Metagaming

Use a troll's statblock, but make it so that the actual monster is unrecognizable as a troll based on its description, and use a different weakness. That way, if the players metagame, they are DEFINITELY in the wrong, and they don't get to bitch if their character gets killed because it isn't actually weak to fire

fucking tell them to roll for Knowledge X and if they fail tell them their characters don't know that information.

Characters do not equal players. Just as you don't have your players swinging swords to prove their character can swing swords, your players cannot use their accumulated knowledge to prove their characters know everything about everything in the game.

Fucking hell dude, it's a ROLE playing game, remind them and remind yourself while you're at it.

>players assume everything is what they expect
>put in an npc who acts like a dmpc but is actually a spy
>they never suspect a thing, ignore obvious contradictions, lies, and suspicious behavior
>they tell him everything and betray their actual contacts

Just punish them. Have them escort a caravan and then bandits attack but the bandits are good guys and the caravan is carrying a bomb for the pc's city. They successfully deliver it due to not investigating who is hiring them or noticing obvious clues. Or have a duergar try to speak to them in a dungeon, but the players will attack him because dark races are evil? Then they find out he's the guy they're there to see.

>trolls are such a rare and mysterious thing that literally no adventuring hero would have ever heard of one

Man just deal with it and let them have the win or make it be an offshoot troll that's weak to like acid or some shit

y'all niggas posting in a troll thread

>Should i just make trolls HEALED by fire damage?
No. Make it explode.

For me the logical answer should be that different types of trolls call for different types of weaknesses, maybe this troll can only be killed by freezing it?

Is there even a thematically deep or important reason why trolls are weak to fire?, does it undermine them in any way if you make them vulnerable to something else?

>>>trolls are such a rare and mysterious thing
Depends on the setting, and the answer may be "yes". The setting may also have it so that adventuring isn't normal in and of itself

Think about Lord of the Rings. The Rohirrim regularly had to fend off orcs for their kingdom, but most of them assumed elves to be the "fair folk" sort, and were deeply distrustful of Gandalf, basically an angel sent from the setting's equivalent of heaven. It's not that farfetched

>When hit with fire, the troll makes a suspicious hissing sound.
>Everyone within 60ft of the troll, make a DEX save, or take the same fire damage the troll was dealt!
>You watch as, in the genesis of the explosion, numerous gnome-sized trolls fall out and scatter.
>The trolls are harder to hit than normal, thanks to their diminutive stature and faster movement.
>As turns pass, these trolls rapidly growing until reaching their maximum size.

Stop using stupid cliches you unimaginative sperg. I'm sorry that you want to chortle to yourself as your players mindlessly hack away at a troll meaninglessly for 30 minutes despite actually knowing its pointless; but have you ever tried being original for once in your life?

Just switch it up and make them only hurt by lightning.

Now you gotta lure an angry troll to the top of a mountain and hope for the best

>be DM
>find a new group of players
>three new players at the table who don't know the tropes
>one guy who knows them all because he googled and read everything prior to playing
>want to play with the tropes straight-up because it'll be fun to watch the party learn
>he keeps telling everyone all the tropes out-of-character at the table
>told him to shut up
>"it's common knowledge, man. it's not like i'm ruining anything"
>rogue party member decides to go explore by himself
>describe there's a chest
>rogue goes to open it
>it's a mimic
>"yo dude why didn't you poke it with a stick to see if it glues"
>rogue retroactively does that despite not going to do it five seconds prior
>get frustrated with know-it-all player and talk to him outside of the table explaining I'm trying to teach the party things organically
>"they can just read the book, bro. it's not a big deal."

Go fuck yourself, Chris.

There's no need to be that obvious. Just explain to them what a "dust explosion" is, that Trolls are composed largely of flammable particulates and maybe show a few Youtube videos to demonstrate while they write up new characters.

>How the fuck do you stop players from using out-of-game knowledge in-game?
Change it.

>Should i just make trolls HEALED by fire damage?
Or make it that the troll's "inner fire" is the thing restoring it, making cold attacks wear down the regenerative effect. Or make something else up.

You're not required to obey the monster manual. They should've asked if they might know anything about this particular beast from folklore or study.

Actually if it's a demon it would qualify for fire immunity, same applies to ice demons.

Weird, I could have sworn that image looked like something else before I enlarged it.

Addendum, before the exact kind of feckless shit for brains comes along that I have to worry about:

Keep internally consistent. Don't change things -just- to fuck players over. Try to make at least a vague hint of sense when deciding how shit works. I shouldn't have to specify, but we have the kind of people who unironically post on /pol/ on this site so there's no limit to how some can be.

Chris sounds like my guy Will.

>I pick up thre boulder
>you are level fucking 1 you can’t oick up the boulder
>I did the math based on the phb and math says I can
>no
>I am an engineering major you can’t make me pretend I am not me
>we are literally roleplaying

Does it really matter all that much? You just cycle through whatever other attacks you have available if it doesn't work anyway.

Retarded OP doesnt know any other examples, but this still gets him (you)'s.

Trolls regenerating like that is common knowledge.

>"I throw an ice spike through it!"
"The monster's gaping wound closes over."
>"I cleave its head off."
"POP! Its head comes back."
>"I burn its face off with a bolt of lightning!"
"The uglied face becomes its regular uglier self."
>"I throw alchemist fire at it!"
"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE STOP METAGAMING REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

Read the whole OP next time.

Swap things around. Maybe it's a troll infected because it ate a zombie by mistake; now only radiant damage stops it from regenerating.

Alternatively copy ; I once ran a beholder as a mass of tentacles creating a room where the "rays" were a stinger at the end of a tendril that injected some horrific chemical into the PCs through exposed skin. The antimagic cone was a series of staggered puffs of gas from another tendril, and the targetable body part was a coocoon surrounding an NPC the party was trying to rescue.

It was awesome, creeped the party the hell out, and they were none the wiser.

To be fair it seems logical that wounds cannot regrow if cauterized.

>You come across a sphinx in the middle of the road. It asks, "What walks on four legs-"
>"It's a man."
>REEEEEEE you need to pretend like you don't know!
When everyone and their mother knows the "answer" to your encounter, and you're counting on them not knowing the answer to your encounter, you have fucked up.

yeah your low int low wis character would totally know the answer to a riddle from an ancient greek play!

Of course he wouldn't. But the player knows. Which makes it a fucking dogshit encounter since there's not possible way for the player NOT to be caught up in a metagame conflict.

What, doesn't D&D or w/e give basic lifts for strength scores?

There's no calculations. It's just a chart that lists exactly how much you can lift at stat of strength.

Mythological trolls did not even regenerate, why does everyone pretend that this whole fire thing is so essential?

How was there even an argument then, was the player just being a shit?

This, I make trolls that don't regenerate, don't give a fuck about fire, and have tough skin of stone.

But everyone can do whatever they want, that's the power of fantasy.

Fuck if I know, I don't play with such retards. I actually like my players.

I just mean that whoever posted obviously meant that the player was retarded because he brought up being an engineering major and doing math. There's never any math.

Demons actually have a wide variety in what they resist based on their type and common environments of the Abyss. It's Devils that you can count on to reliably be immune to fire. Probably due to the difference between chaos and law there.
>Is there even a thematically deep or important reason why trolls are weak to fire?, does it undermine them in any way if you make them vulnerable to something else?
Well, fire is something that most civilisations can whip up on demand, so a type of troll you have to freeze would be much more dangerous to the world in general. You could try ones that are averse to water, certain metals, or salt as other examples though.
Burning and aciding things that are growing back is just what you DO. That's just how these things are handled. It's when that doesn't work that you have to get creative or start researching your enemy. An an example: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qltbRD2VrFU
This stuff also comes back to bite you sometimes, like in one episode of Mushi-shi there's a weed that's the larval form of a fire-eating mushi. The weed is choking out a town's crops. Burning it does not end well.

An allusion to the hyrda, I suppose.

>I did the math based on the phb and math says I can

Wut, a character with 20 strenght can only carry 300 pounds, the strenght score is painfully realistic is you go by the book

How about you stop being a shitty GM, thread closed.

Clearly Poul Anderson's troll was fungal in nature.

>low-key gurps fagging

my GURPS'R

*tips 600 page tome of tables*

Common, you need to not rely on standard trolls. Throw a Sand Troll in, or a Spirit Troll. Or make it a giant with a ring of regen.

Or pull the Iifa tree on them and have it be a pseudo-zombie tree demon thing that gets stronger when set on fire because.... it's on fire.

Extra fire damage on its attacks = they won't try that shit again.

Trying to kill something with fire isn't metagaming you dumb shit - fire is a lethal and destructive force that kills pretty much everything that isn't already made of or using fire.

What's metagaming is that you are letting you knowing the players are right with their out-of-character comments affect your assessment of whether a real person in the same circumstances as the players' characters are could make the same decision as the character is making.

Here's how to fucking solve the real problem that is happening here: Stop making the challenge rely on the characters not knowing what they are fucking doing for it to be challenging - i.e. acknowledge that the challenge of facing a troll is not figuring out you need to use fire, but that it's claws and teeth are going to fuck you up even if you already know you have to use fire to keep it down.

Just fucking change the monster, man. Let them kill this specific troll with fire. Then introduce a breed of fire-resistant trolls to the area that outperform their weaker counterparts in some good ol' fashioned fire-darwinism

Dude, my players are trying to make a deal with norscan shaman woman because I told them she is beautfil. I'd rather have my players act smart than have this s hit

Yup. Either the DM gets pissy about them metagaming because their character guessed correctly (which is only forbidden to role-play because of what the player knows), or they have the character act like a dipshit that can't figure out anything (which is strange that it isn't forbidden to role-play, because it requires using what the player knows just as much as the other thing does).

If these was a sapient species living on earth that could not be killed by anything but fire, do you think you would know about it?

If their character has a steep INT penalty, then it's metagaming, but if not, then the problem is actually that the GM has a steep INT penalty.

If you want things to be obscure, make them obscure. Everyone knows that sphinxes like riddles, hydra heads double when severed, and the medusa can turn you to stone if you look at her. We know this about imaginary things, much less if they were real things in the world we might have to deal with.

If you really want to make common knowledge obscure, just tell them that their character doesn't know and then have them roll for it. If they fail and insist, then talk it out.

>If these was a sapient species living on earth that could not be killed by anything but fire, do you think you would know about it?
If there are dozens of sapient species on the planet, and you have no benefits of comprehensive education nor internet access, do you think you would know the weaknesses of each and every one of them?

You're retarded, humans tend to deal with anything that regrow with fire or acid, treating wounds always involved fire and burning because it damages the cells and force close it, doing it to something that regenerates literally means forcing it to be stuck in the damaged form.

That's like saying you can kill vampires by stabbing their heart, breaking their neck or setting them on fire when any of those methods would kill anything.

>could not be killed by anything by fire
and acid

Worse is when it's a new player who has no way to metagame the system and still bitches about things

>I attack the skeleton with Ray of Frost
>the chilling beam hits is bones but doesn't appear to have caused it any sort of distress
>so... now I roll for damage?
>no, it doesn't take damage, they are immune to cold damage
>then why didn't you tell me that before I wasted my spell?! (cantrip)

Just ask them to roll knowledge checks at the start of any encounter, then indicate it's a homebrewed monster that isn't a troll, or a troll subspecies that may be different from normal trolls.

>haveyoutriednotplayingd&d.jpg

>Be DM
>Village in need of dragon slayer
>Players see a red dragon flying around a mountain
>"Let's get some fire resistance"
>Party confident that they are ready to kill a fire breathing dragon.
>Encounter said red dragon.
>Dragon breathes
>Fighter and Paladin pissed off because it's breathing poison gas

They couldn't explain how a red dragon breathes fire when they've never encountered a dragon before and I never said a thing about fire.

>Not giving the monster ways to counteract its weakness being used against it
>Not letting players feel safe and secure in their metaknowledge before throwing them for a loop with weird shit not found in any monster manual
>Not taking inspiration from everywhere and putting your own twist on it
You sound like the kind of DM who makes monsters fight to the death, bores players with obnoxiously long diatribes labelled as "story", and fudges dice so a character doesn't inadvertently die.

>as they are fighting, the red paint starts flaking off of the green dragon's scales

Cheat.

Make the troll not actually damaged by fire at all. Maybe he's instead damaged by lightning. Prompt the players to make a knowledge or survival check to discover this. Hell, if you've got a Ranger you could throw them a bone and make their class actually handy.

Yes, if it's their only weakness. There's a reason Trolls haven't eradicated the humans.

This is true, but acid isn't handy so it's less likely to be common knowledge.

No, it's just a red dragon with poison breath.

>Yes, if it's their only weakness. There's a reason Trolls haven't eradicated the humans.
On what are you basing that? Why would you know something like that unless you live in an area where trolls are common?

Yes, but just deciding that the red dragons in your setting actually breath poison, then seeing that the characters behave in-setting irrationally, and saying nothing about, is being a passive aggressive bitch.

While having a green dragon paint himself red to confuse adventurers is just funny.

There comes a point where you really need to be willing to meet people halfway. Players HAVE to make assumptions so they're not asking you every other second to elaborate, and 'dragons breathe fire' is a pretty standard one. Did you hint at all that this was a poison breathing red dragon or were you just being a cunt?

>Hang on, sorry. When you say plate armor, you do mean like, steel armor right? I'm not buying like, porcelain plates, but armor. Right? Ok. Just want to be sure after your shitty dragon trick.

They bought fire resistance for no reason. Why would they do that?

You didn1t inform them their characters have no reason to believe that the dragon breathes fire.

Neither did anyone they met (assuming they didn't just materialize their fire resistant equipment from thin air).

Why?

Pull this shit too many times and you're asking for your players to be asking "does my character know [x obvious thing]?"

>Just making sure I get what you mean when you say peasant, he's a farmer and not a seasoned monster hunter, right? If I get into a fight with that group of peasants I'm not going to find one of your poison breathing dragons or something? Do peasants regenerate limbs in this setting? Have I heard anything unusual about peasants? Nothing? Are you sure? Just want to be sure.

Subverting tropes is fine but you should at least give them a warning shot.

I do like the paint idea
They knew the dragon lived on a mountain and flew. I never said anything about a breath, they never looked into anything about a breath. It's not my job to correct an incorrect assumption based on a book they read.

Because Dragons traditionally breath fire? Like, if you asked people 'What do dragons do' then 'Breath fire' would be basically at the top of the list alongside 'Kidnap princesses'.

Do you want them asking you every time a boar turns up 'So, just going with this: Boars don't shit lightning bolts in your setting right?'.

>They knew the dragon lived on a mountain and flew. I never said anything about a breath, they never looked into anything about a breath. It's not my job to correct an incorrect assumption based on a book they read.

Sure it is. If their characters would have never heard of the idea of a dragon breathing fire but can otherwise identify 'It's a dragon', they should likely OOC find out.

Not that guy but it's not the DM's job to correct random assumptions about things that the player characters aren't even supposed to know about.

>traditionally
Dragons doesn't even exist m8

Because 'dragons breathe fire' is up there with 'dwarves are short' and 'elves have pointy ears'. If you change the trope it doesn't go without saying that the characters wouldn't know it, and rather than being passive aggressive about it you should probably drop some hints.

Why would none of the villagers they're helping maybe mention this dragon isn't of a fire breathing variety? Did you at any point elaborate 'Dragons and their nature are little known here'. Did you maybe take a chance to tell them, while they were buying fireproof stuff, to ask if any had the relevant lores to know about it, and if not ask how they knew? Because it sounds like you were just being a dick.

Trolls would be common in all areas if no one knew how to kill them. It's not like they're gonna light themselves on fire, unless there's some sweet underground troll warfare going on. Maybe all of one gender of troll was eradicated in the past in some weird gender war, making them a doomed race. That's some cool worldbuilding your players might not already know.

More likely though you hadn't given it any though and are just being spiteful that they've seen through your lack of creativity.

People will talk about fabulous creatures. They don't have tv, or decent porn. You can't farm all the time.

A decent way to do it other than something so clearly subverting expectations is to try to present a dragon in a fairly original manner. For example, instead of having any sort of breath attack maybe the dragon roars loud enough or high-pitched enough to deal sonic damage in a large area. It's less immediately bullshit for the players and it's a bit more unique than just changing a dragon's color and nothing else.

Another idea is to make the difference an easier leap. I had a dragon in one campaign that was blue but, rather than being a lightning dragon, it was a water dragon. It had fins that clearly indicated that it was water-based when the players saw it, so it didn't come as any surprise that its breath attack dealt a mix of cold and bludgeoning damage instead of lightning. The dragon was an ally, anyways, so it didn't bite the players in the ass but I think it would have been a decent switcheroo even if it were an enemy.

*any thought

>Dragons doesn't even exist m8

Yes they do. Not as physical creatures but we have stories and mythology about them, they very much exist as cultural touchstones people know about.

>Not that guy but it's not the DM's job to correct random assumptions about things that the player characters aren't even supposed to know about.

It absolutely fucking is when it doesn't make sense for their characters.

Have you really never asked your players "hey, would your character really do/know that?" when the situation arises?

The players aren't the ones who have the knowledge of the world you are playing in. The DM is. He should absolutely try to bring everyone to the same page, and that includes telling them when they are making false assumptions.

>It's not my job to correct an incorrect assumption based on a book they read.

It's not 'based on a book they read' it's a pretty big staple of anybody's common fantasy knowledge. If you're going to subvert really major tropes you should at least drop hints, like them coming across a village that had been attacked by the dragon with nothing burned but a lot of bodies. That'd make them go "Oh something's up".

Players HAVE to make assumptions sometimes as to not bog the game down in retarded commonsense questions like "What do you mean 'dwarf'?"

you sound like an user who makes a lot of assumptions

Again, not the original guy, but:
Dwarf actually means being short/small, so nah, and elves in my own setting don't have pointy ears and look just like humans. Anyway, that it's a trope is beside the point, as long as the characters can be assumed to not know about it.

>RL knowledge is the same as in setting knowledge
No

>have you asked the players why their characters would do stupid shit
Only if the characters would know that it would be stupid.

So do you have all your shitposts saved in some Google doc? It's pretty pathetic how well you're able to dredge up these ancient argument starters.

You sound like a very pedantic, infuriating DM. I pity your players.

>only preventing metagaming when it hurts your railroad

Colorful Dragon dude here with some background info, maybe this can clear things a bit.

The dragon was stealing trade goods, not killing people. The players had a source of info being the village elder. The party didn't ask any details about the dragon past why and reward. If the party spent 5 minutes asking for details they would have known it's never been seen breathing fire.

I'm not running D&D. I'm running Dungeon Crawl Classics. Dragons can be randomly generated with powers and colors.

>we have stories and mythology about them,

Yes, and every one of them is different, dragons don't have anything more in common than "a beast that looks like a snake"

>Trolls would be common in all areas if no one knew how to kill them.
I never said that no-one would know how to kill, idiot. In fact, as I already implied, people who live in areas with trolls would know how to kill them.

>People will talk about fabulous creatures.
Which is why you know all about poisonous frogs in south america, right? And why there are accurate manuscripts detailing the habits of tigers from medieval Europe?

My players seem to like it though

No trust me, when I railroad, metagaming isn't going to stop me.

That is because people clumped them together. A Chinese "dragon" isn't the same as a European one, they just looks somewhat similar so when translating, the Chinese word for their dragons became "dragon" in English.
But really it's not even the same imaginary animal.

If they do it every time then tell them they have less point in chargen because they auto-take some knowledge (monsters) or its equivalent in the system.

>How the fuck do you stop players from using out-of-game knowledge in-game?

By not using those monsters anymore. Make up your own. It's perfectly fine to use the Monster Manual to get a template to work with, and alter it.

Yeah I really hate to break it to you, but the OG European Dragon kinda, sorta, spat poison. It's also the dragon that basically started the whole "Kidnaps princesses" cliche.

I've recently had my mind changed on Metagaming like that.

Pretty counter intuitive is that: "Let them"

Why would a character know to use fire on a troll? He wouldn't, but to a player it's fun. It's like presenting a puzzle but the players exciting have the answer.

If you really wanted to surprise the players delve into some really weird D&D monster. And even if one of the players happen to find out what it is let him, because that's exciting for the player to know some random tid-bit of knowledge.

So basically let them, yeah. Don't encourage it, but let it happen if they bring it up.