It’s easy to forget your abilities. With pages of worth of stats and feat print-outs and spell text, you can be forgiven for missing a few niggling little details. For example, the fact that you can summon your own ride rather than accept hand-me-downs. It’s almost as if the paladins of Handbook-World suck at spellcasting.
More than the forgetting, though, it’s the reminding that concerns us today. Oracle may be the kind of hero who studies her tomes (presumably via braille), but she isn’t so hot at diplomancy.
“Hey idiot! Use a mercy!”
“You want heals? OK asshat. Second wind yourself.”
“You do one thing. ONE THING! Cast hex first!”
In effect, we’re talking about a problem that experienced players have to deal with. When you find yourself in a position to quarterback a little bit, your tone and delivery make all the difference. Therefore, to put as fine a point as possible on this one, let’s trade a few tales today. Tell us of a time when you were not-so-gently reminded of an ability you forgot. Alternatively, sing us the song of frustration that comes along with forgetful partymates who could have cured your blindness/curse/level drain several levels ago. In either case, I’ll see you down in the comments!
JOIN THE HANDBOOK OF HEROES DISCORD! Do you want a place to game with your fellow Heroes? How about a magical land where you can post your dankest nerd memes, behold the finest in gamer dog and geek cats, or speculate baselessly on Handbook of Heroes plot developments? Then have I got a Discord Invite for you!
In mid-combat with a terrible undead …. thing, my Magus had to be reminded that my disrupt undead-cantrip was very effective, and I could cast it without limits. Later, she had to be reminded that my prestidigitation could clean up the party before a big court date.
Fortunately the delivery was quite kind, so I was a bit (read: very) embarrassed, but ultimately happy that I could contribute meaningfully.
In the very last session of a campaign, three days ago, we had our samurai down and our witch was about to get critted by the BBEG… She had the good idea to give a small prayer to Shelyn – that is, reminding me that I had the Divine Interference feat. I gave up one of my 6-th level spell slots as a thanks, and we managed to finish the fight without any further losses.
From one experienced player to the next, it’s honestly easy. It can be less straightforward when there is a less experienced player involved – I have witnessed my friends toeing the blurry line between “reminding someone of their abilities” and “playing the character for them”. Most of the time, my approach is to not get involved unless someone asks for help or runs out of ideas, or when using a specific ability might make the difference between victory and TPK.
This happened twice, both times after the fact; I had to be reminded that I could roll Persuasion instead of actually roleplaying the statement, and that I could *use my Move speed on my turn in combat*. The first was trying to convince another player character with amnesia to trust me (we had a backstory connection), the second was a friendly arena fight where the only moving I ended up doing was being pushed around by a Dust Devil spell (or whatever it was actually called).
In my defense, my wizard had a less than stellar Wisdom score, so I guess I just played that quality well XD
Yeah, this is one reason why I most commonly play classes like rogues and fighters… it’s not that they don’t have special abilities, but they tend to be relevant frequently enough that they’re less likely to be forgotten.
At one point we had, in the same party, my cleric of Hercules and my friend’s bard.
While I maintained my cleric’s exclusive memorization of Healing and Strength domain spells as a comedy bit (if no one else specifically *asked* me to, say, memorize Bless, then I wouldn’t remember to do it), my buddy genuinely didn’t know how to play a Bard.
He sometimes used his crossbow (once the Bard really did shoot his own eye out). He owned a rapier (never drawn). Mainly he kvetched about how ineffective he was in combat. Eventually the player did begin writing his own poetry and using Bardic music to buff his teammates and debuff his foes. But in nearly 5 years of playing in that party, HE NEVER CAST A SPELL.
Wait a minute… How does Oracle knows the scroll is written in crayon?
recogniced the “colourful” magical aura coming from it.
“It’s written in crayon, smart guy. Just read it out loud.”
Vengeance: “Wait, how do you know that?”
Oracle: “Because I’ve forseen a future in which I said, ‘It’s written in crayon, smart guy. Just read it out loud.'”
Oracle: “Also you can feel the waxy texture”
She’s not blind, just very shortsighted
Last few years I’ve had the role of reminder as GM abd player in mostly newish group. And there was this case of 2nd edition Dark Heresy campaing in which I had to remind people that Lasguns come with variable power setting, being Only War veteran I of course played as guardsman leaning heavily into the increase in power per shot, to a point I actually had to reload lasgun in several encounters.
Though I’ve had to remind myself and be reminded that in 5th Paldins ue spell slots for smite and it not being a per day kinda spell like ability… and that it works on things that aren’t evil too.
I am EXACTLY Vengeance in this situation.
Then again, I think part of that is just that D&D is not my sort of game most of the time.
The only TTRPG campaign I’ve played recently has a party of me (an almost 30-year-old adult who’s been playing D&Derivatives for more than half of his life) and a gaggle of eight-to-ten-year-olds. And the DM hasn’t told me his age or how long he’s been doing this, but he feels inexperienced, both in terms of “designing adventures” and in terms of “remembering the rules”. I’d have probably offered to run something if this wasn’t tax season.
I am trying very hard to keep things on track without either backseat DMing or telling the kids how to build/play their characters. But on the bright side, my characters* have been quite easy for me to remember all of their abilities, because this is 5e at first level.
*Oh yeah, I died in the second session. I don’t blame the other players for it, even though I technically died because of carelessness with breath weapons around unconscious allies. If the kid learns caution, I’m fine with that.
Based on the pawprint on that scroll, I’m crossing my fingers that the “steed” that gets summoned is some kind of large-sized Patches.
Not so much being reminded of an ability a character had, but being reminded as DM about a curse one of the characters was under.
DM: Roll your agility save
Player: I failed
DM: You didn’t roll
Player: I failed
DM: Come on, roll!
Player: I FAILED
Player was under a curse to never make his agility rolls and I completely blanked on it. Hubby still reminds me of that to this day.
Is Oracle blind? Then why was she bothered by the darkness cast on her in the comic pointed to by “suck at spellcasting?”