#i'm gonna fail every single class or whatever haha

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Making Choices Matter

When a player makes a choice in the game, they want that to matter.

That sounds extremely simple. No shit, right?

But that's actually something that I think a lot of GMs overlook, or don't realize.

When your player makes a choice during character creation, picking an offball skill or a weird feat or a strange subclass, they are literally communicating to the GM: "I'm interested in this."

I've made this opinion before, but in my opinion the true core tenet of GMing a game is to cater to your players. After all, you're putting on a little show for them. They're your friends, and you deserve to have fun as well, of course; but they are making decisions and they would love it if those decisions mattered.

This came up because there's a new playtest for the Dragon Game and in it, Paladins are no longer immune to disease or able to cure it with their Lay On Hands feature. I saw a post that said, "[That feature] made using diseases trivial in a game with a paladin."

I argue: The entire point of taking the feature is so that you can use diseases and let the Paladin player feel cool.

I would actually include disease in a game that otherwise did not include it, if we had a Paladin in the party. I would go out of my way to do that.

Because it's really cool if you say, "Okay, everyone who failed the save now has a disease," and the Paladin player pipes up and goes, "Wait a minute! I'm immune to disease! Fuck yeah!" The player feels super cool now. And if they're high enough level, the Paladin can use Lay on Hands to make their friends cured of the disease. That's something that literally no other character in the game would be capable of!

But this other person...they're just gonna never include disease in the game if they have a Paladin in the party, because they don't want to see the players succeed, I guess. Which, to me, is fundamentally the wrong approach to having a fun time with your friends.

I design these challenges to be overcome. I know as soon as I put a huge fucked up monster in front of them and say, "Haha, this thing has 3 attacks and legendary actions, you guys are fucked," the whole point is for them to destroy it. The entire reason I have this monster here is for them to kill it and win.

If your player makes a choice and you never cater to it, they have wasted that choice. This player wanted to be immune to disease! They thought it would be super cool if the enemy spewed out some horrifying shit that grows boils on your skin or whatever and they get to just go, "Nope, I don't even have to make a save, I'm literally immune to it. Die, monster! You don't belong in this world!" But because they have a bad GM who doesn't cater to their players, and in fact plays against them, they never get to have that cool moment. It never happens for them. They wasted their choice.

And I think the worst thing a GM can do is waste a player choice. They could have picked something else, but they didn't, and now they get nothing, and that sucks.

Now, the dragon game is FULL of choices. You aren't obligated to include disease for every game you have a Paladin in. That's ludicrous. A class, especially in 5e, is a huge package of multiple features and ideas, and it's basically impossible to cater to and include every single one throughout the campaign. Some of it you'll just fucking forget exists. Hopefully, you are a good GM, and communicate to your players when they make a character. Hey, Divine Health isn't even a feature you have to pick, you just get it. So maybe your Paladin player couldn't give a shit less about it. No harm, no foul. But to outright say, "I'm never using disease in a game with a Paladin," is pretty absurd to me.

#roleplaying games #ttrpgs #gming #dming #d&d