As opposed to mass polymorph or true polymorph which both explicitly say that you choose.
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I’m always kind of amazed that DND is such a big budget game that has so many weird problems.
5e is in this weird space where, on the one hand, it’s loose and flexible, but on the other, it’s designed around balanced encounters and precise readings of kind of a lot of rules.
I found it an exhausting balancing act as a DM.
Don’t worry. It sounds like WotC is planning to fix the issue with not enough people wanting to DM their jank by implementing AI DMs in their new VTT.
They did say before that no one at Wizards was working on AI DMs, but it’s all but officially confirmed Hasbro had a 3rd party working on it for them. That’s why you gotta keep your eye out for those little loopholes. 😲
Yeah, I remember that. Along with the focus on digital tools, all I can think is, That’s a video game. You’re designing a video game. Those already exist. That is not what your flagship product is.
Seriously. If I want to play a video game, I can already do that. Even some amazing D&D video games! But the reason tabletop D&D and other RPGs haven’t been supplanted by video games isn’t because the technology wasn’t there yet, but because they do a different thing entirely. If they made Digital D&D, and even if it turned out amazing, it would be a completely distinct type of game, not a new edition of D&D.
Well, at least they promised that rumors of a planned $30 subscription fee weren’t true.
If video published games publisher put out titles with gamebreaking bugs and expected the player’s computer or console to figure out what was wrong and fix them, there would be riots.
I’m always kind of amazed how many people defend WotC putting out products with so many weird problems and expecting DMs to just shadow-patch the issues and not complain about it.Right? And a lot of websites provide a front end, but imagine if you had to look up the API docs, figure out auth, and do your own http post to reply to messages here. “it’s more flexible that way. the DM can decide if they want to use like postman, or requests, or write their own tool!”
I mean this site is hardly the big budget Triple-A title equivalent of D&D. It’d be more like if the new version of Twitter/𝕏 did that.
““I acknowledge the rulebook has made a decision, but given that it is a stupid decision, I have elected to ignore it””
–several people here probably“Fine then. I cast Fireball instead.”
“You know, it doesn’t say you can choose which spell to cast.”
There’s a whole chapter dedicated to spellcasting rules. There’s a fair number of steps involved beyond just choosing which spell you want to cast. There’s a wide variety of reasons that might not work, especially since there no rule that allows you to change what you’re casting after you start.
It doesn’t normally talk about choosing. Like it says you can move during your turn, but not that you can choose if you move or where to move. If the DM chooses everything that the rules don’t specifically say the player can choose, then they’re practically playing the game by themselves.
It actually does say you can choose if you move, several things about when you can choose to move, and lots of stuff about when you can’t move or how much it cost you to move, or to move in certain ways, but you’re correct that (unless you’re using the Variant: Playing on a Grid) the game rules never specifically say the character moving gets to choose where they move, only how far.
Of note; certain game effects, such as the frightened condition, or the effects of spells like dissonant whispers or confusion can limit, enhance or control certain aspects of a character’s movement that might need to be wordier if a specific blanket general rule explicitly said players can choose where to move.
Also of note; The example given in the rule for using the Ready action if “you choose to move up to your speed” (emphasis mine) is “If the goblin steps next to me, I move away.” This example implies that you do at least choose which direction, at least in general, you’re moving when you choose how much to move, even if you don’t get to choose exactly where to move to.
Another noteworthy rule; Becoming Lost under the Wilderness Survival section clearly indicates a circumstance where the characters do not decide where to move, but the do determine a desired direction and a successful ability check allows them to move in that direction.
Certain exceptions apply; for instance, some means of movement such as the spell dimension door do allow to choose exactly where to move, (certain restrictions apply,) or if a creature is an independent mount is “it moves and acts as it wishes.” (Being an exception based game certain rules may contradict that creature’s wishes, such as the rule that says you can move up to your speed on your turn.)
Automatic disadvantage on your next roll for rules lawyering the DM.
I personally just rules lawyer back twice as hard.
- Well, technically revivify requires you to target a creature not the corpse of a creature…
- Actually detect magic doesn’t exclude itself, and the passive detection is pass/fail, so unless you’re immune to divination…
- Oh, the demi-lich got errata’d to have more hit dice, but they never “corrected” the default hp based on the special Undead Nature trait, so now it actually has %60 more hit points than the stat block would imply.
- Sure, freedom of movement lets you escape these non-magical restraints, but you have to spend 5 feet of movement to do it and your speed is currently 0.
A fair chunk That Guy’s tricks depend on a lenient or permissive DM/cherry-picking the most favorable rules & interpretations. If you don’t shadow-patch a bunch of fixes to make things work how people expect them to the game breaks down. If they want me strictly following the rules I’m happy to oblige, but I’ve never seen a powergaming munchkin who could withstand the amount of nerfing actually playing RAW causes.
