D&D 5E Adjudicating Unusual Actions

[Oofta]

In essence what I'm saying is that everything "merely requires a high die roll". What exactly that roll is may vary according to the circumstance. In the case of grappling, it's some sort of opposed test, in which case there may be some sort of thing you could grapple that you will fail at because the opposed test is always too high for you to beat, where some better grappler could perhaps win that contest. In the case of some static difficulty, that difficulty may be too high for you to beat, but if it is then the system isn't arbitrarily stopping you from beating it.

Suppose D&D implemented 'Climb' the way it did 'Track', so that if you took the 'Climb' feat you could make an athletics check to climb something, but that you automatically failed any climb check with a DC above 10 regardless of how strong, agile, and athletic you were.

Or again, look what the rules are saying about 'Track'. A character can be super-humanly perceptive and super-humanly familiar with the wilderness, but without the 'Track' feat, they can't actually follow tracks. Imagine an alternative system where instead, the 'Track' feat merely said, "You have a +5 bonus on Survival and Search checks as it pertains to identifying and following tracks." We are still protecting the idea that PC X is very good at tracking, without suggesting that someone with the appropriate skills to be good at finding and follows tracks is unable to.

The "Kindergarten Rule" tends to prefer that rules be organized in that manner, and not the manner that D&D inherited from 1e when skills tended to be shoved into the system haphazardly (see thief skills and NWPs).

I'd even go so far as to suggest that everyone can, with a sufficiently high roll, cast fireball. The results of that attempt will be almost certainly spectacularly bad, but fortunately the usual result will be so spectacularly bad that the PC will luckily achieve the result, "Nothing happens." But in theory, I wouldn't say "No" to a 1st level M-U opening up a spellbook and trying to cast fireball out of it. I'd just roll Wisdom and say, "The spell is much longer and much more complex than anything you've ever attempted. You realize before going any further, that you only know just enough to get yourself killed in a gruesome manner. Do you really want to try this?"

Whereas I would say that some things are just impossible. You can't hit the moon with an arrow and I'll tell the player that rather than let them even attempt it.

 

[Celebrim]

Whereas I would say that some things are just impossible. You can't hit the moon with an arrow and I'll tell the player that rather than let them even attempt it.

Diana, the goddess of Archery (or whatever your campaign equivalent is), absolutely can hit the moon with an arrow.

I very much oppose rule sets that contain absolutes. When I write rules, I tend to write things more like, "The fire elemental has Fire Resistance 100" rather than "The fire elemental is Immune to Fire Damage." One of several advantages to doing this is you end up with rules that scale across all scales without resorting to local rulings where you define immovable objects and irresistible forces. For example, "Death Ward" is a spell in my game, and it doesn't make you immune to death magic - it gives you a +20 bonus on saves and you no longer autofail on a 1. Against near peer obstacles, this is the same as immunity. But against non-peer problems, this is not immunity. If you open the tomb of Thardizun, that Death Ward may prevent certain and inevitable death, but no mortal magic is going to grant complete immunity to that which threatens even the gods themselves.

If a player proposed to fire an arrow at the moon, I'd telling them whatever I thought their player would know about the range of bows and the distance to the moon in this universe. And if they knew anything about religion, I'd also tell them that if they succeeded in striking the moon, it would probably go badly for them as certainly someone would decide to repay them for their insult and umbrage. (In fact, the very act even if futile would probably raise some supernatural eyebrows.) But I would in fact let them fire arrows at the moon if they wanted to.

(Do you read Tarzan?)

And I suppose depending on what bow they had in their hands, they might could. Several deities and their greater servants do have bows that allow them to hit any target in line of sight. It's not impossible that a PC could have in their hands such a sanity blasting artifact.

 

[Umbran]

In essence what I'm saying is that everything "merely requires a high die roll".

...

I'd even go so far as to suggest that everyone can, with a sufficiently high roll, cast fireball.

Well, you're beyond rules interpretation and adjudication, and for my money you're actually are off into genre expectations and game-world physics and metaphysics here. And you're all good if you like your games that way. But, we are talking in the D&D forum, and that's not the expectation for D&D.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, you're beyond rules interpretation and adjudication, and for my money you're actually are off into genre expectations and game-world physics and metaphysics here. And you're all good if you like your games that way. But, we are talking in the D&D forum, and that's not the expectation for D&D.

What we're talking about is what the OP brought up:

"But as a RPG, as opposed to a computer game, players are expected to do all sorts of creative things which are not specifically covered by a rule."

As such, yes we are by definition beyond rules interpretation and adjudication. We are talking about how to handle things which "are not specifically covered by a rule".

When something is not covered by a rule at all, then it is covered by genre expectations, game-world physics, game-world metaphysics and the like. We are inherently beyond the bounds of the rules by definition, so what else could it be covered by?

I don't know what sort of D&D you play, but I'm telling you what sort of D&D I play. This is inherently a thread about how you go about making rulings. In that sense, there is nothing but different DM's opinions as to what makes for a good game when extending the rules into areas not covered by the RAW.

 

[Oofta]

Diana, the goddess of Archery (or whatever your campaign equivalent is), absolutely can hit the moon with an arrow.

I very much oppose rule sets that contain absolutes. When I write rules, I tend to write things more like, "The fire elemental has Fire Resistance 100" rather than "The fire elemental is Immune to Fire Damage." One of several advantages to doing this is you end up with rules that scale across all scales without resorting to local rulings where you define immovable objects and irresistible forces. For example, "Death Ward" is a spell in my game, and it doesn't make you immune to death magic - it gives you a +20 bonus on saves and you no longer autofail on a 1. Against near peer obstacles, this is the same as immunity. But against non-peer problems, this is not immunity. If you open the tomb of Thardizun, that Death Ward may prevent certain and inevitable death, but no mortal magic is going to grant complete immunity to that which threatens even the gods themselves.

If a player proposed to fire an arrow at the moon, I'd telling them whatever I thought their player would know about the range of bows and the distance to the moon in this universe. And if they knew anything about religion, I'd also tell them that if they succeeded in striking the moon, it would probably go badly for them as certainly someone would decide to repay them for their insult and umbrage. (In fact, the very act even if futile would probably raise some supernatural eyebrows.) But I would in fact let them fire arrows at the moon if they wanted to.

(Do you read Tarzan?)

And I suppose depending on what bow they had in their hands, they might could. Several deities and their greater servants do have bows that allow them to hit any target in line of sight. It's not impossible that a PC could have in their hands such a sanity blasting artifact.

PCs in my game are not gods and cannot achieve god like results. I don't see the point of not telling someone what they're trying to do is not possible under any circumstance.

BTW the "shoot the moon with an arrow" is an example given in the 5E DMG as an impossible task which is why I gave it.

P.S. what does Tarzan have to do with anything?

 

[Celebrim]

PCs in my game are not gods and cannot achieve god like results.

I've never had PC's in my game that are gods either, but that the PCs are gods or are temporarily wielding godlike power is not something I rule out of my games either, nor is it something I can rule out of all possible games. See for example the rather well done 'Tales of Wyre' stories on this site.

I don't see the point of not telling someone what they're trying to do is not possible under any circumstance.

I believe I did say that I would tell the player what the character believed was possible or impossible on the basis of their understanding. All I said was I wouldn't stop them from firing arrows at the moon.

BTW the "shoot the moon with an arrow" is an example given in the 5E DMG as an impossible task which is why I gave it.

Ah. Well, again, the task isn't impossible. It's just impossible for most PCs.

P.S. what does Tarzan have to do with anything?

Your example makes me feel old. In the first of the Tarzan novels, Tarzan fires arrows at the moon to drive off the leopard god that is trying to eat it, thereby saving the moon and his tribe. Alone of the tribe, Tarzan is unconvinced that his actions actually drove the leopard away, but he has no other explanation for the events that transpired.

 

[Oofta]

I've never had PC's in my game that are gods either, but that the PCs are gods or are temporarily wielding godlike power is not something I rule out of my games either, nor is it something I can rule out of all possible games. See for example the rather well done 'Tales of Wyre' stories on this site.



I believe I did say that I would tell the player what the character believed was possible or impossible on the basis of their understanding. All I said was I wouldn't stop them from firing arrows at the moon.



Ah. Well, again, the task isn't impossible. It's just impossible for most PCs.

Well, yes, there's an exception to every rule.

But unless there is magic involved hitting the moon with an arrow is impossible. If somebody insisted I'd just tell them it didn't work. There's a difference (to me) between something that might be possible from the perspective of the PC and something that no one in their right mind would believe is possible.

If a player truly believes their PC can hit the moon with an arrow, then I've described something wrong.

I once had a player say that they wanted to "run around [the NPC] so fast that they created a whirlwind". I simply told them that they weren't The Flash and that it wouldn't work. That response may have been different if he had just acquired the sandals of Hermes instead of just being a monk.

Your example makes me feel old. In the first of the Tarzan novels, Tarzan fires arrows at the moon to drive off the leopard god that is trying to eat it, thereby saving the moon and his tribe. Alone of the tribe, Tarzan is unconvinced that his actions actually drove the leopard away, but he has no other explanation for the events that transpired.

Yeah, I was never that much into Burroughs. I was more into sci-fi as a kid so Aasimov or Heinlein (before he went senile) with occasional Tolkien or Fritz Leiber thrown in.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

The rules in 5e state that the DM gets to decide whether a stated task to accomplish a particular goal is impossible, is super easy, or requires a roll because the tast has an uncertain outcome with a meaningful consequence of failure.

If a PC wants to shoot the moon, the 5e DM decides whether it is possible or not given the circumstances. No rule redesign necessary if one is looking to play 5e, which may or may not be the case here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's nothing wrong with unusual actions, I just want them to be more situational, not something that would make sense on a regular basis.

Honest question: did you actually read the rules he proposed?

Because if you would try that "on a regular basis" as outlined there, you're outright bad at math, and bad at D&D. It's ultra-situational, almost a trap move.

 

[Oofta]

Honest question: did you actually read the rules he proposed?

Because if you would try that "on a regular basis" as outlined there, you're outright bad at math, and bad at D&D. It's ultra-situational, almost a trap move.

You mean blinded and then dazzled*? Based on a save that most monsters or NPCs aren't going to be particularly good at? Yes. It could be very powerful depending on the group. Granting the entire party advantage, stopping all spells and attacks based on vision. All you need is a free hand? Not an issue for a lot of builds.

I could see this becoming a go-to for some PCs, particularly at lower level. Of course the DC is left open to the DM but then that is also a problem IMHO because there's no way for the players to know how effective the tactic is going to be ahead of time.

I'll just reiterate: I don't think D&D needs to implement every trope from every movie.

*Unless I just missed something which is entirely possible.