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

[Garthanos]

Reading a spellbook and just gaining those abilities was a nonstarter.

gives magic more ummmmm not sure what the word is more dignity/mystery etc.

 

[TwoSix]

gives magic more ummmmm not sure what the word is more dignity/mystery etc.

In my campaigns, magic works under a simple premise. If you spend enough time, resources, and plot specificity, you can accomplish pretty much anything.

If an apocalyptic cult wants to summon Orcus, they aren't doing it by researching a 9th level spell for a 17th level wizard to cast. They're doing it by sacrificing an entire town, using a soul gem mined from the 432th layer of Hell, and doing the ritual during a conjunction with the Plane of Night that occurs every 131 years on the winter solstice.

Remember the old 2e rules for making a magic item? That's how magic works in my games, it's driven entirely by the need to create a quest and drive a new plot.

 

[pontinyc]

Just want to thank everyone for all of the tremendous input! It’s been invaluable. Please keep it going, the conversation is opening up my noob eyes to all sorts of possibilities.

 

[Pedantic]

So, I just wanted to throw out a response to the "it's a game, why does everything need to be explained" approach we're seeing a lot here. I find that explaining everything renders the setting more gameable, not less.

Consistent rules give players something to leverage against the setting. They can make plans, draw inferences and use system elements to achieve their ends.

Take something like the "ritual that requires killing a bunch of innocents" type powers above. That's being presented as an ex-post facto explanation for how a villain may have a unique power, but if it's knowable ahead of time, then that's something players can work directly against. They can figure out which settlements in a likely range have to enough people to support that kind of sacrifice and try to catch the villain out, look into unusual disappearances or find evidence of the sacrifice and get insight into a villain's capabilities and and so on.

Moving abilities outside of an in-world justification affects both the "immersion" (verisimilitude, realism, word of your choice here) of the setting, but also the gameplay that's possible around those abilities. Making such abilities entirely removed from player facing mechanics is saying something about the game you're playing; that necromancer moves from a broadly interactively object down to just something you can fight.

 

[Undrave]

Well sure, for example, the NPC Gladiator in the Monster Manual, who has a special ability to deal an extra die of damage with their weapon attacks. How do they do that? How does every Gladiator do that? Why can't a Fighter get this ability? I mean, heck, being enlarged to ogre size just nets you an extra d4 damage; this guy can do 2d12 with a greataxe!

Sure, the Doylist answer is: "it's a math fix so the monster is an appropriate threat for their challenge rating". But the Watsonian answer is "?????.....reasons!". I know people in real life who will gnash their teeth any time something about the game "doesn't make sense", but don't even bat an eye at monster abilities...and this is an ability, it's even called out in the text and given a name, "Brute" (ironically, the Gladiator also has an ability that players can have, "Brave", the same as the Halfling ability. I guess there are no Halfling Gladiators outside of a long-running webcomic).

Isn't that ability basically the same as attacking an extra time but you don't bother with the extra attack roll and they can't target more than one dude at a time?

 

[TwoSix]

Take something like the "ritual that requires killing a bunch of innocents" type powers above. That's being presented as an ex-post facto explanation for how a villain may have a unique power, but if it's knowable ahead of time, then that's something players can work directly against. They can figure out which settlements in a likely range have to enough people to support that kind of sacrifice and try to catch the villain out, look into unusual disappearances or find evidence of the sacrifice and get insight into a villain's capabilities and and so on.

From my perspective, the whole reason to implement "magic as quest" is precisely so the players can research what the opposition is doing, in-game, and then try to stop it.

The type of play I don't want to enable is where the players dig through the PHB looking for a loophole in a spell that will invalidate the current fiction.

 

[Pedantic]

From my perspective, the whole reason to implement "magic as quest" is precisely so the players can research what the opposition is doing, in-game, and then try to stop it.

The type of play I don't want to enable is where the players dig through the PHB looking for a loophole in a spell that will invalidate the current fiction.

I don't really see a difference here between "in-game" and otherwise. Obviously it's annoying if it turns out fireball doesn't set flammable materials alight as expected and your oil soaked room encounter design doesn't make sense now, and that's something you might need to work out at the table collectively in the moment to keep things moving.

But if you give the players information and tools, they're going to use them. Using the mechanics to do stuff and make decisions is playing the game. The less relationship between the mechanics and the fiction, the more risk that your decision won't be adequate informed.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't really see a difference here between "in-game" and otherwise. Obviously it's annoying if it turns out fireball doesn't set flammable materials alight as expected and your oil soaked room encounter design doesn't make sense now, and that's something you might need to work out at the table collectively in the moment to keep things moving.

But if you give the players information and tools, they're going to use them. Using the mechanics to do stuff and make decisions is playing the game. The less relationship between the mechanics and the fiction, the more risk that your decision won't be adequate informed.

Sure. But let's talk practical examples.

Let's reference my example in post #262 of the "apocalyptical cult summoning Orcus" that I believe you were referencing in your post #264. What implementation would you favor for that particular scenario that differs from my offered approach?

 

[Jack Daniel]

Looking for some input on how you DM's justify in-game mechanics or magical effects that some npc's may have, but aren't listed in the PHB? For ex., you want your BBEG to appear in hologram/projected form before the pc's and kill one of his own minions with Power Word: Kill. His projected image then sits and has a conversation with the PC's, inviting them to join his forces.

Fun idea but there's nothing in the PHB to allow this specifically. How does one justify the fact that this individual has access to magic that isn't available to the PC's and what might you say to the party wizard who says they want to learn to do that?

What's good for the goose is always good for the gander. A monster might very well have unusual powers that PCs never will, but if an NPC has a class and levels, then it plays by the same rules as the PCs. The NPC might be able to do something extraordinary via an unusual spell or a rare magical item, but in that case, any PC who obtains that spell or item can thereafter accomplish the same extraordinary thing.

 

[Hussar]

Monsters that are not PC-playable, sure. Gelatinous Cube paralysis on touch? Bring it on. Rust Monster doing its thing? Great! Dragon blasting the room with fire breath? Love it.

If the "monsters" are also PC-playable, however, IMO they all have to follow the rules for PCs...or, the PCs have to follow the rules as if they were NPCs/monsters. Whichever, as long as all Elves or all Gnomes or all Kobolds in the setting are built on the same chassis as all other Elves or all other Gnomes or all other Kobolds.

The concept of inhabitants of the setitng running around with little "PC" or "NPC" stickers on their foreheads is utterly ludicrous, yet that's exactly what these needless differentiations lead to.

One thing to keep in mind is that having PCs and NPCs of a species be mechanically the same doesn't mean a DM has to go through all the headache of rolling each NPC up as if it were a PC; which is a complaint I hear repeatedly. Just assign stuff...with the strict proviso that whatever you assign must be within the limits of what a normal roll-up could produce.

Again, if it's a non-PC-playable monster e.g. a demon, this is fine.

"PC" playable is a 3e invention. It didn't exist in 1e and didn't exist in 2e officially until pretty later on with things like the Complete Humanoid. And, even then, it was never presented as an expectation. An orc didn't gain character levels - he suddenly became treated as an ogre when he became chief. Now, I don't think that the intent was that an orc physically transformed into an ogre, despite using an ogre's stats upon becoming chief. It was purely a game mechanics method to differentiate a rank and file orc from an orc chieftain.

How did that dragon cast spells though? After all, dragons had a percentage chance of having spells. Did they have actual MU levels? But, then, why didn't they need spell components? Beyond that, in 3e and later (if not earlier) any innate casting didn't need spell components, even if the monster was treated as a Level X caster. Why can't I learn to cast spells like a Ki-Rin and never need any spell components for my spells? It's never explained.

This whole thing about a "strict proviso" is entirely fabricated. It never existed in the game. I don't disagree that people play this way. Fine and dandy. But, pretending that it's required? That's not even remotely true.