Re: DMs: How do you tone down your players?


Werebat wrote:
> chaoslight@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > Werebat wrote:
> >
> >>chaoslight@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >>
> >>>alordofch...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>chaoslight@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>What, he should have told the player he can't take those feats?
> >>>>
> >>>>Well, he certainly should have told the player his Ranger 11 couldn't
> >>>>take Weapon Specialization! :-)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Well, obviously. :)
> >>>
> >>>That was already addressed by Donald Tsang, though.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>BTW, it strikes me that a good Shadowdancer build of equivalent level
> >>>>would be tough, but fair 1 on 1 opponent/BBG.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>How does a DM make a fight one-on-one, without resorting to very
> >>>heavy-handed and cheesy storyline manipulation?
> >>
> >>What, the PCs never EVER split up?
> >
> >
> > Ehh, fair enough. I was thinking of the AotC-style energy fields
> > (portcullises) conveniently separating one memberf from the party.
> >
> > Had that done to a char of mine. :)
> >
> >
> >>DM: "OK, you guys have a few months of down time in Greyhawk... I'd
> >>like to know roughly what you spend your time on and who you spend it with."
> >>
> >>Players: "We rent one room at the inn that's big enough for ALL of us to
> >>sleep in. We barricade ourselves in the room and sleep in shifts.
> >>Whenever we are awake we have our armor on and weapons drawn and ready,
> >>spaced evenly around the room in case of area effect spells. If there
> >>is a knock at the door, we wake the sleeping and cast buff spells before
> >>we even acknowledge that we are present. The cleric casts Create Food
> >>and Water to feed everyone and we hire a commoner to change our chamber
> >>pots."
> >
> >
> > Reminds me of a party I DMed for from my high-school days.
> >
> > Me: "You see some flying... things on the horizon. It's too far to make
> > out what they are, but they seem to be moving towards you, more or
> > less."
> >
> > Players: "Stoneskin! Protection from Fire! Haste!"
> >
> > ... then they got pissed when they ended up with impressive magical
> > defenses raised against a flock of birds. It was partly my fault, of
> > course, I was a pretty crappy DM back then.
>
> This sort of thing happens all the time, though. I learned my lesson
> when I tried to have a bronze dragon "discretely" observe the party in
> seagull form, and made the mistake of mentioning that there was a
> seagull on the beach. That seagull became the target of two or three
> divinatory spells as soon as I mentioned it.
>
> Useful tool for making the PCs blow resources, though. "You see a crow
> in a nearby tree..."
>

For this situation the first rule is to mention animals ect. the PCs
notice in the area every so often. About 1ce every game session is
enough to get them to not freak out at every cat, dog, bird or
squirrel. I don't do it quite enough, but I do it enough my players
are only suspicious of such things, not going into full battle mode.

I remember one campain (2e), had egyptian and greek gods, I mentioned a
black house cat came up to one of the players and started meowing, and
trying to rub on him. He killed it. I was rather irritated with the
fact he'd just killed a harmless house cat for no reason, and I
imagined Bast wouldn't be so pleased either. So I decided to make it a
cat of nine lives, the cat came back slightly bigger (lynx size) and
attacked him. He killed it. So it came back slightly bigger again, he
did this 4 times IIRC, eventually comming back as a panther which got
him. The rest of the party refused to help him since he'd brought it
on himself. The cat then went up to the next party member and started
acting friendly. The other party member was nice to the cat, and the
cat hung around, helping out in the fights occassionaly. He died again
and again helping the party out, eventually the 9th time came. The
party was rather sad when he didn't come back.

Taught the PCs a good lession: Don't kill random common animals without
reason.

- Justisaur

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