Changing Flavor: How far is too far?


Gamer Life General Discussion


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

How much flavor do you think a GM can change before it becomes a BAD thing for the players and the game? I can understand making things more interesting, but how far is TOO far? When things get confusing? When it makes the challenge much harder due to lack of expected information?

Or is it a useful tool against metagaming?

For example, how would you feel if your GM described a powerful sorcerer with a magnificent horned helm that emitted deadly beams of arcane energy from its horns. You and your party waste a few rounds/actions sundering said beam-spewing helm only to find that it was never the helm at all, but the sorcerer's Arcane Bolt class ability. Would you feel cheated?

See this thread post for another example.

Please discuss.


When it starts to taste bad. (different groups have different taste)


For me, I believe there is a level of information players should have access to that covers what their character would know just by living in that world. Example: I would let them know that a common monster is X the moment they saw it. Then there is information they might not know like what it looks like when the wizards of Zokmar use their arcane energy beams. I realize this is a silly example, but as a player I would judge what the reality is that my character would know this information.


I think the horned helmet is fine - as long as the players gets a knowledge check to know what it is. That way we eliminate player knowledge and replace it with char knowledge.

And why would the players sunder the item? - Why not kill the sorc and loot the helmet?


As long as no-one could have known it was the Arcane Bolt's it's all right. As a character I might feel a bit cheated, as a player I'd give you a look and admit it was a good plan.
Overall it would help for me if you tell the players that you choose to play some thing differently. And you should be able to get the right infomation when you make the right Knowledge check.

Last session My DM made an (non figthing) encounter with an Illusionist. He decided that this encounter would work better if you did not see the illusion when your saving throw was good enough.(And he was completly right, that helped.) I was i very confused because of this.
It would have helped if he would have told us this a session or more ago.


I like to think of assassin root as a good example that would play off assassin vine.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Little Skylark wrote:

Last session My DM made an (non figthing) encounter with an Illusionist. He decided that this encounter would work better if you did not see the illusion when your saving throw was good enough.(And he was completly right, that helped.) I was i very confused because of this.

It would have helped if he would have told us this a session or more ago.

"A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline."

Your GM wasn't changing flavor, but breaking the rules and disadvantaging his players for his own gain.


One other thought, I think you should change up the flavor once in a while to help keep the setting new and to feel "right". So if the characters have gone to new land with a new culture and then sees Magic Missle cast the same way with the same effect just seems odd. Why wouldn't the new culture also maybe have a different visual effect for the spell? I think your efforts would add to the game IMO.


This is a great chance for the GM to apply a circumstance penalty. Knowledge checks are rolled, a -2 is applied, since the characters think it is the helm. If they make the DC still, the GM lets them know that the ability being used is the exact same as Arcane Bolt.

If the players decide the helm is a sham, then they can act accordingly, ignoring it. They might think the helm boosts or otherwise modifies the ability, and still decide sundering it is more important than simply doing damage. They might think that the helm grants Arcane Bolt uses, and again decide to sunder it instead of attacking.

All three of these situations are things that might happen logically, and the characters themselves ought to work it out. I don't think it's necessary for a GM to say exactly what's happening if a Knowledge check is high enough - just give the information as they would get. Let them decide what to do with it.

I always compare it to a Perception check in my head. Here's a good example, actually:

In the campaign in which I'm playing in, the BBEG is this extraplanar monster that ties these bags filled with organs (from humanoids and animals) to things and leaves them hanging around. Sometimes they're on doors or lampposts or trees, whatever, and they've become a sort of sign (one of many) that the BBEG is around. Last session, during watch at night, my character did a Perception check, and he saw something hanging from a tree a little ways off, that was roundish. He freaked, woke everyone up, and they crept over and inspected it. It was a beehive. The GM was just messing with us, and let our paranoia affect how we perceived the environment.

Really, a Knowledge check shouldn't be different. Just give them the basic information, and they have to work it out.

DISCLAIMER: Obviously, this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

Contributor

Part of the trouble is that you play with the perception and accepted knowledge of the game world.

Take, for example, wands. In Pathfinder, the accepted reality is that a wand is a stick pre-charged with some particular spell. You point it at the target, say the magic word, and *POOF* the magic happens. Disarming someone wielding a wand removes that particular threat.

In the Harry Potter universe, OTOH, wands are used as a magical focus. They have no power in and of themselves, but they allow a wizard of that world to focus their power and use it more effectively. Disarming a Potterverse wizard of his/her wand doesn't remove all their power, but does make them less effective.

The closest parallel to this in Pathfinder is the assorted metamagic rods. Basically your wizard has a magic walking stick that can be used, for example, to add the Empower feat to a spell. It's also usually assumed that he uses the walking stick in some portion of the casting, pointing it or waving it or something. It may also be assumed that if he wants, he can use the rod the same way in a spell he's not using its function for, if just because having to hand it to his golf caddy when he doesn't use its magic gets tedious.

So then on to the question of the sorcerer shooting lightning bolts out of the horns on his hat. Why is he doing that, especially in a world where it is established that there are such things as helms of brilliance and taking off someone's lightning-bolt shooting hat is a valid combat tactic?

If the GM is doing it to fake out the players for relying on their knowledge of the game world, then at very least he should allow the same tactics for the party. Let the party wizard roll his bat turds in glitter then string them as the dangly bits of a gaudy necklace. Let him yank one off whenever he casts a fireball, and then have the enemies make a concentrated effort to disarm him of the "necklace of fireballs" which is really just a necklace of bat turds.

Alternately, allow characters to do a Spellcraft check to figure out whether any particular character prop is a magic item being activated, a focus for a spell, or an inconsequential prop. Similarly, if the sorcerer wants to dance around with a pencil and convince opponents that it is actually a magic wand, have him make a Bluff check to flim-flam those with Spellcraft.


Kevin Andrew Murphy wrote:
Alternately, allow characters to do a Spellcraft check to figure out whether any particular character prop is a magic item being activated, a focus for a spell, or an inconsequential prop. Similarly, if the sorcerer wants to dance around with a pencil and convince opponents that it is actually a magic wand, have him make a Bluff check to flim-flam those with Spellcraft.

This. As a free action, anyone with Spellcraft should have asked for a check. If they failed then they would believe as the GM described and that would be OK.

Not all spells will be cast the same way by all casters. Characters will have to learn this on their own. Players should be asking for checks to allow them to know this.


Isn't there a simple solution to the example given that can completely sidestep the issue? For example, the players just delivered a successful sunder attack to a helmet that wasn't there. In other words, they struck a blow hard enough to damage or destroy a helmet to the sorcerer's unprotected head. Wouldn't it be easier to just have them roll for damage and/or add an appropriate status affect? Though I suppose that then you'd be back at square one, explaining that sunder doesn't really work like that, that you were just throwing them a bone.


Ravingdork wrote:
Little Skylark wrote:

Last session My DM made an (non figthing) encounter with an Illusionist. He decided that this encounter would work better if you did not see the illusion when your saving throw was good enough.(And he was completly right, that helped.) I was i very confused because of this.

It would have helped if he would have told us this a session or more ago.

"A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline."

Your GM wasn't changing flavor, but breaking the rules and disadvantaging his players for his own gain.

Maybe he ruled they weren't interacting with it. Like maybe just looking at it isn't enough.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Gignere wrote:
Ravingdork wrote:
Little Skylark wrote:

Last session My DM made an (non figthing) encounter with an Illusionist. He decided that this encounter would work better if you did not see the illusion when your saving throw was good enough.(And he was completely right, that helped.) I was i very confused because of this.

It would have helped if he would have told us this a session or more ago.

"A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline."

Your GM wasn't changing flavor, but breaking the rules and disadvantaging his players for his own gain.

Maybe he ruled they weren't interacting with it. Like maybe just looking at it isn't enough.

Based on what was said (bolded above) it sounded like the illusion became invisible to them once they made their saves.

That not only breaks the existing RAW, it unfairly disadvantages the players that made their saves.

If I were a player in that game, I would be quick to find out if the GM merely flubbed the rules by mistake, or was actively cheating, and then resolve the issue appropriately.


i would feel cheated by the false helm. if i spent a whole turn sundering a helm that wasn't really there. at least give me (and other allies) a damage roll with all of my sunder based bonuses for each successful attack wasted on the false helmet.

though i have no problems with taking a scimitar and refluffing it as a sabre or taking a longsword and refluffing it as a jian. or describing your silken ceremonial armor as something akin to a wizard's robe or a noble's dress.

hell, i don't care if you describe your leather armor as a freaking corset.

and i don't care if you call your ninja a chelexian hellstalker and i would gladly allow dervish dance to work with reasonable alternative weapons if you wish.

just don't tie your class abilities to a piece of fluff equipment that losing said item has no penalties for. if your big class feature has been described the whole time as being tied to an item. losing that item better hurt. yes, you get the advantage of surprising your foe, but it should reasonably come with penalties that come from losing them item.

the sorcerer with the horned helmet, he tied his arcane bolts to a helmet, he better not be throwing them once i sunder that darn helmet. or if he does, they should be drastically weakened.

if your synthesist requires a transformation trinket, i better well be able to take that trinket and negate (or at least penalize) future transformations as long as i deprive you of it.


I guess part of this would lie in the ground rules of the campaign. In my world, a particular spell manifests a bit differently depending in the specific caster, giving each caster a unique magical signature. Take something straightforward like casting fireball. One sorcerer might seem to spit a green-hued fireball out of his mouth. A crimson bird-like shape might seem to originate from a wizard's bonded object, exploding into a fireball upon impact. A white-hot glowing spehere might spring from a different wizard's fingertips like a Roman candle. And for a cleric of the sun god, a shooting star might appear to fall from the sky, exploding into a fireball where the caster designated.

However, it's consistent for a given caster. And I would think that there needed to be a reason that a spell-like ability appeared to originate from an object-- perhaps a glammer effect? Some kind of magical distraction feat? Is the helm this caster's bonded object, and all of the caster's effects originate from it?

I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but I recall feats in Inner Sea Magic that made the casting of a spell appear to originate from a fake magic item; or to make the casting of a divine spell appear to be arcane. If that was what was going on with the fake magic helm, that's cool by me.

Basically, if there was an in-game reason other than "the GM wanted to mess with the players," then I'm for it.


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I think a lot of what is discussed here is the exact wrong way to handle this and the exact right way to take all fun out of a game.

RPG's are about exploration through the eyes of the characters, not a series of triggering events that cause the GM to call for dice to be rolled.

If the players want to assume things, let them.

If they want to say "Hey, my character is wondering about that helm, and what is causing that strange effect." That is when the GM should call for the appropriate roll.

Granted, your players should understand this is how you handle information but doing it this way makes the game MUCH more fun. Then your players get to figure things out on their own, and its not the responsibility of the GM to spoon-feed you info whenever you're about to make a mistake.

As a player if you're not responsible for your own assumptions and interactions with the world, then what exactly are you doing to actually RP?

As a GM if you're not letting your players manage their own assumptions and interactions with the world, then why exactly are they even there?


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As to the issue of the helm being a fake-out:

If we assume the GM was just faking the players out and had no planned flavor reasons then we are into a trust issue with the GM and the helm is not the problem anymore. GMs and players need a certain level of trust. The GM gets to bend the rules when they deem that it is necessary. If you, as a player, can't trust your GM to use that power for the best interests of the game, then you may just be in the wrong game.

If we assume the GM did have a planned flavor in mind, then again, its fine to let players make assumptions and act on them, so long as they have the option to think things through and make a roll if they actively choose to do so.


Ravingdork wrote:

Your GM wasn't changing flavor, but breaking the rules and disadvantaging his players for his own gain.

"For his own gain?" Is there some kind of gambling going on around most tables that I'm unaware of?

Let's ease up on accusations of sinister intent, eh? It's a friendly game, after all.


I like new settings and new rule systems, for novelty and so the players don't know everything.

As we go through, yeah I will introduce them to the world, but not every bit of fantasy or expectation comes across in my games.

Best example of this, a dm threw a CR 1 pie golem at us in a pre-gen. The pie golem was not a part of the pre-gen. It was great.


Here, I think, is a better question:

When a GM does change flavor, is it his responsibility to suggest knowledge/spellcraft rolls to players, or is it up to them to ask for them?


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Shouldn't players just have to push the "X" button, and select the right response from a list of three choices?


If it's not going to make any mechanical difference, it's just reskinning. For example, you could make an Ulfen fighter with a falchion or nodachi, but describe it like a claymore or zweihander to make it look more culturally appropriate. I don't see any reason that crit range should be limited by how curvy or antenna-like one's blade is. Maybe it's partially serrated, or has a different center of balance, and depending on how subtle the difference is, you could just tell everyone the blade is nonstandard for a greatsword, or have someone make a craft (Weapons) check. Even then, it's not likely to change the way they respond to it tactically. Reskinning a scimitar as a mace would be a different story, as the difference in expected damage type could be relevant to some kinds of DR.
As to the helmet example, I think that'd be more reasonable if the caster were an arcanist with an arcane bond item, so disarm, sunder, and dispel tactics would be relevant if used, instead of making it a bait & switch that potentially gets the party to waste resources.

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