D&D General Has Tiny Hut actually affected your game? Or has it otherwise mattered?

[James Gasik]

Well, they (wotc and design team) had ample oportunity to add it in official errata. It's 3 words (and floor bellow) to add to spell description. Since they didn't, by official, RAW, Tiny hut (2014) doesn't have floor. What Crawford said on social media, is his personal opinion, not official rule as written from WoTC.



AL uses opinions from social media? Well, that just sucks.

I don't recall what the official stance is on that sort of thing. At least in my area, we were heavily encouraged to use "rules as written", and to only make rulings when there was no explicit developer guidance. What this resulted in was, any time I would make a ruling off the cuff, someone would instantly go to their phones to check the internet. I was pretty annoyed at the "it's a hemisphere, so it has a floor" ruling, especially since apparently Crawford initially said it didn't have one, then was like "wait, derp, read your own rules, it's a hemisphere so it does have one!".

Basically it comes down to, is LTH a hollow half-sphere (in which case it wouldn't have a floor) or does the spell effect take up the entire hemisphere. Context matters- if you had say, an offensive spell that said it's area was a hemisphere (I can't think of one, but we have cones and cylinders), then obviously anything in the hemisphere is affected. It's because we think of LTH as a sort of igloo of force that there is a disconnect.

On the other hand, I've heard arguments that it must have a floor because the spell enforces a comfortable temperature within it, which would be difficult if it were, say, erected on cold ground. Or what happens during heavy rainfall, where water would be absorbed into the soil, despite the spell stating the atmosphere inside the space remains dry?

I don't have answers, spells aren't written to cover corner cases, and yet, these edge cases are important questions, and whether or not the spell works as advertised often hinge on how a DM rules.

Something I don't think anyone has touched upon yet is the ability to change the color of LTH. I wonder if this is meant to provide some sort of camouflage, by changing it's color to match it's surroundings, or just a rare moment for a caster to be creative.

 

[Maxperson]

Honestly, I think it's like a lot of things in the game. If you've never seen it used, you don't really realize just how disruptive it can be. But, once you've been on the receiving end of players abusing Hut to the most they possible can, it gets really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that all players will abuse this.

I think it's really a group thing. If the group is good with strategy/tactics, they will put these spells to really good use. If the group isn't, then they will probably see little use.

Out of those groups who use the spells well, there will be a portion who find it disruptive like you and I do, and a portion who just see it as smart play and don't care.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You, could, you know, talk to your playera about your issues?

Are you talking to me, or was this a transitive property of conversation where you were actually talking to the person I was talking to as well, but through a Reply to my post?

Your post makes it sound like you were talking to me, even though I wasn't talking about myself.

 

[Maxperson]

It says that spell of levels 3 or lower cannot affect anything in it.
So would a fireball upcasted to 4th level be a great counter to it?

In the context of this thread, it's very telling that they felt they needed to make that change for 5.5e. Clearly it was an issue to enough people for them to change things.

 

[Baron Opal II]

For me, if you don't have weather or adverse environments in your game, the tiny hut spell becomes or should become irrelevant. The original intent was to make exploration easier by mitigating or eliminating hostile environments.

Aside from making it similar to a cozy, relatively spacious tent, it also keeps out vermin. Rats, even giant ones are kept out. But a cranky boar or disgruntled moose can still ruin your night. I think I give it a 4-5 point damage threshold before it collapses.

 

[Maxperson]

The problem is the fail state for when it is not useful that you are describing is 1) catastrophic failure. All the enemies in the dungeon converge on you at once for using this spell. Whereas without it you might have had your rest interrupted and possibly be ambushed if your watch failed.

It’s also not clear why said patrol wouldn’t go get reinforcements to the same degree if you didn’t have tiny hut up and they found you resting and were themselves unnoticed. The only answer is dm fiat as far as I can tell.

There's no fiat. It's is unknown vs. known. Invulnerable vs. vulnerable. Resting vs. disrupted resting. And so on.

let's say the town was raided and the party has made camp nearby town for whatever reason.

A patrol coming up up on a hut cannot see inside of it, so they don't know if it contains raiders, friends, other enemies, or neutral parties. They likely cannot do anything about it. It's an unknown in a hostile situation, so MUST be regarded immediately as a threat. Since the patrol knows that a fairly competent spellcaster is inside(at a minimum), and possibly more than one, it would be foolish to approach it closely. Better to get help to overwhelm whoever is inside. Fetch casters of your own. Fetch more warriors. Warn people that the group is in the area so that they can set up defenses in case they are hostile.

If there is no hut and it's just a camp, the patrol can see how many are in camp. They can see if those people are armed and armored. What race(s) they are. If they match descriptions of the invaders. Can launch arrows from far away if need be. Can and probably will also send someone back with warning. And more. It's just all around a different situation.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Like Simulacrum and Simulacrum+Wish, Conjure Animals, and anything in 3e involving wizards in personal Demiplanes sending Ice Assassins at each other, the situation with Leodmund's Tiny Hut has come up exactly once per gaming group. In each case, it has followed some variation of the same routine:

1. Someone reads the spell or reads about the controversy surrounding the spell online.
2. They bring it to the group.
3. A large conversation happens that looks vaguely like this (including what the actual limits are, ways to defeat it, how often it will come up, whether it is cheap/cheesy, whether it is OP, how to DM around it, when to DM around it, and whether it adds anything to the game)
4. The, either 1) there are 1-2 sessions where it is played with and then it is put away (usually with option to re-choose for any caster that took it), or 2) we end up not playing with it.

And then it is not a problem for said group. Well, it is a problem in terms of opportunity cost/lost opportunity. In that there could be an interesting and moderately useful spell by the same name that would actually see use in our group. Occasionally that happens (with this and spells/items/etc. like it), but oftentimes not.

I would rather all the force spells lose their existing forcefield capacities. Make this one an actual hut, sure, but also make Force Cage something you could definitively and inarguably defeat as one would an actual cage (bashing, squirming, etc.). The whole invincible/undefeatable/'only way to circumvent is _______' paradigm is an interesting choice for an exception-based game, and certainly favors some ways of addressing problems over others in a way I don't love.

An intersting idea - why does the force cage spell exist, but not just a "summon cage" spell? Why not just create a cage, and cagey things can be done with it. At least have a spell for lower level that's just a cage ,and something higher level as force cage, once you start encountering beings that wouldn't be held by an ordinary cage ,and might be able to escape a force cage but definitely are hindered for a while.

I think 4E had an Instant Campsite ritual. That's already neat - needing only a minute or so to create what's just a camp site, no need to collect materials and set up your tent and fire, but it's still a camp site, so all the things that apply to camp sites apply.
(Though 4E also had the more advanced types of force shelters and mansions for higher levels.)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

You, could, you know, talk to your playera about your issues?

Sorry I was following this at the time on my phone and lost the thread of the conversation.

 

[tetrasodium]

An intersting idea - why does the force cage spell exist, but not just a "summon cage" spell? Why not just create a cage, and cagey things can be done with it. At least have a spell for lower level that's just a cage ,and something higher level as force cage, once you start encountering beings that wouldn't be held by an ordinary cage ,and might be able to escape a force cage but definitely are hindered for a while.

I think 4E had an Instant Campsite ritual. That's already neat - needing only a minute or so to create what's just a camp site, no need to collect materials and set up your tent and fire, but it's still a camp site, so all the things that apply to camp sites apply.
(Though 4E also had the more advanced types of force shelters and mansions for higher levels.)

It's a 7th level spell. With vancian prep of the past it meant that you prepared spells by slot and it made for a an option you could reliably assume would be usable . Plus with banned spell schools it gave high level evokers a bit of a control option rather than the nukes in 7th level revolution.

That particular spell is one that 5e made a bigger problem by getting rid of vancian prep

 

[Hussar]

If you keep running games where every group goes full caster heavy and uses their spells for everything... my guess is that your particular style of DMing makes those choices make the most sense. The players are taking what you are giving them. Now if you are generally cool with all of that, then great! But if these choices of character and their actions of using magic for everything are really starting to get on your nerves and you actually want to stop it... then at this point you should feel free to up the number of Dispels, Counterspells and massive amounts of Anti-Magic areas without guilt. At some point make them wish a least one or two of the players just went Melee. You've put up with this "All magic, all the time" style of game in service of being a "nice DM" this entire time... but if you feel they have been taking advantage of your goodwill and you've grown bored, then feel free to switch things up.

Sorry, where did I say "every group"? I said the last group I had. My current group doesn't. But, thanks for the assumption that it was my own incompetence that was the issue. Of course it could never possibly be that 5e has made casters so much better than non-casters and, frankly, made virtually every class a caster. 5 full caster classes, 3 half caster classes and 2 non-caster classes, both of which get caster options as sub-classes. Gee, I wonder why groups would be caster heavy?