In a probably vain attempt to drag this thread back to the topic, given a spell that actually works the way the player says it does, I'd be inclined to use existing mechanics to adjudicate.

Make a touch roll to hit the helm so you can cast Shrink on it (assuming it's a touch range spell).  The other guy gets a Save vs. Spells, or maybe Ray if it's a ranged spell.  If it's 3.5, I'd have the target make a Strength or Con opposed roll vs. Caster Power check, take 1d4 damage if he fails.

Unseen Servant grabbing a horse's bit?  Make an attack roll, 0-level peasant vs. armored horse.  Invisibility bonus and moving horse cancel each other out. (Given the existence of Mage Hand, I'd be inclined to just say "no, the unseen servant is too slow for that" though).

Quote from: Dog Quixote;492435Creative spell use is best when it's situationally clever, like using an unseen servant to carries the parties lantern 100 feet ahead of the party, so they can ambush monsters trying to sneak up on them, or using mage hand to safely open a door with a possible ambusher behind it so that the monster on the other side swings wildly into empty air as the door opens.

It's less fun when it sets precedence for a game breaking rort that can be applied any place or any time.

This s precisely another thing that bothers me, and what really prompted my first objection. This is tantamount to saying it's okay for the PCs to be clever when it's fairly pedestrian and banal, but if they think of something that could seriously impact the imagined world, suddenly it's all, Hands off! No! Stop! You're not allowed!

Fuck that. I mean, if the GM stopped at that point and said, "Hey, this could have serious impact on the world, and would lead to all sorts of consequences, and might change the direction of everything. Is everyone okay with taking the game down this road?" That would be one thing, and I could respect that, and be okay if the table decides against it. But someone just shutting the idea down because, "No! Your character wouldn't do that!" Forget about it.

Quote from: Benoist;492547Either way, there's no future for our "conversation."

You keep saying that, and yet you're still here.

Quote from: Benoist;492547Either you are mentally crippled, or you believe I am. Either way, there's no future for our "conversation."

I agree.

Let's drop it and move on.

Quote from: two_fishes;492552This s precisely another thing that bothers me, and what really prompted my first objection. This is tantamount to saying it's okay for the PCs to be clever when it's fairly pedestrian and banal, but if they think of something that could seriously impact the imagined world, suddenly it's all, Hands off! No! Stop! You're not allowed!

Fuck that. I mean, if the GM stopped at that point and said, "Hey, this could have serious impact on the world, and would lead to all sorts of consequences, and might change the direction of everything. Is everyone okay with taking the game down this road?" That would be one thing, and I could respect that, and be okay if the table decides against it. But someone just shutting the idea down because, "No! Your character wouldn't do that!" Forget about it.

Well, no one asked the writers to write so many stupid spells. Well, maybe someone did, but it wasn't me. All the shitty spells in D&D have lead to things like lead covered castles to deal with them. It would have been better if they just did a better job writing the spells with the game world in mind.

What are you going to do when the funny uses for spells start stacking up. When the party has Floating Disk Bombers, Mass Drivers, Rope Trick Delayed Chemical Bombs, Lightning Bolt Super Magnets, and blah blah blah. It isn't the one thing that gets bad. It is the fact that one group can make tons of this crap, and the fact that they came up with it so easily implies that the crap is everywhere in the game world. This starts turning Greyhawk into Eberon pretty quickly.

I mean, I get it, that's D&D to a lot of people. I just think it is stupid. I want castles and troop formations to mean something, and all that evaporates just with leveling, let alone "creative spell use" which is basically rules lawyering.

Quote from: daniel_ream;492551In a probably vain attempt to drag this thread back to the topic, given a spell that actually works the way the player says it does, I'd be inclined to use existing mechanics to adjudicate.

I try to do the same. If the game doesn't have a specific mechanic I can use, I will create one on the spot. For example, in Rifts, there is inexplicably no mechanic for how high someone can jump based on physical strength.

QuoteMake a touch roll to hit the helm so you can cast Shrink on it (assuming it's a touch range spell).  The other guy gets a Save vs. Spells, or maybe Ray if it's a ranged spell.  If it's 3.5, I'd have the target make a Strength or Con opposed roll vs. Caster Power check, take 1d4 damage if he fails.

Well-reasoned.

QuoteUnseen Servant grabbing a horse's bit?  Make an attack roll, 0-level peasant vs. armored horse.  Invisibility bonus and moving horse cancel each other out. (Given the existence of Mage Hand, I'd be inclined to just say "no, the unseen servant is too slow for that" though).

I agree as well. The original description of the spell (PH pg. 69) says that the Unseen Servant is not strong and also cannot be commanded to fight, though technically it's not fighting; it's manipulating a bit. I'd say it had to roll to hit at -3 (to hit a small target) & -8 to hit a small, moving target, given it's size and strength. If it hit, I'd have a strength test of the horse vs. the unseen servant. If it won, I'd say the action succeeded.

Quote from: daniel_ream;492553You keep saying that, and yet you're still here.

Fuck you, Daniel. I wasn't talking to you.

Quote from: daniel_ream;492551In a probably vain attempt to drag this thread back to the topic, given a spell that actually works the way the player says it does, I'd be inclined to use existing mechanics to adjudicate.

Make a touch roll to hit the helm so you can cast Shrink on it (assuming it's a touch range spell).  The other guy gets a Save vs. Spells, or maybe Ray if it's a ranged spell.

Problem I found with Shrink is that there is no save, and the range isn't touch, and the caster just needs to be able to see the target. I figured if I was going to change anything, it should be in the "how" of the spell - by changing the "instantly" changes size. Or just adding the common sense caveat that the spell doesn't work right if something is in the way.

Cranewings: I think that we expect a little too much of spell-writers. They're not ever, ever going to be able to think of every possible use that a spell might be put to, and as long as they continue to describe how a spell does what it does, there will be creative twistings of that. The intent of the system is that the DM be there to adjudicate, and fill the gaps between Rules as Written and Rules as Intended. This is not a case of "Just because a DM can fix it, doesn't mean it's not bad design." It's a case of "There is no way to design it so that a DM isn't necessary, without destroying what makes an RPG special".

Quote from: two_fishes;492552This s precisely another thing that bothers me, and what really prompted my first objection. This is tantamount to saying it's okay for the PCs to be clever when it's fairly pedestrian and banal, but if they think of something that could seriously impact the imagined world, suddenly it's all, Hands off! No! Stop! You're not allowed!

Fuck that. I mean, if the GM stopped at that point and said, "Hey, this could have serious impact on the world, and would lead to all sorts of consequences, and might change the direction of everything. Is everyone okay with taking the game down this road?" That would be one thing, and I could respect that, and be okay if the table decides against it. But someone just shutting the idea down because, "No! Your character wouldn't do that!" Forget about it.

Exactly. This is what this whole thing is really about from the start. All that stuff about world consistency, your wizard wouldn't know that, game balance, munchkins and all ? It's all bullshit. It's been from the start about one thing : the GM freaking out about a PC being able to build the equivalent of a mass driver and thereby getting a real fucked up weapon in the game. From there, instead of dealing with the natural consequences of such an action, our sample GMs there are choosing to make up a whole lot of brainfart arguments to basically come down to "No, you won't do that in my game." That's *it*.

Quote from: Benoist;492575Exactly. This is what this whole thing is really about from the start. All that stuff about world consistency, your wizard wouldn't know that, game balance, munchkins and all ? It's all bullshit.

It may be "bullshit" to you, but it's not to everyone.

Everyone runs their game their own way.

Demonstrating your brilliant understanding of English one more time, I see. Congratulations, mate.

Benoist: I allow "creative" spell use, to the point that it would end the game. And there is where I stop it.

I figured interpreting a rule in such a way as to functionally allow every 1st level caster an instant-kill no save, no roll, ranged at will death spell was a bad idea.

When that is going to happen, I say "Hey. Why hasn't anyone come up with this idea in the last 3000 years? It's not a like a steam engine, or an invention - it's just a normal application of this spell. Why isn't every wizard doing this? Why isn't it in the basic description of the spell?"

And the answer is always because "The guy who wrote the spell didn't realize players would try this, and assumed the DM would cover any weird convolutions he missed."

And I think, when the written rules fall down, it's the DM's job to step in and adjudicate the situation in a way that allows the game to remain fun.

Quote from: Benoist;492577Demonstrating your brilliant understanding of English one more time, I see. Congratulations, mate.

-sigh- Whatever. If anyone disagrees with you, then they are automatically wrong, apparently.

Sorry I said anything.

Quote from: Kaldric;492584And I think, when the written rules fall down, it's the DM's job to step in and adjudicate the situation in a way that allows the game to remain fun.

Exactly what I think as well.

It's the GM's job to keep the game fun, allowing or not allowing components as the GM thinks is best. After all, they know their players and their game.

If you look at the evolution of spells from 0D&D to 3e, you can see where they implemented DM restrictions on what spells could do, to keep the game playable. 4th Edition finally went overboard, and just listed spells as "it does this, and this only". I think turning spell descriptions into long blocks of legalese, rather than just saying to the DM "Hey, use common sense", is a bad idea.

You either have the DM put a brake on hairsplitting interpretations that destroy the milieu, or the designers do - and I don't really like it when the designers do it, because they end up with fireballs that are square, powers that are just completely disassociated from the world.

I love it when characters come up with a creative use for a spell. Doesn't bother me at all - even one that is more powerful than the level limits say it should be. I'm also perfectly capable of looking at that spell and saying "If you continue to use it this way, the word will end. You will be able to kill cities, the bad guys will be able to kill countries, and since it's so simple, within a week of you using it, the only logical outcome would be the end of the world."

And then, I can look at the campaign world, and ask the logical question: Why hasn't it happened already? Apply the anthropic principle, probably wrongly, but: If the situation were so easy to derail, if it were so easy to destroy the world/civilization as it stands - why hasn't it been done? There are thousands of spellcasters in the world. Many of them hundreds of years old, and much more intelligent than the PCs. Logically, why haven't they been doing this?

And the only reasonable answer that makes sense in the game, that allows the world to exist, is that "The spell doesn't work that way. There's something in the world, that was left out of the description, that makes doing that a bad idea." So, as the DM, I generally ask the players what they think the reason is. If they can't come up with a reason, I, as the referee, do.

The reason must exist, or the world wouldn't.

And I LIKE playing in the world, so I come up with a reason.

As for creative spell use that wouldn't just destroy the milieu if everyone used it - no problem with it whatsoever.