Intentionally giving people metagame abilities.

[Crissa]

You'd be tempted to kill a PC because he failed to read your mind and know who you planned to make important at a later date?

Technically, the damage done by a dropped cow peaks at about four stories up.

-Crissa

[LR]

Why is so much effort going into defending a crutch like the important unnamed NPC? If a DM wants to do a political intrigue story, then the PCs should be briefed on the important players before they start trying to play politics. Letting them flail around without that kind of knowledge is a cruel exploitation of DM power.

[TheFlatline]

You'd be tempted to kill a PC because he failed to read your mind and know who you planned to make important at a later date?

You missed the part where someone said that a PC could go "Can I be him? No? Okay he must be important I'm gonna keep an eye on him." as a tactic to see who's going to be important to the story.

And I was being silly to boot. The idea of a flaming, mooing cow at terminal velocity dropping out of the sky onto a PC who's player was metagaming doesn't strike you as absurd?

[TheFlatline]

Why is so much effort going into defending a crutch like the important unnamed NPC? If a DM wants to do a political intrigue story, then the PCs should be briefed on the important players before they start trying to play politics. Letting them flail around without that kind of knowledge is a cruel exploitation of DM power.

The argument is a null issue anyway since the power as written gives control of who the PC disguises himself as to the DM to begin with. I really don't get why all the obsession on a misinterpretation of the rule.

[Orca]

What possible purpose does the metagame ability serve that isn't served better by a rogue with a disguise skill and a sap?

If the answer is "None" then you should not have that meta ability.

Replace rogue with sap and disguise as appropriate for all other metagame abilities before implementing any of them.

The argument in favour is that the replacement might well involve said rogue spending an hour or more monopolising the spotlight. Metagame abilities of that type are a shortcut to let you get to the real story, though of course some people will disagree what the real story should be.

[LR]

The argument is a null issue anyway since the power as written gives control of who the PC disguises himself as to the DM to begin with. I really don't get why all the obsession on a misinterpretation of the rule.

It seems to me that it's a symptom of a much larger problem. Whenever I see people complain about PCs with narrative control, they're complaining about the PCs using it to remove some narrative shortcut that they shouldn't have been relying on in the first place. The solution to that problem isn't keeping narrative control out of player hands; it's a better How to DM section in the DMG.

[TheWorid]

You missed the part where someone said that a PC could go "Can I be him? No? Okay he must be important I'm gonna keep an eye on him." as a tactic to see who's going to be important to the story.

Who said it was a tactic? The player could have honestly assumed that the NPC was unimportant. And now he knows, without in-game reason, that he isn't.

[Josh_Kablack]

Technically, the damage done by a dropped cow peaks at about four stories up.-Crissa

Dare I ask how you know this?

[Cynic]

terminal velocity calculation?

[Gelare]

terminal velocity calculation?

I doubt it, four stories isn't enough to reach terminal velocity. Maybe something to do with the way the bones crumple?

[Orion]

Well, air is denser in D&D or something because terminal velocity happens at 200 feet.

That's probably also part of why big creatures can fly.

[Crissa]

Relative damage from a fallen animal tends to peak at 40' clear drop with 'fatal' so... Yeah. It's more a bone crumpling thing than anything about velocity. Certainly the cow will be spread further if they hit a hard surface from 30 floors up, but it'll still be just as dead.

Now, if you change the surface from a sidewalk to something else, the numbers change slightly, but cows are heavy and fragile, and humans are merely fragile, so dropping one from 5' will still kill a man.

After that, we're just talking about how messy the cleanup is.

-Crissa

[TheFlatline]

You missed the part where someone said that a PC could go "Can I be him? No? Okay he must be important I'm gonna keep an eye on him." as a tactic to see who's going to be important to the story.

Who said it was a tactic? The player could have honestly assumed that the NPC was unimportant. And now he knows, without in-game reason, that he isn't.

You did:

Even then, you can used the ability in question to gain metagame knowledge:

Player: Can I be the noble?
GM: No.
Player: Ah, then he's important. Look out for the noble, guys.

All it does it create headaches for both the GM and the players with little benefit.

After the first innocent time, if a player is the meta-gaming type (which in your own scenario he is, since he alerts the party), he's going to start abusing this ability. Hell he already *has* abused the ability if he tells the party "watch out for the noble". I've gamed with players who would seize on this without that first "innocent" time.

Even then, if *you* know that the noble is important, your PC doesn't, and acting on/sharing said information with the rest of the party is metagaming, which if blatant enough gets a cow dropped out of orbit onto your character. If you can break the rules, hell, so can I.

If you don't see how your own scenario can be abused, and how I'd be disappointed in a player who intentionally would do this to determine if someone is a major plot element or not, then I simply do not know what to say.

I'm sorry, if you happen to see the DM's notes and you realize the chest you were trying to open is trapped, you don't suddenly decide to stop opening the chest. Your PC wanted to open the chest, and realizing that there's a trap is metagaming, and deserves to be discouraged strongly.

[LR]

I'm sorry, if you happen to see the DM's notes and you realize the chest you were trying to open is trapped, you don't suddenly decide to stop opening the chest. Your PC wanted to open the chest, and realizing that there's a trap is metagaming, and deserves to be discouraged strongly.

Or maybe the character has some insight that the player can't represent without metagame information, because the player doesn't live in the character's world, and the character is a seasoned adventurer and presumably knows a thing or two about traps or else he wouldn't be a seasoned adventurer. In a collaborative storytelling game where each person at the table is actively participating in the storytelling, the DM should be giving players all kinds of helpful metagame hints so they aren't completely oblivious to the world that their characters live in. The player should not have to cheat in order to get that information, because the system should have rules for acquiring such metagame knowledge instead of telling the DM to bullshit it all and letting PCs suffer under the tyranny of a malevolent DM.

If a PC has no ability to gain this information and the system allows a DM to hold it over their heads while saying, "Hurr should have brought a 10-foot pole," then the sytem is either broken or should be labeled as a game such as Paranoia where that kind of behavior is acceptable. Cheating with metagame knowledge is not a sign that metagame knowledge is bad, it is a sign that your game does not give enough metagame knowledge and that your players have resorted to residential espionage in order to obtain it. If you do not want real life espionage to be part of the game, then you should remove the need for it instead of escalating the problem. PC vs. DM arms races never end well.

[Crissa]

If they hadn't thought about the trap before he saw the DM notes, why would he think about it after?

-Crissa

[LR]

He shouldn't, because he should have the ability to obtain that information without looking at the DM notes. I'm assuming, of course, that this is one of those bullshit chests that shows no outward signs of being trapped unless you're a Rogue that searches every square inch of ground. That seems to be the type of play that Flatline wants to encourage.

I should probably clarify that what I'm suggesting is either a requirement that the DM put actual "hey this chest might be trapped" hints in the description of the chest or that the game should allow characters to have some kind of ability to retroactively not have opened the trapped chest after learning that it is, in fact, trapped. The players should get a constant and controlled stream of metagame information so that they are not forced to fumble around blindly in a world that hates them.

[Crissa]

If I recall, Search is based upon DCs for squares, not inches. If you DM needs you to Search-roll for inches, I think something is wrong.

-Crissa

[violence in the media]

If I recall, Search is based upon DCs for squares, not inches. If you DM needs you to Search-roll for inches, I think something is wrong.

-Crissa

In my anecdotal experience, there seems to be a significant minority of people that are viscerally against the idea of a single Search check covering an area like that. I've played with DMs that have wanted you to search the lid, the base, the floor, and the ceiling separately. That tends to get old.

[RobbyPants]

If I recall, Search is based upon DCs for squares, not inches. If you DM needs you to Search-roll for inches, I think something is wrong.

-Crissa

In my anecdotal experience, there seems to be a significant minority of people that are viscerally against the idea of a single Search check covering an area like that. I've played with DMs that have wanted you to search the lid, the base, the floor, and the ceiling separately. That tends to get old.

I don't think these DMs realize what this does to the game. If the search DC doesn't get any harder, making you search a smaller area just increases how much time it takes, and that's stupid.

He could say you can only search one square millimeter at a time, and you could still search the whole chest; it would just take longer, and people would hate the game. It just becomes a test of the player's patience and perhaps their observation. "Crap! I searched everything but the hinges!"

Does he really want the players (or likely one player) to roll ten or twenty rolls to resolve searching a single chest? Why the fuck would anyone think this is good for the game?

[Crissa]

In my last game, search was 'contiguous planes in cardinal directions'. So no matter the size of the room, I might have to roll search six or seven times. Which was tedious. But we got down to 'contiguous square space' so that it was only one or two rolls per room. Even that was tedious.

But the fact of the matter was, if I only rolled once, there was a pretty good chance that even with a high bonus, things would go missed, and traps would trigger.

-Crissa

[Orion]

Master of Disguise actually works off that game system's Extra/Named distinction.

In other words, all failing to use it tells you is that the target has levels, not that they're plot-critical.

[TheWorid]

Who said it was a tactic? The player could have honestly assumed that the NPC was unimportant. And now he knows, without in-game reason, that he isn't.

You did:

Even then, you can used the ability in question to gain metagame knowledge:

Player: Can I be the noble?
GM: No.
Player: Ah, then he's important. Look out for the noble, guys.

All it does it create headaches for both the GM and the players with little benefit.

I fail to see where I implied that the player was trying to use the power in a lateral manner. Moreover, whether or not it was an attempt to gain metagame knowledge or not, a good system minimizes or eliminates the possibility of metagaming as much as possible, just as it minimizes or eliminates the possibility of minmaxing.

[TheWorid]

In a collaborative storytelling game where each person at the table is actively participating in the storytelling, the DM should be giving players all kinds of helpful metagame hints so they aren't completely oblivious to the world that their characters live in. The player should not have to cheat in order to get that information, because the system should have rules for acquiring such metagame knowledge instead of telling the DM to bullshit it all and letting PCs suffer under the tyranny of a malevolent DM.

I think you may have a non-standard definition of "metagame knowledge".

Master of Disguise actually works off that game system's Extra/Named distinction.

In other words, all failing to use it tells you is that the target has levels, not that they're plot-critical.

True, but "Named" is identical to "important/plot-critical" in that game.

I think that there's another issue beyond the metagame knowledge/anachronism thing. It's the question of why being important makes you immune to the power at all. Sure, I can't knock out the dark lord and impersonate him after shoving him tied up in a closet, but that's not because he's an important character, it's because he has vast mystic powers and would engulf me in arcane fire if I tried.

I think that a more agreeable solution would be something along the lines of allowing the ability, but having a provision about actually playing out the action if something goes wrong, rather than disallowing it outright. So, I attempt to impersonate the noble, and the GM tells me that there was an incident, so we skip to the part where I attempt to knock him out and find out he's a zombie, creating a completely different series of events in which I find out about the undead charade and inform the party in advance.

[RandomCasualty2]

I don't think these DMs realize what this does to the game. If the search DC doesn't get any harder, making you search a smaller area just increases how much time it takes, and that's stupid.

He could say you can only search one square millimeter at a time, and you could still search the whole chest; it would just take longer, and people would hate the game. It just becomes a test of the player's patience and perhaps their observation. "Crap! I searched everything but the hinges!"

Does he really want the players (or likely one player) to roll ten or twenty rolls to resolve searching a single chest? Why the fuck would anyone think this is good for the game?

I sorta do like having more specific searching for general things, like I prefer "I search behind the tapestry" to "I search the room." simply because it requires that you listen to the description of the room first and keeps people paying attention to what's said, which increases the storytelling experience. It also offers PCs a choice as to what to search. Which means if they miss something, it feels a little bit more personal and controllable than just missing a search check and not being able to do anything about it.

It can be brought to ridiculous levels when you get into random searches, that is, nothing in the description gives you any clues, but you're expected to just check on top of the doorframe for a key at whim. At that point it just becomes a matter of guessing what your DM is thinking. The basic idea is that you listen to the description of the room for clues and then decide what you want to search.

[LR]

I think you may have a non-standard definition of "metagame knowledge".

An example of metagame knowledge would be, "The vizier is actually a vampire and the treasurer is really a doppelganger." Such plot elements should not be used without detailing the actions of all the important NPCs. If the treasurer is a doppelganger, then you cannot allow him to interact with the PCs without first giving him a full introduction. So abilities like Master of Disguise shouldn't matter because all of the important NPCs should already be on the table.

I'm not sure what I was trying to say with the trap, but I think the gist of it was that if your system rewards metagame knowledge, then you shouldn't try to punish people who use that knowledge; you should remove the reward.