D&D 5E DM's: How Do You Justify NPC's Having Magic/Abilities That Don't Exist in the PHB?

[Garthanos]

And yes, worldbuilding is in some ways an exercise in science.

ok what experiments do you engage in and are they double blind d
because you are misusing the term science.

No, that's just the 21st-century version of the PC / NPC forehead stickers.

LOL no I can see the name ranger above one and fighter so that must simply mean my nimble bow using character must be called a Ranger not a scout nor just a light infantry ...it says on the label and I will not accept using a class called ranger when I want a fighter..... and I cannot play a scout either because none are named scout... I will resent it massively if someone later makes a character called a scout. LOL

Exactly.

Imagination is great. It's why we do this.

It sure sounds like you are demanding the game designers to do your imagination job for you.

However, in a typical RPG we're also trying to build a setting

Really do you ditch every spell and make new ones... rework the entire magic system cause those are muxh more core setting elements. The monster manual is chock full of creatures that are not functioning the way a PC does but they keep on not functioning the way a pc does tomorrow unless you change it. It sounds to me like you do not want to do the actual imagination work and would prefer to have it handed to you on a fully elaborated platter where you do not have to notice every pc starts with a magic focus that is not an expensive magic item but which they use to do their highly specific classes magics .. and so the monster having an item that was not a magic item and used it on a magic that is also different(oops he rolled a different dice must be different physics) for you to loot was bad wrong fun and meant the universe was completely inconsistent. Not sure how that was so upsetting could it be that you didnt want to get it?

that's solid and consistent enough and has enough integrity that players can run their characters in it without fear of things not working in the setting physics (and yes, magic is 100% a part of a setting's physics) the same as they did in-game yesterday.

Characters are not omniscient and their DM should actually have an imagination that doesnt need force feed explanations about the hair color between a goblins toes. And a character coming from a somewhat different place in the game world or involving a heroic archetype never before seen does not "invalidate" everyones choices" LOL what a laugh you are a 1e gamer so important are those choices oops your character dies make a new one with the other class in 5 minutes no problem LOL.

The type of flexibility you seem to be after where things are not elaborated

yes every monster needs its birthday defined and toe nail length and so on we will keep on elaborating till the end of time and some day that adventure will get written.

and thus can change on a whim, yes.

LOL so full of assumptions what exactly do you think I am advocating change on a whim? I am suggesting its cool when you add things to the setting yes in ways that do not disturb the theme etc etc... but which accommodate your players interests. Instead of treating it all like its some perfect and so tightly defined glass castle that it will crumble when something different enters the picture. Your players and their characters are not exactly informed about every nook and cranny smdh... relax a little.

If my character does magical action X today and repeats the same action tomorrow, the same result should occur, much as if my character did physical action Y today and then repeated it tomorrow.

But you missed with your sword and your jumper stumbled and surely you did it the same today as yesterday you told the dm you were doing the same thing how can you miss when you hit yesterday could it be all the details are not actually worked out AND arent needed because its your and the dms job to elaborate and imagine them according to what a game mechanic said they were and the mechanic is made simple so its easy to use? That cannot possibly be so.

Expand that a step: if two characters are equally capable of doing some action

really really bad example

and both character A and character B do it, the same result should occur for each one, right?

Only the casters whose job is apparently so trivial they get reliable results.

 

[Garthanos]

So is bounded accuracy also "the wrong choice the devs made", or just inconvient because it's in the way of your other goal so you can toss it?

I wish I could toss but the implications are fairly ingrained.... so little room for skill advancement so little attribute advancement you can probably do everything attribute check (skill) wise at 6th level you could do at 20th level its like you didnt get better at all except in combat. (which atleast has hit point and often multi-attack progressions so you feel better able)

 

[Lanefan]

LOL no I can see the name ranger above one and fighter so that must simply mean my nimble bow using character must be called a Ranger not a scout nor just a light infantry ...it says on the label and I will not accept using a class called ranger when I want a fighter..... and I cannot play a scout either because none are named scout... I will resent it massively if someone later makes a character called a scout. LOL


It sure sounds like you are demanding the game designers to do your imagination job for you.

Really do you ditch every spell and make new ones...

Not ditch as such, but yes, I have gone through and rewritten every 1e spell, tweaking and fixing and adding rulings as I went. The impetus for this was that I wanted to put them online, which meant typing them all in anyway (optical character readers being a waste of time), so I figured I might as well fix them all - and add and delete a few - while I was at it.

rework the entire magic system cause those are muxh more core setting elements. The monster manual is chock full of creatures that are not functioning the way a PC does but they keep on not functioning the way a pc does tomorrow unless you change it.

Yes. Monsters are monsters. A Beholder can do its thing with its innate abilities and I don't mind at all.

But the write-up for "Elf" in the MM gets tossed and replaced with the write-up for "Elf" in the PH, as that applies to all Elves. Ditto for the other PC-playable species (which in my game remain mercifully few).

It sounds to me like you do not want to do the actual imagination work and would prefer to have it handed to you on a fully elaborated platter where you do not have to notice every pc starts with a magic focus that is not an expensive magic item but which they use to do their highly specific classes magics .. and so the monster having an item that was not a magic item and used it on a magic that is also different(oops he rolled a different dice must be different physics) for you to loot was bad wrong fun and meant the universe was completely inconsistent. Not sure how that was so upsetting could it be that you didnt want to get it?

If it works for the NPC it should work for the PC, and vice versa. What's so bad about this concept?

Characters are not omniscient and their DM should actually have an imagination that doesnt need force feed explanations about the hair color between a goblins toes.

Hyperbole aside, characters are not omniscient but DMs are - or should be.

And a character coming from a somewhat different place in the game world or involving a heroic archetype never before seen does not "invalidate" everyones choices" LOL what a laugh you are a 1e gamer so important are those choices oops your character dies make a new one with the other class in 5 minutes no problem LOL.

There seems to be some snark here. Letting it pass.

yes every monster needs its birthday defined and toe nail length and so on we will keep on elaborating till the end of time and some day that adventure will get written.

Man, you've got the exaggeration meter dialled to eleven today.

LOL so full of assumptions what exactly do you think I am advocating change on a whim?

Kind of, yes. I'd say it comes across more as you're advocating for in-setting change by fiat; which may be on a whim or may have loads of careful planning behind it. Either way, it's hell on the players.

I am suggesting its cool when you add things to the setting yes in ways that do not disturb the theme etc etc... but which accommodate your players interests. Instead of treating it all like its some perfect and so tightly defined glass castle that it will crumble when something different enters the picture.

It crumbles, to some extent, if something new comes in without a good in-fiction explanation; because what's coming in "new" - let's say a new class - was in theory always there...and thus should always have been just as choose-able in the past as it is now. That it wasn't chooseable due to not existing yet means that when players chose their characters' classes earlier they were denied an option today's players now have.

So, for a new class, a reasonable in-fiction explanation might be that members of this class are all new to this world, having just got here rescued from their own world that was in process of dying*. That does, however, really constrain the possible backgrounds for any characters in that class, and ensures that every one of them is a stranger in a strange world.

It's the same rationale that leads me to dislike the designated hitter in baseball. Pitchers hit for themselves just fine for 75+ years, no reason they can't still do so; and the presence of the DH somewhat invalidates baseball's older records as it's not the same game now. However, if the designated hitter had been a part of the game since day one I wouldn't have a problem with it.

* - I've in fact used this in an old campaign: I'd banned Monks but some players wanted them back, so I redesigned them from the ground up and then a PC party did the off-world rescuing to get them available for play.

Your players and their characters are not exactly informed about every nook and cranny.

No, they're not; but ideally I-as-DM am. "Ideally" obviously has to give way to practicality at some point, but when in doubt I'll always try to err on the side of having too much info to hand rather than too little.

But you missed with your sword and your jumper stumbled and surely you did it the same today as yesterday you told the dm you were doing the same thing how can you miss when you hit yesterday could it be all the details are not actually worked out AND arent needed because its your and the dms job to elaborate and imagine them according to what a game mechanic said they were and the mechanic is made simple so its easy to use? That cannot possibly be so.

So, to follow the theme of taking things to eleven, by this if I cast Fireball and you cast Fireball we should get totally different outcomes: I get a sheet of green flame 100 feet away and you get something resembling a flame-thrower shooting from your hands. Then tomorrow when we both cast Fireball I cause the pond to freeze while you summon a BC Transit bus.

I mean, I love wild magic as much as anyone, but if magic is never predictable the wildness would lose its appeal (and probably get pretty dangerous!) in a hurry.

 

[Andvari]

I think there's also a difference between "having to justify" and "needing to justify." Most of the time I don't feel the need to justify any weird abilities NPCs might have, because it's not a question that's being raised. So spending time on it is a wasted effort 90% of the time. But I recall a few instances where a player started inquiring and I had to come up with a plausible explanation, or at least had to think about it. Though the players never pursued it further than that.

So a lot of weird abilities might theoretically be available to PCs, where in practice they aren't going to pursue it. Such as going off on a potentially long side quest not relevant to the adventure itself might not be what the other players or the DM are interested in. So often perhaps it's more of presenting the idea that some of these strange things could in fact be done by a PC under the right circumstances. But this doesn't entail a need to make rules for it.

 

[Garthanos]

So, to follow the theme of taking things to eleven,

Thanks for taking the hyperbolics well.. sometimes moods are that way.

by this if I cast Fireball and you cast Fireball we should get totally different outcomes: I get a sheet of green flame 100 feet away and you get something resembling a flame-thrower shooting from your hands.

Maybe there are actually dozens of spells but the game mechanics for each are just not that specific (ie you can set the fireball so its fire effects are adjacent and in game world that is two different spells (but two different sets of mechanics would be redundant) , so in game world the casters who know how to do the one generally know how to do the others (perhaps even one that is a heat blast and the other is flames so their damage type is mechanically the same), each variation may introduce elements which are different but inconsequential like the flame color you mentioned.
Maybe casters are very adept at making cosmetic changes or personality / moods (there is your chaos) infects how the spell manifests in those ways so (I think it was AD&D that first mentioned a fireball looking like skulls or something )

Then tomorrow when we both cast Fireball I cause the pond to freeze

There is an ice at-will attack magic in 4e (its narrowly defined combat effects could be described many ways however more is possible .... see below). The game explicitly suggested allowing an arcana check to modify rituals and elsewhere gave guidelines page 42, for scaling improvised actions to reflect the skill and power of the user... those mechanics mention the possibility of enable using power slots on improvised tricks (I have seen some restrict those tricks to normal athletic things but I said why does that have to be the case especially when a ritual could be adjusted on the fly and you have an at-will effect) I would totally consider allowing someone to sustain that at-will to create a path to walk across the frozen lake surface based on skill checks and that at-will (*this latter effect might because its protracted use involve expenditure of a healing surge) ... the dice involved can reflect your outside the box useage...

while you summon a BC Transit bus.

I mean, I love wild magic as much as anyone, but if magic is never predictable the wildness would lose its appeal (and probably get pretty dangerous!) in a hurry.

Not that fond of wild magic generally speaking but I am fond of people being able to customize their characters in ways that suit them and player characters being unique and magic having many many different manifestation distinct to the culture it was developed in and having those reflective of cultural identities as well as variations based on individual talents... AD&D had a mechanic to represent a form of variation in talent up to a degree you had to roll the dice to learn a given spell (not much variation just on and off).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Thanks for taking the hyperbolics well.. sometimes moods are that way.

Maybe there are actually dozens of spells but the game mechanics for each are just not that specific (ie you can set the fireball so its fire effects are adjacent and in game world that is two different spells (but two different sets of mechanics would be redundant) , so in game world the casters who know how to do the one generally know how to do the others (perhaps even one that is a heat blast and the other is flames so their damage type is mechanically the same), each variation may introduce elements which are different but inconsequential like the flame color you mentioned.
Maybe casters are very adept at making cosmetic changes or personality / moods (there is your chaos) infects how the spell manifests in those ways so (I think it was AD&D that first mentioned a fireball looking like skulls or something )


There is an ice at-will attack magic in 4e (its narrowly defined combat effects could be described many ways however more is possible .... see below). The game explicitly suggested allowing an arcana check to modify rituals and elsewhere gave guidelines page 42, for scaling improvised actions to reflect the skill and power of the user... those mechanics mention the possibility of enable using power slots on improvised tricks (I have seen some restrict those tricks to normal athletic things but I said why does that have to be the case especially when a ritual could be adjusted on the fly and you have an at-will effect) I would totally consider allowing someone to sustain that at-will to create a path to walk across the frozen lake surface based on skill checks and that at-will (*this latter effect might because its protracted use involve expenditure of a healing surge) ... the dice involved can reflect your outside the box useage...

Not that fond of wild magic generally speaking but I am fond of people being able to customize their characters in ways that suit them and player characters being unique and magic having many many different manifestation distinct to the culture it was developed in and having those reflective of cultural identities as well as variations based on individual talents... AD&D had a mechanic to represent a form of variation in talent up to a degree you had to roll the dice to learn a given spell (not much variation just on and off).

Yeah, one of many ways 1e implemented to control caster power that were removed in 3e forward.

 

[Lanefan]

Thanks for taking the hyperbolics well.. sometimes moods are that way.

No worries.

Maybe there are actually dozens of spells but the game mechanics for each are just not that specific (ie you can set the fireball so its fire effects are adjacent and in game world that is two different spells (but two different sets of mechanics would be redundant) , so in game world the casters who know how to do the one generally know how to do the others (perhaps even one that is a heat blast and the other is flames so their damage type is mechanically the same), each variation may introduce elements which are different but inconsequential like the flame color you mentioned.
Maybe casters are very adept at making cosmetic changes or personality / moods (there is your chaos) infects how the spell manifests in those ways so (I think it was AD&D that first mentioned a fireball looking like skulls or something )

I don't remember seeing anything about fireballs and skulls - other than a floating skull that casts them as an innate. Might have been a 2e thing.

Fireball is already enough of a headache in my game, as I still have it expand to fill its full volume (about 33000 cubic feet, or 33 10' cubes). Use with care.

There is an ice at-will attack magic in 4e (its narrowly defined combat effects could be described many ways however more is possible .... see below). The game explicitly suggested allowing an arcana check to modify rituals and elsewhere gave guidelines page 42, for scaling improvised actions to reflect the skill and power of the user... those mechanics mention the possibility of enable using power slots on improvised tricks (I have seen some restrict those tricks to normal athletic things but I said why does that have to be the case especially when a ritual could be adjusted on the fly and you have an at-will effect)

If I were writing a novel I could get behind this, but for gameplay purposes some consistency is nice so both the players and opposition have at least a vague idea what causes what and can plan around it. Without those constraints, I suspect arcane casters would get even more out of hand power-wise.

Not that fond of wild magic generally speaking but I am fond of people being able to customize their characters in ways that suit them and player characters being unique and magic having many many different manifestation distinct to the culture it was developed in and having those reflective of cultural identities as well as variations based on individual talents... AD&D had a mechanic to represent a form of variation in talent up to a degree you had to roll the dice to learn a given spell (not much variation just on and off).

I still make them roll to learn a new spell (except the one they get each time while training for a new level, but that one's random based on what the trainer happens to want to teach).

 

[Micah Sweet]

No worries.

I don't remember seeing anything about fireballs and skulls - other than a floating skull that casts them as an innate. Might have been a 2e thing.

Fireball is already enough of a headache in my game, as I still have it expand to fill its full volume (about 33000 cubic feet, or 33 10' cubes). Use with care.

If I were writing a novel I could get behind this, but for gameplay purposes some consistency is nice so both the players and opposition have at least a vague idea what causes what and can plan around it. Without those constraints, I suspect arcane casters would get even more out of hand power-wise.

I still make them roll to learn a new spell (except the one they get each time while training for a new level, but that one's random based on what the trainer happens to want to teach).

I really wish Fireball still worked like that.
Would really mitigate the damage bump it gets over other 3rd level spells.

 

[Lanefan]

I really wish Fireball still worked like that.
Would really mitigate the damage bump it gets over other 3rd level spells.

You're the DM - fix it.

 

[James Gasik]

Obligatory Grod's Law reminder: You cannot and should not balance mechanics by making them annoying to use.