Realism
You guys remember the time a T-Rex tried to eat my party’s treasure? It was a session of general hilarity and wacky hijinks. The encounter wasn’t just a big bad vs. the party though. There was also a baby T-Rex in the mix. The l’il guy spent the better part of the encounter chasing our sorcerer around like a cat with a laser pointer. And it’s this game of baby dino keep away that I’d like to talk about today.
Here’s the setup. Imagine that you’re a momma Tyrannosaurus. As a hard-working single dino parent, you’re relieved to finally find a free weekend for some quality time with your kiddosaurus. So there you are in the great outdoors, taking in a little sun and fun at the local beach. All of a sudden, what should be a pleasant day of roaring at Jeff Goldblum is ruined. A party of bullying adventurers have come to kick sand in your face and ruin your kid’s day. And if you’re going by a strict reading of the T-Rex stat block, there’s not much your can do but pick up your beach blanket and go home.
You see, if you want to torment a gargantuan animal with a 20-foot reach, all you have to do is cast fly. This is precisely what the sorcerer player did. Dude ascended to a cruising altitude of 45 feet, then began casting all of his shiniest and most distracting spells. One Handle Animal check later and the dangerous encounter had become a farce. Thanks to the famously walnut-sized brains of dinosaurs, it wasn’t hard for the rest of the party to get to the quest objective while the lizards were distracted. Happily, as a student of popular culture, I knew that dinosaurs make excellent parents.
“OK,” says I. “We’re back to the dinos’ turn. The momma dino stomps on the sand. She gestures up at the sorcerer with her head, and then adopts an odd stance. With her tail straight out behind her and nose pointed up into the air, she looks almost like a ramp.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” says the Sorcerer.
“Taking a cue from its mom, the baby leaps atop its parent, scrabbles up the incline of her body, and then vaults from her head. That’s a flying grapple attack at you, Sorc.”
“I ain’t even mad,” says the mage. And friends? That’s exactly the reaction you’re shooting for.
As a general rule, it’s better for a GM’s monsters to go by the book. While you want to encourage improvisation and stunting amongst PCs, monsters should stick to their default shtick. This way a GM can encourage creative play without accusations of “breaking the rules” in a monster’s favor. But every once in a while, allowing monster creativity can produce its own brand of fun. In my case, the rest of the party had to choose between defending the sorcerer or going for quest objectives, and the encounter was suddenly interesting again.
Be careful though! As Wizard so ably demonstrates in today’s comic, it’s possible to go too far with this sort of thing. For example, I recently pit my party against a bhole. These freaky giant worms come with a slimy, entangling breath weapon. And when the party’s bloodrager tried to activate his boots of speed by clicking his heels together, I had to think long and hard whether or not to allow it.
“You’re entangled in a thick layer of worm slime. How exactly are you clicking your heels?”
To my player’s credit, he quickly agreed that it didn’t make sense within the fiction and moved on with his turn. But it was still enough to make me leery. And that in turn brings us to our question of the day! When it comes to a GM making creative calls, how much is too much? When is the guy behind the screen punishing players or giving monsters too much credit, and how do you know when an interesting bit of improv crosses the line into unfair GMing? Ain’t no one wanna be the “bury your water guy” after all. Sound off with your own unique calls and unfair monster actions down in the comments!
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Unfair monster actions… yeah anything with more than one attack in Warhammer fantasy. there’s relatively few starter classes that give players more and if I remember correctly geting a 3rd attack at higher tier careers is rare too. so imagine meeting a monster that not only Terrifies the crap out of half the party but proceeds to make enough damage in one attack to make even the full plated knight sweat.
This sounds remarkably similar to straight up Warhammer. How close is the RPG to the tabletop system anyway?
The original Warhammer Fantasy RPG was practically identical in stat blocks between the rpg and the tactical minis game. You could pretty easily switch between them as needed
Not all that much. You’re a lot less powerful and a lot more likely to die screaming of a gut wound you got from a fight with a pickpocket because nobody knows enough about medicine to prevent it getting infected and you have no money to give your local priest of Shallya than most of the characters there!
That said, it’s got the same grimdarkly humorous feel to it, so they’re clearly in the same world, just at very different tiers of power.
Wizard looks remarkably similar to her old incarnation in this strip.
I guess maleness is all just water weight. 😛
I think it’s the hair, nowadays she has it up in a neat bun, but back before her gender/sex change it used to be long and flowing.
Very similar to how it looks when the burn is ruined by it getting wet (except that obviously it didn’t use to cover the eyes/be so messy)
Wizard’s gender switch was a popular move, but I do miss the original design. He had that classic “snobby wizard” vibe going on:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/woodelf
Also, lol @ that comic in retrospect.
Be thankful Sorcerer isn’t here to ‘dry’ your spellbook, Wizard.
Wizard and Sorcerer aren’t on great terms right now anyway…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/unhallowed-rites-part-4-speak-now
Fireball + spellbooks might well = mage war.
For this, I suppose there needs to be a line drawn between “background flavor” and “actually a factor.” For the problem raised in the comic, I would rule that the spellbook is protected against basic attacks such as that (although greater situations might put it to test).
I think it, at least in part, links to the “lol no sell” problem of immunities and such.
The most common one is “swimming across a river.” Suddenly (and usuually for the first time in the campaign), the question of how the mage protects spell books is relevant.
This is what extra dimensional spaces are for. When shut they are water/air/etc tight.
Also why I always have a “Backup Bag of Holding” which just has a second set of any essential gear that if lost would impede my ability to “do my job”, and this is regardless of class when i play D&D.
In the levels where swimming across rivers is a significant challenge, access to extradimensional spaces is far from guaranteed.
All my D&D character’s First Goals are “get a Bag of Holding/Haversack/Portable Hole/etc”. Depending on the character the second goal can often be “Get a bag of Devouring”, those ‘cursed’ items are stupidly useful as well.
Spellbooks are made with vellum, not paper. (Vellum is basically leather you write on) They also use “Special inks” that cost obnoxious amounts. I assume these two points make them waterproof.
Computer code is inscribed on silicone wafers, not paper. It also uses gold components that cost obnoxious amounts. I assume these two points make them waterproof.
Computers are actually water proof. It’s the stuff other than water that is mixed in that causes problems. So you can immerse your PC in de-ionized water* and it’ll work just fine, plus you get a very efficient water cooling!
Of course your PC needs to be clean to laboratory standards so that the water stays de-ionized after your immersed it. And also, pure water is quite corrosive, so it’s not going to last all that long, since the materials of your PC will be dissolved and this in turn will provide water with all the ions needed to be conductive and provoke shorts.
But for a few glorious moments, it would work!
*De-ionized water is a thing you can buy, it has many industrial applications. It’s also sold as “non-conductive” or “low-conductive” water. It’s normally to a higher standard of purity than distilled water. Also, it has a shelf life because it eventually eats away enough of its container to stop being low-conductive.
Leather, a material that famously isn’t damaged by water.
(A quick Google search indicates that vellum is actually waterproof, which Gabe didn’t mention. Gabe also didn’t mention that the book is bound in leather, which still doesn’t react well to water, and would still cause problems even if the individual pages were waterproof.)
Assuming that ink is waterproof just because it’s expensive is foolish, as anyone who wears makeup could tell you. Spellbook ink is presumably expensive because it needs to be somehow magical, and being magical doesn’t automatically make you waterproof.
I have no desire to become a Google-expert on vellum. Whichever side of that argument you’re on, it’s not going to be much fun looking into random forum posts for GMing guidance.
To my way of thinking, the real issue is making these into fun challenges rather than “gotcha” GM moment. In that sense, it doesn’t matter whether or not swimming with vellum grimoires is the best idea. What matters is creating an interesting experience around the premise. For example, if you’re deep in an underwater caver, ruin your spell books, and discover “the knowledge of the ancients” written on the walls of the dungeon, you now have a reason to try out new spells rather than sticking to your old ones. Alternatively, the elemental attacked changed your all your spells. Now “fireball” is “waterball,” does bludgeoning damage, and has a chance to knock prone. Do you attempt to revert the spell our use it as-is?
Do you mind if I steal some of this idea, Colin? The underwater runes on the wall thing is a perfect combo for my heroes to get their hands on an arcane knowledge Macguffin.
Do it up!
I was mostly riffing on a Exalted game where a sorcerer sacrificed all his knowledge of spells for the greater good, only to be handed a list of equivalent higher-level spells in turn. It does take away some of the agency of “I chose my own spells,” but getting to play with shiny new toys takes some of the sting out of it.
I try to remember the times that my supposed cleverness (a Neh-Thalggu using *charm person* to convince the PCs that the Lovecraftian brain-eater tentacle-crab is actually quite handsome-looking and their new best friend) killed the fun of the evening by removing player agency…
…and keep that cringey memory intact when I keep giving that ghast additional hit points so that (even after a CRIT from sword-and-board fighter and ANOTHER CRIT with a trick HOLY WATER ARROW from our Hawkeye/Green Arrow wannabe elf), the perpertually initiative-impaired Sorcerer can cast *disrupt undead* for the finishing blow and feel like he actually contributed something to the fight.
Out here trying. 🙁
Do you think it’s worth it from the Sorcerer’s perspective, or is that brand of GM fudging counterproductive for the whole table?
Just like the judgment error with the brain-eater and this whole topic thread in general, I think it partially comes down to “Know your table.”
With the “let the Sorcerer play, too” I got it right that day, and the teenagers weren’t miffed that the other Dad at the table (who was more sensitive to FOMO) got to take the kill shot.
With brain-eater in Castle Amber’s basement, I also thought I was creating more fun for everyone, but I got it very, very wrong. 🙁
Fairly early on in my In Search of Sanity/Strange Aeons 1 campaign (which just successfully wrapped up, with three PCs set to wander the Dimension of Dreams forever, one consensually absorbed into a Great Old One and the last one dissolving into nothingness) the party had to deal with a nightgaunt, a creature two CR above APL with the notorious ability to pick up foes, force them to make a saving throw each round or be unable to take actions, and then fly them to a lethal height and drop them. Despite the book just saying “this thing attacks”, I had earlier decided that I would play up its maliciously playful/taunting nature and likely make it a recurring foe rather than play it “optimally.” (Especially because it was coincidentally immune to the Kineticist’s ranged attacks, leaving the party with very few defenses against it.)
The nightgaunt picked up one PC, disabled him and got him 10 feet off the ground. The party’s Witch had the Prehensile Hair hex and managed to grab the lifted PC with her hair, but because she was Small, she just got lifted too. Another PC then managed to jump up and do some significant damage to the nightgaunt. In response, I had the nightgaunt, tired of this encounter and struggling to lift a fully-armored PC with a second PC dangling off him, throw the grappled PC at a third PC… which I ruled caused the Witch PC to get dragged along. All three of them ended up in a big pile as the nightgaunt flew off.
The Witch was, at the end of the campaign, STILL complaining about that moment in-character (out-of-character she loved it).
This right here is the happy version of the trope. Good on ya for doing a characterful thing and creating a memorable moment.
There’s a very underappreciated set of 3rd party rules from Bastion Press for Pathfinder that gives you crazy and blasphemous ideas like… putting your spellbook in a watertight box. Or you can cast Sequester Spellbook (if you aren’t more concerned that your GM will say that it’s possible for a monster to find your spellbook on the astral than that your spellbook is able to take damage).
> crazy and blasphemous ideas like… putting your spellbook in a watertight box.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZlEcKCm3gbE/maxresdefault.jpg
“As a general rule, it’s better for a GM’s monsters to go by the book. While you want to encourage improvisation and stunting amongst PCs, monsters should stick to their default shtick.”
Another good reason to run GURPS, unlike D&D, “stunting” is just called “playing”, and is part and parcel. So while mooks won’t do anything ‘weird’, once I break out what are clearly “sergeants”, “captains”, “personal enemies”, or “BBEGs”, the Players know it could very well be anything goes and don’t complain, because it’s always ‘anything they can get away with” from them.
“When it comes to a GM making creative calls, how much is too much?”
Honestly, depends on how much you let the PCs “get away with”. If it’s D&D (fairly rigid rules on what’s allowed) and you let teh PCs make Trips, Sprinting Attacks, stunt their spells, etc without being super strict on Feats, Ability requirements, Class only abilities, and what not, then it’s the same fair game from the “important” NPC enemies/allies.
Not mooks though. Sure, occasionally a variant flavor of mook might roll out with a new twist, to keep it interesting, but mooks tend to have one job: Make the PCs look good by being cannon-fodder and that’s what I limit them to.
I always liked 4e’s take of making “mooks” official with those 1 hp minions. Great for that whole “mowing down the enemy” vibe.
4e’s “mook rule” was mostly a refluffing of the way OD&D handled it, where higher level warriors just mowed down low level creatures as a “if you can hit them, they just die” kind of thing. I don’t remember the exact wording of the rules, but I’ve been using variant’s of them since the 80s (and so have a lot of other DMs, WotC just decided to finally recodify them in 4e).
I once played a swashbuckler in a Pathfinder game, where i convinced my DM to let me spend a panache point to have my horse be below the window I was jumping out off.
Of course I didn´t consider what else might be on the other side. Highlights includes:
Forgetting the nice garden outside was completely fenced off.
A bunch of heavily armed guards. Both parts were very surprised.
Wolves. A lot of wolves.
A Cliff Side. Had to replace my horse after that one.
A shark tank. Had to replace my horse again after that one.
That werewolf I decided to pick a fight with on one random evening stroll.
So in conclusion, the other side of the window contained a horse in a fenced garden, guards, wolves, a cliff, a shark tank, and a werewolf. The only similar battle I know:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMHIJZYXsAAZdDO.jpg
I am gonna presume Fighter and Thief are just off-screen enjoying the wet robes contest 😛
Fighter is busy with his own struggles. Dude wears leather pants, and they’re soaked after the water elemental fight. Acrobatics checks just to walk around, poor bastard.
Thief, however, is ogling furiously.
Hey Wizard, invest in an ‘enduring spellbook’, its a common magic item, you really should have one already.
It’s a useful item. That’s power gaming. And Wizard knows that’s wrong.
That’s all I can say about the other side of the window. There were horses in fenced-in gardens and guards on the other side of the window. Wolves and shark tanks were also found there.
Whatever you call it, it sounds like an exciting time.
This is the first time I heard about Realism. It’s funny that I heard it through a comic lol.
If it makes you feel any better, the illustrator had to take A LOT of art history classes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(arts)
😛