Sometimes, you or your players want to do something amazing that isn't exactly legal by the rules. How would you handle that? Would you deny it, rule that they must do something or give something up to do that, or allow them to do it as is?
As an example, an adventure that I'm building in my head for my homebrew world has the characters having to board an enemy flying ship (the craft they use for this is a small flying boat). Their boss is a bard and is doing the following awesome thing: He sounds like he has 3 people and 6 instruments singing in his voice, is amplifying his voice to cover a very large area so that the players can hear him sing while on board the enemy ship, and to give penalties to the enemy attacks. (By the way, he's singing Nightwish's Last Ride of The Day). Would you allow this sort of thing to happen, even if done by an NPC that has class levels? (He also has an awesome line: "I shall do as the Bard does - and make them dance.")
So what awesome things have you allowed your players do that weren't legal under RAW or RAI? Or, what awesome things have your players asked about? How do you handle these situations?
I tend to be permissive, so long as the group of us at the table can come up with a reason for letting it happen that isn't just "because it is cool". To use your example of the amplified bard song, that would likely entail one or more of the characters having worked prior to that point (even if quickly and improvisedly with materials on hand) to invent and build a device that provides that benefit (rather than just saying "sounds cool, sure, I don't care how it works - but it does work").
In the past, my campaigns have had a few moments of this type of situation... mostly resulting in me needing to decide what kind of damage pouring a keg full of holy water on an undead all at once would do, resulting in the invention of the first airship in a campaign setting that is capable of non-magical flight (the rest are wondrous items, include wondrous items in their construction, or involve binding elementals).
It's really hard to remember other instances - not because they don't exist, but because allowing this kind of creative thinking is so much a part of my DM style that I think of all but the above examples as just "par for the course".
In my Darksun campaign my players stole a "psionic jam box" (small obsidian orb infused with psionic power to allow it to play a limited number of songs) from the psionicist college dorm room of a noble's son.
Later in the campaign they had to rescue a NPC from an Athesian street gang. He was being held in a building in the slums of Tyr. There were guards posted outside the one room building with the other gang members inside. Half of the party used the jam box to successfully challenge the guards outside to a "You got served" style dance battle.
The dance throw down drew the attention of the other gang members who came out to watch. This allowed the other PCs to sneak in and rescue the NPC without opposition.
I allowed it because it was the proper combination of good social rolls, good role playing, and utter awesomeness.
My only concern when you make a powerful NPC even one that helps the players. The players can come off as sidekicks. Why am I doing this when boss guy bard so 10 times more bad ass than I am?
Archon007 wrote:
RustedKitsune wrote:
Is the bard's singing effectively there just to give blanket disadvantage to the hostile's attacks on the PCs while they are aboard the enemy airship? If so, there might be other ways of achieving the same ends without bending the acoustics rules.
For example: arm all the hostiles with crossbows that have been weakened by flying through clouds and have a range of only 5ft/60ft. They always attack with disadvantage. Above 5ft, they have disdvantage because of range whilst at 5ft or less they have disadvantage because they are in close combat. The players need not know this, of course. They might find out if they grab a discarded crossbow and try to use it but you could hand-wave that away by pretending that the weapon had been damaged when it was dropped.
Or simply say that all the hostiles are drunk (=poisoned) and therefore have disadvantage on attack rolls. That might be quite entertaining. 
At least back in the day, the solution would be independent spell research. Literally anything you want to do can be turned into a spell, with the major limiting factor that the coolest abilities were always high-level spells.
I can't even remember whether it was from a book or not, but I know that I played in a 2E game where the wizard had a first-level spell that allowed him to be clearly heard by anyone within 1000 feet or so.
BoldItalic wrote:
Archon007 wrote: