Red Flags for DMs?

[Quertus]

To be fair, so is this thread's bar for bad DM's/red flags.

Red flags - which is what this thread is about - probably should have a low bar. Bad DMs is a different (but obviously related) beast, and should have a higher bar.

It was a summary of the conversation. I assure you, the DM tried while the Player ignored.

I'm not sure how I feel about alignment restrictions. I think I'd want a DM to say that the character wouldn't do that, but then allow the player to give a reason that such an act is within the PC's alignment. I'll leave it at that, since most of my experience with this sort of thing is where I feel a DM should have given more direction, while most of you have had DMs be overly restrictive.

Curious that you summarize with such negative language, if, as you claim, it wasn't the gist of the conversation.

Alignment restrictions only make sense if alignment makes sense (which it doesn't, IMO), and if alignment is prescriptive rather than deceptive - which are two very different schools of thought.

Personally, I stopped writing an alignment on my sheet long ago. I prefer to play a character, with, you know, a personality. You wanna put a label on my character, fine, whatever, it's not going to change the way I play the character.

Unless I'm trolling you. You spontaneously turn my charger evil over a single questionable act, and I'll give you one "are you sure" before I'll show you the true meaning of evil.

In my experience, "Ask first" is actually a good sign that the GM understands that there are broken combinations and builds, but that not every build that uses elements of those broken things is, itself, broken. "Ask first, show me what you're building and why, and we'll discuss it," is what this tells me.

And yes, such a GM might allow one character to use Halfling skip rocks, another character to use the martial stance that lets you re-roll 1s on damage, and a third character to use the martial strike that lets you re-roll and stack damage on the max roll of a damage die...but wouldn't allow any one character to use all three. Or even the last two together.

One GM's approach is to require you to tell him of any tricks or exploits you intend to use, and he'll let you know if he's okay with them or not. Either way - because you discover (or "discover") one you didn't tell him about in play, or because he underestimated how dangerous it would be to his game's balance - he has a blanket rule that he'll give you one chance to work with him to replace a broken trick's pieces, and, if you don't take that chance and use the trick again, he reserves the right to simply take away the pieces without replacement.

Sounds tyrannical, except that it only gets that way if a player refuses to work with him.

Again, takes trust, though, because otherwise one can see it as adversarial and just keep trying to break things.

I've seen the mindset you describe, but never on an "ask first" GM. I doubt I'd have trouble with that "build" of GM, so I'll concede that it doesn't guarantee a red flag, just that it always has IME.

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I have two opposing schools of thought on this.

On the one hand, I'll hand a prospective DM pages of analysis of Quertus' capabilities, including what I consider his best combos laid out in exacting detail. Not that it matters, of course, because Quertus is tactically inept, and has never pulled off those combos to date. But it's just good form, given the sheer number of custom spells Quertus has - heck, he has more senses/detects than the PH has spells.

On the other hand, I don't want the DM to custom tailor the adventure to the PCs. I'd prefer if the DM never looked at any of the PCs sheets, and just ran the world realistically. So the DM wanting to know anything about my pc beyond its "interface" (name, AC) is a yellow flag. My hackles raise, and I ask why they want to know. Thus ensures conversations on combat as war vs combat as sport, tailored challenges vs realistic world etc, so I can find out if the GMs play style is such that I can enjoy the game - or, if they haven't thought about it, preach my religion on the topic.

Now, this gets a bit tricky if there are other players within earshot, as I've met plenty of GMs who (as should come as no surprise to regulars of these boards) believe that all players are sheep who won't notice their "subtle" manipulations / blatant rails. In this scenario, I can't just directly come out and ask if they cheat in ways that aren't fun for a wolf, just in case they actually do have a flock of sheep that are having fun, ignorant of the details behind the curtain.

EDIT:

And what's stopping any prepared caster from doing the same thing? Why aren't they on your ****list? Yes, a martial adept can take 10 minutes to change maneuvers. Giving them 10 minutes in-game to do this is reasonable. Not checking what they're swapping is boneheaded to say the least. It'd be like letting Clerics and Druids be spontaneous casters and then complaining they're overpowered. If you can't see that's the fault of the ***hole player and lax-to-the-point-of-being-incompetent DM rather than the rules, I don't know if I can help you.

I come from a different school of thought I this. I don't want DMs custom tailoring challenges to the PCs, I don't as DM want metagame knowledge about the PCs capabilities, I just want to run the world fair and square, and ask that the players do the same with their characters.

I've had a few players who were probably abusing my "trust" on this issue, but so what? If Duncan's player feels he needs to cheat to make sure Duncan never has an appropriate spell prepared in order to have fun playing the character, so what? His fun isn't hurting anyone, so who am I to call him out for badwrongfun?

[WarKitty]

I don't get why people dislike the idea of sword magic or something of the sorts.
Maybe because people measure fighters with reality standards, while magic is OK because there is no comparisson with reality.
I mean, it's fantasy, why can't the answer for marcial stuff be magic as well?

For example, the barbarian. Instead of being the guy that gets pissed off, why not just say he infuses his body with magic or something of the sort?

That's pretty much the fluff that I go with. In my world, reality is mutable, and people can learn to mess with it. The most obvious of these are magic users, who make a craft of messing with reality. But everyone can do it - if you study the sword hard enough, you can become so awesome with it that you can literally tell reality to sit down and shut up when you swing.

[Thurbane]

It is, sadly, pointless to argue with Darth Ultron.

Yet people do. Constantly.

Assuming he isn't just a troll (and if he is, definitely one of the best I've seen, because people never fail to bite), and his games really do run the way he says, why on earth would anyone think they could debate a point with him?

I personally find it hard to believe that any player (except one who is a first time gamer and doesn't know any better) would stay in a game like the one he describes.

I'm very much a advocate of "different play styles work for different groups", but even I cannot visualize any group that would enjoy a game where any effort to make your character good in any field is "dirty cheating" and rule 0 gets applied at the drop of a hat (say, if the DM doesn't like how your character describes his daily grooming routine).

...and we're doing a "ToB is anime!" "Is not!" "Is too!" debate in 2017? Really?

[Zanos]

I personally find it hard to believe that any player (except one who is a first time gamer and doesn't know any better) would stay in a game like the one he describes.

I recall him mentioning that he hemorrhages a lot of players, but it's fine because they were bad players anyway. Other options include not knowing any better, or simply being browbeat into accepting his views.

...and we're doing a "ToB is anime!" "Is not!" "Is too!" debate in 2017? Really?

It's [CURRENT YEAR] guys! There's probably a monk thread that's less than a week old if you want to complain about recurring discussions.

[Thurbane]

It's [CURRENT YEAR] guys! There's probably a monk thread that's less than a week old if you want to complain about recurring discussions.

Fair point.

Still, I was kind of interested in the direction and discussion in the thread - I felt like the better part of a full page being the same, tired old pro-ToB anti-ToB arguments was a bit of a derail.

I felt like a lot of those replies could have been copied and pasted from a thread from ten years ago.

[Quertus]

Yet people do. Constantly.

Assuming he isn't just a troll (and if he is, definitely one of the best I've seen, because people never fail to bite), and his games really do run the way he says, why on earth would anyone think they could debate a point with him?

If he isn't just playing devil's advocate, well, one way or another, I feel I'm not alone in having learned something from our conversations.

And that's what matters to me.

Hopefully, other people reading / participating in the conversations he's in learn a thing or two, too.

[danielxcutter]

Hey, looks like the forum's back!

[atemu1234]

Hey, looks like the forum's back!

Good thing too, I missed it.

[Florian]

I don't get why people dislike the idea of sword magic or something of the sorts.
Maybe because people measure fighters with reality standards, while magic is OK because there is no comparisson with reality.
I mean, it's fantasy, why can't the answer for marcial stuff be magic as well?

For example, the barbarian. Instead of being the guy that gets pissed off, why not just say he infuses his body with magic or something of the sort?

I think it´s not "Sword Magic" that´s the problem, it´s the execution.

Most of the time, martial "power" is seen as trained so it should be at will, not slot-based. People I talked to about Bo9S really disliked that you had to prep some moves for an encounter and then fall back to regular attacks when those are spent.

[Zanos]

I don't get why people dislike the idea of sword magic or something of the sorts.
Maybe because people measure fighters with reality standards, while magic is OK because there is no comparisson with reality.
I mean, it's fantasy, why can't the answer for marcial stuff be magic as well?

For example, the barbarian. Instead of being the guy that gets pissed off, why not just say he infuses his body with magic or something of the sort?

People's issue with blade magic is that you shouldn't be able to achieve supernatural results with non-supernatural methods. People are fine with wizards shooting fireballs because it's explicitly a result of supernatural power. Attaining the power to strangle ghosts, will magical effects(that aren't mind control) away, and fart lightning by lifting weights strains credulity.

Now obviously I'm fine with a little bit of this. There's settings where physical and 'spiritual' power are explicitly connected(Yu Yu Hakusho, Dragon Ball Z, etc.) so it makes sense that the guy that punches the hardest fires the biggest laser. But that's more of an Eastern theme than a Western one. While obviously I'm fine with someone becoming stronger than is possible in reality by mundane training, I would prefer that abilities which are explicitly supernatural in nature have a supernatural source.

[Florian]

I don´t really know if it´s an "eastern vs. western" thing.
All things "martial" are directly connected to how we envision physics in a game world to work and once you start "breaking" that, a lot of things break down or become non-imagineable.

[icefractal]

As a note, the maneuvers with supernatural effects, such as teleporting, are (Su) abilities. Check the school descriptions.

Regarding the resource scheme - this is sort of a tangent so I'll put it in a block:

Spoiler: On the mechanics/fiction relationship

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There are roughly three degrees to which an IC action can be linked to a mechanical action.

Hard-Linked: The characters' IC understanding of the action matches the mechanics fairly closely.
Example: Wizard spellcasting. Because Wizards trade spells, they'd know about things like spell names, spell levels, spells/day, even CL. Their terminology for it might be different, but if you asked a Wizard IC what they were doing, they might say something equivalent to "I'm casting a Lightning Bolt. It's a spell of the third circle, and with this one expended I only have one more prepared today. As a mage of the upper 5th circle, my Lightning Bolt is twice as potent as someone who'd just reached the ability to cast it." Also Exalted 2E, where pretty much all the mechanics were IC terminology as well.

Soft-Linked: The character is intentionally using the action, and knows conceptually what it does, but their understanding may not match how the mechanics actually function. Also, the character may sometimes try to use the action when it's mechanically impossible and not know that there was no chance of success, only that it didn't succeed in that instance.
Example: Many 4E classes use this, but also some 3E classes. Sorcerer, for example, is hard-linked if and only if Sorcerers IC know that:
* They have an exact number of slots/day, and different levels of slot.
* They know a set of distinct spells, and are casting a particular spell which will always have a specific effect.
* Their caster level affects how potent the spells will be in precise ways.
If they think of themselves more like sorcerers as depicted in other fantasy material, where it's "I let the magic flow through me and see what happens. I have a limit of endurance, but I don't know exactly how far I can push it." then they are in fact soft-linked. Cleric and Druid may be soft-linked too, depending on how they think of their magic working IC.

Unlinked: The action is made entirely on the player's side. The character doesn't even necessarily know that it happened.
Example: Fate points (in Fate system). When the player spends a FP to invoke their "Friends in unlikely places" aspect so that a biker gang shows up and chases away the vampire that was about to drain them, the character thinks that was just a lucky coincidence.

Crusader is fairly hard-linked, IMO. Opportunities arise randomly in battle, they take advantage of them, and then different ones arise soon after. Plus, divine power is pretty much an excuse for things working any way at all.

Swordsage and Warblade are a bit more soft-linked, in that the "limited opportunities" reason doesn't match that well with preparing maneuvers ahead of time. I think they could be more hard-linked with a slight change - instead of preparing specific maneuvers, they just get the opportunity for that number of maneuvers before needing to size up the situation again (ie. refresh maneuvers). A given maneuver could still just be usable 1/refresh, so it's mainly that they don't pick in advance.

Although again, unless Clerics and Druids admit IC that many of their spells are functionally identical to Wizard spells and work in almost exactly the same way, they're equally soft-linked as any Bo9S classes are.

[Thurbane]

As a note, the maneuvers with supernatural effects, such as teleporting, are (Su) abilities. Check the school descriptions.

To play devil's avocado, there are a couple of exceptions to this. I'm about to leave for work, so I'll let someone else look them up.

[JNAProductions]

To play devil's avocado, there are a couple of exceptions to this. I'm about to leave for work, so I'll let someone else look them up.

Spoiler: Big Image

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[martixy]

To play devil's avocado, there are a couple of exceptions to this. I'm about to leave for work, so I'll let someone else look them up.

The shadow jumps, yea... I never liked that. Even if it makes them significantly more powerful, it strains my disbelief past its breaking point.

[Arbane]

The shadow jumps, yea... I never liked that. Even if it makes them significantly more powerful, it strains my disbelief past its breaking point.

How about monks' Abundant Step? As we all know, punching people is inherently more mystical than stabbing people.

[Svata]

That's fine. But (EX) abilities are explicitly able to break physics.

[Quertus]

That's fine. But (EX) abilities are explicitly able to break physics.

Wait... Non-magical abilities are explicitly allowed to break physics? Isn't that, like, some kind of basic logic error there? Isn't that equivalent to saying, "physics can break physics"?

[danielxcutter]

Wait... Non-magical abilities are explicitly allowed to break physics? Isn't that, like, some kind of basic logic error there? Isn't that equivalent to saying, "physics can break physics"?

Odd, but I guess whatever makes them work isn't specifically magic, at least not in the way that you can seal off with an AMF. Personally I'd prefer it if WoTC'd disposed with Ex abilities in general, but they didn't, so...

[Svata]

Bolding (mine) for emphasis

Extraordinary Abilities: A rogue’s evasion ability and a troll’s ability to regenerate are extraordinary abilities. These abilities cannot be disrupted in combat, as spells can, and they generally do not provoke attacks of opportunity. Effects or areas that negate or disrupt magic have no effect on extraordinary abilities.They are not subject to dispelling, and they function normally in an antimagic field. Indeed, extraordinary abilities do not qualify as magical, though they may break the laws of physics.

[Arbane]

Wait... Non-magical abilities are explicitly allowed to break physics? Isn't that, like, some kind of basic logic error there? Isn't that equivalent to saying, "physics can break physics"?

Real world physics. Lots of things in D&D break physics just by _existing_, and that's not even an (Ex) ability. (Undead, giants of any kind, elementals, golems...)

[danielxcutter]

Real world physics. Lots of things in D&D break physics just by _existing_, and that's not even an (Ex) ability. (Undead, giants of any kind, elementals, golems...)

I honestly loled at that.

[bekeleven]

Dragon's flight isn't extraordinary. Do you have any idea how many times wings this size would have to flap to lift that body? We're talking hummingbird rates, and that assumes hollow bones.

[Tanuki Tales]

How I see rolling stats:

Back on page 9, since I'm reading through this thread:

That was basically 20 minutes (because I got sick of his voice by that point) of an AD&D Grognard not getting how 3.X mechanical requirements work. Which you can tell from him slipping back into using outdated game terminology halfway through.

Thanks for at least something...interesting to outline your opinion.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Dragon's flight isn't extraordinary. Do you have any idea how many times wings this size would have to flap to lift that body? We're talking hummingbird rates, and that assumes hollow bones.

Yes it is.

Extraordinary abilities are nonmagical, though they may break the laws of physics.

[danielxcutter]

Yes it is.

I'm fairly sure that if it's not called out as a supernatural or spell-like ability, it's extraordinary. I'm pretty sure feats are Ex) abilities too.

Btw, I think I've seen your name on Rusty and Co. comments... that's you, right?

[Florian]

Wait... Non-magical abilities are explicitly allowed to break physics? Isn't that, like, some kind of basic logic error there? Isn't that equivalent to saying, "physics can break physics"?

Not really. The default assumption is, that as long as nothing says otherwise, in-game physics are the same as our real world physics. Ex abilities point out were that assumption is not true and in-game physics differ from real world physics.

I think an (Ex) shadow jump is actually a good example for this. We know that it is not physically possible to enter a shadow. But we also don´t have coterminous planes, so we don´t know the physical relationships here. This (Ex) ability tells us, that there actually is a physical relationship here, that someone with the right training can actually put to use.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Btw, I think I've seen your name on Rusty and Co. comments... that's you, right?

Yep. Ja. Oui.

[Grod_The_Giant]

To play devil's avocado, there are a couple of exceptions to this. I'm about to leave for work, so I'll let someone else look them up.

At a guess, things like Shadow Jaunt were supposed to be (Su) as well and got missed for the same reasons that Iron Heart Surge never got edited and the errata switches to Complete Arcane halfway through.

In general, though, I suspect a lot of the "weeabo fighting magic" critics didn't notice that most of the objectionable maneuvers are supposed to be (Su), or that the Swordsage is supposed to be a gish-type.

[Quertus]

Not really. The default assumption is, that as long as nothing says otherwise, in-game physics are the same as our real world physics. Ex abilities point out were that assumption is not true and in-game physics differ from real world physics.

I think an (Ex) shadow jump is actually a good example for this. We know that it is not physically possible to enter a shadow. But we also don´t have coterminous planes, so we don´t know the physical relationships here. This (Ex) ability tells us, that there actually is a physical relationship here, that someone with the right training can actually put to use.

Oh, well, that's different, then. Of course you can jump through a shadow if it's a gateway to a coterminous plane. That's not breaking physics, that's using the physics of the world.

Just like mages do when they cast spells.

Rats. I'm back to being confused again.