D&D 5E Adjudicating Unusual Actions

[Oofta]

@Celebrim - just a couple more thoughts on why I rule like I do.

As a DM it's my job to create a consistent, believable world. Ultimately it has to be believable to me, and my sense of what would be possible given a world where magic is a possibility.

Just because dragons are real, doesn't mean that anything is possible. That's why I personally wouldn't implement the "anything is possible just not probable" style. If I allow anything, then there is the implicit implication that anything is possible when it's not.

So I do this not only for my own sanity, but also for the players other than the player that is asking to do the impossible.

So, is throwing a chair and knocking somebody down possible? Sure. Tying a rope to a ballista bolt not designed for the task in order to grapple a dragon? Hit the moon with an arrow? No. Design and build a grappling hook ballista to help fight dragons? Maybe, let's work together on how it might work.

I'll work with players to try to come up with a compromise to achieve their goal. I won't let them attempt something clearly impossible.

 

[Celebrim]

If somebody insisted I'd just tell them it didn't work.

I think we are moving on into a slightly different topic, which is, "Does the player get to adjudicate the results?" And I think in D&D and most other fortune in the middle procedural systems and even most fortune at the end systems the answer is a definitive, "No." I'm not a pushover. People on the boards have this sense of my play that since I'm so accommodating to propositions that I'm relinquishing authority over adjudication, or else that because I assume so much authority by the GM that I'm hostile to player propositions and both of those views of how I run games and how I encourage newer players to run games are based on stereotypes where the players and the GM are in competition and not cooperation.

There are only a very limited number of situations where player can take over adjudication, simply because as a rule it's not fun to introduce a problem and the solution to it as well. While it can suck if a GM isn't open enough to creative solutions, if a GM is too open to creative solutions that can suck even worse. (See my discussion in the 'stunt' thread I linked to.)

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

In most cases, you are absolutely right. And it's very important to communicate roughly how hard something that the players propose is so that they understand what they are risking. In a FitM game they don't have to know the full stakes, but the player should have the same understanding as their character. If the player has pictured in their head that the broken span of the chasm is just 5' wide, and in your head it's 50' wide, the player needs to understand both what that gulf looks like to you the GM and also what sort of distance his character has reason to believe he can jump. Yes, there might be a PC that can jump a 50' gulf, but does this PC have reasonable grounds for believing that?

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.

A really good case in point. In this case, the PC needs to understand what their character sheet means. Just how fast is a base move of 60 feet or 120 feet per round anyway? The player understands that in some sense he is supernaturally fast - a speedster. But is he fast as a Cheetah, or as fast as the Flash, and if the Flash, then which Flash - faster than a train Flash or faster than the speed of light Flash? That is part of communicating the fictional situation to the player so that he can make well informed decisions. Can the monk use his speed to create a whirlwind? Probably not. Would I allow that monk to literally run on water for a short distance as if the pool were not difficult terrain? Maybe so, give me a balance check.

 

[Charlaquin]

New scenario to adjudicate:

Player wants to have the character tie a rope onto a ballista bolt, tie the other end to himself, lodge the bolt in a Huge flying dragon, and get pulled along with it in hopes of climbing up the rope to get either closer to or on top of the dragon at some point.

Woah, now that’s pretty wild! I don’t know that a ballista bolt is going to have enough force to carry a Medium or even Small creature tied to it with a rope... If anything, it would significantly decrease how far it could go...

Alright, I think I have my ruling. The ballista attack’s close range becomes the length of the rope (unless the ballista’s normal close range is already shorter than the rope), and it’s long range is triple that distance (so assuming a 50 ft. rope, the range would be 50/150). If the attack exceeds the dragon’s AC by 5, the bolt will get lodged in its body. While the character is attached to the dragon in this way, the dragon’s movement forces the character to move with it as if the character was grappled (and since the dragon is Huge, a Medium or larger creature so attached would effectively halve the dragon’s speed.) The character can climb the rope, spending 2 feet of movement for every foot, as per the usual climbing rules. The dragon can use an action or a reaction to try to buck the character off as a Strength (Athletics) vs Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Actobatics) contest, or it can simply use its action to attack the rope.

 

[Sacrosanct]

There are a couple other issues here as well. The way a large ballista is built, the rope and person would have to fit through the firing mechanism (see image). Those ballista fires bolts around 10lbs in weight.
So the player is probably assuming a smaller ballista that is open ended. Those fired bolts around 5 lbs.

When a 5lb object suddenly has to pull a 200lb armored person, it will lose all momentum. End of story. All the rest is irrelevant.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

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.

I second this

Also stuff like "i use diplomacy and bluff on the stone, telling to get blood to flow from it" or "i roll such a high intimidate that i can stare angrily at wounds and they will close out of fear". Hilarious as stuff like this can be it doesnt fly at my table. (Even if i can think of exceptions that make sense. In no normal instance would these ever work)

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Eep goes the halfling (as his foot flues at the dragon and the rest of him stays on tge ground)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

You are grossly overestimating how hard it is to get Advantage for one round and clearly haven't done the math on the probabilities of both rolling to hit and rolling to save. Either that or you still haven't actually read it and think it's just a save. Dazzled isn't actually a thing in 5E though I think but you could do 1 round blind + 1 round where the creature had Disadvantage on attacks and Perception checks maybe instead.

 

[Oofta]

You are grossly overestimating how hard it is to get Advantage for one round and clearly haven't done the math on the probabilities of both rolling to hit and rolling to save. Either that or you still haven't actually read it and think it's just a save. Dazzled isn't actually a thing in 5E though I think but you could do 1 round blind + 1 round where the creature had Disadvantage on attacks and Perception checks maybe instead.

So I'm not allowed to my opinion? Thanks!

If you like the rule, that's fine. I don't and explained why. Have a good one.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So I'm not allowed to my opinion? Thanks!

If you like the rule, that's fine. I don't and explained why. Have a good one.

That's a rather blatant strawman!

Your stated objection is based on the false premise that this action is sufficiently effective that it would become a common/default action. You have given no evidence to support this and as I have said, the math involved makes in extremely unlikely that it would routinely be worth blowing your action for a chance to inflict Blind on an enemy for a single turn, especially given it is situational (it probably wouldn't work at all on an opponent with a closed face helm, or significantly taller than the PC or one with large or tough or deep set eyes, or which doesn't rely on sight or which is undead or supernatural, for example).

Further you say not everything from a movie has to be in D&D, and that may be true but that's not relevant. This is a classic gambit and, for example, happens at the start of Queen of Stone (by Keith "Eberron" Baker). It's not some outre Hollywood stuff.

The reason I am picking up on this is not that you are unusual in objecting in an apparently unconsidered way, but rather that this sort of superficial analysis which doesn't actually look at the value in the context of the odds and effect is common among a large subset of DMs! I think works against good play and RP and so on in many cases. I've been guilty of it before, and I think it's worth challenging and pointing out the issues with. I'm happy to run the numbers for you if you still believe it's powerful and reliable.

For the thread in general I think the key thing to keep in mind when adjudicating these kind of actions is whether you want to encourage this sort of swashbuckling or discourage it. Keeping them situational and risky, but with decent rewards when they work out is a good way to encourage it.

 

[Oofta]

That's a rather blatant strawman!

Your stated objection is based on the false premise that this action is sufficiently effective that it would become a common/default action. You have given no evidence to support this and as I have said, the math involved makes in extremely unlikely that it would routinely be worth blowing your action for a chance to inflict Blind on an enemy for a single turn, especially given it is situational (it probably wouldn't work at all on an opponent with a closed face helm, or significantly taller than the PC or one with large or tough or deep set eyes, or which doesn't rely on sight or which is undead or supernatural, for example).

Further you say not everything from a movie has to be in D&D, and that may be true but that's not relevant. This is a classic gambit and, for example, happens at the start of Queen of Stone (by Keith "Eberron" Baker). It's not some outre Hollywood stuff.

The reason I am picking up on this is not that you are unusual in objecting in an apparently unconsidered way, but rather that this sort of superficial analysis which doesn't actually look at the value in the context of the odds and effect is common among a large subset of DMs! I think works against good play and RP and so on in many cases. I've been guilty of it before, and I think it's worth challenging and pointing out the issues with. I'm happy to run the numbers for you if you still believe it's powerful and reliable.

For the thread in general I think the key thing to keep in mind when adjudicating these kind of actions is whether you want to encourage this sort of swashbuckling or discourage it. Keeping them situational and risky, but with decent rewards when they work out is a good way to encourage it.

You like the ruling, I don't. There's no straw, no men, nothing. Because decisions like allowing unusual tactics is almost always an off-the-cuff reaction to something unexpected I draw the line at things like this fairly low.

While I try to enable and encourage creative solutions, I don't allow anything that subjects a target to status effects unless the circumstances are rare and unusual. Having access to sand is not rare nor unusual.