I think I have been running Grease wrong in my games

[Jon_Dahl]

I hate Grease. I really do. I hate that spell. Maybe I'm stupid, but I just don't get it. But I have an excuse! I expect that the players know how their spells work and that's it. I have asked the player who uses Grease (excessively) how does the spell work and this what we have and I'm sure that it's all wrong:

STARTING YOUR TURN: When you start your turn within the greased area, you must roll a Reflex save vs. DC XX.

FAILING A REFLEX SAVE: If you fail, you fall and must remain prone for the duration of the spell, and if you already were prone, you remain prone.

A SUCCESSFUL SAVE: If you succeed, you either don't fall or you can get up (a move action) and move at half speed (another move action) if you succeed in a DC 10 Balance check but if you roll 5 or less, you fall again and remain prone until the next round.

I don't get it. But I really want to emphasize that I ask my players what their spells do and they tell me. I'm not going to learn all the spells at heart, since I just don't have the time and energy to do that. This is what I've been told so this how I have done things. The situation could get better, though.

[Keltest]

For starters, if you don't trust what your players are telling you, I highly recommend cracking open the book and looking yourself. You don't have to memorize everything, but if you don't trust their recounting, you should at least check.


Having said that, this seems like an accurate reading. You make continuous saves to avoid falling, or to get back up once you have fallen, as long as the spell lasts. Its intended as crowd control against those clumsy fighters and wizards. Where are you confused?

[Jon_Dahl]

For starters, if you don't trust what your players are telling you, I highly recommend cracking open the book and looking yourself. You don't have to memorize everything, but if you don't trust their recounting, you should at least check.


Having said that, this seems like an accurate reading. You make continuous saves to avoid falling, or to get back up once you have fallen, as long as the spell lasts. Its intended as crowd control against those clumsy fighters and wizards. Where are you confused?

Thank you. I'm confused because the spell seems weird and overpowered. A PC wizard easily disabled an ogre barbarian 4 (CR 7) for 5 rounds during a battle. It was not difficult since almost any ogre barbarian NPC has a low reflex save.

[zlefin]

the spell is indeed overpowered; it's one of a large number of spells in core that are known to be overpowered.

[Keltest]

Thank you. I'm confused because the spell seems weird and overpowered. A PC wizard easily disabled an ogre barbarian 4 (CR 7) for 5 rounds during a battle. It was not difficult since almost any ogre barbarian NPC has a low reflex save.

That's its intended use. Its one of the earliest forms of crowd control, and also one of the easier ones to circumvent. You can work around it in a few ways:

A: Acrobats. Agile characters with good reflex saves will be largely unbothered by this. It has a DC of 11 plus the casting stat modifier, which becomes less and less impressive as the encounters go up in levels. Ideally, your encounters do not consist of monsters that all share the same weak saves, but for versimilitude's sake this isn't always possible. Having said that, the spell is designed specifically to incapacitate groups of low level mooks, so theres no harm in letting it work as advertised sometimes.

B: flight. Anything that is flying simply doesn't care about the spell, period. This becomes more feasible at higher levels as more forms of flight for your encounters become available.

C: tactics. Don't have the enemy all charge the party in a big group. Come at them from multiple directions, have ranged enemies on the high ground. Perform an ambush so that your melee combatants are already close to the party, so that a grease spell affects the PCs as well. Basically, don't just group up to be taken out by the one spell. Archers can easily outrange grease as well, so you can always have at least some forces attacking. Ideally you want to force the grease to protect your ranged characters from approach as much as it protects the PCs.

D: opposing spellcasters. Grease is a first level spell. Any and every enemy bard, sorcerer or wizard could conceivably have access to it no matter their level, so they can attempt to counterspell it. Once they get third level spells, dispel magic comes online for ending the spell early.

[Alent]

Quoting the SRD:


A grease spell covers a solid surface with a layer of slippery grease. Any creature in the area when the spell is cast must make a successful Reflex save or fall. This save is repeated on your turn each round that the creature remains within the area. A creature can walk within or through the area of grease at half normal speed with a DC 10 Balance check. Failure means it can’t move that round (and must then make a Reflex save or fall), while failure by 5 or more means it falls (see the Balance skill for details).

Bolded text seems to me to be a convoluted way of saying "The area of a grease spell is a precarious surface and moving within it requires use of the balance skill with slightly stricter failure conditions" and simply restates balance rules. (Edit: This might be me just subconsciously nerfing it, the RAW on this is weirder to me the longer I read it. Regardless, all the grease spell says is "you fall", it doesn't say you can't get up, however unlikely getting up actually is.)

So... Your reading is pretty close, but I think you're off on a few parts. my read:

1) When the caster casts the spell, creatures in the effect reflex save against it. (not on their own turns)

2) At the start of the caster's turns, for the duration of the spell, all creatures in the effect have to save against it.

3a) At the start of the affected creature's turns, if they are standing, they are balancing on a precarious surface and have to succeed on a balance/acrobatics check to move at half speed.

3b) At the start of the affected creature's turns, regardless of success/fail on their reflex save, if they are prone they have to take a move action to stand up or can crawl 5 feet. Since moving in the spell requires a successful balance check, it stands to reason that on a successful balance check, you can stand up because as you noted, standing up is a move action.

You might also want to deviate from book for prone people in grease and let them slide while prone farther than 5 feet/turn. I think 5e lets people crawl at half base speed?

4) If struck while balancing, you have to make another balance check to avoid falling. There's also that obnoxious thing about needing 5 ranks in balance to not be automatically flatfooted. Since almost nothing I'd want to grease has a chance of having the balance ranks, I'd almost argue that it's worse to let them succeed on the saves if you've got any decent number of sneak dice in the party.

[J-H]

If you think that's bad, check out Wall of Thorns. It literally takes minutes to chop through a 5' square.

[King of Nowhere]

while prone, you can use a move action to move 1.5 meters. so it's reasonable to allow to move 3 meters as a full round action. so if your clumsy monster get stuck on grease, just have it crawl away, lose a round, get up later. or suck up that -4 penalty to hit and ac and full attack while prone. that's the best thing to do against a tripping build; I play a tripper, I know it.

Also, while I agree that normal people cannot be expected to know everything, in order to DM a game you need some system mastery. Ideally, at least as much as your players, if you want to properly challenge them. And while you can't memorize every single spell, you should at least read it if your players keep using it eveyr encounter.I mean, I'm sure googling d20srd grease would have been faster than writing in this forum and reading the answers.

[Alent]

while prone, you can use a move action to move 1.5 meters. so it's reasonable to allow to move 3 meters as a full round action. so if your clumsy monster get stuck on grease, just have it crawl away, lose a round, get up later. or suck up that -4 penalty to hit and ac and full attack while prone. that's the best thing to do against a tripping build; I play a tripper, I know it.

Yeah, if it helps... just roleplay it. Have kobolds shove each other off. Equal and opposite reactions, they'd both slide off different ends of the grease, etc. I know if DMing, I'd start looking at this as a chance to insert some cinematic storytelling.


Also, while I agree that normal people cannot be expected to know everything, in order to DM a game you need some system mastery. Ideally, at least as much as your players, if you want to properly challenge them. And while you can't memorize every single spell, you should at least read it if your players keep using it eveyr encounter.I mean, I'm sure googling d20srd grease would have been faster than writing in this forum and reading the answers.

This. I know I found the question to be slightly irksome since at my table, when someone/the DM is annoyed by how a spell works, the default happenstance is EVERYONE pulls out devices/books and looks the rule up and immediately begins questioning how it works as a group discussion.

[Bronk]

Thank you. I'm confused because the spell seems weird and overpowered. A PC wizard easily disabled an ogre barbarian 4 (CR 7) for 5 rounds during a battle. It was not difficult since almost any ogre barbarian NPC has a low reflex save.



3b) At the start of the affected creature's turns, regardless of success/fail on their reflex save, if they are prone they have to take a move action to stand up or can crawl 5 feet. Since moving in the spell requires a successful balance check, it stands to reason that on a successful balance check, you can stand up because as you noted, standing up is a move action.

This is important for your future rulings because the area of a grease spell is only a 10 foot square. That's four 5 foot squares, the ogre in your scenario must be in only one of them, and on open ground they're all an edge. So:

1) If the ogre falls down in the area of the Grease spell, it would only take one round to crawl 5 feet out of the area. (One thing the spell doesn't specifically do is turn the area into difficult terrain, which would halve all movement modes. Instead it just halves walking speed under certain circumstances.)

and 2) The ogre is large, and is two 5 foot cubes tall. It could fall half out of the greased area, and stand up in a normal square.

[Zanos]

STARTING YOUR TURN: When you start your turn within the greased area, you must roll a Reflex save vs. DC XX.
Incorrect. The save is first made on the cast. Any creature remaining in the grease when the casters turn comes up again must save again.


FAILING A REFLEX SAVE: If you fail, you fall and must remain prone for the duration of the spell, and if you already were prone, you remain prone.
You don't have to remain prone for the duration, you can use a move action to stand normally but are then subject to the balance rules. Raging barbarians though, cannot make balance checks.



A SUCCESSFUL SAVE: If you succeed, you either don't fall or you can get up (a move action) and move at half speed (another move action) if you succeed in a DC 10 Balance check but if you roll 5 or less, you fall again and remain prone until the next round.

Again, there's nothing to lock you prone for the duration. I think you're overcomplicating the spell, the entire description for what it does is two pretty concise sentences.


Thank you. I'm confused because the spell seems weird and overpowered. A PC wizard easily disabled an ogre barbarian 4 (CR 7) for 5 rounds during a battle. It was not difficult since almost any ogre barbarian NPC has a low reflex save.
You can still attack and move while prone, just at a -4 penalty and reduced speed respectively.

[Fizban]

I hate Grease. I really do. I hate that spell.
Standard reminder that nothing is forcing you to allow the spell and you could just ban it. Or "remove" it if the word "ban" is too harsh. I need a softer word that still gets the point across quick and clean (because "ban" sets people off), but there really isn't one.


3a) At the start of the affected creature's turns, if they are standing, they are balancing on a precarious surface and have to succeed on a balance/acrobatics check to move at half speed.
Because balancing is part of movement and they're not on a narrow surface, I wouldn't call for a balance check until they try to make that move.

3b) At the start of the affected creature's turns, regardless of success/fail on their reflex save, if they are prone they have to take a move action to stand up or can crawl 5 feet. Since moving in the spell requires a successful balance check, it stands to reason that on a successful balance check, you can stand up because as you noted, standing up is a move action.
Again, since balancing is part of movement, I see no reason to require a balance check just to stand up. The stand up action has to remain essentially un-interruptible as written if you want to keep some semblance of control over prone effects (otherwise you have the "I trip him with the AoO from him trying to stand up" problem). So I say no matter how you fall in the Grease, you can move action to stand up, and as long as you don't move the only thing that will put you down again is the forced reflex save (or badly failed check when being hit).

You might also want to deviate from book for prone people in grease and let them slide while prone farther than 5 feet/turn.
In particular, people attempting to employ Grease against creatures of even Large or greater size ought to take note of the fact that a Large creature can just reach *out* of the standard 10' area. Maybe that's a crawl action, maybe not, but unlike a damaging AoE where you only need part of their space to hit them, Grease ought to require more than 50% of their space to affect them.

If I had to make a quick ruling I'd probably say that pulling yourself to a square you can reach is a move action that provokes, not limited to 5' but still capped by your speed. So you can't hack your speed by pulling yourself around, but there are creatures big enough that their movement action at full speed is basically just one stride, one armlength, and if they can reach solid ground from where they are then they don't need to "crawl."

4) If struck while balancing, you have to make another balance check to avoid falling. There's also that obnoxious thing about needing 5 ranks in balance to not be automatically flatfooted. Since almost nothing I'd want to grease has a chance of having the balance ranks, I'd almost argue that it's worse to let them succeed on the saves if you've got any decent number of sneak dice in the party.
Another reason why I'd not require any checks to stand up, since you're probably already making checks for being hit. Grease is double-dipping its mechanics, using both reflex saves and balance checks, when it really shouldn't be. Easiest way to start work on fixing it is to dump one or the other.


Yeah, if it helps... just roleplay it. Have kobolds shove each other off. Equal and opposite reactions, they'd both slide off different ends of the grease, etc. I know if DMing, I'd start looking at this as a chance to insert some cinematic storytelling.
You'd think that if anyone would think of this on the spot, it would indeed be the supposed masters of traps, the kobolds. But Greasing kobolds is a pretty big waste when they die to even 1st level AoEs, it's just big creatures that are the problem.


This. I know I found the question to be slightly irksome since at my table, when someone/the DM is annoyed by how a spell works, the default happenstance is EVERYONE pulls out devices/books and looks the rule up and immediately begins questioning how it works as a group discussion.
And this is the bit that made me want to post in particular: sooooo many people, DM advice columns, all over the place say that you should never ever look up rules at the table because it just wrecks everything. Except if people actually care about the game, shouldn't *everyone* be reaching for their books so they can give informed input on how the game should proceed? Just because it's a roleplaying game doesn't mean that when you're in the middle of a game part you should suddenly give up on using the game for fear that it will somehow ruin the roleplaying.

No, the problem is non-homogeneous groups where some of the people will lose interest if you dare to focus on the game part of the game for a minute. And while that's unavoidable because there's only so many people to play, it still bugs me that "no books at the table" is touted as an ideological rule. If there's a rule problem great enough for the DM to want a book, it's probably great enough that everyone should be grabbing a book. So good on your group for acting as one!

[Keltest]

And this is the bit that made me want to post in particular: sooooo many people, DM advice columns, all over the place say that you should never ever look up rules at the table because it just wrecks everything. Except if people actually care about the game, shouldn't *everyone* be reaching for their books so they can give informed input on how the game should proceed? Just because it's a roleplaying game doesn't mean that when you're in the middle of a game part you should suddenly give up on using the game for fear that it will somehow ruin the roleplaying.

No, the problem is non-homogeneous groups where some of the people will lose interest if you dare to focus on the game part of the game for a minute. And while that's unavoidable because there's only so many people to play, it still bugs me that "no books at the table" is touted as an ideological rule. If there's a rule problem great enough for the DM to want a book, it's probably great enough that everyone should be grabbing a book. So good on your group for acting as one!

As far as it goes, completely stopping play at a table for any reason is generally badness and something you want to avoid. At my table, if theres some quibble about the rules, I make a ruling, and then after the game we go look it up and decide if we like my ruling or the RAW better, and use that the next time.

[Florian]

And this is the bit that made me want to post in particular: sooooo many people, DM advice columns, all over the place say that you should never ever look up rules at the table because it just wrecks everything. Except if people actually care about the game, shouldn't *everyone* be reaching for their books so they can give informed input on how the game should proceed? Just because it's a roleplaying game doesn't mean that when you're in the middle of a game part you should suddenly give up on using the game for fear that it will somehow ruin the roleplaying.

That made me laugh a bit. I think it happens only in D&D that people tread the mechanical parts as "rules of the game", while those rules are actually what is written in the DMG, while the PHB only holds individual resolution mechanics.
That´s amongst the pros and cons of rules heavy game systems. If it´s important to you that each (possible) option is represented by a set of discreet mechanics, then you have to life with either making breaks to research something, or making errors because you can´t possibly have everything memorized.
Personally, I would not stop an ongoing or good running game for something as meaningless as mechanics.

[Fizban]

I make a ruling, and then
Which means it wasn't something you thought you should look up, so there wasn't actually a problem. But I get a serious sense of pressure on DMs to make off the cuff rulings even when they aren't sure, which is worse. Because then you get a bad ruling which you might have to retcon, which anyone in the group who was more aware of than you will be extra annoyed with no matter the result.

Personally, I would not stop an ongoing or good running game for something as meaningless as mechanics.
Unless, ya know, the reason you're playing dnd is because you like the dnd mechanics.

There also seems to be an expectation that you're going to need to look something up suddenly in the middle of a scene, such that you'll have to stop a scene and thus ruin it in some way. Which is a sign that the DM screwed up entirely when planning the scene, because they should have already looked at everything they needed to know at that time. Or, and this is the big one, calling for mechanical rolls on mechanics they don't understand in response to spontaneous roleplaying, because they can't be bothered to think about what their players might do. "Oh you're talking to some NPC, uh, roll Diplomacy? How does that even work? Uh, sure that's a result I guess they like you now? Oh you want to roll knowledge on something? Uh sure, you know something. Oh you want to know what the rest of the people are doing, uh. . ."

I'd say that any problems with DMs looking up rules (at which point players should also be looking up rules, because this has a direct effect on them) has nothing to do with the idea that "stopping" the game to check something is bad on its own. Aside from mismatched groups, a stop in a bad place really just indicates sloppy DMing, that the DM didn't actually finish planning that scene and ran into a roadblock because of it. So I guess the "no books at the table" rule is for patching sloppy DMs by encouraging them to rule zero/improv through their mistakes? That's reasonable. But I will never accept the idea that a DM who knows the rules so poorly they have to make up a ruling out of nothing and look it up later should even be allowed to make up that ruling, not in a details first game like 3.5. If you don't know it well enough to run from memory to have a solid guess and can't be bothered to plan, there are games with fewer and even shared mechanics that would be better.

Not that I'd say John_Dahl (or likely anyone here) has that much of a problem with 3.5. Or that anyone actually follows the "no books at the table" rule so dogmatically. I just don't like how some people present the idea.

[Jon_Dahl]

I'm kind of happy that after reading the replies, I'm still confused about the spell. Keltest and a couple of other members seem to be okay with my reading while Alent and Zanos clearly disagree with me. And this is all about the core function of a common 1st-level spell. I would like to say that there should be a clear step-by-step instruction about what exactly happens when someone is in Grease area, but I daren't to be that bold.

[Jon_Dahl]

4) If struck while balancing, you have to make another balance check to avoid falling. There's also that obnoxious thing about needing 5 ranks in balance to not be automatically flatfooted. Since almost nothing I'd want to grease has a chance of having the balance ranks, I'd almost argue that it's worse to let them succeed on the saves if you've got any decent number of sneak dice in the party.

That is so awful and dreadful that I have no words. Wow. But I will never tell about this detail to my players.

[Mordaedil]

Nothing says you can't take some liberties with the spell at higher levels so it doesn't become their go-to solution for everything. Allowing first level spells to always work even at high levels gets tiring for any DM. As the enemies get stronger, or more massive, it stops working, maybe the soldiers slide across the grease ending up prone at the edge of the spell, making it still sort of work, but they just get back up next turn and are now unhindered by the spell. Heck, it will look comedic, but it makes sense that anyone running or charging into a field of grease would slide across until the ground was normal again, hit a sudden break and lose their balance.

[Alent]

I'm kind of happy that after reading the replies, I'm still confused about the spell. Keltest and a couple of other members seem to be okay with my reading while Alent and Zanos clearly disagree with me. And this is all about the core function of a common 1st-level spell. I would like to say that there should be a clear step-by-step instruction about what exactly happens when someone is in Grease area, but I daren't to be that bold.

Well, to be fair, you aren't that far off, and it is a terribly edited spell. Most of 3.5 core needs to be purged and rewritten, but good luck getting that to happen now that WotC has moved on.

I would rewrite the first paragraph as follows, borrowing a little from the 5e rewrite of the spell and adjusting to make it less potent and incorporating some of the ideas tossed around the thread:

"A grease spell covers a solid surface with a layer of slippery grease, transforming it into a precarious surface with a balance DC of 10 to remain standing, walk across the grease, or stand up. As a full round action, Prone creatures can slide across the grease at half base land speed without making a balance check.

When the grease appears, each creature standing on the grease must make a successful reflex save or fall prone. A creature with 5 ranks in balance can substitute a balance check for their reflex save. A creature with the Mobility feat that succeeds by 5 or more allows that creature to immediately slide to the nearest edge of the grease effect, provided it is within 10 feet.

If a creature can brace itself against an object such as a wall, railing, a sturdy weapon or tool stabbed into the ground, or a friendly creature outside of the slippery area, they receive a +5 circumstance bonus on reflex saves and balance checks made against the spell effect."

This drops the number of reflex saves made against the spell (I think Pathfinder made that same change) and provides a few Click Adventure solutions to the saves/checks. Of course, I would also bump up the grease area to an extra 10 ft for every 3 or 4 CL you have, to compensate for the changes, but that's optional.


That is so awful and dreadful that I have no words. Wow. But I will never tell about this detail to my players.

Be glad your players haven't discovered the wonder that is Mundane Grease, aka Marbles and a push broom.

[zergling.exe]

(otherwise you have the "I trip him with the AoO from him trying to stand up" problem)

This isn't actually a RAW problem because the actions are resolved like this:
1) Prone target attempts to stand triggering AoO
2) Tripper makes an AoO to "trip" but does nothing because the target is already prone
3) Target finishes standing up from prone

AoOs are always resolved before the action that triggered them.

An attack of opportunity “interrupts” the normal flow of actions
in the round. If an attack of opportunity is provoked, immediately
resolve the attack of opportunity, then continue with the next
character’s turn (or complete the current turn, if the attack of
opportunity was provoked in the midst of a character’s turn).

[Fizban]

This isn't actually a RAW problem because the actions are resolved like this:
1) Prone target attempts to stand triggering AoO
2) Tripper makes an AoO to "trip" but does nothing because the target is already prone
3) Target finishes standing up from prone

AoOs are always resolved before the action that triggered them.
Correct. But people thinking naturally rather than mechanically often assume that when a guy is trying to stand up, you should be able to smack them back down, and expect to to use that AoO to keep them prone with another trip. It took a while for that bit of knowledge to get around- I remember plenty of zomg-infini-trip damage calculations back in the day.

Similarly, one might naturally assume that standing up in a Greased area would be difficult and thus require a balance check (this was Alant's suggestion), but there is no such rule in the stand up or main Balance descriptions. Balance is only rolled for movement, and in response to damage. So you can stand up in the Grease just fine, and that's good. Unless the DM decides to add an extra balance check to navigating the already bonkers spell.

[Zombimode]

I'm kind of happy that after reading the replies, I'm still confused about the spell. Keltest and a couple of other members seem to be okay with my reading while Alent and Zanos clearly disagree with me. And this is all about the core function of a common 1st-level spell. I would like to say that there should be a clear step-by-step instruction about what exactly happens when someone is in Grease area, but I daren't to be that bold.

Sure, lets do that.

First, the spell description:


A grease spell covers a solid surface with a layer of slippery grease. Any creature in the area when the spell is cast must make a successful Reflex save or fall. This save is repeated on your turn each round that the creature remains within the area. A creature can walk within or through the area of grease at half normal speed with a DC 10 Balance check. Failure means it can’t move that round (and must then make a Reflex save or fall), while failure by 5 or more means it falls (see the Balance skill for details).

[...]

I've omitted the part about the spell use against items.

"A grease spell covers a solid surface with a layer of slippery grease."
Tells you how the spell manifests in the game world.

"Any creature in the area when the spell is cast must make a successful Reflex save or fall."
So we have our first step: caster casts Grease, spell takes effect, all creatures in the area Need to save or fall prone.

"This save is repeated on your turn each round that the creature remains within the area."
Next step: on the casters turn, all creatures in the area Need to save or fall prone.

"A creature can walk within or through the area of grease at half normal speed with a DC 10 Balance check. Failure means it can’t move that round (and must then make a Reflex save or fall), while failure by 5 or more means it falls (see the Balance skill for details)."
This describes a continous effect. There is no set time when this happens but a condition: whenever a creature makes a movement that includes an area that is coverd by the spell effect, a Balance check is required to aviod the consequences.
An additional effect that is not immediatly obvious is that any creature that is forced to a Balance check while moving is treated as flat-footed unless it has at least 5 ranks in Balance. Also, taking damage Forces another Balance check to remain standing.

And thats it.

[Malphegor]

the spell is indeed overpowered; it's one of a large number of spells in core that are known to be overpowered.

Grease and Haste are my two go-tos for relatively low level spells that are worth more than any other spell in my spellbook.

Seriously, I would gladly play a character whose only capabilities was Grease+metamagics to alter it.

you can...

lubricate someone's weapon so they drop it!

make them fall over prone (note they are not helpless and can still attack, but SO MANY AOOS!)

since you're conjuring up grease you could make a case to a DM that slapping that onto a spellcaster's face might distract them enough to lose concentration...

My current DM even buffed the spell (because he is a madman) by saying if you cast a fire spell or light it on fire somehow it acts like a 1d4 damage version of the 3rd level spell incendiary slime and does continuous damage to the people within the grease.

The spell is ridiculously powerful in its versatility for something most wizards likely started with.

(my main issue with it is that I've never seen a DM try to do a balance check in it. my current one seems to prefer doing a reflex save each time, which... is basically the same idea, and a lot of monsters we've faced have low reflex, so it's okay from my perspective)



Regarding the thing with the rules checking...

Eh. It's worth it, especially with spells, to repeatedly check the description, both on DM and player side. There's enough specifics and drunken WOTC wording that interpretations on any given spell vary wildly. I know it's a lot of stuff to check out, but it's sometimes really awesome to be able to refer to solid rules to establish 'yes, this is how this mechanic works' rather than rely on human memory

[Alent]

Similarly, one might naturally assume that standing up in a Greased area would be difficult and thus require a balance check (this was Alant's suggestion), but there is no such rule in the stand up or main Balance descriptions. Balance is only rolled for movement, and in response to damage. So you can stand up in the Grease just fine, and that's good. Unless the DM decides to add an extra balance check to navigating the already bonkers spell.

It simply breaks verisimilitude to say that standing on a slippery substance like grease isn't balancing on it. I think that's well within the territory of RAI and a possible RAW, although not by the most literal reading.

That said, we're dangerously close to killing catgirls, and you can see from my proposed patch that I want to rein in the number of checks, so... yeah.


My current DM even buffed the spell (because he is a madman) by saying if you cast a fire spell or light it on fire somehow it acts like a 1d4 damage version of the 3rd level spell incendiary slime and does continuous damage to the people within the grease.

Isn't that a holdover of a popular misinterpretation of AD&D grease?


(my main issue with it is that I've never seen a DM try to do a balance check in it. my current one seems to prefer doing a reflex save each time, which... is basically the same idea, and a lot of monsters we've faced have low reflex, so it's okay from my perspective)

Really, I think this is a reasonable decision. Balance and Reflex have a lot of conceptual overlap, merging them is reasonable and it's not like balancing comes up very often outside of saving throws.

Also, I love the description of WotC wording as "Drunken".

[Necroticplague]

If I had to make a quick ruling I'd probably say that pulling yourself to a square you can reach is a move action that provokes, not limited to 5' but still capped by your speed. So you can't hack your speed by pulling yourself around, but there are creatures big enough that their movement action at full speed is basically just one stride, one armlength, and if they can reach solid ground from where they are then they don't need to "crawl."

How does that disallow 'hacking your speed by pulling yourself around'? It sounds like explicitely allowing it if your reach exceeds your speed.

[King of Nowhere]

Standard reminder that nothing is forcing you to allow the spell and you could just ban it. Or "remove" it if the word "ban" is too harsh. I need a softer word that still gets the point across quick and clean (because "ban" sets people off), but there really isn't one.

You could say that the spell "does not exist". that's what I do; in my campaign world some spells don't exist, nobody has them, researching them would not work, because they contradict whatever rules of magic are in place. or maybe nobody knows them and I could allow them in after research




And this is the bit that made me want to post in particular: sooooo many people, DM advice columns, all over the place say that you should never ever look up rules at the table because it just wrecks everything. Except if people actually care about the game, shouldn't *everyone* be reaching for their books so they can give informed input on how the game should proceed? Just because it's a roleplaying game doesn't mean that when you're in the middle of a game part you should suddenly give up on using the game for fear that it will somehow ruin the roleplaying.

No, the problem is non-homogeneous groups where some of the people will lose interest if you dare to focus on the game part of the game for a minute. And while that's unavoidable because there's only so many people to play, it still bugs me that "no books at the table" is touted as an ideological rule. If there's a rule problem great enough for the DM to want a book, it's probably great enough that everyone should be grabbing a book. So good on your group for acting as one!
There's so much fanaticism about this game. At least in internet forums, because everyone I ever met at tables was cool.
There was a time when I was trying to follow internet advice. Then I got over my insecurity and dumped it out of the window. I still take what I need, but I disregard what I don't. the thing is, every table is different, what works for one group of players doesn't work for another, and people posting generally assume a specific table that is often completely different from what you got. Practically always they assume a level of committment and mastery much greater than what you've got in practice.

So in that specific case people say you should not read the books at the table because they assume
1) you should know all the rules by memory already
2) you should have spent 20 hours of your time preparing the session, including checking eveyrthing that may ever possibly happen.
3) that if you have a doubt it will be about some very obscure interpretation, and your players will be equally involved, and therefore it will spark an hour-long heated debate
Because they assume you have a lot of mastery an a lot of time to devolve to the game. they do not assume that you simply must check the exact range of a spell, because those hardcore guys who answer forums assume that you already know all of it.
So, if you have a doubt, take out the damn book. Now, if there are doubts about the interpretation, there is the point where you have to make a ruling on the spot. But as long as it only takes a minute or two, then take out the book.

I got most of my best moments at the gaming table by outright violating internet advice; sometimes without knowing it was internet advice, sometimes intentionally.
So, take everything you read on the internet with a pinch of salt, and never, ever assume that the guy who's posting knows better than you do. He may know RAW, and he may know optimization, and he may know the gaming groups he hangs up with, but he does not know your table, your situation, or anything about you or your group. Take the posts as friendly advice, look for the wisdom in them, but don't let yourself be shackled by them.
that goes for my post too, of course :smalltongue:




My current DM even buffed the spell (because he is a madman) by saying if you cast a fire spell or light it on fire somehow it acts like a 1d4 damage version of the 3rd level spell incendiary slime and does continuous damage to the people within the grease.


while the srd says nothing about it, grease is flammable, and the italian version of the srd specifically mentions that as a rule. So it's a sensible ruling. 1d4 is almost nothing anyway, and people caught on grease, as mentioned, should get their asses out of it asap

[Florian]

@King of Nowere:

I partially blame WotC and especially how they handled the RPGA. The later fostered the "RAW über alles" attitude to make organized play work with a rules heavy system, but the real culprit here was when WotC started including errata to the base game that were clearly inspired by and intended for RPGA play and didn't have jack to do with what happened on individual home tables.

That said, I don't agree with the sentiment that you're expected to know all the broad and discreet rules of a rules heavy game system by rote. No one really put forward the notion that this should be expected and be the reason for "no books". It´s more like... hm... I can explain this better with Pathfinder, ok? The idea to formalize a lot of things that come up in the game as stuff like "Conditions" means that a lot of feats, combat maneuvers and spells draw on the same bunch of task resolution mechanics and core mechanics, so you don't actually have to know that much and you can improvise a lot on the fly by sticking to the core framework. Ex: once you have set rules for the "Entangled", "Stunned" and "Paralyzed" conditions, you can actually shrink a lot of spells down to their stat block and the conditions that are in play. The "Entangle" spell has the "Entangle" condition at its core, the Chains of Light spell has "Stunned" (failed save) and "Paralyzed" (made save) as core. Beyond that, nothing else needs to be said or memorized. But: 3.5E/PF fail a lot in this regard because they don't manage to get their s**t straight and actually use the system they put into place as core. So you'll have exceptions and counter-exceptions and all that.

The main question then is (looping back to my exchange with Fizban), whether you're willing or not to "just wing it" by using the core system and conditions instead of looking ab the actual details of the spell or ability in question.

[King of Nowhere]

@King of Nowere:

That said, I don't agree with the sentiment that you're expected to know all the broad and discreet rules of a rules heavy game system by rote. No one really put forward the notion that this should be expected and be the reason for "no books". It´s more like... hm... I can explain this better with Pathfinder, ok? [snip]

And yet you prove my point, because you already expect me to know the conditions. that's already beyond the majority of gamers. I've been playing for years, and yet there are a lot of things I need to check if they come up. what's the distinction between sickened and nauseated? One gave some minor penalties, one caused you to only take movement actions, but which is which? What were exactly the penalties for dazzled? what was the penalty to ref saving throws for entangled? Did "shacken" apply a penalty to damage rolls, or only to hit? If you are both entangled and stunned, what's your AC penalty?

90% of the times we have to bring out a book during session, it is because we forgot some minutiae like those (most often, some details about a spell's workings). And it doesn't take much to find the answers to those questions.

that said, I fully agree that if you have a question of adjudication of RAW versus RAI, with different ideas on what RAI entails, then the DM should adjudicate and move on.

But the fanaticism I was referring to is that a lot of people in forums will say "do X, period". Maybe I can make an example from this forum: one week ago, I asked how a monk could get around his inability to use shields. Most of the answers were of the "don't use a monk, they suck" kind - with the variations "play a different character", "play an unarmed swordsage (or weird multiclass combo) and call it a monk", "ask your DM to buff you because you'll be useless"; even one "you wanted to play a low-power class, you don't deserve to try and be effective". Which is really dumb, because at my table, with my party, I am effective and I am having a lot of fun. And a few of the answers proposed strange RAW tricks that no DM would accept.
Sure, some of the answers were very useful (there's a reason I keep asking questions in the forum), but it takes some knowledge to sift through all them. If I were a novice player, I would end up confused, and persuaded not to play a monk. If I were a novice DM, I'd drop some huge boosts on the party monk to compensate for the supposed uselessness, and accidentally end up with him overshadowing the rest of the party (I did that early in my career, with a barbarian in a party of casters. At some point the barbarian could easily solo any encounter that challenged the rest of the party. Luckily I managed to fix the power gap).

[Fizban]

How does that disallow 'hacking your speed by pulling yourself around'? It sounds like explicitely allowing it if your reach exceeds your speed.
The part where I said "but still capped by your speed?"