Best Situations where you had to improvise what the rules don't cover...


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


What are some situations as a DM that your players ran into something that the rules didn't cover?

Or as a player, how did your DM overcome this sort of situation?

Here's an example. We had a halfling Rogue who wanted to sneak into someone's Jail cell - The DM had him roll escape artist to squeeze through the bars into the cell. Thus using the skill backwards.

Or here's another one. We were fighting a Vampire Lord with custom defined weaknesses indoors. We needed there to be sunlight in order to deal damage to the Vampire, so the party Wizard threw a couple of fire balls against the wall and blew a hole open in the castle's dining room - letting in the sun.

I think the second example is more of a situation that is defined in the rules, but a less than conventional use of an otherwise strictly blast spell - but I'd like to hear about those kinds of situations too.

Silver Crusade

My 280lbs-of-fat hotei monk used Monkey Style to get on top of a (high) tree where an evil rogue was shooting at us.
I grabbed him, and angel-jumped on the rocky ground a good dozen meters below, with him as a pillow.

The rules questions were :

"How much damage did I just dealt ?"
"How much do I suffer ?"
"When will everyone stop laughing because of what I just did ? Will the people I play with ever breathe again ?"


I love improv combat, really. Fully half of the combats I participate in, whether playing or running, would take SO LONG to parse under each possible permutation of rulings that could apply that improvising an answer is the best alternative.

"Alright, so I'm charging through the window with this guy underneath me. I made the grapple check, so how much is the falling damage?"

"What's the damage of a tree thrown through a T-Rex's mouth interior?"

(From a diff game) "How much damage should a critically-hit lead crystal ashtray do to a distracted person from behind on a called shot to the head?"

"What's the damage of a gold coin at maximum terminal velocity?"

"How good of a strength check do I need to throw a person onto a 4 foot spike and impale them? What would the damage of that be?"

You know the improv is getting out of hand when the majority of players know the damage of throwing one individual at another better than they know the basic damage of a charge attack with a lucern hammer, battle axe, or spiked chain.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Maxximilius wrote:


The rules questions were :
"How much damage did I just dealt ?"

1d6 per 10 feet of falling, per the falling rules.

Maxximilius wrote:

"How much do I suffer?"

1d6 per 10 feet of falling, though you could argue that the rogue was acting as soft ground and convert the first 1d6 to nonlethal (me being a physics major I really don't think it would work out this way since people are on the whole not very soft compared to mud, but I would allow it since I as a DM like to encourage my players to pull strange stunts). Or you could argue that you are entitled to make an acrobatics check to reduce the damage by 1d6 (I really doubt you could land correctly while holding someone though).

Maxximilius wrote:
"When will everyone stop laughing because of what I just did ? Will the people I play with ever breathe again ?"

Sometime after they stop laughing at my party's monk for using immovable rods to swing his way into the sky and drop things on people.


I remember in a 1st edition game we encountered a bunch of orcs on the other side of a 10-foot wide chasm. The barbarian won initiative and threw his axe killing an orc. He was so excited that next round he threw his shield, killing an orc. The third round he decided that the halfling thief was pretty smart so he threw the halfling, killing an orc. In 1st edition barbarians were not known for their brilliance. They could have a maximum (yes, I do mean maximum) Wisdom of 15. This player chose Wisdom to be a dump stat.


D20 modern- dark matter

-The balance DC for standing on a Grey's space ship while said ship was invisible and hovering next to a moving train

-The effects of being enveloped in concentrated dark matter.

-The DC to recognize Chuck Scheumer while Chuck was in period costume for the American revolution.

-The reaction of an elephant standing next to someone that had just fired a gun (at someone other than the elephant)

Silver Crusade

Tikael wrote:


1d6 per 10 feet of falling, per the falling rules.

I would gladly agree with this rules lawyering, since I'm no stranger to these to begin with.

The question here was more about the total damage, including for my monk's weight (do I inflict additional damage equal to a falling object of my weight/2 because of soft material ?) ; if I had to do several grapple checks (fun factor + plausible evasion checks + potential to fail or win horribly), if I had a way to suffer less damage thanks to rogue pillow + acrobatic check (M. Bison's Ultra Combo 1 from Street Fighter IV ?), etc.
It's not really a case of "there are no rules", but "this precise situation needs to play with and twist a lot of rules you almost never need".


Maxximilius wrote:
Tikael wrote:


1d6 per 10 feet of falling, per the falling rules.

I would gladly agree with this rules lawyering, since I'm no stranger to these to begin with.

The question here was more about the total damage, including for my monk's weight (do I inflict additional damage equal to a falling object of my weight/2 because of soft material ?) ; if I had to do several grapple checks (fun factor + plausible evasion checks + potential to fail or win horribly), if I had a way to suffer less damage thanks to rogue pillow + acrobatic check (M. Bison's Ultra Combo 1 from Street Fighter IV ?), etc.
It's not really a case of "there are no rules", but "this precise situation needs to play with and twist a lot of rules you almost never need".

I think it's a funny situation, and I'd probably say that the Thief is Dead and the monk has a DC vs. Fortitude chance of falling unconscious and taking X damage or Y damage based on the roll - for speed and simplicities sake.

If he failed the DC, then I'd say he'd fall unconscious with a proud smile on his face.

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Jumping off a ledge with a rope in one hand towards a large sized, flying enemy who has an ally in a grapple. My character wants to grapple this large sized foe and pass the rope to the ally.

How would that work?

The Huge, Gargantuan, and Colossal foes? I want to climb them in combat. How does that work? I was pretty sure the answer was going to be in Ultimate Combat, and the art suggests that it might have been at one point.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Maxximilius wrote:


The question here was more about the total damage, including for my monk's weight (do I inflict additional damage equal to a falling object of my weight/2 because of soft material?

I would say no, if you are grappling then you are technically going to be the same "object" and subject to all the same forces as each other. If you had pushed him out of the tree then jumped on him then yes you would act as a falling object but you would necessarily take the same damage as him (this cannot be mitigated for only one object in the collision).


CalebTGordan wrote:

Jumping off a ledge with a rope in one hand towards a large sized, flying enemy who has an ally in a grapple. My character wants to grapple this large sized foe and pass the rope to the ally.

How would that work?

The Huge, Gargantuan, and Colossal foes? I want to climb them in combat. How does that work? I was pretty sure the answer was going to be in Ultimate Combat, and the art suggests that it might have been at one point.

I have 2 house rules for situations like this (yes, they come up so often in my games, we needed whole new house rules).

First: If you succeed on a grapple against something 2+ size categories different from you, something fun happens; if you grapple a smaller foe, you do not gain the grappled condition, but loose the use of one hand (similar to the Grab special ability); if you grapple a larger foe, it does not gain the grappled condition, but is instead slowed. Whilst grappling an opponent 2+ size categories larger than you, you can move one square on said opponent after succeeding a maintaining grapple attempt. Also, because the opponent isn't grappled, he doesn't have to try and pull you off. He can just attack you. Unless you move around to it's back, then it needs to dislodge you before it can attack you (kinda like having to escape a pin before attempting any other grapple-countering maneuvers).
Second: Attacks from an opponent 2+ size categories larger than you still risk hitting you if they missed by the size penalty on attack rolls (after taking into account your own size penalty to AC; if you are small sized (+1 AC) and a Huge elemental misses you, it would have to miss by 3 (2+1) or less to trigger this. For a gargantuan to trigger this against a Large creature, it would have to miss by 3 also (4-1). The attack then becomes a Reflex save, DC = the attack roll that missed. This is because a Titan's Hammer has a head larger than a square on a grid, so we like to treat it like an area attack in certain circumstances.


My favorite one (which comes up as often as I can pull it off) involves Fly and Feather Tokens.

Round one- tanglefoot bag (or Web, or Black Tenticles, or whatever you need to do to keep someone from moving) and fly straight up. Second round fly up again and break a token.

How much damage do you deal to someone when you drop a giant tree on them? Or how about a Galley ship? What if you drop it on the house they're in?

Twice I've seen a GM just facepalm and take the bad guy off the board. No rolls, just shrug and sigh.

Silver Crusade

Tikael wrote:
Maxximilius wrote:


The question here was more about the total damage, including for my monk's weight (do I inflict additional damage equal to a falling object of my weight/2 because of soft material?
I would say no, if you are grappling then you are technically going to be the same "object" and subject to all the same forces as each other. If you had pushed him out of the tree then jumped on him then yes you would act as a falling object but you would necessarily take the same damage as him (this cannot be mitigated for only one object in the collision).

You mean, except with the monk being the one on the good side of the rocks, and the rogue on the bad side of the sandwich ? There is applying RAW like a Lawful Archon, and there is having fun when the situation is just calling for it ; and it's coming from a rules lawyer.


It seems crushing enemies with large objects or using them as pillows is common.

I had a druid that liked to change into a bird, fly over enemies, and then change into something large and heavy. Typically rhinos. The DM hated on me alot.

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My brother tired to tie the tree feather token to arrows and then shoot them at people. He never succeeded in making the combo work though, even though I gave it a chance.

He also bought the largest bag of holding and then went to the sea and let it fill up with water. It served as a security device (anyone turning it inside out would have a fun surprise,) and as a fun trump card in combats. In combination with freedom of movement and a few other spells he would turn the bag inside out and flash flood the area, knocking just about everyone over. If the space was small enough and confined enough it would also put anyone not prepared in a sudden underwater battle.

He also wanted to buy alchemist's fire by the barrel. I agreed to let him do this but reminded him that without the help of an alchemist and proper lab he couldn't open the barrel or tap it without risking explosion. He ended up almost killing the party with it when he threw it into a gelatinous cube I had given the fiendish template to, and as a result had enough intelligence to pick up levels in monk. The g.cube dissolved the wood of the barrel and the exposed explosive inside of it combusted, causing more then 100d6 of damage in a 40 ft. radius. Most of the PC were able to take cover, but a couple didn't make it.

Another fun equipment trick that made me think about how things would work was when the Decanter of Endless Water, a drill, and a couple spells were used in conjunction with each other to take care of some troublesome foes in a small room. It was discovered that there were some troublesome foes in a room that had only one door and no windows. Using a couple spells to seal the door and keep it shut, a hole was drilled into the door the decanter was used to fill the room with water. Math had to be done to figure out how fast the room would fill, but the technique worked well enough for that situation.


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Similar to the tying trees to arrows before, I had an archer who managed several times to make holes in enemy ships in a nautical campaign by using this tactic. It's pretty easy to hit the broad side of a warship, and then suddenly there's a warship inside your warship and that's bad.

Yo dawg, I heard you like to sail so I put a warship in your warship so you can sail while you sail.


Ryuko wrote:

Similar to the tying trees to arrows before, I had an archer who managed several times to make holes in enemy ships in a nautical campaign by using this tactic. It's pretty easy to hit the broad side of a warship, and then suddenly there's a warship inside your warship and that's bad.

Yo dawg, I heard you like to sail so I put a warship in your warship so you can sail while you sail.

Dude, you rock. I haven't laughed that hard in a while. I'm totally stealing this.


Maxximilius wrote:

My 280lbs-of-fat hotei monk used Monkey Style to get on top of a (high) tree where an evil rogue was shooting at us.

I grabbed him, and angel-jumped on the rocky ground a good dozen meters below, with him as a pillow.

The rules questions were :

"How much damage did I just dealt ?"
"How much do I suffer ?"
"When will everyone stop laughing because of what I just did ? Will the people I play with ever breathe again ?"

Don't forget to apply 1d6 of that damage *you* take as non-lethal since you landed on a yielding surface (that other guy). We applied this when I rode a roc all the way to the ground after the ranged people killed it.

19d6 lethal damage, 1d6 for yielding surface. Then the saves vs drowning in.. roc bits.

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