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Nerdarchy i have a dilemma. How do you react when you agreed to do something for a player or allowed them to have/do something but later down the road it becomes a huge problem. Is retcon an option?
PC: "There's a treasure chest full of treasure in here right?" DM: *Lightbulb* "Why yes. Yes there is indeed." (Starts looking up the stats for a mimic)
"Hey, we're going to play a stone age setting campaign, do you have any ideas for your character?" "I wanna play Iron Man" --My real life example. I bent over backwards trying to make it viable. Player never showed.
I get told "no" a lot because I enjoy physics and there is an engineer at the table, we get together to try and use physical aspects of the spells to do Rube Goldberg-esk traps and such.
I usually have to say no because the players have used up their actions; "no, you don't have cunning action and you've already attacked, so you can't hide." Sometimes it's because the room is already defined, or to clear up a miscommunication; "No, the hallway branches to the right here, 'left' would actually just be forward, my bad for not making it clearer." I'm hesitant to engage in communal storytelling because some people would be perfectly capable of engaging such content positively and constructively, and others would need specific systems outlined in order to determine what the limits were because they'd just seek to abuse them. Our current group is 4 veteran players, a moderate skill level player, and two newbies. I'm far less worried about the newbies than the veterans lol
Im currently running a game where i collaborated with one of my players that wanted to play an evil char and the rest of the party wanted to play heroic chars so he created a necro wizard and slowly built an army while tricking the party into thinking he is a good char. The paty has just realized what has happened and his necro wizard was just visited by orchas and is now a lich and is the final boss for the heroic party lol
I had a player their very first character was a half-elf rogue. She wanted to be born from the goddess of death and have a necklace of 3 wishes that don't go away.....at level 1.
Crumpler64 I would allow it but halve it's wish spell power, no spells above caster level 4. As dm you could make it have draw backs, making it less likely to be spammed
'Yes, but you have to make a sacrifice to have that kind of power. Wish doesn't make sense from a death goddess how about a death ward instead that you can only use once.' that's what I would do
Maybe she could be born from a death goddess but her godly powers isn't activated to its full potential and she's not used to her powers so she's vey inexperienced with it and can be unpredictable. As for her wish granting necklace, it can be literal minded of what she meant and interpret it differently than her, or make it a cursed item with dire consequences.
I would have allowed it. There are so many opportunities for the DM to retcon fix that through her failure to word it well. Player: "I wish I was immortal.' DM: Poof, a strange sensation comes over you as you realize your soft supple skin is taking on a distinct blue gray hue as is changes to a really fabulous looking marble. You are now a very finely detailed marble statue, and quite invulnerable to damage. Congratulations." Party Member: "Wait..wasn't she carrying the gold..."
If a player asks to do something stupid I usually ask "how is your character doing this/going to do this?" Make them do all the hard work of justify their stupidity. It will either make it interesting or the player will come to their own realisation how stupid they are.
This also depends on the maturity level of the players. If you have a first time-er who is used to video games as the closest they've been to a Table Top like D&D suggestions will be like asking an 7 year old for 'what they want from Santa.' If that's the case as a GM you might not want to offer this as an option. Also a thought on what's appropriate for what type of game: Finding a "Magic Mushroom," could have a VERY different meaning in a gritty game. If a character wanted to find a "Magic Mushroom" in a game like Shadowrun could have the exact same effect as "magic mushrooms" in our world. It would be fun as a GM to run a hallucination on your player & not have them realize things aren't as they perceive them until they have a scene with another PC.
I don't DM often but when I do I tend to say ''No'' by just saying stuff like ''Are you absolutely sure that you wish to attack this lord,right in the middle of the court full of knights?'' or smth along those lines. And I don't even need to say no to anything related to character creation by saying ''All races in PHB are ok and these races I've picked are also ok,all normal classes and all subclasses and spells included in phb and XGTE are ok''
I have a table set up for rolling the spells that will be in the new mage's spellbook. They have to FIND the rest. 1st level is guaranteed one general utility (mage hand was a general utility in 2nd edition) and one ranged damage spell. Beyond that... its roll on the tables. I'll allow ANY character to cast Bigby's Insulting Finger. As a free extra bonus action. "You raise your hand with just one finger extended. You pick the finger"
To me, "player agency" means the players' actions have consequences. If they want to take over the thieves' guild instead of eradicating it, they can do that. (Of course it cuts both ways, and leaving a villain alive might cause trouble for them later). In other words they have agency in as much as they can shape the world through their actions. This idea of "co-DMing", that they can will something into being because it's "good for the story" (a profoundly fuzzy and subjective phrase) seems absolutely bonkers to me. And this isn't me being a control freak DM. If anything I feel even more strongly about this when I'm a player. If I ask what's in a room and the DM says "what do you think is in the room" I'm gonna say "well, whatever I can see, and I'm waiting for you to tell me what that is because that's how D&D works". But different play styles for different people I guess.
DM: Can I say NO to my players? Nerdarchy: YES, BUT you should try your best not to. Honestly I find most often the NO comes out when the players idea won't work at all given the current state of the world (such as high magic in a low magic setting or enough food for the party in a fire-plane desert) and this includes the meta-states of the world such as HYPER-silly actions in a dark&gritty game or vice-versa.
Not sure if this entirely counts, but one time when the main antagonist of mine made an off-handed comment about someone a PC valued, said PC used their Luckblade's Only wish to both try and kill the villain and reveal the location of the valued NPC. Since the wish was so vague, as in, pretty much worded similar to how I described it, I basically said nothing happens (Though certain truths of the wish did/were to come, as a wish to me is a wish). As a result the player, not the PC, but the player, actually rage quit and left the table. Then proceeded to complain about this to the other players over DIscord whilst the game was still running. I wasn't really sure how to process that, but I eventually just kicked the player from the game entirely.
Can we skin the Bullette? Yes... but you're going to be carrying around 300 lbs of Bullette plate. Oh, and you have a high chance of breaking non-magical items used to 'skin' it.
About the magic armors...why no? To make the teleport effect permanent you need to cast it 365 times, per suit of armor, in analogue to the teleportation circle. And any effect the supresses or disjuncts magic still turns your army into a (politically fatal) liability. Your player would have a "didn't see that coming"- moment normally reserved for supervillains! ;)
"there's a treasure chest", I woulda said Yes, give me a moment. Then looked up a few low key items, and the mimic, leaving one item and some silver/gold coins on the ground around the 'chest', and another slightly stronger item and more valuables inside the mimic. teach them a lesson, rather than just shut it down, but still reward them a bit, for buying in.
As a GM I had a scenario where one of my players constantly mis-reads or mis-understands his abilities, one specific example is we are playing pathfinder and he is playing as a wind walker monk which has the ability of "as a move action you can air walk as the spell up to your fast movement bonus", this player is CONSTANTLY trying to use it during a full round move, or trying to use it to sprint accross huge gaps, the latest thing was he tried to ask for a shortcut around the city by air walking over the mile wide river "in bursts" and I have to say no. If I were to say yes to all of these he would be literally breaking the way that the ability is meant to be used, it would be like a fighter hitting for 3 points of damage and asking "can I just say I killed him"
I take my DM cues from Dr. Evil. When they come up with a gamebreaking idea, you reply, "That would be a big, fat no, Scottie.". The next encouinter is sharks with lasers. Squashes those pc it's all about me moments.
Had a player want to craft magical handcuffs for another player's character cuz the other player allegedly owed him money in rl...I said "that is out of game revenge and is not ok"
I just started in a game this last saturday and the DM had a great chance to say no, but she allowed my idea instead. I am playing a Lizardman Gloomstalker Ranger with a charisma of 4. He tries to be friendly but offering dismembered finger when someone says they are hungry just does not go over too well with others. He has been a riot to play with a sound background and story.
My party keeps asking an "essential" npc to tag along with them, the first time i said no because he had duties to attend to genuinely. But after they expressed that he is a free meatshield, ive decided he is super busy with diplomacy. Any thoughts on how i can say no in a better way?
I have a regular player who liked to grab the weirdest, most out there character concept she can because she likes being "different." So we start a brand new campaign which requires that the characters all be teenagers (or the teenage equivalent for their race) living in this small mining town in the middle of nowhere. The type of town where hopes and dreams go to die because all there is to do there is work in the mines, and eventually everyone does. Except the PCs will find an excuse to escape into a life of adventure. So I tell them going in, "this town has humans, halflings, and goblins" -- I house-ruled goblin PCs -- in huge numbers, with a minority population of dwarves. There is a nearby elven kingdom, so while there aren't any elves there, a handful of half-elves exist. Pick your character's race from that list, please." And all the players get to it and I end up with the halfling rogue who's the daughter of the local tavernkeepr -- she's more rough and tumble than she seems because the tavern is a *miner's* bar, so she knows how to take care of herself. We get a human cleric who was an acolyte at the local temple. We get a Human fighter and a goblin fighter, both of whom are scheduled to start in the mines next summer when they reach adulthood. And then there was *her*. She's one of my most creative players, and I love having her at my table. But when she said, "My character's a centaur..." I immediately said, "No, she's not..." because that was outside of the limits of the campaign's theme.
I have a question for the masses, I wanted to ask my DM if I could play as a Duergar instead of a regular dwarf, would that be a bit too much or too broken?
We're playing 5e, huh, I never knew that, I have a 5e guide but in mine it says nothing about stats or anything referring to the Duergar other than a tidbit of lore.
I let players take over NPC dialogue (gives em someone they like enough to protect if they can put words in their mouth), so I really only say no when they try to make the NPC say/do things that throw everything off. Alfred can give you a treasure map (legit or not), Alfred will neither tell his boss off nor go questing with you.
No you can't shoot your heavy crossbow midair while climbing over a banister just because you rolled a natural 20.......if they hadn't shot it yet I would've allowed it just to let them be cool...but it's a heavy crossbow and you already do a shitton of damage you don't get to shoot it again just because you rolled well trying to do something else...a player actually got very mad at me for not letting him do this.
jeice13 I wasn't referring to the extra damage a heavy crossbow does compared to a hand crossbow I was referring to the ton of damage he already did that turn because he already shot it once?? It would have been way more than an extra 2 damage if he had gotten to shoot it twice in one turn...
We shall love on. It still makes no sense to load it that fast (even with whatever training crossbow expert is supposed to represent) but its not really unbalancing
His heavy crossbow does a d10+2 and the d6 from hunters mark that he had (that's an average of 10 damage on top of his other shot unless Im missing something?) and he got a d8 on top of all that the first time he shot it. The emphasis on the weapon was because heavy crossbows have the loading property ...so there are 2 reasons 1) he already did quite a bit of damage and 2) the heavy crossbow has the loading property. I didn't want to be unfair to the other players since an extra attack would be a pretty big deal for level 3 characters.
I don't agree that silly characters don't working in a serious game. The AI character Poe in Altered Carbon is very silly yet the rest of the show is incredibly dark and serious. Sometimes you need a character that can break the tense.
Yes, but the reasons the dolphins can fly is they are evacuating ahead of world destruction. Do they want to escape on transdimentional dolphins or save their world.
I do say no in very few ocassions, in case a player want to do something a special skill (that he doesn't have and other member of the party has) does. If something could be a game breaking mechanics and I know that player will do that often to solve all his problems If I've lost track of what's happening and there's a very especific rule implied that I can't remember well, nevertheless in this case I state, I'll say no but because I don't know for now.
It's up to you then to establish this idea. First time a player asks about something make it amazingly beneficial for them. (Gold coins, jewels or magic weapon or something) after the others see what that player got as a reward they too will start thinking of interesting ways to use the environment. Reward the behaviour you want!
Simo lemme rephrase this, my players don’t use this in a way that actually is fun and world building. One in particular asks for things that aren’t appropriate like wanting his character to magically be pregnant and get strength bonuses from (in his words) “mad mommy powers”. It’s generally just used to get a rise out of me or other players. And the others just go with the flow since they’re interested in an unfolding narrative with generalized descriptions and asking specifics when pertinent. Mostly.
VikingFyre In that case I recommend you have a good talk at the start of your next session about tone and expectation of your games. Ask the players what they want from there game. Also if your players are acting stupid for a while just sit and wait for them to stop talking crap or go have a break for ten minutes till they shut up. Most importantly have consequences for their actions 'they kill the barman they are hunted and known as murders and thieves' 'player get magically pregnant well now he has disavatage on all Dex rolls and what will he birth? Some sort of uncontrollable horrible monster/demon like an aliens chest buster'
Oh they’ve experienced consequences for stupid stuff. A long running Call of Cthulhu game was ended all because they couldn’t behave themselves and wound up getting themselves killed by an avalanche they were supposed to prevent. My group has ups and downs.
Have you tried just taking complete control of the world yourself? No one says you have to let the players in on the world-building side of things. That's your job, traditionally. Maybe if you didn't give them the option of co-DMing, if you insisted that anything they want to happen they have to make happen with the abilities and resources available to their characters, you could provide a clearer idea of the game world, its themes, flavour, tone and mechanics, and then they would get on board with that instead of wanting to be silly.
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Nerdarchy i have a dilemma. How do you react when you agreed to do something for a player or allowed them to have/do something but later down the road it becomes a huge problem. Is retcon an option?
PC: "There's a treasure chest full of treasure in here right?"
DM: *Lightbulb* "Why yes. Yes there is indeed." (Starts looking up the stats for a mimic)
Once they kill the mimic the gold inside it is cursed
"Hey, we're going to play a stone age setting campaign, do you have any ideas for your character?"
"I wanna play Iron Man"
--My real life example. I bent over backwards trying to make it viable. Player never showed.
the feels
Pirrip Galvin "You can try."
PC: "Can i ____?"
DM: "You can certainly try."
I get told "no" a lot because I enjoy physics and there is an engineer at the table, we get together to try and use physical aspects of the spells to do Rube Goldberg-esk traps and such.
I don't say "No but.." I say "NO!" and then I smack the players hand with a ruler!
usernamedkjah
Right
Are you catholic? You sound like one of my mom's old teachers =P
I'm glad ya'll liked my joke...Maybe I should really do that!
I shoot them with a nerf gun.
I usually have to say no because the players have used up their actions; "no, you don't have cunning action and you've already attacked, so you can't hide."
Sometimes it's because the room is already defined, or to clear up a miscommunication; "No, the hallway branches to the right here, 'left' would actually just be forward, my bad for not making it clearer."
I'm hesitant to engage in communal storytelling because some people would be perfectly capable of engaging such content positively and constructively, and others would need specific systems outlined in order to determine what the limits were because they'd just seek to abuse them. Our current group is 4 veteran players, a moderate skill level player, and two newbies. I'm far less worried about the newbies than the veterans lol
What do you mean I can't play a Tarrasque...?
Frederick Pagliarulo
Let them play the Tarrasque,
And when you let the the other players roll epic characters with ridiculously legendary equipment allow a battle royal.
Im currently running a game where i collaborated with one of my players that wanted to play an evil char and the rest of the party wanted to play heroic chars so he created a necro wizard and slowly built an army while tricking the party into thinking he is a good char. The paty has just realized what has happened and his necro wizard was just visited by orchas and is now a lich and is the final boss for the heroic party lol
I had a player their very first character was a half-elf rogue. She wanted to be born from the goddess of death and have a necklace of 3 wishes that don't go away.....at level 1.
Crumpler64 I would allow it but halve it's wish spell power, no spells above caster level 4. As dm you could make it have draw backs, making it less likely to be spammed
'Yes, but you have to make a sacrifice to have that kind of power. Wish doesn't make sense from a death goddess how about a death ward instead that you can only use once.' that's what I would do
Maybe she could be born from a death goddess but her godly powers isn't activated to its full potential and she's not used to her powers so she's vey inexperienced with it and can be unpredictable. As for her wish granting necklace, it can be literal minded of what she meant and interpret it differently than her, or make it a cursed item with dire consequences.
I would have allowed it. There are so many opportunities for the DM to retcon fix that through her failure to word it well.
Player: "I wish I was immortal.'
DM: Poof, a strange sensation comes over you as you realize your soft supple skin is taking on a distinct blue gray hue as is changes to a really fabulous looking marble. You are now a very finely detailed marble statue, and quite invulnerable to damage. Congratulations."
Party Member: "Wait..wasn't she carrying the gold..."
If a player asks to do something stupid I usually ask "how is your character doing this/going to do this?" Make them do all the hard work of justify their stupidity.
It will either make it interesting or the player will come to their own realisation how stupid they are.
Simo Sure, catch the arrow.
Isn't snatch arrow a feat in the game?
This is how I operate as well. The ol' "you can try" approach always makes 'em think about the actual plausibility of what they want.
"You step into a room that is empty but for a small table in the center of it."
"Is there a magic sword in the room?"
The answer is, "NO!"
Nokomarie the answer is always "yes" followed secretly by the surprise "mimic"
Or yes, but suddenly the sword rises up and attacks you.
This also depends on the maturity level of the players. If you have a first time-er who is used to video games as the closest they've been to a Table Top like D&D suggestions will be like asking an 7 year old for 'what they want from Santa.' If that's the case as a GM you might not want to offer this as an option.
Also a thought on what's appropriate for what type of game: Finding a "Magic Mushroom," could have a VERY different meaning in a gritty game. If a character wanted to find a "Magic Mushroom" in a game like Shadowrun could have the exact same effect as "magic mushrooms" in our world. It would be fun as a GM to run a hallucination on your player & not have them realize things aren't as they perceive them until they have a scene with another PC.
In the two year long campaign I’ve been running I’ve had to say “Maybe when you’re a higher level” more than a flat no.
the DM equal to " maybe, whean you are older"
Most of the time in our group we are pretty reasonable with each other and we dont usually flat-out say no, we usually compromise
I don't DM often but when I do I tend to say ''No'' by just saying stuff like ''Are you absolutely sure that you wish to attack this lord,right in the middle of the court full of knights?'' or smth along those lines. And I don't even need to say no to anything related to character creation by saying ''All races in PHB are ok and these races I've picked are also ok,all normal classes and all subclasses and spells included in phb and XGTE are ok''
I have a table set up for rolling the spells that will be in the new mage's spellbook. They have to FIND the rest.
1st level is guaranteed one general utility (mage hand was a general utility in 2nd edition) and one ranged damage spell. Beyond that... its roll on the tables.
I'll allow ANY character to cast Bigby's Insulting Finger. As a free extra bonus action.
"You raise your hand with just one finger extended. You pick the finger"
To me, "player agency" means the players' actions have consequences. If they want to take over the thieves' guild instead of eradicating it, they can do that. (Of course it cuts both ways, and leaving a villain alive might cause trouble for them later). In other words they have agency in as much as they can shape the world through their actions. This idea of "co-DMing", that they can will something into being because it's "good for the story" (a profoundly fuzzy and subjective phrase) seems absolutely bonkers to me. And this isn't me being a control freak DM. If anything I feel even more strongly about this when I'm a player. If I ask what's in a room and the DM says "what do you think is in the room" I'm gonna say "well, whatever I can see, and I'm waiting for you to tell me what that is because that's how D&D works".
But different play styles for different people I guess.
DM: Can I say NO to my players?
Nerdarchy: YES, BUT you should try your best not to.
Honestly I find most often the NO comes out when the players idea won't work at all given the current state of the world (such as high magic in a low magic setting or enough food for the party in a fire-plane desert) and this includes the meta-states of the world such as HYPER-silly actions in a dark&gritty game or vice-versa.
MrZriael perhaps they can find food in the desert, but it's in the form of a giant rattle snake they have to kill to eat.
Not sure if this entirely counts, but one time when the main antagonist of mine made an off-handed comment about someone a PC valued, said PC used their Luckblade's Only wish to both try and kill the villain and reveal the location of the valued NPC. Since the wish was so vague, as in, pretty much worded similar to how I described it, I basically said nothing happens (Though certain truths of the wish did/were to come, as a wish to me is a wish). As a result the player, not the PC, but the player, actually rage quit and left the table. Then proceeded to complain about this to the other players over DIscord whilst the game was still running. I wasn't really sure how to process that, but I eventually just kicked the player from the game entirely.
Can we skin the Bullette?
Yes... but you're going to be carrying around 300 lbs of Bullette plate. Oh, and you have a high chance of breaking non-magical items used to 'skin' it.
One of my favorite quotes, and I don't remember where its from. But: "God answers all prayers. Sometimes the answer is no."
About the magic armors...why no? To make the teleport effect permanent you need to cast it 365 times, per suit of armor, in analogue to the teleportation circle. And any effect the supresses or disjuncts magic still turns your army into a (politically fatal) liability. Your player would have a "didn't see that coming"- moment normally reserved for supervillains! ;)
"there's a treasure chest", I woulda said Yes, give me a moment.
Then looked up a few low key items, and the mimic, leaving one item and some silver/gold coins on the ground around the 'chest', and another slightly stronger item and more valuables inside the mimic.
teach them a lesson, rather than just shut it down, but still reward them a bit, for buying in.
Best phrases: yes, yes but, yes and, no but
I would add "yes if"
Don't forget "you can try…"
As a GM I had a scenario where one of my players constantly mis-reads or mis-understands his abilities, one specific example is we are playing pathfinder and he is playing as a wind walker monk which has the ability of "as a move action you can air walk as the spell up to your fast movement bonus", this player is CONSTANTLY trying to use it during a full round move, or trying to use it to sprint accross huge gaps, the latest thing was he tried to ask for a shortcut around the city by air walking over the mile wide river "in bursts" and I have to say no. If I were to say yes to all of these he would be literally breaking the way that the ability is meant to be used, it would be like a fighter hitting for 3 points of damage and asking "can I just say I killed him"
When I saw this topic all I could think of was Scott's mech army. I'm glad that you brought it up.
I said: "You can't find that... yet"
"Are you sure you want to try that?"
"That should be interesting. Go ahead and try."
I take my DM cues from Dr. Evil. When they come up with a gamebreaking idea, you reply, "That would be a big, fat no, Scottie.". The next encouinter is sharks with lasers. Squashes those pc it's all about me moments.
Had a player want to craft magical handcuffs for another player's character cuz the other player allegedly owed him money in rl...I said "that is out of game revenge and is not ok"
I just started in a game this last saturday and the DM had a great chance to say no, but she allowed my idea instead. I am playing a Lizardman Gloomstalker Ranger with a charisma of 4. He tries to be friendly but offering dismembered finger when someone says they are hungry just does not go over too well with others. He has been a riot to play with a sound background and story.
My party keeps asking an "essential" npc to tag along with them, the first time i said no because he had duties to attend to genuinely. But after they expressed that he is a free meatshield, ive decided he is super busy with diplomacy. Any thoughts on how i can say no in a better way?
I have a regular player who liked to grab the weirdest, most out there character concept she can because she likes being "different."
So we start a brand new campaign which requires that the characters all be teenagers (or the teenage equivalent for their race) living in this small mining town in the middle of nowhere. The type of town where hopes and dreams go to die because all there is to do there is work in the mines, and eventually everyone does. Except the PCs will find an excuse to escape into a life of adventure. So I tell them going in, "this town has humans, halflings, and goblins" -- I house-ruled goblin PCs -- in huge numbers, with a minority population of dwarves. There is a nearby elven kingdom, so while there aren't any elves there, a handful of half-elves exist. Pick your character's race from that list, please."
And all the players get to it and I end up with the halfling rogue who's the daughter of the local tavernkeepr -- she's more rough and tumble than she seems because the tavern is a *miner's* bar, so she knows how to take care of herself. We get a human cleric who was an acolyte at the local temple. We get a Human fighter and a goblin fighter, both of whom are scheduled to start in the mines next summer when they reach adulthood.
And then there was *her*.
She's one of my most creative players, and I love having her at my table. But when she said, "My character's a centaur..." I immediately said, "No, she's not..." because that was outside of the limits of the campaign's theme.
I have a question for the masses, I wanted to ask my DM if I could play as a Duergar instead of a regular dwarf, would that be a bit too much or too broken?
you will never know if you do not ask just be okay with scaling it down a bit if your DM thinks its a bit much
alright then!
what edition are you playing? Duergar are a player subrace in the 5e Swordcoast Advendturer's guide, which is official published WotC.
We're playing 5e, huh, I never knew that, I have a 5e guide but in mine it says nothing about stats or anything referring to the Duergar other than a tidbit of lore.
No not at all. That's up to the DM to decide. In case if you're wondering, the duergar subrace is on page 104 of the sword coast adventurer guide.
I let players take over NPC dialogue (gives em someone they like enough to protect if they can put words in their mouth), so I really only say no when they try to make the NPC say/do things that throw everything off. Alfred can give you a treasure map (legit or not), Alfred will neither tell his boss off nor go questing with you.
No you can't shoot your heavy crossbow midair while climbing over a banister just because you rolled a natural 20.......if they hadn't shot it yet I would've allowed it just to let them be cool...but it's a heavy crossbow and you already do a shitton of damage you don't get to shoot it again just because you rolled well trying to do something else...a player actually got very mad at me for not letting him do this.
We shall love on. Hahaha, a shitton of damage, right. That extra 2 on average compared to a hand crossbow is terrifying
jeice13 I wasn't referring to the extra damage a heavy crossbow does compared to a hand crossbow I was referring to the ton of damage he already did that turn because he already shot it once?? It would have been way more than an extra 2 damage if he had gotten to shoot it twice in one turn...
We shall love on. Well you did put some emphasis on weapon type, and yes, if you shoot it twice its... 4 EXTRA DAMGE!
We shall love on. It still makes no sense to load it that fast (even with whatever training crossbow expert is supposed to represent) but its not really unbalancing
His heavy crossbow does a d10+2 and the d6 from hunters mark that he had (that's an average of 10 damage on top of his other shot unless Im missing something?) and he got a d8 on top of all that the first time he shot it. The emphasis on the weapon was because heavy crossbows have the loading property ...so there are 2 reasons 1) he already did quite a bit of damage and 2) the heavy crossbow has the loading property. I didn't want to be unfair to the other players since an extra attack would be a pretty big deal for level 3 characters.
As requested, a cat in power armor: 78.media.tumblr.com/baf386cd14ef31d26d21fac98f92a3b8/tumblr_osy0o7OtEg1rn94gdo1_500.jpg
Jeff Bangle ...I'm bringing that into my wargame.
I don't agree that silly characters don't working in a serious game. The AI character Poe in Altered Carbon is very silly yet the rest of the show is incredibly dark and serious. Sometimes you need a character that can break the tense.
Ted has been really killin the Optimus Prime artwork
My players wants to fly on dolphins. What do I tell them? I suppose it could happen, couldn't it?
Yes, but the reasons the dolphins can fly is they are evacuating ahead of world destruction. Do they want to escape on transdimentional dolphins or save their world.
Best phrase "You can try"
That artwork is from Magic the Gathering!
This seems to be more characters dont get to dm than anything
7:40 I had to say no to a silly character in cos
My players want to make a giant Tarrasque Mecha. Thank you, I was in desperate need of this video
I do say no in very few ocassions, in case a player want to do something a special skill (that he doesn't have and other member of the party has) does.
If something could be a game breaking mechanics and I know that player will do that often to solve all his problems
If I've lost track of what's happening and there's a very especific rule implied that I can't remember well, nevertheless in this case I state, I'll say no but because I don't know for now.
I have that dice bag! I love that thing :P
another reason to say no is when your murderhobo player wants to kill the NPC that all 5 other players want alive.
Make it a micro treasure chest. 1 cubic foot
All good points.
My players aren’t creative enough to take advantage of this
It's up to you then to establish this idea. First time a player asks about something make it amazingly beneficial for them. (Gold coins, jewels or magic weapon or something) after the others see what that player got as a reward they too will start thinking of interesting ways to use the environment.
Reward the behaviour you want!
Simo lemme rephrase this, my players don’t use this in a way that actually is fun and world building. One in particular asks for things that aren’t appropriate like wanting his character to magically be pregnant and get strength bonuses from (in his words) “mad mommy powers”. It’s generally just used to get a rise out of me or other players. And the others just go with the flow since they’re interested in an unfolding narrative with generalized descriptions and asking specifics when pertinent. Mostly.
VikingFyre In that case I recommend you have a good talk at the start of your next session about tone and expectation of your games. Ask the players what they want from there game.
Also if your players are acting stupid for a while just sit and wait for them to stop talking crap or go have a break for ten minutes till they shut up.
Most importantly have consequences for their actions 'they kill the barman they are hunted and known as murders and thieves' 'player get magically pregnant well now he has disavatage on all Dex rolls and what will he birth? Some sort of uncontrollable horrible
monster/demon like an aliens chest buster'
Oh they’ve experienced consequences for stupid stuff. A long running Call of Cthulhu game was ended all because they couldn’t behave themselves and wound up getting themselves killed by an avalanche they were supposed to prevent.
My group has ups and downs.
Have you tried just taking complete control of the world yourself? No one says you have to let the players in on the world-building side of things. That's your job, traditionally. Maybe if you didn't give them the option of co-DMing, if you insisted that anything they want to happen they have to make happen with the abilities and resources available to their characters, you could provide a clearer idea of the game world, its themes, flavour, tone and mechanics, and then they would get on board with that instead of wanting to be silly.
No!
Ah yes, the the Gryphongaffe Armor!
I had a player say he was "going to use [his] mad PDF skills to make a bugbear paladin." I said, "Heh ... No."