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

[Blue]

Just because it's a conscious design choice doesn't mean they got it right: they're quite capable of making wrong choices, and did so here.

I agree they can make the wrong design choices. What makes you say that they did in this case?

I remember all of the problems that manifested in 3.x when using character creation rules to build foes in terms of DM prep time. I also see that with bounded accuracy the primary knob left for survival is HPs, so foes having a lot more HPs than PCs is rather embedded - changing to using PC rules would seem to require quite a bit of other changes in the foundation of 5e math.

 

[Irlo]

Anyone can use the unclassed NPCs from the Monster Manual as-is.

And we have all the rules necessary for building PCs. Anyone can use those to stat up NPCs if they want.

Do what works for you.

 

[Maxperson]

If I were a player and the DM kept on creating magic for narrative purposes - then that would disrupt my immersion and I believe my fun (including Agency). If my character's magic is always limited to RAW/RAI with strict limitations but the DM can go off script whenever they please because magic is magical how does that not affect my Agency?
As someone who cares about Agency I thought this would be obvious.

Why? Research how to go off script and get powers of your own. Fantastic adventures have been had to accomplish things like this.

 

[TwoSix]

Why? Research how to go off script and get powers of your own. Fantastic adventures have been had to accomplish things like this.

That's how I do it. The consequential powers characters get aren't their builds, it's what's they earn in the story.

 

[SkidAce]

Because everything in the universe has some sort of underlying principle(s) of physics that allows it to function as it does. Magic is no exception.

Says who?

And besides, magic is in our story world, not the real one, so corrollaries can be invalid.

 

[Maxperson]

That's how I do it. The consequential powers characters get aren't their builds, it's what's they earn in the story.

In the background of one of the PCs in my group, he got a tattoo that was said to be the mark of a Chosen of Mystra. He didn't know if it was true or not and I never confirmed or denied. The group is about to hit 12th level and his PC died a few sessions ago. The group just brought him back.

As his soul was being called back, he heard Mystra telling him that she still needed him for other things. As you are probably aware, raise dead imposes a -4 penalty to almost everything that goes away 1 per long rest. It's not exhaustion, so the spells that work to remove exhaustion don't work to remove that penalty.

When he returned to consciousness, the group rested and he started to spend hit dice to restore himself a little bit, since raise dead also doesn't heal you. While he was spending hit dice, he was surrounded by a silvery glow which is silver fire, something that Chosen of Mystra get. He's not aware of what it is yet, though he may have guessed out of character. Since silver fire has restorative properties, I removed one of the -1s for each hit die spent.

Silver fire doesn't exist in 5e and there's no set structure for it. I'm making it up. @AnotherGuy's argument that I shouldn't be able to do things like that for NPCs is also an argument that I shouldn't be able to do it for PCs. I very much disagree. As DM I should be able to do both.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Silver fire doesn't exist in 5e and there's no set structure for it. I'm making it up. @AnotherGuy's argument that I shouldn't be able to do things like that for NPCs is also an argument that I shouldn't be able to do it for PCs. I very much disagree. As DM I should be able to do both.

My argument is, that in a game like D&D if a statable NPC can do it, then the PCs, with training, should be able to do it. Thus the new magic created falls under the standard magic framework (system).

 

[Pedantic]

Silver fire doesn't exist in 5e and there's no set structure for it. I'm making it up. @AnotherGuy's argument that I shouldn't be able to do things like that for NPCs is also an argument that I shouldn't be able to do it for PCs. I very much disagree. As DM I should be able to do both.

Not to speak for anyone else, but I don't think that's the point being made at all. The argument is that whatever rules you make up for this system should ideally apply to everyone in the setting, as appropriate. If this is a resource that's unique to 1 chosen individual, it really doesn't matter, but if it's applicable to a set of people, it ought to function the same way for NPCs/PCs.

The argument being that there shouldn't exist systems that PCs categorically can't interact with. If you have an elven seer that can channel her past lives for skill bonuses, then whatever diegetic process allowed for that system should be available for a PC to interact with. Maybe it's just a "elves over age 700 develop X ability" sidebar, and your 80 year old PC can reasonably expect to do that later if the campaign has a massive time skip, or it's a domain power of the elven god of memory, and if someone statted up such a cleric after a character death, you'd explain the mechanic.

Given 5e's design norms, it doesn't even matter if the ability isn't perfect represented as a PC class domain power in the NPC's statblock, so much that based on that description, a PC cleric can expect a similar ability, even if the the exact implementation isn't the same.

 

[Hussar]

Well, there pretty much goes the rationale for wizards - the guys who gain magical power by studying it. Magic may not be physics because it breaks the rules of physics all the time. But there has also always been a subset of magic in D&D that is subject to study, classification, consistency, and mastery through doing so. That doesn’t mean all magic has to fit into that subset, but a substantial portion will.

Thousands of generations of sheep breeding or farming in general, long before anyone could even conceive of dna or any scientific principles really shows this not to be true.

The fact that one wizard can’t read another wizard’s spellbook shows that there isn’t a systematic approach to study.

 

[Incenjucar]

Thousands of generations of sheep breeding or farming in general, long before anyone could even conceive of dna or any scientific principles really shows this not to be true.

The fact that one wizard can’t read another wizard’s spellbook shows that there isn’t a systematic approach to study.

That rules out a unified system at best. Alchemy texts in the real world were basically riddle books but they still produced chemistry after enough iterations.