Bawylie
A very OK person
Gotcha and thanks for the response.
To me, when the player asks for disadvantage on their own attacks to reflect their flaw, their intent and such was much more clearerly much more succintly reported to me than "feebly attack" or any amount of "rate the fear vs the attack in terms of" back and forth questioning could produce.
I dont feel its necessary or good for me to decide for him what "feebly" translates to or whether there is a will save that maybe he makes that then tells him (you over come it) or whatever you were seeing the will save accomplish.
If i choose to just tell him "describe without rules" then it comes down to me guessing what the level of issue they were shooting for was. Maybe i get it right. Maybe i dont.
But the key is if i were to do that i am drawing a huge honking line for them in how they portray giving into their flaw.
If they choose from set a (run away, take no actions, take normal actions etc) they get control of the exact outcome and resolution barring surprises or interruptions.
If the choose from set b (any mechanical change applied by a rule) the forfeit control and its my ball now and naybe they get the kind of change they sought or maybe they dont.
That division imo discourages them from taking a lot of options as it adds in the chance of an outcome their voluntary choice did not aim for.
I dont need to divorce my good players from the rules to manage rules lawyers at my table. Allowing the players more options does not diminish my control or authority. I find it does the opposite.
But, certainly for some groups at some tables it would be simpler and quicker for a player to just choose between the limited set of options under their control (take no action, run away, only take one swing out of two possible, etc etc etc) instead of trying any of the options which force the GM-player reconciliation of intent phase.
After all, if they just move up and declare "she just attacks once with her axe" that whole "what does feebly, fear vs attack" gets avoided.
Every table is different.
Maybe lost in the example but I’m not advocating that players must choose to act from a limited menu. They can choose to do anything they want to do, and if I have questions, it’s so that I can faithfully apply the rules to execute their action as best as I can. Facilitate.
My player base includes a large mix of people (from kids to grognards), who have all sorts of expectations or traditions they bring with them to the table. I ask them, in the interest of expediency, and to maximize actual play time, to leave the rules to me and just focus on playing the character/the scenario. They agree, and that agreement enables an enjoyably paced game that moves through a lot of content. Of course there are other ways to pace a game, etc., I’m just talking about my tables.
But that agreement also sort of inoculates against weird situations like what happened in CR. I’m not saying it prevents character deaths, but it does ensure that all decisions and rulings are in good faith, and any deaths come as a result of a series of unfolding, preventable, events instead of quirks. That’s important to me because when a character dies, the player should not feel cheated or gypped.
I might have a very different perspective if I had a large audience though. Who can say. Probably they shouldn’t feel cheated either. That warrants some more thinking.