ArwensDaughter
Adventurer
Background (skip if you like):
Sunday evening, for the first time in months, our family was able to sit down and play D&D together. Since our last session, those of us most bitten with bug have variously: read enworld forums, played in a PbP game, DMd a game with friends, watched Critical role, among other things. The difference those activities made in our game play was noticeable and encouraging. One change was the players (especially our teen children) were much more creative in their approaches to encounters. While I have a long ways to go in gaining confidence and agility as a DM, I was more able to swing with the creativity this time.
Question:
The players entered a bone-filled room. As soon as the first PC crossed the threshold, the bones began to assemble themselves as skeletons. While the adventure (LMOP) did not specify, I ruled that it took the skeletons one round to assemble. My son, who plays an arcane trickster (rogue), used Mage Hand to grab one of the femurs of one of the assembling skeletons and hold it up in the air, out of the reach of the assembling skeleton. On his next turn, he used the femur to attack the skeleton (whom he named Peg Leg). He missed, and by his next turn Peg Leg was no more.
I was pleased with his creativity, and they enjoyed the encounter, but afterwards I realized I could have decided that the femur would resist and try to rejoin the skeleton, and asked my son for an ability check of some sort to keep control of the femur. But that begs the question: what type of ability check? Arcana because he is using a spell to hold and move the femur? Dexterity? strength?
And, just now I realized it could be an opposed check, not merely a passive one. In that case, presumably the skeleton would make a strength check. (perhaps at disadvantage, since it could only stand on one leg?)
What would be your ruling and why?
Sunday evening, for the first time in months, our family was able to sit down and play D&D together. Since our last session, those of us most bitten with bug have variously: read enworld forums, played in a PbP game, DMd a game with friends, watched Critical role, among other things. The difference those activities made in our game play was noticeable and encouraging. One change was the players (especially our teen children) were much more creative in their approaches to encounters. While I have a long ways to go in gaining confidence and agility as a DM, I was more able to swing with the creativity this time.
Question:
The players entered a bone-filled room. As soon as the first PC crossed the threshold, the bones began to assemble themselves as skeletons. While the adventure (LMOP) did not specify, I ruled that it took the skeletons one round to assemble. My son, who plays an arcane trickster (rogue), used Mage Hand to grab one of the femurs of one of the assembling skeletons and hold it up in the air, out of the reach of the assembling skeleton. On his next turn, he used the femur to attack the skeleton (whom he named Peg Leg). He missed, and by his next turn Peg Leg was no more.
I was pleased with his creativity, and they enjoyed the encounter, but afterwards I realized I could have decided that the femur would resist and try to rejoin the skeleton, and asked my son for an ability check of some sort to keep control of the femur. But that begs the question: what type of ability check? Arcana because he is using a spell to hold and move the femur? Dexterity? strength?
And, just now I realized it could be an opposed check, not merely a passive one. In that case, presumably the skeleton would make a strength check. (perhaps at disadvantage, since it could only stand on one leg?)
What would be your ruling and why?