D&D General When do you overrule RAW?

[FitzTheRuke]

Because they are different things. Fighter maneuvers are not supernatural constructs, and there should be a possible explanation for how they work. I don't want mechanics to override the setting.

Mechanics don't have to "overrule the setting" but trust me: YOU do NOT know how to fight a giant monster any more than you know how to cause fire to appear spontaneously out of nowhere.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Mechanics don't have to "overrule the setting" but trust me: YOU do NOT know how to fight a giant monster any more than you know how to cause fire to appear spontaneously out of nowhere.

Again, if this scene were in a movie, how would it be depicted? What would it look like to generate the results you want?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

When RAW just doesn't give a plausible result, similar to Mercer's complaint.

Most recent example: In a play by post game I'm running, the PCs scattered caltrops on the floor. An animated suit of armor came marching through to attack them. By the RAW, the caltrops should slow it, which -- to my mind -- requires it to be slowing down from pain. But animated suits of armor are basically crude magical robots. They will certainly get damaged by the caltrops (a little), but they're not smart enough to go "ow, this sucks, I'm going around a different way."

I don't know - they get stuck in their feet and make it difficult to walk? They might lack the ability to be careful to avoid the worst of them, or to kick (or use foot-flexing muscles) to shake them off.

Similarly, caltrops by RAW should slow oozes or swarms, which is hard to picture.

Get sucked up inside them and are uncomfortable/distracting/cumbersome?

So I ruled that caltrops don't slow the armor and wouldn't slow other creatures where it was hard to make the logical case for it, even if, from a game standpoint, they would.

I mean, you're fine to rule that way, of course, but there's LOTS of ways the story could be told to make it work.

 

[Mort]

Magic has its own set of rules. Fairness doesn't enter into that in this situation. You want spells to be less effective? Make them so. But as it stood, she wasn't able to provide an explanation more convincing than, "the rules say I can".

But where not talking about the rules, by the rules the ability clearly works.

We're talking about - do you overrule the rules.

And in my experience, when this comes up -DMs let magic slide because "it's magic..."

But make the non-magic solution have to pass the "does it make sense test..." thereby inherently penalizing this solution by requiring extra steps.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Again, if this scene were in a movie, how would it be depicted? What would it look like to generate the results you want?

"I stab the monster deep in the ankle, making it pause while it figures out what happened."

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Again, if this scene were in a movie, how would it be depicted? What would it look like to generate the results you want?

What? The Fighter stopping the monster?

The fighter would run in the way and the monster would probably stop to smash the fighter instead of going wherever the DM had originally intended. Aside from DM's intentions, there's no reason that the fight needed to proceed the way the DM wanted it to.

Why did the monster do that? Because the fighter was THERE. Made themself a more obvious target than whoever they had thought to go after first. Pissed them off. It depends really on what the REST of the scene looked like, both before this incident and after it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean, you're fine to rule that way, of course, but there's LOTS of ways the story could be told to make it work.

I'm not arguing for RAW to be changed or for anyone else's games to follow my rulings. I'm saying that, for me, the way I picture most oozes (being very liquid unless they're specifically described as being more dense, like a gelatinous cube, or how swarms work or how big and how dense bags of caltrops are in game), it doesn't work for me.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm not arguing for RAW to be changed or for anyone else's games to follow my rulings. I'm saying that, for me, the way I picture most oozes (being very liquid unless they're specifically described as being more dense, like a gelatinous cube, or how swarms work or how big and how dense caltrops work), it doesn't work for me.

Oh yeah, that's fair enough. I just find that I tend to feel that when people (in general, not necessarily your example here) have problems with imagining "how (something in D&D) is possible" they just aren't letting the story tell itself.

When we're allowed (encouraged!) to imagine ANYTHING - I don't know why we'd use that to imagine why things would be impossible, when we could instead imagine how they WOULD be possible.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Magic has its own set of rules. Fairness doesn't enter into that

It's a game.

There are more than enough double standards and unfairness IRL, we don't need them in our escapist entertainment.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh yeah, that's fair enough. I just find that I tend to feel that when people (in general, not necessarily your example here) have problems with imagining "how (something in D&D) is possible" they just aren't letting the story tell itself.

When we're allowed (encouraged!) to imagine ANYTHING - I don't know why we'd use that to imagine why things would be impossible, when we could instead imagine how they WOULD be possible.

I think my players would all say I'm pretty loosey goosey. The caltrops thing was a rare case of me having an objection.

I would much rather have a cinematic and cool adventure, rather than turning into a simulationist grind, but I still have a nebulous boundary things have to stay inside.