If your PC has the ability to turn into a fly, then the game has deliberately given them some amazing stealth and scouting capabilities. I say this is working as intended.
How does a DM deal with players who look for these wild ideas?
I think it’s fine to think outside of the box and metagame. But does it end up in a slippery slope where it feels like the players just want to outthink every encounter where it’s just a rube Goldberg set of plays?
But say by adventure 10, they’re still trying to beat the system. It feels exhausting trying to create a story like “A vampire council, but they have anti-magic doors so you can’t disguise yourself. And also no rats. And you can’t teleport in there. And summoning a devil or warping the castle is forbidden. And…”
In a world where magic exists and anti-magic countermeasures are a thing do you think any reasonably powerful person wouldn’t have them in place? It seems like you’re trying to come across as ridiculous but all of those sounds like pretty reasonable precautions in a magical world.
If you’re not a fan of this type of behaviour, I recommend playing a TTRPG that isn’t D&D.
D&D has gotten a bit of an “LULLZRANDOM!!11!!” reputation, possibly because of the content creators needing something whacky to get views, or just because of how mainstream it is. If you need to stand out in a crowd of thousands being extreme, novel, or whacky has the lowest effort for the highest reward.
If everyone at the table finds the game fun, then you are playing correctly. I find this behaviour exhausting and would tell the players that it needs to stop unless someone else wants to GM.
What would examples of alternative TTRPGs be? And what characteristics would they have that would prevent the “LULZRANDOM We’re breaking the system” type of gameplay?
I’m thinking maybe crunchier and more in-depth rules ala Pathfinder or GURPS, since the barrier-to-break is much higher due to having to read more, but I’m just guessing as a relative ttrpg novice here haha
I would instead lean more into the FATE direction. They are more open for interpretation and thus allow the DM more control.
Spells there don’t necessarily specify transforming your weapons. The DM would maybe allow it but doesn’t have to. Some of those games don’t even have a spell list, so no definitive way to know, your spell idea works or even exists (unless you did it before).
This is the first time I have heard of FATE and that is interesting! From what I’m reading, it’s highly free-form, with stuff normally associated with characters or the setting being referred to as aspects (like some kind of adjective or attributes of a programming class), which can be called upon to give bonuses provided you have enough fate points). The free-form part comes from the aspects being basically anything related to the characters/setting at hand. I guess it does put a lot of onus on both the DM and the player to collaboratively figure out how to find creative solutions to problems, but in a way that isn’t mechanically restricted.
From what I’ve seen from the suggestions so far, rules-lite/abstract helps to mitigate some of the rube-goldbergy-mad-contraption-tzeentchian-ness that seems to be inherent in rpgs (and probably human nature lol), but not by “restricting” players in a strictly defined box of rules. Rather, rules-lite systems allow for the rube-goldbergy-mad-contraption-tzeentchian-ness to feel less like breaking the system and more like building the system (within reason and the DM’s judgment), which is huge. So either that or a heavy narrative focus seems to work well in theory.
I am not here to shit on D&D. If you’re having fun, then it’s the right game for you and your table.
D&D is a rules medium game that is based around combat, but isn’t great at combat being balanced at combat where every PC is basically immortal. The game itself doesn’t really set a tone, which makes different people have different expectations of what the game “should” be.
Because of it not-quite-being-great at anything, people tend to want to push limits, or add homebrew.
Edit: A rules lite system with a set tone will also prevent this level of silly, if that’s not what you want
Oh don’t get me wrong, I play D&D and love it as well haha
I was just curious about other systems and how their approaches to rules, balance, and storytelling affect how players play as well (and DMs DM), seeing as there’s a myriad of different systems each with different goals and mechanics. I haven’t played any other system on the tabletop, as my group hasn’t really tried playing other systems yet (only crpgs based on other systems, plus me reading manuals and rulesets because why not)
I can see how a rules lite system would prevent random pushing of the system until it breaks type of gameplay, ala PbtA games. Plus with more emphasis on crafting a narrative vs focusing on the best combination of stats/skills/interactions, there’s less incentive to turn the mechanical knobs until something ends up broken.
Personally I think the players coming up with some cool new trick for each encounter sounds pretty good. The problem is when they find one cool new trick that works for everything. Like, casting Create Water in someone’s lungs sounds awesome the first time you do it, but you don’t want a whole campaign of just that. But even if the players agree that that would be boring, it’s hard not to do that without justifying why it wouldn’t work, and if it wouldn’t work every time, why would it have worked the first time?
Create water doesn’t work inside a person because all living things inherently have enough magical ability to resist spells cast on or in their person. Damage dealing spells have to be specifically designed to work on people, or they have to be able to attack someone by applying an external force.
There isn’t anything to “deal” with. If you want your players to only give predetermined solutions to problems, you really need to play a different game.
Imo this is firm “you can get away with it exactly once” territory. It’s clever, so it should be rewarded. But after the once every lord will mysteriously have anti-shape shifting wards.
There is a honeybee statblock in Wilds Beyond the Witchlight. Also a regular spider in the Monster Manual, which could work just as well. Apparently the average spider in the Forgotten Realms is poisonous enough to have a 15% chance of immediately killing an average commoner with a single bite
Nah, more dangerous. People rarely die of spider bite down here in Australia. Been like 8 deaths to the world’s most deadly spider over recorded history. Sure, that number is probably artificially low cos back in the old days some bites would’ve just been written off as a heart attack etc, but it’s still surprisingly low compared to say deaths by cow etc.
Strategically placed near every door, window, sewer pipe, and vent the DM put an Antimagic Field device.
I especially like to imagine a druid coming in through the sewer as a rat and having his robes get soaked in poo when he gets popped out of wild shape.
Strategically placed near every door, window, sewer pipe, and vent the DM put an Antimagic Field device.
I once played with someone who argued that Diplomacy would never be usable on any important person because, since it requires 1 minute of uninterrupted conversation to use, everyone who is important enough would have a jester or aid or someone they’d hire specifically to interrupt every conversation they were involved in every 9 rounds. Absolutely infuriating person to play with. This anecdote is completely unrelated to this post, but your suggestion just made me remember it again, and it irritated me all over again.
That could make for a fun gimmick(tie it to a roll behind the scenes) for a session, but beyond that, fuck no. Not only would it be an absolute drag timing out each conversation, eventually the party will start working out ways to get around it, be it a graceful zone of silence to the more likely “Gut the loudmouth and use the corpse as a puppet”.
Why would anyone want their diplomacy interrupted, even as the one being affected? It’s not like diplomacy is some evil spell. A successful diplomacy check means you were able to have small talk, relate, and do all the normal things strangers do to put each other at ease. You don’t “defend” against diplomacy!
Imagine trying to agree on a treaty with some jester interrupting every 54 seconds…
They never really went into detail, their whole argument was that if you wanted to use Diplomacy, you did so by default at a -10 penalty (for doing it ‘rushed’), or it would guaranteed fail, for the above reason. :(
Changing others’ attitudes with Diplomacy generally takes at least 1 full minute (10 consecutive full-round actions). In some situations, this time requirement may greatly increase. A rushed Diplomacy check can be made as a full-round action, but you take a -10 penalty on the check.
Antimagic field is an eighth level spell with one hour concentration duration; an item that has it on 24 hours a day would easily be a legendary item. People underestimate how powerful a spell it is and suggest spamming it everywhere. Having it on every door, window, sewer pipe, and vent would be massive overkill just to spite wildshape.
Hiring monodrones is usually cheaper. They are the simplest Modrons, and they would be perfectly willing to work for a Lawful king (the evil-good axis doesn’t come into play) because it increases the amount of order in the multiverse. But every modron has Truesight.
Hell, maybe hire a whole team of modrons. Monodrones to stand watch at all ingresses, with orders of “raise an alarm if you see any disguised shapeshifter enter through that window / door / arrowslit / whatever”, and duodrones with orders of “patrol the castle and raise an alarm if you see any disguised shapeshifter”.
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