D&D 5E Improvised actions in combat

[Lanliss]

Ah. I misunderstood how you meant to use the rug--I thought you meant to use it as a blindfold, but you're actually using it as a source of dust. In that case, we're in the "dirt in eyes to blind the guy scenario". Rule of Yes would let you get a free round of blinding; on any other attempt I'd make that a DC 8 Con save to avoid one round of blindness. Generally rubbing dirt in someone's eyes is going to be better than throwing a bunch of dust in their face.

I don't have a Rule of Yes, and tend to arrive at a ruling to stick with. After all, there won't always be a rug to throw, or a building to leap off of. Even if there is a building or tree, the PC is sacrificing HP whenever they pull the trick, so I don't have much of an issue with them doing it repeatedly.

Also, from my point of view, the option the enemy has is to close his eyes or get dust in them, either of which leads to temporary blindness. The reason I would rule it as an improvised attack instead of a Con save is to emulate whether the enemy swipes the rug away quickly enough, as you don't really 'shrug off' blindness from dust in your eyes. Of course, these are all just me explaining my personal rulings, not me trying to sway your point of view.

 

[Lanefan]

The PC won’t sound so cool if he dies while trying to be cool or takes an significant amount of damage – and demand more healing for him – just because he wanted to sound cool.

Yes it will!

"I died trying to do something daringly stupendous!" always sounds way better and cooler than "I got clobbered in the front line again". And it's all the times the stupendous move doesn't come off right that make it so special when it does.

In my table, everyone else would just think he/she is either stupid or a smug.

Which says some things about your table, I suppose. Personally, I'd just enjoy the entertainment, patch the poor schlub up, and move on.

Lan-"if I don't charge, and if you don't charge, who the hell's gonna charge?"-efan

 

[Igwilly]

I apologize if you took what I said as a slight towards your games, I meant a very specific form of 'Fantastical', the kind that you see in the given examples. A world where the acrobatic hero thinks on his toes, using his environment to the greatest effect. The kind of world where diving off a building or throwing a rug is plenty effective, at least for the current requirements of the hero.

Oh, I see. Forgive me if I was rude.
In playstyle, I tend to play “safer but effective”. In terms of fluff, characters, world, etc. I go over-the-top, but there are some rules I won’t break. There’s also the following factor:

Yes it will!

"I died trying to do something daringly stupendous!" always sounds way better and cooler than "I got clobbered in the front line again". And it's all the times the stupendous move doesn't come off right that make it so special when it does.

Which says some things about your table, I suppose. Personally, I'd just enjoy the entertainment, patch the poor schlub up, and move on.

Lan-"if I don't charge, and if you don't charge, who the hell's gonna charge?"-efan

I would spend all the time – up to his resurrection – thinking about if my PC would live if I had picked the “smartest” choice.

Moreover, as I said, my problem is not with improvisation itself, but relying in improvisation for half of the classes, but not the other half.

Edit: just to be clear, I'm talking about using improvised weapons in place of actual weapons, just that. Daring feats of acrobacy and the like are more then welcome, just don't underestimate your foes

 

[Lanefan]

In playstyle, I tend to play “safer but effective”.

Where I'm a bit more gonzo, most of the time.

In terms of fluff, characters, world, etc. I go over-the-top, but there are some rules I won’t break.

Such as?

There’s also the following factor:

I would spend all the time – up to his resurrection – thinking about if my PC would live if I had picked the “smartest” choice.

Yeah, me too, but I just take it as a lost gamble - this time - and carry on.

Moreover, as I said, my problem is not with improvisation itself, but relying in improvisation for half of the classes, but not the other half.

Edit: just to be clear, I'm talking about using improvised weapons in place of actual weapons, just that. Daring feats of acrobacy and the like are more then welcome, just don't underestimate your foes

Ah. I'm thinking about improvised combat actions overall, not specifically improvised weapons.

Lan-"if you run out of handy weapon-like things to improvise with, we have precedent in our game for picking up another PC and throwing it at the enemy"-efan

 

[Sunseeker]

Fair enough, but how are you supposed to know whether something would normally require a feat or a specific class feature, unless you read everything everywhere to learn what is already codified? Every edition from 2E through 4E was loaded down with dozens upon dozens of supplements.

I don't usually play with people that ignorant of the game. When I have, I've educated them.

Newbies don't usually try to do things to get that extra +2 bonus or that special feature, they usually try to do stuff 'cause they think it's cool. This plays into the later portion of my post where I make sure I know my players and I try to learn who does "cool improv stuff" for the fun of it, and who does "cool improve stuff" to play the system to their advantage.

There was at least one 3E game, using the OGL, which had a class with the explicit power to ask questions while sounding like you already knew the answer; which was great for RP purposes, except it meant that nobody outside of that class could even attempt such a thing, and there's no way for a player to know that they couldn't attempt it unless they were somehow familiar with the powers of other classes.

I'm not familiar with this class or that feature. The game isn't perfect. Some improv is allowable when the game addresses the situation poorly. Other improv is allowable when it's clear the goal is to "do something awesome" as opposed to game the system for advantages they wouldn't normally have.

 

[uzirath]

I love it when combat feels fluid and creative. Sure, like anything, it becomes tiresome if abused, but it's one of the features which make tabletop RPGs more fun than video games (which tend to apply the rules more quickly and evenly). So I'm all for creativity in battle.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't usually play with people that ignorant of the game. When I have, I've educated them.

When there are literally hundreds of books available, with hundreds of classes and thousands of feats, I can't blame anyone for not knowing them all.

Newbies don't usually try to do things to get that extra +2 bonus or that special feature, they usually try to do stuff 'cause they think it's cool.

This part sounds weird to me. Is that really a problem you've had to deal with? Do players literally attempt to gain a numerical bonus by describing their default action in a special way?

I mean, I know that's how it worked in Exalted, but I've always understood improvised actions in an RPG to be about doing things you couldn't explicitly do already, rather than just gaining a bonus to whatever you were going to do anyway. Do you have an example of when someone tried to improvise their way into +2 on a check?

 

[Igwilly]

Where I'm a bit more gonzo, most of the time.

Such as?

Yeah, me too, but I just take it as a lost gamble - this time - and carry on.

Ah. I'm thinking about improvised combat actions overall, not specifically improvised weapons.

Lan-"if you run out of handy weapon-like things to improvise with, we have precedent in our game for picking up another PC and throwing it at the enemy"-efan

I don’t really consider athletic and acrobatic feats to be “improvising”. We have rules for that; free-form rules, but there’s clear guidance, requiring perhaps just checks. If you expend your “points” on this stuff, you’ll use it, that’s a promise. When I talk about improvising, I mean going into uncharted waters, where you have almost no guidance of what to do. It can happen, that’s for sure.
However, I’m often scared about how much people talk about how “improvising” (in the broader sense) is so crucial to the game. It’s fun doing that, but you don’t actually need to do crazy stuff all the time; often the simple choice is best. When the simple choice really is the best, going into risky overcomplicated feats, involving several checks seems like being a show-off here. However, if you do get advantage, or even save the day with that, you’re a hero. I properly reward players when they have a good idea, but not every idea is a good one. The discussion was about using severely inappropriate “weapons” in place of real weapons, so I was thinking about that.

Well, I think my particular rules are not something important in this thread, but if you're interested, I can share a few by other means.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I don’t really consider athletic and acrobatic feats to be “improvising”. We have rules for that; free-form rules, but there’s clear guidance, requiring perhaps just checks. If you expend your “points” on this stuff, you’ll use it, that’s a promise. When I talk about improvising, I mean going into uncharted waters, where you have almost no guidance of what to do. It can happen, that’s for sure.
However, I’m often scared about how much people talk about how “improvising” (in the broader sense) is so crucial to the game. It’s fun doing that, but you don’t actually need to do crazy stuff all the time; often the simple choice is best. When the simple choice really is the best, going into risky overcomplicated feats, involving several checks seems like being a show-off here. However, if you do get advantage, or even save the day with that, you’re a hero. I properly reward players when they have a good idea, but not every idea is a good one. The discussion was about using severely inappropriate “weapons” in place of real weapons, so I was thinking about that.

Well, I think my particular rules are not something important in this thread, but if you're interested, I can share a few by other means.

What's crucial is that RPGs with a DM are (theoretically) infinite-resolution and open-ended. Unlike a choose-your-own-adventure where you have to either run from the burglar or hide in your room, in an RPG you and the DM can explore what happens if you climb out the window, call the cops, offer the burglar a drink (laced with cyanide), bribe him to go away, or team up with him and rob houses together. It's not about improvising attacks per se; it's about improvising gameplay, some of which could be combat. I guarantee that if you try to play out Home Alone in D&D, the DM will be improvising rules in "combat" at least since of the time, even if your "combat action" is just "I release the paint can and retreat through the door behind me."

Again, it's not the actual improvisation which is key. You can have a fun adventure using standard rules. What's important is the latent possibility of improvisation, if you think of something clever to do, because the game world has infinite resolution.

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[Sunseeker]

When there are literally hundreds of books available, with hundreds of classes and thousands of feats, I can't blame anyone for not knowing them all.

Nor do I. But I keep resources on hand to illuminate the issue for them.

This part sounds weird to me. Is that really a problem you've had to deal with? Do players literally attempt to gain a numerical bonus by describing their default action in a special way?

Yes.

I mean, I know that's how it worked in Exalted, but I've always understood improvised actions in an RPG to be about doing things you couldn't explicitly do already, rather than just gaining a bonus to whatever you were going to do anyway. Do you have an example of when someone tried to improvise their way into +2 on a check?

Sure, from jumping up on walls to get the "high ground" attempting to make acrobatics checks to get extra bonuses on dex-based checks, or simply attempting to "purple prose" their attacks into something superior.