D&D General When do you overrule RAW?

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Where is this rule found?

Other Activity on Your Turn
You can communicate however you are able, through brief utterances and gestures, as you take your turn.

 

[James Gasik]

Other Activity on Your Turn
You can communicate however you are able, through brief utterances and gestures, as you take your turn.

Curiously you can do this while also uttering the Verbal components of a spell!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The most common RAW I ignore is that you cannot talk when it's not your turn.

Are people just supposed to save up their Monty Python quotes or something? Insane.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Yeah, like a Warlock using Repelling Blast, Grasp of Hadar, or Lance of Lethargy can punt around or slow anything regardless of size on hit without even a save, but here's the Battlemaster's Pushing Attack:

Pushing Attack​

When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one superiority die to attempt to drive the target back. You add the superiority die to the attack's damage roll, and if the target is Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw. On a failed save, you push the target up to 15 feet away from you.

Gotta love the martial double standard of adding in two levels of failure (to hit and save) AND a resource expenditure for things casters just get to do.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

To defend Mercer here, I don't think anyone would be at their best as a DM while doing it live in front of a sold-out Wembley Stadium.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I know what I prefer, and that's giving players a fair shake.

Someone DMing differently than you is not automatically being unfair to the players.

 

[M_Natas]

I've had it occur in games, a few months back, I made such a persuasive and logical argument to an NPC that they capitulated to me and only later did we realize that the DM never actually forced my 12 Charisma Wizard to make a die roll!

A lot of people would say "well, that's roleplay", but the fact that someone can bypass the game mechanics and make arguments to the DM basically turns Charisma into a non-ability. Which isn't kosher, IMO.

I mean, I've often seen the opposite scenario, where a player says "I roll Charisma to persuade the NPC!" and the DM asks the socially awkward player "what do you say? Present your character's argument".

A roleplaying game kind of assumes that, at some point, you have to disassociate the player from their character- if I can't play someone who is stronger, smarter, and better looking than I am, it's not roleplaying any more.

It's method acting.

You present two extremes here.
Mechanics only (just a Charisma role without explebation) and pure roleplay to success without mechanics.

For myself, I'm totally fine with the second one but not with the first one.
But - for me you don't have to method act to make an argument. You just have to tell my how you wanna persuade the NPC. What is your angle? You don't have to play it out in character with a funny voice but at least tell me if you wanna bribe him or bond over the fact that your moms have the same name or something.

Which leads me to Matt Mercers ruling. I haven't seen the Live Show so I'm going off from what is written in this thread:

I'm from the school of DM that doesn't allow players to declare skill checks. They need to tell me what their character is doing and I decide if a check is needed and what check is appropriate.

Now in battle, most action declaration are very mechanical, because in 90% of the time, an action declaration in battle is also describing exactly what the character is doing (like attacking the orc with a sword, casting a fireball and so on).
So, as long as I as the DM understand, what the characters is doing in the Game World, I'm fine. He can try it.
Fiction first, mechanics second.

So, now we have some game mechanics that can become very disassociated with the game world.
So, Marishas use of sentinel was such a disassociated mechanic in this case, because it was mechanics first.
"I press button x and the giant monsters speed gets reduced to 0".
But it does not tell us what the character is doing.
So I would have stumbled over that rule in that specific case, too, because the player is attempting something that is not covered by ingame character action.

I would guess the declaration of the use if the sentinel mechanics created a disassociation in Mercers head. He just couldn't imagine how the character could do that.
That's why he asked Marisha to clarify. To reassociate the mechanic with the ingame world.
That's why I encourage my players to not think in game mechanics but to think in what your character would actually do in the game world.

So, be that said ... during combat I probably would have let it slide or maybe even come up with my own explanation to reassociate the mechanic to the game world, but sometimes your brain is just blocked and you can't think of a way when you are playing at the table right now. You have some seconds to make a decision, you can't really take more time to think or the players get bored ... or the 60000 viewers in the stadium or the million viewers in the stream ...

Edit:

Also to add - Spells work better for a lot of DMs, because when a player declares that his character is casting spells XYZ, the character in the game world is exactly doing that. It is a mechanic that is strongly associated with the game world.

 

[James Gasik]

Someone DMing differently than you is not automatically being unfair to the players.

That is true, although fairness is in the eye of the beholder (not Xanathar).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Again just unfairly penalises the martial player by making them just through an extra hoop.

So the lack of any visual image of how something a PC wants to do would actually look like isn't a problem?

 

[James Gasik]

You present two extremes here.
Mechanics only (just a Charisma role without expman) and pure roleplay to success without mechanics.

For myself, I'm totally fine with the second one but not with the first one.
But - for me you don't have to method act to make an argument. You just have to tell my how you wanna persuade the NPC. What is your angle? You don't have to play it out in character with a funny voice but at least tell me if you wanna bribe him or bond over the fact that your moms have the same name or something.

Which leads me to Matt Mercers ruling. I haven't seen the Live Show so I'm going off from what is written in this thread:

I'm from the school of DM that doesn't allow players to declare skill checks. They need to tell me what their character is doing and I decide if a check is needed and what check is appropriate.

Now in battle, most action declaration are very mechanical, because in 90% of the time, an action declaration in battle is also describing exactly what the character is doing (like attacking the orc with a sword, casting a fireball and so on).
So, as long as I as the DM understand, what the characters is doing in the Game World, I'm fine. He can try it.
Fiction first, mechanics second.

So, now we have some game mechanics that can become very disassociated with the game world.
So, Marianas use of sentinel was such a disassociated mechanic in this case, because it was mechanics first.
"I press button x and the giant monsters speed gets reduced to 0".
But it does not tell us what the character is doing.
So I would have stumbled over that rule in that specific case, too, because the player is attempting something that is not covered by ingame character action.

I would guess the declaration of the use if the sentinel mechanics created a disassociation in Mercers head. He just couldn't imagine how the character could do that.
That's why he asked Marisha to clarify. To reassociate the mechanic with the ingame world.
That's why I encourage my players to bit think in game mechanics but to think in what your character would actually do in the game world.

So, be that said ... during combat I probably would have let it slide or maybe even come up with my own explanation to reassociate the mechanic to the game world, but sometimes your brain is just blocked and you can't think of a way when you are playing at the table right now. You have some seconds to make a decision, you can't really take more time to think or the players get bored ... or the 60000 viewers in the stadium or the million viewers in the stream ...

Edit:

Also to add - Spells work better for a lot of DMs, because when a player declares that his character is casting spells XYZ, the character in the game world is exactly doing that. It is a mechanic that us strongly associated with the game world.

Now I just want to interject.

Critical Role,. as I've conceded, is entertainment. First and foremost. Matt gets a pass when he makes decisions that fit his narrative, because he's producing content to entertain. His players aren't just players playing a game, they are actors, and are, presumably, complicit in the narrative.

So when I talk about this incident, I'm talking about how I would respond to it in a real, actual game of D&D.

Now.

You're the DM of a group of players. You've approved the characters (and possibly have DM'd for them for more than one session). How on Earth could you have a problem with a core Feat of one character, which they presumably use often, that you know exists, and how it interacts with a scenario you created?

This isn't like someone swapping their spell list out today! Surely in your mind you could have said "Gee, I wonder how that Sentinel Feat is going to affect my encounter?" well in advance?