D&D 5E Capricious Home Rules and DM Pet Peeves

[MNblockhead]

My pet peeve is interrogations. 9/10 of my worst roleplaying experiences has been associated with interrogations. I go to great length to avoid them as player and DM.

Okay, there is a story or several here. Do tell.

In my games we don't role-play them that much. Players describe what they want to know, how they are asking, any spells cast, are they using intimidation or persuasion. Skill checks are made. I describe the result.

We don't sweat the details too much. No need to act out the entire conversation.

BTW, if players take the good cop, bad cop approach: e.g. one uses intimidation and the other uses persuasion, I give them both advantage on their roles.

I usually don't bother rolling for NPCs, I just have DC level to be reached. But if the NPC has a lot of experience with interrogations, deception, and the like, then I might make it a skill contest and may give the person being interrogated advantage if he or she has a lot of experience.

Torture is touchy. In my games, PCs can torture, but we just discuss it at a high level. We don't role-play the gruesome details. That's not fun for me. Also, if torture is used I am very likely to have the person being tortured make stuff up, falsely admit to things, make false accusations, and basically say anything to make it stop. Just like real life, it generally doesn't lead to great results. Though, real life doesn't have zone of truth...so, torture, unfortunately, may be more effective in DnD reality than mundane reality.

 

[MNblockhead]

My way of dealing with it is to simply state that torture does not work - torture someone long enough and they will tell you what they think you want to hear but there's no way of knowing if it's true or not. No insight verification or even Zone of Truth will work at that moment either.

I may give people advantage/disadvantage based on what they say for intimidate but that's it. Start describing how you're holding someone's feet to the fire and I just shut it down.

That's an interesting spin. I can see making a home rule that torture negates ZOT. But it is not supported by the RAW.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Elves and dwarves in their modern conception obviously owe a great deal to Tolkien. But, the halfling/hobbit is entirely the creation of Tolkien.

Hmm? No. They're Tolkien's take on the Little Folk. Or at least heavily informed by his knowledge of folktales about them. It's more obvious in his discussion of them in the early chapters of The Hobbit. He did take them in his own direction, of course -- that of idealized rural Englishmen -- but no more so than elves and dwarves, I don't think.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

That's an interesting spin. I can see making a home rule that torture negates ZOT. But it is not supported by the RAW.

My home rule wouldn't be that torture negates ZOT, it'd be that torture negates PC. As in "Your character is now an NPC". But that's really never been a problem in my group. I don't think my players want to go there any more than I do.

 

[Oofta]

That's an interesting spin. I can see making a home rule that torture negates ZOT. But it is not supported by the RAW.

My justification is that with zone of truth is that if you torture someone they will tell you what they believe is what you want to hear. So to quote Obi-Wan, "it's true from a certain point of view".

That and torture is evil and I don't allow evil characters in my campaign.

 

[MacConnell]

My justification is that with zone of truth is that if you torture someone they will tell you what they believe is what you want to hear. So to quote Obi-Wan, "it's true from a certain point of view".

That and torture is evil and I don't allow evil characters in my campaign.

I must concur on this situation. With relation to this thread's original premise, I, unfortunately due to combat, have had exposure to certain unpleasant methods of interrogation. I am adamantly against this kind of behavior and try to dissuade players from attempting it without actually having to say, "Don't do that."

In RL, it seems, only the Jordanians have learned that torture does not work. Jordan is the only country I know that does not employ those methods of interrogation.

 

[Ancalagon]

Used to have a very long list, now it's just a single house rule that both fixes a pet peeve and speeds up play.

AOE spells and effects apply to anyone engaged with a target in range of the AOE.

The pet peeve is how anyone can place a fireball so perfectly as to not hit an ally who is in a swordfight with the target and that the effect is so perfectly sized as to allow this. The benefit is it makes figuring out AOEs in TOM much easier, and when I run a grid based, keeps people from counting each and every flipping square trying to figure out how to hit 8 orcs without hitting the PCs.

I love it!

 

[Corwin]

AOE spells and effects apply to anyone engaged with a target in range of the AOE.

As much as I think I like this, I have a question. What about any allies standing next to, but just beyond, a target at the edge of the AoE? Effectively, you "increase" the radius by allowing it to reach past the edge, to get opponents engaged with the target(s). But does that same "increase" apply equally to the target's friends also standing an equal distance beyond?

 

[ArwensDaughter]

I know too, too much about the Brontosaurus thing

(B excelsus, the thing you think of when you hear 'Brontosaurus', has always existed, just it was thought it was close enough to Apatosaurus to instead be A excelsus, as opposed to A ajax, the thing you think of when you hear Apatosaurus. But now recent work shows they're different enough to be separate, but two things we thought were different enough are now more Brontosaurus)

Totally unrelated to the OP's question, but I am so excited to learn that Brontosaurus is back! It was my favorite dinosaur in elementary school. When my kids were studying Dinosaurs several years ago, I was so disappointed to discover that Brontosaurus no longer existed. Their teacher didn't even recognize the name. And now they're back!
Crazy how small things can make us happy.

 

[OB1]

As much as I think I like this, I have a question. What about any allies standing next to, but just beyond, a target at the edge of the AoE? Effectively, you "increase" the radius by allowing it to reach past the edge, to get opponents engaged with the target(s). But does that same "increase" apply equally to the target's friends also standing an equal distance beyond?

On a grid, I rule that you have to be engaged with a target of the AoE for it to affect you as well, and I don't consider allies next to each other as being engaged with each other. So in your example, the other allies wouldn't be affected.

However, in TOM I use a concept of Engagement Pools to help describe who is fighting with whom and in this case, if you are close enough to touch another PC who is engaged with an enemy, you are now part of that engagement pool. All members of an engagement pool are hit by an AoE. This probably sounds a lot more complicated than it is in actual play. The important thing for the PCs in TOM is understanding when and whom they are engaged with (thus making them vulnerable to AoEs targeting that group), and which and how many enemies they can hit with an AoE. With the latter, when a player wants to cast a fireball, I may tell them they can hit 2 or 3 Engagement pools or x creatures clumped together but not engaged with anyone, using the DMG AoE rules as guidance. If there is a question on the number or which groups, we'll roll some quick dice to resolve the uncertainty and the player can then make their decision or even decide to do something else.

I'm particularly happy with the way I've refined how I run ToM in this edition, and I've taken a bunch of players who were grid fanatics and converted them to loving the free form nature and epic battlefields that ToM allow. This rule was central to getting their buy in so that they can have some certainty without the grid.