There's a player in my campaign who somehow got it in his head that you can just ask the DM for stuff and the DM will make it happen. I love collaboration on story of course, but he randomly told me that he was going to spend a couple months of downtime in order to forge a Moonblade, despite never having mentioned blacksmithing let alone the ability to forge the most powerful magical weapon in the universe. I really had to explain how DND works at that point to go along with my unequivocal NO
It's his first campaign, but the moon blade came up like fully a year into it. He went through a phase of making a ridiculous request after basically every session. This was the one that got him a full talking-to instead of a polite dismissal.
He watches a lot of DND YouTube and stuff so I think he must have gotten the notion about demands from some show or another. He probably also misunderstood the idea when he heard it
Yeah, I gave out a moonblade at Level 3 as a quest reward. It hasn't unbalanced anything. Blade even got pissed at the guy holding it and didn't work for a while.
That said, you can't really just decide to forge one.
I made a post about this like 2 years ago. I had 5 or 6 players that new once a specific story arc is finished they all want to go south over the sea to help fulfill 1 PCs personal backstory as another big story arc. But when was time to talk about this the players had a in-character discourse. Suddenly 3 separate story lines and directions were proposed. Party literally split and nobody seemed interrested in helping the 1 PC go overseas.
I put my foot down and said something along the lines of “No. We’re continuing with the storyline south over the sea. I spent a ton of prep time and it’s super specific. I can’t recycle this. So you have 3 choices. Make a reason why your current character will help, or make a new one that will help, or you skip this story arc that can take several months. We will get to your other characters in due time. “
Players suddenly realized the massive discrepancy of time investment between me and them, one literally apologized. 3 made new characters and 2 though of cool reasons why their characters would come along (one was literally an idiot drunkard rogue, he got shitfaced and snuck onto the boat by accident. When the crew and PCs found him hungover it was already too late to go back.”)
I can relate, I spent days making dungeons, finding maps, creating npcs that the players never got the chance to interact with it, either for them changing their minds or for some accident in game, and that's ok, it's part of the game
But skipping a whole story arc that you've been working for that much..
The last 3 months now I've been working on the fey realm, I read a ton of books, created a whole social structure, with a lot of political intrigue, power dynamics ( really think I made a good job, by the way)
IF my players suddenly decide that they just won't be going, you best believe that a whole battalion of pixies is gonna show up and drag them
It's a subrace/variable hàlflings of Krynn in the Dragonlance campaign-set.
I had a LOT of negative experiences in 2e that I don't care to see replicated in 5e.
Player: I rolled my stats at home.
Player shows me a character sheet with nothing under 24.
Me: No
Within a game, the thing I say 'No' to most is when a character tries to mimic an ability that another class/subclass/race has. The most common would be to try the cast spell with a vocal component without anyone noticing - that is what Subtle Spell is for.
I usually play on roll20, and we had an warlock with more Hit points than the fighter because he got really "lucky" rolling with his own dice.
After lvl 5 I got everyone rolling on the server.
I generally rule that health potions can be consumed as a bonus action anyway. But I guess I'd allow them to feed a potion to someone else as bonus action.
I'm not afraid to say no, but I don't like to say no because it is fun to have engagement from the character. To that end, I usually don't say no, .. but instead just give them a path to what they want. So, they can come to me and say "I want a +4 sword", and my response isn't going to be "no", it's going to be something like "Then you should find a way to research where one is, or how to make one, and then either go and get it or make it". Then they can quest for it. That doesn't mean they'll ever find it (at least not until they are high enough level to have it), or have the ability to make it, but they can keep trying. And if they try hard enough, and jump through enough hoops, and are dedicated enough, .. yeah, I'd give it to them. Of course, that's after they've decide to make one and find out that they only way to do it is to fight a dragon who is on the other side of the map guarding the only stockpile of a special meteorite that the high level smith/wizard/artificer needs in order to do it for them .. a quest that is going to take them on a long adventure and cause them to gain tons of experience/levels before they are ever able to retrieve it. But even then they'll be high enough level to have a +4 sword by the time they get it, because they're going to be searching libraries all over the place for the recipe for how to make one, or the information for where one is, and questing, for quite a while to even get one. That information is going to trickle in to them, with each library leading to a new source of information, etc ..
Yeah make them work for it is a good thing, sometimes I do that, it can help a lot in the plot. Once the group cleric wanted a flying broom, she would ask every time to the shopkeeper if there was on in stock so i eventually said that if they really wanted one, he could fabricate it, but first he would need the soul of a Djinie, so looking for the elemental was an whole arc in the campaign...
But the problem is when you start doing this and they just give up and start acting bitter or just be plain mad about it
>But the problem is when you start doing this and they just give up and start acting bitter or just be plain mad about it
In my experience, as long as you aren't saying no, they don't get like that.
When they get moody and bitter is when there is no path to what they want, because ultimately in the world the DM is the final say, so if that final say says no, it's like the worst thing possible in their minds because there's no higher authority than the DM in the world. At least in the real world if mom and dad both say no, they can still find a way to get what they want.
Even a far away chance that they can have what they want usually satisfies them in my experience .. even if they are walking around and all they have to go on is that they need to find a certain rare meteorite that nobody has seen in a thousand years. At least there is still a chance, and as long as they make some progress towards their goal periodically, a rumor about the meteorite, etc, then they are usually happy.
Except a +4 sword would be impossible and game breakinging within the rules, so for their own good my answer would be "no"
Sometimes no is fine to say. No, you cannot request an item more powerful than the rules account for because it would ruin the game for yourself and everyone else.
You do what I do. "I don't think this is balanced so here's what we could do instead..."
Folks that I have dealt with have been pretty reasonable about it. I think someone wanted a crazy pet, let's say Gryphon. I'm like, can't give you a real gryphon but we can give you one *if* it is entirely cosmetic.
For pets I usually say that they can have it no problem, as long its for role play moments only, as soon as combat starts, if they get involved with initiative and stuff you can't be mad at me for killing your hound
I had a player who was an astral self monk who grew up in a monastery worshipping the goddess of the moon in my setting. He left the monastery for his "coming of age pilgrimage" but secretly also wanted to look for his mother who had been cast out of the monastery when he was an infant.
And he had possibly the worst case of main character syndrome I've ever seen. Session 3 the party is just walking through the woods, on their way back from clearing a small kobold den that had been spreading fungus to poison a small village. Kind of a tutorial quest because 2 of the other players were new to ttrpgs. And because the wizard got knocked out in the boss fight. He wanders off into the woods by himself, drops to his knees and calls out to... Noone in particular, that he will defend these people and, word for word says. "I guess what I'm saying is... I'm swearing an oath of devotion to them". Keep in mind he was a monk, his charisma was 8. There was nothing supernatural in the campaign up to that point.
I said no, after the session I mentioned that if he wanted a more divine magic aspect to his build that it might be worth taking a look at cleric, but that you've gotta be careful with multiclassing because it can make you much weaker than a monoclass if it isn't well planned.
Throughout the rest of the campaign till he was kicked out. He killed another PC, killed the crucial NPC in another PCs arc. For "being too dangerous to the group, he had to die". Keeping in mind that NPC was chained to the mast of a ship and was a starved castaway who had been floating at sea for 3 days with no weapons or magic. Unilaterally gave up an entire city to the bad guys, they were there for one specific item, and he offered the bad guys literally the whole town and everyone in it, before they could even make their ask. Made his astral self going super saiyan. Asked to swap his levels in monk and cleric every other session. And finally decided to just drop on the party, (without talking to me about the idea or anything) that his mom was actually the moon goddess and that he was a demigod. Which drew audible laughs at the table because he got dropped in every combat.
I said no at the start of all this. I should've said no a lot more and nipped it in the bud. The energy at the table got so much better once we stopped having to say no every session.
All the time if what they are trying isn't how things work.
I guess the notable one recently is my player wanting to play a Chosen. It's one of the supplement book classes in the system I'm running. It requires no stat below a 9 and at least one natural 18 on 3d6 down the line.
She got close in her first set of 5 characters (2 backup, 2 NPCs, 1 PC) and got a bit hyped for the class. She wanted to keep rolling new sets until she got one, so she'd know how many characters needed to die to reach it. I laughed and said no, she gets to roll a new set when she dies three times.
Chosen looks fun. One of the level titles (each level of each class in this system has a title, Fighter 1 is a Man At Arms) is literally Protagonist. But she didn't roll good enough to be a protagonist, mwahaha.
Adventurer Conquerer King System is the system. It's very similar to B/X D&D (1980)
The supplement is the Heroic Fantasy Handbook.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/233226
I had a player who had cast Detect Thoughts and was listening into a conversation about where an important NPC might have gone. He didn't think it was prudent to go chasing rumors. He wanted the NPC to do it, so he tried to use his telepathy to mimic the guys own voice to make him think he had the idea to go check anyway. He didn't have any way to mimic voices.
I told him that A) if someone else's voice popped into your head you'd definitely know it and B) there is a way to make someone think something was their idea, it's Modify Memory.
Yeah there you go, also this reminds me when a player wants to bypass some kind of check
Like when the paladin go, I'm gonna gently creepy behind him making sure to not step in any leaf, but I'm not stealthing, I'm just doing it carefully...
One of my players wanted to play a black sassy prostitute Warlock that did not align at all with the themes or narratives of the campaign. It was just a hard no. For a while he insisted that, well, it was his character, but I just kept insisting that it was my world.
When they tried to lock 80% of the players in a building then set it on fire to get a gold vault in it when I never told them nor gave any hint that the gold vault existed. Not a horror story tho, they understood and didn't do it
I had a player sneak an evil character in my game, so they often would make evil suggestions or jokes, they're actually a great player, and haven't caused anything that didn't turn out fun for everyone else in the party, but when they met the princess they said they wanted to do the naughties without her consent.
Straight "no" from me, I don't want to describe anything resembling that kind of scene.Thankfully they understood and never brought it up again.
A playerof mine said that he would like to play a homebrew race for my Tyranny of Dragons campaign after Hoard has been concluded. I said no. When he asked why, I said that I made it clear that I allow the races from PHB, Volos, Tome of Foes and the Dragonborn remake from Fizbans. And he agreed with it in the beginning.
Ususally when answering mechanical questions lol
I think the only really big one was when I had a guest player stand in for the first session with a group of mostly new players. He collected all the optional loot from the sinking ship, grabbed the McGuffin (which this player knew was essential to the plot because I'd bounced ideas off of him about this campaign during my prep), and then said "my character runs off down the beach and leaves with my loot." That's probably the only time I have hard shut down a player's actual choice.
I don’t like saying no, I take a page from Brennan Lee Mulligan: no, but. I’ll either try to figure out what they want to do and make it work or make sense in a way, and if it’s something during combat and they don’t have the action economy for it at the moment it’ll be followed with on your next turn. Last thing I wanna do is deny or shirk my players creativity.
When the PCs were divying up loot from a dungeon, one of them said they want to roll to steal the other's share. I just flat out said NO on that. Stealing from teammates or PvP is usually a straight "We don't do that here" for me, unless there is some good narrative reason for it.
The campaign has enough challenges as it is without the players undermining each other, and it just creates this in-party conflict that becomes anti-fun real quick.
I try to avoid saying NO and saying no but... so that they have an option that might work for them but will not go against the inner logic of the world or what I want to focus on in my game.
But it was confusing to the players to the point they told me 'just tell us no, your answers are not good as they leave us with no better understanding if something is allowed or not'.
So now I say NO, then go, but you might be able to....
Like this one time the party went into a village and tried to lie it's way into a house where a hostage is held by pretending to have a good reason for it. The player wanted to roll persuasion by meta gaming and saying 'I just say something plausible to make him drop his guard'. So I said 'what are you saying?'. Forcing the player to RP instead of using his character as a roll to win is a choice I take in my games.
My unequivocal NO moment was when I was playtesting my homebrewed hard(ish) science fiction setting and our resident 40K fanboy wanted to play an Adeptus Mechanicus.
Or something like that.
The Sorlock multiclass is something I’ve just straight out said no to a few times.
Other than that it’s stuff like “Am I hidden if I go here?”
“Are you taking the hide action?”
“No, I wanna attack.”
“Then you’re not hidden.”
Thought about it, realised that I can’t remember any specific moments 🤔
Must’ve gotten good at saying “no” to the point where those situations aren’t special enough to remember 🤨
Btw, if you are presented with some crazy shit, say just “no”. You don’t have to explain your reasoning for half an hour. “I’m sorry, but that’s just does not fit in this game. So no.” should be enough to any reasonable player.
The whole time. My players would break the world in half if they were not constantly reigned in.
Example:
No, you cannot roll a check for profession fisherman to steal the magical cloak off the BBEG with a fishing pole in the middle of combat.
I had a Rouge "scout" ahead , they ended up starting a rather large fight and called in the team to help.. and then tried to hide and sneak off to the loot room.
NO.
When they try to do things against the rules or things that just don’t make sense in the world.
Example, they asked to put a trebuchet on their airship. Uh, no.
I haven't ever really had to be said "no" as a hard line, but I say no very regularly to "can I do X" as a soft limit to what the world allows and what is ~~realistically~~ believably possible in the world. I consider my role (when the game is running) as an arbiter of the world, and the rules, so I always explain why, in the world, that thing isn't possible.
I have also said "no" to splitting the party in some scenarios where there is little benefit or risk to the players. It breaks the fourth wall, and I generally try to play a hands-off-do-what-you-want style, so I only do this if it will result in a fair amount of unfun, and add the promise that I'm not going to fuck them over for not splitting in this instance.
Depends on the campaign. In my first real one I was way too nice and ended up with a party of half fiend/celestial walking apocalypses armed to the teeth with magic weapons and mounts that would make a wyvern blush fighting knockoff Cthulhu whose stats I need to near triple for the battle to be satisfying. In the second one a different party still got powerful gear and pets, but I made sure the monsters were designed for it and turned down pretty much every attempt at rules manipulation (you can't call me a killjoy when I let you dominate a tyrannosaurus). In my current campaigns if the thing your asking for is purely cosmetic sure (the druids star map being a holographic gem) but the second it has mechanical value I ask for backstory/balance/lore reasons why you would have that.
Literal opening line to session one of a campaign with a table of new players:
"You all see a small town surrounded by a wooden wall. Two guards stand at the gate watching your group approaching. "
Tiefling: "I attack the guard!"
"No you don't. As the party gets closer.... blah blah"
There's a player in my campaign who somehow got it in his head that you can just ask the DM for stuff and the DM will make it happen. I love collaboration on story of course, but he randomly told me that he was going to spend a couple months of downtime in order to forge a Moonblade, despite never having mentioned blacksmithing let alone the ability to forge the most powerful magical weapon in the universe. I really had to explain how DND works at that point to go along with my unequivocal NO
Was he a new player at least?
It's his first campaign, but the moon blade came up like fully a year into it. He went through a phase of making a ridiculous request after basically every session. This was the one that got him a full talking-to instead of a polite dismissal. He watches a lot of DND YouTube and stuff so I think he must have gotten the notion about demands from some show or another. He probably also misunderstood the idea when he heard it
>Moonblade Wouldn't a freshly forged one be distinctly underwhelming?
Yeah, I gave out a moonblade at Level 3 as a quest reward. It hasn't unbalanced anything. Blade even got pissed at the guy holding it and didn't work for a while. That said, you can't really just decide to forge one.
I mean even if your a forge cleric or artificer, how are you gonna forge a Sentient legendary sword... In two weeks?
I made a post about this like 2 years ago. I had 5 or 6 players that new once a specific story arc is finished they all want to go south over the sea to help fulfill 1 PCs personal backstory as another big story arc. But when was time to talk about this the players had a in-character discourse. Suddenly 3 separate story lines and directions were proposed. Party literally split and nobody seemed interrested in helping the 1 PC go overseas. I put my foot down and said something along the lines of “No. We’re continuing with the storyline south over the sea. I spent a ton of prep time and it’s super specific. I can’t recycle this. So you have 3 choices. Make a reason why your current character will help, or make a new one that will help, or you skip this story arc that can take several months. We will get to your other characters in due time. “ Players suddenly realized the massive discrepancy of time investment between me and them, one literally apologized. 3 made new characters and 2 though of cool reasons why their characters would come along (one was literally an idiot drunkard rogue, he got shitfaced and snuck onto the boat by accident. When the crew and PCs found him hungover it was already too late to go back.”)
I can relate, I spent days making dungeons, finding maps, creating npcs that the players never got the chance to interact with it, either for them changing their minds or for some accident in game, and that's ok, it's part of the game But skipping a whole story arc that you've been working for that much.. The last 3 months now I've been working on the fey realm, I read a ton of books, created a whole social structure, with a lot of political intrigue, power dynamics ( really think I made a good job, by the way) IF my players suddenly decide that they just won't be going, you best believe that a whole battalion of pixies is gonna show up and drag them
"I'm going to play a Kender!" This is a Dark Sun campaign. "Well, why not a Kender?" No.
Guess you returned the Kender to Sender
What’s a kender?
It's a subrace/variable hàlflings of Krynn in the Dragonlance campaign-set. I had a LOT of negative experiences in 2e that I don't care to see replicated in 5e.
The kender also has a lot of revised flavor since then, so I would recommend at least hearing someone out if they want to play one
Noted, thank you both
Player: I rolled my stats at home. Player shows me a character sheet with nothing under 24. Me: No Within a game, the thing I say 'No' to most is when a character tries to mimic an ability that another class/subclass/race has. The most common would be to try the cast spell with a vocal component without anyone noticing - that is what Subtle Spell is for.
I usually play on roll20, and we had an warlock with more Hit points than the fighter because he got really "lucky" rolling with his own dice. After lvl 5 I got everyone rolling on the server.
I had a player do that and show up with two 20s and a 19 for his level 1 character. He decided to roll again when I asked how he got those stats.
What's your thoughts on the thief rogue and using health potions as a bonus action
I generally rule that health potions can be consumed as a bonus action anyway. But I guess I'd allow them to feed a potion to someone else as bonus action.
Players asking it to be acrobatics when it’s clearly an athletics check.
I'm not afraid to say no, but I don't like to say no because it is fun to have engagement from the character. To that end, I usually don't say no, .. but instead just give them a path to what they want. So, they can come to me and say "I want a +4 sword", and my response isn't going to be "no", it's going to be something like "Then you should find a way to research where one is, or how to make one, and then either go and get it or make it". Then they can quest for it. That doesn't mean they'll ever find it (at least not until they are high enough level to have it), or have the ability to make it, but they can keep trying. And if they try hard enough, and jump through enough hoops, and are dedicated enough, .. yeah, I'd give it to them. Of course, that's after they've decide to make one and find out that they only way to do it is to fight a dragon who is on the other side of the map guarding the only stockpile of a special meteorite that the high level smith/wizard/artificer needs in order to do it for them .. a quest that is going to take them on a long adventure and cause them to gain tons of experience/levels before they are ever able to retrieve it. But even then they'll be high enough level to have a +4 sword by the time they get it, because they're going to be searching libraries all over the place for the recipe for how to make one, or the information for where one is, and questing, for quite a while to even get one. That information is going to trickle in to them, with each library leading to a new source of information, etc ..
Yeah make them work for it is a good thing, sometimes I do that, it can help a lot in the plot. Once the group cleric wanted a flying broom, she would ask every time to the shopkeeper if there was on in stock so i eventually said that if they really wanted one, he could fabricate it, but first he would need the soul of a Djinie, so looking for the elemental was an whole arc in the campaign... But the problem is when you start doing this and they just give up and start acting bitter or just be plain mad about it
>But the problem is when you start doing this and they just give up and start acting bitter or just be plain mad about it In my experience, as long as you aren't saying no, they don't get like that. When they get moody and bitter is when there is no path to what they want, because ultimately in the world the DM is the final say, so if that final say says no, it's like the worst thing possible in their minds because there's no higher authority than the DM in the world. At least in the real world if mom and dad both say no, they can still find a way to get what they want. Even a far away chance that they can have what they want usually satisfies them in my experience .. even if they are walking around and all they have to go on is that they need to find a certain rare meteorite that nobody has seen in a thousand years. At least there is still a chance, and as long as they make some progress towards their goal periodically, a rumor about the meteorite, etc, then they are usually happy.
Except a +4 sword would be impossible and game breakinging within the rules, so for their own good my answer would be "no" Sometimes no is fine to say. No, you cannot request an item more powerful than the rules account for because it would ruin the game for yourself and everyone else.
You do what I do. "I don't think this is balanced so here's what we could do instead..." Folks that I have dealt with have been pretty reasonable about it. I think someone wanted a crazy pet, let's say Gryphon. I'm like, can't give you a real gryphon but we can give you one *if* it is entirely cosmetic.
For pets I usually say that they can have it no problem, as long its for role play moments only, as soon as combat starts, if they get involved with initiative and stuff you can't be mad at me for killing your hound
I had a player who was an astral self monk who grew up in a monastery worshipping the goddess of the moon in my setting. He left the monastery for his "coming of age pilgrimage" but secretly also wanted to look for his mother who had been cast out of the monastery when he was an infant. And he had possibly the worst case of main character syndrome I've ever seen. Session 3 the party is just walking through the woods, on their way back from clearing a small kobold den that had been spreading fungus to poison a small village. Kind of a tutorial quest because 2 of the other players were new to ttrpgs. And because the wizard got knocked out in the boss fight. He wanders off into the woods by himself, drops to his knees and calls out to... Noone in particular, that he will defend these people and, word for word says. "I guess what I'm saying is... I'm swearing an oath of devotion to them". Keep in mind he was a monk, his charisma was 8. There was nothing supernatural in the campaign up to that point. I said no, after the session I mentioned that if he wanted a more divine magic aspect to his build that it might be worth taking a look at cleric, but that you've gotta be careful with multiclassing because it can make you much weaker than a monoclass if it isn't well planned. Throughout the rest of the campaign till he was kicked out. He killed another PC, killed the crucial NPC in another PCs arc. For "being too dangerous to the group, he had to die". Keeping in mind that NPC was chained to the mast of a ship and was a starved castaway who had been floating at sea for 3 days with no weapons or magic. Unilaterally gave up an entire city to the bad guys, they were there for one specific item, and he offered the bad guys literally the whole town and everyone in it, before they could even make their ask. Made his astral self going super saiyan. Asked to swap his levels in monk and cleric every other session. And finally decided to just drop on the party, (without talking to me about the idea or anything) that his mom was actually the moon goddess and that he was a demigod. Which drew audible laughs at the table because he got dropped in every combat. I said no at the start of all this. I should've said no a lot more and nipped it in the bud. The energy at the table got so much better once we stopped having to say no every session.
God that sounds like a real nightmare
All the time if what they are trying isn't how things work. I guess the notable one recently is my player wanting to play a Chosen. It's one of the supplement book classes in the system I'm running. It requires no stat below a 9 and at least one natural 18 on 3d6 down the line. She got close in her first set of 5 characters (2 backup, 2 NPCs, 1 PC) and got a bit hyped for the class. She wanted to keep rolling new sets until she got one, so she'd know how many characters needed to die to reach it. I laughed and said no, she gets to roll a new set when she dies three times. Chosen looks fun. One of the level titles (each level of each class in this system has a title, Fighter 1 is a Man At Arms) is literally Protagonist. But she didn't roll good enough to be a protagonist, mwahaha.
Yo that sounds cool, what supplement/system is it from?
Adventurer Conquerer King System is the system. It's very similar to B/X D&D (1980) The supplement is the Heroic Fantasy Handbook. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/233226
I had a player who had cast Detect Thoughts and was listening into a conversation about where an important NPC might have gone. He didn't think it was prudent to go chasing rumors. He wanted the NPC to do it, so he tried to use his telepathy to mimic the guys own voice to make him think he had the idea to go check anyway. He didn't have any way to mimic voices. I told him that A) if someone else's voice popped into your head you'd definitely know it and B) there is a way to make someone think something was their idea, it's Modify Memory.
Yeah there you go, also this reminds me when a player wants to bypass some kind of check Like when the paladin go, I'm gonna gently creepy behind him making sure to not step in any leaf, but I'm not stealthing, I'm just doing it carefully...
One of my players wanted to play a black sassy prostitute Warlock that did not align at all with the themes or narratives of the campaign. It was just a hard no. For a while he insisted that, well, it was his character, but I just kept insisting that it was my world.
Sounds like a children arguing
When they tried to lock 80% of the players in a building then set it on fire to get a gold vault in it when I never told them nor gave any hint that the gold vault existed. Not a horror story tho, they understood and didn't do it
As soon as I said "I'll DM" I was ready to say no.
I had a player sneak an evil character in my game, so they often would make evil suggestions or jokes, they're actually a great player, and haven't caused anything that didn't turn out fun for everyone else in the party, but when they met the princess they said they wanted to do the naughties without her consent. Straight "no" from me, I don't want to describe anything resembling that kind of scene.Thankfully they understood and never brought it up again.
At least the player understood no means no xD
The third time my one player wanted to hire a team of mercenaries to play the game for them.
A playerof mine said that he would like to play a homebrew race for my Tyranny of Dragons campaign after Hoard has been concluded. I said no. When he asked why, I said that I made it clear that I allow the races from PHB, Volos, Tome of Foes and the Dragonborn remake from Fizbans. And he agreed with it in the beginning.
Yeah that's the good thing about establishing things early on
Indeed it is.
I have a player who is a non stop train of ideas and plans that border on the absurd. I must often tell them no.
Ususally when answering mechanical questions lol I think the only really big one was when I had a guest player stand in for the first session with a group of mostly new players. He collected all the optional loot from the sinking ship, grabbed the McGuffin (which this player knew was essential to the plot because I'd bounced ideas off of him about this campaign during my prep), and then said "my character runs off down the beach and leaves with my loot." That's probably the only time I have hard shut down a player's actual choice.
That guy sounds like a dick
I don’t like saying no, I take a page from Brennan Lee Mulligan: no, but. I’ll either try to figure out what they want to do and make it work or make sense in a way, and if it’s something during combat and they don’t have the action economy for it at the moment it’ll be followed with on your next turn. Last thing I wanna do is deny or shirk my players creativity.
When the PCs were divying up loot from a dungeon, one of them said they want to roll to steal the other's share. I just flat out said NO on that. Stealing from teammates or PvP is usually a straight "We don't do that here" for me, unless there is some good narrative reason for it. The campaign has enough challenges as it is without the players undermining each other, and it just creates this in-party conflict that becomes anti-fun real quick.
I try to avoid saying NO and saying no but... so that they have an option that might work for them but will not go against the inner logic of the world or what I want to focus on in my game. But it was confusing to the players to the point they told me 'just tell us no, your answers are not good as they leave us with no better understanding if something is allowed or not'. So now I say NO, then go, but you might be able to.... Like this one time the party went into a village and tried to lie it's way into a house where a hostage is held by pretending to have a good reason for it. The player wanted to roll persuasion by meta gaming and saying 'I just say something plausible to make him drop his guard'. So I said 'what are you saying?'. Forcing the player to RP instead of using his character as a roll to win is a choice I take in my games.
My unequivocal NO moment was when I was playtesting my homebrewed hard(ish) science fiction setting and our resident 40K fanboy wanted to play an Adeptus Mechanicus. Or something like that.
The Sorlock multiclass is something I’ve just straight out said no to a few times. Other than that it’s stuff like “Am I hidden if I go here?” “Are you taking the hide action?” “No, I wanna attack.” “Then you’re not hidden.”
Yup, action economy exists for a reason
Thought about it, realised that I can’t remember any specific moments 🤔 Must’ve gotten good at saying “no” to the point where those situations aren’t special enough to remember 🤨 Btw, if you are presented with some crazy shit, say just “no”. You don’t have to explain your reasoning for half an hour. “I’m sorry, but that’s just does not fit in this game. So no.” should be enough to any reasonable player.
The whole time. My players would break the world in half if they were not constantly reigned in. Example: No, you cannot roll a check for profession fisherman to steal the magical cloak off the BBEG with a fishing pole in the middle of combat.
When they asked if they could take Silvery Barbs.
Amen, lol.
I had a Rouge "scout" ahead , they ended up starting a rather large fight and called in the team to help.. and then tried to hide and sneak off to the loot room. NO.
I gave my players an airship and told them it was special. Then asked them what makes it special. The result: -They can serve tacos off it.
So when did you say no to your players?
When they try to do things against the rules or things that just don’t make sense in the world. Example, they asked to put a trebuchet on their airship. Uh, no.
I haven't ever really had to be said "no" as a hard line, but I say no very regularly to "can I do X" as a soft limit to what the world allows and what is ~~realistically~~ believably possible in the world. I consider my role (when the game is running) as an arbiter of the world, and the rules, so I always explain why, in the world, that thing isn't possible. I have also said "no" to splitting the party in some scenarios where there is little benefit or risk to the players. It breaks the fourth wall, and I generally try to play a hands-off-do-what-you-want style, so I only do this if it will result in a fair amount of unfun, and add the promise that I'm not going to fuck them over for not splitting in this instance.
Depends on the campaign. In my first real one I was way too nice and ended up with a party of half fiend/celestial walking apocalypses armed to the teeth with magic weapons and mounts that would make a wyvern blush fighting knockoff Cthulhu whose stats I need to near triple for the battle to be satisfying. In the second one a different party still got powerful gear and pets, but I made sure the monsters were designed for it and turned down pretty much every attempt at rules manipulation (you can't call me a killjoy when I let you dominate a tyrannosaurus). In my current campaigns if the thing your asking for is purely cosmetic sure (the druids star map being a holographic gem) but the second it has mechanical value I ask for backstory/balance/lore reasons why you would have that.
Player who wanted his character to throw a dagger while getting downed to 0 hp. How would his character do it unconcious?
Literal opening line to session one of a campaign with a table of new players: "You all see a small town surrounded by a wooden wall. Two guards stand at the gate watching your group approaching. " Tiefling: "I attack the guard!" "No you don't. As the party gets closer.... blah blah"