D&D General When do you overrule RAW?

[UngeheuerLich]

Some monsters have magic resistance, so why should some homebrew monster not be immune to non-magical pushing/hindering effects from large and smaller monsters?

So sometimes it is not overruling but giving special abilities. The lines are blurry.

Maybe Mercer asked his wife if she is allowed to ignore the special immunity.

 

[billd91]

Some monsters have magic resistance, so why should some homebrew monster not be immune to non-magical pushing/hindering effects from large and smaller monsters?

So sometimes it is not overruling but giving special abilities. The lines are blurry.

Maybe Mercer asked his wife if she is allowed to ignore the special immunity.

In context it was pretty clear that he wasn't talking about a special immunity for that particular monster - more about expressing skepticism that the sentinel feat should stop something that big.

 

[nevin]

whenever RAW is stupid. for instance.....Grappling the Kraken, trying to knock out the ancient dragon with a smack to the back of his head with the hilt of your sword, Kicking the earth elemental in the nads, trying to use a skill to scare the ghost whose been dead for 200 years, I could go on for awhile. some things that RAW might be interpreted to allow are just so freaking stupid they hurt the game and the story.

 

[Vaalingrade]

There's a RAW rule for targeting the nads?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

whenever RAW is stupid. for instance.....Grappling the Kraken, trying to knock out the ancient dragon with a smack to the back of his head with the hilt of your sword, Kicking the earth elemental in the nads, trying to use a skill to scare the ghost whose been dead for 200 years, I could go on for awhile. some things that RAW might be interpreted to allow are just so freaking stupid they hurt the game and the story.

Good thing RAW doesn't automatically grant success to any of those things.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Grappling the Kraken

Rules already limit this by size. You need a giant to grapple a kraken.

trying to knock out the ancient dragon with a smack to the back of his head with the hilt of your sword

There is is only rules support for this if the smack would put it at 0hp anyways.

Kicking the earth elemental in the nads

This sounds like flavoring a disabling effect, not a rule about targeting the nads.

trying to use a skill to scare the ghost whose been dead for 200 years

This, this though, this is accurate. There's some very stupid gaps in monster immunities/resistances.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There's a RAW rule for targeting the nads?

Only in 4e.

 

[Clint_L]

In context it was pretty clear that he wasn't talking about a special immunity for that particular monster - more about expressing skepticism that the sentinel feat should stop something that big.

Yeah, I got that impression, that it was way too big and also a sort of amorphous creature. I know we could all use our imaginations to come up with some sort of rationale, but those guys are all professional actors so they are looking for more than that - they want something that preserves the coherence of the story they are creating. Which is my preferred way to play as well - I am very much of the "rules are suggestions" school that Snarf describes above. Not that I don't follow them most of the time, because most of the time they work great and it's easiest to stick with them. But none of us think twice about chucking them when they conflict with what makes sense to us in the story. Note that this tends to work in the players' favour a lot more often than not:

Them: "Can I try this thing that isn't covered in the rules at all (or even contradicts the rules) but would be super awesome in the story?"

Me: "Sure, let's figure out a DC!"

But keep in mind that I have also been known to substitute a jenga tower for difficulty checks and stuff like that in my D&D, so I'm not exactly a stickler.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Only in 4e.

Wait...

I played 4e without targeting the nads all this time?

 

[Tony Vargas]

If the argument is going to be "people want a thing" refuted by "that thing isn't real, they just want me to suffer" forever, then it hardly matters what terms we use. You've go two sides with the explicit premise "adopt my design goal and ignore theirs."
There isn't a compromise there, it's just whining about who's lost the current round of getting what they want.

I mean, in context, the discussion is about DMs overruling the RaW (which is one of their traditional functions, and a more critical function the less complete/dependable/fair/etc the RaW may be). It's going to be individual judgement, and different DMs may rule differently.

But, in the context of 5e, it's also quite explicitly the DMs function to narrate the results of player actions. So if the player declares an action, and the DM doesn't decide up front that there's no uncertainty and ask for a different action or narrate the result right then, but calls for a check, and the player succeeds, then it's the DM's responsibility to narrate the result.