D&D 5E When RAW goes too far

[atanakar]

If the game doesn't say you can do it, you can't, no matter how clever you think you are.
If the game says you can do it, you can.

In my experience players who are always trying to find corner cases to exploit end up not playing anymore. They are weeded out natural by the group. Other players don't like wasting precious gaming time. They want to game to resume asp.

 

[clearstream]

If only JC's first part of that tweet had made it into the actual rules

"In D&D, everyday things—walls, gravity, bread, laughter—work the way we expect them to, except for when the rules say otherwise."

That would have saved so much argument over the years.

The issue is that while everyone might agree on the basics - where experiences and expectations are shared - there is plenty of room in a magical, fictional world for divergence on the particulars.

Gravity in DnD does not work the way we expect it to in many particulars. But more generally, there is no clear definition of what exogenous rules we ought to bring with us when we enter a game; especially one with numerous exceptions by intent, and omissions and elisions by necessity.

 

[clearstream]

If the game doesn't say you can do it, you can't, no matter how clever you think you are.
If the game says you can do it, you can.

The latter is true, but as to the former, what Crawford just implicitly said is that there are a whole host of things that a game will not say you can do, but that you can do.

 

[Coroc]

....

The wording goes something like "Unless stated otherwise, handles and hinges for all doors are on the left..."

ah yes the brute gets time to shine finally over the rogues lockpicking and the wizards knock.
why did i never think of that? Just make doors with handles and hinges on the same side, they are impossible to open other than smashing them to pieces.

 

[R_J_K75]

Lava is viscous and several times denser than human. I bet landing on it is much more survivable than concrete!

I always wondered about what would happen if someone partially came into contacts with lava. In my head I always pictured that body part being incinerated instantaneously. When you see footage on TV its moving at the speed of molasses, so seems unlikely. But if someone was unfortunate enough to step off a curb like Phil Connors into a puddle of lava would their foot be gone immediately or just severely burned? Obviously in the above example, either way, our hero would awake the very next morning without a scratch.

 

[Fenris-77]

In one adventure module I own, going by the module's actual words (which count as RAW for the module) makes opening any door hard if not impossible.

The wording goes something like "Unless stated otherwise, handles and hinges for all doors are on the left..."

Ahh, goblin craftsmanship at it's finest. I bet all the stairs only go down to. I don't know how the little buggers manage that, but they do.

 

[R_J_K75]

Ahh, goblin craftsmanship at it's finest. I bet all the stairs only go down to. I don't know how the little buggers manage that, but they do.

Because they use the left handed wrench to make em.

 

[S'mon]

I always wondered about what would happen if someone partially came into contacts with lava. In my head I always pictured that body part being incinerated instantaneously. When you see footage on TV its moving at the speed of molasses, so seems unlikely. But if someone was unfortunate enough to step off a curb like Phil Connors into a puddle of lava would their foot be gone immediately or just severely burned? Obviously in the above example, either way, our hero would awake the very next morning without a scratch.

You can find videos of people walking on lava - obviously this requires fairly cool lava, the hotter it is the more liquid it is. But it's always very dense since it is molten rock, it's not a huge amount less dense than solid rock. So it will burn you but you won't go far into it and it certainly won't instantly vapourise your foot.

 

[R_J_K75]

You can find videos of people walking on lava - obviously this requires fairly cool lava, the hotter it is the more liquid it is. But it's always very dense since it is molten rock, it's not a huge amount less dense than solid rock. So it will burn you but you won't go far into it and it certainly won't instantly vapourise your foot.

So is the consistency/density similar to say molten jello?

 

[S'mon]

So is the consistency/density similar to say molten jello?

Why It Is Possible to Walk on a Lava Flow (But You Still Shouldn't)

There's been some buzz about a video of a fellow "running up a lava flow." Normally, Wired Science blogger Erik Klemetti would ignore videos of people doing dumb things, but he realized that although this guy did run up the lava flow, it actually wasn't as crazy as it seems. DISCLAIMER: This...

www.wired.com