Once again I find myself second guessing my choices due to some player discussion/complaints. I am not one to change spell, save, or RAW DCs but I do very often change item, trap standard DCs to keep seasoned players on their toes. Am I wrong/unfair in doing so?
I am seriously curious if other DM go by PhB, DMG, etc...with these items.
Example: manacles DC 20, I scaled up due to a particularly slippery/nimble PC. I also sometimes "enchant" to prevent magical tomfoolery but now I have gotten some feedback that I'm being unfair, honestly its making me want to quit all together because I keep getting the books preached at me.
I guess my question is are changing up DCs something y'all as DMs do or am I the lone trickster?
All, I repeat, ALL of the numbers in the game can be changed at the DM's will.
The discussion at your table is something I've dealt with many, many times since I DM both at home and for my local shop. I will get vets in who know information from 4 generations of books, and I'll get the rules lawyers who tell me I'm doing it wrong because the book says. The answer to your plight is a bit two fold:
1: You are wrong about how you handled the manacles, but only in the sense that you did it to thwart a player. Never compete with your players.
2: Actions have consequences. If you find something that a player is really good at, reward it, and use other things to make life interesting for them.
I have a rather slippery monk in my group, binding them is a joke, but I do it all the time. The last time it happened, when she escaped, I had about half a dozen guards wandering around the facility specifically watching certain choke points. She entered one of the choke points, got hit by a few poisoned darts, and woke to find herself back in the cell, bound, drugged, and with 2 guards at the cell door.
Another player I had chose to take the find familiar ritual, pulled out an owl, and used it to do aerial scouting. This made ambushes, surprise events, and hidden locations almost impossible to put into my game. I did all that anyhow, and decided to play a different hand. One time the owl spotted a broken down caravan, they avoided it thinking it was an ambush. When they reached the next town they had to explain why they left the local merchants out to die in the wilderness. There were other times that they saw things that looked like ambushes and avoided them, only to find out they were ambushes and everything worked perfectly.
I hope those points give you something to think about, but we have one last thing to touch on:
Don't stop DMing! Everyone, even veteran DMs like myself, makes mistakes. Around 30 years of DMing under my belt and I forget initiative, I forget to roll damage dice for my creatures, I forget that my player's Barbarian has 2 attacks. Your players are giving you feedback, that is wonderful. That means they are participating inside your game and their actions have meaning to them.
The other part though, is to stand your ground, you are the DM. Ultimately your decision is what happens, you want a DC 25 manacle, tell them it's masterwork craftsmanship. After explaining that, explain that you are going to manipulate numbers, as DM it's your prerogative, but you will take their concerns into account. As you've shown on the forums you do take their words into account, but you have to make a decision, stick with it, and stand firm on it. Once that consistency and confidence are shown, your players should accept your rulings with more grace.
The philosophy behind 5e is "story first". Creatures and objects have the stats they should have according to their story. A goblin is a goblin; it doesn't get scaled up to match the players without a narrative reason. That doesn't mean you can't have a goblin tribe leader/champion/warlord/whatever that's tougher than the average goblin, but it does mean you don't throw players into a dungeon where all the goblins are CR 10 for no apparent reason just so you can adjust the difficulty.
That's not to say you can't (you're the DM) or that doing so is inherently bad, but it does ruin immersion for some players and it's often unnecessary. 5e's rules ensure even low CR monsters can pose a threat to high-level characters. ACs rarely go above 20 by any significant amount, so even a CR 1/4 goblin's shortbow attack has a decent chance of hitting and dealing significant damage. (See: Tucker's Kobolds)
So, by all means, have enchanted manacles that are harder to pick, but then you have to be ready to explain who created them and why do the NPCs that are using them on the player have them? If you don't have a convincing story reason for why these manacles are harder to pick, your players are going to feel cheated.
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So....
Once again I find myself second guessing my choices due to some player discussion/complaints. I am not one to change spell, save, or RAW DCs but I do very often change item, trap standard DCs to keep seasoned players on their toes. Am I wrong/unfair in doing so?
I am seriously curious if other DM go by PhB, DMG, etc...with these items.
Example: manacles DC 20, I scaled up due to a particularly slippery/nimble PC. I also sometimes "enchant" to prevent magical tomfoolery but now I have gotten some feedback that I'm being unfair, honestly its making me want to quit all together because I keep getting the books preached at me.
I guess my question is are changing up DCs something y'all as DMs do or am I the lone trickster?
Thanks for reading,
M
Sometimes a Nat 1 tells a better story than a Nat 20 ever could.
All, I repeat, ALL of the numbers in the game can be changed at the DM's will.
The discussion at your table is something I've dealt with many, many times since I DM both at home and for my local shop. I will get vets in who know information from 4 generations of books, and I'll get the rules lawyers who tell me I'm doing it wrong because the book says. The answer to your plight is a bit two fold:
1: You are wrong about how you handled the manacles, but only in the sense that you did it to thwart a player. Never compete with your players.
2: Actions have consequences. If you find something that a player is really good at, reward it, and use other things to make life interesting for them.
I have a rather slippery monk in my group, binding them is a joke, but I do it all the time. The last time it happened, when she escaped, I had about half a dozen guards wandering around the facility specifically watching certain choke points. She entered one of the choke points, got hit by a few poisoned darts, and woke to find herself back in the cell, bound, drugged, and with 2 guards at the cell door.
Another player I had chose to take the find familiar ritual, pulled out an owl, and used it to do aerial scouting. This made ambushes, surprise events, and hidden locations almost impossible to put into my game. I did all that anyhow, and decided to play a different hand. One time the owl spotted a broken down caravan, they avoided it thinking it was an ambush. When they reached the next town they had to explain why they left the local merchants out to die in the wilderness. There were other times that they saw things that looked like ambushes and avoided them, only to find out they were ambushes and everything worked perfectly.
I hope those points give you something to think about, but we have one last thing to touch on:
Don't stop DMing! Everyone, even veteran DMs like myself, makes mistakes. Around 30 years of DMing under my belt and I forget initiative, I forget to roll damage dice for my creatures, I forget that my player's Barbarian has 2 attacks. Your players are giving you feedback, that is wonderful. That means they are participating inside your game and their actions have meaning to them.
The other part though, is to stand your ground, you are the DM. Ultimately your decision is what happens, you want a DC 25 manacle, tell them it's masterwork craftsmanship. After explaining that, explain that you are going to manipulate numbers, as DM it's your prerogative, but you will take their concerns into account. As you've shown on the forums you do take their words into account, but you have to make a decision, stick with it, and stand firm on it. Once that consistency and confidence are shown, your players should accept your rulings with more grace.
The philosophy behind 5e is "story first". Creatures and objects have the stats they should have according to their story. A goblin is a goblin; it doesn't get scaled up to match the players without a narrative reason. That doesn't mean you can't have a goblin tribe leader/champion/warlord/whatever that's tougher than the average goblin, but it does mean you don't throw players into a dungeon where all the goblins are CR 10 for no apparent reason just so you can adjust the difficulty.
That's not to say you can't (you're the DM) or that doing so is inherently bad, but it does ruin immersion for some players and it's often unnecessary. 5e's rules ensure even low CR monsters can pose a threat to high-level characters. ACs rarely go above 20 by any significant amount, so even a CR 1/4 goblin's shortbow attack has a decent chance of hitting and dealing significant damage. (See: Tucker's Kobolds)
So, by all means, have enchanted manacles that are harder to pick, but then you have to be ready to explain who created them and why do the NPCs that are using them on the player have them? If you don't have a convincing story reason for why these manacles are harder to pick, your players are going to feel cheated.