D&D General When do you overrule RAW?

[p_johnston]

So the thing is rules arent perfect and because edge cases will come up where they dont make sense because rules designers either didn't expect something to come up or they simply didnt want to make a 2,000 page book where each ability multiple paragraphs.

RAW the tarrasque can be tripped by ball bearings. Thats stupid. I dont have any particular problem with matts rulimg except that he should have made it asked "how?" Before the attack not after.

 

[CreamCloud0]

It's simple. If I remove a single feat from martials and a third of the class(assuming the ability to cast 9th levels spells) from spellcasters, there's no possible way it can be perceived as being aimed at martials or hitting martials harder. It simply can't rationally be perceived that way. This guy is trying to tell me that I'm being harder on martials if I do that, and he's flat out wrong and misrepresenting.

if you remove 6 abilities from a class that only has 10, and 25 from a class that has 50, and who can actually still make use of 10 of those 'disqualified' abilites indirectly, then who have you actually had a greater impact on? the caster has lost twice the number of abilities than the matial started with and has an equal amount remaining.

sure you might be removing numerically more abilities from the caster but each individual ability is worth far less due to the sheer quantity they have, and the ones they get to keep are the more powerful ones.

 

[Mort]

This thread is about overriding RAW, not the limits of specific classes. I get tired of every single thread that even touches on classes even tangentially getting sidetracked. Because I am also aware of what a half dozen or so people think of the fighter class. They don't need to remind us on every thread possible.

Can we just for once not derail another thread? Please?

But part of the discussion is when to override RAW and does doing so tend to affect certain classes more than others.

For example, you mentioned you don't cap falling damage. And falling damage is an interesting case.

Casters tend to have an easy solution - feather fall -makes up to 5 people ignore 600' of falling damage.

non-casters have to rely on their HP. Admittedly falling over 200' is fringe case, but most of these will be (when discussing ignoring RAW).

 

[jgsugden]

I was watching the Critical Role special from Wembley, and there comes a moment where the party is fighting a kaiju-sized opponent and a character, Bo, tries to use a reaction attack from the sentinel feat to stop it moving after another party member. The attack is successful, but Mercer immediately overrules it, asking the player (his wife) “how do you do that?”, to which she had no real answer. Note that after missing on the initial attack she had spent her only reroll to try again, believing that immobilizing the monster was critical.

I agreed with his ruling - her comparatively tiny character somehow locking down a massive supernatural creature to whom she was insignificant would have made no sense in the story. But I know others would have very different feelings. So my question is: when do you feel justified overruling RAW?

I was kind of disappointed in Mercer here. I do not take away from the PCs - and I could have come up with a dozen ways in which she could have effectively stopped the giant monster. Stun the leg ... make it partially slip ... lure it onto something that hats the movement ...

In the end, I can't think of a time when I denied a PC something they were entitled to under the RAW once the rule is in place. In prior editions I felt a need to change some rules before PCs took an option, or I would talk to them between sessions to adjust something, but with the exception of backing out the optional flanking rule for my own version of it after allowing others to use it, I have not needed to do even that in 5E.

 

[Reynard]

I was kind of disappointed in Mercer here. I do not take away from the PCs - and I could have come up with a dozen ways in which she could have effectively stopped the giant monster. Stun the leg ... make it partially slip ... lure it onto something that hats the movement ...

In the end, I can't think of a time when I denied a PC something they were entitled to under the RAW once the rule is in place. In prior editions I felt a need to change some rules before PCs took an option, or I would talk to them between sessions to adjust something, but with the exception of backing out the optional flanking rule for my own version of it after allowing others to use it, I have not needed to do even that in 5E.

To be fair, nothing was hurting that monster unil they figured out the puzzle. Even when the paladin?barbarian? dropped 160 points of damage in 2 attacks, it just kept on going. I'm pretty sure it had quantum hit points and in that light not letting her stop it with a pointy stick doesn't seem out of place. I bet it would have shrugged off a restraining spell, too.

 

[Oofta]

I think, ideally (IMO of course), the DMs line of thought and inquiry should be "how can I make your action fit into what I think is going on in the fiction..." And the DM should work with the player to get the action to fit (in a way they both conceptualize working) .

To often, I see DMs act as goalies, who think their job is to intercept/disallow any act that doesn't fit their idea of the fiction/what's going on. And I think this is backwards.

I had a player that was one of those players that would try to do things way outside the rules all of the time. So I would tell them no, the game doesn't work that way and ask what they were trying to do. Based on what they were attempting I'd see if there was some way we could get close to what they were attempting but sometimes the answer was no. Want to swing from a chandelier even though there's no rules for it? No problem, give me a check. Try to do something completely outside of the capability of the character? I'm not going to be an "always say yes" kind of DM.

Limitations on what PCs, and trying to solve situations within those limitations, is part of the fun of the game.

 

[Oofta]

But part of the discussion is when to override RAW and does doing so tend to affect certain classes more than others.

For example, you mentioned you don't cap falling damage. And falling damage is an interesting case.

Casters tend to have an easy solution - feather fall -makes up to 5 people ignore 600' of falling damage.

non-casters have to rely on their HP. Admittedly falling over 200' is fringe case, but most of these will be (when discussing ignoring RAW).

My ruling for falling damage will apply no matter what class or how many HP the character currently has. Saying something the PC attempts does not work under specific situations has nothing to do with class. Sometimes I'll say no to the effect of a martial character, sometimes to the effects of a spell. Either way it's rare but if I thought I was nullifying the actions of any character more often than another I'd reconsider the rulings and discuss it with my players.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My take away from Matt’s decision is: while I’m perfectly fine with the last 2 bullet points of the Sentinel feat, the first bullet point should include one of the following:

A) a size limitation (…if the target is one size larger than you or smaller)

Or

B) a saving throw to avoid the speed reduction

Be that as it may, the time to announce such a rule change is before the player has even selected the feat, and definitely way before they've committed their reaction to using it!

 

[Oofta]

To be fair, nothing was hurting that monster unil they figured out the puzzle. Even when the paladin?barbarian? dropped 160 points of damage in 2 attacks, it just kept on going. I'm pretty sure it had quantum hit points and in that light not letting her stop it with a pointy stick doesn't seem out of place. I bet it would have shrugged off a restraining spell, too.

Do you happen to remember which episode this was? More context might be useful.

 

[billd91]

To be fair, nothing was hurting that monster unil they figured out the puzzle. Even when the paladin?barbarian? dropped 160 points of damage in 2 attacks, it just kept on going. I'm pretty sure it had quantum hit points and in that light not letting her stop it with a pointy stick doesn't seem out of place. I bet it would have shrugged off a restraining spell, too.

To really be fair, we don't know that nothing was hurting it. We know that none of the damage done so far had stopped it. It's entirely possible there were multiple ways of dealing with it - one focusing on traditional attacks that faced a lot of resistances and a big pool of hit points that, when exhausted, might have exposed the egg, and the other involving more direct attacks on the lower-hp/higher-AC egg.