Something, I think, Every GM/DM Should Read

[Zhaleskra]

Personally, aside from the fact that "prone" means lying on the ground in a specific position, I'd go for "creatures that are already 'lying down' can't be made to lie down". So this is one case where I'd tell the rules to Sit Down and Shut Up for the sake of the believability of the game.

Regarding changing monsters, I could justify with "if you're using metagame knowledge, so will my NPCs". Of course that's a last ditch if players are just "going textbook". Perhaps my troll is a scandinavian troll which do have different weaknesses from standard D&D trolls.

 

[Hussar]

Just on the Prone sidebar.

The condition of being prone is not caused by someone falling down. It's caused by the fact that the target is on the ground. How you get to the position of prone is irrelavent to the rules in question.

Or, would you rule that if the target is sleeping on the ground, he's not actually prone, since no outside action actually caused him to be on the ground? If the target, under its own power, is lying on the ground, is it prone or not?

This is why I dislike it when DM's start out from the position of "I just know better". It creates all sorts of loopholes and weirdness that's completely unintended. One of my personal favourites is the idea that skill checks in d20 fail on a 1. They don't and there's several very, very good reason why not.*

Then again, if it REALLY bothers you that a snake can be made to suffer the prone condition, just tell the players up front that you're not using that rule. OTOH, trying to bring up this rule change in the middle of combat is a bad idea because you are messing with player expectations.

*Fail on a 1 - how does this interact with the Take 20 and Take 10 rules? Particularly if you add in the idea of 1 being a critical fumble, suddenly Take 20 no longer works. It's also very unrealistic - a doctor fails to treat a patient 5% of the time, regardless of how trivial the problem is? I'm pretty sure that I can jump a 5 foot wide pit 20 times without falling in the hole, and I'm doubly sure that my 15th level Monk can certainly do so. Adding in Fail on a 1 punishes PC's and does nothing to NPC's.

 

[Raven Crowking]

You and I game in two different worlds.

In the world I game in, I don't have to say that you can't knock a snake prone -- the players would be saying it.

(I would be saying that a snake which is coiled and ready to strike/spit can effectively be knocked prone....it could still potentially bite, but would lose reach.)


RC

 

[Barastrondo]

For me it's less about "is the snake lying on the ground?" and more "Does the snake grant combat advantage to adjacent enemies, can it only move at a crawl speed unless it takes a move action to right itself, and does it impose a -2 penalty to ranged attacks?" (Oh yeah, and "is it at -2 to hit?")

If all of these things are true at all times, then yes, the default state of the snake is the prone condition. If they aren't, then I figure there's a difference between prone and the prone condition (just as characters may be stunned by a revelation but not subject to the stunned condition), and that a quick bit of reskinning can define what the prone condition means to non-humanoids. I've seen snakes in that couple-of-seconds it takes to right themselves stage (ever had a hawk drop a snake in your path?); that's what I'd have in my head for them, for instance.

 

[TheUltramark]

You and I game in two different worlds.

In the world I game in, I don't have to say that you can't knock a snake prone -- the players would be saying it.

(I would be saying that a snake which is coiled and ready to strike/spit can effectively be knocked prone....it could still potentially bite, but would lose reach.)


RC

I agree
As i said in a post about this earlier, if I were the DM, I am sure any of the players would not even try this without questioning "hey, its on the ground already, can I knock it prone???"

 

[TheUltramark]

For me it's less about "is the snake lying on the ground?" and more "Does the snake grant combat advantage to adjacent enemies, can it only move at a crawl speed unless it takes a move action to right itself, and does it impose a -2 penalty to ranged attacks?" (Oh yeah, and "is it at -2 to hit?")

If all of these things are true at all times, then yes, the default state of the snake is the prone condition. If they aren't, then I figure there's a difference between prone and the prone condition (just as characters may be stunned by a revelation but not subject to the stunned condition), and that a quick bit of reskinning can define what the prone condition means to non-humanoids. I've seen snakes in that couple-of-seconds it takes to right themselves stage (ever had a hawk drop a snake in your path?); that's what I'd have in my head for them, for instance.

have you ever seen someone punch a snake in a manner that flips the snake into the air so that it lands on its back?

 

[Neonchameleon]

To the "You can't knock a snake prone" crowd - possibly not. But that's because the snake is already prone...

 

[Barastrondo]

have you ever seen someone punch a snake in a manner that flips the snake into the air so that it lands on its back?

I have never seen all kinds of things that happen in a D&D game. But if the warforged fighter with a big hammer decides to use his "knock prone" power on a snake, he'll describe it in a way that works for us, or I will if he delegates it to me, and we move on. The folks I game with take readily to the concept of separating out a mechanical condition from an in-game description, so for us "prone" can mean "sprawled inconveniently on its back," and "punch" can mean "grab behind the head, lift halfway up and throw into the ground." One of the nice side effects of this approach is that you effectively gain a wider variety of scenes that happen in an in-character context, while still keeping track of a relatively limited pool of mechanics. Quite fond of that approach, personally.

 

[nedjer]

Couldn't someone just fireball the damned thing?

 

[Fifth Element]

(I would be saying that a snake which is coiled and ready to strike/spit can effectively be knocked prone....it could still potentially bite, but would lose reach.)

So you have no trouble with a snake, in combat, being "knocked prone" then? -2 to hit can reflect that loss of reach.