Last night I played in the second session of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I'm playing my 2nd-level fighter folk hero, Butch Uprise. I'm in a five person party.
I'd been thinking all week that I wanted to try to avoid making a basic attack with my ax if I could think of something else. So that's what I did. The session of 2.5 hours or so which was conflict intensive didn't see my fighter swinging his ax even once. Instead he:
- Used his shield to keep rats from attacking the party's wizard, a noble he defers to (being a commoner himself);
- Threatened the rats' nest to draw them off his comrades and onto himself;
- Grappled a cultist and shook him until he surrendered;
- Avoided a combat instigated by the bard in order to get common people to safety.
With the exception of the grapple, this required a ruling from the DM each time. (In the previous session, I also beat two kobolds to death with a sleeping kobold.)
Now, the DM in this case happens to be fair and experienced in adjudication by the looks of it. But I wondered how it might turn out if it was another DM who felt put upon because I wasn't choosing to just "swing my ax again" or who didn't think the actions I took were in keeping with how they thought the scene should be resolved or who perhaps thought the actions were "silly." Such a DM might have made the outcome too difficult or too cumbersome in risk or cost to be worth it. In the face of this, I might have instead just relied on swinging my ax rather than chance the DM's adjudication. That didn't happen and I was glad to see that it didn't, but I think it's a fair concern for players to have. I've seen it in actual play situations that I've been in, on podcasts and other games I've observed, and seen how people adjudicate situations on the forums in ways that make me sad.
So I'm interested to hear your stories of actions you've taken (especially in combat) that you feel were adjudicated well or poorly. Include, if you can, some details about the situation, what you did, how the DM resolved it with either narration and/or mechanics, and what you might have done differently. For that matter, feel free to share adjudications you feel you botched as a DM and wished you could have done differently or adjudications you felt you nailed perfectly.
i play in 2 groups, one whose norm isn't D&D and one that is. the former is very good at spending their actions more creatively, doing something beyond just "i hit him again". i run a 4e game in the latter. in both gruops, my wife is one of the players and have been attempting to encourage them to be more cinematic.
last year i ran a session in which the players had the chance to reprise their PCs from an old planescape game we'd played a decade ago that another player ran. that session also saw a reprise of the lava pit room from white plum mountain. there was a fight in that room during which one enemy fell off a cliff. one player's PC decided to leap off the ledge onto the fallen enemy, which i determined was a combined bull rushcharge attack and required an athletics check.
in another game, while menaced by a flameskull, my PC was successful in wrapping it up in an empty bag--which i promptly swirled about and after a big wind-up, slammed against the ground. the GM did a nice job handling that, judging that in fact, the flameskull was blinded, had no line of effect and by being disoriented, was dazed (save ends). i'm not sure how balanced that was, but it was fun as heck!
One of my favorite combats ever involved about a dozen cultists in a ring around 4-5 prisoners we were trying to rescue. My swashbuckler drew his sword and charged right at them, only to make a last-second flying leap over the entire group, getting their attention and convincing most of them to give chase while the other PC's used the distraction to make their way to the prisoners and arm them with a few extra daggers we had on hand.
Adjudicated poorly:
my characters party is surprise attacked by goblins. I fail a wis check so I am groggy and I am surprised and have to struggle to get my armour on. While putting on armour I fail a dex check and stumbled off a hill. The damage from the fall reduces me to 0 hit points and I am unconscious in a stream, a 50% chance is assessed that I am face up or face down- my character ended up face down and drowns in 4" of water.
Jbickley00 wrote:
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
Kalani wrote:
Good:
A DM once let me do two grapples check to do a tornado DDT into a pin in on a Frost Giant. Then when the giant "kicked out", he applied an embarrassed condition.
Bad
A DM once forced a forced a -20 penalty to a full round action with a bow to pin a nobleman to a nearby wall. I nat 20ed.
Then he gave the noble a free contest to see if he could break the arrow AND rolled a check between my arrow and the man's robes.
"The robe might rip" he said.
We just stared.
Alas if 5e and it's simple mechanics existed.....
As a DM, I just try to rule fairly. That means I don't show bias for or against the players. I just rule as I see it and I do so consistently. I would say I am "moderately" cinematic in my approach. Meaning I tend to allow things that if I were watching it on tv I could accept it even though deep inside I'd know it wasn't really possible. If it's the sort of thing I'd turn the channel over because I thought the show was stupid then I'd rule against it.
I prefer DM empowered games because the actual rules system is much simpler. That is a feature. I am though probably one of those people who assumes a decent DM. My experience with bad DMs tends to make me just skip their games. I use the term bad as in evil vs bad as in inexperienced. The inexperienced but still good DM (good as in not evil) I will support and be patient as he improves (as all good DMs will with some experience).
I think if you don't like swinging your sword, then it's like adjudicating 'well' in order to make someone happy who doesn't actually like the game. And I say that because why focus so much on adjudication unless swinging a sword/rolling a die is a non event for you?
It seems one of these painful thespian ideals to magically raise play high above the lowly person who likes to roll a die.
Really swinging a sword (or whatever else the system offered that you went for, like casting a spell or whatev's) aught to be fun by itself. AND THEN adjudications can potentially add more fun on top. Fun on top of fun. Or adjudications can even be less fun, but the skill involved is to not make them remove all fun the rule set grants.
But rather than that it seems people do get that 'I'm doing this super special move and I must be favoured in my adjudication because swinging a sword is DROSS!'
That makes me sad.
I was playing in a game recently, and we encountered an evil incorporeal ghost witch that was throwing around scary firebolts of some sort. Due to it flying and various other circumstances, the only one who could touch it was the bard who had a wand of Magic Missiles, but she was low on HP and we couldn't possibly heal her enough before the next firebolts finished her off.
The DM allowed my improvised action of readying to throw myself in front of the incoming firebolt, taking the damage to myself and sparing the bard. He didn't even require a check of any sort, since I was taking the damage automatically and bypassing the need for an attack roll. It's absolutely not something I would want to do very often, since taking damage is always a bad thing - and since I am actually a huge fan of just attacking with my sword - but sometimes the circumstances require it.
iserith wrote:
Emerikol. wrote:
Emerikol. wrote:
There's always the attempt to push a foe off a bridge or ledge, but that's easy to adjudicate by the rules.
In one of my last games, an NPC threatened to destroy the dragon eggs in a black dragon's lair while the party was speaking with the black dragon (trying to figure out how they would get out alive). This raised the tension level of the situation as the black dragon started to get angry. The monk in the party decided to move over to the eggs. He asked if he could ready his action to throw his body in front of any egg that the NPC attacked. Straight up, I ruled that's great. If the NPC attacked an egg, I would have let the Monk dive in and take the damage. Unfortunately for the group, the NPC was bluffing. Instead she stole an artifact and used powerful magic to plane shift. Allowing the monk to even try to do this feat won the dragon's respect so that it allowed them all to leave without harm. It was a great moment.
Oh...by the way, Iserith. This is a great thread. I hope we get a lot more ways to do things other than just straight up attack with weapon.
I'm NOT a very math/balance savvy DM. And from time to time. I'll set a DC too high or too low.
If & when the players complain about it (and they do), I hear them out and revise. Not every time they challenge something - just when it's apparent I've erred too far one way or another.
"Hang on, Brad, are you saying X is Nearly Impossible for anyone to do?"
-Oh, no. I'm not saying that at all. (Revise)
-No, but look at your circumstances. You're trying to X while N is going on.
That sort of thing.
Generally, despite mistakes, I try to be mindful about how I'm training my players to behave. I don't want to disincentivize clever play through bad calls.
Heres a good call on me:
-I negotiated a deal with a local black dragon to stop raiding a nearby town in exchange for monthly tribute, pointing out that a prosperous town would yield more treasure and food more often than one that was constantly rebuilding and overly concerned with dragon defense. Now I had to roll all kinds of stuff during the negotiation, but when we got back to town, the DM didn't have me roll to convince the council of elders. They simply agreed, relieved to be free of violence at a lower cost (proportionally) than the regular dragon raids.
Bad Call
Apocalypse World. We'd arrayed a coalition of disparate forces to oust a corrupt sheriff. The MC described the situation as we rolled up, that the sheriff hadn't bothered setting up a defense. We made our demand for total unconditional surrender (using the move Go Aggro) and I rolled a 12 (needing at least a 7 to kind of succeed or at least a 10 to totally succeed). When you succeed on Go Aggro, the NPCs can either do what you want, or suck it up and take the consequences of your threat. The MC decided the sheriff would suck it up. Cool. Undefended, that should've been annihilation - but the MC treated the Sheriff as though he had his forces set up in defense. Result: 1 damage. WTH? If you wanted a big battle, you needed to telegraph it. If you choose to suck it up, it means sucking it up, not brushing it off. Not Metal.
iserith wrote:
It's not hugely important for a DM to make sure they're making every improvised thing the players attempt nicely balanced with the existing rules and mechanics. The goal of D&D is to tell an interesting story, and in lots of stories the part where someone attempts something unorthadox during the fight is the part where the power dynamics are likely to change. The guy who had the advantage at first is now in a difficult position, a hero( or villain) figures out a better strategy to fight the enemy with, etc. Who cares if it's not the optimal action to take? It makes for a better story! Just try to make the difficulty of the action as fair as possible without stopping to look up any more than one, maybe two rules. Basically, you don't want to halt the fight for too long or that'll discourage improvising things in the future. If your ruling seems reasonably fair to you, players probably won't notice anything wrong with it either. If it comes up a lot later you can refine it then; I've always felt trying things out is the best way to judge experimental rules.
I'm Iserith's DM. I kind of adore Butch. 
I think the key is to not constantly discourage outside-the-box thinking. 5e ended the powers system for most melee classes, and in doing so drove them back to relying on the DM to allow them to do interesting things. While I prefer 5e as a whole over 4e for a pile of reasons, that's one change I wish had been less thorough - I enjoyed fighters declaring things other than "I attack" or "I attack more than once" and not having to make rulings constantly.
Making good rulings on in-combat actions isn't easy at all. I've been doing it for two decades and it's still not easy. I'm not entirely sure I made the right call when Butch tried to protect the mage - I'm a little worried I stepped on the toes of a class feature (the Protection fighting style) with how I handled it, though the fact that Butch spent an action makes me feel a bit more at-ease about that.
The most common problem I see from DMs having to do on-the-fly rulings on in-combat actions is putting penalties so high that they remove significant chances of success from the action, which encourages players to just do what's on their character sheets. If you're going to do that, quite frankly, you're going to frustrate your players less by just telling them they can't do things the rules don't explicitly allow for - offering false hope isn't a good thing to do to people.
Sounds like you crave a game without the murder/loot-and-repeat style of 99% of D&D adventures out there. You're not the only one hoping some writer will come along and save us all from endless, mindless dungeon crawls through A-Z monsters in the monster manual whose sole motivation is to hoard treasure so the PCs will come and kill them.
Good call Isereth. I only hope that D&D can live up to something other than the murder-hobo mentality. (are we allowed to still use that term?)
jh
Emirikol wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
FFSAA wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
I let players try to do any action they want, but I make sure I understand their intent, what they want to have happen, before deciding what the impromptu mechanics will be. Usually you can classify the actions into a few abstractions.
1) they want to use their action to do something that is not an attack and don't expect to be doing damage to an opponent.
This is easy, since it's just a normal use of an action and does not have an effect that is in competition with an attack action. For example, turn over a table to give cover, push over a stack of barrels to cause confusion or knock people down, etc.
2) they want to do something as a kind of attack, expecting damage to occur and possibly some effect.
You have to think about the action in terms of normal class features and feats. Is it something that is doable because of the specifics of the combat, the location or terrain, then it certainly could be as damage effective as a normal attack or more and and added effect. Why not, that's the player using the environment to great effect. You and the player just have to be happy with the effect.
If the action is something that the player could claim to do regardless of the location or terrain, and basically spam it wherever and whenever, then you have to seriously weigh it against normal attack actions. Maybe you'll want to apply some overriding factor here, rule of cool, or a cinematic moment, or maybe another use for inspiration points. But if not, then you'll have to come to some agreement with the player, like it does less damage than a normal attack, but gets the effect, or it does more damage than a normal attack, but needs another check, and has interesting consequences for failure.
iserith wrote:
Bad Call:
Requiring three or more rolls to determine the success or failure of an action that is not an extended action. I say it that way first because I have seen it so often that it has become a rule of mine to never require more than two rolls for non-extended improvised actions.
Example 1 (D20 Modern):
I had a character in a shootout in a bar. She wanted to shoot the bottles behind the bar to shower the enemy beneath them in flammable booze before throwing her lighter over the bar. The DM required an attack roll against an AC of 15 to see if I hit any of the bottles. He then gave the enemy a Reflex save to avoid being hit by the booze, and then required an attack roll against a target with cover to toss the lighter and ignite the flammable booze.
Example 2 (D20 Modern):
My character, the same one from example one, was chasing someone down on her motorcycle. She attempted to knock him to the ground by kicking him as she drove past at 25 mph. The DM told me I had to make an attack roll for the kick, which I expected. However, he also said that I had to make a Drive check to avoid opportunity attacks for moving through the enemy's reach (despite the fact that his back was to me), another Drive check to retain control of the motorcycle, and a Fort save to see if my character hurt her leg (she would have taken 2d6 damage on a failed save).
Note: I eventually stopped trying to improvise in that DM's game because he never made it worthwhile. The funny thing was the DM eventually complained that we were killing off all of the villains, and that he couldn't establish a recurring villain because we solved every problem with our guns. At that point I excused myself to use the bathroom so I wouldn't be openly laughing at the DM in front of the other players.
Back when I ran (3.5, 4 for a few games, d20mod), I'd tell my players "act like superheroes, like movie characters". And they... would attack with their swords. Sometimes it's not the DM that holds the epicness of a game down. ~_~
iserith wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
Whir wrote:
ChaplingMcGuilicutty wrote:
Whir wrote:
powerroleplayer wrote:
Emirikol wrote:
Noon wrote:
Noon wrote:
Bad. I was playing a goliath ranger and I wanted to push a large cask into another large cask in the hopes to either roll them all onto hobgoblins or at least get the two cask to make the footing difficult. The DM ruled that I had to make 3 checks each incrementing by 5 starting at a hard DC. After I succeed on the first two, but failed the last one he rolled to see which direction the ale would flood. It came out onto the party while not spiling in any of the space the hobgoblins need to engage the party.
Fun (but possibly bad). I was playing a goliath runepriest and my holy symbol was a 30 pound chunk of sardonyx rock. An eladrin pirate teleported up into the crows nest to get away from the party. I had gloves that let me throw stuff for enhanced damage so I asked if I could throw my holy symbol at the mast of their ship and bring him down with it. The DM made it an attack vs. AC and if I missed I might end up throwing my holy symbol into the ocean. I hit the mast, it cracked, my holy symbol skid to a stop near a guard rail and the eladrin was dumped into the ocean.
Fun. Was playing my runepriest again inWestgate and tracked thieves back to a dojo that belong to the nine golden swords. There was a Shou wizard that was tearing into the party with swarms of magic missiles. I wanted to take down the wizard without killing him with a ranged attack. The DM said If I throw my polearm as an improved weapon and it was enough damage to kill him and beat the DR of the wall that I could subdue him by pinning one of his hands to the wall instead of killing him. I ended up rolling a crit and it was decide that the throw was pretty demoralizing to the other Shou ran away. (I suspect they were going to runaway after the leader went down anyway /shrug)
Rhenny wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
Wuzzard wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
ChaplingMcGuilicutty wrote:
dungeondude wrote:
powerroleplayer wrote:
Yup, lots of DMs are doing their level best. Some aren't good at reacting to off-script stuff or improvisation. They might make a bad ruling in good faith.
The multiple checks to accomplish something is a Sim-sickness. "Well, there's a check to throw something at the bottles, then a check to see if the NPC got out of the way of the glass, then a check to see if you can light the spilled alcohol on fire..." and so on, when the bulk of that attempt can be covered by ONE check. It's parsed down into discreet actions instead of an overall effort.
All in good faith, still a bad call. Some DMs, average DMs, and sometimes veterans, could use frequent training in styles that are not their own. More tools for the box.
"Sim-sickness," I like that. That's a very common bad call - too many checks to resolve a single action or situation with the result often being failure since the chance to fail goes up with more rolls. And often it ends up in deprotagonizing, slapstick results.
I recall a one-shot I was in with a DM who called for an Acrobatics check for my paladin to get up on a table to attack someone. I was like, "Why? That's really just difficult terrain and I have the movement to spare." Stuck to his guns and I, of course, failed the check because I was in plate armor and had a 10 Dex or whatever. So "naturally" I fell over like someone in the Keystone Cops rather than a valiant warrior defending the keep from a horde of undead. So stupid. I recall Chris Perkins doing this as well in an Acquisitions Inc. game where the group was trying to get on a dragon or whatever. It turned into slapstick - which admittedly is probably okay considering that group and the format. I saw more of that in the latest podcast and just kept shaking my head.
Usually when my players want to do something off script I first decide if any roll is needed at all. If not, then sure, what they attempt just succeeds. If a roll is needed, then I imagine a difficulty and ask them to roll. Sometimes I even pick a number in my head for them to roll against. Most times I just want the die to surprise me. A mediocre roll, most of the die range, is a success. A high roll is a outstanding success. A really low roll is a failure usually with some consequence. The die roll is less about accurate mechanics and more about me wanting to have some semblance of uncertainty. It's all part of the fiction.
iserith wrote:
Sure. This isn't a process-simulation, it's a task-resolution system.
If you're trying to model everything, the system drags down your game and you train your players to avoid doing things that require an avalanche of successful rolls.
if you're trying to determine whether something works or doesn't (and how well), you've got this handy system.
Even the roll-under check of years past wasn't process, it just determined whether you could do what you set out to do. And the higher your stat, the more you could reasonably pull off.
I think you guys paint way too broad a brush. In the end the DM and the players playing with the DM have to decide just how far they want to allow things to go. While I actually agree with the table and rough terrain argument, I might not agree with every argument. If the DM never makes some things hard, the game just goes off the rails for many groups and interest is lost. Some actually want a certain level of cinematic realism and no more. It's the DM's job to set that tone for his game and be clear where his preference fall.
I think getting on the back of a dragon that is likely moving is probably impossible in real life even if dragons existed. So I wouldnt' have a problem requiring a serious check to do that and it failing a lot. Now if you are the ultimate uber acrobatics super star then you succeed anyway. But I don't want a DC that says the average guy will succeed even half the time.
TiaNadiezja wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
There was a game about a year ago where I was playing a Tiefling Wizard named Narvas, and one of us was playing a Hobgoblin Rogue named Gorthach. Gorthach got turned by a vampire during one of our missions, yet remained loyal to us after we killed his master, so we protected him during the day by keeping opaque bottles for him to cram himself into with Gaseous Form.
One battle took place during the day, meaning that Gorthach was out of commission, and the enemy spell-caster had been counter-spelling me so much that our melee front-liners were taking a beating. I found out from the DM that the enemy caster had no Illusion spells, meaning that I could cast those at will without being countered, so I asked if casting Greater Invisibility on Gorthach would allow the sunlight to pass through him without burning him. The DM thought that sounded cool and agreed that it would work, however I only had a single-digit number of Wizard levels at the time, meaning that Gorthach would have to do his damage pretty quickly before the spell expired. I uncorked Gorthach's bottle - inside my cloak, so that any sunlight would be indirect - and stuck my finger inside so that I could deliver the spell (Touch range). Gorthach spent:
*one turn Running to the enemy caster (Natural 20 to Move Silently!)
*one turn killing the caster with a Full Attack: 2 attacks with his shortsword, each with the sword's magical enhancement (I think +2 or +3), 20+ STR, and Sneak Attack (I think +3d6)
*one turn Running to an enemy melee Front-liner, "failing" the Move Silently check and inspiring the enemies to surrender in fear of "The Silent Death" 
From then on, I always kept at least two of my 4-th level spell slots reserved for Greater Invisibility, and later took the Extend Spell feat so that I could also use 5-th level slots.
Emerikol. wrote:
iserith wrote:
Shirebrok wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
kalil wrote:
I'm not the biggest fan of "Are you sure?"
For one, it suggests I've missed something while simultaneously not telling me what I missed.
For two, it feels like, "you idiot," belongs in there, somewhere. "Are you sure, you idiot?"
And for 3, it seems like the DM is asking permission to drop a Gotcha! on me. Which relates back to 1 - if I missed something, tell me. If I didn't miss anything, then I've already signed on to the eventualities of my action, but you still need to hold my hand bc I'm an idiot (2).
Now, NONE of that could be intended by the DM at all. But that's how I experience "are you sure?"
bawylie wrote:
I actually want my players to mostly use their in class abilities, swinging swords, casting spells. If you just throw a bit of "roleplaying" into those actions, they're totally fun. The occasional out the box action is also cool, but it requires some kind of situational setup most of the time. Drop that tent on the foe, springboard off the plank and flip over the guy, etc. Those events can have special mechanical benefits outside what your ordinary attacks/spells might do. How easy or difficult these things will be will depend on the circumstances and likely result (the two examples above, not difficult, but you need those props in place first).
But. I think your standard abilities are supposed to be the most effective approach, most of the time. Because if they arent.... well... doesnt the game just degenerate into who can think up the next quirky form of attack? Why bother to attack "normally" at all? For balance reasons, I dont want that. If you want a game with all weird and wonderful attacks every round... I dont think DnD is the best fit, there will be other systems that work better for what you want.
Fralex wrote:
kalil wrote:
5e has a simple way to reward sub-optimal moves that are in-character: inspiration. I give those points out like candy. Almost anything that fits with a character and also makes people smile or woot or cheer or even groan gets inspiration.
Got a Life Cleric Outlander who only wears the hide armour he made himself, not anything tougher. He is superstitious, ignorant, grubby and smelly, and no-one can convince him to wear "better" armour. Great - he starts every day with a point of inspiration (and gets a touch of GM armour in that enemies don't tend to target him quite as much as they possibly should - maybe one attacker for every two that go for the other two front-line characters (fighter and pally)). Rule of Cool, man.
I also find advantage / disadvantage to be really useful, too. A surprising move can get advantage, something cunning might force disadvantage on the enemy, something else might grant advantage to another player's next move, and so on. Often it'll take a skill check to get the bonus, and that really makes people think about what their character is good at. Or I can apply an attack roll to what might otherwise be automatic. A shield-bash might be just a Help action, but with an attack roll to apply both the Help AND a d4+STR damage.
There's still lots of room for special moves, too. I found 4e to be great inspiration for moves, especially for martial characters. The Paladin misses a lot, and gets a bit frustrated, so once he just declared he doesn't care about defence and is just going to go, quote, "hog wild" on the foe, smashing biting and kicking like a lunatic. Great! I do a mashup of 5e and 4e rules. He grants combat advantage to the target's next attack against him. But he also gets a version of a 4e power, where even a miss will do his strength modifier in damage, and yes, he gets to add his Divine Smite to the auto-hit if he wants (Tempus approves the hell out of some righteous face-smashing). Finally, he gets to give another player a point of inspiration (but has to tell us something that character did that impressed the Paladin).
Is it a bit OP? Sure! But only this character can do it, and he can only do it if he's missed his attack against the same target twice in a row. It's sort of his signature move. And it gets the player to compliment the other players on their coolness, and encourages them to do flashy kickass stuff to impress the pally. It's fun.
The Lightfoot Halfling Rogue gets the (to me, reasonable) bonus-Hide / attack-with-advantage move when lurking up the back of the party (at the expense of drawing a lot of "aggro" from enemy shooters), but when shooting I give the enemy half-cover for the ally the Halfling is obviously hiding behind. But for melee (he really likes melee) I let him disengage, move to the other end of the line, and get combat advantage if he makes a successful opposed stealth check against the enemy at the other end. His disadvantages are 1. that his stealth is against an actual roll, so it's less reliable than the ranged version, 2. he's in melee at the end, so he can get attacked, and 3. he can't concentrate on the most-wounded-enemy, he has to switch targets. The advantage is that the enemy doesn't get cover. It's nice and clear, and he knows what to expect and can plan accordingly.
OP? Maybe. But it's the only Lightfoot Halfling Rogue he'll ever play (probably). Let's have fun with it!
--
On the other hand, I did have to make it fairly clear that you can't expect to get advantage on every attack with quirky moves. It's got to suit the situation, and make sense, and hopefully be a bit different to something you've done over and over. Other than signature moves like the ones above, I want to see things that take advantage of the room or the action.
Had one player doing weirdly dopey things like aiming at an enemy's bow to "surprise" it. Nuh-uh. Unless you're actually trying to disarm them, that's just not a good move. Sometimes ya just gotta roll your attack like always. I suggested a rough rule-of-thumb that you can only do a weird move about once an encounter. It has everyone looking for their one special move, without getting over the top.
Kalani wrote:
bawylie wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
iserith wrote:
Apart from the obvious auto-successes, I try to give the player a choice when they go for creative and cool in challenging situations.
Some theorycraft examples;
1. Swashbuckler wants to swing on a chandelier in combat to get past guards and land on the stairs behind and above them.
- I'd rule that they can swing on the chandelier and go over the guards automatically if they take OAs from them and treat the intervening space as difficult ground (a slower careful swing) or;
- With an athletics check of appropriate DC - either succeed without suffering OAs and with only normal move expended or if they fail, take OAs and land amongst them (a rapid risky swing).
2. The example about diving in front of the firebolt.
- Only if within 5ft of the character to be protected, use a reaction and make a Dex check to dive in front and take the damage. Successful check - intervening character takes full damage, failed check target takes damage as normal. In both cases intervening character goes prone or;
- As above, use a reaction but make a Dex check with disadvantage to step in the way. Successful check - intervening character takes half damage, failed check target takes damage as normal. Character stays upright.
These may look a little ponderous, but I am generally very good at simulating the ineracting elements in my head on the fly and coming up with choices without disrupting the flow of play, and my players really like tactical choices.
Emirikol wrote:
psikerlord quoth:i actually want my players to mostly use their in class abilities, swinging swords, casting spells. if you just throw a bit of "roleplaying" into those actions, they're totally fun. the occasional out the box action is also cool, but it requires some kind of situational setup most of the time. drop that tent on the foe, springboard off the plank and flip over the guy, etc.those events can have special mechanical benefits outside what your ordinary attacks/spells might do. how easy or difficult these things will be will depend on the circumstances and likely result (the two examples above, not difficult, but you need those props in place first).
but i think your standard abilities are supposed to be the most effective approach, most of the time. because if they arent.... well... doesnt the game just degenerate into who can think up the next quirky form of attack? why bother to attack "normally" at all? for balance reasons, i dont want that. if you want a game with all weird and wonderful attacks every round...i dont think D&D is the best fit, there will be other systems that work better for what you want.
Noon wrote:
Timmee wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
players attack roll can be any descriptor he wants. It is just do I give them a proficiency bonus or not. Do I give them advantage or not. If I have to adjudicate damage from something silly, probaly 1d4.