Fight a Round and Find Out
Ah, the long-awaited second installment of our Magus licking monsters series! Those racial grooming habits have come back to bite our favorite catfolk once again! One can only surmise that someone triple-dog dared her to do it (which, for a catfolk, is in extremely poor taste). Be that as it may, it’s not the dangers of giant licking I want to talk about today. It’s the danger of LOGIC.
At issue is the application of phrases like, “It only makes sense if…” and “If that’s true, then…” and “Assuming Earth physics are true…” to a game world. In the present example, it does make a certain amount of sense to suggest that cold-themed monsters do cold-themed things. A frost giant may be pushing it a bit, but take this yeti for example. Check out its signature supernatural ability:
Cold (Su) A yeti’s body generates intense cold, dealing 1d6 points of cold damage to any creature that contacts it with a natural attack or unarmed strike, or whenever it hits a foe with its claws or rend attack.
Dude is so cold that it hurts you to punch him. And if you’re so imprudent as to go for some tongue-on-yeti action, then I think a GM would be justified in ruling as per today’s comic. But then we begin to extrapolate.
Suppose you were suffering bleed damage from an icicle trap. Would your fists get glued to the yeti when you landed a gore-soaked hit? And what if you had to cross some open water? Could you push a yeti corpse into yonder river to create an instant ice bridge? I don’t know about you guys, but I say “no” to the former and “yes” to the latter. And that has to do with the element of player agency.
When you get creative with monsters, environmental abilities, and similar effects, I think it pays to get creative in the players’ favor. This may play merry hell with verisimilitude, but it’s worth the tradeoff in fun. That’s because the power dynamic makes it so incredibly easy for players to feel like they’re being targeted unfairly, even if you’re just trying to run a consistent world. Therefore, when it’s my turn behind the screen, I err on the side of cartoon physics for players and only-what-the-rule-says-it-does for me.
What do the rest of you Handbook-World inhabitants think? Would you stick that riding gecko to the yeti if it managed to land a bite? The image is funny, but is it worth the risk of pissing off the player with an antagonistic ruling? Sound off with all your own creative calls, logical rulings, and geckos hanging by the tongue from yetis down in the comments!
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I live in the cold dark north and I say any one stupid enough to get their face near anything radiating such cold should suffer. And if we start using being wet wither from gore or other sources, you are going to have bigger problems than being stuck on something. While the rule mentions attacks with hands as example for natural attacks, biting counts so while in name of gameplay efficiency they wont get stuck but still eat that damage.
Also we have a saying up here north: You get used to everything, except an icicle up your ass. Magus is free to test that “urban legend” in the other Handbook.
> You get used to everything, except an icicle up your ass.
I suppose Rus Vikings had to find some way to entertain themselves in the winter. O_o
Rus viking? oh no, I’m north of that we sit in snow banks for fun, when ant hills aren’t available :D, also there are legends of icicles being used as assasination tool, push it through the ear of sleeping person and very little evidence remains in the morning.
I thought the Rus were throughout Finland? Clearly my history is off. :/
Swedes ruled us from 12th century, before that we were of little value. I mean you have an option to live where weather is nicer and soil more fertile, or where enviroment is same as in home but more swamps, hostile natives and a lot of stinging biting bugs.
And by British you mean Australian accent, since drow are from the land down under.
To quote one of NYC’s finest: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/headcanon.png
Crikey Sheila, don’t be blooming your onion. I ain’t no dingo eating your baby. It’s all shrimp on the barby.
As a full-blooded Aussie, I take offence to the blatant underuse of the word “c**t” in that sentence!
What do carts have to do with anything? 😛
Reminds me of the time the party decided to capture a Mimic instead of killing it. They had made their perception rolls and were standing outside the room discussing how to go about it. Then the players spent the next HOUR discussing all the things they could stick the mimic to, if they could cut off mimic chunks and put rings of regeneration on them to make mimic ammunition for ballistas, and all the ways you could use a captured creature that could shape change into a multitude of regular items. When they FINALLY decided to go in and try and capture it, the Mimic was long gone. Mimics in my homebrew are intelligent, so it heard all their plans for it and it’s body parts and booked it out of there.
What do you mean with British accent? She is a drow, drows have Scottish accent 😛
No, those are dwarves. XP
Drow, being from that place Down Under with all the giant spiders, have an Australian accent.
I’m reminded of a module back in the Living Greyhawk days where the read-aloud text stated that it was so cold that water froze instantly. Had a group of players (3.5 ed) who wanted to use flight plus the create water cantrip to rain massive ice boulders down on their foes.
Oddly enough, for the adventure I’m currently running I used that same Yeti stat block.
I had samurai with insane crit damage and monks throwing haymakers like machine gun fire. They’d used *Endure Elements* in order to wander around the Himalayas clad in nothing but their summer kimonos and had become complacent to the notion of taking actual *Cold* damage. Cue an encounter where the critter deals 1d6 hp of damage to the monk for *every hit* it takes and has a mate waiting in the wings (with concealment) to attack the samurai after he’s used up his alpha strike.
Fantastic economy of surprise damage + player reaction for comparatively low HD.
First – Magus looks stunning in that double-breasted red long coat – very stylish. But what is she saying? I lack a frozen pole to stick my tongue to to try to make out what she said.
“I thought it was an urban legend” in a very mangled way
Blame the temporary lack of tongue dexterity due to being grappled
Inquisitor having a British accent does make me wonder about backstory like is a British accent the norm for drow in handbook world or did inquisitor grow up / pick up the accent from somewhere else?
Magus, just breathe out onto the ice giant. The ice will melt just enough to let you out.
I assumed inquisitor had an Australian accent. Drow being from a land Down Under(dark) and all, which includes giant spiders and other horrid creatures.
Usually what happens at our table is we have a bickering session for about fifteen minutes until a compromise is found along the lines of ‘Well whatever we choose, I’ll take a note and we’ll apply that to everyone.’ It’s very precedent-based, is our table.
This is why I prefer the “let the GM decide” convention. It’s not ideal, but it does save on the argument.
The bickering is a vital part of letting the GM decide, I’d say, as if nothing else it gives me time and/or ideas for figuring out what the hell is going on
Bickering = No Bueno
Narrative Negotiation = Cool Beans
SEMANTICS!
She’s an Inquisitor. Obviously she has a Spanish accent.
I didn’t expect that.
My best creativity was dealing with a fungus that exudes an aura of cold, but is also instantly destroyed by cold damage (that it does not create). Brown mold is the name.
I dropped water from a nearby river/pond (IDR which) on top of it, causing it to freeze. Contact with ice causes cold damage over time… so, it was its own doom, essentially.
Heh. A creature that could never evolve in nature. Neat!
As a British reader, they all have British accents. Think Bilbo (either one). That’s pretty much the voice I read them in.
Wait… Fighter with a British accent!? The mind boggles.
> And if you’re so imprudent as to go for some tongue-on-yeti action, then I think a GM would be justified in [anything is valid here]
Yes. Yes, it’s very justified.
And amusingly, it’s not entirely a joke (although my first reaction was caused by the horror of the words “tongue-on-yeti action”). When the players decide, knowingly, to do something stupid, then the GM can, and should, make up something as a consequence – preferably something funny.
Humor is an interesting corner case. The rules change a bit when comedy is on the table.