D&D General When do you overrule RAW?

[Maxperson]

Yes, higher-level people can take a bellyflop off the tallest tower in the land and walk away dusting themselves off. That's exactly what people think of when they think of realism.

Maybe understand what realism is before you continue this conversation. It's not all or nothing. It's a sliding scale between primal undescribable chaos and our reality. And yes, falling is on it.

 

[Maxperson]

(This is also one of those cases where you have to be careful about stealth nerfing martial classes by holding them to a different standard from the spellcasters. If I rule that you can't immobilize Godzilla with the Sentinel feat, I should not then turn around and allow rime's binding ice -- a 2nd-level spell -- to work.)

Sure. In the above case you are in fact actually hitting the caster significantly harder. The Sentinal feat is on par with a cantrip. It allows you to stop a creature cold for 1 round if you hit, usable potentially every round. A second level spell is much stronger and is a limited resource.

I said in a post above that I would render 1st-3rd level spells impotent against Godzilla. There's no way you can say that I'm aiming at martials if I deny Sentinal.

Edit: Missed this.

Finally, when I do overrule RAW, I take a look at whether a PC has expended resources or otherwise relied upon the rule working as written. If so, I allow them to change their action; so Bo would get the reroll back. But I imagine it isn't practical to apply such a "takeback" in a live play context.

Were I Matt, I'd just have told her before the attack that her character knows Sentinal won't be effective against Godzilla.

 

[M_Natas]

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?

My problem is, when a rule or mechanic has no real association with the game world during play, because it foremost needs to make sense to me, what is just happening.
But also, I can't forsee any strange interaction a rule or feat may have.
Like if a character takes sentinel at level 1 and they fight Godzilla at level 20 ... I wouldn't know that at Level 1, because I don't plan my games 20 levels out.

But like I also wrote, here, not being at a table where I have to make a decision in seconds, I would have allowed sentinel to work to stop Godzilla. Because especially in a fight I wouldn't want to overule RAW and I hope I think I would have find a way to make sense of it.

But like I said, sometimes you can't just square something in your head, while at the table. It just doesn't make any sense and when I (and especially the player who wants to apply the mechanic) can't see any possible ingame fiction thay would support the mechanic, I will rule accordingly.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Nope. There's no way anyone can train to knock over a 30 story high monster. It literally can't happen.

Except ... maybe? If "knocking over" meant "break the monster's ankle" or "cut their Achilles tendon" or something. There are ways to make it work, if one is focused on the effect of the ability, rather than its text.

But again, that relies on being comfortable with relying on rulings rather than wanting it all to be spelled out in the text of the rules.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'd have ruled the same with Mercer. One of my players champions "realism" against certain RAW to the party's favour so I would feel nothing in making a call like this that makes sense to me for the fiction.
I'd then also amend the Sentinel feat so this issue would never come up again.

Core books are guide books at the end of the day and designers "make mistakes"

 

[Maxperson]

Except ... maybe? If "knocking over" meant "break the monster's ankle" or "cut their Achilles tendon" or something. There are ways to make it work, if one is focused on the effect of the ability, rather than its text.

Um, with Godzilla?! Your 3 foot piece of steel isn't going to scratch his skin, let alone break an ankle or cut a tendon. What you describe could possibly work with a giant, but not with a creature that is 355 feet tall.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Um, with Godzilla?! Your 3 foot piece of steel isn't going to scratch his skin, let alone break an ankle or cut a tendon. What you describe could possibly work with a giant, but not with a creature that is 355 feet tall.

I would want to see what weapon Marisa's character was wielding. It's been a while since the Mighty Nein days, but I seem to recall they wrapped the campaign up basically wielding god-level weapons and gear.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Um, with Godzilla?! Your 3 foot piece of steel isn't going to scratch his skin, let alone break an ankle or cut a tendon. What you describe could possibly work with a giant, but not with a creature that is 355 feet tall.

Then how can they harm it in the first place?

 

[Bagpuss]

He was in front of a live crowd of 12,000 cheering people. Hard to keep things straight there! He was likely just feeling the pressure to keep things moving and didn't want to double back.

Yeah it could well have been handled completely differently on a stream, or a home game.

 

[M_Natas]

Then how can they harm it in the first place?

That is a good question. Does anybody know which rules for the Kaiju were used?

Because D&D Monsters usually don't go to that size.
Like a Tarrasque is 70 feet long and 50 feet wide.

Godzilla is 400 feet high and 600 feet long. So Godzilla has like ten times the size of a Tarrasque in any dimension. That would be like a 1000 times the mass of a Tarrasque.

The D&D rules were not created with Kaiju in mind.

If I would be a Kaiju from scratch for 5e, it would be more like a ... Spelljammership or something.
Having a damage threshold of 30, can't be stopped moving because of pure inertia of such masses when they are in motion and so on.