Some players are on MinMax overdrive
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2024
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"Okay, so he gets to make a dexterity saving throw... That's a 16, so he manages to sidestep you and you take the full damage. ...No, he doesn't have disadvantage, you made a huge shadow above him, he knew you were coming. Anyway, he continues his monologue, using your actions as an example of the foolishness of humanity."
Brontosaurus is gargantuan, so you'd have to do a lot more than side step to get out of the way.
Nope. The rules for falling on a creature don't factor in size, except for if it knocks the target prone. The check is DC15 to dodge.
Nope. Those rules are optional, and dumb, and now outdated.
First of all, if I'm the DM, you don't get to tell me not to use a rule.
Second of all, there will not be a situation where I use the 2024 ruleset. The 2014 ruleset is still around, and still usable, and anyone calling it outdated is an idiot.
Third, this is the only official rule given for this situation. If we don't use it, there is no rule for falling on someone and we resolve it however I like. And since you just tried to interrupt my monologue, I'm not inclined to be generous.
First of all, lol, we are probably not very compatible.
Secondly, they are literally outdated in an official capacity. I find they are improved for the most part, but have fun being so self-righteous about them.
Thirdly, no, they have improvised damage rules, which they specifically list large objects falling on players as examples. Improvised damage under Combat in chapter 8.
That rule was optional in an add-on book most tables won't have, and didn't get brought forward into the new core rules, unlike the other optional rules. There's probably a good reason for that.
There's a lot of things I can say about this. To summarise:
All of that hardly matters, because you responded to a DM ruling by saying "nope". No shit we're incompatible. At the VERY least, I want my players to respect me.
That's what all the new content for the next 10 years will be based on. The old core rules are still there, but everything new will be based on the new books. That's a lot like saying not everyone will be playing a sequel, which is true, but the community will shift over to it in time. The new PHB is there fasting selling book ever, so that gonna be pretty fast. Especially once more new content comes out and is incompatible with the old rules
I don't care about your moral argument here, even if I agree with your stance, that's not what I'm here for. If your stance is that strong, I would recommend leaving DnD behind and moving to Pathfinder or another alternative, otherwise every new discussion will be covering materials you refuse to consume (for completely understandable reasons). Your players are going to want to something from the new rules at some point, and you will have to be the bad guy there. Even by being here and discussing the game, you are consuming the new rules and driving engagement with them.
Ok? The new DMG is out. This rule is not in there.
I find that unlikely. Everyone has the free rules, and a lot of the DMG content is in the free rules. You'd have to find some way of doing encounter math, which the free rules has, but I'm sure a lot of paper players have the DMG, even if just for that.
They updated falling in the new PHB, including adding a DC15 (Athletics) or (Acrobatics) to change a fall into a dive when falling into a liquid to take half damage. Your telling me they couldn't have added a very similar rule, or even added onto that section to include falling onto other creatures if they wanted to?
Your right, all of this doesn't matter. This rule takes the fun out of dropping something big onto someone as size doesn't matter for fall damage. Players might as well drop themselves onto the BBEG, same effect. You killed my fun, so I'm not participating with you.
If a simple nope ticks you off that much, I'm not sure who you could play with. Do you remember every rule interaction off the top of your head? Never get anything wrong? I play with players and DMs of vastly varying skill and experience levels and everyone gets something wrong every session. If someone corrects them and they snap about respect, whether DM or player, that's a bridge too far and we would all be having words afterwards, if it didn't derail the session right then and there.
Respect is something which is earned and goes both ways. Saying your rule is law like your Aku doesn't seem very respectful.
But you're not correcting me. I am using a rule correctly and you don't like it. You're not being helpful, you're being entitled.
I was in the middle of a monologue, and you tried to divebomb the BBEG. That's highly disrespectful, but I'm accommodating and give you a chance to succeed using the existing rules. It doesn't work out the way you want, so you tell me not to use those rules because they're dumb. And you call ME disrespectful for calling you out?
Your using a bad rule most people don't know about, which leads to a lot of bad outcomes, from a source a lot of tables won't have.
I think it's truly best for the game to just not use this rule. As in, it's dumb. The designers clearly agreed, given they didn't bring this rule forward, but did bring the diving into liquid rule off the same page. TCoE 170.
This rule breaks peoples intuition of how they expect falling objects to behave. It's harder to dodge a larger falling thing, and that it would do more damage. And of course easier to dodge a smaller falling thing, that would do less damage. Object still follow that rule, per the improvized damage rules, but for some reason creatures don't? If you take that farther, at some point you'd have to put a stop to it, or else you'd end up ruling it's a DC15 to dogde a city sized creature creature landing on you. So, where is that line?
If I had known ahead of time that we were using that rule, I wouldn't have done the above combo. If I wanted to something similar in this scenario, I'd use conjure animals to drop 8 giant owls on top of the BBEG, because size doesn't matter with this rule. You rolled one 16, but you still have to roll 7 more times to dodge the other creatures falling on you. That's a potential 80d6 (8*20d6 split between the creature and the BBEG).
In the brontosaurus scenario as above, I would argue the falling player has advantage as a sort of unseen attacker, which means your rolling that saving throw at disadvantage. And most high(er) CR creatures have low dex mods. Doing the math here, this will work 84% of the time. Even if there dex mod is +5, it will still work 70% of the time. Even without advantage, 60%. It won't be enough damage on to kill everything, but on average you can still kill some creatures up to CR12.
RAW, with only 1 player making 1 attempt with, it's going to work out most of the time. You can say "you fools, I rolled a 16" all you like, but that only potentially saves your BBEG from the worst version of this combo. That's without players debuffing dex saves through something like hex, using multi conjure spells, or trying multiple times.
Imagine how you would feel if your players did this to every one of your boss encounters, or even just your BBEG. I don't think you would feel very respected at that point. I know I wouldn't.
I've never met a player at a table who knows about this rule, the community clearly doesn't know about this rule, hence the above meme, and the insect plague meme recently, and the old fairy/polymorph memes. Odds are this is going to be a surprise for one party or another, usually both. And it won't be a fun surprise for either. I'm sure you've gone over this niche rule with your tables, but I find it much more likely that players expect to work like described in all these memes and posts, and yeah, they are gonna be mad when it doesn't work like they would expect it to.
That's why I'm telling you to not use these rules at all, to just avoid the whole concept that has been problematic for the entire history of the edition. Otherwise the optimal build for every charecter is to get as many 3rd level spells slots as they can.
Call it what you want. By RAW, it's a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw to avoid damage regardless of the size of the falling creature (beyond that if it's tiny it does no damage at all). And that's assuming you're playing with the optional rules for creatures falling on other creatures causing damage.
I've seen that rule before. They didn't carry it forward into the new rules, and for good reasons.
That rule comes from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything which is compatible with the 2024 update so it's still a valid RAW interpretation according to WOTC.
They carried forward all the other optional rules from Tasha's, and not the that one. Clearly they didn't like something about it.
They didn't carry Artificers forward into the new PHB but they're still a valid class. This rule not being in the newest books only means it didn't need modification to fit with the new material not that it is no longer valid.
2024 is not a new version that completely replaces 2014, it's an update where things stay the same unless they're mentioned in the newer material, hence all the official adventure books being compatible with 2024.
I'd agree in general, but they copied the other rule about falling into liquid off the same page from Tasha's without modifications and not the rules for falling onto other creatures.
They specifically chose not to have those rules when it would have been no effort to add them.
And they did update falling, by adding the section about falling into liquid, and describing it as a hazard.
That signals to me they very clearly did not want those rules as the new baseline for the game.
That's a valid argument. I still disagree, but I can see your point.
Obviously you don’t wildshape until you’re about to hit.
At terminal velocity? You're gonna need to make a damn good check to time that right.
This isn't a physics sim. This is a roleplaying game.
😉
To continue the quote, physics are what I allow them to be.
Going by the pure rules, you don't have enough time to wildshape. You just splatter. I'm being kind by giving you the opportunity at all.
From this response and the others given here I think you should have better said "... this is MY roleplaying game". I don't think I would enjoy this attitude as a player.
That beeing said, you do yours. As long as you are having fun and you have players that enjoy your style of DMing, that's all fine.
Not everybodies playstyle is compatible, and that is a good thing, because different people enjoy different things. I'm saying this because I want to make clear that I'm not trying to make a personal attack here.
No matter what the real world laws of physics are, the GM is the final arbiter of the rules. That's not an ego thing. That's just how it works. Everyone's roleplaying game works the same, even if they have different rulings.
Now, let's quickly picture this scene where the GM instead rolls 14. The BBEG is making his speech, then a shadow falls over him, he looks up, and gets crushed by a brontosaurus. He's resiliant, having taken only half the fall damage, but he's knocked prone and at a serious disadvantage as everyone rolls initiative.
Would anyone complain about the optional rule being used? Would anyone argue there should be no shadow because "the sun wouldn't be there" or "I hadn't transformed yet"? And if they decided to make that check to transform right before impact and succeeded, would they complain about the high DC due to the high speed?
I don't think they would. I think they're only complaining because the GM didn't give them what they wanted. They don't care about the game, they just care about getting their own way.
I agree. I am not compatible with that playstyle.
Somehow I doubt it was established that the fight was at noon on the equator until that moment.
This isn't a physics sim. This is a roleplaying game. Physics are what I allow them to be and it's funnier for falling creatures to have a drop shadow.
If it's large enough to impose disadvantage on a Dex save it's large enough to cast a noticable enough shadow to grant advantage, therefore a flat roll.
The dex save has nothing to do with size (beyond needing to be Small or larger to deal any damage at all). I assume the Disadvantage was because they didn't see you.