Let’s face it, some people’s playstyle just doesn’t work well with some games—and D&D, or at least 3.x, is for lack of a better term my bugbear. It’s not that it wasn’t my first system. It’s just that I’ve gotten far too used to a certain flexibility of mechanics, and tend to attack my problems accordingly. So when I’m in a game, things go a little… screwy, and my judgment calls (or the ones my GMs have to make) start getting into “Really need to have been running this game for years to be able to ad-hoc this stuff correctly” territory. To wit:
When I’m playing, I….
- Consider “roll on them to squish them” a relatively valid strategy when dealing with a swarm of spiders. Particularly when the character in question is wearing full plate.
- Cheerfully agree that “punt across a greased floor on your own shield” is a decent strategy for avoiding the effects of a grease spell.
- Use close as a finishing move—or at least, use it to enable someone else’s finishing move. It made sense in context.
- …after suggesting that someone else finish the undead thing by throwing a charged wand of cure light wounds at it like a javelin.
- Sell the local kobolds on the idea of starting a bank. (All right, that one’s actually decently reasonable.)
- Make peace with the Far-Planes-twisted wolverine.
- …and subsequently decide that a barbarian-beguiler riding a Far-Planes-twisted wolverine would be the most awesome thing the system could handle.
And when running, I….
- Decide that the group including a baby dragon PC would be the Best Thing Ever. (Though it helps that we all think in terms of “that would be awesome and adorable”.)
- ….and that the perfect way of tracking an ethereal filcher would be a blink basset hound.
- ….which therefore means that the group needs a blink basset hound.
- Manage to rationalize a frustrated player dealing with a swarm of outsized beetles by smacking them with a casting of create water so as to set them up for the dragon’s ice breath.
I just need something with a little more room for my approach to problem-solving in an RP situation.
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See. all those sounded great to me to. Mind you, I haven’t played D&D in years.
I know exactly where you’re coming from. I like my games a lot looser too. Of course I’m sure D&Ders are going to swarm in to say you can do all that in D&D and that your problem isn’t so much the system as it is the GM who won’t let you try these solutions or can’t find a way to make it work mechanically.
Still, I believe it’s the system’s job to suggest the way a world works and what kind of solutions are appropriate within its “genre”. D&D’s focus is not on loose and free outside the box solutions, at least not the last time I looked.
Oh, I can accomodate all of those in 3.x/Pathfinder games. Actually I have an easier time improvising in a well-structured game than in a looser game. In a well structured game I have all sorts of rules to act as a scaffolding to connect new rules to. They also serve as a yardstick to measure fancy tricks by. A trick has to be effective enough that it’s worth it to try in certain situations, but there has to be some elment of uncertainty or risk because these aren’t usual things. When I’ve got a lot to compare it to, I can judge these well. In looser games, I find that I second-guess myself a lot and it’s harder to go off the beaten track.
Here’s how I’d rule your suggestions.
*Spider squishing – I’d treat this like an overrun/trample attack. Pathfinder standardized all the combat maneuvers so they work the same. Then you’d do improvised weapon damage without the damage reduction. On the downside, you’d face the spiders’ attack as they crawl into your armor. I’d probably make the character make a will save after this because having spiders inside your armor is creepy.
*Punting across the grease spell. It’s an action to unstrap the shield and then they’d have to make a tumbling/acrobatics roll. Just to stay up would be a low DC. To get to a specific spot would be harder.
*Close? As in the cantrip open/close? That would depend on the circumstances.
*Hurl the wand as a javelin? Hold the charge and improvised weapon. I’d even say the wand would do a d3 piercing, but had a 50% chance of breaking. If they wanted to expend the wand, I’d let somebody do a Use Magic Device roll to get more damage, but 100% chance of breakage.
*Civilize the kobolds? Diplomacy and/or an appropriate profession skill.
*Make peace with Lovecraft’s honey badger? Animal handling with a big penalty. Knowledge:dungeoneering or having non-euclidean scooby snacks will help offset this. Training it for riding would be an extended skill check. You’d need the hide of a Cow of Tindalos to make a propper saddle though.
*Baby Dragon PC? I’ve played that. (It helped that it was a song drgaon and could transform into human form.) ECL covers this.
*Blink Basset Hound? Blink dogs already have scent and track. Blink lets you perceive ethereal creatures. A BBH would probably have max ranks in survival, but would probably be small instead of medium.
*Create water just before an ice attack would give a situational penalty on the save.
Somehow if you’re a D&D player, “my bugbear” sounds to me like a term of endearment. Who’s my bugbear? *Who’s* my bugbear? …but, I have a bit of an odd relationship with the “evil humanoids” in D&D so take from that what you will.
I think the kobold banker thing has actually been done before, possibly by Shakespeare. That’s no reason not to do it again, of course.
But! It’s all a matter of preference. If a beetle is standing in a puddle when a dragon breathes ice breath on it, do its little arthropod feet get stuck? If the floor is greasy can I still charge if I use my shield as a toboggan? Does rolling a barrel through a swarm of small spiders count as an AOE attack dealing Wood element damage? Do female gnolls *really* -
Uh, anyway the questions are endless and subject to vast conjecture and various artistic presentations. Most RPGs are too mechanically coarse to allow for a lot of nuance in this department, the solutions people will present for each of these situations will generally provide a bucket for the situation according to the granularity of the system, but it may not really do it justice.
Feyd: He still hasn’t seen the dart so I pretend it’s on my other hip.
Frank: OK, make a deception roll using your… dexterity with a DC of 20.
Feyd: 27!
Frank: Paul, you are, uh, tricked. Feyd can have a +2 on his first attack.
Paul: Huh. Shoulda seen that coming.
So I’d say, yes, there’s always a ruling that you can guess at as a player or give as a GM, but whether this will be truly satisfying compared to the imaginative leap required depends on:
1) Whether the game has sufficiently plastic mechanics to handle the situation as presented, and
2) To what degree the GM enjoys rewarding people for coming up with egregious solutions to everyday problems. If you want the weird stuff and the outre fantasy strategies you have to encourage. Otherwise, the players will stop trying.
Frank: The dart’s an improvised weapon. You can’t use it during a grapple because you’re not proficient. Page 133.
Feyd: The hell?
If a beetle bites a wizard and the wizard has a flagon
and the wizard in rebuttal pours a puddle from the flagon
and the puddle’s on the beetle and the wizard has a dragon
and the dragon breathes a blizzard on the puddle-making wizard…
we call that a puddle-wizard-blizzard-beetle-dragon-muddle-flagon battle.
“your problem isn’t so much the system as it is the GM who won’t let you try these solutions or can’t find a way to make it work mechanically.”
That pretty much sums up my impression as well. The 3.X system gives you a good framework for how to handle many situations, but it (obviously) isn’t a complete catalog of every situation or every solution. If you’re expecting it (or any game system) to be, you’re already doing it wrong.
Going off of the comment of “Really need to have been running this game for years to be able to ad-hoc this stuff correctly”, you MAY actually be complaining about the difficulty of game mastery (mastery of the system) of D&D over some other system and I think that’s a longer discussion — but I also think maybe you need to re-evaluate your definition of “correctly”. If you’re group is having fun, you’re doing it right.
*Tough* crowd.
Wow. (Pardon the delay, grad school is beating the stuffing out of me.) From all these responses, I think I can come to but one conclusion…
…I really need a better DM.
Oh, and Jack (sorry I missed you in the mod queue there; you wouldn’t believe the level of spam comments can get buried under if I look away for a day or two)–part of what I was looking at was the level of interconnectedness everything seems to have. If a non-monster character (or any character really, but the ones with the class levels are worst about this) has this level of skill in that area, it must have this number of hit dice, and therefore I need to go back and make sure I’ve got the saves right, and the bab….
I did my first attempt at running something-close-enough-to-D&D a couple weeks ago, and even with just monsters it was driving me mad. Started designing the class-leveled NPCs, and… I think I may see if the third in our group is willing to run Hoard again.