This post was inspired by [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s thoughts about "rulings not rules".
In my 4e session today, I had to make a few judgment calls, mostly around divine discorporation: the players were fighting Lolth, and bloodied her, but didn't know about the discorporation rules.
The bloodying happened in this way: the PCs (for tactical reasons) had driven their Thundercloud tower through the Demonwebs and into the Abyssal void below. The fighter PC, standing on the roof of the tower about 10' or so above ground (web) level used Warrior's Urging to pull in Lolth. As she came in, she passed into one auto-damage zone, which left her about 50 hp above bloodied, and then - when she was drawn through the next zone - she would be bloodied.
I had already noted that when Lolth discorporated, she would die but the Queen of Chaos would be freed (my Lolth backstory: she became corrupted because, when she used her webs to hold the world together she encountered, and was possessed by, the Queen of Chaos at the bottom of the Abyss). So I rolled Bluff for Lolth and then got the players to roll Insight - two of them beat her (the paladin and the invoker/wizard) and so I told them they could see her smirking, and almost welcoming being bloodied - and then when they asked why I told them that they suddenly recalled (one in his capacity as a Marshall of Letherna, the other as a Sage of Ages with Memories of 1000 Lifetimes) that a deity who is bloodied might discorporate - and the Sage of Ages (bearing the Rod of Law and having made the better check, beating a Hard DC) could sense the Queen of Chaos about to break free.
That was the first need for a "ruling" - on making and getting info from a skill check.
The second came up because the trigger for Lolth's discorporation is being bloodied, and it takes place as "no action". The fighter has a power, Sudden Opportunity, that is a free action when an enemy becomes bloodied. I let him take his attack. He rolled a crit, which took another 100-odd points of Lolth, but still left her up.
That was the second need for a "ruling" - on the play sequence of resolution.
Because his roll was a 20, he was able to use his paragon path ability to recover a daily power - I ruled that he could recover Sudden Opportunity.
That was the third need for a "ruling" - on whether or not a daily power is expended, hence recoverable, when the roll to hit for it has been made and another ability triggered by that roll.
Sudden Opportunity is triggered on an enemy become bloodied or being critted. So I ruled that the fighter, having recovered it by critting, could use it again.
That was the fourth need for a "ruling".
The fighter rolled a 17, which was enough to hit (he needed 15 or better: +31 based, +2 for combat advantage from Deadly Draw, _1 because Lolth was subject to the Battlefield Archer ranger's Hunter's Quarry vs AC 49). This did enough damage to bring Lolth down to 120-odd hp.
The paladin player had, in the meantime, declared that he wanted to use his Ring of Tenacious Will - which has a "no action" ability that allows it's wearer to hang on when normally s/he would be killed - to instead make Lolth hang on rather than discorporate: in effect to externalise rather than internalise the ring's power. I asked him if he recalled
how he had got the ring - in particular, how he had called on Pazrael (Pazuzu) for aid. With that prompting from me, he did. I said that to "externalise" it, he would need Pazrael's help. He was happy to do that. I also pointed that this would destroy the ring, costing him 5 surges (because his Surge base would shift from a +9 CHA bonus back to a +4 CON bonus) which would leave him with exactly zero remaining. The player replied "I'm a Questing Knight - we all die sooner!" - no "or later" was forthcoming.
Then, to show that I wasn't
just a bad illusionist GM, I pulled out my slip of paper from my campaign notes that had written on it "Pazuzu may appear to the PCs" - and so Pazuzu appeared, and helped the paladin externalise the power of the ring.
So this was the fifth "ruling" - that the paladin could do this as a free action and have Pazuzu appear and help him. (Though there is
well-established precedent in our game for PCs permanently burning magic items for thematically related but not canonical effects.)
Now Pazuzu's motive for doing this was to stop the Queen of Chaos benefiting from the demise of the Demonweb and hence the unleashing of the ultimate chaos of the Abyss, which only her webs were keeping at bay, per the Underdark sourcebook. That Lolth's webs had remade and held creation together as part of the Dawn War was a well-established detail in our campaign that the players knew (and so they knew that in killing her and wrecking the Demonweb they were taking a risk). The Queen of Chaos, on the other hand, only the sorcerer knew about up until now, as it was a pact with her that had established him as a Demonskin Adept back in the lead-up to Paragon tier. (And as a result he had her symbol branded on the inside of his eyelids - which is what causes him to become blind when he sees glimpses of the Abyss, his 16th level path feature.) Last session I had hinted, and this session I confirmed to the player (and PC), via telepathic communication from Lolth/the Queen of Chaos as she was on the verge of discorporation, that all this time he had been chanelling chaos energy from her (especially via Demonsoul bolts) so that he could come and kill Lolth and free her.
So the legacy of an old ruling, about the fiction of paragon path acquisition, returned to support further backstory.
Also, to prove I wasn't a completely arbitrary GM, I pulled a slip of paper out of my GM folder, from its somewhat tattered state clearly written a while ago (from memory, probably about 2 or 3 years ago) and showed it to the players, saying "Pazuzu may appear to the PCs" and declared myself to be playing it an interrupt speed. The players were amused, although the player of the dwarf fighter did point out that I might have dozens of such bits of paper with all manner of plot point written on them.
In any event, it was now established that Lolth's discorporation was sufficiently delayed that the fighter could complete his pull (from warrior's urging) and take his attack - which hit again (I think 15 exactly was rolled) and brought her down to 50-ish hp left. The paladin's turn was next - as Lolth was marked by him he used Winter's Arrival to teleport into a flank of her with the fighter, attacked with a reasonable-damage power needing only a 12 to hit (compared to the fighter he had +2 to hit for her being bloodied, and a +1 bonus from his Blessed Weapon) and rolled a 14, and did 60-ish damage, enough to drop Lolth to -3.
And so she died rather than discorporated. And before her turn came up (which would have been next). So I didn't need to rule on how Lolth/the Queen of Chaos might break free of the influence of the Ring of Tenacious Will and Pazuzu.
Her dying telepathic projection, in Elvish, to the sorcerer (who, while a Demonskin Adept and Emergent Primordial is also a votary of Corellon) was "Tell Corellon . . . I . . . always . . . lo----". And then she was gone. The sorcerer player completed it as "loved him", the invoker/wizard player as "loathed his guts". Lolth's last words were my final ruling for this particular episode.
There were other "rulings not rules" in the session, though the above is the stand-out. Before the episode just described, when the PCs drove their Thundercloud Tower down through the demonweb, I had to decide what happened. Looking up Q1 (a very hard module to reference quickly), I read out to the group its description of the space beyond the demonwebs - "A player who steps of the paths of webbing is swept away into the howling winds of the Abyss". So I flipped through my copy of Manual of the Planes to find something suitable for these howling winds and decided that a Vacuum rift (levelled from 14th to 28th) and an Entropic Rift (levelled from 22nd to 30th) should do the job. Some quick calculations showed that the Tower would lose 35 hp/round while stuck in the rift like a bath-plug; and after Lolth was killed the elf, paladin and subsequently dwarf all got sucked into the edge of it, and the elf and dwarf into the Far Realm, to be spat back out as helpless protoplasmic mutates.
I also had to rule on how subtle Pazuzu could be. He wants the Rod of Law, and so secretly attacked the invoker/wizard to try and get it. I rolled a very high Bluff check (50-something) for him, which meant that no one but the invoker noticed his use of Soul Corruption to try and dominate the PC. Because he was adjacent to the PC, and because that is a ranged power, it triggered an OA which the invoker/wizard hit (though he needed a 20 to hit, and it would not have been a crit, and he missed). Pazuzu then pointed out that he'd been attacked "unprovoked" and used his Pestilence power to shift (fly) away, which also happens to let him attack the PC with a poison cloud.
The only evidence for his attacks the other PCs had were the invoker/wizard's protestations, and there was a bit more confusion and inaction before battle was fully joined with him by the party. (And partway through that battle we had to finish, though the invoker/wizard has taken control of Pazuzu - by using his Ring of Wizardry to recharge his encounter domination power, and then landing it using his Eye of Vecna to get a +10 to hit buff - and is planning to have him fly into the above-mentioned Abyssal rift).
That ended up being a longer description than I anticipated when I started.
The ruling about Pazuzu's subtlety was easy - Bluff skill check combined with a power with the charm and psychic keywords (so no overt manifesation - at least until he kept it up and bloodied the PC!).
The ruling about the Abyssal rift was fairly easy, too: the players knew they were doing something drastic rending the demonwebs, and I was quite overt about flipping through my copy of MoP and noting down my two rift/fissure effects.
The big ones, obviously, were around Lolth's discorporation. The game's timing rules around free actions and no actions (which discorporation is) have always been a bit hand-wavey, so I was going to have to rule. The action was driven mostly by the players - the paladin player (remembering past practice) nominated the externalisation of his Ring effect, and that sort of control over life and death is a part of his PC's schtick (as a Marshall of Letherna). The rulings on Sudden Opportunity's recharge and re-trigger could probably have gone either way, but my reasons for ruling the way I did were very overt at the table: if a player is worried about Lolth discorporating before he can kill her, and looks down his sheet and sees a triggered daily power that could stop that, then rolls a crit and has a recharge ability that could let him reuse it, and the rules
permit that interpretation, then I am going to go with it!
In the fiction, what happened? Lolth, prone (due to previous action) but angry scuttles across her demonwebs to attack the PCs, who are 15' above web-level in their half-"submerged fighter". As she does so, she enters the sorcerer's zones, which scour here with thunder plus the Swords of the Marilith, causing her to begin discorporation (against Lolth's will, perhaps, but strongly willed by the Queen of Chaos latent within her). As she starts to discorporate the dwarf is laying into her with his hammer, again (the crit) and again (the second Sudden Opportunity) and then Pazuzu suddenly appears and takes the paladin's ring from him, and uses its power over life and death to delay the discorporation and the Queen of Chaos's emergence.
Lolth closes on the fighter, trying to gain the upperhand, but he continues to lay into her with Overwhelm, his hammer (the attack for Warrior's Urging) and then the paladin teleport in a shroud of ice adjacent to her and stabs her (like Sam against Shelob) with his khopesh, destroying her physical form before she can discorporate and the Queen of Chaos manifest herself at the chaotic heart of the Abyss.
This fiction, and the GMing motivations that were driving the rulings that enabled it (ie I'll read the rules in the way that permits the players to use their resources to achieve the dramatic outcome they are pushing for), was clear to everyone at the table. It didn't feel to me like there were any illusions.
I'm interested in any thoughts around techniques, agendas, illusionism,"rulings not rules", etc.
