Hello, first of I would like to start by saying I am a fresh off the block DM. I have studied many rukes, but I still have trouble understanding the difference of different actions in a turn (other than move and standard), i constantly have to re find and remind myself of various rules on combat and some things on how the game works. I do my best to interpret the rules as best I can, and I tend to make judgment calls on the fly leaning a little closer to "would it be fun" rather than "do the rules say you can" unless its something i know I should be strict on.
I have been DM'ing my first time for about 6 months now, I decided I would do an entirely homebrewed reality based on 80's sci fi cyberpunk, think Blade Runner and Mad Max-ish... Because im a masochist and didn't understand the massive undertaking of pseudo modernizing pathfinder and fitting things to this setting.
Ok, onto my problem. During a fight with sand pirates on a desert moon, one of my players was a female orc skald in our party and was facing off against the captain of these pirates, a large gnoll barbarian with a cyborg cannonball cannon arm special attack. During the fight up to the boss she managed to retrieve a few magic flaming arrows off some crossbow weilding guards she killed. In my stats for these arrows they did normal damage (1d8) plus 1 point of fire damage a turn until removed, and on a Critical Hit they would ignite the person on fire. The problem came when the orc skald wanted to take the arrows out and use mage hand to lift one and try to stab the gnoll barbarian with it in hopes of setting it on fire. I explained that thematically the arrows always burst into flames while traveling through the air, the friction would spark them. This had already been shown to be the case when they were used against the players 3 times a moment before. She said she would just shake them rapidly then when they ignite hand them off to the mage hand. I explained that even if that would work that mage hand moves 15 feet slowly as a full action (if i remember correctly) and that speed wouldn't allow any sort of puncture through his thick armor. Then she said she just wanted to touch the arrow to his fur to light him on fire. We ended up getting into a little bit of an argument after i said no that wouldn't work and we debated semantics. After it got out of hand I put my fist down and just said "No."
Now I want to say I rarely if ever say "No." I prefer "you can definitely try..." And i encourage creative spell use.
Anyhow she felt it was a reasonable action to attempt, and i gave in and said if she was heart set on trying it she could. This obviously made her not do it assuming i wouldn't allow any attempt and it would be a waste of time. My thoughts were that the boss was 20 feet away, too far for the hand to travel in one turn, then that the fire would need crossbow strength friction to ignite and it wouldn't be like a roaring flame, just a magical fire effect on impact and so just setting it on something flammable wouldn't work because it needed to pierce something to set fire to it. She argues that if it had fire on it it shouldn't matter if it pierces or not. And in my mind i already set that it only actually set fire to people on a CRITICAL HIT. So for me it just seems overly complicated and difficult and wouldn't work. This resulted in bickering between us and caused tension between us the rest of the session in which she continues to ask permission to attempt anything at all to get my "approval" first.
This caused a lot of problems with the other players who tried to jump in and defend me by saying "DM's word is law, its ok come up with another plan..." But then she would argue semantics with them.
Anyhow, this situation felt stupid and its still causing arguments about how we both believed it should or should not have worked. So i have come here to ask if anyone else believed my ruling was sound? Or did i drop the ball and should have her just try it and fail without ever saying why? I was worried that would cause issues in itself. Was I in the wrong? Please let me know your thoughts on this subject below. Thank you for reading all this. I look forward to any advice about how to handle situations like this in the future.
(I'm typing on a phone, apologies for any typos)
The biggest problem here is a player trying to decide how the world works, when that's normally the job of the GM, and then trying to argue with the GM instead of letting it go and doing something else.
How else could you have handled it? As long as game balance isn't ruined, there's no harm in stretching the rules a little to allow more creativity. The skald could just have picked up a crossbow and fired the crossbow bolts, so allowing an action of similar effectiveness would have been reasonable:
"Makes a ranged touch attack. On a hit, the gnoll takes 1 fire damage per round until removed as a standard action. On a crit, he catches fire and takes 1d6 damage per round instead."
That would probably have led to a more fun gaming session, even if it's not how you originally imagined things working.
Quote: mage hand moves 15 feet slowly as a full action (if i remember correctly) Standard action to activate, then 15 feet per move action. So you could move it 30 feet in a round if you activated the spell on the previous round.
30 feet per round is 3.4mph, so you could legitimately argue that you wouldn't be able to hit a mobile foe with something that slow.
Plus there's the small fact that mage hand specifically says it can't be used to move magical items, so wouldn't work. But congratulations on your homebrew world, if you have any other questions, that's what this forum is for.
First, download a free copy of Troll in the Corner's Guide to Combat and print it out for your folder. It will help you with keeping track of the different actions in a round.
Second, it's a good idea to chat with your players at times like this and encourage their creativity, but you have to remind them that if the effect they want to achieve with a spell or ability is not in the book description, then it usually can't be achieved in that manner. Games like the classic Marvel Superheroes were designed with unlimited creativity in mind, while Pathfinder encourages creativity within the ruleset.
Mage Hand just moves too slow to use to attack. That's why it's a cantrip. That said, at the table, let your player try such a thing if they wish and just let them know that it doesn't move fast enough to cause damage after they've tried it.
Alternately, you could explain that before they try it, so they don't waste an action. You can also just try to meet them halfway and say it hits for 1 point minimum but the arrow won't penetrate enough for the flaming effect to come into play.
Once players start making their own effects for abilities, they tend to crack the game and run wild. There are other abilities that can accomplish such a thing such as the Occult Adventures zero level spell of Telekinetic Projectile.
In effect, the player asking to use Mage Hand is such a way is also asking you to discount Telekinetic Projectile and effectively invalidates that ability for Occult classes. That's why they have to stick to the effects listed in the spell description. Stick to what's written and encourage them to be creative within those definitions.
Once they come to that understanding, the game will move along without these conflicts. Don't shy away from handing out a simple +1 circumstance bonus from time to time or a minor amount of damage such as a single point but no more.
I've found the best thing to do when a conflict pops up at the table, is to start the next session by reminding everyone that the game is not Players vs GM, but that you want them to succeed and are doing the best to help them play the game as they like. To that end, you have to interpret the rules to the best of your ability and they should support you in your efforts to do so.
If an argument breaks out mid-game, just take a breath and say "this is how we're going to handle it today. We can talk more about it after the session and we will review the rules section during the week, but we need to continue the game for now."
I would definitely let her try her attempt. It won't work and she will have wasted her turn. Arguing with the GM for longer than a few exchanges is a problem and needs to be addressed, in private if possible. The fact that she wouldn't let it go shows a lack of maturity on her part and if that type of behavior continues, more drastic actions will have to be taken.
New players sometimes think that everything they think up should be able to work. There is a fine line between "thinking outside the box" to solve problems and abusing the rules(which often they have no idea about). It can take awhile for some players to find out where the line is.
Your mistake was getting drawn into an argument during the game. Before it got to any sort of a debate, just say my ruling is that you can't do that, and I don't want to take any time out of the game to discuss it. I'll be happy to discuss it with you at some point after the game, but for now we are going to move on.
The argument probably arose from her being told she couldn't do something. I know a few people like that. She can do whatever she wants. It just would not achieve anything. In this case I think you should have let her do whatever she suggested, but ruled that it didn't work when she did it. The arrows seemed to have specific rules to activate and her character seemingly does not know those rules.
I would see it playing out like this. Player shakes the arrows vigorously to ignite them. You respond that they do not ignite. She would probably next move them through the air with her mage hand to see if that would ignite them. It of course would not, and when she seemingly hit the monster with it, it would not do any more damage than you figure poking someone with 5lbs of force would achieve (1 damage?).
Doing it that way would let the player work out on their own that these magic arrows have rules that have to be met to work. If they tried to argue after that, then the fault for holding up the game is theirs. By telling her it wouldn't work, you gave her character information she would not have had otherwise. That allowed her to suggest that it should work the way she wants them to.
It is impossible not to get caught in these situation even for experienced GMs, and when you do, you have to put your foot down. In that regard you were right. Her constantly asking for permission is juvenile, but your response should be "You can do whatever you want. That is the fun of the game."
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"female orc skald in our party and was facing off against the captain of these pirates, a large gnoll barbarian with a cyborg cannonball cannon arm"
This is so metal that reading it made my eyes spark irl
I think you made the right call. It's totally reasonable not to have these arrows ignite from the mage hand, and honestly, probably not even from the shaking. The mage hand can move something up to 30 feet a round (if you use your move and standard to move it). The mage hand can't pick up something that is magic (you might handwave and rule away this rule: it's probably in there to prevent some possible abuse of the spell that you may or may not run into).
So lets assume you ignore the bit about not picking up magical items. At the point where you are levitating a flaming object at someone, your brave orcess faces a new challenge- it's too slow to actually make an attack roll with. She could hurl it at someone, like a torch, and at least in 3.X that could deal 1d3 fire damage, but with mage hand she doesn't have the velocity to hit the guy if he's aware and reacting. If he's not aware, he'll become away when a fire is brought close to him- I'd probably rule something on the spot like, 1d3 damage, some basic reflex save for half, but properly, I don't think she can attack someone with mage hand. You need to do a lot of house rules with mage hand to actually get it to be any manner of weapon with something as simple as a flaming stick. By rules, you could probably find a way to levitate over some type of bomb or grenade (notice it has to be a mundane bomb or grenade), at which point it would lazily duplicate rules for throwing a splash weapon at a square.
Matthew Downie wrote: .
How else could you have handled it? As long as game balance isn't ruined, there's no harm in stretching the rules a little to allow more creativity. The skald could just have picked up a crossbow and fired the crossbow bolts, so allowing an action of similar effectiveness would have been reasonable:
"Makes a ranged touch attack. On a hit, the gnoll takes 1 fire damage per round until removed as a standard action. On a crit, he catches fire and takes 1d6 damage per round instead."
That would probably have led to a more fun gaming session, even if it's not how you originally imagined things working.
Here's the thing, she decided to just cast another spell instead, then when the boss moved closer she asked if she could personally hold two arrows, one in each hand, and stab him with them to try and cause the same effects. Of course I felt that was more reasonable, she has two weapon fighting feat, and i considered them light weapons so she took the -2 to attack on both, she hit with one and the other just bounced off his armor and broke. I explained that the force of the arrow doing 1d8 damage before was due to the crossbow, so I let her do 1d4+Str Mod in damage for each arrow that hit and 1 fire damage a round until they were removed. Everyone including the skald agreed that all made sense. And I let it happen. But even though i allowed that action it caused more fights because she couldn't understand why that was ok but her earlier action wasn't. Its Bassically been the only time in which i have put my foot down and said "No" because even other more innovated magic usage still had a sense of realism in the world, this just felt super convoluted to pull off and entirely banking off her idea of how a fire arrow worked rather than my description and ruleing on how i was having them work... So yea i guess your right, it did come down to a fight about who had control over the world and what the aspects of certain things did. Its now been a day and the player is still upset, saying things like "i guess ill find ways to be creative that you approve first from now on" when we were enjoying watching a video on how useful prestidigitation could be creatively and i mentioned how open I was to cool stuff like that (kinda walked into that one though). Anyhow i just needed to know if I was crazy and i should have been more lenient, but I'm more confident that i was at least 85% in the right. Thanks for the help!
Ageless_Bum wrote: The argument probably arose from her being told she couldn't do something. I know a few people like that. She can do whatever she wants. It just would not achieve anything. In this case I think you should have let her do whatever she suggested, but ruled that it didn't work when she did it. The arrows seemed to have specific rules to activate and her character seemingly does not know those rules. The problem is I know this player, she is family. The turn before all this happened she began meta gameing over if she should cast Sleep, saying things like "well if i know you and you know how strong sleep can be, you would make it impossible to put the boss to sleep so i shouldn't even try ..." Of course everyone chimed in to dispute that and say things like "what would your character know and attempt?" So she grumbled and cast sleep, the problem was she was technically eight, the boss had over 4HD, and it was ineffective. This made her upset that she wasted a turn attempting something that out of character she thought already wouldn't work. And so if i had let her carry out the entire scenario she wanted to attempt with the arrow and mage hand and after everything i said "you try this action, but the arrow didn't act as expected and it didn't work" she would immediately assume i was just shutting diwn a creative idea she believed would work for no reason, and the argument would then happen after wasting her turn again, making it far worse. So i was caught between explaining why it wouldn't work right then so she didn't feel like she wasted 2 turns in a row and actually got to do something, or let her attempt it and reap the consequences of her assuming I was just being a jerk. This whole scenario has just been so dumb, we have never had anything like this come up before this, and now its causing a lot of tension over something I believe is just incredibly stupid... So now i have to deal with the skald constantly checking any creative ideas with me before ever attempting them. The most annoying part is all 3 of the other players in our party sided with me and felt it was an unreasonably complicated action that seemed elaborate and pointless at that vital moment, and didn't fit thematically as well. And all of them said many times that I had made up my mind and that was it, but then she would turn to argue her point with them instead. I'm glad like 85% of people do agree i was in the right on this one, hopefully i can mend this and prevent this kind of thing in the future. Thanks for the advice.
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cfalcon wrote: "female orc skald in our party and was facing off against the captain of these pirates, a large gnoll barbarian with a cyborg cannonball cannon arm"
This is so metal that reading it made my eyes spark irl
The entire campaign is retro 80's cyberpunk fantasy, lots of Cyber-Orcs and robotic laser beam shooting raptor mounts. Taking place on the desert moon of "Chernabog Epsilon-009", a moon scared by endless magic warfare during the age of the old even empire in which the subjugated any and all planets and races in a sort of "manifest destiny". The players are part of a society of Exiles that live by the millions in crashed starships from The Great War large enough to turn into cities filled with outcasts and murderers. The moon orbits a gas giant that is filled with literal Neon Gases that ignite by constant raging thunder storms, which makes colorful ripples of light cover Chernabog at night. Its also so close to this planet that the gravitational pull between them makes a gigantic miles wide raging hurricane of sand at the closest point between the two planets, it travels across the surface in a cycle, and its a low gravity swell that lets the sandstorm be perpetual, also the lowered gravity means the massive Dune style sand worms flock to it to help them feed and not collapse under their own weight. Bassically though its all cyber-orcs, space elves, laser pistols, mad max, magic is a plague like radiation poisoning from the war that gives you immense power before making you explode in like 20~30 years, oh and neon lights... That's my super over the top world of madness and metal awesomeness.
Dajur wrote: I would definitely let her try her attempt. It won't work and she will have wasted her turn. Arguing with the GM for longer than a few exchanges is a problem and needs to be addressed, in private if possible. The fact that she wouldn't let it go shows a lack of maturity on her part and if that type of behavior continues, more drastic actions will have to be taken.
New players sometimes think that everything they think up should be able to work. There is a fine line between "thinking outside the box" to solve problems and abusing the rules(which often they have no idea about). It can take awhile for some players to find out where the line is.
Thanks, we are all very new, i picked up pathfinder and taught it to them, 3 out of 4 of our players are actually family members. We have had a wild ride discovering and learning pathfinder together over the last 6 or so months. I know it can be hard because even i forget rules and Google is still my best friend whenever something weird happens. Its just the unbelievable level of fight that happened in which all the other players had to step in and nearly ruined the entire rest of the session for everyone with the overly awkward tension that followed... Just seemed like it didn't need to happen and that to me my reasoning for why it wouldn't work seems far more concrete than her assertions that it would, and that's without me being DM and deciding the rules. Just on a basic thematic level of describing these arrows being shot at them, I very clearly established how they worked, even describing them looking like normal crossbow bolts as they flew until they traveled a few feet and then they would ignite. And I said "it does 1 fire damage a turn until its removed, but nothing actually sets ablaze" then 2 turns in a row the crossbow pirate Crit, Nat 20, and i specifically said "oh and its a crit, so you are NOW on fire taking an additional 1 fire damage a round until you spend a move action to put yourself out with the desert sand or dropping and rolling or something along those lines " Making it very clear that full flaming effect of setting someone on fire was a critical hit specific effect. (Also I know the fire damage is low, they are currently level 3 and have very low health, meaning full damage would be extremely punishing)
I just think that with what i describes thematically and how they worked mechanically definitely meant they would not function as she was intending and it would be a futile attempt. Anyhow, thanks for the advice, everyone has really helped!
Mage Hand wrote: Target one non-magical, unattended object, up to 5 pounds. It wouldn't work on a magic arrow. Period.
As for wielding the arrow like a knife, that would use the improvised weapon rules. It definitely wouldn't do arrow damage. Likely 1d4 at best, 1d2 or 1d3 more likely. It would also only crit on a 20 and do x2 damage instead of x3. In most cases it wouldn't get any magical effects from using it this way, though there's nothing wrong with you still allowing it to burn them as a GM call.
I'm firmly of the mindset that real creativity doesn't involve bending the rules. Just my two cents, but in real life we have to deal with physics, in the game you have to deal with rules.
I agree. The Mage Hand limitation against magic items precludes its use in the case.
NeonScorpion wrote:
The problem is I know this player, she is family. The turn before all this happened she began meta gameing over if she should cast Sleep, saying things like "well if i know you and you know how strong sleep can be, you would make it impossible to put the boss to sleep so i shouldn't even try ... Family can make things quite difficult. It is important to somewhat distance yourself from them in the case that you are the GM. I do not mean treat them as strangers, but to give them the same respect and limitations that strangers would have.
Imagine that this situation was real life for your player. She would never have been able to discuss the option of putting the enemy to sleep. She would have tried and it would have failed. After that she would have tried the arrow trick and that would have failed. It is very realistically how things happen in real life. Even looking at it from game rules, she only wasted 12 seconds of her time by failing for two rounds.
I personally like allowing a certain amount of meta-gaming. I like the players to discuss to an extent. I like for them to joke about the real world implications, and if that makes them realize something was a bad idea, I have no problem with them working off of what they realized. This is a game after all. To balance that, if they try something that just doesn't work, then it just doesn't work and that is life. I still recommend keep responding with the same line every time she asks for permission. Not only is it the truth, but it also drives home the point of do whatever you feel like.
Honestly if she is the type that hates failing, then the game or your group might not end up being the right fit for her. Everyone (including GM) should have fun after all.
It seems reasonable to think, in character, that the boss will be too tough to be affected by sleep. Unless there is an in character reason she doesn't know how the spell works?
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