skill
>start imitating kamen rider and shouting the eponymous "RIDER PUUNCH!" "RIDER KIIIICK!"

>"So, as a barbarian I can unsheathe my weapon as a free action?"
>"yes"
>I SHEATHE AND UNSHEATHE MY AXE 578 TIMES IN FRONT OF THE ORC!"
>"He gonna slap you..."
>"BUT I HAVE HIGHER INITIATIVE!"
>"Fuck you eduardo, he gets the first shot"

>Player obtained a potion of canned thunder
>buys two iron swords and joins them together
>pours the canned thunder in between the swords, creating a strong magnetic field in between the edges
>put a coin inside
>shot it like a railgun
>there were too many things wrong with that, but left it at "when you try to do that it explodes and shatters into pieces"

>find a drug laboratory in a pirate island that mimics a latin-american country
>pirate-"Who the fuck are you guys?"
>player-"DEA"

>bard gets a harpy companion
>"What are you going to call her?"
>"Vainilla ATM: all terrain mobile"

etc.

I love you guys

>>52773251
>Because you are ignoring the rules of the game.
Stop assuming what game he's playing

>>52773064
I did a similar thing once, set up a whole place for a fight when the players were rushing in a journey

there was no fight, they wasted a fuckton of time and didn't make it, that will teach them to be metagamey fucktards

>>52777780
Exactly. IMO hunter is best when the hunters have no idea what they're dealing with out of the gate, and that's a lot easier to do when the players themselves are in the same boat.

>>52777598
Right? They should invent gunCOTTON, it's way more believable! All you need is a clumsy alchemist who wears cotton tunics.

>>52762202

My friend's character walked away from the greatest concentration of orcs to make a kill pocket around the corner of a door. I was left alone to fight this big horde of 6-8+ orcs.

That door he was guarding led to the basement and there were no orcs in the basement.

He did it just so my character would die.

>>52762202
FATE.

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>>52773320
>the rules should have an exception stating that it doesn't apply to my current campaign location

>>52777780

That kind of happened in a one-shot Hunter game I was in.

>Group ends up staking a vampire and stuffs him in a sleeping bag
>Take an injured character to the hospital
>One of the other characters steals the car with the vampire in the trunk and take it to a TV station
>TV station calls the police
>Police were ghouls

Fun times.

>>52770133
That's retarded. It's more like responding with "Anything, we're in a buffet."

>>52776876
First, recognize how stupid your idea is. You want to throw a bunch of the most widely-recognized creatures in history at your players, then watch them pretend to flounder against them because while thy know perfectly well how to win, you won't let them. Who is that supposed to be fun for?

Now, with that in mind, here are your options. First, acknowledge that your players will figure out the weaknesses of these things. Embrace it. Then let them know it won't do them much good. Oh, you know that the invincible lion can be strangled to death? Good for you. It's still a quarter ton of angry cat with no concept of pain or fear, and you're not Heracles. You know how to kill a hydra once you decapitate it? Well some other sap didn't, and it has eight hungry heads waiting for you to give it a try, plus that ninth immortal head that can regrow the whole body unless you figure out what to do with it.

Second, come up with your own mythological monsters and have them rampage around Greek-style. Or use older monsters. I can guarantee you few if any of your players will know how to appease an Edimmu. Just keep in mind that you have to give them some way to figure it out, otherwise it's just do random shit and hope it sticks.

>>52766970
>Do you have like a ferret or something in your pocket you send into your house, car, place of work every morning before stepping foot inside?

In this scenario, do I have the ability to create a flying scout that is mentally linked to me, making it super convenient to always use it?

Because if so, then yes.

>>52765890
>ThatGuy fucking repeats everything I say as I'm saying it, in character, to relay it to the others.

>my players stay in character when relaying important information to the party

A++ would invite to my table any day

>>52774808
>>52782746
>NPCs actually acting like people is somehow against the game rules.
Last I checked, even NPCs have trained skills and shit. Just because the PCs are morons doesn't mean everyone else is.

>>52766427
>If you're fighting an enemy your character hasn't fought before, and you know from out-of-game experience that it's vulnerable to fire, and your attack options are spells that do fire damage, acid damage, or necrotic damage, is it metagaming to choose the fire?
>Assume all three are equally chosen in other combat. Is the only fair way to approach it to do a three-way equivalent of flipping a coin?

Use fire. If they're vulnerable to fire, they're an ice dragon, a straw golem, a dry old mummy or something else.

What I mean is, there's an in-game non-meta reason they're vulnerable to fire and your character sees that reason and chooses fire.

>>52768056
>The problem is just adding a special feature will give you a shoddy, slapdash monster

It will give *you* a shoddy, slapdash monster.

Many years ago, it would have given me the same.

Like everything else, DMing is a skill and it improves with experience.

>>52769761
>Your scout could die

Excellent. They died for the Emperor fulfilling His purpose. Much better the scout up front trigger the ambush than the expensive hard-to-replace equipment that was coming up behind them.

Obviously those two have a similar condition to what my gm has in which npcs can't be more than useful idiots, they can help when prompted by PCs but otherwise are mindless retards outside of combat who are in standby mode until the PCs interact with them.

>>52785147
Meant to quote
>>52784966

>>52784986
Not always. Take trolls - there's no reason whatsoever to know that trolls are vulnerable to fire or acid, except that we've all universally decided "fire and acid keep things from regenerating." Which has a reasonable logic (cauterization and chemical cautery), but why wouldn't cold also work? People use cryotherapy to slow cellular growth - sounds perfect for a regenerating monster.

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>>52772531
Taking 20 while searching for traps is literally the example from the rulebook of when it's a good idea to take 20.

>>52762330
You know, that's okay, at least they can't mass produce the things. Heaven forbid they fucking invent factories.

>>52785285
>says right above that you can't take 20 if faced with a threat or when there's a penalty for failure
>traps aren't a threat
>the risk of accidentally setting off a trap isn't a penalty for failure
One more example of why DnD is garbage, I guess.

>>52785385
More like looking for traps can't set them off. You have to actually try and disable the thing for it to be a threat sufficient to prevent taking 20.

>>52765890
ThatGuy doesn't try to betray the party, thus lowering the possibility of being That Guy. Me might play a dumb character, but that doesn't mean he's not loyal.

>>52785285
>automatically incurs failure
>"I take 20 to detect the trap."
>"You succeed. You detect that the spear trap is now in your guts."
Seems like a shit example desu

>>52785385

>Perception when looking for traps
>the risk of accidentally setting off a trap isn't a penalty for failure.

I don't know what dungeon you're in but for the most part staring at a floor tile doesn't create enough pressure to set the thing off.

>>52785242

Because the ancient greeks didn't have cryogenics when they wanted to describe how the hydra was finally killed.

>>52785497
>The traps are sentient, and insecure.
>Staring at them long enough literally puts enough emotional pressure on them that they preemptively go off.
>Poison dart trap profusely apologizing as toxins are flowing through the veins of the party's rogue.

>>52767926
Since the dude's familiar keeps getting killed, we can tell it keeps finding dangerous shit everywhere. So yeah, I would keep looking for dangerous shit because there's ALWAY dangerous shit. Have the GM stop abusing people all the damn time, and maybe the players will relax.

>>52768026
Better it than me. I can buy new birds, I can't always get a new me.

>>52764834
If a familiar can derail the campaign, it's a bad campaign.

>>52768320
So Earth-Three Ultraman?

>>52765967
That's not metagaming, that is shitty magic system. Manipulating numerous objects or living beings or parts of living beings (like a single blood vessel in brain) is the first thing you state as being high level or impossible when making telekinesis magic.

>>52777920
>stop assuming that the handful of games that have the mechanical situation that led to such a thing is one of those handful of games
Naw, fuck yourself.

>>52772230
You're using too many traps if your characters ALWAYS expect traps.

>>52784921
>a player relays information meant only for him, that he has no reason to believe on face, and in truth, has many reasons to doubt, word for GM word, not his own, to others, and the rest of the group metagames along with it rather than asking why that guy is listening to the voices in his head

>>52785405
>>52785497
>looking for traps means standing at the door and staring until you see a trap
Hang your head in shame.

>>52785513
...Which explains why trolls also regenerate from acid damage. No, wait, you're just wrong.

>>52766321
So, he spent most points on making high-specialised build really good against non-armoured enemies? That's powergaming, but not "using knowledge not available to character" (something that can't be observed by anyone learning tk)

>>52766321
Not metagaming really

Powergamer, which is sometimes worse than metagaming

>>52771032
>>52766262
>knifeglaive

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a bonus to hit, since there's more potential stabbing? Why would it attack multiple times? That's unbalanced as fuck.

>>52773251
>Nobody, in an area populated by trolls, has ever thought to use fire on it once.
>Nobody, in an area populated by trolls, has ever told somebody of that one time that they set a troll on fire to drive it away.
Why is it that anti-metagame faggots always come up with shit that turns the setting into a video game? Why is player knowledge discouraged rather than taken advantage of to set up more interesting campaigns? Why are you such a faggot?

>>52786819
Because anti-metagamers come from the same mentality as railroaders - they have a story and fuck you if you have any different ideas about how it should go. And in their story, you get pummeled by a monster for some number of rounds before you randomly chance on the one method you can use to defeat it.

>>52786949
Even in vidya as a whole, it's sometimes possible to defeat a boss that you're supposed to lose to based off of skill or level grinding. I just think it's funny how they always go on about "muh story," while running their campaigns like a shitty video game but with less input and more balance patches.

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>>52762202
Nothing exciting, just your typical "throws an autistic pissfit when the adventure deviates from what he read" player back in highschool, when D&D 3.5 was new and exciting.

He had prepared a character with exactly the right set of skills and spells to deal with basically everything in the adventure, but the DM moved things around to add some more variety to the game, and I guess that really triggered his autism. I don't know why people are like this or how society lets them get this bad, but if he was strong enough to flip that table, I'm sure he would have.

>group's faces when we found out why he was upset

>>52786819
>>52786949
To be honest, I've encountered more trouble with anti-metagming autism than actual metagaming. In one game I had a GM who was really autistic about enforcing anti-metagaming to the point where everything feel constantly jarring.

He was GM'ing a Pathfinder AP and I decided to play an Inquisitor who was local to the village the adventure took place in, having lived there her 20+ year life. Yet somehow I had to constantly roll knowledge checks to figure out where places where in the village, because that's how the rules be.

Later after my Inquisitor made a success knowledge check to discover a monster was weak to cold iron, I had to constantly make mention that I was loading a cold iron bolt into her crossbow before an attack, otherwise it would be counted as a normal bolt and not ignore its DR. Even though there is no logical reason for the Inquisitor to NOT be constantly riddling it with cold iron bolts when she knows that it had a cold iron weakness.

>>52786819
>rural peasants are scientists in a lab
Anon, of course some guy set fire to a troll once, and sure, he probably went and told his pals later. No one is going to go out and try the same thing, though, 'cause trolls are fucking dangerous and no one's going to voluntarily risk their lives just to double confirm what might well be a tall tale your friend made up on a drunken bender.

Does your character try to follow every piece of random hearsay they come across? Do they try to ward off ghosts with salt, or placate fey lords with a saucer of milk?

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>>52787252
>Anon, of course some guy found a bear in a cave once, and sure, he probably went and told his pals later. No one is going to go out and try see for themselves, though, 'cause bears are fucking dangerous and no one's going to voluntarily risk their lives just to double confirm what might well be a tall tale your friend made up on a drunken bender.

>>52787252
>Does your character try to follow every piece of random hearsay they come across?
Yes, because my character lives in a world where a) these creatures exist, b) there's esoteric magical bullshit that exists, and c) the people who have been living in this troll invested part of the world probably have more insight into dealing trolls than I do (assuming I don't already know about trolls for one reason or another).

I mean, you're basically assuming that only one dude set a troll on fire to great affect and nobody else tried something similar at any other point in this village's history, which is not very realistic and runs counter to how knowledge spread, even in rural areas such as what you're describing.

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>>52768320
>metagaming is only okay when *I* do it!

>>52787252
Assuming I have no other good ideas, yes. Best case scenario it works, worst case scenario I was fucked anyway.

>>52787574
>>52787421
It's more that I'm assuming that most people, when confronted with a troll, would run the fuck away rather than try to experiment with what would kill it.

>>52765663
Breadcrumbs.

>>52787513
Well at least when a player brings torches to a troll hunt, it's not arbitrarily warping the reality around them. I mean what, do you think that it improves the game to punish players for acting intelligently when confronting a monster that they know about?

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>>52767771
Good luck reading my notes, I barely understand them myself!

>>52787669
People aren't always going to have that option, especially if it's an area where troll sightings are common.

>>52787669
That's fun if you're playing a game of Scooby-Doo, but in most games constantly running away gets boring.

>>52787337
Bear Lore being one of the most ridiculous things in D&D aside, there's a big difference between knowing about the existence of something and knowing how to deal with it. Even today, how much contradictory advice exists on what to do if a bear spots you in the woods? Do you run? Stand still? Curl up into a ball? Punch it on the nose? Shout at it? Take off your clothes?

Anyway, I'm not trying to defend knowledge rolls, so much as argue against the notion of "it's a fact within the setting, therefore everyone would know it".

>>52787787
>>52787785
Well, obviously adventurers are a lot braver (or more suicidal) than your regular peasant. They're also a lot better equipped to experiment like that, especially since they're less likely to be ripped to shreds in one hit.

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>>52787717
I think it teaches them not to cheat by using out of game knowledge to gain an advantage in a combat encounter. When I'm dealing with a player like that, I write down, date, and photograph changes in advance to make it 110% above board. I always am open to discussion on what should or should not be common knowledge. If a player plays the game instead of cheating, say, makes a knowledge roll, then they get the right information. If and when they stop trying to cheat, this becomes unnecessary.

>>52787874
>Well, obviously adventurers are a lot braver (or more suicidal) than your regular peasant. They're also a lot better equipped to experiment like that, especially since they're less likely to be ripped to shreds in one hit.
Clearly, but I'm talking about villagers who, for one reason or another, couldn't afford to run away and had to put that knowledge to the test in order to survive the encounter.

There are plenty of reasons why this could be, maybe a troll broke into their home? Maybe the troll attacked a family and one of them can't run away for whatever reason? Maybe the troll attacked a camp full of injured people and someone decides that they can't just leave their companions behind?

Either way, such a situation is going to happen and they're going to set a motherfucker on fire if it boils down to either testing that knowledge and hoping for the best or leaving someone they care about to die.

It's just something that's going to happen over a long enough timeline.

>>52788003
But why go through such additional effort when it adds nothing to the game? Do you think it's fun to pretend not to know something just so the world doesn't warp itself just because my character decided to load up on torches when he heard of a troll in the area? Do you think that you're doing your players a favor by saying that everything they know is wrong because they didn't make the right roll beforehand?

It also doesn't make sense from an in-game scenario either, like you're in an area where trolls are common, yet at no point before going out to deal with the trolls does nobody in the village mention "oh yeah, trolls aren't affected by fire, they're affected by X instead," even when they're presumably hiring these people to deal with the trolls that have been plaguing their village for an indeterminate amount of time?

Also, how is bringing torches to a troll hunt cheating in the first place?

>>52788132
>yet at no point before going out to deal with the trolls does nobody in the village mention "oh yeah, trolls aren't affected by fire, they're affected by X instead,"
You're assuming the player would ask anyone's opinion on the matter. For all you know they just walked into a shop and said "25 torches please mate" and then fucked off.
And if they talked to the locals then it wouldn't be metagaming anymore, would it?

>>52788219
>You're assuming the player would ask anyone's opinion on the matter.
And you're assuming that nobody, especially the people who hired them in the first place, would've mentioned something as simple as "Oh yeah, before you go, you should get X. When we talked to a few people who survived a troll attacked, they mentioned that when trolls encountered X, there was a reaction that weakened them."

I mean, if they're in a village and presumably hunting down trolls for profit, the dude who hired them has a vested interest in giving them all the information that they'd need to accomplish the job, especially since their success benefits everyone in the village.

If that's not the case then that raises some questions as far who the fucking moron is whose running that shitshow and why is nobody else lynching this moron for fucking up their one chance at dealing with the troll problem.

Also, don't think I didn't notice how you didn't answer any of the other questions either.

>>52762202
Not sure if this counts
>forum roleplay
>RP maker demands everyone to post as its going very slowly atm
>suggests my character attack one of hers as they are enemy factions and says it would be fun
>my character decides to walk up and say hi as he has her face but she doesn't know his, so he's trying to get more info of where she lives, etc.
>her character instantly thinks my character is untrustworthy and tries to run
>my character attacks
>later she sends one of her characters to imprison and torture mine for attacking an important member of the faction
>she locks him in another dimension, which she didn't consider autohitting
>later on I try to drag another of her characters with mine to another pocket dimension
>she now says that is autohitting and has her characters injure mine to stop it
>call her out on the BS
>she just basically shrugs
I fucking hate Gaiaonline. Fuck you Pinoy girl who led that RP.

>>52788310
I'm not the guy you were talking to, why would I answer your questions?

Basically this whole debate comes down to OP not giving out enough information about the situation, as per usual on /tg/, so there's no point back-and-forthing with assumptions any more.

>>52788370
If you weren't the dude that I was arguing with then you shouldn't made that clear. You are correct though, it does fall down to critical information being withheld for arbitrary reasons, even when it makes no sense within the context of the setting.

>>52788489
Oh no, I meant OP not giving out information to US as to how he did things.

Player-hating miseryguts that I am I still bet its their fault for not even trying to enquire, but obviously there's no way of knowing that without input from OP.

>>52771317
Yes, but it's not necessarily BAD metagaming unless you're sabotaging the rest of the group.

>>52788540
Do you find DMPCs to be a bad idea?

>>52788644
Never run one, so I'd guess I'm not a fan.

Depends what you'd class as DMPC really, I've run the odd NPC alongside the party for a short period of time, but usually only at their invitation. Didn't even stat the character properly half the time, just gave them a couple of basic abilities like you'd give a monster.

So yeah, generally negative, I guess.

>>52788540
Even if they don't ask, if someone is asking you to do a job, especially one that's dangerous, they should give you the relevant information by default since you succeeding is in everyone's best interest.

Not everything needs to be figured out, especially when it's basic shit that most people would've already figured out through putting in the bare minimum of research to learn.

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>>52788692
They might just have found a flyer somewhere, offering a reward for troll-heads. Old farmer greg might have mentioned a bounty and they ran straight to the shop without enquiring.

We just don't know.

>>52788714
Well everyone knows trolls live in the dark

>>52788726
Do they? Even the ones in the hobbit had campfires and shit.

Unless that's a reference to something, at which point I've just made a fool of myself.

>>52788690
I find DMPCs to be way too favoured by the DM (I'm the gaiaonline guy) personally, so that's good to hear.

Do you find meta gaming to be a big issue between other players? I found that a really annoying one since people kept somehow instantly realizing my characters motives because they read about his personality.

>>52788744
No I'm just shitposting

>>52788714
That still doesn't explain shit though.

The flyer could've had a blurb reading "warning, bringing X is highly recommended" predomidably in the corner. Farmer Greg could've mentioned "oh, and trolls hate X so be sure to bring it before you go out to collect that bounty" before he mentioned the price.

There's no excuse to withhold critical information like this from a group that you've hired to take care of the troll problem, especially when you have a vested interest in their success.

>>52766262
Is that the guy that left/got kicked out for being a powergamer? That's about all I know of the show secondhand. Also
>be on a show
>think the dm is gonna tpk everybody and just end the show on that episode with no warning
>even if he was gonna tpk, thinking it isn't gonna lead to a revenant party or something
Come on guy on that show, use your damn brain

>>52788759
I have an unofficial and poorly enforced 'no pvp' rule in my games, so anything directly competitive is usually all in good fun, which means that inter-player metagaming isn't really a big issue. Not as far as I've noticed anyway.

Generally speaking I recommend that players don't read eachother's sheets though, just to keep the temptation away.

>>52788799
The flyer could have said 'enquire with the mayor for more information' and they ignored it. Why would farmer greg know anything about the bounty or trolls? All he knows is that there is one and are some.

How many times do I need to say 'we don't have enough information on the situation to judge'?

>>52788851
Because farmer Greg used to be an adventurer who specialized in fighting trolls but took a wound that made it so he couldn't fight trolls anymore

>>52762202
D&D 3.5, sadly. Squeezing every point of damage out of their PC's... Killing BBEG with one hit, etc.

>>52762202

Going on the internet and buying/downloading the adventure module being run if/when they can ID which module is being run.

Killing new player's characters if they don't meet up to optimization standards (this mostly happened to the Shadowrun demo team at GenCon from 2011-2015; if new PCs weren't min-maxed so they rolled the maximum possible number of dice under the dice pool cap, they were summarily executed). If the player tried to keep their sheet secret, it was assumed their optimization wasn't sufficient and they were killed anyway.

A larp player blackmailing a GM with the whereabouts of the GM's lost dog in exchange for more in-game power and knowledge.

Again at GenCon, in 2010 (the last year BattleTech was in the Wabash ballroom), a player broke into the wheeled green locking cages to steal game notes for the next day. Note that this required physically cutting the padlock lock away from the cage with a bolt cutter.

>>52788935
Wow that larp situation sounds fucked up.

>>52777714
>>52777780
Currently about to do this.

>>52788935
>LARP player blackmailing a GM with the whereabouts of the GM's lost dog

Shit dude that's awful but also easy. Agree to all his demands, check out the information he gives, and then kick his ass out.

>>52788954

So are most US-based Larp players, though. Something about wanting to "win" at a game which doesn't have a win condition.

And yes, it was hugely fucked up. From what I understood, the player had found the dog wandering around, took it back to their house, and kept it there for a week until the larp event. Once his character sheet got hugely updated with what he wanted, the dog was given back.

>>52788851
>The flyer could have said 'enquire with the mayor for more information' and they ignored it.
The flyer still could've added "oh, and bringing X is highly recommended" afterwards in bold print.
>Why would farmer greg know anything about the bounty or trolls?
Because he brought it up you fucking mongoloid.
>How many times do I need to say 'we don't have enough information on the situation to judge'?
And how many times do I need to say "there's no excuse for witholding critical information from the player like that" before it penetrates that thick skull.

If you're going to change the way that trolls work just to prevent meta-gaming, and this change is not at all referenced before you get to the point where you actually have to start taking down trolls, you're a shit DM, period! And if you need a reason why, it's because the quality of your campaign hinges on your party knowing shit without actually knowing shit.

>>52788935
>Killing new player's characters if they don't meet up to optimization standards (this mostly happened to the Shadowrun demo team at GenCon from 2011-2015; if new PCs weren't min-maxed so they rolled the maximum possible number of dice under the dice pool cap, they were summarily executed). If the player tried to keep their sheet secret, it was assumed their optimization wasn't sufficient and they were killed anyway.
Were the demo GM's doing this themselves? Like the people that represent the company at the convention?

>>52788994
>holding someone's dg hostage for roleplaying power
Holy fuck I didn't know people could be that petty.

>>52789014
Sure, you could spoonfeed them the information. But then why give monsters weaknesses at all if you're just blatantly tell the players what they are?
Finding a monsters critical weakness should take some work, not just 2 minutes reading a flyer. Don't you want your players to have a sense of accomplishment for exploiting this stuff?

>>52789023
>Were the demo GM's doing this themselves? Like the people that represent the company at the convention?

No. The other veteran players at the table were. Like so:
>show us your character sheet, newbie
>no
>*vets roll initiative to begin combat and kill newbies character*
OR
>show us your character sheet, newbie
>ok
>character sheets shows character's primary skills to not be mathematically maxed-out
>*vets roll initiative to begin combat and kill newbies character*

The GMs weren't involved, except as bystanders, since they aren't allowed to interfere (by company policy) in rules-legal interactions between characters. Sorry, I see how that was confusingly worded.

>>52789065
The fuck kinda company tolerates that sorta shit?

Hell, I'd be less likely to buy your product if you fucking allowed vetting like that as it shows that the GM isn't more than a referee for the rules.

>>52789054
>Sure, you could spoonfeed them the information. But then why give monsters weaknesses at all if you're just blatantly tell the players what they are?
Because a) villagers being slaughtered by trolls aren't going to give two shits about "challenging the players" and b) if the encounter can be rendered moot due to the players knowing the enemy's weakness then the encounter wasn't going to be all that fucking challenging in the first place.
>Don't you want your players to have a sense of accomplishment for exploiting this stuff?
Yes, and they'll feel much more accomplished when they're going up against a troll while loaded out with torches but it still kicks their ass due to taking advantage of its environment, y'know, like a predator usually does?

>>52773251
Yet IRL, we have no Lycan problem. Yet most people of old knew about silver.

Though we're still fucked by more uncommon monsters like Skinwalkers.

>>52789087
>The fuck kinda company tolerates that sorta shit?

Well, eventually CGL didn't tolerate it any more, and shut the practice down in 2015 or so by (IIRC) making new characters immune to interparty fire until they'd accumulated a certain amount of karma/XP (unless the new character started the fight).

Their original policy on non-interference came about because players were accusing GMs of interfering with genuinely character-driven interactions (fighting over loot or taking jobs or something else. There's a ton of room for totally legitimate party in-fighting in Shadowrun). So they forced the GMs to stay out of it, not realizing the full import of their decisions.

And before you say it, forward-thinking and an acknowledgement of the "law of unintended consequences" has NEVER been a strong suit for gaming companies in general, and for CGL in particular.

>>52785285
It says 'disable deveice' there, not 'search for traps'

>>52789228
>There's a ton of room for totally legitimate party in-fighting in Shadowrun
That's not true at all. Murdering your partners is the fastest way to lose street cred in Shadowrun, which makes you lose Johnsons.

You shouldn't ever kill your partners on a run, cause there's so many ways that will fuck you over and return to bite your ass.

>>52789264

He didn't say it was a good idea. He said that there's a lot of room for party infighting with all the differing motivations and all the racism and shit that are baked into the game universe and the game rules.

>>52789054
>But then why give monsters weaknesses at all if you're just blatantly tell the players what they are?
If you're a DM, then you're a shit DM. Any competent DM could answer that question.

1) Because knowing something's weakness doesn't mean you're in a position to take advantage of it. You're not going to burn a troll in an abandoned mine full of firedamp, not if you want to keep your skin.

2) Because knowing something's weakness doesn't mean it'll let you take advantage of it. Creatures tend to know their own weak spots and protect them. Your troll might ambush people from underneath a bridge, forcing them into an environment where fire and acid don't work so well.

3) Because attacking something's weaknesses requires the expenditures of scarce resources. Oil and fire magic aren't infinite use, and even torches go out if you coat them with too much troll goo.

4) Because attacking something's weaknesses means you're not doing something else. Imagine a giant using a couple of trolls as foot-soldiers - if the wizard is setting them on fire, he's not hitting the giant with his big blasting spells.

tl/dr, If the only interesting thing about your encounter is that the monster has a weakness, it's not an interesting encounter.

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Maybe not the worst but recently:

>Guy: "I don't trust the woman."
>Rest of Party: "Why not? She seems nice enough..."
>Guy: "Usually these kind of nice characters are evil sorceresses and such in games. So I'm not doing anything with her."

Character ended up being a genuinely nice person so he just looked like an asshole.

>>52777898
>I SHEATHE AND UNSHEATHE MY AXE 578 TIMES IN FRONT OF THE ORC!"

It's exactly this kind of fuckery that leads to things like the peasant railgun. I'm glad that player is using his system-breaking for lulz and not evil.

>>52789473
Or, as an idea, your trolls could be wet ?
Because as you said well
> Because knowing something's weakness doesn't mean it'll let you take advantage of it. Creatures tend to know their own weak spots and protect them. Your troll might ambush people from underneath a bridge, forcing them into an environment where fire and acid don't work so well.
And they live under Bridges (where water us usually) or old mines/caves... which are also pretty damn moist.

By idea you could just weaken the first one or two fire attacks by some sort of moistness based DR and have your players wondering why this did not work as well as intendet.

and if your wizard has the idea to use Prestidigitation to dry clean the trolls, let him fucking do it.

You know
>>52788851
>>52789054
You can adjust an encounter without beign a metagaming faggot of an GM and STILL have a sense of accomplishment and wonder for your players.

>>52777898
>>players get hand to hand skill
>>start imitating kamen rider and shouting the eponymous "RIDER PUUNCH!" "RIDER KIIIICK!"

I had a PC that was literally this once. Except swap out the word "RIDER" for "JUSTICE"

Aegis/Soulfist was some of the most fun I've ever had in a Pathfinder game.

>>52769965
Guy who created this is a retard. It's not helpful at all, and there are more simple ways to explain this. I'll give my best shot.

You have a rate of fire (RoF) that determines how many times you can fire a ranged weapon per turn. For shotguns, it's written as RoFxN, where N would be the number of pellets per shot.

The average shotgun's RoF is 3x9. It can fire 3 shot times per turn, with 9 pellets per shot.

What does this mean? Well, the more shots you fire, you get a bonus to your character's skill according to a table within the book. For a shotgun, your 1st shot grants you 9 pellets (1x9), giving you +2 according to the table. The 2nd shot fires a total of 18 pellets (2x9) with a +4 bonus, and the 3rd fires a total of 27 pellets (3x9) giving you +5 according to the table.

How do you determine hits? It's simple as rolling the dice and comparing your skill level (modifier by range, number of shots, etc.). Guns also have a Recoil stat, but I'll get into that in an example.

Billy has skill 12 in Shotguns. His shotgun has RoF 3x9 and Recoil 1. On his turn, he fires his shotgun 3 times at some dude. 3x9 = 27, and according to the aforementioned table he gets a bonus of +5 to his skill to hit. That puts Billy's skill at 12+5, or 17. Billy rolls 3d6 and gets 9. He succeeds and has a Margin of Success of 8 (17-9). The first success (beating the target number) grants a single hit. For determining how many extra pellets hit, you look at your Margin of Success, and for each full multiple of the Recoil stat found in the Margin of Success (just divide), an extra hit is made.

Since Billy's recoil is 1, the Margin of Success grants 8 extra hits, for a total of 9. For damage, it quicker to just take the average of a die (3.5), add modifier (e.g. 3d6+4, +4 would be the modifier), subtract armor, and multiply it by the number of hits (rounding down). For Billy, his shotgun does 1d6+1, so he deals (3.5+1)x9 damage, or 40.

>>52774723
I didn't know simple concepts like multiplication could stump so many people.

>>52785529
I'd play in a setting with that.

>>52789801

Holy shit, i mean, i get the math behind that stuff and all, simple multiplication.

Butt fuck man, that's a lot of calulation and possible dice rolling for something that should feel quick.

>>52785529
>apologetic traps
>they can't help what they are
>in their attempts to not hurt whoever set them off they inadvertently hurt someone else, but worse
I need to use this.

>>52789904
It DOES work quick. The problem with the rules is that it takes a lot of words to explain.

In essence it's Roll > Compare to Skill Level > if Fail, you don't hit, if Succeed, you hit at least once > Compare Margin of Success (Skill Level - What you Rolled) to Recoil. Margin of Success divided by Recoil (round down) = Extra Hits > Roll damage for each hit.

But the rules try to cut out using "divide" because the writers know it scares the fuck out of idiots. So you get "An attack scores one extra hit for every full multiple of Recoil by which you make your attack roll." and "For instance, if your attack had Rcl 2, success by 0-1 would mean one hit; success by 2-3, one extra hit; success by 4-5, two extra hits; success by 6-7, three extra hits; and so on."

we stole a scrol from a player while he was knocked out. --> first thing he doese after waking up:search his backpack for the scroll... he has not needed it for a looooooong.

>>52773415

>"See, "Silver" isn't right, it's mistranslated from the original elven. "Celebin" doesn't mean "Forged in silver", That's "Taminceleb" The swords weren't forged with silver, they were coated in "Water of Silver", Mercury. As period elven blades were made of aluminum alloys, that explains the rest of the passage: The elves kill the beasts, leave behind their "magic" swords and the weapons crumble to dust. This would end up being the undoing of at least one elven kingdom however; the Council of Mirrors on the Lake were slaughtered to the man by the dread lord... Oh, sorry, wandering a bit; Point is, Silver metal is for vampires, you need quicksilver for werewolves.

>>52772691

"They want the food up front? Fuck no; That scam only works the first time. Make something up about rice that explodes if you break a deal or something... No, how the hell am I going to say it? You're the native speake- The spell? No, I can't make rice explode, but they don't know that."