The Crimson Binome
Hero
My second least-favorite clear-cut rule is that anyone with a swim speed can use any melee weapon effectively while underwater. If you can swim, there's no reason to prefer a trident or dagger over your maul.
So we have all seen, ad nauseum, discussions of situations where vague or non-specific rules can make rulings challenging or complicated (how do characters with the Alert feat react to invisible creatures who are standing motionless?). But something that came up in my game last night that called attention to a different kind of issue: rules that are clear but don't necessarily make logical sense.
Specifically, the party rogue was attacked by a swarm of spiders. He poisoned his weapon and attacked the swarm the same as he would any other foe (he is using a subclass form the Primeval Thule Player's Companion that applies poison to his weapon as a bonus action). He hit and rolled his weapon damage (which was cut in half because of the swarm's resistance). He also rolled his poison damage, which was not reduced because the swarm is not immune or resistant to poison damage. Additionally, the swarm failed its saving throw and therefore suffered from the poisoned condition.
There is no ambiguity over how any part of the encounter should function by the RAW. But basically, the rogue killed dozens or hundreds of tiny spiders, crawling on his body, with the swipe of a poisoned sword. Those who survived the blow were somehow very sick. A round or so later, his brother the barbarian killed the last of them by striking them (again, the tiny spiders crawling all over the rogue) with a morningstar.
Truly, this is a fantasy roleplaying game.
Anybody run into any similar experiences?
I don't think this is a problem with the rules. I think the issue is how you applied the rule to the situation at hand...
I going to try to cover some of the problems with this answer:
"There is no such thing as bad rules, only bad DMs.": While what makes a rule 'good' is subjective based on what you want the rule to accomplish, it can be the case that a rule does not accomplish anything well. There is such as thing as bad design. I tried in my post to explain what I think the reasoning of the designer was in offering up highly simplified rules with respect to swarms. And, I think you could probably say, "We made the decision in this case to prioritize simplicity and balance over verisimilitude.", and defend that. What you can't claim is that when a DM does apply the rules in a consistent, non-arbitrary, credible manner and encounters results that break suspension of disbelief, that DM fiat is the obvious solution and results in consistent, non-arbitrary, credible rulings. By definition, DM fiat is going to be more arbitrary and less clearly credible than applying the rules as written. We've moved from 'rule of law' to the arbitrary 'whim of the DM'. What might be intuitive common sense to the DM might well not be intuitive common sense to the player, and in particular the player may well object to suddenly finding a rule he was basing his decision making on pulled - as it will seem to him - arbitrarily because the DM just doesn't like the results.
"Rulings not Rules" or "If you don't like the rules, just ignore them": I don't think there are is any phrase that has gained currency in the last few years in RPGs that causes me to pull my hair out more than "Rulings not Rules". You can't excuse away problems with a game system by simply saying, "The DM should just make stuff up." If the job of the DM was just to make stuff up, the DM shouldn't need rules at all. If anyone really believed in "Rulings not Rules", they wouldn't need rule books nor would they try to sell rule books. Rulings are not inherently better than rules. Moreover, the best use of rulings is as an adjutant to rules, to cover cases of rules ambiguity or which are not considered by the rules. This is not such a case. This is a case the rules cover in a clear manner, but which produces outcomes that the table is not happy with. This is not a case where you need a ruling because the rules are silent. This is a case of needing new rules. And moreover, any 'ruling' here would be defacto new common law rules, as post such a 'ruling' any player at the table would rightly expect the 'ruling' to be applied consistently, non-arbitrarily, and credibly in every similar case that came up. Even if you don't write such a ruling down to make it reviewable, it's still going to be a verbal rule that is part of that table's social contract. Finally, "ruling" is a greater burden on an individual DM than "rules" are. That's why DM's buy rules. If rulings were easier on DMs than rules, DMs would never shell out the cost for buying a bunch of rules. DM's buy rules to make their game easier to play and run, because they understand - even if they are unable to verbalize this understanding - that rulings are harder than rules. Smithing out a ruling to handle a problem requires a lot of mental overhead, a lot of understanding of the system, a lot of knowledge of probabilities, and a lot of good judgment. Rules are not easy to make, and making a ruling is just as hard as making a rule (because rulings as I said are rules). The more times a DM has to smith out a new rule in the course of play, the less likely he is to be satisfied with the purchase of the rules set, because while just about every DM has house rules, no DM buys rules for the purpose of making house rules. They go to that extra effort of adjusting the rules not because they like it especially, but because they want the system to just work.
"And ignoring that context in favor of a rules process is sub-optimal, sometimes even Bad DM-ing. It's shirking the job of the ref/judge, which is really, knowing how and when to apply those rules": I'm forced to get personal with this line of thought because it's not part of any sort of common sense consensus that you are drawing from, but exactly when is it the job of a referee to know when to not follow the rules? You aren't actually talking about a case of knowing how and when to apply rules. The referee knew the rules and applied them correctly. The problem isn't that he was a bad referee. Likewise, we don't normally imagine we have judges for the purpose of ignoring what the law says when they don't like the law. A judge is not shirking his responsibility as a judge when he applies the law impartially according to its clear stated purpose. That's his job. He may have under the law certain judicial discretion and authority, but he has no authority to just ignore the law. The problem that you are actually talking about here is that a DM wears more hats than "referee". But by ignoring that and spewing garbage about "Bad DM-ing" like there was some situation where it was objectively bad to actually follow the rules, you are missing that a DM "referee" hat and the associated fairness and neutrality it promises is not something any DM can just throw away when he doesn't like it. DMs have a responsibility to their players to follow the rules, and if they aren't going to do so, then they have to renegotiate the social contract on the spot. It's not a given that a DM can use Rule Zero not only to cover things not covered by the rules, but to decide not to follow the rules when he doesn't like the results of doing so. A player can be justly upset when Rule Zero authority is claimed in a situation that is well covered by the rules, and can justly protest that the referee is in fact being arbitrary, uncreditable, and inconsistent when the referee violates the letter of the rules. No DM that wants to keep his player's long calls Rule Zero when he's going to overturn a rule mid-session, without calling a quorum, explaining his position, and validating his authority in this matter with "the people". What is clear and sensible to one person by no means is going to be clear and sensible to everyone. And don't expect simple "majority rule" to be sufficient here. You need pretty much unanimous consent if you aren't going to harm the player's sense of you as a fair and neutral arbiter.
"Simulation over Game": Look, I'm first and foremost a Simulationist myself in terms of my preferred aesthetics of play. But I recognize that that is just my preferred aesthetics of play. It's not objectively true that having a swim speed eliminates the penalties for wielding certain weapons underwater is a nonsensical rule. It's only nonsense if your preferred aesthetic of play is Simulation. It's not objectively true that the fiction should take priority over the rules. Other groups are perfectly free to prioritize other aesthetics of play over Simulation, and say, "For the purposes of speed of play, game balance, terseness of the rules, and clarity we are willing to accept and overlook certain simulations. Sure, in the real world a swung bludgeoning weapon is hard to employ underwater, but so what." You can't just say that a group that makes that trade off is objectively suffering from "Badly DMing". What you can say is that for a certain groups aesthetic priorities, they are poorly served by a particular rule. In that case, my recommendation would be to talk it over with the group, explain your reasoning, and then come up with a rule that you can better live with. What you are likely to find is that there are various competing aesthetics of play in the group and sometimes even within an individual in a group. There is no simple fix to situations like this.
And at its core, my question here had nothing to do with the narrative, it had to do with the rules themselves. I wasn't asking for clarification on how I could have run the situation differently, I was asking others what similar experiences they'd had (and laughed at).