The Yellow King's page

OldHairyDM wrote:

And don't stop inviting friends you've had for a decade. There's no amount of horror that's worth losing a whiskey drinkin' buddy. Ever.

No gaming is better than bad gaming and if you do horror right someone who's there for the combat will be bored to tears.

You don't invite all your friends to everything you invite anyone to unless all your friends are alike. It's the back stabbing advice everyone else is giving to "manage" him that would lose the OP his buddy, not having one game he doesn't play in.

Yes but you should explain the type of game to your buddy let them know that there will not be a lot of combat focus and you won't be able to fight most encounters and instead need to run away, list changes x y and z that you are making, and then tell him he is invited but if it isnt the kind of game for him its okay. If he is your friend you talk to him you don't just not invite him.

The general rule of thumb is if he is part of your gaming group you invite him, otherwise if he finds out you are running a game with the old group sans him it will look like you just don't want to play with him if he was not told anything about it.

I'm not saying a GM can't ruin a game by surprising the players by bending and breaking mechanics. It's happened to me.

But I am saying that good GMing can have a little of that.

Yes a good and skilled gm it takes a very careful hand to do something like that.

Stuff like arbitrarily deciding player X does too much damage so I am going to do more damage to them and make them do less damage, meanwhile I will make player Y who does less damage do increased damage because I want it to be fair.
I had a dm do that to me, I was playing a character built around doing a lot of damage, and I would always get critted, meanwhile the person playing the bard using crappy weapons, and not using his class features to buff himself would get all the kills rarely get hit in combat, and in general out preformed me, even going all in which meant I was expending resources. All of the dms rolling was done behind the screen mind you, I was also the only d10 hd class and had the highest con, ac, and had some defense abilities, and I was still knocked out in almost every other combat.
Doing stuff like that just makes your players not see the point in playing because you have already decided what will happen.
And that is why the advice to do so was bad was because it was stuff like that.

I also think the DC is 20.

To pinpoint the square it's 20 over the DC. So invisibilitynis 20 - 20 for fighting, DC = 0 to notice the presence of the invisible attacker and +20 to pinpoint square.

No rule gives you a -20 for attacking on your stealth check except sniping, and sniping takes a move action so it can not be done with a full attack, and must e done with a ranged attack, you would have the full dc, on top of that the rules themselves state that it is a +20 to stealth if you are attempting to hide, so a five foot step away would allow you to attempt to hide since your opponent can not see you.

You would know you were attacked, you would know where you were attacked from, but if unless you had a way to see invisible or detect if the opponent was still there you would not be able to tell if they were still there or not without a perception check.

Although invisibility provides total concealment, sighted opponents may still make Perception checks to notice the location of an invisible character. An invisible character gains a +20 bonus on Stealth checks if moving, or a +40 bonus on Stealth checks when not moving (even though opponents can't see you, they might be able to figure out where you are from other visual or auditory clues).

As seen here if you move, five foot step is movement you get a +20 to stealth for them to attempt to detect you. It explicitly calls out that it is +20 stealth.

And if you want to say a five foot step is not movement then it would be a +40 to stealth.
IF a five foot step is movement it would give you the opportunity to hide again by RAW, because it is movement, RAW calls movement not the move action.

So the point of sniping is to avoid being pin pointed, so let's say joe sniper snipes makes his -20 stealth check, all is right in the world the enemy doesn't know where he is.
Now Joe does a full attack then hides after using a five foot step, the enemy still knows where he shot from and can move towards him because his location is known even if they can't see him because he is stealthed.

Action

Usually none. Normally, you make a Stealth check as part of movement, so it doesn't take a separate action. However, using Stealth immediately after a ranged attack (see Sniping, above) is a move action.

Now from this stealth does not require an action, it is normaly taken as part of a move action because....

When you start your turn using Stealth, you can leave cover or concealment and remain unobserved as long as you succeed at a Stealth check and end your turn in cover or concealment. Your Stealth immediately ends after you make an attack roll, whether or not the attack is successful (except when sniping as noted below).

You begin and end in concealment.

This entire discussion is rendered moot by greater invisibility.

Of course, the subject is not magically silenced, and certain other conditions can render the recipient detectable (such as swimming in water or stepping in a puddle). If a check is required, a stationary invisible creature has a +40 bonus on its Stealth checks. This bonus is reduced to +20 if the creature is moving.

As we see here you can not be seen, if you can not be seen the opponent needs to make a check to perceive you after you change squares with the five foot step, the check would be 20 from invisible + stealth score vrs perception. This is also part of being invisible this is not mundane hiding which also could not be done well being observed without special abilities.

Now with Scent you have an easy answer to this issue.

When the creature is within 5 feet of the source, it pinpoints the source’s location.

You can pin point him by five foot stepping into the square he just attacked you from.

Or, again, you can manage it entirely behind the screen without telling anyone and if you do it at all with subtlety everyone gets to play what they want without feeling constrained by the gm.

This is entirely the worst advice you can give someone, the gm I had that pulled that crap I refuse to play with anymore because I can't trust him and it was easy to tell what he was doing.

If you want things to go how you want arbitrarily write a book.

Mr. Pitt has the right idea. If you start undermining your players they will stop trusting you. The GM I had, after we figured out he was cheating we never trusted anything he did again, because well he cheated us once he could do it again. In the end it is a cooperative game, once you start cheating you ruin the spirit of it, especially if it is done out of spite, your role as a dm should be arbiter and judge. I am going to reiterate, if it seems too strong and like there is a problem talk to him about it, or if needed have the group talk together. Creating a mentality of us vrs them is never what you want to do but if you start doing stuff like fixing damage dealt, telling players that you are going to retroactively make them ineffective, ect it will hurt their faith in you running the game. So talk to him and rather then say this is how it is say I want to work with you to fix this, these are my concerns how can we come to an agreement that will make us both happy. A lot of dms seem to forget that the game is cooperative at it's heart not vrs.

So reading this over.
You have talked with him, do not take the advice to cheat, it is very obvious when dms cheat with the dice. I nearly walked out of a game when a dm started cheating dice then lied to my face about it. Which was made better by other players noting they noticed it too.
If talking to him doesn't work then ask him for solutions or have a group talk about it if it is a problem, find a comprimise, resorting to fiat and rule 0 constantly will just make your player feel targeted and will ruin their enjoyment if you use it to nerf what they want to do so heavily it becomes impossible to do.
Also, specifically for the magus, if he has to move to attack he can not full attack, this lowers his damage progression a lot.
Don't play against the player should be the core thing, once you start an arms race with your players you will win and they will lose interest because it is not ment to be us vrs them.
More smaller enemies was a good suggestion since he will have trouble being able to attack them all at once and will give everyone something to do in combat. Or even do one or two big guys will little guys to encourage him to not go all out 100% of the time. Also use multiple combats in a day, it will force him to not want to use all his goodies in one combat.