Favored Foe
I feel like Inquisitor and Cleric should hang out more often. Our resident ̶c̶h̶a̶o̶t̶i̶c̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ true-neutral dark elf seems every bit as practiced in the art of buzz-killery as her dwarven counterpart. At least she has the sense to shut up and take advantage of an opportunity though. No doubt she’ll slay if she ever manages to find a pair in her size.
As for today’s discussion, we already talked about very-specific bonuses way back in “Less Favored Terrain,” so let’s not belabor the ranger class’s issues. We’ve also discussed substituting abilities in non-standard situations in “Utility Shot.” We’ve even gone a few rounds battling the rule of cool back in “Handwave.” While I have no doubt that we’ll see talk shop about all of the above down in the comments, it’s the last that I’d most like to revisit today.
When it comes time to invoke the rule of cool, GMs have a judgement call to make. Is the player genuinely trying to achieve a fun moment from a character standpoint, or are they breaking rules in the name of unfair advantage? In Ranger’s case, it’s hard to imagine that saving a few copper on cosmetic items would upset the game balance. The calculus starts to shift is she insists that Favored Enemy (dragons) means she should know intuitively where to buy dragon hide armor. And it shifts yet further if she wants to craft that armor set for free after a dragon fight.
By the same token, there’s a danger more insidious than red dragon heels. When you’re too preoccupied with worrying about game balance, you risk ruining your players’ good fun. I still regret telling my alchemist bro, “No, you can’t harvest the giant scorpion’s venom,” back in my early days of GMing. I was trying to play by the rules, and I didn’t want to ruin my meticulously-balanced average wealth by level. With the benefit to of hindsight however, this is exactly the sort of moment where you’re supposed to reward player initiative. The several dozen Google results you can now get for “harvesting monster parts” should be a clue.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we look for that delicate balance? How do you as a GM know it’s time to “yes, and” the player’s idea, and when is it better to stick with, “That’s not really how that works?” Sound off with your own examples of not-quite-legal rulings and that’s-so-clever-I’ll-allow-it hijinks down in the comments!
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Sometimes its a minor thing, like a player asking to draw a holy rune to counter an infernal curse. The player had not taken any actual divine powers to back up their scribble but they were still using their background as an avid scholar of faiths to back up their idea. Whenever players want to resolve a smaller obstacle that is not the ‘main event’ like this, I feel comfortable if they’ve got at least a loose explanation of how their plan could work.
For bigger things like boss fights or existential threats, I like to borrow from Blades in the Dark’s ‘Devil’s Bargain’ or the Lancer RPG’s ‘Power At A Cost.’ You have to pay a price upfront for a chance at pulling something crazy off. In one game, a player risked burning his mech’s systems trying to overclock his emitters creating a bunch of hologram clones, when he could only normally make one at a time. Another player tried to ‘parry’ an enemy railgun by firing his own railgun to intercept the shot, at the cost of his Core power (special once-per-mission ability) and potentially taking the railshot instead. I’m a lot more lenient on players trying wierd plans if they at least bargain something to show why they don’t do this often.
So you’re allowed to cut the Gordian Knot, but it’s not a perfect solution? That does make the “I draw a line through the maze walls” type solutions a lot more palatable.
No particular examples come to mind, but my group tends to be reasonably loose about that kind of thing… as long as it’s not overtly nonsensical, it’ll fly. In your example, being able to craft for free is probably going too far – but if a character has killed dragons before, they presumably have contacts they’ve sold raw dragonhide to in the past.
What is the dividing line between reasonable and unreasonable? Is it that “free gear” a non-challenge, while tracking down an old contact is still a story hook?
There’s no place like Vvardenfell, there’s no place like Vvardenfell…
Heh. Now I want there to be cursed boots of haste that take you back to the spot where you made camp most recently.
I wonder what Bad Cat’s favored enemy is. ‘Goodie two-shoes’? ‘Virgins’? ‘Worthless & incompetent minions’?
Also, is Ranger buying for herself, or an other-handbook fling?
> Also, is Ranger buying for herself, or an other-handbook fling?
Scripts pending Laurel’s approval. 😛
My rule of thumb is generally based on how much work it’s going to be for me to make up a rule for what they want to do. 5e in particular has very weak item crafting rules, so when my player decided they wanted to make a master magic item smith, i had to hammer out (heh) a system for harvesting GP value of monster parts. And then my player decided he wanted to have already made an artifact and just left it at home, and thats about where i drew the line.
Meanwhile if my ranger were to ask me if she knew where other dragon hunters might hang out to buy armor from, i would go “sure, you met a couple of them in ranger school when you were taking your AP Favored Enemy classes. Theyre in X part of town these days.” Because at the end of the day, knowing a guy doesn’t really give you any more resources to spend than you already have, just new and fun ways to spend them.
> my player decided he wanted to have already made an artifact and just left it at home, and thats about where i drew the line.
Sounds a bit like the old, “If I have crafting feats, can I just start with double my wealth by level?” from 3.X.
The resources idea is interesting. Could we phrase that as “more options, but not free stuff?”
My 3.5 halfling rogue once rolled a Critically-awesome success at detecting and disarming a mechanical fire trap, so the DM spontaneously declared I could remove it and take it with me to study (given some manual assistance and our party’s *bag of holding*). I looked up some costs, then for a later adventure asked (based on the “Dwarven Brewmaster” portable distillery and sprayer backpack from the *Arms & Equipment Guide*) if I could make it man-portable for easy deployment, given ### gp. investment. The DM said “Sure, sounds reasonable.” Cut to several adventures later. The party is investigating a dungeon in an anti-magic field. Our gnome mage is suddenly feeling pretty useless, until I equip him with an alchemist’s fire – fueled flamethrower. Even though in D20 and other 3.5 expansions there are classes and feats devoted to creating such gizmos, the DM was willing to buy into the idea that (based on his own suggestion) with enough time, money, and fiddling, my rogue could make something that could be worn like a backpack and replicate the spell *burning hands*, while consuming a finite quantity of ammunition (flasks of alchemist’s fire).
At present, I’ve hand-waved the availability of printed books in my campaign world. Some D&D books treat them as rare, some Dungeon magazine adventures and modules treat them as commonplace; *Four From Cormyr* introduced mass-market trashy romance novels: “Shocking Tales of Elven Desire.” One player wanted to donate books to their old adventuring college. I’ve decided that (for my purposes) the annual rummage sales introduced in two other modules presupposes halfling mathom houses and human flea-markets the rest of the year, so the group can go thrift-shopping in search of mundane books to donate (and in the process find the plot-hook to their next quest).
I had been scratching my chin for a way to introduce *Candlekeep Mysteries* into the campaign, and I’ll be darned if that player didn’t innocently hand me the key!
> mathom houses
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuSFE77WgAIyiKO?format=jpg&name=large
> Even though in D20 and other 3.5 expansions there are classes and feats devoted to creating such gizmos…
For me, one important caveat about “can I just pretend like I have this other class’s class power” is whether that person is actually in the party. If it’s just a theoretical concern, I’m happy to allow creative shenanigans like that.
I tend, if anything, to be too permissive of my players’ ideas, to the extent that it once ended a campaign. Explaining all the details would take forever, but to sum it up, I once introduced a BBEG in a dramatic way, with the intent that the players would be swiftly overpowered and the BBEG would escape to cause havoc another day. That… didn’t happen.
Through a sequence of creative ideas and really good rolls, the players succeeded in capturing the BBEG, stopped its repeated escape attempts, and hurled it into a sun. At any point, I could have said “No, that doesn’t work.” I SHOULD have said “Listen, what you’re doing is fantastic, but the BBEG needs to escape for the story to continue.” But I was so confident that I could roll with the punches and walk it back to where I needed to be that I just let it happen.
The campaign’s been dead in the water since then. We’ve talked about rolling back that one session and trying again, but honestly, it really knocked the wind out of my sails. Since then, I’m trying to be better about saying no.
I think it’s about letting them make the attempt and then letting them fail even when they roll really well.
“They struggle for a moment, but then burst free from [whatever].” Do some damage, apply a negative condition, but don’t let the clever solution become a the foolproof one.
In our table we defenestrate balance. Balance is but an illusion some players take sanctuary to not face how unfair and unforgiving their game is. Chaos rules, reject core rulebooks, burn errata, homebrew stuff is canon, embrace chaos
Get me a pair of 3″ pumps while you’re out. Size 12.
Sorry only got pink Kinky Boots of Charisma +3 😛
I’ll take ’em!
XD
My group never has full WBL in the first place, harvesting some venom or turning the boss into cool armor would only get us closer to that point.
Anyways. My groups are usually pretty good about this kind of thing—ignoring the rules when it’s more fun to do so—so the times I don’t stand out more. Like that time the party druid (wild shaped into a giant eagle) wanted to pick up the barbarian, and the DM argued with them about it for at least a quarter of our 90-minute session. I don’t know why.
Some DMs are just better than others. Ugh.
I like the idea of AWBL being a thing that they’ll get if they find some of the secret items. They’re above ABV if they find everything, and below of they never investigate anything.
I apply ye olde “1 Minute Rule”, if I or any Players can think of significant ways allowing it repeatedly would break things, I strongly consider not doing it unless A) it’s really, really, friggin cool //and// B) the Player agrees it’s “One and Done”. If after a minute were can’t think of ways it’s game breaking, it’s allowed with a caveat of “I can revoke this cool thing from future usage at my whim”.
Now sometimes it’s cool and makes the game better to allow it more than once, to instead we House Rule it in permanently. Though that’s pretty dang rare.
Any examples of interactions you’ve allowed on a semi-permanent basis?
My last group became rich thanks to harvesting dragon skin and meat. It got kind of funny later on because the GM actually forgot and was wondering why Irlana always had the cash to buy whatever she wanted and every else didn’t. I just replied “Because they’ve already spent all their gold.”
That Extravagant lifestyle don’t come cheap!
It seemed like everyone had like 5 weapons each while Irlana just had her scimitar and Mick’s tuskblades. So she didn’t need as much enhanced. Especially once she got Keen.
Did you ever get disarmed though? Seems a bit risky to just carry that one scimitar….
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/alternate-loadouts
Nope, never got disarmed. I did have a kunai as a backup just in case, but never had to use it. Meanwhile everyone else seemed to be constantly changing up their weapons.
Wow, Inquisitor’s facial expression is really expressive here! You can see the exact moment her stoic façade broke and exposed her inner basic bitch! Also, hair? Immaculate. Girl’s had a Glow-Up fo SHO!
If I could come up with a comic premised on pretty dresses and long flowy hair, Laurel would be the happiest illustrator.
Character gen TTRPG Vs video games? Mind’s eye Vs slider bars!
My basic metric for this is quite similar to yours. If the player is trying to do something cool by making an uncommon ability fit a new situation because they’re trying to find a way to contribute, that’s fine. If they’re trying to break the game balance with a meme they found online, not so much.
I used to think I was the type of GM who rarely said no to things, but it turns out that was just because I hadn’t met the type of player who’s really into exploiting memes to try and break the game. Turns out I am very incompatible with that type of player.
Now you got me curious. Were they trying to do peasant railgun or something?
No, they saw some vine about how to permanently turn your character into a gold dragon. They thought it quite a funny idea. I told them why; A) it would completely destroy game balance if one character suddenly became a dragon, and B) how the spell in question didn’t actually work like that.
Oof. I know that vine. I never understood wanting to blow up the game world. But then again, I’m the type of player that wants to hew closely to the “main storyline” in video games. Poking around at the edges and trying to break stuff is fun sometimes, but boy do you run into diminishing returns when you make the attempt in a multiplayer game.
This sounds like the approach I’d take as well.
If you’re doing something clever and original, go forth with my blessing. If you’re using some hackneyed gimmick that the internet’s chamber of infinite tactical monkeys has spat out, in the sin bin for you.
I’ve adopted an unofficial “rule of cool card” for my group. If they come up with some clever and awesome way of dealing with a situation that’s not necessarily going with the rules but sounds plausible, I’ll tend to give it to em with the caveat that It’ll work this way this time but this is not going to set a precedent for future usage.
For example, they were infiltrating an underwater cave system and came across a ritual chamber full of Skum cultists. Wizards asks if they can use air bubble on the altar then cast fireball there to use the cavitation wave to add some extra damage and radius. Deciding that I like the idea rather than rolling a combat vs almost 2 dozen cannon fodder and a leader, I let it happen then have the temporarily deafened party fight just the wounded leader.
A tapented GM of my acquaintance likes to phrase it as “I’ll let this work once.”
my rule for rule bending in my game for player’s cool moments \ideas \shenanigans is very simple:
if the players don’t mind the mobs to have the same options, then it’s balanced.
But if they get nightmerse about he pouncing-teleporting-incorporeal-death_touching-via_lance_while_mountied shtick
…then i say no.
“Fight your own build” is a funny encounters though. As a sometimes food. 😛
also id like to say i was i’d keep the red showed. they match her eyes well. (might need to change the color of her outfit to match though, red shoes on dark outfit kinda clashs.
don’t text on phone while on the bus.. so many misstypes.
‘if i was her”
…”the red shoes”
…”kinda clashs).”
Reminds me of Samurai Jack: https://img.memecdn.com/samurai-jack-rocked-those-heels_o_5006727.jpg
My basic metric for this is to try to account for all possibilities. Usually this means that I homebrew the finicky/awkward aspects of rules so that players can smoothly do what they want.
Another method I’ve heard of is using “Hero Points” to justify some actions, and that’s not bad either.