Let It Go
Rul’zaz’ritan demands adherence, but also the wisdom to know when to hold your tongue. For is it not written in the texts that the dungeon master is the final arbiter at each table? And is not there Rule 0 to ensure that all at the table come together and enjoy the game together, as a party?
For there are the Rules As Written, but we must remember that in every temple of gaming, there are their own Rules of the House, which we may discuss but must abide by or else find a different House in which to Game.
And so, let us bow our heads in humility, and remember that we have all of us misremembered, mistaken, or homebrewed, and that even those who set down the texts have also given us errata. Let us remember the joy of the game, lest we fall to temptation and become That Guy.
Amen
Couldn’t have said it better myself. And because I’m a lazy-ass bohemian, I decided not to try.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we all learn to be better leucrotta together? What would you say to tempt out a rules-loving adventurer? And for that matter, what technically-incorrect nugget would lure you from your hiding place? Give us all your least lawful rulings and most common misconceptions down in the comments!
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“…admittedly, it might take me an *immediate action* or two to get to you–”
“–or are you counting on the Spring Attack feat to save you?”
Now remember, if you use both your immediate actions on your turn, you can only use one additional immediate action before your next turn.
Wow, that leucrotta really knows its audience! 😀
Rul’zaz’ritan seems like a surprisingly chill guy for a deity of Law. Cleric must hate that paryicular paean. 😉
As for being a leucrotta, hmm… “Hey, you kids wanna see me divide by zero?” – “Whoo, lookit me dual-wield these weapons you dropped! Look Ma, no feats or thumbs needed!” – “Wahey, guess I’ll invent a tracking spell. Should only take me one full round to make it up, right?”
Sects have been known to dispute on such matters.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/ecclesiastical-differences
I like rules.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/181/190/tumblr_lsdptrZkpi1qh6cr0o4_r1_500.gif
Woo! Rul’zaz’ritan is canon. I came up with that dumb pun back in feb, in the patreon comments for the page with the floating tower. True story.
Also, the discussion topic reminds me of the TTS tabletop special, the BBEG was on fire, he would have had to make a willpower test to act each turn and would be taking 1d10 damage, ignoring armour and toughness, each turn. and he was already deep into critical damage. so big E’s sleep spell was pointless because he would have died before getting another chance to act anyway.
Insofar as Rul’zaz’ritan is a divine being, you might say they’ve been canonized. 😀
Now y’all just need to bring in Rul’av’kul and I will be a very happy chap.
I’m just happy to be out from storylines and back into one-off gags. That business with Bad Cat was a LONG one!
We’ll explore this biz in due course. 😀
I admit I’m quite the rules lawyer myself, but the Lawful Good kind, aiming to keep things consistent and fair. I’m fine with rule adjustments (I’ve used modified rules myself in most of my games, and my list of Pathfinder 2e variant rules currently stands at 26 pages) just as long as they’re made clear beforehand and enforced consistently. Blindsiding players with big changes out of nowhere, though, strikes me as a serious violation of their trust. No one wants to, say, invest in learning a spell only to find out it has a huge extra component cost that they were never told about.
Seems reasonable. Did you get hit with this biz in an IRL session?
Really, it’s an issue of communication and interpersonal dynamics. Jumping all over an inexperienced GM mid-session and undermining their confidence / authority? Not cool Taking that inexperienced GM out for beers between sessions and talking through your concerns? More betterer.
Sort of. One of my GMs upped the costs of a number of spells, such as resurrection spells, to keep them rare in a campaign that was generous with treasure, but he usually warned us before they came up. The only issue was the time he almost priced up Teleportation Circle purely because the 5e PHB said its components were “with 50 GP” rather than “worth 50 GP”, and I had to explain that that’s almost certainly a typo and they don’t have their own, higher cost.
And yeah, that’s a good thing to keep in mind. The point is not to undermine or outdo the GM, but to help them run the game better. Conveying that properly is something I’ve been working on.
Probably the thing that has most consistently tripped up my group in general is using the extra attack feature outside of your turn. Turns out you can’t, so no 3-swing opportunity attacks for you, or even 2 swing readied action attacks.
Theres also one person in my group in particular who just cannot wrap his head around invisibility not equaling stealth. No matter what we do, he still tries to play and run it like that.
The difference between “an attack” and “an attack action” is simple. When you attack, that’s an attack action, unless your just attacking, in which case it’s only an attack attack (not to be confused with your ‘3-swing opportunity attack,’ which experienced gamers know as an attack attack attack).
If you invoke the nat 20/1 auto success or failure incorrectly, I am immediately aware of your position.
I’m guessing that position is, “Hanging in space over a cliff?”
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/magic-number
It will be when I’m done.
In the vein of the Handbook, though I’m not sure how effective it will be if Wizard isn’t there…
“Come out, we simply must discuss what’s going on in the court! I’ve digested the most interesting rumors.”
She’s come tearing out of the panel like Wile E. Coyote smacking into a painted tunnel.
Oh hey, that’s me!!
For tempting a rules-loving player, I’d have to know them, but if I was the one being lured, all you’d have to do is ask me about 5e’s bonus action spell rule (everybody thinks they know what it is, but nobody does!!), say you can’t hide in combat, or deny rogues their sneak attack feature when they should definitely be getting it.
Okay but seriously, ask me about the bonus action spell rule. It’s not “one leveled spell per turn” and it’s actually way less complicated than people think, but nobody ever actually reads the rule, they just pass on the incorrect version by word of mouth
Also big handshake with Cleric here because I don’t know about other systems but in 5e, surprise is a condition, which applies during the first round of combat, and not an actual round.
>all you’d have to do is ask me about 5e’s bonus action spell rule (everybody thinks they know what it is, but nobody does!!),
>It’s not “one leveled spell per turn”
GAH! I was about to talk about that one too. It’s really annoying too because on the very rare occasions where the distinction matters, you’ll end up unintentionnaly denying a player the capacity to do something cool (e.g cast a spell and then jumps off the tower safely with Feather Fall) even though that would have been a 100% RAW thing.
Right?!
I use an IF->THEN to explain it: IF bonus action casting, THEN only other magic on your turn is action cantrips.
Can you action surge to cast two action spells if they’re both level 1 or higher? Yes. Can you cast a spell as an action and a reaction on your turn? Yes.
Can you cast a bonus action cantrip and an action leveled spell? No, you did BA magic, so any action spell has to be a cantrip. Can you cast a BA spell and a reaction spell on your turn? No, a spell cast as a reaction isn’t an action to cast.
Can I cast a BA spell on my turn, and then a reaction spell on someone else’s turn? Yes, because it’s not the same turn anymore.
Why does this exist, can’t we just ignore it? Hello, meet my divine soul sorcerer, he’s going to heighten hold person and then quicken disintegrate.
Genuinely I do think it’s a good rule for a few reasons, but “roll with disadvantage against hold person and then autofail against disintegrate in one turn, no multiclassing” gets the point across pretty well most of the time.
What if you cast a spell as an Action and then decide to cast a cantrip as a Bonus Action?
Order doesn’t matter for this rule, so if you cast anything other than an action cantrip (a reaction spell or a level 1+ action spell), you can’t cast anything as a bonus action at all
So, if the spell you cast as an action is a cantrip, you can cast whatever you want as a bonus action (but you give up the ability to cast reaction spells until after your turn ends), but if it was level 1 or higher, you can’t cast any bonus actions at all, not even a cantrip
Ya done good, AsimovSideburns. Ya done good. 🙂
And you’re right: the bonus action spell rule is annoyingly simple. If you cast a bonus action spell as your main action during your untap step, you can still only cast a full round spell (like a summon) during the auction phase. Pretty straightforward. >_>
[If you cast a bonus action spell as your main action during your untap step, you can still only cast a full round spell (like a summon) during the auction phase. Pretty straightforward.]
But I can still play my trap card, right?
Only if you’ve got a pawn all the way to the other side of Catan.
Aha, but if you’ve got a wild draw four you can king your character instead, which lets you build hotels.
The whole rule 0 thing is nice, but people have an annoying tendency to throw it around all the time in online discussions. Thing is, your table is not my table, so when talking about the game, we’re going to base the discussion around the rules that are written in the book, else no one will understand each other.
As for the thing that’d lure me, well the 5e’s bonus action spell has already been mentionned by someone else, so another one : the stupid case of consumed components without a price tag.
Basically, you can use a component pouch or a focus to replace material components of a spell if they don’t have a cost… AND if they aren’t consumed. The end result being that *Protection From Evil and Good*, and only that one spell, is a pain in the rear to cast if you want to play it RAW, because it consumes its components, but gives no value to them, so you don’t know how much is consumed or what it would cost to buy at a merchant. It’s annoying, and I think most people would reasonnably completely ignore that tidbit (and I let my players ignore it when I GM), but it personally drives me crazy.
I share your frustration. Believe me I do. But this just isn’t a realistic expectation. If we’re talking about a video game or a rigid strategy game (e.g. Magic: The Gathering), then it makes sense to discuss the set of rules that we’ve all agreed to abide by. But if we’re talking about 5e, the idea of “rulings, not rules” is right there in the book. The culture of homebrewing and “this is how we play it at my table” is baked in. So rather than trying to excise that part of hobby, I think it’s better to 1) thoroughly explain your group’s idiosyncrasies, and 2) keep table variation fixed in your mind as a principle: “I don’t know everything about the way this online dude games. I’ll give ’em the benefit of the doubt.”
As for Protection From Evil and Good… That just sounds like a fun case of verisimilitude:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/material-components-2
😛
What even is that thing?
Based off of IRL mythology, weird as it looks:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/magical-beasts/leucrotta/
> At any point that a leucrotta’s targets are unaware of it
Wait, in this panel cleric and thief are clearly aware of it so they shouldn’t– What do you mean “roll initiative”?
What people thought hyena were in the pre-David Attenborough times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocotta
I feel Cleric’s pain. Except on the “Surprise round” thing which is merely a case of bad terminology without actually mattering too much except if you forget that people still have turns in the round they’re surprised.
The biggest thing that gets overlooked in 5E is sight rules. “That you can see” gets so overlooked for things like opportunity attacks and counterpsell.
The sight rules in general get really overlooked. Since almost every PHB race (Apefolk, ‘Alflins, and Dragonborn notwithstanding.) Most parties adventure without light, ignoring the fact that this should give disadvantage on their passive perception due to darkvision turning dim light into dark. Honestly the problem stems from cutting low-light vision, and that leading to everything defaulting to Darkvision except Dragonborn who were pushed into normal vision.
I feel ya on sight rules getting overlooked:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/sudden-onset-blindness
In my head, that’s a case of the tabletop conflicting with the fiction. “But I can see the guy behind the pillar! I know exactly where he is!”
“I dare say I might cast Enlarge Person on myself… As a standard action!”
That’s very big of you. 😀
“You better stop me before i cast *time stop* and then cast *time stop* while time stops, to loop time into itself indefinitely!”
“Ha! you have to come out now- i *took 20* taunting you!”
Cleric: ” But you Can’na take 20…oh i see what you did there…”
And once again: “OH DEAR GODS IT’S EATING MY FACE.”
I can offer nothing except to say I entirely agree with the holy texts.
If I attempt to correct the DM, let it only be because they are unhappy with the result of their own misinterpretation of a rule; or elsewise, let me be struck down, so help me Rul’zaz’ritan.
… I’m gonna regret that vow, aren’t I?
Truly, it will be a test of thy faith.
I’m a major devotee of the Rule of Cool. If my players come up with a cinematic or fascinating escape from a situation, even if it pretty heavily bends the established rules for a particular situation, I’ll usually let them get away with it once. I’d rather see something cool and spectacular, especially as a last-ditch effort, than RAW my players into an early grave.
It’s a line of thinking coming from PbtA games: being a fan of my players combined with seeking alternative costs for them to pay instead of purely in blood. It might not be RAW, but it keeps the table fun as hell.
But that is Cheating!
Sometimes, the GM might not be aware of the Holy Word of Rul’zaz’ritan and its priest Dave Loperscommentary. At that point, a player with max ranks in Knowledge (rulebook) can be of help, and I try to be that player when I can.
But if they have willingly chosen to reject the Holy Word (good creatures are not affected, after all), far from me the idea of proselyting. After all, a good GM is more trustworthy than some dusty old books.