What would you rule?

[Piratecat]

I'm curious how you solve the problem that you just gave anyone with a spare 400 g (10 g each) an incredibly powerful at-will?

They're 40 gp a piece, right?

To a certain extent this wouldn't be a problem for me, because my players would know that it would be a rarely-used tactic they shouldn't abuse. There would be a couple of ways to balance it, though:

- only usable on large creatures
- you grant combat advantage and/or an opportunity attack when you try it
- using this technique requires you to fall prone

Even so, I'd chat with my group afterward and discourage them from making this a regular tactic. I wouldn't want them to dilute the coolness.

 

[Flipguarder]

See maybe this is a group to group issue, but I feel like the response of my group if I treated them as you would yours, would be something like "so how often can we use this?"

I want to be the kind of DM that allows these kinds of things, but keeping out unbalancing options has always seemed like it has to take priorty.

 

[Piratecat]

I'd probably answer them by saying "It's not technically okay by the rules, but it was too cool not to allow. I want to encourage you to think creatively. Do you guys mind if I let it happen but you don't make it a regular tactic?" I'm betting they say yes.

Even if they don't, the trick is to make it occasionally useful but usually sub-optimal. It makes sense to me that if someone is trying to kill me, I don't have them grabbed, and I bend over to jam a nail through their foot, that's going to open me up to attacks. It only takes one or two times being hit with an opportunity attack to discourage this as a tactic in every fight.

You know what else might work? Saying that it counts as a daily magic item use. That would limit it, although it's a little too rulesy and meta- for me.

 

[Journeymanmage]

I like taking DM's out of their box...

Many people do, but once you break the seal it hurts the resale value.

 

[korjik]

See maybe this is a group to group issue, but I feel like the response of my group if I treated them as you would yours, would be something like "so how often can we use this?"

I want to be the kind of DM that allows these kinds of things, but keeping out unbalancing options has always seemed like it has to take priorty.

Everything you can do I can do better, I can do anything better than you...

But I dont unless you do it first. Technically, first and second.

To put it bluntly, using something like that once is a clever use of resources in a desperate situation. Using it again constitutes player proposing a rules change. Using it as a standard tactic constitutes player acceptance of a rules change.

Then in the next dungeon, the kobold nail their feet to the ground right before the great big boulder rolls down the hall and crushes them. If you change the rules, I will use it.

The moral of the story is: Insperation from desperation is good. Lots of fun for all. Manipulating the rules to make thing easier on the players is bad. Makes DM not have fun. Makes the game end with 'Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies!'

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

Okay, thanks everyone for the replies and very interesting discussion. Just what I was looking for from this crowd and I wasn't disappointed.

I agree, this will and should probably only be a 1 shot event. Truly, it was creative and desperate because at the time, we couldn't figure out how to immobilize the beast. One of our casters finally figured out he could do that.

As we discussed it after the session (with lots of laughs), the DM said that next time someone tried it, he'd raise the DC much higher and if you failed, the Dragon kicks you hard with the target leg, doing damage and pushing you X squares and knocking you prone.

Always a solution...

Thanks again gang!

 

[Colmarr]

I told the DM what I did and he said, "come again?"... Totally numbed his thought processes for a bit. He finally ruled I had to meet a DC of 15, which I did. Then he ruled that the head of the nail was too small to hold back the power of the dragon and he lifted off, pulling the nail through his foot (he did allow 1d4 damage).

I take it this wasn't the DM we've heard so much about before? That's a much more reasoned response than I would have expected

I'm not sure how I would have ruled this. You said it was a higher-level campaign, so how large was the dragon? If it's foot was thicker than the nail would be long, I wouldn't have allowed it to work.

If the dragon was large size or medium, I'm honestly not sure what I would have done. I probably would have ruled that it took the dragon a move action to pull itself free. Not enough to really inconvenience it, but it would have had to choose between staying and attacking, or flying away but foregoing its attacks.

 

[DarkLord Of DForce]

Right, this is not that group and set of DMs.

This is an "accelerated" campaign we're running at home. We leveled up, 5 at a time. Just for the fun of it.

Anyways, it was a large dragon. Not sure if the size of the foot would preclude driving a nail through it or not. I'm not sure what length the Nail Of Sealing is?

Thanks.

 

[UltimaGabe]

I'm curious how you solve the problem that you just gave anyone with a spare 400 g (10 g each) an incredibly powerful at-will?

Incredibly powerful? Hardly. It takes a standard action (which deals no damage- 1d4 is hardly noteworthy), costs money (not even the most powerful daily power costs a single copper), and all it does is immobilize the target. The only time this would be remotely useful outside of very, very rare occurances is at lower levels (when there are less powers that immobilize), but at lower levels the fact that it costs money is going to be a huge deal, and by the time the money becomes a non-issue, immobilization is so easy to come by (and/or easy to circumvent) that it's not an effective tactic anymore. I don't know many players who would rather spend their standard action to do something any Fighter can do on an opportunity attack for free, especially if it cost them money.

Yes, in theory, if all of your encounters are trivialized by immobilizing the enemy, and the party is rolling in Nails of Sealing, it could potentially be a problem. But if your campaign is derailed by a non-damaging immobilization consumable item, maybe it wasn't very well-built to begin with.

 

[Artoomis]

If I allowed it for the "coolness" of it I'd probably hedge my approval with saying something like:

"Very cool. To your absolute amazement it works, but in observing how this works you are pretty sure that this was plain luck and it probably would not work a second time."