D&D 5E Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e

[Thomas Shey]

No, you misunderstand. How someone feels about a thing doesn't change the thing. The play being described is not altered by what I call it or how someone feels about what I call it. I really only care about the play.

No, I think I understand quite well, actually. If you don't care about how someone feels about how you express a thing, in practice you don't care how the discussion goes.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Bow fishing exists.

Like standing on a boat and sniping fish with barbed arrows.

You have to account for defraction and it's short range. It's easier to start your shot by dipping the arrow in the water to see that angle, but it's a thing. Full cover from water is ridiculous.

The 'you can't shoot something underwater' is an issue with bullets.

depends on setup but i would say 4-6 ft is most people max.6 is pushing it IMO. Anyone that says they shoot fish 15-20fow is full of crap.

Thread for the curious:

How deep can you shoot fish

www.bowfishingcountry.com

 

[Ovinomancer]

No, I think I understand quite well, actually. If you don't care about how someone feels about how you express a thing, in practice you don't care how the discussion goes.

Well, okay, you ignored what I said and erected a strawman. That's a thing you can do, I guess.

I mean, I could say that I don't care how someone feels about aerodynamics. It's essentially the same thing -- the how it works doesn't change by feeling. Feeling enters only in the evaluation of feelings. If you want a different term (as I offered, twice, and you've snipped and ignored), sure, but it doesn't change what's being discussed, and I don't really see that the actual problem is with the term given how much denial of the analysis is taking place. Since this is the case, maybe you'd like to weigh in on the analysis arguments before staking out a terminology hill to die on?

 

[FrozenNorth]

No worries. I get it, for sure. I felt like shooting at a swimming target near the surface seemed still within the bounds of reasonable expectations.

I think an arrow would lost nearly all momentum after only a few feet worth of water. I have no data to back that up though...just a hunch that the fletching would be an issue.

Even completely ignoring the water, the shot would already have disadvantage from the target being prone at range.

In an ideal playthrough (from both the player and DM perspective), the first question would have been “Do I have line of sight to her?”. Note that as traditionally applied, Hunter’s mark is irrelevant to this determination.

If the response to this question was yes, then the ranger probably would have been able to get a shot against her at disadvantage.

Of course, ideal playthrough do not exist in practice.

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

It sounds like a 3e thing, but apparently not so. Thrown weapons are utterly useless, but other ranged attacks merely take a -2 penalty for every 5 feet of water they pass through. So pretty much useless, but not entirely so.

And now I'm having flashbacks to 3e. Thanks for nothing!

 

[Lanefan]

Which rulebook is this in? The rules of the game(s) leave this at the meta level.

Exactly.

That you've decided to nail it down doesn't, in any way, remove this argument. It says that you wrote additional rules for you're table.

Whcih is a) fine and b) what the game expects.

But, even there, what you have is completely arbitrary and rather goes towards my point rather than away from it.

Sure it's not perfect, but it's a better reflection of in-game reality than what was there before. It's like golf - your shot might not go in the hole but if you end up closer to it than you were before, the shot was worth taking.

 

[Lanefan]

I think I'm perfectly fine with the familiar grabbing something and then bringing it along with them through the pocket dimension. It doesn't seem to alter what they can do so much as speed it up, right? They can certainly carry an item back to their owner, so the pocket dimension thing just lets that happen faster, and seems a creative way to swipe something or similar.

Sign me up for a Wizard-Thief right now, give me Find Familiar and let me have a raccoon. The crime wave will start tomorrow, and within weeks I'll be the richest person in town!

Ba-roken!

 

[Lanefan]

Or what happens when the character with the scratch comes up to the one with the horrific gash and says:

“MAN YOURE GONNA BE ON THE SHELF FOR LIKE 3 WEEKS! HOW ARE WE GONNA ADVENTURE WITHOUT OUR FIGHTER BEING ABLE TO USE HIS ARM?”

Fighter: Nah, it’ll be fine tomorrow morning. Actually, lets do a test. This looks like I’ve severed my UCL. So I shouldn’t be able to <throws his spear the typical distance>…

Yeah I’m good, let’s roll.

I do somehow feel closer to death though, let me just put that out there for the record. Did you slip some shrooms into my rations?

A very nice pillory of 4e-5e way-too-generous recovery rules. Well done!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Sign me up for a Wizard-Thief right now, give me Find Familiar and let me have a raccoon. The crime wave will start tomorrow, and within weeks I'll be the richest person in town!

Ba-roken!

If this use of Find Familiar to let a pet steal baubles breaks your game, then I’d say you have an overly fragile game.

 

[Campbell]

Give your players a nuke, but just 1 says I. I of course stole that one bit nuke from John Harper. Still I says it.