DM: The Druid explains that her chickens have disappeared-
Scootaloo: Seriously? She's a Druid! Can't she just summon more?
DM: For the love of Luna's left hoof... Summons don't work that way. The Druid needs heroes to track down her hens. She offers you a generous reward for your help.
Scootaloo: Like what, pine needles & tree sap? Pfff-HAHAHA! Since when do Druids raise chickens?
Apple Bloom: Yeah! A real Druid would let them roam free!
Scootaloo: I bet she's really an egg-poaching thief in disguise! Flank her, girls!
DM: I miss my WoW guild.
"In a game about fantasy heroes, creative creatures and imaginative magic, I'm surprised how often players will use logic to disbelieve certain elements of the game."
And so it is right. Fantasy world, like any other, should obey its internal rules and follow some logic - that's what creates a suspension of disbelief in players and/or audience. I don't care if magic means 2 + 2 = fish, but don't try to use it as an argument if it comes out as frog for no real reason except sloppy thinking.
I don't believe there is any inconsistency here, but he's talking about as a general rule.
I also happen to agree with this. This is the kind of stuff that makes a setting serious or not.
Things like, "How can the ecosystem support all these apex predators?" And, "Why doesn't the economy crumble thanks to adventures constantly returning with chests full of gold?" or "If the shopkeeper has all of this expensive equipment, why can't I shank him? Level 20 huh? Why isn't he out saving the world instead?"
Consistency is what sets the tone of your game.
Using real world logic with regards to fantasy though is potentially another story. Even a Wizard is unlikely to know anything about particle physics for instance. But good luck preventing one from starting the industrial revolution and creating free energy devices.
I actually have killed a shop keeper before. He was another party member's brother, and his character hated his family. My character was a two-weapon ranger named archer, who was a member of the royal guard, but only due to his skill, not his 'honor.' So, after several plat was sent to me, I skill check'd the crap out of brother shop keep, sold everything he owned to other NPC shops, and distracted the guards by casually walking around town with my 9 speed, laughing as the party kept trying to force me back onto our airship. They only succeeded due to a fail-crit-fail skill check of me roof running next to the rope ladder...
I got a bit tied up, so the fun with the guards had to end.
Needless to say, my char was one of the several from our party who were permanently banished from town.
I still think it was a win for me, as that character still has 15+ AD...
Between me and the dragonborn sorc, who is way too efficient with those contracts, we have near 100 AD
I haven't had a chance to use it yet because I basically never DM, but my favourite idea is that a level twenty-some-odd wizard goes around setting up "no-kill zone" wards, sometimes as a civil service or low-profit philanthropic endeavor- but usually in exchange for a percentage of the profits, hence why shopkeepers in cheap inns can be slaughtered wholesale but shopkeepers with a good stock of magic items aren't targets.
Alternately, depending on the setting, there's a god that does it automatically, but I like the Wandering Izschack more than the vengeful god of shopkeepers.
On Fantasy Logic -
In D&D 3rd edition, werewolves have a resistance to damage overcome only by silver. In a recent fight with werewolves, one PCs used a magic glove that creates daggers with the "Bane" magic ability. What Bane does is give an additional +2 bonus to attack and +2d6 to damage toward a specific type of creature. In this case, his dagger was "Werewolf Bane".
But the PC incorrectly assumed that the word Bane, by classic Webster definition, should also overcome the damage reduction werewolves have. It doesn't. The fight halted for two minutes to explain that Bane and Silver are not the same thing in this game's context.
Just because silver is the "bane" of werewolves, it doesn't mean that the magic ability "Bane" on his dagger is silver.
With that out of the way combat resumed.
And the PC got blinded by the naked Nymph anyway so... hurray?
Good question. I suppose covering their eyes would work. I believe the blidning ability works on sight so not looking at one would prevent it.
you'd have a lot of ponies looking at the ground though. :)
Well, yes...sort of. In mage, you have to have the pre-requitsite know-how. You can't just conjure up a working nuclear weapon... you have to already know how to make one, and then have the prerequisite spheres to create the parts and materials for it. Plus your paradigm has to allow for such things, and then there's paradox, and the trouble with making the stuff permanant... basically, while you CAN make a nuclear weapon in Mage, it's probably easier to just BUY one from some dude name One-Thumb Yuri in Kazakhstan or something
What we have here is a textbook example of the PCs not wanting to be cooperative with the GM.
Luckily for me, I haven't ever run into any of that yet. Usually my groups are pretty good about helping the GM along - I mean, after all, it's not easy to be a GM. They've definitely got the hardest part in the game - imagining encounters, preparing stats, etc.
Actually, considering that worshiping nature doesn't mean you're a PETA member or even vegetarian it makes perfect sense for a druid to raise chickens.
After all, sacrificing people all the time attracts too much suspicion.
I actually had someone try that 'hippy druid' thing on me once. It was another players girlfriend, and she wasn't TOO bad. She asked a lot of questions, repeatedly, about what die to throw and such...she was a fighter with a large ax. All she needed was the D20 and the d12 and she couldn't be bothered to remember it. So let's see what this "genius" had to say about druids.
Girlfriend: Hey you can't eat that, it's meat.
Me: So?
GF: So? Aren't you like a tree huggy mage thing?
Me: You mean a druid, a nature priest?
GF: Yeah, I mean you can't respect nature if you're evil and eat animals and stuff.
Me: Well what am I supposed to eat then?
GF: Well plants duh, that way you don't hurt nature.
Me: So you're saying PLANTS aren't a part of nature, and that eating animals is evil because it doesn't happen naturally.
GF: Oh yeah, I guess you can't eat like trees or other important plants either.
My pathfinder group right now is doing their best to make sure that in a world where magic works and many species live together, that every town the DM makes works properly in a medieval setting. They were surprised when the first town we went to has a democratic government (albeit a super corrupt one that we had to take out), and wanted to be very specific at how the farming systems in our town worked. They basically wanted to make sure it was like medieval Europe, and while some objections to what the DM had was reasonable, others were just a little silly, because you can't assume that the culture and social structure of a fantasy world is going to be medieval, even if that's where the non-magic tech is at the moment.
Ever since Eberron came out, all my D+D worlds have secretly been Eberron (in the sense that magical technology makes the effective tech level higher than medieval even if people still use medieval trappings).
My group had similar interests. One time we launched a 3 hour tangent discussing with the DM exactly how our newly acquired city states (plural, like a boss), would interact economically, including the concept of slave labor, resource management, and military draft and development, and most importantly, securing a major waterway in the area from the Dwarven kingdom across the water in order to control trade throughout the entire region.
Try getting the rest of the party involved to the point that it looks like each of you just got a doctorate in socio-economics- talk talk talk about money, resources, how to deal with citzens, etc. It might inspire him to let you do it.
It's sad that people don't learn about medieval democracies in school. Italy, for example, had an embarrassment of democratically ruled cities*; and you didn't usually have a large town without it having a certain freedom from the lords to run their own business.
* Actually, Italy tended to have towns that tried every possible kind of governmental system, every few years or so when people get bored. You could go away on business for six weeks and come back to a commune, or an oligarchy, or a democracy, or a despot. Siena went through a lot of this, IIRC.
Amusing, could someone tell them that the default Pathfinder setting is actually late Renaissance? And that one of the 'five Frances'[1] is from the 20th century, (Isger is Vichy France).
Damn that was quick. Session just started and its already about to be catastrophically derailed. Or the DM is going to let Fluttershy fight back, and then Rocks fall.
Yea, but the other side of the coin a lot of DMs are so lazy they just use the excuse "a wizard did it" on everything. I mean there is a level of suspension of disbelieve but if you push it too far, then that suspension breaks.
Yes, but it often breaks for the most arbitrary of reasons. It's a bit jarring when the sort of person that wants to play a half-celestial half-fiend kobold sorcerer/barbarian/dragon disciple with a feral template half-dragon silver dragon mount and an awakened rabbit druid for a valet doesn't bat at eye when hired to defeat the ancient (fire) half-elemental (white) half-dragon tyrannosaur that guards the "Secret" Gate to Everywhere at the northern pole quits your game because your description of the journey mentioned both polar bears and penguins.
Fluttershy has a lot of work to do every day. She is in charge of all the animal care in Ponyville. She doesn't have the time to chase after a few chickens when she has to coordinate all of the other animal care workers in town. And taking care of them also includes taking care of them as they grow up and giving them medical attention. The CMCs don't understand logistics.
Point of order: the veterinarian pony in "Secret of my Excess" has never seen Spike before. It is therefore unlikely that she has any kind of close working relationship with Fluttershy - or indeed any of the mane six.
Counter point: Spike is the only Dragon in Ponyville, and certainly the only Dragon Fluttershy has dealings with. Because it is Spikes first time at the vet, there really would be no reason for her to have experience dealing with dragons.
Depends on how close they are to the chickens. I've seen Players do some pretty crazy stuff over Animal Companions or other steeds and stuff they'd bonded with emotionally.
If it's just "Hey those are my source of Eggs and pillow stuffings" then yeah, hire a couple kids to go get 'em.
I just want to say that I'm really, really, enjoying this guest series. To me, it feels extremely true to the CMC's characters, and the screen captures are excellent. I'd like to suggest that the author develop this idea further and make his/her own comic strip.
In a game about fantasy heroes, creative creatures and imaginative magic, I'm surprised how often DMs haven't heard of suspension of disbelief or internal consistency.
Oh, they've heard of them. They just recognize that these things aren't often worth the effort. That's especially true if players don't offer more than complaints about what is supposed to be a cooperative process. If they're not paying for the DM's time (both at the table and in preparation), the obligation to make sense of things is the entire table's responsibility.
The Encounters program works in part because of where it encourages organizers to ignore internal consistency. When you're running three to six tables at a time, people are always coming and going, and tables change from session to session. People will show up for just one scene, or every other scene, or find themselves proceeding to the next scene with an entirely different group every week. You wind up relying on retroactive continuity more than would be good for a novel.
Fortunately, this is a game, not a novel. You have players, not an audience. As participants, they should recognize when it's in their interest to recognize that we have always been at war with Eastasia.
It's less funny when you realize Flank means the side of the pony, and does not technically have any kind of pseudo-sexual connotation, beyond the ever so immature "Lol she said flank. Lol that means her butt lol".
That's why we have "rump" and "plot", which you'll agree are even easier to be immature about in a DnD context.
Actually, its a picture of Rainbow Dash flicking her hoof whilst saying "Swag", which was preceeded by "Yeah, why don't you suck my dick ya dumb bitch, hurrhurrhurr."
NPC King: Greetings, oh hale and hearty warriors! We thanks thee, that thou hast answered our call, in this, our darkest time.
Player: Certainly, my liege. How may we be of service?
NPC King: We have been plagued by by foul vermin, they devour our crops, infest our fields, and attack our people, and we are helpless against their numbers and might!
Player: We shall slay them. Tell us, what threatens your kingdom?
NPC King: We are beset by rats. You must aid us, brave knight.
Player: Rats? How are rats dangerous?
NPC King: They swarm by the dozens, and just the other day, Sairos here was bitten by one. He bled for nigh unto twenty minutes! Seiros, show them your wound.
A guard steps forward and looks at you pathetically as he holds up his finger. It has a small bandage wrapped around the tip.
"In a game about fantasy heroes, creative creatures and imaginative magic, I'm surprised how often players will use logic to disbelieve certain elements of the game."