Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
gives magic more ummmmm not sure what the word is more dignity/mystery etc.Reading a spellbook and just gaining those abilities was a nonstarter.
gives magic more ummmmm not sure what the word is more dignity/mystery etc.Reading a spellbook and just gaining those abilities was a nonstarter.
In my campaigns, magic works under a simple premise. If you spend enough time, resources, and plot specificity, you can accomplish pretty much anything.gives magic more ummmmm not sure what the word is more dignity/mystery etc.
Isn't that ability basically the same as attacking an extra time but you don't bother with the extra attack roll and they can't target more than one dude at a time?Well sure, for example, the NPC Gladiator in the Monster Manual, who has a special ability to deal an extra die of damage with their weapon attacks. How do they do that? How does every Gladiator do that? Why can't a Fighter get this ability? I mean, heck, being enlarged to ogre size just nets you an extra d4 damage; this guy can do 2d12 with a greataxe!
Sure, the Doylist answer is: "it's a math fix so the monster is an appropriate threat for their challenge rating". But the Watsonian answer is "?????.....reasons!". I know people in real life who will gnash their teeth any time something about the game "doesn't make sense", but don't even bat an eye at monster abilities...and this is an ability, it's even called out in the text and given a name, "Brute" (ironically, the Gladiator also has an ability that players can have, "Brave", the same as the Halfling ability. I guess there are no Halfling Gladiators outside of a long-running webcomic).
From my perspective, the whole reason to implement "magic as quest" is precisely so the players can research what the opposition is doing, in-game, and then try to stop it.Take something like the "ritual that requires killing a bunch of innocents" type powers above. That's being presented as an ex-post facto explanation for how a villain may have a unique power, but if it's knowable ahead of time, then that's something players can work directly against. They can figure out which settlements in a likely range have to enough people to support that kind of sacrifice and try to catch the villain out, look into unusual disappearances or find evidence of the sacrifice and get insight into a villain's capabilities and and so on.
I don't really see a difference here between "in-game" and otherwise. Obviously it's annoying if it turns out fireball doesn't set flammable materials alight as expected and your oil soaked room encounter design doesn't make sense now, and that's something you might need to work out at the table collectively in the moment to keep things moving.From my perspective, the whole reason to implement "magic as quest" is precisely so the players can research what the opposition is doing, in-game, and then try to stop it.
The type of play I don't want to enable is where the players dig through the PHB looking for a loophole in a spell that will invalidate the current fiction.
Sure. But let's talk practical examples.I don't really see a difference here between "in-game" and otherwise. Obviously it's annoying if it turns out fireball doesn't set flammable materials alight as expected and your oil soaked room encounter design doesn't make sense now, and that's something you might need to work out at the table collectively in the moment to keep things moving.
But if you give the players information and tools, they're going to use them. Using the mechanics to do stuff and make decisions is playing the game. The less relationship between the mechanics and the fiction, the more risk that your decision won't be adequate informed.
Looking for some input on how you DM's justify in-game mechanics or magical effects that some npc's may have, but aren't listed in the PHB? For ex., you want your BBEG to appear in hologram/projected form before the pc's and kill one of his own minions with Power Word: Kill. His projected image then sits and has a conversation with the PC's, inviting them to join his forces.
Fun idea but there's nothing in the PHB to allow this specifically. How does one justify the fact that this individual has access to magic that isn't available to the PC's and what might you say to the party wizard who says they want to learn to do that?
"PC" playable is a 3e invention. It didn't exist in 1e and didn't exist in 2e officially until pretty later on with things like the Complete Humanoid. And, even then, it was never presented as an expectation. An orc didn't gain character levels - he suddenly became treated as an ogre when he became chief. Now, I don't think that the intent was that an orc physically transformed into an ogre, despite using an ogre's stats upon becoming chief. It was purely a game mechanics method to differentiate a rank and file orc from an orc chieftain.Monsters that are not PC-playable, sure. Gelatinous Cube paralysis on touch? Bring it on. Rust Monster doing its thing? Great! Dragon blasting the room with fire breath? Love it.
If the "monsters" are also PC-playable, however, IMO they all have to follow the rules for PCs...or, the PCs have to follow the rules as if they were NPCs/monsters. Whichever, as long as all Elves or all Gnomes or all Kobolds in the setting are built on the same chassis as all other Elves or all other Gnomes or all other Kobolds.
The concept of inhabitants of the setitng running around with little "PC" or "NPC" stickers on their foreheads is utterly ludicrous, yet that's exactly what these needless differentiations lead to.
One thing to keep in mind is that having PCs and NPCs of a species be mechanically the same doesn't mean a DM has to go through all the headache of rolling each NPC up as if it were a PC; which is a complaint I hear repeatedly. Just assign stuff...with the strict proviso that whatever you assign must be within the limits of what a normal roll-up could produce.
Again, if it's a non-PC-playable monster e.g. a demon, this is fine.