Narrative implications of clearing miniatures from the battle mat

[Talakeal]

As I have mentioned in a few of my other threads, I recently had an incident in my game that prompted a discussion with my players.

Essentially; while the PCs were fighting some monsters, a demon was lurking around in the ethereal plane nearby hindering them with spells. Only one PC could see the demon, and none of them could attack it. Once the players killed the monsters, the fight ended and I cleared the battle mat. The players then decided to teleport out, and the demon countered their teleport spell. The players insisted I had tricked them by clearing the battle mat before all hostile enemies were neutralized.


My players have stated that by clearing the battle mat the Game Master is implicitly telling the PCs that all hostiles who are present are either dead or have fled the scene. Those who are captive, hidden, feigning death, begging for mercy, gloating and monologuing, taken prisoner, negotiating a cease fire, or calmly waiting to see what the PCs do next MUST remain on the board u til there is no possibility of them hindering the PCs. To do otherwise is both dishonest and a fundamental betrayal of the DMs main role as acting as the players eyes and ears.

Personally, I usually clear the battle mat once the action has ended and we are no longer acting in the turn based combat sequence and have slipped into more freeform narrative play. I never dreamed that the players would see a models presence on the table as anything more than a combat marker, let alone a statement of their fundamental existence or capacity for hostile action.

Any of you have policies or procedures for when a model can be on the table or other thoughts?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Talakeal
…the fight ended….

How exactly was this communicated to the players? Did you tell them, “The fight’s over,” or did they just assume this from seeing no more minis? And what about the one PC that could see the thing?

With my group, I sometimes keep them on initiative even after all visible enemies are down, and my players have learned to ask, “Are we off initiative?” Usually they know when something’s up.

I had the reverse issue once, in a minor way—an enemy combatant used his turn to run away from the combat as fast as he could. I moved the mini to the edge of the battlemap and described how he ran off into the woods. As I envisioned it, he was quickly lost in the trees and undergrowth, and I’d intended for him to escape the combat entirely.

But one of my players, who was still new to RPGs, saw the mini sitting on the edge of the map and thought it was still a valid target, so his ranger took a shot. It was a solid hit even with the range increment, and so I allowed it as a mini-CMOA. But it was a reminder that minis have a powerful presence in the minds of players.

[King of Nowhere]

at my table we don't pay much attention to the battle mat; the main reason is that it's hard to use one, as our fights grew increasingly large the more we leveled up: at low level people tried to stay close for flanking bonuses, now they try to spread to avoid area effects.
so we have a battle mat representing an area of dozens or even hundreds of meters, and we only use it for large scale, who is in melee with who, and who is out of range.

also, we never have those kind of problems, because end of the fight has always been clear. mostly the losing team will try to flee by teleportation, or the monster dies.

anyway, your specific case seems just like a general case of miscommunication. it happens all the time, and whether it involved a bad description or the use of a battle mat it doesn't really matter. miscommunication happens.
as a rule of thumb, when the players make some bad decision based on miscommunication - something that they clearly would not have done had they gotten the facts straight - i allow for retconning.
of course, i can do that because we have good trust at our table, and the players trust me to not intentionally misdirect them (well, unless i'm roleplaying an npc intentionally trying to misdirect them, but that's another thing entirely) and judging fairly if i should rewind the action, and i trust the players to not abuse it and not claim a false misunderstanding in the hope of gaining advantage.
your table, even though mostly drama-free in the last year or two, still feels a lot more edgy than what i'm used to

[False God]

If an enemy is still in play, actively acting against the players, then the fight isn't over.

They may have difficulty tracking or acting against this remaining enemy, but the enemy is nonetheless still an active combatant.

[Murphy80]

How exactly was this communicated to the players? Did you tell them, “The fight’s over,” or did they just assume this from seeing no more minis? And what about the one PC that could see the thing?

I too would be interested in what you said to the Pc who could see this meddling ethereal demon. Did you tell him the demon was still watching?

anyway, your specific case seems just like a general case of miscommunication. it happens all the time, and whether it involved a bad description or the use of a battle mat it doesn't really matter. miscommunication happens.
as a rule of thumb, when the players make some bad decision based on miscommunication - something that they clearly would not have done had they gotten the facts straight - i allow for retconning.

That sounds like a fair way to handle miscommunication.

[Pauly]

I’m with the players.
By picking up the mat you are effectively playing the closing music and rolling the end credits.
The players will have assumed that since the map is rolled up that the demon has sauntered off, and they are free to cast post combat magic.

Once you lay out the tactical map you should only pick it up again when all hostiles are neutralized.

[KillianHawkeye]

I’m with the players.
By picking up the mat you are effectively playing the closing music and rolling the end credits.
The players will have assumed that since the map is rolled up that the demon has sauntered off, and they are free to cast post combat magic.

Once you lay out the tactical map you should only pick it up again when all hostiles are neutralized.

Do you not just leave the map out for the entire session? Why would you roll and unroll a battle mat between each encounter?

[animorte]

I too would be interested in what you said to the Pc who could see this meddling ethereal demon. Did you tell him the demon was still watching?

Myself as well.

Once you lay out the tactical map you should only pick it up again when all hostiles are neutralized.

I don’t recall anything being said about picking it up. “There were no visible miniatures” is what I gathered.

[Talakeal]

How exactly was this communicated to the players? Did you tell them, “The fight’s over,” or did they just assume this from seeing no more minis?

I don't recall. I would assume I just told them that they killed the last monster and then put the dead models on the shelf. I strongly doubt I formally told them the fight was over.

And what about the one PC that could see the thing?

In my system spirits are typically really more like sentient buff spells than actual combatants. I normally tell the players (who can see them) that they are lurking in an adjacent dimension and then place them off to the side of the map.

I do not believe I explicitly told the player that it had left or remained. I simply told her that there was a spirit lurking in the spirit world of the room and then notified her when it actively cast something.

Honestly, I don't recall EVER having explicitly mentioned what a spirit did after a fight, either friendly or hostile, and this was the first time in decades of playing that it ever came up.

And of course, as the demon can walk through walls it would have been a trivial matter for it to simply leave the room and still be in range to cast spells if I had been intentionally trying to hide from the PCs or indeed given it any thought at all.

your table, even though mostly drama-free in the last year or two, still feels a lot more edgy than what i'm used to

One thing about my table; two of the players react really harshly to being given advice. One of them takes it as being called stupid and will start shouting and swearing and calling names, and the other doesn't like being told what to do and will go out of his way to do the opposite (usually involving killing his character out of spite).

So one way I have learned to get by without drama is to simply keep my mouth shut and let the players come to their own conclusions about tactical decisions if not explicitly asked. It also does a lot to shield oneself from the ubiquitous accusations of railroading that are hurled at all DMs.

The cost of this is that sometimes the players get stuck or get in over their heads and the game just kind of stalls out for a while with nobody willing or able to make a decision.

I would have probably let them retcon it if they had asked OOC, but they are generally too proud to do so. In this case the party actually had two in game retcon powers they could have used, but they are so averse to expending resources it took them over an hour to actually use one.

If an enemy is still in play, actively acting against the players, then the fight isn't over.

They may have difficulty tracking or acting against this remaining enemy, but the enemy is nonetheless still an active combatant.

How does this actually play out for you though? Are you required to keep the game broken up by rounds and keep the minis on the board? Is there a time limit?

I can imagine all sorts of weird situations where this just isn't practical; a stealthed enemy following the party for days waiting to strike, an evil wizard scrying from a tower a thousand miles away and occasionally casting a curse upon them, a prisoner who has submitted but then goes into a rage when he learns the party's true intentions, a villain who has defeated the party and is giving them a chance to beg for their lives, etc.

[Tanarii]

Have you tried smacking your players with your DMG?

Not, like, because of this specifically. They just seem to generally need it.

[Telok]

Personally, just out of sheer lazyness, I leave all the crap on the table until I need to remap or something.

There's nothing explicit about clearing the board after the main combat is over, to me. But I've played game systems where you could seamlessly morph from physical combat into a social conflict, or vice versa, or have enemy reinforcememts portal in randomly even after the fight, or have everyone stop fighting for long enough to qualify for "fight over" before resuming hostilities. And of course there's always snipers, tho it weirds D&Ders out when you tell them each square is 20 meters and the halfling with a rocket launcher is 253 meters away (plus the mini is sitting on the line instead of neatly in a square, but that's just so I can watch them twitch).

I'd probably chalk this one up to general miscommunication via different personal assumptions. Possibly brought on by most people thinking in real-world terms most of the time. By that I mean we don't have a provable spirit world/etherial plane/whatever with sapient spirits or critters potentially watching us & interfering in our lives 24/7. Closest we have is germ theory & bacteria/viruses that we deal with by washing our hands & covering sneezes.... and now it occurs to me to use that as an example of how to think of those things, just say "assume free floating sapient bacteria with touch range spell casting".

Functionally invisible to us, yet detectable with proper gear. Has a shrine + ritual to appease equality in the sink + hand washing to clean off. It could work as a sort of example I think.

[False God]

How does this actually play out for you though? Are you required to keep the game broken up by rounds and keep the minis on the board? Is there a time limit?

You make it sound like the players are doing this to you. You engineered the situation. So yes, if you came up with this idea which by its nature is going to drag out combat, it's on you to run the situation until it is finished. The players defeat the monster, the monster runs away, the countdown timer goes off and blows everything to heck, whatever.

I can imagine all sorts of weird situations where this just isn't practical; a stealthed enemy following the party for days waiting to strike, an evil wizard scrying from a tower a thousand miles away and occasionally casting a curse upon them, a prisoner who has submitted but then goes into a rage when he learns the party's true intentions, a villain who has defeated the party and is giving them a chance to beg for their lives, etc.

If you're regularly engaging your players in combat, but not giving them the opportunity to respond in combat, because "Its complicated" I can see why your group has difficulties.

[kyoryu]

I think that leaving the mat out while there's unknown hostiles not actively doing anything gives out a lot of information. Whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you.

I think the most important thing to do here is to make sure that it's clear what that means. The issue isn't that it's done one way or the other, the issue is that there's a mismatch in expectations. Clarifying that mismatch is more important than what the ultimate clarification is.

Personally, I'd be fine saying "the battle mat will be cleared off when, to the best of the players' knowledge, all enemies are done and no NPCs are actively engaging in hostilities, such as sneaking to make an attack, etc. However, that does not mean that there are not other NPCs that are around that might react to things that you do in the future."

Otherwise, leaving the mat full is like announcing that someone has blown a Notice roll.

The other way, of course, is to not be as aggressive about clearing the mat until they're out of the location. This might actually be the better option.

[Thrudd]

In this particular situation, I understand why you'd decide combat was over, since the characters had no way to physically interact with the demon. BUT, did you mention to the player who could see the demon that it was still there in the ethereal when the other enemies were gone? and were they aware that the demon had been casting spells against them during the fight? As the DM, if I knew the demon would/could counterspell them, I'd have reminded the player of its presence or at least had them make a perception or intelligence check of some kind when they declared they were going to cast teleport, to give them a chance to change their mind and avoid losing the spell. It's easy to see how they'd forget about the invisible enemy, but also, knowing your players, you know they'd be pissed about getting counterspelled by an enemy the character should have been aware of and blame you for cheating. Of course, maybe they had no way to know the demon could counterspell, even if they remembered it was there -had it counterspelled anything during the fight?
In any case, I would have treated this as a "are you sure you want to do that?" moment- but maybe doing that pisses them off as much as surprising them with an invisible counterspeller?

[Talakeal]

In this particular situation, I understand why you'd decide combat was over, since the characters had no way to physically interact with the demon. BUT, did you mention to the player who could see the demon that it was still there in the ethereal when the other enemies were gone? and were they aware that the demon had been casting spells against them during the fight? As the DM, if I knew the demon would/could counterspell them, I'd have reminded the player of its presence or at least had them make a perception or intelligence check of some kind when they declared they were going to cast teleport, to give them a chance to change their mind and avoid losing the spell. It's easy to see how they'd forget about the invisible enemy, but also, knowing your players, you know they'd be pissed about getting counterspelled by an enemy the character should have been aware of and blame you for cheating. Of course, maybe they had no way to know the demon could counterspell, even if they remembered it was there -had it counterspelled anything during the fight?
In any case, I would have treated this as a "are you sure you want to do that?" moment- but maybe doing that pisses them off as much as surprising them with an invisible counterspeller?

The problem is that the player in question has no way of knowing that it is the demon who is the one casting the spells, she lacked any sort of spell-craft or magic sensing abilities and the demon doesn't require any sort of chanting or gestures, although the other players who could not see it figured it out pretty quickly.

Asking my players "are you sure of that" does indeed piss them off as I said above, one player reads it as telling them what to do, one reads it as calling them stupid, and all players occasionally call it railroading. Typically, if anyone points out a flaw in their plans (including other players) they pout and or get frustrated, say something like "Fine, then YOU tell me what my character does" and sulk for close to an hour.


The whole topic actually came up again because Brian and I were playing Mansions of Madness with my family over Thanksgiving and we lost a scenario by being a single action too slow. The next game, Brian went to take his turn and said he was going to leave the room he was in to do something in the other room, and I said "If you don't mind some advice, since we are on a strict timer, it might make sense to clear the current room before the next one to save yourself from making two trips," and he absolutely exploded at me, shouting and calling names and telling me that he should just leave and let me play his character from now on, to the point where my family got so uncomfortable they all found excuses to stop playing. I told him he really needs to work on explosive outbursts in response to good natured advice, and then that led down the rabbit hole which led to him telling me that it is cheated for the GM to remove a model from the board if it still has the capacity to hinder the PCs.


Also, from a mechanical standpoint, one could easily get the same results from traps or environmental hazards. Say, a trap that periodically shoots fireballs at the players is really not much different than a wizard casting fireballs from extreme range.

The real issue is, I think, players forgetting or not paying attention to the GM's description and being mad that is comes back to bite them, and the whole "hostiles remaining on the battle mat" is just an attempt to shift the burden of responsibility or apply malice.

You make it sound like the players are doing this to you. You engineered the situation. So yes, if you came up with this idea which by its nature is going to drag out combat, it's on you to run the situation until it is finished. The players defeat the monster, the monster runs away, the countdown timer goes off and blows everything to heck, whatever.


If you're regularly engaging your players in combat, but not giving them the opportunity to respond in combat, because "Its complicated" I can see why your group has difficulties.

I am having trouble parsing what you are saying.

Best I can figure, you are saying that if the GM presents a challenge that cannot be resolved in a (relatively) short and direct skirmish, then everyone needs to suffer through a drawn out and mechanically clunky resolution?

Like, a stealthy enemy deciding he can't win a straight fight, dropping a smoke bomb, and then tailing the party waiting for a chance to ambush is a pretty straightforward and logical scenario from a narrative perspective. And its pretty easy to run mechanically, just have the enemy make periodic stealth tests against the party's perception while playing normally, and then start a new combat when the players spot him or he decides to strike. Pretty simple and straightforward. But demanding that they spend the next hours, days, or weeks acting in initiative order, moving minis on the battle-mat, having the DM draw out every minor locale they pass through and place a model for every NPC they pass by, and being asked their action every six seconds is not something anyone can or should want to actually sit through.

Likewise, if during a straightforward battle, one of the enemies decides to negotiate a cease fire, everyone is still there, and hostilities can resume at any time. But does anyone actually think the scenario would be improved in still treating it as a combat, with everyone going around the table in initiative order and being limited to six seconds of speech at a time rather than simply playing out the negotiations in freeform RP?*

Have you tried smacking your players with your DMG?

Not, like, because of this specifically. They just seem to generally need it.

The idea has been floated before, yes.



*You know, now that I think about it, this did actually come up a couple of years ago. The players encountered a strong unit or enemy soldiers who were in the middle of a training exercise. In my mind, it was a choice between ambushing them or trying to talk their way past them. The players sort of chose the worst of both worlds, announced their presence, walked up to them, shouted some insults, and then attacked. The enemies' responded to the players announcing their presence by moving out of a training formation and into a battle formation, and the party mage cried bloody murder that enemies were allowed to move during an RP scene and spoil his fireball placement.

[False God]

I am having trouble parsing what you are saying.

Best I can figure, you are saying that if the GM presents a challenge that cannot be resolved in a (relatively) short and direct skirmish, then everyone needs to suffer through a drawn out and mechanically clunky resolution?

It seems like they're suffering through it anyway, since they are attempting to exit the situation, and the enemy combatant they(at least one of them) thought was there, was still there, but they didn't know that because of your clearing the board action, is still there inhibiting them. It's not a matter of "everyone should have to suffer", it's a matter of "things should actually BE resolved when you communicate (verbally or otherwise) that.

Like, a stealthy enemy deciding he can't win a straight fight, dropping a smoke bomb, and then tailing the party waiting for a chance to ambush is a pretty straightforward and logical scenario from a narrative perspective. And its pretty easy to run mechanically, just have the enemy make periodic stealth tests against the party's perception while playing normally, and then start a new combat when the players spot him or he decides to strike. Pretty simple and straightforward. But demanding that they spend the next hours, days, or weeks acting in initiative order, moving minis on the battle-mat, having the DM draw out every minor locale they pass through and place a model for every NPC they pass by, and being asked their action every six seconds is not something anyone can or should want to actually sit through.

They key you're missing, and the it's the same element that got you into this situation, is you're missing the party's participation in the enemy's smokebomb. There's no guarantee that they all lost sight of him, and they're not dumb enough to think he just vanished. They may spend several more round searching for him.

Likewise, if during a straightforward battle, one of the enemies decides to negotiate a cease fire, everyone is still there, and hostilities can resume at any time. But does anyone actually think the scenario would be improved in still treating it as a combat, with everyone going around the table in initiative order and being limited to six seconds of speech at a time rather than simply playing out the negotiations in freeform RP?*

Again, this is back to the same problem that got you here. You're making proscriptive decisions for how the party ought to behave in these situations. Don't do that.

[Talakeal]

It seems like they're suffering through it anyway, since they are attempting to exit the situation, and the enemy combatant they(at least one of them) thought was there, was still there, but they didn't know that because of your clearing the board action, is still there inhibiting them. It's not a matter of "everyone should have to suffer", it's a matter of "things should actually BE resolved when you communicate (verbally or otherwise) that.

They key you're missing, and the it's the same element that got you into this situation, is you're missing the party's participation in the enemy's smokebomb. There's no guarantee that they all lost sight of him, and they're not dumb enough to think he just vanished. They may spend several more round searching for him.

So the issue, to me, is one of explicit communication, and is pretty common in RPGs.

For example, if I mention that a PC spots a trip wire in a doorway. A few minutes later, a PC says they are walking through the doorway having made no effort to disarm it first. It could be they forgot about it, it could be that they weren't paying attention when it said, it could be that they misunderstood and thought it had already been disarmed or applied to a different door, or it could be that they legitimately don't care about setting off the trap and are just ignoring it to save time.

Whether or not the DM should remind the PC or "gotcha" them is an ongoing debate. I generally say "Yes" but my players generally say "No".


In this particular case, there are two issues complicating it:

A: The players are stating that removing a model from the board communicates that the model has "fled" while in my mind it indicates that there is no longer an active battle occurring.
B: Tactics generally consist of countering one another's actions until one side outthinks the other. In this case, warning the PCs beforehand about the NPC's plans can really remove the whole tactical element from the game.

Again, this is back to the same problem that got you here. You're making proscriptive decisions for how the party ought to behave in these situations. Don't do that.

I don't follow.

In this example, both sides are negotiating a ceasefire voluntarily. Nobody would enjoy continuing to play this out as a combat with initiative order and six second turns. But the enemies are still present and the negotiations could break down, at which point either side could choose to attack and then combat would resume.

The only "ought" here is that if the players are confused by the GM's descriptions, they "ought" to ask for clarification, and the DM "ought" to respond honesty; and if they are doing something really weird, the DM "ought" to ask them why and remind them of the situation, and the player's "ought" to be able to respond to that suggestion without OOC anger or IC spite.

[gbaji]

So the issue, to me, is one of explicit communication, and is pretty common in RPGs.

For example, if I mention that a PC spots a trip wire in a doorway. A few minutes later, a PC says they are walking through the doorway having made no effort to disarm it first. It could be they forgot about it, it could be that they weren't paying attention when it said, it could be that they misunderstood and thought it had already been disarmed or applied to a different door, or it could be that they legitimately don't care about setting off the trap and are just ignoring it to save time.

Whether or not the DM should remind the PC or "gotcha" them is an ongoing debate. I generally say "Yes" but my players generally say "No".

Yes or No to which?

My general rule of thumb is that if the PCs have access to information that would make any action they later propose automatically foolish or fail, it's your job as the GM to remind them. The assumption being that the players have forgotten something that their characters clearly would not. It's easy for players, in the course of table talk, examining treasure, discussing plans of attack for the next room, arranging their marching order, or whatever, to have forgotten that in the midst of 9 other things you mentioned being in the room, one of them was a trip wire across the one doorway they are planning to travel through. You should *always* remind them of this, because it's a very good bet that their characters would not just forget, or fail to notice that the tip wire they already spotted and made note of is still sitting there, waiting to trigger on them.

A simple. "Ok. You want to walk through the doorway. What are you going to do about the trip wire you spotted earlier" should jog their memory, while still giving them full agency in terms of their action(s) in response to said trip wire.

Note, that this is *not* what you should do if, for example, the rogue for some reason searches for such things secretly (perhaps looking for hidden stuff that can be pilfered without the rest of the party knowing), and you hand a note back with the information about the trip wire, and the rogue chooses not to tell anyone. At that point, you should pass another note back to the rogue's player asking what that character is going to do about the trip wire (ie: "What do you do/say about the trip wire you spotted?"). Again though, always ask for clarified actions if/when there's some known issue that they may have forgotten.

No group of players should be upset about this. As long as what you are doing is information gathering only. Don't ask them "are you going to do X?" (imposes your assumption about their actions). Ask them "what do you want to do about Y?" (reminds them that there's something to take into account, but gives them full agency to act on it). If they're still upset for some reason, then I'm not sure what's going on inside their heads. This is no different than you describing what's in a room, and then asking them what they do next.

In this particular case, there are two issues complicating it:

A: The players are stating that removing a model from the board communicates that the model has "fled" while in my mind it indicates that there is no longer an active battle occurring.
B: Tactics generally consist of countering one another's actions until one side outthinks the other. In this case, warning the PCs beforehand about the NPC's plans can really remove the whole tactical element from the game.

As to A, that really depends on what "standard" you've applied in the past. Is this something you've told them in the past "If I remove something from the mat, you can no longer interact with it". Or is this just something they've put in their own heads? And even if the former is true, you didn't put the ethereal demon on the mat, and therefore didn't remove it, so it doesn't apply in either case.

At my table, there's always a battle mat in place, with miniatures on it, but there's no particular relevance until the PCs are in a situation where specific positions matter. The game is descriptive only until that point, but at all times, I do tend to ask them to put their characters minis in some sort of order to indicate relative position, and have them change that formation when the conditions change (walking down a narrow single file path, walking along a wide road, scrambling up a hill, crossing a river/bridge/whatever, etc). Typically, the beginning of a "battle" is descriptive as well. Sometimes, depending on various factors and perception rolls, the PCs may have the opportunity to position themselves first (I'll draw stuff out using dry erase markers, and ask them where they are going to go), or something happens to them, I ask them how they respond, and then draw out the map placing their minis appropriately based on their current marching formation (and perhaps resolving the first set of attacks/spells/whatever with them in that position).

Ending a battle is pretty much the same. It's not really about a combat "ending", but that there is no longer any specific need to graph out their position relative to other things around them. This does not mean that there aren't still other threats off the map (or for whom position is irrelevant), but merely that there is nothing else physically around them that they may make specific note of and react to by changing their mini's position using normal combat move rates and actions. If they read anything more into that, that's entirely on them. And honestly, there's no real removal of the mat, and it's not like I take the time to erase the room/whatever that I drew. I've just removed the last of the bad guys they could see and interact with (because they killed them all or whatever), and we move on. Their minis are generally just left in the last place they were when the "battle ended" anyway. So yeah, if something else happens post-battle, it's pretty easy to just extrapolate from their last combat positions (and whatever descriptive stuff has happened since). Not really sure why this is an issue.

As to B. I'm not familiar with the specifics of what this ethereal demon could or could not do, but what would the players expect if he was there and there was no battle going on? If the same demon was floating around, casting spells on them while ethereal, and perhaps one character could see "hey there's an ethereal demon there", and the party is being hit by spells at the same time, would they expect you to put out a battle mat, draw where they are and put minis in position? Or just play it out descriptively? I'm assuming the latter (again there's nothing there to interact with physically, right?).

Assuming the latter, why would they assume that because the enemy minis have been removed from the mat, that the ethereal thing casting spells on them has magically disappeared? They didn't defeat it. They didn't drive it off. It's still just as out there capable of casting spells on them as it was during the "battle". The "battle" only gets drawn out because positions of PC and NPC matter. That's it. This is not like a video game where the mode shifts, music starts, and now you're in a battle, and once the music stops, it's all over. And yes, I would do the exact same thing if there were an invisible assassin hanging around after the battle waiting to strike or something. If the players don't know about it, then they don't know. I may ask them "Ok. What are you doing in the room now that the enemies are all dead", but that's not me lying to them. That's what they know. No different than if they walked into the room, and believed it to be empty, but the same invisible assassin was in there. I wouldn't draw out a battle map for them there either, since that would clue them in that a fight was about to start.

Having said all of this, you should probably have told the one player whose character could see the ethereal demon that it was still there watching them or something. This does not provide them information about what the demon is planning to do, or may do in response to their own actions, but acts as a memory job of "oh yeah, that things still there, let's take it into account when planning our next steps". You don't have to tell them what the demon's abilities or plans are, but if one of the PCs can physically see the thing, you could tell that player this information. It's still "in the room", right?

I'm also a bit confused as to why your players first response to finishing a battle seems to be to teleport away. This isn't the same scenario you posted before where they snuck into the palace to attack the royals there, then attempted to teleport out before their guards got there, only to have it counter spelled by the demon thing? Or is it? Seems remarkably similar, and I'm honestly confused why these sort of tactics seem to be used and re-used by your players. Have they heard of, you know, just attacking places and defeating the bad guys within (and then perhaps taking some time to loot the place for treasure)?

It just feels very "video-gamey" to enter a room, kill the bad guys within, and then immediately teleport away or something. Like they are afraid to stick around and engage in the world around them for some reason and need to "get back home" after each fight. Dunno. Feels (from your descriptions) that this table is in desperate need of a good old fashioned dungeon crawl. And yeah, having some powerful bad guy using scry and spell attacks to weaken and harass them is a great way to keep them on their toes. And if they somehow magically "forget" that there's someone there regularly casting spells on them while they're exploring/fighting/whatever, that's really on them.

Maybe just don't let them teleport out of everything like that? Heaven forbid they have to come up with some sort of tactical approach to a situation that requires them to just straight up defeat the bad guys. Maybe this is just my pov from playing a game where teleportation magic is rare and far less flexible than it is in most games. My players literally only use teleportation when they happen to have someone powerful enough to use it *and* they're like done completely with the entire portion of the scenario (like nothing left to do in this entire region of the world, the entire adventure is over, and we're just saving ourselves months of time traveling back home situations). I just find that when the players don't have such easy "out" abilities and spells, if forces them to come up with better approaches to tactical situations (planning both for the attack and for what happens after the attack). That's just me though. YMMV.

[Jay R]

The Game Master does not owe them a battle map unless the battle map is needed to show them something that the PCs could see.

My players have stated that by clearing the battle mat the Game Master is implicitly telling the PCs that all hostiles who are present are either dead or have fled the scene.

First of all, if they think the Game Master has made a statement, and the Game Master knows that he has not, then they are simply mistaken. Correct the mistake (without implying anything other than an honest mistake), and move on.

The answer to a false "implicit" statement is a true explicit statement. "When I clear a battle map it does not mean anything except that the battle map is not needed for the next action. The presence or absence of a battle map will never imply anything about hostiles that the PCs cannot see. The battle map is not now and never will be an aid to metagaming. I state that explicitly, and it will always be true."

Those who are captive, hidden, feigning death, begging for mercy, gloating and monologuing, taken prisoner, negotiating a cease fire, or calmly waiting to see what the PCs do next MUST remain on the board u til there is no possibility of them hindering the PCs. To do otherwise is both dishonest and a fundamental betrayal of the DMs main role as acting as the players eyes and ears.

Dishonest? That's just sloppy thinking. Showing them a hidden foe is dishonest. Not showing a hidden foe is honest.

The Game Master does not owe them a battle map unless the battle map is needed to show them something that the PCs could see.

Any of you have policies or procedures for when a model can be on the table or other thoughts?

The players made a false assumption about your action. Correct the assumption. Tell them clearly and explicitly that:

1. They shouldn't guess or make implicit assumptions about what something means.
2. Those who are hidden will never appear on a battle map. The map only shows what the PCs see.
3. There is no rule about what a GM action means that didn't come from the rules or the GM.

Last weekend my players had an encounter with pixies. I had the PCs on a battle map to see their marching order, but no figure except the party ever appeared on the map. I knew where the pixies were, but until the PCs can see them, the players cannot see them.

They also had an encounter with a gang of pickpockets. I never even set up a map.

The Game Master does not owe them a battle map unless the battle map is needed to show them something that the PCs could see.

[KillianHawkeye]

IMO, the existence or lack thereof of miniatures on a battle map has no intrinsic narrative implication at all. None whatsoever. Their only narrative meaning is in what the DM describes.

But altogether aside from that fact, I think the OP just needs to find better gaming friends. The current ones sound like terribly immature child-people if they can't rationally take any suggestion from the DM. Nobody needs people like that in their life.

[icefractal]

Yeah, from what's been said the players appear to want three mutually exclusive things.

1) The GM never suggests or reminds them of anything, this is 100% on them.
2) The game is a challenge they can feel proud about beating, not trivially simple.
3) They never make a mistake or lose at anything.

Any two of these are possible at once, but not all three. It seems like some of the players would be ok with dropping #2 and having the game be an OP-isekei-esque stroll through painfully outclassed enemies, but besides being boring to run, it's probably not a solution all the players would be happy with either.

[Reversefigure4]

In my system spirits are typically really more like sentient buff spells than actual combatants...

And of course, as the demon can walk through walls it would have been a trivial matter for it to simply leave the room and still be in range to cast spells if I had been intentionally trying to hide from the PCs or indeed given it any thought at all.

Not like actual combatants other than the fact that they cast actively hostile spells. So they're like an environmental hazard - you can't interact with them or stop them, but you absolutely need to be aware they're there and doing things in the same way you need to be aware which parts of the floor are gaping holes. (It's also easy to see why the players are frustrated by the invisible-demon-whose-spells-work-on-you-but-your-spells-can't-affect-them... it's pretty much a recipe for frustration, particularly since it's capable of perceiving them and casting spells through walls!)

But this sounds like some fairly basic 101 GMing - the players are about to make a mistake that the characters never would.

One of the characters can see the demon right there. They know it can cast hostile spells against them. They know people cast counter-teleport on them. It's all right there directly in front of the characters faces. But it's not in the player's faces, particularly if you're removing the map to indicate there's nothing to see. Of course, it sounds like there really isn't anything they could do to prevent the demon counterspelling them even if they could see it. But basic GMing says the character don't forget things just because the players do. They don't walk directly into open pits just because the player's forgotten the description of the room. They don't forget the king's name they learned half an hour of character time ago just because the player's previous session was three weeks ago thanks to player illness.

Now in Talakeal's place, he can't inform, correct, speak to, or advise the players in any way without them screaming at him, so there's no fixing in. On a normal table? "Hey guys, remember the demon is still sitting right there looking at you. Want to do anything about it before you teleport away?" solves the problem.

[King of Nowhere]

The problem is that the player in question has no way of knowing that it is the demon who is the one casting the spells, she lacked any sort of spell-craft or magic sensing abilities and the demon doesn't require any sort of chanting or gestures, although the other players who could not see it figured it out pretty quickly.

Asking my players "are you sure of that" does indeed piss them off as I said above, one player reads it as telling them what to do, one reads it as calling them stupid, and all players occasionally call it railroading. Typically, if anyone points out a flaw in their plans (including other players) they pout and or get frustrated, say something like "Fine, then YOU tell me what my character does" and sulk for close to an hour.


The whole topic actually came up again because Brian and I were playing Mansions of Madness with my family over Thanksgiving and we lost a scenario by being a single action too slow. The next game, Brian went to take his turn and said he was going to leave the room he was in to do something in the other room, and I said "If you don't mind some advice, since we are on a strict timer, it might make sense to clear the current room before the next one to save yourself from making two trips," and he absolutely exploded at me, shouting and calling names and telling me that he should just leave and let me play his character from now on, to the point where my family got so uncomfortable they all found excuses to stop playing. I told him he really needs to work on explosive outbursts in response to good natured advice, and then that led down the rabbit hole which led to him telling me that it is cheated for the GM to remove a model from the board if it still has the capacity to hinder the PCs.


Also, from a mechanical standpoint, one could easily get the same results from traps or environmental hazards. Say, a trap that periodically shoots fireballs at the players is really not much different than a wizard casting fireballs from extreme range.

The real issue is, I think, players forgetting or not paying attention to the GM's description and being mad that is comes back to bite them, and the whole "hostiles remaining on the battle mat" is just an attempt to shift the burden of responsibility or apply malice.

I take it back: your table is still concentrated drama, you just learned to not trigger your players.
This is not a solution to the drama, no more than avoiding the elephant and pretending it's not there makes the elephant go away

[Battlebooze]

Mmm. I think perhaps a simple reminder that there was still a threat in the area despite the figures being removed might have been polite, especially if a situation like this has never occurred before. It sounds like your players are upset for a reason, though I don't think you did anything particularly outrageous by removing the figures.

On the other hand, an ethereal demon the players lack a way of dealing with counter-spelling on the players when they try to leave? Yea, I think I'd be annoyed at this kind of situation as well. The rest of your campaign better be really good to back up this kind of cheese.

[gbaji]

The Game Master does not owe them a battle map unless the battle map is needed to show them something that the PCs could see.

Just a counter point here. I would argue that the battle map has less to do with what the players can see, and more to do with any situation in which PC positioning matters. This is usually when there are physical enemies with which the party may interact in some way. In this specific example, one of the players could "see" the demon, so saying "only things you can see will appear on the battle map" is not an absolutely correct statement. Saying "Only things you are both aware of and can interact with and for whom precise scaled relative position matters will appear on the battle map" is a better rule.

Having said that, there are times when I might very well put things that aren't physical on the battle map as well. An illusion, for example, will appear there because they don't know it's not real until they interact with it. Some spirits may appear as physical beings and be fully visible, but aren't tangible (but perhaps their physical position matters). Obviously (and where your point about "seeing" things comes in), if they can't perceive something, it should not appear on the map (but you should, as you said, track its location). It's just that being able to see something isn't the sole criteria for putting a battle map in play IMO. There are lots of times that the PCs will see something, and I'll handle it descriptively because relative positioning doesn't matter (or it's just unwieldy to manage from a mechanical perspective).

Not like actual combatants other than the fact that they cast actively hostile spells. So they're like an environmental hazard - you can't interact with them or stop them, but you absolutely need to be aware they're there and doing things in the same way you need to be aware which parts of the floor are gaping holes. (It's also easy to see why the players are frustrated by the invisible-demon-whose-spells-work-on-you-but-your-spells-can't-affect-them... it's pretty much a recipe for frustration, particularly since it's capable of perceiving them and casting spells through walls!)

Yeah. I might suggest maybe not doing this, unless the PCs have some means to deal with it. I'm also a bit confused about how something can be ethereal yet still cast spells on physical beings. I'm a bit hazy on the rules for going ethereal, but I thought that meant you couldn't interact with anything physical (can cast spells on yourself and other ethereal beings, but that's it). Is this something in D&D? Or something that was cribbed? Even spells that allow remote spell casting (scrying stuff), at least allows for a dismiss to get rid of it. Having an ethereal spellcaster floating around sniping at them sounds kinda iffy to me. Again, I have no clue what rules are being used, but one of the things I'd use extremely sparingly is anyone capable of attacking the party (even with just spells), while not being subject to any sort of countermeasure. I suppose it's possible that the party did have some means to attack an ethereal opponent with them (an ethereal blade maybe? Dunno), but just didn't think to use it?

I can definitely see this sort of thing being frustrating to the players. But then again, you'd think that something like this, if it was frustrating to them, would stick in their minds.

Now in Talakeal's place, he can't inform, correct, speak to, or advise the players in any way without them screaming at him, so there's no fixing in. On a normal table? "Hey guys, remember the demon is still sitting right there looking at you. Want to do anything about it before you teleport away?" solves the problem.

Yup. Just remind them that something is there if they're aware of it (which they were), and ask them what they want to do about it. It's really simple and doesn't project any assumed action on the players.


Missed this in your earlier post:

I don't recall. I would assume I just told them that they killed the last monster and then put the dead models on the shelf. I strongly doubt I formally told them the fight was over.


In my system spirits are typically really more like sentient buff spells than actual combatants. I normally tell the players (who can see them) that they are lurking in an adjacent dimension and then place them off to the side of the map.

Er. Did you put a miniature for the demon off to the side of the map in this case as well? And if you did, did you pick it up and put it away with the rest of the minis? If you did pick up the mini for the demon and put it away with everything else, then it's quite reasonable for your players to have assumed that the demon left. It was something they could see. It was floating around. You put a miniature on the map (off to the side, but presumably there to indicate something they were aware of and was present). If you removed that miniature, then that would absolutely be telling the players that the thing the miniature represented had left and was no longer visible to the PC who could see it.

And of course, as the demon can walk through walls it would have been a trivial matter for it to simply leave the room and still be in range to cast spells if I had been intentionally trying to hide from the PCs or indeed given it any thought at all.

Can the demon see through walls too? If it left the room, and is no longer visible to the PC who could see it before, then it's reasonable to assume it also lost line of sight to them and should no longer be able to know what they are doing in the room, if/when they are casting a spell, and certainly could not target them (much less a spell they are casting with a counterspell). Just being in range isn't sufficient. You also need to be able to perceive the target. Again, my memory of how D&D handles ethereal stuff is hazy, but I don't recall it allowed you to see through opaque objects on the physical plane. Maybe I'm misremembering though.

One thing about my table; two of the players react really harshly to being given advice. One of them takes it as being called stupid and will start shouting and swearing and calling names, and the other doesn't like being told what to do and will go out of his way to do the opposite (usually involving killing his character out of spite).

Then don't give them advice or tell them what to do. Just tell them what is there and ask them what they want to do about it. And yes, this means that you remind them of things being there, but (again) don't ask "do you do X?", or say "maybe doing Y would work better", etc. If they ask you for advice/information, have them make the appropriate knowledge skill roll and then provide them information.

And yeah, from your descriptions it sounds like you have a table full of people who can't seem to make up their minds about what to do, and as a GM this can be very frustrating, and the temptation is to just move things forward by asking more direct questions "Ok, so are you going to do X, or Y", and this can be interpreted by them as you railroading them in some way, or limiting their choices. The best advice I can give you is to be extremely aware of what you are saying and what signals that may be sending to them. Always stick to providing information that may help them make a decision, but be careful about editing or omitting things in ways that might seem to the players to be you leading them to do things that are "mistakes". Regardless of mini placement or removal, after the combat I would remind them that the demon was still there in the room and visible:

"Ok. You've defeated the bad guys in the room, but that demon thing floating in the air is still there watching you. What do you do?"

It's informative, but doesn't push them in any direction. Just lets them know that there's still something around that they are aware of and could be a problem for them.

[KorvinStarmast]

Do you not just leave the map out for the entire session?

When I use one, it's out there, but it gets erased or rejiggered as needed for play. It is only rolled up when it is time to go home.

Have you tried smacking your players with your DMG?

Not, like, because of this specifically. They just seem to generally need it.

+1

The other way, of course, is to not be as aggressive about clearing the mat until they're out of the location. This might actually be the better option.

+2

{with a little bit snipped}
The Game Master does not owe them a battle map unless the battle map is needed to show them something that the PCs could see.

First of all, if they think the Game Master has made a statement, and the Game Master knows that he has not, then they are simply mistaken.

Showing them a hidden foe is dishonest. Not showing a hidden foe is honest.

The players made a false assumption about your action. Correct the assumption. Tell them clearly and explicitly that:

1. They shouldn't guess or make implicit assumptions about what something means.
2. Those who are hidden will never appear on a battle map. The map only shows what the PCs see.
3. There is no rule about what a GM action means that didn't come from the rules or the GM.

Last weekend my players had an encounter with pixies. I had the PCs on a battle map to see their marching order, but no figure except the party ever appeared on the map. I knew where the pixies were, but until the PCs can see them, the players cannot see them.

They also had an encounter with a gang of pickpockets. I never even set up a map.

Nice summary.

But altogether aside from that fact, I think the OP just needs to find better gaming friends. The current ones sound like terribly immature child-people if they can't rationally take any suggestion from the DM. Nobody needs people like that in their life.

That suggestion has been offered and rejected numerous time in the past few years on this very forum.

On the other hand, an ethereal demon the players lack a way of dealing with counter-spelling on the players when they try to leave? Yea, I think I'd be annoyed at this kind of situation as well. The rest of your campaign better be really good to back up this kind of cheese.

it's not cheese, some enemies really freaking hard to deal with (phase spiders come to mind)

[Chronos]

As a DM, you have an obligation to give your players the information that their characters would have. There is not, however, any obligation that that information always be accurate. The world can be misleading, deceiving, or sometimes even outright lie to them.

Your players, and hence their characters, thought that combat was over. But how did the characters know that? They can't hear the background music change from minor key back to major. What they knew was that all of the monsters they saw were (or at least, appeared to be) dead. They might conclude from that that the combat is over... but that conclusion might be wrong. Or they might decide to play it safe, and prod all of the apparent corpses, and wait a few rounds to see if anything else happens, and do whatever it is that paranoid people do in your setting to determine the presence of spirit-realm entities.

[KorvinStarmast]

Or they might decide to play it safe, and prod all of the apparent corpses, and wait a few rounds to see if anything else happens, and do whatever it is that paranoid people do in your setting to determine the presence of spirit-realm entities.

Not to mention "loot the corpses" as a thing often done ...

[Talakeal]

Yes or No to which?

Yes, I think the players should be warned. No, my players don't like being warned.

A simple. "Ok. You want to walk through the doorway. What are you going to do about the trip wire you spotted earlier" should jog their memory, while still giving them full agency in terms of their action(s) in response to said trip wire.

This is very good, actionable advice. Thank you!

Is this something you've told them in the past "If I remove something from the mat, you can no longer interact with it". Or is this just something they've put in their own heads?

Definitely that latter.

I'm also a bit confused as to why your players first response to finishing a battle seems to be to teleport away. This isn't the same scenario you posted before where they snuck into the palace to attack the royals there, then attempted to teleport out before their guards got there, only to have it counter spelled by the demon thing? Or is it? Seems remarkably similar, and I'm honestly confused why these sort of tactics seem to be used and re-used by your players. Have they heard of, you know, just attacking places and defeating the bad guys within (and then perhaps taking some time to loot the place for treasure)?

It just feels very "video-gamey" to enter a room, kill the bad guys within, and then immediately teleport away or something. Like they are afraid to stick around and engage in the world around them for some reason and need to "get back home" after each fight. Dunno. Feels (from your descriptions) that this table is in desperate need of a good old fashioned dungeon crawl. And yeah, having some powerful bad guy using scry and spell attacks to weaken and harass them is a great way to keep them on their toes. And if they somehow magically "forget" that there's someone there regularly casting spells on them while they're exploring/fighting/whatever, that's really on them.

Maybe just don't let them teleport out of everything like that? Heaven forbid they have to come up with some sort of tactical approach to a situation that requires them to just straight up defeat the bad guys. Maybe this is just my pov from playing a game where teleportation magic is rare and far less flexible than it is in most games. My players literally only use teleportation when they happen to have someone powerful enough to use it *and* they're like done completely with the entire portion of the scenario (like nothing left to do in this entire region of the world, the entire adventure is over, and we're just saving ourselves months of time traveling back home situations). I just find that when the players don't have such easy "out" abilities and spells, if forces them to come up with better approaches to tactical situations (planning both for the attack and for what happens after the attack). That's just me though. YMMV.

Yes, its the same scenario I mentioned earlier. I abbreviated it about, the full details are in my campaign diary, because I didn't intend for this thread to be about the specific instance so much as the player's declaration that cleaning the battle mat means that all hostiles have "sauntered off".

Basically, the players often find a way to bypass an enemy without neutralizing it, but then it comes back to bite them in the butt when they raise an alarm or have to fight their way back out and suddenly have to deal with the hole adventure compressed into one big encounter.

So their plan here was to get in through a combination of stealth and fast talking, kill their targets, and then teleport out, thus never having to deal with any of the guards or other enemies.

Yeah, from what's been said the players appear to want three mutually exclusive things.

1) The GM never suggests or reminds them of anything, this is 100% on them.
2) The game is a challenge they can feel proud about beating, not trivially simple.
3) They never make a mistake or lose at anything.

Any two of these are possible at once, but not all three. It seems like some of the players would be ok with dropping #2 and having the game be an OP-isekei-esque stroll through painfully outclassed enemies, but besides being boring to run, it's probably not a solution all the players would be happy with either.

This is also my assessment of the situation.

But this sounds like some fairly basic 101 GMing - the players are about to make a mistake that the characters never would.

One of the characters can see the demon right there. They know it can cast hostile spells against them. They know people cast counter-teleport on them. It's all right there directly in front of the characters faces. But it's not in the player's faces, particularly if you're removing the map to indicate there's nothing to see. Of course, it sounds like there really isn't anything they could do to prevent the demon counterspelling them even if they could see it. But basic GMing says the character don't forget things just because the players do. They don't walk directly into open pits just because the player's forgotten the description of the room. They don't forget the king's name they learned half an hour of character time ago just because the player's previous session was three weeks ago thanks to player illness.

Actually, I think its kind of the opposite.

Nobody in the party is an expert in demons or conjuration magic, they only have one person capable of detecting magic, and one person capable of seeing ethereal beings (and these are not the same person).

The players absolutely know how the spells work and what can be done to interfere with them, and instantly realized what was going on, their characters not so much.

I take it back: your table is still concentrated drama, you just learned to not trigger your players.
This is not a solution to the drama, no more than avoiding the elephant and pretending it's not there makes the elephant go away

Eh. Most of the people I have gamed with over my life are mentally ill. It am not qualified to actually cure people, so if I want to avoid drama, not triggering them is really the only way to go.

On the other hand, an ethereal demon the players lack a way of dealing with counter-spelling on the players when they try to leave? Yea, I think I'd be annoyed at this kind of situation as well. The rest of your campaign better be really good to back up this kind of cheese.

Not like actual combatants other than the fact that they cast actively hostile spells. So they're like an environmental hazard - you can't interact with them or stop them, but you absolutely need to be aware they're there and doing things in the same way you need to be aware which parts of the floor are gaping holes. (It's also easy to see why the players are frustrated by the invisible-demon-whose-spells-work-on-you-but-your-spells-can't-affect-them... it's pretty much a recipe for frustration, particularly since it's capable of perceiving them and casting spells through walls!)

I think you guys are over-selling this a bit.

My world is animistic in nature, spirits are not uncommon, nor are the means of dealing with them.

The players often underestimate spirits, and this particular party makeup is pretty vulnerable to them, but even so they are far from helpless.

Off the top of my head they could have blessed the sniper (who has blind-fighting)'s gun and killed or driven it off, performed an exorcism, summoned a spirit of their own to battle it (this is what they ended up doing), create a ward or anti-magic shell around themselves, saturated the area with iron powder or jade dust, cast spirit sight on themselves and then battled it with their own spells, countered its counter spell, or simply let it use up all of its magic hindering them in less decisive ways before dropping the teleport rune.

They also have a time-monk who can turn back time and a bard with a common sense retcon power, so they can't even be taken by surprise.

Yeah. I might suggest maybe not doing this, unless the PCs have some means to deal with it. I'm also a bit confused about how something can be ethereal yet still cast spells on physical beings. I'm a bit hazy on the rules for going ethereal, but I thought that meant you couldn't interact with anything physical (can cast spells on yourself and other ethereal beings, but that's it). Is this something in D&D? Or something that was cribbed? Even spells that allow remote spell casting (scrying stuff), at least allows for a dismiss to get rid of it. Having an ethereal spellcaster floating around sniping at them sounds kinda iffy to me. Again, I have no clue what rules are being used, but one of the things I'd use extremely sparingly is anyone capable of attacking the party (even with just spells), while not being subject to any sort of countermeasure. I suppose it's possible that the party did have some means to attack an ethereal opponent with them (an ethereal blade maybe? Dunno), but just didn't think to use it?

Not D&D, its my own system (link in signature). Basically, targeting an ethereal being with spells (or vice versa) is slightly harder than normal casting, but still fully possible. They can also be seen by mediums and attacked by blessed weapons, but the party only has one of the former and none of the later, though they did have a wizard who can enchant people to make anyone see spirits and a cleric who can bless any weapon to allow it to attack a spirit.

But they didn't do this, because their goal was to get in, kill their targets as quickly as possible, and get back out, and actually dealing with the demon would have interfered with that goal.

Can the demon see through walls too? If it left the room, and is no longer visible to the PC who could see it before, then it's reasonable to assume it also lost line of sight to them and should no longer be able to know what they are doing in the room, if/when they are casting a spell, and certainly could not target them (much less a spell they are casting with a counter-spell). Just being in range isn't sufficient. You also need to be able to perceive the target. Again, my memory of how D&D handles ethereal stuff is hazy, but I don't recall it allowed you to see through opaque objects on the physical plane. Maybe I'm misremembering though.

In my system, magic can be sensed through walls by making a test using the insight skill, and this is good enough to target it with a counter-spell.

And yeah, from your descriptions it sounds like you have a table full of people who can't seem to make up their minds about what to do, and as a GM this can be very frustrating, and the temptation is to just move things forward by asking more direct questions "Ok, so are you going to do X, or Y", and this can be interpreted by them as you railroading them in some way, or limiting their choices. The best advice I can give you is to be extremely aware of what you are saying and what signals that may be sending to them. Always stick to providing information that may help them make a decision, but be careful about editing or omitting things in ways that might seem to the players to be you leading them to do things that are "mistakes". Regardless of mini placement or removal, after the combat I would remind them that the demon was still there in the room and visible:

"Ok. You've defeated the bad guys in the room, but that demon thing floating in the air is still there watching you. What do you do?"

It's informative, but doesn't push them in any direction. Just lets them know that there's still something around that they are aware of and could be a problem for them.

Sums it up pretty well.

[gbaji]

Off the top of my head they could have blessed the sniper (who has blind-fighting)'s gun and killed or driven it off, performed an exorcism, summoned a spirit of their own to battle it (this is what they ended up doing), create a ward or anti-magic shell around themselves, saturated the area with iron powder or jade dust, cast spirit sight on themselves and then battled it with their own spells, countered its counter spell, or simply let it use up all of its magic hindering them in less decisive ways before dropping the teleport rune.

Ok. That makes a lot more sense. When you said "ethereal demon" I assumed you literally meant "a demon who is ethereal" (as in the D&D ability). A spirit makes perfect sense to me (game system I play has spirits and spirt like beings). Yeah. That's strange that in a game that has this stuff, they apparently didn't equip themselves with much to deal with them? Hmmm...

Not D&D, its my own system (link in signature). Basically, targeting an ethereal being with spells (or vice versa) is slightly harder than normal casting, but still fully possible. They can also be seen by mediums and attacked by blessed weapons, but the party only has one of the former and none of the later, though they did have a wizard who can enchant people to make anyone see spirits and a cleric who can bless any weapon to allow it to attack a spirit.

How long does it take to do those things? I'm just confused why they didn't take this thing out in the fight? Heck. In my game, things like that are like the first things you target precisely because they take special weapons/magic to deal with. See one? Cast up your blessings/whatever, then whack it. In the middle of a combat? Even better time to do so because it's likely thinking you're pulling out that weapon to whack a physical opponent instead, so you have better odds of actually getting it with a hit (spirits like this can just sorta float away from you, and would presumably not just hang out letting you whale on them if they have a choice, right?).

But they didn't do this, because their goal was to get in, kill their targets as quickly as possible, and get back out, and actually dealing with the demon would have interfered with that goal.

Yeah. But did they have a plan to do this without maybe being identified? Is there any issue with retaliation in this game world? My game table does these sort of strike attacks too, but we make sure to use some sort of magic to conceal ourselves and/or prevent divination type spells to figure out we did what we did, and we make sure to leave no witnesses. Why would they just not bother to do anything about this thing? Did they not see it until they were actually in the battle? Or did they notice it earlier?

In my system, magic can be sensed through walls by making a test using the insight skill, and this is good enough to target it with a counter-spell.

And did any of them have the insight skill to detect his spell and counter it? If not, why?