Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6285236" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think this is ultimately an issue of agency. Most of the time, when D&D tells you what your character must think, it does not dictate a particular action.So, a few examples:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Charm Person: If you fail the save, your character must believe that the caster is your trusted friend. But how you act with that new belief is up to you. Maybe you would not reveal some secrets to your truest friends.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Morale: If it fails the check, your monster must want to end the fight and preserve their life. But how they do that is up to you. Maybe they flee, maybe they surrender, maybe they "pretend to be dead."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Illusions: If you fail the save, your character must believe that the illusion is real. But how you act with that new belief is up to you. You may believe that there is a wall there, but maybe you take an axe to it instead of just ignoring it, and then....</li> </ul>So if you wanted to weave a "trick" into this, you'd probably want to follow a similar pattern: a successful trick makes you believe something, but it's up to the believer how they respond.In that framework, a trick shouldn't force movement or action. If that's the goal of the trick, it should just make that course of action more appealing: if you succeed in tricking the target, they think you are weak, or that there is an opening, or that they'd get some bonus for that action. Then, on their turn, they decide what to do. Such an ability might look something like this:Apparent Opening When you are damaged, as a reaction, you can use this ability. All enemies that can see you must make a WIS save or believe that they have Advantage on their next melee attack against you. They actually have Disadvantage. ...there's one other way that D&D has handled this in the past, and that is something similar to 3e Feinting: a skill check that gives you a bonus against the target. This also avoids dictating enemy actions, it just abstracts a kind of edge you get against them. Such an ability might look a bit like this: Apparent Opening When you are damaged, as a reaction, you can use this ability. All enemies that can see you must make a WIS save or believe that they have Advantage on their next melee attack against you. Your AC actually improves by 4 against enemies that fail this save until the end of your next turn, and such an enemy also cannot gain Advantage against you until then.  But in no case does it say that an enemy attacks you, or moves, or does some other action. I think that's the line that can be drawn: some folks are cool with that, but it's a significant violation for some other players.(As an aside, I think it was 4e's prohibition on "wasted actions" that changed this dynamic, since the above scheme can result in pointless uses of an ability -- if you charm a sociopath, or try to surrender to one, or throw illusions at a party empiricist, or whatever, the mechanic might not result in the intended effects. Most elder editions were totally fine having the DM make this call, and had no issue/actively encouraged negating player abilities.)</blockquote>

Verification