D&D General When to know a rule?

[GrimCo]

Oh, but my dear FrozenNorth, the player is supposed to trust the DM implicitly. Nothing the DM does is ever worthy of suspicion, because it is the DM who does it; the DM does not need to earn trust, they deserve trust simply because they are DM.

Well, not implicitly. But personally, i think being charitable and giving DM benefit of the doubt that he isn't a-hole goes long way in building good relationship.

Or at least that's how a certain group of fans seems to see it. Me, I hear that stuff and want to run for the hills.


And what of divine casters? They have access to every spell on their spell list. The books even specifically say so.

Yep. They get acess to all spells on their list, published in books we are using for game. Custom spells aren't on the list.

I also really, really don't think you hate to invoke rule 0. Rather the opposite, actually.

Invoked it 2 times in 20 years. Once i stoped game, thanked everybody for good time and ended campaign on the spot. Other time i ended session, talked to player in private and politley exluded him from future games.

Well then, you won't mind me doing other rule-affecting things in an abstract, between-sessions kind of way that has no more justification than "oh I did downtime for that," right? (I of course do not at all expect you to say 'yes.' Because this exception is quite clearly opening a doorway to doing almost anything one wants with a fig-leaf excuse.)

Well, as i see it, we already do it. Every time pcs level up or multiclass, since you gain new ability every level in 5e and can multiclass freely. Most people just go with "pc trained offscreen" and don't go in depth how your fighter or rogue all of a sudden can cast spells.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, I my game I add lots of spells beyond what is in the couple of adventure books. Roughly 5,000 spells and counting. When I have an orc ice sorcerer, I want them to have a good selection of ice and cold spells....not just the couple that are in the rulebooks. I like each 'area' to have it's own magic traditions. If find it dull for the evil drown mage seven miles deep in the Underdark casts.....fireball. He instead has Acid Strike. And I do love bizarre spells beyond anything published in most offical books.

So.....enter a small handful of players. They say that they should know all the "rules" before we start playing the game. They note they know all the published spells. So they say if the DM adds spells to the game, they should get the full spell write ups before the game. The players must have all the game rules.

I'm not so sure we count things like spells, magic items, monsters, equipment, and other such things in the game...as "rules"?

I'm quick to point out that a huge part of the players not knowing every single detail of the game is part of the fun. And very begrudgingly this handful of players will accept that....but only to a point. They are fine with one single encounter where I use a spell unknown to them....but they demand to be given the full spell write up as soon as their characters encounter it. I say that defeats the whole point. The players don't know about a spell for a single encounter, then just "remember" and become experts on the spell?

I don't think that seeing one goblin cast Goblin Glue once should take away all the unknown mystery fun of a spell. The handful of players are quick to say that "they the players" just want to know the rules....."the spell". And they agree to act out and pretend their character does not. I'm not a fan of this at all....very few players ever do this....most do the soft exploit of "oh my character does not know what the spell description says, but will just randomly guess the exact right thing...".

My houserules are Spells are Treasure. So if a character finds a copy of a spell written out, and if they can read it, then the player gets a copy of the spell. Though the big way characters learn a spell is a downtime activity. The character needs to be in a small city at least, that has some magical tradition or a library or magic school or a magic guild. Or if the character can find a lone 'private' spellcaster that is willing to share the knowledge. There are downtime activities to do to try and learn a spell.

But in general, a character can't learn a new spell when "on" an Adventure. As my typical adventure takes place in the "Wilderness" far from civilizations. So I player can't just say "oh I walk back to the city to learn the spell". Unless that player wants to remove that character from the game. But, sure, sometimes and adventure will take place near or in a city. But still a character can't fight a couple of vampires, see a new spell...pause the game...and go research it in downtime. It is not like the DM and other players will just sit around and wait.



So....do things like spells count for "knowing all the game rules"?

How does "lore" and "game rules" mix? The lore of a spell can give you a lot of information about the spell....but the "lore" does cross over with the "stats" of the spell. Things like spell range, targets, damage type, effects, duration are al "lore" information, that is also "stats/game rule information". The Stats give you the spell lore for free.

Is it "too much" of a "burden" to force players to use Downtime to learn new spells?

I love spells as treasure, and see no reason why the players should have access to that kind of information if the PCs don't. I also fully support getting new spells as a downtime activity.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sincerely: If you wish to have no game in your roleplaying game, why do you use any systems at all? Surely it would be better to just do freeform roleplay.

Come on. You know it's not all or nothing. You can't sincerely think that's what people mean.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah...I find the asymmetry here pretty telling.

To be fair, D&D is an asymmetrical game.

 

[Corinnguard]

And the DM is steadfastly refusing to allow the players any access to it.

Let's say that you were this DM, would you allow your own players access to it? I am curious about how you would handle it compared to @bloodtide.

 

[TwoSix]

Are you seriously going to say that you would be perfectly fine with this if your DM did this? Your DM plunks down about a thousand pages of homebrew spells and says, "Yup, I'm going to use these in the game, but, you are 100% verbotten from seeing any of them until I choose to use them in the game." No warning bells? No red flags whatsoever. Not even the slightest twinge of doubt in your mind?

I'm fine with it in principle. I have no problem with the initial character-building options in the PHB being just a small subset of what actually exists within the setting.

My main question/concern would be what is the diegetic relevance of codifying all those spells? If they're something the players can slowly discover as treasure or learnable techniques, etc, that's fine. I have no problem with treating spells as diegetic entities as opposed to purely metagame constructs.

But the relevant information as to the spell's mechanics should be discoverable in play. I wouldn't be OK with my character having access to a spell/spells and having to check with the DM everytime I cast it as to how it works. If an NPC casts it, I should at least be able to make Arcana checks to figure out its level, general function, etc. And observing its actions should give the character clues as to its overall function and power level.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I wanted to touch on this, because there can, in fact, be cases where a divine caster might not know that a spell on their list exists. This isn't 5e content, but I think it's relevant (from the 2e Tome of Magic):

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Here, we have a book that adds more spell options to Priests. Rather than say "poof, you can add these spells to your character", it goes over reasons why these spells can suddenly become available. It may be that the spell existed, but your Cleric or Druid doesn't know about it, and has to request it from their deity once the knowledge is gained, or they meet certain requirements. It's perfectly fine to add a spell to even the Cleric spell list to your game without immediately telling all your Cleric players "oh hey, you can use this spell now". It could be a plot point that, long ago, the leader of your Religious Order banned certain spells and so the knowledge of their existence was lost, and then you come upon a scroll of one such spell in a dungeon and realize "oh hey, this is a thing I can do!", not even knowing that it's a forbidden spell!

I can't tell you how much I love that 2e took the time to give this sort of question real thought. One of the best things about the pre-modern editions!

 

[Corinnguard]

Are you seriously going to say that you would be perfectly fine with this if your DM did this? Your DM plunks down about a thousand pages of homebrew spells and says, "Yup, I'm going to use these in the game, but, you are 100% verbotten from seeing any of them until I choose to use them in the game." No warning bells? No red flags whatsoever. Not even the slightest twinge of doubt in your mind?

I would be fine with it because I have known my DM for almost 20 years, long before he invited me to join his role-playing group. There are going to be things that only the DM knows and has access to, and they have their own reasons for either withholding info or giving it on a need to know basis. And if a DM were to have access to a thousand pages of homebrew spells, I doubt that they would do as you just mentioned. That's a good way of losing your players to another table and harming your own rep as a DM. You want the players to trust your skills as a DM.

 

[bloodtide]

Lessee. 500 spells, assume about 100 words per spell, that's 50 000 words. Presumably, also, this is several man-hours of work, probably spread over several days, if not months. Now, you're claiming that you have not a single typo, misspelled word, poorly written phrase, nothing, in all that work? Not a single, solitary mistake.

Other then I do have an amazing grasp of the English language, I also own a wondrous device known as a "computer". This device can read my work and correct things...really it is amazing. I do also possess the skills of: Editing, Proofreading, and Double Checking.

Excuse me if I'm not really buying that. I strongly suspect that there are numerous errors in your work. Not because of any fault of yours, but, simply because knowing that writing can be rather challenging and it's easy to make typos, mistakes, and various other errors, even by paid professionals with thousands of published words to their names. Having spent a rather lengthy amount of time proofing papers, I'm fairly certainly that I could find numerous errors in your work.

Writing is only "challenging" if your not a writer. Just like anything else. If you have skill and talent, things you know are not "so hard". I doubt you would find many, but sure I make one from time to time. For example I misspell "disintegrate" from time to time.

But, ignore all that. You're claiming that you can create five hundred new spells and not a single one of them causes any problems at the table? Again, I don't really have a lot of confidence in that. Professional game authors, with teams of editors and play-testers cannot do that. I strongly doubt that a single person, working on their own, could.

I'm not really sure what a problem might be? Any spell that needs it, has a good paragraph of Legalese written by me.

Yea...and professionals and multi million dollar game companies that can't seem to hire one editor.....well, you can see their work for yourself.

But there is a huge different between someone doing a job, and someone doing something for fun or love. I, like most gamers, could never make half the mistakes you see in official books. I will never, ever "miss" something like: Detect Magic: school Evocation. Ever.

Of course, also as just a single person who is my own boss, I don't have to listen to others, blinding hand my work off to others, "work" within a corporate juggernaut and get over ruled by random people. If I see a typo, I can stop and fix it in seconds. In a company setting often you can only send an e-mail to your "boss" and hope they take care of it. And...well, there are lots more bad work horror stories.

So, if there are 500 new spells in the game world, any divine spells would be known by all divine casters. And, any arcane caster could add them to their spells known automatically.

Yet another reason why players should not know all the spells.

 

[James Gasik]

I can't tell you how much I love that 2e took the time to give this sort of question real thought. One of the best things about the pre-modern editions!

Hey there's a reason I keep all my old books around. Sure, a lot of what was written in the 2e era was "throw stuff at the wall and see what sells", but for all it's flaws, there were a lot of really great ideas that came out of that halcyon era.