Breccia
2021-11-05, 07:40 AM
So a DM friend of mine brought up what I hope is an interesting topic. One of her players in a mid-level campaign has a semipacifist cleric. That player wanted a variant of the flame strike or fireball spell which was incapable of harming a sentient, living being. (This DM and I agree that "sentient" meant "Int at least 3") While my first thought was this would be an ideal spell to hurl into a crowded melee, unable to harm yourself or your allies, the DM said, based on the player, that they weren't looking for an advantage -- just continuing to RP as a cleric who had taken a matching oath.
We had also both seen some Inuyasha, enough to know about a powerful sword that could not harm the living. Naturally the discussion went there.
Anyhow, I'd like to discuss both parts of this topic.
1) Asking specifically for "flame strike, except it can't harm sentient living beings" is a self-imposed penalty, and a significant one since the spell will only harm constructs, the undead, and monsters with Int 2 or lower. (This is based on the DM's ruling of "alive", I pushed for elementals but she didn't go for it) What would you do, in this specific case?
a) Grant the request exactly, and praise the role-playing. [this was the DM's thought]
b) Deny it outright, and stick with RAW. The easiest answer.
c) Following examples of other spells, make the replacement spell do bonus damage (or penalize the saving throw) against the remaining targets it's allowed to harm.
d) Leave the damage the same, but allow sentient, living beings hit to heal (a set value, or let them roll a Hit Die, or something)
e) Leave the damage the same, but add a nonhealing effect [this is where I went biology, saying the flames could burn diseases and poisons out of the sentient living targets]
f) Leave the damage the same, ignore living sentient beings as asked, but upgrade the spell in some other way (range, area, components, etc)
What would your answer be?
2) In a more general sense, how do you handle players asking for what appears to be a pure penalty with no benefit? I'm not talking alignment or behavior, "I refuse to steal from the innocent" is (a) fairly standard in an RPG and (b) could be broken at any time. I'm talking about a significant drawback the player can't simply choose to ignore, like a sword +1 that cannot harm creatures that don't use weapons (so it couldn't harm a dragon or bear). Belkar's geas comes to mind here.
If a player volunteers to take an unremovable handicap, do you compensate with some other benefit? Do you allow them to lower their performance and leave it at that? Do you refuse, to keep the playing field even? Has this ever come up in your games?
We had also both seen some Inuyasha, enough to know about a powerful sword that could not harm the living. Naturally the discussion went there.
Anyhow, I'd like to discuss both parts of this topic.
1) Asking specifically for "flame strike, except it can't harm sentient living beings" is a self-imposed penalty, and a significant one since the spell will only harm constructs, the undead, and monsters with Int 2 or lower. (This is based on the DM's ruling of "alive", I pushed for elementals but she didn't go for it) What would you do, in this specific case?
a) Grant the request exactly, and praise the role-playing. [this was the DM's thought]
b) Deny it outright, and stick with RAW. The easiest answer.
c) Following examples of other spells, make the replacement spell do bonus damage (or penalize the saving throw) against the remaining targets it's allowed to harm.
d) Leave the damage the same, but allow sentient, living beings hit to heal (a set value, or let them roll a Hit Die, or something)
e) Leave the damage the same, but add a nonhealing effect [this is where I went biology, saying the flames could burn diseases and poisons out of the sentient living targets]
f) Leave the damage the same, ignore living sentient beings as asked, but upgrade the spell in some other way (range, area, components, etc)
What would your answer be?
2) In a more general sense, how do you handle players asking for what appears to be a pure penalty with no benefit? I'm not talking alignment or behavior, "I refuse to steal from the innocent" is (a) fairly standard in an RPG and (b) could be broken at any time. I'm talking about a significant drawback the player can't simply choose to ignore, like a sword +1 that cannot harm creatures that don't use weapons (so it couldn't harm a dragon or bear). Belkar's geas comes to mind here.
If a player volunteers to take an unremovable handicap, do you compensate with some other benefit? Do you allow them to lower their performance and leave it at that? Do you refuse, to keep the playing field even? Has this ever come up in your games?