Metagaming...

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Metagaming...

Post by Maj »

This word gets used a lot on D&D boards, but what does it really mean? What is your definition of metagaming? What are examples that you've seen of this? Is there a standard definition that most gamers agree upon?

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Re: Metagaming...

Post by RandomCasualty »

Anytime your thinking, strategizing involves the fact that you're playing a game, and adapts to that.

Any time you do something illogical because of game rules, such as attacking your own ally to gain a sneak attack because you know your ally possesses the elusive target feat. Your character wouldn't necessarily know he would never end up hitting his ally, so he wouldn't do something like this (unless he was evil and realyl didnt care about his ally, but this is another story).

Also it includes thinking stuff like "there's gotta be a solution to this problem because the DM wouldn't make it an impossible puzzle."

Basically anytime you separate from your character to get game benefit, you're metagaming, beacuse the only reason you're doing that is because you as a player are using your knowledge of the rules to gain an advantage which your character doesnt' have access to.

If a character has no knowledge skills which would tell him about pit fiends, has never encountered a devil before or has even heard much about them and suddenly buys a holy silver sword prior before fighting one is metagaming. The only reason he's doing this is because he read the pit fiend entry in the MM. If he never did that, he'd never be doing this.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by User3 »

When a character acts based on knowledge that character could not possibly possess.

That's how I would define it, anyway.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Essence »

I agree with the Guest. Anytime your character takes an action because of knowledge the player had and the character did not, the player is metagaming.

This does not, however, include the Elusive Target trick. Frank already explained the flavor text behind that in another thread; I won't repeat him. Suffice it to say that different gaming groups have very different ideas of what knowledge a character has the ability to acquire in-game.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Oberoni »

The thing about D&D is that the game world really does obey different laws of reality than ours.

In D&Dville, it's a perfectly valid tactic for a 12th level barbarian to escape by jumping down 50 stories, or swimming through lava for 6 seconds.

People can take arrow shots and live.

Clothing doesn't burn from a large number of fire effects that hit characters.

So a lot of what is typically considered "metagaming" is really "well, that's what D&Dville is like, sorry."
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Username17 »

Metagaming is when you break the fourth wall. It happens when the characters take an action because it is a game, rather than because of what the game does.

So if you set fire to yourself in order to light your way - because you know that you have access to magical healing and you'd rather suffer the certainty of 2nd degree burns all over your body than risk making your way in the dark - that's not metagaming.

If you leap into the chasm filled with lava because the DM won't let a needed plot device on your person be lost - that's metagaming.

If you rely on the rules of the game world, that's not metagaming. If you rely on the social interactions in the real world, that's metagaming.

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Re: Metagaming...

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083301517[/unixtime]]If you rely on the rules of the game world, that's not metagaming.


Agreed.

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083301517[/unixtime]]If you rely on the social interactions in the real world, that's metagaming.


I'd call that poor RP, not metagaming. But you can define metagaming broadly enough to include this sort of stuff, as something like breaking the shared illusion of the game.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by RandomCasualty »

Oberoni at [unixtime wrote:1083299768[/unixtime]]
In D&Dville, it's a perfectly valid tactic for a 12th level barbarian to escape by jumping down 50 stories, or swimming through lava for 6 seconds.

Maybe if he's survived something like this before, but he shouldn't automatically know that he's capable of surviving this. Because this stuff kills the average human, even the exceptional human, so he really wouldn't do it unless he'd accidentally survived something like this before.

He doesn't know numbers, he learns by example.

While the laws of the world do define the characters, the characters do not necessarily know the laws. They don't have knowledge (D&D physics) 12 ranks. The only way they learn is from stuff actually happening to them.



People can take arrow shots and live.

This depends on how you define hit points. Hit points can just be the guy moving to reduce the arrow to a grazing wound. It doesn't have to be an arrow sticking into the barbarian's heart. In fact from the PHB definition of hp, I don't that's what it's supposed to be at all.


Clothing doesn't burn from a large number of fire effects that hit characters.

Well, it's not destroyed, but we can assume it still comes out burned. There isnt' a rule for it because it's a descriptive effect and not a mechanical one.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by fbmf »

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1083352003[/unixtime]]
Oberoni at [unixtime wrote:1083299768[/unixtime]]
In D&Dville, it's a perfectly valid tactic for a 12th level barbarian to escape by jumping down 50 stories, or swimming through lava for 6 seconds.

Maybe if he's survived something like this before, but he shouldn't automatically know that he's capable of surviving this. Because this stuff kills the average human, even the exceptional human, so he really wouldn't do it unless he'd accidentally survived something like this before.

He doesn't know numbers, he learns by example.

While the laws of the world do define the characters, the characters do not necessarily know the laws. They don't have knowledge (D&D physics) 12 ranks. The only way they learn is from stuff actually happening to them.


But D&D people know that they defy the physical laws. The barbarian knows he has been hit by a fireball, a lightning bolt, and been breathed on by a black dragon at point blank range and he is still alive.

Now, if you believe hitpoints are "rolling with the punch", why doesn't the barbarian know he can "roll with" a 500 foot fall.

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Re: Metagaming...

Post by RandomCasualty »

fbmf at [unixtime wrote:1083353457[/unixtime]]
But D&D people know that they defy the physical laws. The barbarian knows he has been hit by a fireball, a lightning bolt, and been breathed on by a black dragon at point blank range and he is still alive.

Well, most likely he believes he got lucky. Remember hit points are the ability to turn a greater wound into a lesser one. They aren't the guy standing there in the Superman pose taking the damage, that's damage reduction and energy resistance. That barbarian is actually ducking to the side for his life.

Now he figures he can probably take this stuff the next time, but he probably won't actively seek it out, and unless he's actually fallen 2000 feet and the character himself knows how much damage he'd take, he won't actively throw himself off without metagaming.

People in real life have survived falls from huge distances, Sometimes people jumping from a plane find their chute just doesn't open and they're falling to their death. In some rare cases, they've survived. But that wouldn't exactly convince these people that they could just do it again, and they'd probably only do something like that if the situation were really really bad.


Now, if you believe hitpoints are "rolling with the punch", why doesn't the barbarian know he can "roll with" a 500 foot fall.


If he's never done it before, he wouldn't know.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Username17 »

Well, most likely he believes he got lucky.


Why would he go off adventuring then?

The characters absolutely have to know that they are nigh invulnerable or their actions make no sense. If they are repeatedly chasing after dangerous situations, whether by challenging zombie dragons or fighting their way through hordes of ogres - they absolutely have to know that they are really, really, really, really tough.

If characters thought they were in any way normally tough they would do what normal people do when the shit hits the fan - run the frickin hell away!

But they don't. Time after time, when confronted by danger, they charge after it. Partly this is because they live in a world with resurrection for the victorious. But also because they presumably know what's going on as regards their own ability to take punishment and survive horrible infernos and close encounters with cataclysmic monsters.

So yeah, if you assume that for some weird reason the party Rune Knight Captain is under the weird delusion that he is in any way "just a normal person" - then the only reason he goes out to face mortal danger every day is because he is goaded by a player. A player who is aware of how the rules of the game work and thus throws the character into positions that the character is pissingly afraid of because he is under the misapprehension that he will survive less time than a cheesecake in a washing machine every single time.

That's pretty retarded though. The Rune Knight Captain isn't going to die just because he has been lanced through the stomach with a stinger the size of his head. In fact, probably all of the Rune Knights can take that stinger to the stomach without dangerously impeding their ability to swing a sword.

That's the world they live in. That's the only world they've ever known. So if you apply your standards of what would happen to an Earth person - a type of person they've never even heard of - and start having the characters act on that - that's metagaming. That's taking information that the characters couldn't possibly know (namely that being completely hardcore is no defense against gravity) and applying it to character actions.

It is bad role playing to have medium level characters balk at jumping off of high cliffs.

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Re: Metagaming...

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083366275[/unixtime]]
Why would he go off adventuring then?

For the same reason people in reallife become firemen and rush into a burning building to save people. They know the risks but they do it because they think they're serving the greater good. That's what being a hero is all about.


The characters absolutely have to know that they are nigh invulnerable or their actions make no sense. If they are repeatedly chasing after dangerous situations, whether by challenging zombie dragons or fighting their way through hordes of ogres - they absolutely have to know that they are really, really, really, really tough.


Why? Heroes are people who go into dangerous situations full well knowing they could die, and they go anyway, because it's the right thing to do (or they're that eager to try to get rich quick).


If characters thought they were in any way normally tough they would do what normal people do when the shit hits the fan - run the frickin hell away!

Yet firemen still go into burning infernos in real life to try to rescue people, knowing they may never come out again.

Do you even know what a hero is? Because they do exist in real life too, and they don't need superpowers to do so.


But they don't. Time after time, when confronted by danger, they charge after it. Partly this is because they live in a world with resurrection for the victorious. But also because they presumably know what's going on as regards their own ability to take punishment and survive horrible infernos and close encounters with cataclysmic monsters.

Eh... You have a weird conception of what a hero is. You think the only reason people do stuff is because there's no risk... I don't even know how to respond to that.


So yeah, if you assume that for some weird reason the party Rune Knight Captain is under the weird delusion that he is in any way "just a normal person" - then the only reason he goes out to face mortal danger every day is because he is goaded by a player.

He's not a "normal" person. He's a damn good fighter, but even he has limits. He knows he can still die. But still instead of cowering in a corner like the average man, he decides to go out and try to make a difference. That's what being a hero is all about. You know you may likely die, you go anyway.

Lets face it, adventuring ain't a safe profession.


That's pretty retarded though. The Rune Knight Captain isn't going to die just because he has been lanced through the stomach with a stinger the size of his head. In fact, probably all of the Rune Knights can take that stinger to the stomach without dangerously impeding their ability to swing a sword.


Reread what hit points are again, because that ain't it. So long as he has the hit points, that stinger only grazes him as he tries to dodge aside from it, leaving a minor bruise on his right side as he rolls away.

Honestly after reading this I don't think you have any idea of what bravery and heroism are. You think that there's no reason to try to save others lives if you aren't equipped with superman style invulnerability and a reasurrance you'll be true resurrected in the unlikely event someone does kill you.

It's the very willingness to face danger that makes heroes and separates them from the common man. They know they're not invincible, but they fight anyway.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Username17 »

Yet firemen still go into burning infernos in real life to try to rescue people, knowing they may never come out again.


Knowing that there is a really small chance that they won't come out again. I've worked with firemen. Before I went back to school I drove an ambulance. It's a dangerous job, but not on the scale of beating up giant scorpiondragons with a sword.

The biggest risks are the long term health effects as you get exposed to sick people and smoke a lot.

You picked one hell of a bad example.

Do you even know what a hero is? Because they do exist in real life too, and they don't need superpowers to do so.


That's some impressive sentiment you've got there - but if your definition of "hero" is me, you've got some problems going with your model.

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Re: Metagaming...

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

RC. I don't get it. Let's say heros don't need superpowers . . . D&D PC's have superpowers. Even the most ordinary Barbarian gets infused with strength once a day. A Paladin smites, a cleric actually gets powers from a god.

It's just not metagaming for a PC with exposure to even those minor abilities to assume all sorts of weird things happen and adjust accordingly.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083368084[/unixtime]]
Knowing that there is a really small chance that they won't come out again. I've worked with firemen. Before I went back to school I drove an ambulance. It's a dangerous job, but not on the scale of beating up giant scorpiondragons with a sword.

The point is that there's a chance you could die, and you chose that profession over something else. Sure, it's not exactly that high risk, but it's a lot more high risk than most of us are used to.

That's some impressive sentiment you've got there - but if your definition of "hero" is me, you've got some problems going with your model.

Heroes are people who take risks they don't have to, sometimes great risks, to help others.

What is your definition?
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Username17 »

Heroes are people who take risks they don't have to, sometimes great risks, to help others.


Those people are quite often not "heroes" but "morons". The guy who charges into the collapsing building because maybe, just maybe he can save one more person before the building goes down? His ass gets fired so fast that Death and Cheetahs have to say "Man, that was fast."

Taking great risks doesn't help anyone. It's about odds and numbers, not about looking wicked awesome while jumping through a window. If you take extra risks you are creating more work for other emergency workers. If you fall in the field, you can't help anyone. Instead of being a helping hand, you've taken two more people out of service to haul your risk taking ass back - assuming they can even get to you.

That's a shift of three people down vs. only one person up - which means that if you are running even a 1/4 chance of dropping in order to save someone you simply aren't doing anybody any good.

A hero is somebody who maximizes the good they do for others - which by definition means not taking large risks.

Now, on the D&D front - an 8th level Wizard is often running aorund with an Intelligence of 24. He can damn well do this math. If he didn't think that he was probably going to triumph over a pack of 10 Ogres (each of whom is as wide as he is tall and armed with a stick larger than he is), he wouldn't do it.

Which means that either the players are metagaming constantly or their characters damn well know that they have the super powers which the game says that they have. The italicized conclusion is not only obvious, it's inescapable. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the characters in a D&D game believe themselves subject to the same limitations as normal humans from the real world. They aren't normal humans from the real world and they aren't subject to those limitations.

Your claim that they would view themselves as you view yourself is frankly puzzling.

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Re: Metagaming...

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083381125[/unixtime]]
Which means that either the players are metagaming constantly or their characters damn well know that they have the super powers which the game says that they have. The italicized conclusion is not only obvious, it's inescapable. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the characters in a D&D game believe themselves subject to the same limitations as normal humans from the real world. They aren't normal humans from the real world and they aren't subject to those limitations.


OK, look at it this way...

You're playing in a game in an undefined game system. The system isn't important... So I won't tell you which. So far your character hasn't taken falling damage yet so you now have no idea what it does. You've managed to kill 3 9' tall ogres and a minotaur with only light wounds. You now come face to face with a 60' drop. Do you jump?

My guess is that you don't. The only reason your character woudl consider jumping there is if you've read the rulebook and you know how much damage it does. From playing the game you have no idea how much that fall is going to do to you damage wise. The only reason you'd consider jumping is either you're very desperate or you read the freaking rulebook. If the latter is the case, you're metagaming plain and simple.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Oberoni »

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1083385074[/unixtime]]
OK, look at it this way...

You're playing in a game in an undefined game system. The system isn't important... So I won't tell you which. So far your character hasn't taken falling damage yet so you now have no idea what it does. You've managed to kill 3 9' tall ogres and a minotaur with only light wounds. You now come face to face with a 60' drop. Do you jump?

My guess is that you don't.


"So you do what would be impossible in the real world, and then you're confronted with a situation that would be impossible in the real world. Would you believe you can do the impossible, or not?"
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Username17 »

The characters are not in an undefined game system though. They are in a defined game system - they are in the world they have always lived in.

The characters have been actively running around this world for over 20 years. Depending upon race they may have been doing it for over a hundred years.

They know how fast things fall. They know how much it hurts when they jump down 8 feet onto hard stone (basically not at all for D&D characters) - and can extrapolate the effects of what would happen to them on a longer fall.

They don't run around with Earth Physics all the time and then call time for the supernatural on Thursdays - they are running around with D&D physics every single moment of their lives.

Which means that the fact that you haven't memorized the entire rulebook puts you at a disadvantage relative to the character you are playing, who has no concept of d20s being rolled but does have a solid grasp of what does and does not work in the fantastic world he was born into.

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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Absentminded_Wizard »

Of course, a 10-ft. fall can kill a 1st-level commoner, which the standard town demographics tables indicate is the most common type of person in a D&D world. Naturally, some people in D&D worlds can fall a thousand feet and not think about it, and the PCs will become part of that group if they live to hit a certain level. I guess the question really is, when do D&D characters realize that they're orders of magnitude tougher than most people in their world?

Of course, it's actually easy to explain why D&D characters are so willing to fight horrible monsters. If you go strictly by game mechanics, a character can't tell he's hurt until he's disabled (0 hp). Normally, in the real world, if you take on an opponent with a sword and he wounds you, you'll feel a lot of pain when the first strike hits. However, a 5th-level fighter who takes 1d8 damage from a longsword doesn't notice it. In fact, he wouldn't even notice it if he went into the fight with only 10 of his h.p., since he would still have at least two left and would be fighting the same as he was at full strength. He probably has no idea that the next blow his opponent lands will probably knock him unconcious and leave him bleeding to death.

The situation with falling damage can get a little bit tricky. The average person in D&D land is a 1st-level commoner, who can be rendered unconcious and dying by a high roll on the 1d6 damage from a 10' fall. However, a lot of 1st-level people aren't commoners. An expert can expect, at worst, to be disabled by a 10-ft. fall, while a warrior doesn't even risk disability. So now the question becomes whether all characters start out as commoners and develop into other NPC classes, or whether people (particularly PCs) simply begin life with one PC class level. If the former,then they've probably had experience with falling out of trees and being noticeably hurt. If the latter is the case, then all fighting and divine-type PCs have never had to worry about suffering any noticeable ill effects (again, going strictly by mechanics) from falling out of a tree, provided they were completely healthy when they climbed that tree.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083395167[/unixtime]]
The characters have been actively running around this world for over 20 years. Depending upon race they may have been doing it for over a hundred years.

They know how fast things fall. They know how much it hurts when they jump down 8 feet onto hard stone (basically not at all for D&D characters) - and can extrapolate the effects of what would happen to them on a longer fall.

No they can't. It's like saying you can know what it feels like to get shot in the gut with a pistol without actually seeing it happen or have it happen to you.

You learn from two things, experience and observation. Thus far in this example we assume the character has yet to experience a drop of greater than 10 or 20'. If this is a super high level world where the character is used to seeing peopel jump off cliffs and live, then he'll probably think he can too. On the other hand, considering the majority of people have an aversion to heights and falling off them like most people in the real world, it's unrealistic to expect characters to just "know" how much damage they'll take. The average person, even the average adventurer, fears falling off a cliff, and so will the character, because he doesn't know any better.

The character does not know the physics and effects of everything in the game world. He doesn't know if he's likely to survive or not, just like you probably can't say what the probability of surviving a 50' drop is on Earth, or the probability of survivng a gunshot wound to the stomach.

Which means that the fact that you haven't memorized the entire rulebook puts you at a disadvantage relative to the character you are playing, who has no concept of d20s being rolled but does have a solid grasp of what does and does not work in the fantastic world he was born into.


You are seriously underestimating knowledge skills and just take everything for granted. Your character doesn't know what every spell does. He may never have ever heard of finger of death, unless he has spellcraft or knowledge arcana. He has no clue what a balor's weaknesses are without the appropriate knowledge.

Remember, characters aren't born at high levels, they have to work their way up. This is often a fairly fast process depending on how fast your campaign timelines are. I've had characters go from level 1 to 10 in less than one game year. Now, I don't think the character will automatically absorb the total limits of what he can do now until he actually tests those limits.

PCs don't go running arouind with copies of the PHB in their backpacks which reference exactly how muhc damage they take from stuff. They have no conception of hit points.

To have your character expect to survive a big drop when he has never done it before, or seen another member of his race do it before is pure metagaming, plain and simple.

You as a player have read the manual and suddenly your character is all confident because he knows he can't die. If this was 1st edition, where all the rules were in the DMG, you wouldn't know them... you'd have no idea what would happen when you fell a given distance until you actually did it. In fact, you might worry if there was some kind of Gygaxian clause of automatic death past a certain falling distance. And it just as well could be there. And if you jump off a 1000' drop and get nuked because of it, it's your own damn fault.

Honestly if the DM decided to stealth rule 0 some of this stuff you'd get your characters totally turned to paste the way your metagame thinking works. And he sure can stealth rule 0 it, because your character wouldn't have any idea what happens beyond a fall he's actually witnessed or personally experienced. He has no idea its even possible to survive a 100' drop until he's either accidentally done it or seen someone else do it. So if you metagame and get bit in the ass for it, its really not the DM's problem.

Just like in real life, you arent filled with genetic knowledge. You have to actually hear about it, see it or do it before you actually learn it. And hearing about it usually isn't enough for something unbelievable like that.

Admit it Frank, you know your character can survive a fall like that because you the player have read the PHB, and that's the only reason. Your character has never seen anyone survive a fall like that, nor has he done so himself.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Username17 »

just like you probably can't say what the probability of surviving a 50' drop is on Earth,


Assuming that it is onto hard concrete (or similar surfaces), about 50%.

Admit it Frank, you know your character can survive a fall like that because you the player have read the PHB, and that's the only reason. Your character has never seen anyone survive a fall like that, nor has he done so himself.


Actually, it's because I've read the DMG. Reading the rules is the only way I can know anything about my character's envronment. I can't just extrapolate from the environment I live in - because the same rules don't apply.

This is a world in which metal armor provides less than no protection from electrical attacks - a state of affairs I can't even begin to comprehend.

This is a world in which people jump off of cliffs in order to prove that they have a right to lead - and this works.

The physical laws that would make this all work are beyond my knowledge, and have basically nothing to do with the relativistic universe I live in. But it's the world they live in. It's a world in which jumping off a cliff without a parachute really is a right of passage for powerful warriors.

I don't live in that world.

But my character does.

My character knows that you have to be able to survive being run over by an elephant before you can even join the Rune Knights. He knows that leaping off a cliff and surviving is something which the fated can and do do. He knows that his friend the Monk has the slow fall ability and isn't even inconvenienced by such a drop. That's the world he knows. He's never ever known life in a world in which having noble blood was no protection from gravity. The very concept is absurd because D&D characters cannot even reach such a place.

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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Oberoni »

Now see, I like this thread. It's got old-school Frank.
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I'm with Frank on this one.

For example: the monk in the group has improved evasion, and a hella reflex save.

This monk knows that he can get out of the way, and there's not much out there that can pin him down.

Therefore, he tells the Druid to cast Flame Strike even if he'll get caugh up with it, because he knows he can get out of the way. (He plays his character very brash and cocky, that's exactly the sort of thing he'd say.)

I've had a few other players accuse him of metagaming. I say, I know exaclty what my limitations are physically. I know that I can take a blow that would knock out a horse and keep moving, and I know that I am simply not capable of fast movement by any stretch of the imagination. Therefore, since I know that about myself, why wouldn't an 8th level monk/1st level psychic warrior/1st level fong-ryu master (homebrew PrC) know that he can easily avoid area affect spells when he has yet to take full dmaage from even one at any point in his career?
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
RandomCasualty
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Re: Metagaming...

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083434582[/unixtime]]
My character knows that you have to be able to survive being run over by an elephant before you can even join the Rune Knights. He knows that leaping off a cliff and surviving is something which the fated can and do do. He knows that his friend the Monk has the slow fall ability and isn't even inconvenienced by such a drop. That's the world he knows. He's never ever known life in a world in which having noble blood was no protection from gravity. The very concept is absurd because D&D characters cannot even reach such a place.


Well, for the most part, at low level, characters in D&D obey the same laws our world does. If you fall a good distance, you're likely to be dead or dying.

Now, suppose that such people that could survive this stuff on a regular basis actually existed on Earth. How would you actually know you're one of those people? Until you actually leap off the cliff, you have no idea. The problem is that you don't exactly even know yourself. You can't adequately even stat yourself due to the myriad of random figures involved.

As for monk's and slow fall, yeah a monk could jump off the cliff, just like a wizard could with feather fall, because they've specifically learned techniques to beat falling. This is different from simply trying to soak it, not knowing how much damage you'll take.


I've had a few other players accuse him of metagaming. I say, I know exaclty what my limitations are physically. I know that I can take a blow that would knock out a horse and keep moving, and I know that I am simply not capable of fast movement by any stretch of the imagination. Therefore, since I know that about myself, why wouldn't an 8th level monk/1st level psychic warrior/1st level fong-ryu master (homebrew PrC) know that he can easily avoid area affect spells when he has yet to take full dmaage from even one at any point in his career?


But you don't know what your limitations are per se, until you've tested them against something. You'll know you're fast, but how fast remains to be seen. Fast enough to dodge lightning? Fast enough to escape the raging inferno of a fireball? You don't really know if you're that good until its actually happened.

Now, as for the character being simply cocky, sure he could be that cocky and just say "fire away" and be fine if that's his personality, of course roleplaying wise, it's the cleric who is really going to be questioning himself, if he's good alignment anyway. For your companion to tell you to flame strike him without concern is one thing, to actually be the one who has to pull the trigger is entirely another.

If he hadn't seen the monk in action, no good or neutral character is just going to "take his word for it". The monk is brash and cocky, and he probably knows that... therefore it's likely the monk is overestimating his abilities. So the cleric should most likely not do that until he's seen the monk survive area attacks on a regular basis. Because while the monk may know he's damn fast, the cleric certainly doesn't, and it could be an evil act if the cleric killed him with a flame strike unless the situation was totally dire.

This isn't a staple tactic the cleric should be using. Because for him to actually use it without seeing the monk in action... that's metagaming.
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