I’ve always just treated it as a natural 3D extension of the 2D grid rules

I believe that’s how it’s handled in D&D too, or at least how my table has always done it. I meant more as a practical matter, you’re very unlikely to have a vertical wall grid and some kind of stand of the correct height for your minis, so you can’t just count squares like you would for horizontal movement. That’s when the Pythagorean Theorem comes up in my experience.

That’s fair. Perhaps another style of DMing and/or a different system are more your speed.

If you actually have to use that much math more than once in a blue moon, you’re doing it wrong.

There’s no grid in the sky, though

Sometimes restrictions breed creativity, though.

The DM can not metagame, definitionally

The secret to writing (or playing) characters that are smarter than you are is that you can take your time coming up with what they do. Maybe in-game your character has a razor wit and would have a snappy comeback for any situation. Out of game you’ve got a list of pre-prepared retorts you can bust out as needed.

That doesn’t work for 40k, to my understanding. It’s a miniatures combat game

I want to see a Trek episode shot like one of those Eddie Murphy films where he plays all the characters, using Jeffrey Combs

That’s kind of important to the story though.

I read once that the earliest edition(s?) didn’t have Rogue as a separate class, that everyone would be searching for traps and such. And when Rogue was added with the explicit ability to detect traps, it caused a crises because suddenly that implied that no one else had that ability.

It’s the cats you gotta worry about.

Main quest? Weird tangent? They’re the same picture!

God you just described my prep in a nutshell. This is how they ended up fighting an orchestra

There are ways. You could, for example, set up a bbeg where that’s his whole deal. The townsfolk are scared of this guy because he has the supernatural power to just kill you, straight-up. Maybe the questline leading up to their encounter involves the players finding defenses or counters or sabotaging his supply of spell components or whatever, such that, if they DO get power-word-killed, it’s because they had ample opportunities to not, and failed to take them.

Nope, no, that’s encouraging their behavior. Now your player thinks you’re giving them a quest to earn enough money to play out their brothel scene.

Nope, no, that’s encouraging their behavior. Now your player thinks you’re giving them a quest to thwart this bouncer.

You absolutely do not have to RP this. You can say “No.” You can say “Ok, you go off and do that, what’s everyone else doing?”

brb, converting my 401k to gold to attract an adorable baby dragon

I’m not one of them, but I empathize with all the GMs that are just sick of dealing with those particular kinds of misconduct that crop up with new players.