But, putting all of that aside, and taking the argument as valid ad arguendo, there's still a problem: you still have the GM selecting a specific set of fiction to threaten townsfolk to void the ability when there are other, equally valid fictions that can be selected. This means that use of tge ability is entirely gated behind the GM's agreement to let it happen, and only to whatever extent the GM wants it to happen, turning this ability into an ask of the GM for permission to deploy it. That's MMI.
@hawkeyefan can best clarify, but to my reading of posts up thread, DM said that they gave the party a benefit in accord with the rule (satisfying it, due to that word "or"), so it was in fact not at issue whether the commoners felt threatened.
The statement of mine that you quoted has nothing to do with MMI, nor did the other position on Rustic Hospitality that you trued to exclude. That the thread is about MMI is not sufficient to make any and all statements in the thread about MMI.
@hawkeyefan can best clarify, but to my reading of posts up thread, DM said that they gave the party a benefit in accord with the rule (satisfying it, due to that word "or"), so it was in fact not at issue whether the commoners felt threatened.
And? The bit you quoted noted it was up to the GM to determine if the ability functions at all, and, if do, to what extent. The bit of tge ability that didn't happen was the warnings which are not part of the "or" you put all the weight of your argument upon (and accepting ad arguendo that the "or" carries that weight). You're just pointing out I was right, here.
As for arguing tge "or", you're arguing that it is the GM's choice which happens and not the player's which jusr reinforces my argument tgat it's the player asking if this works. The ability doesn't read that way, and further 5e is in natural language so arguing the "rest" is only the mechanical definition of long or short rests is already without foundation.
They did in part, but that aside the bit you just quoted wasn't suggesting they did, but addressing the argument that the possibility of risk to life was sufficient to void the ability. Context does matter.
I disagree. A table is more than able to determine and insist that a GM that has agreed to the deployment of the ability cannot unilaterally decide to walk it back without further play at the table (ie, not GM solo play).
To me this points to Rustic Hospitality not being a great narrative ability mechanically.
That's certainly how I would play to give it more weight -- as soon as I the GM accepts that the people will hide them despite whatever risk, I wouldn't change this state until the players make another "move" or a certain amout of time goes by say X days or whatever. (with the exception being clearly established backstory / abililtes of the Duke that would invalidate this). If there is a plausible at least 50/50 scenerio where they wouldn't be found until another player "move" I'd give it to them.
It would be a better abillity if this was codified but then that can lead to "excessive creativity" and "squinting" in certain edge cases to make the fiction fit.
The GM in D&D seems to always have the ability to screw the players by the rules. A decent GM will presumably not do that maliciously at all, and not accidentally very much. I'm guessing having something more than "The villagers like me so I'll trust them to hide me in the barn" could be supplemented by making sure they covered their tracks heading to the barn, leaving the village and circling around in case there is a spy on the village, set up a warning system, pick a barn with an escape tunnel, get up and leave before sunrise, etc... If the DM is a jerk it probably wouldn't matter. If they had written down "villager 3 is a spy" then something seems likely to be needed.
Your example outlines what you would require to give permission. It's still Mother May I. I asked how the players achieve not being found without your permission.
When you say 'If the DM is a jerk it probably wouldn't matter'. Well, the player in the real game used a resource specifically for this instance and it didn't matter. Presumably you agree that all the people arguing that this is fine in this thread are jerks?
To me this points to Rustic Hospitality not being a great narrative ability mechanically.
That's certainly how I would play to give it more weight -- as soon as I the GM accepts that the people will hide them despite whatever risk, I wouldn't change this state until the players make another "move" or a certain amout of time goes by say X days or whatever. (with the exception being clearly established backstory / abililtes of the Duke that would invalidate this). If there is a plausible at least 50/50 scenerio where they wouldn't be found until another player "move" I'd give it to them.
It would be a better abillity if this was codified but then that can lead to "excessive creativity" and "squinting" in certain edge cases to make the fiction fit.
Your example outlines what you would require to give permission. It's still Mother May I. I asked how the players achieve not being found without your permission.
If the player wants there to be no way to be found no matter what -- I'm not sure any edition of D&D provides anything that would do that without the player having a lot of knowledge about the Duke's men.
When you say 'If the DM is a jerk it probably wouldn't matter'. Well, the player in the real game used a resource specifically for this instance and it didn't matter.
The resource doesn't guarantee hiding indefinitely. Do the guards have a wizard with scrying feeding them Intel? Is the Duke really pissed off more than the party knows? Is there a spy in the village? If any of those, or many other things are true, the resource wasn't enough.
If the party has good Intel I would probably have given the players an idea how long it seemed like the hiding place was good for.
If the party had good watches that could see things, I'd probably give them a good chance of seeing if anything had gone sideways.
The bit of the ability that didn't happen was the warnings which are not part of the "or" you put all the weight of your argument upon (and accepting ad arguendo that the "or" carries that weight).
Use of the feature is conditioned on - posing no threat, and not putting lives at risk. Seeing as DM agreed the feature could be used, those conditions aren't at issue (insofar as deciding whether it worked or not goes: it worked.)
As for arguing the "or", you're arguing that it is the GM's choice which happens and not the player's which jusr reinforces my argument tgat it's the player asking if this works.
The ability doesn't read that way, and further 5e is in natural language so arguing the "rest" is only the mechanical definition of long or short rests is already without foundation.
The word "rest" is used through the 5e game text to refer to long and short rests. I think if you want to suppose it doesn't have that meaning, then you are making your interpretations of the game text more difficult for yourself... but each group certainly must go with their reading of the text.
They did in part, but that aside the bit you just quoted wasn't suggesting they did, but addressing the argument that the possibility of risk to life was sufficient to void the ability. Context does matter.
I genuinely don't think it was at issue for the DM in question. They agreed that the feature worked. The dispute is over the results of "worked". Say I cast a fireball intending to kill all the Duke's men, but my fireball fails to kill them all. My fireball still worked, even though it failed to achieve my intent.
Especially given the incredibly tight 8hr window for the PCs to fully recover all hp and all nonitem based resources. The "hints and clues" people like @Cadence are calling for have already been given or the players wouldn't consider hiding from them as they did.
Given the inefficiencies that plague a manhunt even in a world with powerful, violent police with access to dramatically more powerful tools and resources (vehicles, radios, computers, night vision, drones, etc., etc.), I'm sorry, I just absolutely do not buy that hiding someone in your barn for 8 hours is an "incredibly tight 8hr window." A pseudo-medieval world simply does not move that fast. Frankly, I would expect it to be at least a couple days leeway, and that's an absolute, rock-bottom bare minimum unless the Duke's men are actively using magic or have somehow perfectly determined where the party is and have a fire lit under their tails to find them RIGHT NOW.
Like...I am confused, even vicariously frustrated, at the suggestion that this situation is so terribly dire that even 8 hours' rest in a relatively hidden space is somehow an incredibly egregious expectation. What? How? Why?
Pretty much anything could be a thing that causes a fear for their life. Even something simple as knowing that the Duke would raise taxes or withdraw guards from the nearby forest on the town would make surviving the next winter or spring* monster proliferation season a serious risk in some areas.
Then you are straight-up invalidating the feature before the game even takes off the ground. This is covert Mother May I in action. You are actively neutering the player's abilities, while pretending to let them work. Why? What benefit does that serve?
We were obviously going beyond the original example to a whole new hypothetical when the fireball & immune/resist got raised since they were never part of the original.
I'm continuing with that whole new encounter with a whole different set of guards for a whole different duke because of that. Otherwise you are asking about the viability of a whole new situation still bound by the old situation & that makes poor boundaries of discussion as it would leave no room to discuss anything.
Then you need to explicitly say that. You can't just assume everyone is 100% on board with your modifications. You need to specify what you're doing and why, otherwise the best you will achieve is confusion, and at worst (as we see here) you'll waste your time and others'.
Indeed, you are a different type of GM who runs a different type of game. That has no bearing on your "rank".
*Most creatures give birth in the spring, It was just an example of a season.
That's....not what I was saying. I was saying that this was the DM speaking to the player. "Oh, sure, you can invoke the ability. But it won't do anything you actually want it to do."
That’s a very valid point. Though, I think the alternate should also be avoided - that being: ‘regardless of how the dm determines the outcomes of the players action he can’t have the outcome entail the villagers fearing for their lives.’
I think there’s a happy middle ground between those 2 options.
Fully agreed--the players shouldn't get absolutely everything they want, there should be risk of stuff going wrong. But something like that--the villagers being genuinely fearful--requires both build-up and expression in context. For example...
DM: "You're pretty sure the Duke's men haven't caught your trail yet, but they'll be following you sooner or later. You arrive at a farmstead, on the outskirts of Fairhaven. There's a kindly-looking dwarf man outside, repairing some farming equipment, and you can hear a woman's voice singing something in Elvish from the kitchen. Several children, ranging across several ages, are doing various things around the farm. What do you do?"
Folk Hero Fighter: "I approach the farmer, giving him a traditional greeting."
DM: "He looks up from his work, and his eyes widen, pretty clearly in fear, but your words do seem to settle him a little. 'Greetin's, stranger. What brings you 'round these parts?' You can tell he's noticed the fact that the party is heavily armed."
Paladin: "I tell him of the good works we have done in the countryside, hoping the symbol of Bahamut on my shield will assuage some of his concerns."
DM: "He does seem a bit calmer, yes, though you can tell he's still on edge. 'Eh, y'wouldn't be those so-called rapscallion ne'er-do-wells the Duke's men keep talkin' about in the tavern, wouldja?' He doesn't seem to be asking this as a leading question--it's more like he's asking for confirmation."
Fighter: "Hmm...I'm not sure... [gets a glare from Paladin] Okay, okay, honesty is the best policy. 'Yes, we've been fixing some problems, and the Duke's men aren't always happy about it. We were hoping to find a place to stay the night, if we can...' "
DM: "The man nods, and his fear fades to sadness. "M'sorry, friend, but...with the missus pregnant and me eldest jus' about ter hit conscription age...I can't."
Rogue: " 'Hey, don't worry, we get it. Sometimes you gotta take care of the stuff close to you, even when you wanna help others.' "
DM: "He smiles, and gives you a wink. 'Eh, don't count me out jus' yet. FARA! 'EY, FARA, WE GOTS SOME GUESTS FER DINNER.' The woman's singing stops, and you hear muttered expletives in dwarvish, though the woman who exits from the farmhouse is a delight. The farmer spares what food they can, particularly that which can be stored and carried for a while--at least a couple days' rations for everyone. He also tells you about the fishing cabin that he and some of the other farmers keep, about fifteen miles north of town, near a mountain tarn that connects to the local river. 'Iffin' yeh move quicklike, ye'll sure reach it afore sunset. Ain't nobody who knows 'bout it other than us farmers, far as I know anyhow. Should ya have time, there is a wicked draft that'd be real nice to not find next week.'"
Fighter: "'Thank you, friend. We won't forget your help, and we'll see what we can do to fix up the place. If we think we're being followed though, we'll steer clear.' I assume we eat a quick meal with the family and then move on?"
DM: "That makes sense to me. Anything else you guys want to do while you're on the way to the cabin afterward?"
Rogue: "Oh, I'm absolutely gonna do some things to prepare for any uninvited guests we might have."
This is what I mean by justifying stuff. And, importantly, doing this is not an absolute carte blanche! Because it's very easy to dance on the line, to do just enough work to justify never actually letting the players achieve things unless it's what you would have approved anyway. (Note the difference here: it's not just "DM approves," because there's this element of needing to guess at the things the DM will let through, an extremely high likelihood that most solutions won't work even if they're plausible and persuasive. Hence my references to "curmudgeonly" or "miserly" DMing.)
But something like this, when used judiciously, with care and respect? Yeah, I'd be fine with that. "Can't take a long rest here, might get a long rest at the cabin, might be followed, what will you do to address that?" is a perfectly acceptable situation, because everything that should be above board is above board (even though there are still ambiguities and unknowns!), and the players are equipped to handle the problem and did get SOME benefit.
