Early game

>Early game
>Facing a wight that flat-out can't be harmed by conventional weaponry
>If they get close it WILL kill them and turn them into more undead
>Party knows both for a fact
>Barbarian chooses to try anyway, boasts he is the fucking strong
>Charges in, swinging his greatsword
>Nat 20

Internet is fairly full of stories wherein a player rolls a natural 20 and their character then automatically and gloriously succeeds at whatever they're doing. But what would you have done in this situation, were you the DM? Would you have gone with the usual conventions of these story, or would you have had the barbarian be drained to a husk in defiance of them, or perhaps somewhere in between?

Bonus question: Was it okay to throw a wight against the party to begin with, when they had no means of harming it?

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I would've had something like this.
>The Barbarian with all of his fury strikes the earth with such force the very ground splits open
>The Wight is devoured whole by the hungry soil, never to be seen again
And no, it's not right to throw a wight at the party this early in the game.

>what is undead immunity to critical hits?
Personally, while I wouldn't let the barbarian kill the wight because immune to crits and all, IF he at least suggested he wanted to push the wight away or something, I'd let him knock the thing down a well, through a wall, or incapacitate it in some way, allowing the party some time to think of a more permanent solution.

And definitely not okay to toss a wight against them. Assuming the party is level 1, a wight can kill them in 1 hit, assuming 3.5e.
>Energy Drain (Su)
>Living creatures hit by a wight’s slam attack gain one negative level. The DC is 14 for the Fortitude save to remove a negative level. The save DC is Charisma-based. For each such negative level bestowed, the wight gains 5 temporary hit points.
>A character with negative levels at least equal to her current level, or drained below 1st level, is instantly slain. Depending on the creature that killed her, she may rise the next night as a monster of that kind. If not, she rises as a wight.

Could be worse, you could have the PC's fight a Vampire that's a part of the Union of Eclipses despite PC's knowing jack to shit about vampires beyond Default Vampire and Vampire Lord, because of the initial obscurity of diverse vampires, and the content presented in 2e Ravenloft.

Never fuck with a vampire over 500, they're simply Epic level threats that can and will Ream your asshole.

The fucking High preist of Vampires literally shag's lolth, and you'd miss this guy out if you havn't played a 1e module and read carefuly the Hordes of the Abyss splatbook, and even then, they cocked up his deity with a web enhancement which they then fixed in Forgotten Faiths with an even more obscure reference to a Lich deity that became a God by accident when he became a Lich because the lazy-ass fucking cat-like vampire deity who lives in what is literally the Scarlet devil mansion let a Piece of his divinity out for shits and giggles and it somehow latched on to this guy.

Anyhow, this Lich Deity? Literally is you bro, will help you ascend to undeath like a "You can do it!" kind of guy, as if an exemplar of Liches everywhere. Has access to the Luch Domain, so you know he's legit.

I mean you could have him roll that 20 and have the sword bite into the wight's skin but also not harm him. Teach that guy a lesson about not punching above his weight.

>>Facing a wight that flat-out can't be harmed by conventional weaponry
>If they get close it WILL kill them and turn them into more undead

why did you make them fight this?
why not just have them fight real enemies
what do you want them to do run away

>Was it okay to throw a wight against the party to begin with, when they had no means of harming it?
not okay

It depends on the group. My current group is a pretty laid back, goofy, anything can happen kind of group, so yeah, I'd allow something cool to happen. My previous group was a pretty serious campaign where we stuck to the rules hard and fast, so I would have not allowed it then.

Regarding the bonus question, how did you expect them to beat this encounter?

I would find it a perfect opportunity to show how the world works
>the barbarian swings his greatsword with all his might, cleaving a might cleave and cutting wood, rock and ground alike in half
>the wight stands unharmed

Maybe because I live for those little "aw shit..." moments.

Also, the funniest thing about Wights is that they look like Crack Addicts. Or a guy who just smashed their face in a massive pile of the stuff.

Actually I think there was some kind of Class/Prc/Template for a Drug-addict, and Undead pickled in barrels of Alchemical waste.

>how did you expect them to beat this encounter?

Given the circumstances stated above? I most certainly did not.

The wight was a semi-random encounter - meaning that there was one wandering about in the dungeon and that it could bump into the party at any time. The dungeon held magical items for them to find, things that could've harmed the wight, but they never did, mostly because they didn't explore their surroundings well enough.

I suspect OP was trying for a vidya style "beef gate" enemy and lacked the GM-balls to say "the wight punches each of you clear back to the dungeon entrance, cracking your armor and doing five damage" when they tried anyway.

>just make up whatever "but at what price" kind of thing, if you wanted so bad that villain and had plans for hum
>maybe the barbarian is now undead and barbarian, since this would happen
>maybe it's for a greater plan
>the enemy is spying the party via the now sleeper agent barbarian, because of a drop of bad guy blood that dropped into barbarian's eye or something

More like punching above his wight.

I should clarify that by beat, I don't mean kill the wight. I just mean to complete the encounter. How were they supposed to deal with this Wight? Were they just supposed to run? Because then it comes down to the group. If it's a bunch of murder hobos, I think you fucked up, because murder hobos will want to kill everything. If it's a group that's more strategic and is willing to cut their losses, well, then it's more acceptable, but still not really advisable.

CARLOS

Found the fucking casual who wants to win forever.

>playing d20 systems

But yeah criticals don't make the impossible happen. Especially not on a 5% chance like in d20.

He got the perfect hit, exactly where he wanted, with all his might, hugely impressive.

The party have to take (or retake) fear checks as one of the most perfect blows he has ever struck ... does absolutely nothing.

I wouldn't kill the Barbarian though (or I would make a roll for it with a really low chance of it ending in death).

You could just hand wave it, the Wight is so impressed or surprised by the stupidity it lets him leave or doing something non-fatal to him. Or actually make it part of the story with the Wight taking an interest in the foolish Barbarian and trying to turn him.

As for the bonus question, how dare you give a party a challenge that can't be completed by combat!? Seems fair to me as long as there was a chance given for the characters to know the full situation.

>chooses to spend his leisure freetime playing a hypothetical imaginative adventure game where literally anything you can think of might happen if you want it to
>"I'm making it so you have to run away from this ghost! Your characters are cowards I guess!?!? Isn't this so fun and heroic!"

no self respect

>But what would you have done in this situation, were you the DM?
I tell the barb: if you ha a weapon which could damage this entity, it woul have been a deathblow. But now... your weapon just glides through the wight without effect.

>Bonus question: Was it okay to throw a wight against the party to begin with, when they had no means of harming it?

Many, many players have a very gamey attitude towards RPGs... "If my GM confronts me with X I should b able to beat it!" Nope, not in MY game! Ofcoure I stated my premise on this approach very clearly before. Mayb even remembered them when the wight appeared. Sometimes learning requires a tough lesson, if they still try...

If I know my players have such a gamey approach and I'm in shortage of players without it.... then it would be a bad idea to throw the wight at them.

Nat 20 autosuccess is stupid bullshit memes when it's something normally impossible. It would probably break his weapon, but maybe drive the thing back and knock it down, so they can flee.

They can totally hurt it if they use their brains though. Oil and fire, acid, trapping it under rubble so it's not a threat anymore.. plenty of ways to deal with things immune to non-magic weapons.

>Sometimes learning requires a tough lesson, if they still try...
If you are running a game with fellow full grown adults to "teach players a lesson" then maybe there's a reason no one wants to put up with you.

>the idiotic barbarian slams his weapon into the wight, it doesn't do anything

You shouldn't play shitty systems with "weapons can't do anything to this monster because, uh, they need to be magic" anyway.

Why? Magical beings being completely unkillable save by some specific weapon or weapon type is a staple of fantasy, fairy tale, mythology, and religion.

It's a lot of fun and some barbarian being able to ignore the rules because he's just so strong is boring and cheapens the whole effect.

>Early access game
>Facing a night that flat-out can't be used as a conventional release day
>If they get close it WILL look like an unfinished mess and turn them into anti-shills
>Playerbase knows both for a fact
>Lead dev chooses to launch anyway, boasts "You can do anything!"
>Charges in, E3 Hype
>Nat 2.0

>In a hypothetical imaginative adventure game where literally anything you can think of might happen if you want it to I cannot conceive of a single reason why anyone would want to avoid a fight
Maybe you lack the imagination for these games.

>Barbarian cleaves into the wight, shattering the wight's tattered armor
>Wight casually leans in and whispers "Sticks and stones won't break MY bones"

Then things get REALLY spoopy

youtube.com/watch?v=NkixFyvLHUk

"No, it's 3d6 to roll the stats of your new character, not the d20"

Not the user you were talking to, but I find that a slightly gimmicky thing to do in a lot of stories.
Take those Rick Riordan books, which are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. Every series has some form of special metal that's "the thing that kills monsters" which is why you can't pack an SMG to every dungeon run, but then a whole bunch die to being set on fire or tossed off cliffs or even crushed with rocks, and there's no difference in the underlying principles of bullets over throwing boulders other than the scales involved. It can be done well, but it does make the story seem just as contrived and a tad cheap when the only reason the villain wasn't instantly atomized was magical immunity to stuff, even worse when that's taken away and they get obliterated, as tends to happen. Personally I prefer "can't be KILLED short of this thing, but he's not going to be fighting if you blast him with an anti-materiel rifle a couple dozen times, either,".

In this case, no, there's no reason he should be able to hurt the Wight more than superficially, just have him knock it onto its bony arse to leg it, because what constitutes "magic" is clear and there's plenty of alternatives for a party.

...

Hell, there's even a bit where a dude gets a few swords, melts them down and makes some Celestial Bronze-jacketed bullets for his WW1 plane, then goes and strafes a whole line of monsters. No reason is ever really given why they still all insist on swordfighting and turning into animals to beat each other with other than the odd throwaway "bullets don't work on heroes" line and nothing to back that up.

>And no, it's not right to throw a wight at the party this early in the game.

Except the wight exists in the world, and the characters' actions led to them encountering it.

>level 1 character climbs onto cliff, decides to try to fly
>jumps off
>this user decides that he takes 0 fall damage because it's not right to throw 5d6 damage at a character this early in the game.

Interesting, my party faced something like this early on. Graverobbing is a strong drug.

A natural 20 still can't hurt something that is immune to physical. Don't reward stupid bullheadedness, there's enough of that.

But NO ONE could hurt it? Sounds like your players had a poorly balanced party.

Anyhow, in our case, it was a wight. I was very strong but unable to hurt it, so I grappled and pinned it so it couldn't use the bad touch on the no-no place, while the only person who could hurt it was a cleric with their little pew pew cantrip.

The Wight died an embarrassing death over quite a few rounds, essentially dogpiled by people holding it down while the cleric chanted like a maniac and slowly erased the foul thing from the world.

>Internet is fairly full of stories wherein a player rolls a natural 20 and their character then automatically and gloriously succeeds at whatever they're doing.

Internet is full of fucking autistic bullshit, OP. Here's the question: do you care about your game making any sort of sense, or do you care about "omg rewl of kewl" where you slowly grow an entitlement complex in your players until they become fucking insufferable?

>nat20! I seduce the medusa!
>nat20! I autokill the tarrasque
>nat20! I literally convince everyone i should be king instead!
>nat20! I literally jump over the wall from pole vault position
>nat20! I literally jump to the moon from standing position XD XD

This kind of shit starts out cancerous and only metastasizes from there.

>But what would you have done in this situation, were you the DM?

He got a critical hit. If we are talking a 3.5 wight, there is no damage reduction or anything so I don't know what you're on about. If you mean a 5e wight, they only have RESISTANCE to non-silvered weapons, so your DM is an idiot, and also the 5e wight, while deadly against a level 1 party, is far from an autokill.

So either your DM's a retard, or you're making up shit. Either way, a nat20 is not an excuse to break the game rule for no fucking reason.

How is that funny?

Wait, what game is this? Because in 3.5 and Pathfinder wights don't even have damage reduction. In 5e they have nonmagical damage resistance, not immunity. They aren't incorporeal. So why wouldn't the party be able to damage it?

No, I'd do this.
>Jump off a cliff to see if you can fly
>Obviously fall
>Your character falls into the ocean, no fall damage because of high DEX and you dove in
>But now you have to roll a fortitude check to see if you're still conscious

>He got a critical hit. If we are talking a 3.5 wight, there is no damage reduction or anything so I don't know what you're on about. If you mean a 5e wight, they only have RESISTANCE to non-silvered weapons, so your DM is an idiot, and also the 5e wight, while deadly against a level 1 party, is far from an autokill.
>So either your DM's a retard, or you're making up shit.

Or he's playing neither of those systems?

>>this user decides that he takes 0 fall damage because it's not right to throw 5d6 damage at a character this early in the game.

>Don't give full information
>Laugh at user for working with the available info

>nat20! I seduce the medusa!
Nothing wrong with that, scaly girls need some love too.

How about 3d20 pick the middle?

What other system has wights, barbarians, nat 20s being critical successes, etc.?

A 2e wight is immune to nonmagic weapons as well. They are highly magically reinforced super-undead. While not, say, a lich, they are still very powerful intelligent undead. Why WOULD a normal weapon hurt it?

>Mayb even remembered them when the wight appeared
Is that okay? Isn't it OOC meta knowledge that would make the PCs not even try to circumvent the difficult encounter and just straight up "we retreat"?

>why did you make them fight this?
The players chose to fight it. The DM simply put it there. They chose to attack it full-retard rather than trying to see what it was.

>why not just have them fight real enemies
The fuck does this mean?

>what do you want them to do run away
Maybe characters should consider ways of bypassing a challenge other than hacking it apart. For example lead it in a circle and run past it through a door, close the door. It will take the wight a while to break the door down, so you've got time to light some oil and set up a nice little corridor of death for it. Also you could try to trip it with rope, hogtie it from a distance and pull taught trapping it while everyone else fires arrows.

>It's another one of those 'kek nat20' threads

...It isn't?
Read the part that isn't greentexted, nigger

actually reptiles can't feel love.

LOL

Making up bullshit just to accomodate shit-tard players is a good way to ensure they will stay retarded. Have fun being a cuck for your player's stupid decisions, faggot.

>The topic of the thread is a nat20 hit on a 'can't be touched' enemy.

Who's the nigga now

Not even him but the topic is about whether or not is okay to throw immortal enemies at the level 1 party

Are you having a stroke? Do you smell burnt toast?

>>The topic of the thread is a nat20 hit on a 'can't be touched' enemy.
>>It's another one of those 'kek nat20' threads

Pick one and only one, nigga

>can't be harmed by conventional weaponry
>light some oil
>everyone else fires arrows
???

Let me have this ok

>Pick a random god.
>Said god favored his bold boast and allowed him to harm the wight.
Easy.

This, players don't learn from their mistakes unless it costs them a character. If your judgment as a DM shifts, even a bit, it tells the players that the rules are second only to DM fiat, and it'll become a game of "let's entertain the DM like puppets so that he can give us free perks for ruul of kewl xD" which will only breed entitlement.

As much as people love to shit on vidya on this board, a lot of DM's would improve if they ran their games like a video game, in the sense that if the rules state that something is impossible, it's fucking impossible no matter what you do or what you roll.

>light some
how? How do you make fire?

My party travels with fireflies in a bottle like a lamp because we don't know how to make fire.

There's only one true answer to this

>Kill them all, my son, kill them all.

>Giving a literal Deus Ex Machina to a player just because they got a NAT20.
>Giving a literal Deus Ex Machina to a level 1 character just because their player got lucky.
You're the reason most games suck, if nothing's impossible then where's the goddamn risk?

>we don't know how to make fire.
Hang up your sword, "adventurer".

There are millions of lethal creatures in the sea, I could just say "You got eaten by sharks, I said higher you must roll higher than 15 to stay conscious" if I wanted to and who would stop me?

I usually let anything that's a natural 20 or natural 1 happen.

It's a whole lot of fun when a single roll can change the route of a whole campaign, and it's a good GMing exercise in improv.

Rude

>Doesn't know how to make a fire
>but knows how to play DnD

>Barbarian's greatsword follows its path straight to the ground, slamming and tearing apart the stone and dirt with incredible force. The debris creates a small cloud directly upon the wight, who is momentarily blinded.
It's fine to reward naturals. It's a fallacy to assume that rewarding means letting the player become a god and do whatever the hell he wants.

>Was it okay to throw a wight against the party to begin with, when they had no means of harming it?

Sometimes, I run my games like Dark Souls without resurrection. Combat is realistically lethal, you can go to areas where you're not sufficiently leveled, and death is abundant.

But the key thing is that this is not how I normally run a game, and I discuss with the players beforehand if they want to do that. It was fun, and good times were had by all. One dude managed to survive start to finish without dying by sheer idiot luck. The min-maxer died like 16 times.

Basically, communication is the correct answer, not "yes" or "no". As is often the case with pointless Veeky Forums arguments.

>what would you have done in this situation, were you the DM?
Depends entirely on what expectations I established with my players. But probably killed him. Thing is, he'd know that going in that he should expect to be killed if he behaved recklessly, so it wouldn't come as a surprise.

>It's fine to reward naturals.
No, the only "reward" that a natural should give are the ones that are already codified in the book (namely auto-hit for 20's and auto-miss for 1's).
>It's a fallacy to assume that rewarding means letting the player become a god and do whatever the hell he wants.
When you allow a NAT roll to remove restrictions for the sake of "rule of cool," it generally devolves gameplay into a slippery slope where players expect naturals to ALWAYS mean success or failure in spite of whatever is in front of them and gain a sense of entitlement to always be able to roll, even if the action they're attempting is more inefficient than trying to break down a wall with your head.

I let him cleave it the fuck in twain. 3.5 is ass cancer, and so is throwing bullshit enemies at your players without a damn good reason.

Barbarian rolls to confirm his critical threat, does his damage. Maybe kills the wight, maybe not. Maybe dies and becomes wight #2.

Absolutely fine. Encounters that you have to run from or avoid are fine. Not everything should be solved by shankings.

I'd say he still fails to hit the wight, but maybe startles it and doesn't get instagibbed. He was roleplaying with the knowledge that he wouldn't succeed, so he deserves what he gets in-character and out-of-character (he apparently thought it would make for a good story), but the luck still deserves to be recognised. Not that 5% is THAT insanely unlucky, if every nat 20 turns into miraculous bullshit far beyond the character's physical abilities then 1/20 of all rolls will result in that and it kinda trivialises the whole thing. That sort of "okay you got a nat 20 rolling for something stupid and impossible" thing should be reserved, at the GM's discretion, for a climactic moment for the entire campaign, eg los tiburon pinning a dragon in midair.

I would have had some sort of bonus for criting, if they confirm the crit. But still not had the barbarian do damage.

Oh yes, heaven forbid the world is actually a dynamic landscape where shit isn't scaled to your level by default. No, it should function like a video game where you can't pass the metaphorical chest high wall because the DM determined that you aren't strong enough to make to the realm of CR 3-5 enemies as a group of level 2's.

If you're traveling through a forest, be prepared to find anything from giant bees to trolls. The world doesn't care about "balance," and it's your job to overcome the obstacles before you.

>No, the only "reward" that a natural should give are the ones that are already codified in the book (namely auto-hit for 20's and auto-miss for 1's).
Nope. There's no reason to think the game needs to be played entirely RAW. In fact, the game becomes broken and unplayable quickly if you have uncooperative RAW lawyers.
I'm sorry you have such terrible players, mine always defer to me when determining the outcome of an action. I've also never had a complaint when a natural didn't result in something interesting, which is often done to move the game faster or cover a potential abuse hole.

>hurr muh verisimilitude
>it's okay if I murder my players' characters with something way out of their league because I don't run babby vidyo gaems buzzword buzzword
You must be a really fucking fun GM. Put the random encounter table down, for the love of god

>There's no reason to think the game needs to be played entirely RAW.
There's also no need to add more rules to complicate matters when the game already gives clear and simple answers as far what rolling a 20 and a 1 represents. Also, if you can't fall back to the rules while determining the outcome for an action, it calls to question why are you using such rules in the first place?

>every adventure has to be a tidy walkthrough with nothing but Level Appropriateâ„¢ encounters

If the players know exactly what they're walking into, and did it anyways, it's exactly like the earlier example of walking off a cliff. If your character doesn't die when they walk off a 500 foot cliff, then you know for certain that nothing you do in the game really matters.

If you only encounter things that your character sheet says you can kill with a few rolls, then all the creative problem solving is drained out of the game.

I'd say the most a natural 20 would do is scare off the wight temporarily, like turn undead. For a really dark game, I'd follow the rules to the letter, and let the Barbarian's ugly death (from his own foolishness) be a warning to the rest of group.

The only one playing a videogame is you.

In videogames every stage is level appropriated for the character so you can always beat shit up.

You are a /v/irgin

>You must be a really fucking fun GM.
I am a really fucking fun GM, because when my players know that the path will take them through a forest, they take the time to do the research just to make sure that they know what they're getting into before they potentially run into something out of their league.
>Put the random encounter table down, for the love of god
Why, because you want to breeze through the game describing how "awesome" and "badass" your snowflake is? Suck it up, if you don't want to die, make sure that you know what you're getting into beforehand.

If you're setting up a meticulous path where every encounter is planned out and properly balanced to the player's abilities, you're not presenting a world, you're only giving them a theme park ride that exist purely to stroke the mutual ego of everyone at the table.

>Also, if you can't fall back to the rules while determining the outcome for an action, it calls to question why are you using such rules in the first place?
Because they provide a good basis for the game. But if I wanted to play a game that had 100% hardline unquestionable rules that strictly prescribed and prohibited all available actions to the player, I would, and in fact do when that's what I want to do, play a video game. I know it sounds trite but rule 0 is a rule, and in this case it pretty clearly does apply.

>There's no reason to think the game needs to be played entirely RAW

You know, thinking about it, pretty much every game book I've read has more or less said this very thing in it's GM-tips section.

So in a way wouldn't "not playing RAW" technically BE playing RAW since more often than not "go ahead and make shit up if you think it'd improve your game" actually IS one of the "rules as written"?

When this happens in Mutants and Masterminds 3e, a crit allows you to choose between a bonus to your attack's DC, an additional but weaker effect on top of your usual one, or an Alternate Effect entirely.

Approaching this like you would an AE in MnM 3e would be a perfect case for something like that. Basically turning what would normally what would normally be Damage into a Snare Affliction that uses "pummeling into the earth" as the Descriptor. The wight would still get a Resistance check against this, perhaps if this was 5e a Strength check, but it would actually do something unlike the Damage.

>Because they provide a good basis for the game.
Obviously it's not if you have to constantly add or remove elements just to avoid gross imbalance issues.
>I know it sounds trite but rule 0 is a rule, and in this case it pretty clearly does apply.
Rule 0 is a failsafe for situations where the rules don't cover something that's happening within the campaign, not to give shit DM's the ability to freely alter the rules whenever they FEEL as though the rules aren't good enough for their campaign. If the rules aren't to your personal liking, it tells me that maybe you'd be happier playing another game with better rules, where you don't have to constantly rule 0 something just maintain game flow.

>everyone makes a fantasy adventurer with cool weapons and armor and gear that picked to get ready to fight monsters with
>"don't fight this monster, run away like a fag instead!"

Maybe you should have picked the weapon that actually harms the monster then instead of the cool looking one.

>its okay to be retarded because its FUN
kys

>OD&D in a nutshell

who said they were "constantly" doing it?

Are you putting words into the other guy's mouth to puff up a strawman? Because it sure looks like you're putting words into the other guy's mouth to puff up a strawman.

>heaven forbid the world is actually a dynamic landscape where shit isn't scaled to your level by default.
Why would you ever do this
seriously you are playing with your friends for their enjoyment, youa re not beholden to simulate some author's bullshit world, he isn't going to come out of the book and get mad at you.
meanwhile your real actual friends bothered to spend some of their finite and valuable time with YOU as a person, accommodate them, not your love of whatever arbitrary numbers hasbro shat on the page.

The monsters that you're fighting don't give a fuck about how cool you are or how important you think you are. If you see an elephant barreling towards you and you don't have the means to take it out before it runs you over, moving out the way is an optimum strategy and you'd be a fool to think otherwise.

>Why would you ever do this
Because immersion, not him by the way.

I don't give a fuck about the enjoyment of anyone.

>"other guy"
Whatever you say man.
>who said they were "constantly" doing it?
When he said that he uses crits as a means of avoiding imbalance issues and move the plot along, seen here >which is often done to move the game faster or cover a potential abuse hole.

>you are playing with your friends for their enjoyment

Maybe he and his friends enjoy an immersive world where they are at a real threat of dying and must act smart and not do stupid heroic bullshit in order to survive and triumph?

Players care , the DM should care, You know what doesn't ever matter? What the monsters "care about". Why does the DM prioritize the wishes and desires of fictional hypothetical trash monsters instead of the sentiments of his real human being players?

shit dm

>where you don't have to constantly rule 0 something just maintain game flow.
Occasionally rewarding naturals is not that. And that's not how rule 0 works, it's the principle that the rules as written are guidelines to the real game, which is generally the interpretation that the GM gives in the manner he judges most fun for his group, rather than hardline absolutes. I'd suggest reading some of the wordings given for it, the older editions were especially good at conveying it.

>shit dm
Yet I somehow have friends to play with every weekend?

What gives?

Stockholm syndrome
I love the "hurr suck it up buttercup" retards in this thread

Obviously not, the Barbarian player very strongly indicated his idea of fun via his behavior. A good DM picks up on player behavior clues and accommodates them. A shit DM ignores what his players want and insists on his obsolete grognard simulation that no one likes so he can feel smug about punishing his players for bothering to show up with enthusiasm.

My friends aren't cry babies pieces of shit. My friends constantly complain videogames are too fucking easy nowadays. Which was the sole reason we tried Pen and Paper since videogames are easy and boring nowadays, make we should make our own adventures which are hard and more realistic. You are a child.

>Why would you ever do this
Because players tend to have more fun in the long run when they know that nothing in the world that they're playing in, is obligated to be balanced around what they can and can't do.

There's no challenge in overcoming an obstacle that's balanced around you, there is challenge however in meeting an obstacle that you're not meant to overcome through brute force yet beating it anyway through smart play and preparation.

Also, my players aren't bitches who get their panties in a twitch the moment they're not curb-stomping everything in sight, so that's a plus as well.