D&D General When do you overrule RAW?

[el-remmen]

"any reasonable person would know a caltrop wouldn't work against certain foes".

That seems a reasonable assumption to me! In fact, it is reasonable to assume that ANY weapon or spell may not work against certain foes - depending on the foe or the specific circumstances.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It's certainly true that everything in the game is negotiable by the DM- you are not bound by any rule or line of text in the game. What I find objectionable is the arbitrary nature of such rulings- the player is told what resources they can use to make a character. They select options based on what the mechanical text of those options says that they do.

Agreed. The reasonable (fair) solution is to give the monster a special defense like "immune to slow" or "immune to piercing damage" or whatever...

 

[Reynard]

Are house rules the same as "overruling RAW"? (he asked, desperate to avoid yet another martials vs casters threadstorm)

 

[Reynard]

Certainly, their characters should know if Sentinel won't work on Kaiju, right?

Not necessarily. Sometimes you have to try a thing to know it won't work.

Like fire and trolls. In my game they are immune, or it heals them, or causes backlash, or anything other than halting their regeneration.

 

[James Gasik]

It's not the designer of the caltrop's fault, either.

If a monster should be immune to piercing damage or difficult terrain or whatever, the bloke designing the monster should put that in it's block....
...since DMs routinely re-design monsters....

Well it is, if they fail to take into account caltrops working on golems, oozes, fire elementals, etc., etc.. Basically the a lot of this comes down to the fact that D&D is not written to be a simulation. It's a game, and it's rules don't always take verisimilitude into account.

Simply put, if you're going to write rules with the assumption that they do what they say they do in all circumstances, put a disclaimer on your game saying "hey, sometimes rules don't make sense in the logical world we live in. D&D isn't that world.".

In the end of course, the DM is certainly free to change or ignore any rule that makes the campaign less fun. Perhaps Mr. Mercer felt allowing a puny Feat to reduce the challenge of his encounter significantly was, ultimately, less fun for his game. The problem I have is less that he decided to do this, it's more the when and the how.

Doing that when the player is thinking to themselves, well my character has this ability, so I'll do this in the combat isn't great.

And it's made less great when, instead of explaining why it doesn't work, the DM says "now you, player, who have nothing to go on but your own potentially meager knowledge of fighting giant monsters, and have no information other than some vague flavor text, justify your ability's existence!"

Even if the player had come up with a defense, it's the player convincing the DM, and has nothing to do with their character or their abilities. "Ability to persuade the DM out of character" shouldn't be a necessary skill to play D&D.

 

[billd91]

Now could Kaiju monsters have a trait that says "immune to effects that reduce their speed"? Certainly. And players should have a chance to know such things in advance. Certainly, their characters should know if Sentinel won't work on Kaiju, right?

I can certainly see kinds of opponents that might be immune to speed reduction. A juggernaut, perhaps. But if Sentinel wasn't supposed to work on a kaiju, I would expect its effect to be limited by the size of the opponent like push effect from the Crusher feat is. It isn't gated by size so it's reasonable to expect it to work... barring a specific injunction about movement like for a juggernaut. And if there was one, I wouldn't necessarily expect the PC (or player) to know it without discovering it via experience unless it was a fairly common class of opponents (which kaiju aren't).
Honestly, I think Matt didn't make the right call. But he's got a deep well of trust built up between him and the players, so a dubious interpretation every once in a while isn't really a big issue.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So the rules cannot take everything into account and it is perfectly possible, even likely, that sometimes unforeseen edge cases crop up where blindly following the rules would produce particularly implausible outcomes. In such cases it is fine to overrule the rules, and I'd consider this to be one of GM's responsibilities.

But I don't think the example here is that, and I think it was a bad ruling. Some monsters being rather big is not a rare edge case; it is totally expected one and clearly codified in the rules. It was perfectly reasonable for Marisha to expect this to work.

And I even agree with Mercer, that it doesn't make much sense for the movement stopping to work on creatures that big, and that's why I put it on my houserule document that it doesn't, so that the player can make informed decisions on how to employ the feat or indeed whether to choose it in the first place.

This reminds me of another similar bad ruling of Mercer's (again on Marisha's expense,) where he ignored the normal fall rules after the player had already committed to the jump (correctly by the RAW) assuming that that the fall could not be lethal. Buddy, the moment to tell the player that the normal rules won't apply is before they jump!

(Of course what annoyed me more about that than the incident itself, was the internet reaction. There were a lot of "LOL Marisha so dumb" comments, even though her intuition of the rules governing the situation was perfectly correct, Matt just pulled the rug from under her. Smelled like misogyny. )

 

[James Gasik]

Are house rules the same as "overruling RAW"? (he asked, desperate to avoid yet another martials vs casters threadstorm)

I wouldn't think so, as long as they are properly explained to the players (and presumably approved by them).

Like say you have a rule that says that Monster of size Huge are immune to things that reduce speed (call it the Juggernaut Rule) simply due to their mass and momentum. If the rule is known, then the player knows they can't use Sentinel or Ray of Frost, or Lance of Lethargy, or anything else in this battle.

If the players feel that's a fair rule (and they will certainly let you know if not, one way or another), everything is good.

If you spring this rule on the fly, OTOH, that may result in damage to your relationship with your players.

 

[Mort]

Are house rules the same as "overruling RAW"? (he asked, desperate to avoid yet another martials vs casters threadstorm)

With house rules - the players, at least in theory, have access to them beforehand.

Here, we're looking at an "on the spot" ruling - the player would have no way to know that their action would fail.

So for the first instance, it's not the same. After the first instance, it essentially becomes a house rule.

 

[MrTemplar]

I almost never overrule RAW, but that is because I DM a weekly table at the local Adventurers' League night. If I was running a non-AL league game, I might overrule RAW if it helped the flow of the game, and/or worked better with the fiction, or just made plain common sense.