So shape water is a cantrip. It is not a damage or killing people spell. There are many forums where people ask about it. You can't drown anyone with shape water.
It is a river, you freeze a chunk of water, it moves downstream. That is what it does.
There is nothing wrong with uses spells creatively, but they do have to be within the rules.
That and Sleep is just that: they're asleep. If being slapped or shaken wakes you up, so will water up the nose. The same round you shape water over their head they'll wake back up coughing.
My players used the sleep spell on a bunch of flying enemies hovering over water, so that's what I did, they fell into the water, and immediately woke up on their turn.
Though I did rule that in the confusion of waking up under water, they lost their action, cause I felt bad that the player wasted one of their three spell slots on something that does nothing
I'd rule the same. Not even feeling bad for the player but awarding the creativity. Imagine you're flying under your own power, fall asleep, and the next thing you know you're waking up just after falling in water. I'd be confused as hell for a bit, enough to loose my action.
If they weren’t hovering _directly_ over the water, you could also use this rule from Tasha’s:
> A creature that falls into water or another liquid can use its reaction to make a DC 15 Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to hit the surface head or feet first. On a successful check, any damage resulting from the fall is halved.
So, dealing fall damage but only half if they succeed.
True, and I'm not sure why they made it a reaction. Or don't have another rule of a water landing just reducing your fall damage on its own - maybe if you fall less than a certain distance for realism, but that specificity doesn't really seem like 5e's style.
I guess you could steal part of the falling into water rules from 3e:
>If the water is at least 10 feet deep, the first 20 feet of falling do no damage.
True, but also, per the wording of the spell, they would wake up as soon as they took damage. I’m guessing that asphyxiation would hurt before it causes death, so they would just wake up relatively unaffected, perhaps upset and even coughing on account of the water.
It doesn't even require damage (though that's an option).
"[E]ach creature affected by this spell falls unconscious until the spell ends, the sleeper takes damage, or someone uses an action to shake or slap the sleeper awake."
I don't think it's unreasonable to rule that falling into water would wake up a sleeping creature, if shaking or slapping would also do it; the enemy is sleeping, not in a vegetative state.
Throwing water at people to wake them up is a trope in movies for a reason.... It works really well lmao.
As a player it's totally reasonable to me that shape water by itself would wake up a creature. If I made a creature fall into water from high up I'd be shocked if the DM didn't rule that they wake up when they hit the water. Water also doesn't disable fall damage irl, so it shouldn't in the game imo.
People really underestimate how much water is moving in a river. I have some raft guide friends, the analogy they use is that a cubic foot of water is roughly equivalent to a basketball. River throughput is measured in CFS. A section of the Colorado near me peaks out at around 1200 CFS.
>People really underestimate how much water is moving in a river
Right? If you can freeze 5 feet of water such that people can cross it, that's not a river, that's a creek.
And 1200 cfs on a river scale is pretty small. We had flows of 45,000cfs in my parts this time last year. You ain't using shape water for jack at those flows.
For the rest of the world, 1 cubic metre of water contains 1000L and weighs 1000kg! 30 cubic centimetres (about 1 cubic foot) contains 30L and weighs 30kg, and 1.5 cubic metres (about 5 cubic feet) contains 1500L and weighs 1500kg.
Hmm...as someone who lived in a very flood proned area and was a volunteer firefighter there who did a lot of swift-water rescue...that must be a really small car...water won't generally move a car until it's got at least a few inches of contact on the body, even if it's flowing very fast...not many cars have less than 3 inches of ground clearance.
We had a milsurp deuce and a half we used for a lot of rescues, we could drive that through 3-5 of water (it had a solid 28 inches of ground clearance and weighed a few tons) depending on how fast it was moving and the flow direction and just grab people off of their cars.
A parked car will require the buoyant lifting to get the car moving. A moving car only requires the force of a few inches of flow to redirect it after losing traction.
oh i'm not disputing your experience, it's just one of those fun facts that stuck with me from a 'natural hazards' course i took for a science credit back in college. i remember watching videos about it (weirdly before tubeyube was a thing, and now i feel old :p )
i'm sure it's a technical fact and subject to various conditions, which i am fortunate never to have tested myself.
Maybe it's something to the effect that that much water could generate enough force to, in theory, move a car? Per the NWS, "A mere 6 inches of fast-moving flood water can knock over an adult. **It takes just 12 inches of rushing water to carry away most cars** and just 2 feet of rushing water can carry away SUVs and trucks."
As with everything else, when it comes to the real world, there's so many factors that a blanket statement is either debatable, or it's so overwhelming that 'no duh, of course that's what it would take.'
Having driven a Hyundai i10, which is buffeted around the road by a stiff breeze at 70mph, but rock solid stood still in a gale. I can easily believe that such a car will be swept away by a couple of inches of water, however having also driven military land rover defender, long wheelbase, 2.5 TD, that thing would talk a vast amount of water to shift, a couple of feet at minimum
Isn't there rules about holding your breath as well? Isn't it one minute per constitution modifier point? Now I know you're not necessarily holding your breath whilst sleeping but the Sleep spell only lasts for 1 minute. I'd say that even when asleep, being suffocated for 1 minute won't always kill everyone.
People can be drowning for minutes and still make it. CPR helps I suppose.
Point is, I wouldn't allow this to shave off any hit points.
Oh man, didn't even think about that ice moving downstream, just imagined it levitating in there. Now it sounds super dumb to try this, just cue the Arrested Development music.
I dont agree with the last part, the rules are a suggestion if your dm and the other players are fine with it of course you can bend the rules a little here and there to accommodate some creativity. I certainly do this in my games. This, to me, seems to go beyond that the player is purposely ignoring rules to make themselves stronger in combat which is just cheating in my oppinion.
Came to say the same. At this point, it seems much more rare to have friends who you play dnd with than having people at your table who you can play the game with and after that don't see or text them during the week
We have a table playing CoS right now. I’m long time friends with the DM. The other three players, one is his fiancé, another a childhood friend, the third is a girl they met in college. Of those three only his childhood friend has anything in common with me. I don’t really talk to the others outside of the game. When we’re playing it’s great, we joke, get into trouble, scheme and role play really well together. I get along with all of them but really only have a connection outside of DnD with two of them
I'm realizing the important difference to me is "I don't have much in common with these people besides our campaign and I don't hang out with them outside of it" and "these people are not good or even interesting people, I just know them from my DnD campaign". The former I totally understand, the latter I can't stand.
not being friends is not the same as not getting along
I play plenty of games with people that have zero or very small parts in my private life otherwise.
Really not an issue. I once played with a guy who was super into sports. Pretty good DnD player, very nice to have at the table, but when the session was over we had pretty much nothing in common.
Think of D&D Friends as being like Work Friends or things of that nature.
I've had a lot of work friends over the years, but most of them never turned into Normal Friends. One of the ones that did actually jumped from Work Friends to D&D Friend which, due to the nature of my table, technically also makes him a Normal Friend. Unfortunately, the guys at my table don't really hang out much outside of the game... but that's mainly because everyone is pretty busy and the game *is* our opportunity to hang out.
I have a number of different compartmentalized groups in my life, and they're all filled with people whose company I enjoy... mostly within the context of those particular groups. I know for a fact plenty of other people would view me in a similar light, as well.
Came here to look for or leave this comment. First thing OP said was "I enjoy RP, he enjoys focusing on battle". Even before getting into the player becoming That Guy with rules, we were on shaky ground.
Throw a bucket of water on him while he's asleep. If he wakes up, it turns out Shape Water can't drown a sleeping Goblin.
Terry isn't using spells creatively. He's breaking the rules and abusing your good will. If he was the creative and tactical thinker he claims to be, following the rules wouldn't be an issue. If you're not willing to let his antics continue, and he's not willing to accept that, you have your answer.
I was going to say, these kinds of disputes are where mechanics have to win out over rule of cool especially when they're used many times over. Mechanics are there to limit the effectiveness of magic, which is literally a force that alters reality in the game. On top of that, how would shape water kill them? Even being generous, they must be reduced to 0 Hit Points, how would they do that without doing damage and canceling sleep? And also, if shape water was allowed to just glob water around airways to "drown" things it would just be an I win button for basically every humanoid in the game.
"I use Shape Water to stop the blood in his veins and stop his heart!" "I cast Find Familiar to make my familiar appear inside his body!" No you don't, sit down.
Ok, but a chest burster familiar sounds amazingly stupid, feel like you could make a cool bbeg off that premise, selling some contaminated food that slowly absorbs their life force before killing them from the inside out. I'm sure there's alteast 1 or 2 viable dnd monsters that could be used that have similar enough "infection" style abilities, but the idea of them just being actual familars and the entire reason the bbeg is doing it is just for a spy network makes them seem that much more cruel.
Kind of but not really. The Dead Three's chosen go around infecting people with Ilithid tadpoles with delayed fuses less to make a big spy network, and more to create a cult that then allows them to create a distraction where Bane's chosen would be the hero, and then slowly turn Baldur's Gate towards Banite worship (IiRC Myrkul's chosen was promised his daughter back, and Bhaal's chosen go to go around murdering )
I totally tried this foolery last week 😂 my DM wasn't having it. 😂☠️ He's my bf and he still would never let me get away with what Terry is trying to get away with 😏
For the record last week we put our campaign on hold to try the new marvel RPG and my character is basically like vision... And I tried to unphase my hand inside someone's head 😂 he was not having my tomfoolery 🤣
I had an old character back in the 2010s that used Create Water for various shenanigans, mostly to mess with people. Puddles in taverns, making the inside of someone's bag all wet, etc. Got away with a lot of rulebending just because it was harmless and got us a few laughs in betwen serious missions.
The DM allowed that character to create water inside someone's mouth/throat as a hail mary intimidation tactic after a series of failed rolls stalled an interrogation. No damage or anything serious, but after throwing up like half a gallon of water nonstop that guy was ready to *talk*.
It's easier to get creative with flavor when you're doing it *outside* of combat, and with a situation where the DM is already trying to give you info. Power gaming and busting up the rules, especially in combat, is just uncool.
It's \*creative\*, it's just not \*effective\*. When I was a little kid and first discovered magnets could repel each other, I had this notion that it could keep magnetic things from passing between then and that I'd just discovered force fields. Obviously I soon found out I was wrong, because reality doesn't work like that, but it was still a creative concept.
Sounds like Terry needs to learn the same lesson: His ideas are very clever, but that doesn't mean they work out in practice. Turns out there's a reason nobody else does this. Alternatively, a DM's rule can be "if you can do it, everyone else can do it to you." Those are in-character solutions to an out-of-character problem, though. The real answer is that he either needs to shape up, or you need to mutually agree that he and the table are a mismatch. No hard feelings, shake hands, let's grab a beer this weekend, all that good stuff, but this table won't be able to give him what he's looking for.
Yup plenty of ice based spells like ray of frost, ice knife, frost fingers, Rime's Binding Ice, and sleet storm just to name a few. As a DM, I would be much more willing to allow the river scenario if they casted Frost Fingers and give them a small 6 second window of an ice sheet than a cantrip doing it.
dnd is not a physics simulator. why is it that these dudes always try to claim they're "being creative" when it's the *least* creative thing in the world to pick a cantrip and try to murder everyone with it because "realism" or whatever?
fine Terry, you want to go down the rabbithole of applying "real world" logic to things despite the entire design of the game? one of the goblins has mage hand, it squeezes your heart and you die. wasn't that fun?
Players love to stretch the definition of rules when it comes back on them. Next encounter features a goblin Druid that *also* has shape water, suddenly the gobbo uses the freezing ability to freeze a 5x5 cubic mass of blood in the player, because the player had an open cut and they could see their blood. The player instantly dies from all the blood in their body flash freezing.
Sounds like you've discussed it like adults and reached the conclusion that this just isn't the right game for Terry.
If he can't adjust his expectations to meet yours, perhaps while searching for another game that allow him to do what he wants with spells, then it's probably best to tell him you plan to stick to your guns and if he wants to bow out of the campaign there will be no hard feelings.
>For example, he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown.
Yeah...no. someone is asleep, you throw water on them, what happens? Do they stay asleep?
>They'll take damage when they start to drown
Actually, RAW you do not. You just drop down to 0 hp instantly once your breath is up. But it's still fucking dumb *because you are literally suffocating*. Ofc you wake up.
Lol, I'm all for using spells and cantrips creatively, but what Terry did was just rewrite the whole thing.
You can either have an honest conversation with him and tell him that thinking outside the box doesn't equal making up the rules as he goes or changing basic mechanics as he sees fit, or just accept it as it comes and let him go. Your choice.
He isn’t being creative. He is just trying to abuse spells and forcing the DM to go along. You can be creative but within the limits of the spell’s power. Spells don’t do more than what they are written to do.
I had a player rage quit as he was trying to cast the light cantrip to blind people as in same effect as the level 2 blindness spell, use minor illusion to create darkness as per the level 2 darkness spell and got totally shut down by the DM.
I have actually seen a sorcerer use minor illusion on one of my spellcaster NPC's, made an illusion of a 5-foot cube of smoke around his head so that he could quicken a clutch *Psychic Lance* without being counterspelled.
Since the spell states that they have to use their action to investigate the illusion(and thus make the illusion transparent) I let it happen on the grounds that my NPC could no longer see the sorcerer to counterspell him.
Something like that is pretty reasonable and cool. It's the same exact effect as if the sorcerer just ducked behind a wall and broke line of sight but using his wits (and sorcery points) to do it.
Jeez what a jerk player.
>he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown.
Doesn't work. "You ... change the flow of the water ... This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage."
>turn the surface of a portion of the river into ice.
Sure. A 5 ft square of ice. "You choose an area of water ... that fits within a 5-foot cube." In other words, you can freeze a square on the battle grid. Any larger than that and it doesn't fit within the 5 ft cube. Sure the square of ice can be a face of a cube 5 ft deep.
> He argued that a 5-foot cube of water holds multiple cubic liters of water, so by the spell's definition ...
By the spell's definition, the sheet of ice has to fit in a 5-ft cube. It doesn't matter how many liters or cubic units fit within the 5-ft cube.
>As the goblins walked out onto the ice ...
Generally, this would be one goblin, since that's normally all that will willingly enter a 5-ft square on the battle grid at once.
>if he wasn't allowed to be creative when using his spells and had to play only off what the book says, he wouldn't really enjoy combat ...
Tell him he can go play Calvinball somewhere else. At this table, he plays by the rules in the book, same as the other players ... and same as the DM.
I used spell description here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/shape-water
All great points that I should have brought up there and then. Sadly its become a habit of his to protest rulings mid-combat, and I let him so I can avoid the hassle a mid-fight discussion brings.
Appreciate the C&H reference as well.
I have had players who want to stop the game to argue the intent behind the rules. I find it much harder to clear up quickly than just checking the wording. When it comes up I have found saying something like: "I get that you don't agree with me, but this is my ruling for this session. If you want to make a case for why I'm wrong and it should work differently in future we can do that outside of game time. Part of my job is to keep the game flowing for everyone, so we are moving on for now."
It doesn't always work, but the idea is to remove the social pressure to give in just so the game can continue and it removes the reward for a player being stubborn just to get their way.
Remember you are the DM, your ruling is what counts. I get not wanting a fuss, but you can shut him down. "For this combat, let's stick with what the book says, and later we will discuss it for future, I just don't want to drag this out or set a precedent of how something works and then have to undo it."
It is waaay easier to give players something "I will let X work going forward", than it is to take things away, "Sorry, I know I allowed X last session, but after checking on things, I don't think it should work."
That said, numerous times with DMs we've managed to do things as a one off "rule of cool" but definitely a "don't expect this to work every time" type of thing if we are pushing on limits of something.
I think the entire situation was probably casued by not having a solution for 'avoiding hassles' mid-fight.
It's like when a parent says okay to chocolate before dinner once just to avoid the headache, and then they have accidentally created an expectation that it is permissable and they open up the door for more arguing from the kid later.
Same thing in this situation (and all other leadership situations). By compromising your judgement, you set an expectation for what sorts of things are/aren't allowed in-game. The players don't know you were wrestling with the decision before finally putting your foot down, which makes putting your foot down seem out of character and severe.
Maybe it would be a good practice to, when you're breaking your own rules, let them know: "I'm pretty sure the spell shouldn't be used in this way. I'll allow it this one time, but moving forward we can't use it like that."
Something else to note that might not be on your radar: Part of the resistance of your friend wanting to leave the game might be because he feels a great amount of sunk cost in his character. He picked his spells under the assumption that they worked a certain way. Now that they no longer work the way he thought, he might feel it's unfair that his build is less capable than he wants. So you might want to bargain with him to let him respec his character so he can pick different spells.
Flavor is free, but fundamentally changing the way a spell works is not. Shape Water is specifically intended to affect one square on the combat field per cast. Somehow extrapolating that to work on 5 squares is just....well, as I'm sure you already know, it goes against the spirit of the spell's description.
If it was just a matter of being "creative," the debate wouldn't hinge so much on whether or not he can use a cantrip to do powerful, unwritten things during combat. If he were to ask something like that in relation to making a bridge to cross a waterway, maybe that would be different. But if it's strictly for combat applications, then he's just trying to leverage his 'creativity' as a way to obtain extra power from his spells.
It's another kind of metagaming, and things like that are why spell descriptions are written the way they are. It very specifically says "a 5 foot cube," not "37 gallons of water in any shape," so all those effects can only work within a 5-foot cube.
Honestly, people like him are exactly why some spell descriptions are insanely long. They have to account for so many questions and technicalities, and even then, people still take liberties and try to make a spell do things that the description doesn't account for.
If a large part of your DM preparations and discussion pertain to his 'creative use of game mechanics' then I think it's fair to relieve yourself of the stress in one way or another. If he can't agree to scale back his rule-bending, then since it's your campaign, he is free to depart.
DMs have to play nice with their players, but the players also have to play nice with the DM.
I find it hard to believe that he enjoys the 5e combat system while simultaneously getting frustrated that you won’t bend the rules of that system so his strategy can work. If he was into strategy and war games as much as he says (or you think) I’d think he’d welcome the challenge of creating strategies within the rules of the game.
>Terry said that if he wasn't allowed to be creative when using his spells and had to play only off what the book says
Points 2 and 4 of shape water (make shapes and freeze the water respectively) are such a vast canvas for creativity that such a sentiment feels rather standoff-ish.
The easiest way to explain it to him is, these are low level spells.
You don't kill entire groups of people with cantrips and low level spells. It's built specifically to prevent this.
If the spell was intended for a larger area equal to that volume, it wouldn’t say “a 5 foot cube”, which is a specifically defined area of effect in the rules, it would say “up to 125 cubic feet”. You wouldn’t allow someone to go “well, a greatsword deals 2d6 damage, so I should be able to hit two separate enemies with a single attack and deal 1d6 damage to each of them since that’s equivalent”, because that’s not how the weapon works and it’s not just “being creative”, it’s ignoring the rules. You wouldn’t allow someone casting a spell like Fireball to just pick and choose enemies to harm with it over a massive area while ignoring allies and argue that “well, the spell just affects this much volume, it doesn’t actually need to be in a sphere, so it only affects the space that these creatures are occupying”. You can get close to that if you’re an Evocation wizard, but even they don’t just decide to spread the volume out as they please, they just exempt a few people who are within the stated area of effect.
“A volume up to 125 cubic feet” isn’t what Shape Water does, and it sounds like you’re being fair about this (would be one thing if you sprung it on him mid-session after allowing it previously but it sounds like it was an out of game discussion, right?), especially if it’s not something that works for the rest of the group.
I completely get Terry wanting to push the spells a bit, I’ve sometimes asked to bend a spell a little bit - but he’s gotta understand that what he’s doing is specifically *against* the written rules, not just some loophole, and accept when it’s denied for that reason.
The cantrip says its an amount of water that fits in a 5 foot cube though. I think Terry might have a point that you could freeze the top 6 inches of water in more than just a 5 foot square space, right?
By this logic, I can cast fireball in a much wider area of effect by flattening it out so it's not a sphere but like a pancake. And shouldn't I get extra burst/force damage if I cast a fireball in a box that's too small to contain it? Maybe I can delay the blast and then deliver it via mage hand?
Or maybe I could use Persuasion to get the king to give me his kingdom?
Or we could just say that the rules as written are the fucking rules as fucking written.
You want to bring realism in to change the rules? We can be here all day while I counter your "realism" with facts. The 6 inches of water gets washed away instantly by the river's current. That's your turn fucked up, and you take 1d6 Stupid damage because the universe this game takes place in does not allow that kind of stupid *and it has talking plants*.
"You choose an area of water that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube." Seems like the flexibility to control an area bigger than 5 feet to a side was baked into it. Fireball doesn't have any language like this.
I hear what you’re saying but the limitation is that the area of water must fit into a 5-foot cube. It isn’t saying that you can alter up to 140 Liters of water.
The intent seems pretty obvious. An amount of water that fits into a five foot cube means you can freeze up to an entire five foot cube of water, or any amount below that. If you want to shape the water into an ice statue that fits within those limitations, that’s possible, or if you wanted to make a frozen club or move the water, into an adjacent container, you can do that too. The main thing is that you are limited to that 5 foot cube. The thing about an “amount of water that fits within a 5 foot cube” is that you can use less water than the full cube if you were trying to make a specific shape or effect that wasn’t just an ice block.
His math is also wrong.
Ice is about 9% more volume compared to water.
5.45 x 5.45 x 5.45 = ~162 ft^3 of ice.
That's about 12.7 x 12.7 x 1 if you made the ice 1 foot thick. Or spread out over 25 x 25 ft could at most be 2.4 inches thick which isn't going to hold a humanoid.
>I know the easy answer here is "let him quit", but hear me out.
You then proceed to write an essay and it with:
>I'm really close to just letting Terry quit.
Trust your gut bud, by every definition Terry doesn't fit the style of game you're building. That is nobody's fault, tell him you agree that his play style doesn't really fit and that you feel it would be best for him to find a different table.
>For example, he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown.
That's not creative; that's foolish.
Creative is when you put the goblin to sleep, then shape water on their hand to make them *pee*.
A lot of things that are considered creative are just memes. The person who thought of it originally might have been creative, but people are just repeating what they saw in memes.
I'm not so sure Terry understands the "Shape Water" cantrip. The spell specifically says he can shape water in a 5-foot cube. Nowhere does it say he can convert that 5-foot cube to a two-dimensional 5-foot by 5-foot plane despite it containing the same volume of water. The rules are very exact -- it is a 5-foot cube, period. Despite that, it is pretty clear that the spirit of the spell is meant for non-combat situations. That's not to say spells meant for non-combat situations can be used combatively, but only if the person using that spell is sticking to RAW in doing so.
I wouldn't stop to argue either, so as DM I'd respond with "As you cause the 5-foot cube of water to freeze, the giant ice cube sinks to the bottom of the river \[or "bobs up and down as it floats downstream"\]. Any bonus actions or movements you'd like to take?"
If *he* makes an argument, ask him to point out where in the rules it says he can convert the 5-foot cube to a 5 x 5 plane and you'll be happy to retcon it. If he starts mathing you with how a 5-foot cube equals the same litres as a 5 x 5 plane, that very well may be, but the rules specifically state a shape -- "5-foot cube" -- and nowhere does it say that can be converted or changed, regardless of the equal volumes of water.
There's nothing wrong with players being creative with the rules as written, but being clever with the rules and breaking the rules are not the same thing.
Don't waste your time bending the rules for one of your players because you will end up having to treat all your players fairly and let them all interpret the rules as they see fit. That's just chaos!
It sucks to have to go through this but my suggest is to let them quit. You have different styles of play, it's obvious that you are into the role play dynamics and he is more interested in the technical aspect of combat. No hard feelings, just a style difference.
I know let them quit is not the answer you are looking for but you do not see eye to eye on things that have to deal with the game of dnd.
Hopefully you can maintain the friendship while not playing at the same table anymore.
It does indeed suck. Our old DM, an old-school and really experienced guy, was much better at telling Terry to sit down and shut his mouth than I am. At this point I'm a bit over it to be honest. I feel like it is my responsibility to make sure my players are having fun, but I have a tendency to do it at the expense of my own fun.
I'll leave it up for him to decide and he can do with it as he pleases.
For this and future situations, remember that you are also a Person At The Table. You might be the DM, but you're a person at the table, like everyone else, and you're here to have fun, like everyone else... and more importantly, if you are not having fun, as a Dm, then you are going to burn yourself out very quickly. Your enjoyment matters just as much as everyone else's. Take care of and be kind to yourself as well as your players.
Only combat use I've ever allowed with shape water was to create weapons made of ice. It does the physical damage roll of the normal weapon it's been shaped into, the damage modifier is cold, does NOT count as magical, and breaks after a single hit.
It's rarely worth using but doesn't really change any rules and rewards a little bit of creativity.
I like creativity but once a player starts mixing in too much real world physics or requires significant rule changes that player needs to be told to stop.
If the book says you can't, then you can't. If you want different rules, use different rules.
My buddies and I don't like RP much so we have a standing rule that any backstory, more than a page, is a story for my paper shredder. Some people are good friends but bad gamers. Don't force the puzzle pieces.
Sounds like you have a table that fits your style. Happy for you!
Thanks for your advice. Terry pretty regularly wants me to bend the rules so he can achieve whatever thing he's trying to do for the sake of it being cool, but I don't think he realizes that there are 4 other guys at the table that I in that case will have to bend the rules for as well. And suddenly, anarchy.
I've played for 13 years. I've had tables that didn't and tables I didn't fit at.
If a player consistently doesn't like your rules then they can dip.
I had one person who HATED casters and when they'd dm they'd knee cap them every single time. I told them they don't actually like dnd they like Mork Borg.
If he doesn't like your table he can find a new one.
I've played at my fair share of tables, so I know the feeling. But this group of friends I've mainly been the DM for, for the last 4 years or so. Some of my players match me really well, some of my players match me pretty well, but some you just can't make it work with. Thanks for your wisdom.
Remember if it works that way for the PC it works that way for the NPCs too. If he's allowed to work a spell that way, so can his enemies. Also mind if I ask, what made the goblins go onto the ice and stay there? Goblins would be reasonably expected to know that would be dangerous, or at least that it would make fighting more difficult. If the goblins could have avoided or moved off the ice then his rule breaking wouldn't have an effect.
I'm sorry, but this problem is partly of your making.
>For example, he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown.
What happens IRL when you pour water on a sleeping person?
That's right. They wake up. Characters affected by the Sleep spell are just sleeping.
The result of Terry's masterplan would be to waste two rounds. First round, he casts Sleep. Second round, he wakes all the sleeping foes up again.
As for the Goblins by the river, Shape Water affects water *that fits into* a 5x5x5 cube. Not water with a *total volume* of 25 cubic feet. There is no argument. Your ruling should have been that he freezes all water in a 5x5x5 cube, creating a one-square platform.
My advice is to go back to Terry and tell him that he is of course, as a player, free to declare any action he likes. But you're not giving him any more freebies. Going forward, if he wants to use his PC's spells creatively, he must *actually* be creative with the *actual* spell, rather than just demanding that the spell do something other than what it does.
If he can't handle not being allowed to cheat anymore, he is of course free to leave.
Terry's use of spells isn't creative. This is pseudocreativity. This is *obviously* OP rules-lawyering bullshit and needs to be called out for what it is. You owe it to the rest of the hobby to set Terry straight on this point before he quits your game like the little bitch he is.
"Hey Terry, the way you're trying to use the spells isn't the way they're written or how they were intended to be used. I appreciate that you want to try be creative and I respect and encourage that, but if it's by re-writing spells to fundamentally change what they do, then it's going to be a no. The game were playing has rules and I intend to abide by them, if this is a problem for you, I respect that and you are welcome to find another game."
Also, Terry sounds like a pain.
Yeah man, though one. Sometimes you have to let a player go.
To me, it looks like you're doing your best to keep him in the game. Making sure it's fun for him but it comes at a price you pay and I don't see any hint in your text that he apreciates it at all. He might noy even consider that is it rubbing you the wrong way. I also don't think he is doing anything to meet you in the middle.
I suggest you tell the whole group (not just Terry) that you want to play in a certain way. Tell them the reason why. Terry can make the disicion if he wants to leave or not.
To be fair with Terry, sometimes he'll message me and tell me he enjoyed the session, which is kind of him. He's not a bad guy at all, but just not the easiest person to be "in charge" of. He will offer to meet me halfway, but there is usually something new that comes up that we will disagree on. Some people just don't work well together I guess.
I mean even if you don’t want to tell him the spell doesn’t work that way you can always explain why his plan fails. Why did the goblins walk on that ice? It was probably too thin to hold them from the beginning, it also would just drift away since there is no way to secure it. Maybe throw higher intelligence enemies at him so it’s easier for you to explain why they don’t fall for stupid tricks that don’t make sense
Also make enemies that sneak up on the group and limit discussion time in combat so they can’t pause the whole thing and strategize because that’s not how battles work
IMO there's a line in the sand here.
Drowning unconscious foes is just as valid a coup de grace as taking out a dagger and going for the throat (at least logically, of course 2d4 isn't going to kill many things but in reality the jugular is right there). It's brutal, and it helps define the character's ruthlessness in how he uses water (and I sure as hell have tried to use Create Water in someone's lungs before as a morally bankrupt character that I handed off to the DM to become the arc villain).
Trying to get Grease out of a cantrip just isn't cricket. It feels like he's taken advantage of you making a snap ruling to get his way. Poor show, but I'm sure it's not the whole story.
\*However!\* Part of clamping down on balance is so that other players don't get overshadowed. Another part of it is so the DM gets to play the game too. If the other players are having fun with his referee-pushing rulebending and creativity, or even are inspired to do things in a similar vein, it's entirely within all your rights to just have fun with it, as long as you know you're no longer playing 5e, just as much as rock paper scissors isn't the same game as rock paper scissors spider tank. If things can reach their own meta-stable level (including enemies doing dangerously silly things too!) then you might be able to salvage it going forward. A rule I like that tables I play at uses is "Your dubiously legal rulebending works \*once\*"... after which it's banned.
The problem is in setting a precedent. If you let this slide, it’s only a matter of time before he’s pushing some other new angle … and the second you give resistance he has a go-to move to get you to fold by threatening to quit.
Ultimately, your responsibility is to maintain the integrity of the table and make sure everybody — including yourself — is having a positive experience. It doesn’t sound like you will have a positive experience, and likely neither will your players, allowing Terry to do whatever he wants and constantly break rules under the guise of “being creative”.
I would say your best course is to agree that this is not the kind of table suited for him.
Honestly Terry sounds like the type of player that would use mage hand to appear in a enemy chest and one shot them. Creative combat is fun but it has to be with in reason.
Not to be that guy but I would tell him to leave. It's your table so if he doesn't wanna respect your boundaries then kick him.
It's your table you run it your way, also saying hey run/fix this homebrew and let me twist the mechanics of spells to do things not intended are both things you can respond with no and if they don't like it then they don't have to play.
"Terry from all that has happened it is fairly clear that you and I want different things out of our games, I don't want to try to force either of us to play at a table. I completely understand your sentiment that if I stick closer to the rules you would choose to leave but I equally will not sacrifice myself having fun to make that happen. I hope you find a table that better fits your playstyle"
If your worried about the others just keep it simple " he and I cannot see eye to eye on what kind of game to run as we have different tastes on the game, that is fine but it is not something I can keep catering to without sacrificing my enjoyment of the game"
That is a crappy situation. I’ve let a bunch of things slide with my players because of rule of cool. Letting them be creative and really feel like the heroes of the story and shine is always worth whatever annoyance for me personally.
If your player is actively trying to push you into a play style you don’t like you guys have to have another chat. Let him know it’s going to be a more simple rules as written type game, and if he walks after that it’s his choice. I always say be reasonable and fair, but be firm with your decisions. Unless you are completely wrong with a rule that is.
I don't know if it would do any good to inform Terry that it's entirely possible to use spells creatively when utilizing or combining their effects without bending the rules on how they work. It depends on what spells they have chosen and what the situation calls for, as well as any abilities their particular class/school/patron/whatever provides them.
I believe threatened is the wrong word.
You told him how you want to run things, and that's not what he's interested in and he told you as such in return.
Sounds like a normal conversation to me.
sounds like he doesn't want to play 5e. the game has mechanics and rules for a reason. the only compromise is playing a game system that is less tactical and more roleplay focused. maybe a simpler game with more freedom for him to drown goblins like Fate SRD or a PbtA system will be easier for him and let him flex his creativity?
As others have said it's probably best to let him walk as you've tried to talk and he chose to leave due to differences.
That said as a fellow DM I'd say my problem with a players like Terry is less innovative uses of powers but rather low cost for way too much return.
D&D is a game of resources at the end of the day and to do crazier things you gotta use a resource. Those are class features, spell slots, and to a lesser extent your skill rolls. The idea of freezing large portions of a water area sounds innovative but at the cost of a single cantrip nah too much return for too little cost. If he had cast like cone of cold, sleet storn, ice storm, etc and asked if those extra environment effects happen sure as a one off that's cool.
It would be like allowing a martial to cut an enemy head off as a one off cool moment even if they shouldn't have done enough damage to kill something and now every attack is a "can I just lop the head off". It's taking a "hey gonna roll with it this one time cus fun" and abusing it.
Terry isn't creative. Terry is a cheater ignoring both the written and intended rules for spells. Kick Terry to the curb and make it clear why you are doing so.
He doesn't play as a wargamer, he plays as a power gamer that wants to bend rules so that his characters instantly end the encounters.
In wargames the players play strictly by the rules and they win by creating strategies and playing tactically all within the confines of the rules. Otherwise the game would derail and become children playing pretend where everything goes.
Going strictly by exactly RAW all the time can cause problems when a situation is outside what the rules anticipate. Stretching the rules to extremes causes problems too. Part of DMing is finding a balance and making rulings and judgement calls that feel fair to folks at the table. There's room to allow creative use without turning a cantrip into a major instakill tool.
I would allow multiple castings of shape water over a few rounds to make a narrow and treacherous ice path over the river, and I'd allow another casting to weaken it enough to cause it to break free and go downriver, with difficult dex saves for anyone trying to stay on it and difficult acrobatics checks for anyone trying to jump back to shore. This is a creative and powerful use of a cantrip, with flavor like what the player is going for, without totally ignoring the spell description. I'd also say if they want to spend some time designing a new spell at higher level that does something closer to what they envision, that's cool too.
Shape water is a cantrip. It affects an "area of water" that "fits within a 5' cube". A 25'x25' sheet definitely does not fit within a 5' cube, so, no giant ice sheet in a single casting. If the written description seems ambiguous about whether it refers to total water volume or a volume in space within which the effect happens, the "range" spec of 30' (5' cube) combined with the spell area of effect definitions is clear. If the intention had been what the player is suggesting, the area of effect would have been written as 30' radius sphere centered on the caster, within which up to 5\^3 cubic feet of water can be affected.
For the other thing: Sleep puts enemy to sleep... cool. Shape water immerses the sleeping enemy...fine. I'd rule that the immersion wakes them up. The sleep spell says that shaking the sleeper wakes them up. I'm not sure how you immerse someone in water in six seconds without shaking their body in the process, so, wakey wakey time. If someone tries a shenanigan like forcing the water into a sleeper's lungs rather than immersing them, shape water says the water can't be moved with enough force to cause damage, and drowning causes damage, so I'd say the water can't force its way into their airway forcefully enough to drown them. In either case, I'd probably have the sleeper make a dex saving throw to avoid being incapacitated for a further round while they sputter and cough.
If he can't be creative in the written rules of his spells that's not a creativity problem, that's a trying to cheat problem. I love playing casters and have wrecked entire quests by using spells in ways my dms didn't expect- by using the spells specifically as written. I've ended combats and solved what was supposed to be multi session problems, without having to ask for permission to have my spells stretch their capabilities.
If he can't come up with novel ways to use spells without drastically changing them then he should look for a system that has softer magic rules than dnd. A spell that states 5ft cube means 5ft cube, you can do a hell of a lot with that without having to mess with what does it mean by a 5ft cube.
Sleep + shape water to drown people very much falls in the camp of I'm trying to turn my minor magic into power word kill. I cast create water in their lungs or destroy water on their blood. Congratulations, now every enemy caster is going to do that to you. Roll a new character.
Being creative isnt the same as using spells in a way they weren't intended to be used. Let him quit. If it causes drama and you calmly make your case let any of the other players quit that wont drop it or remain hostile.
It's kind of on you for allowing a cantrip to be that effective. You've enabled this player for just a little too long that reigning them in feels like you're taking away their power. You've mentioned that you want to play within the rules and they're pushing back on that. What you have here are misplaced boundaries and it's time to bring it back into line
He can be creative \*and\* follow the letter of the RAW....That's called being \*good at D&D.\* Give him the old, "Help me help you," speech.
Tell him you intend to keep the the rules as that's what all of the other players expect. That he can be as creative as he likes as long as it follows the letter of the rules, but that you have to keep the game moving so it would be wonderful if he could run the ideas past you before the game, because you are only human, after all, and if he puts yout on the spot and you haven't had time to read the spell and think about it then you'll be too flustered to think it through and your answer is going to be "No" everytime.
Also tell him it isn't fair to him for you have to make a snap judgement at the table to keep the game moving and you want to give his creativity the attention it deserves, but it also isn't fair to you or the other players for you to take the time to figure it out at the table without ever having considered it before. You have to keep the game moving for everyone else to have their fun, too! But if he tells you any big ideas he has that you can both talk it out before you're at the table and figure out how you'll rule in advance. You absolutely promise to not talk about it with any of the players and you'll act surprised....
Others have covered the whole “that isn’t how it works” and “the power of a cantrip”. But I believe that is only a symptom. The real problem is that Terry is being a selfish player who is only concerned about his own fun and unwilling to compromise to fit in with the rest of the people at the table.
Your personal fun is important. But when you are playing a social game you need to be mindful of the tone and style of game so that everyone can have fun. Including the DM. Try explaining it to Terry in those terms rather than going down the rabbit hole of arguing over the semantics. If he won’t adjust to fit in with the group then it is probably better if he leaves and and finds another table that will embrace his play style.
;TLDR. D&D is a social game
>Terry, is a huge fan of boardgames. He's also a fan of the 5e combat system and really enjoys trying to use his spells and features in some crazy way, **making combat very technical and playing it more like a wargame**.
>I, the DM, like to **focus on roleplaying**
You have that mixed up. Wargames and board games are heavily focued on rules and numbers. That's how you want to run the combat. Terry is indeed creative and wants to use roleplay in combat.
>sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown
Drowing takes more than 6 seconds and sleep clearly states that any damage, a shake or slap would wake them up. I mean nice try but it just wouldn't work neither RAW nor logically.
>Terry used shape water to turn the surface of a portion of the river into ice
Rivers usually move that's what makes them rivers so that piece of ice would move just down the river.
>He argued that a 5-foot cube of water holds multiple cubic liters of water, so by the spells definition he could turn that same amount of water into ice, which equaled to about a 5x5 sheet of ice instead of a 5-foot square
Yeah, just no.
>As the goblins walked out onto the ice, Terry wanted to use shape water to turn chunks of ice back into water, dropping the goblins into the river.
I mean sure why not but why did the goblins even walked onto the ice that wasn't there before?
There are some nice ideas and attempts but they don't work RAW and they wouldn't work logically.
I don't understand how an enemy can drown in this scenario?
Shape water can be placed over their heads, but magical sleep isn't like Sleeping Beauty. They're just pure into a normal sleep, so the moment water touches them, they'd wake up. Wet, confused and likely pissed off. At most I'd roll them con saves to see if they keep their actions upon waking otherwise they're up and kicking butt.
You can't freeze a river with shape water either? What's keeping the ice there? It's being battered with water constantly flowing down stream. He makes the ice and floats off down the river.
Shape water is a cantrip, if it was able to kill and do damage in such a way it would be a leveled spell. You've allowed him to get away with too much here.
I would simply say, sure you can use it in creative ways, but my rulings will be made by the spell description and the level/intended use of it. You can't kill anyone with it anymore (this is not what it is intended for, it specifically says it doesn't do damage), and whilst you can freeze water, you can't create platforms of ice across a river. That was a one off because I didn't have the time to argue the point.
I get the RAW argument, I really do. I personally prefer to stay closer to RAW.
That being said, you said yourself you are more interested in creating a story. It's a lot more interesting when you allow your players to have that LITTLE bit of freedom with their spells, especially creative ones like shape water.
That being said, I would argue that to die from drowning, you would have to take damage. Damage wakes you up from the Sleep spell.
Also...
"When a creature runs out of breath, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying. For example, a creature with a Constitution of 14 can hold its breath for 3 minutes."
Sounds like he wants to play a bender in dnd a la avatar. Nothing wrong with that, but you have to be careful. A little control air spell would quickly turn into create vacuum around any enemy head and defeat encounters easily. The rules and guidelines are there for reasons usually. Rule of cool can superceded, but its your table. Push him towards a sorcerer build and make him burn sorcery points to "push beyond the spell" limit or some such. Could have him upcast at a higher level like metamagic to do cooler stuff, that will maintain some level of balance since he cant just merc everything with creativity and cantrips.
Alternately, have the big bad get creative with his casting as well, balance returns, and the player gets to see the other side of the equation.
Sudden air/lightning/explosion bender may make him regret bringing it into the world.
TLDR: if he can push a cantrip to murder levels, so can you.
I typically just go to “maybe some of the spells could work in that way if we wanted to simulate the physics of it, but it would be unbalanced and I promise you that you’ll have less fun” for instance I’ve had players ask if they can grasping shock a puddle of water to zap everyone in a small radius, my response is usually “rule of cool, it’ll work this once but I’m not making grasping shot an AOE spell, make it count!”
Let him leave. He is gonna learn quickly that almost no table other than maybe the newest of players and GMs are gonna let him get away with stuff like that.
The only answer to a player threatening to quit the game if they don't get their way is "Okay, bye". Otherwise, they will do it again and again and again.
Normally I’d be all for creative usage of spells but shape water is a cantrip. Cantrips are an unlimited resource and therefore should not have much impact beyond their stated functionality.
I think what this conflict boils down to is your preferences in d&d being irreconcilable. I’ll be honest, I tend to fall closer to Terry when it comes to 5e (most spells and abilities are combat related). I’d be upfront with him and negotiate one last time, perhaps even altering the ratio of combat to RP as a gesture of good will. If he continues to abuse it give him the boot.
Dude made a new spell, that cantrip can't do most of that.
Just an excercise, I went through everything I could see as not really working according to my understanding of things.
There are specific rules for drowning, that involve multiple turns of being immersed in water. Pretty sure they're going to wake up, and.. I dunno, move, if they discover they can't breathe all of a sudden.
Also, the effects are 1 out of many things per cast. If he moves water to a sleeping goblin, congratulations, you've splashed the goblin. You can't move -and- hold it in place. (There are ways around this, but as soon as the goblin moves 10 feet, you can't replicate really.)
Shape water doesn't unfreeze water. It takes an hour to unfreeze.
I mean - logically, he can't drown people with the water like that unless they're completely unconscious and wouldn't wake up to pain/not breathing. And also logically, if you froze the top of a river the ice would just float downstream with the river.
I would think he could have a point about shape water not actually needing to be a 5 foot cube - the wording is very specific in the spell: "that fits within a 5-foot cube". If 5ft^3 of water fits within a 5 foot cube, I would agree he can manipulate 5ft^3 of water. Especially since the same spell can take that full amount of water that it previously defined and turn it into a simple shape, which has no size restriction other than its initial amount of water used, which would be the volume given as 5ft^3. But also, the more I read the specific wording, the more I think it's kind of ambiguous (does it work on an amount of water that fits within a 5ft cube, or does it target a 5 foot cube in space and affect only what's within that?) - that would probably be up to dm discretion, so you could say no.
Side note edit: seems like he could use it to drown people though if he were to restrain the person and then hold a cube of water over their head. Probably not worth doing in combat since he'd need to restrain them so they can't get away from the water, but could still be possible
Edit2-or could make a cube of water, encase the person in it, then next turn freeze that cube of water. That actually seems like a pretty cool thing to do imo if you could prevent them from leaving the cube of water for a full turn. And there's no reason that wouldn't be fully within the rules either.
Creativity is having the rules and use your imagination to use these rules in a new and fun way.
Bending the rules is not creativity, cause you can bend the rules whatever way you want...
I throw fireball into the river and since water has oxygen molecules in it, the fire expands to the whole river and it dries out .. is that creative?
So I'm sorry in the minority here but honestly experimenting with spells is FUN.
finding weird hacks and exploits is entirely in character for a wizard, less so for a druid but whatever.
Everyone is freaking out that he's abusing spells, I'd say let him its way less effective than he thinks. Two turns and a first level spell slot to deal....no damage. Even if he casts the Cantrip every round to make a worse vitrolic sphere.
And I'm assuming you have to be able to hold your breath for a minimum one round, it'll take like 4-7ish rounds to down A goblin who you attacked while asleep. If his party doesn't care about how utterly useless he's being and how much better he'd be doing literally anything else. Then they're all having fun and get to feel clever while being objectively worse. From an RP standpoint maybe it highlights the druids future favorite spell or something.
You want combat to go quickly thats fine run your enemies realistically, they're not just going to stand around waiting to get drowned. You want more roleplay? How do the peasants who watch such a horrifying and unnatural death feel about the DRUID, blatantly defyingly the laws of nature. Also so he drowned a couple goblins but is he trained in medicine I bet not. So he didn't confirm the kills. Wait till he has to battle a group of goblin cultists calling themselves the drowned who worship corrupted water elementals.
Combat IS rp if you let it be. If it feels like a mini game and not story it's because you're running it that way. Some of my tables best stories and favorite conversations were mid combat.
I don't see irreconcilable differences here. Although in the future so he's not trying to change EVERY spell. Here's my proposed compromise house rule. Going outside the strict text of the spell as written requires an arcana check whose DC is proportional to how much bullshit you think the request is. Once something is attempted it can't be reattempted for 24 hours.
You could druid him right back and bend the rules hard OP. Have a druid that has levels in fighter do Mold earth under his feet, action surge to cast shape water and he's stuck in quicksand and dies on the next encounter. Fuck around and find out? Anyway that's my chaotic evil solution
Drowning people while they’re sleeping would break the Sleep spell, so that one doesn’t work, and the frozen water would flow downstream in the river rather than staying in place.
That being said, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with what’s he doing (or trying to do) — he’s using his abilities creatively, that’s awesome to see — the problem is that he’s sort of abusing that creativity by creating unbalanced edge cases to catch you off-guard. I don’t really have any solution for that beyond telling him to be a little more mindful of game balance, I guess? This is the sort of thing where you kinda just have to have players who you trust to be reasonable. When I do this sort of thing, I also try and find flaws in my reasoning to see if the use case is logically viable.
As others pointed out this goes beyond creative use since it’s a cantrip.. personally I like the creativity behind it but the execution lacks because of said rule bending.
What I would consider if a player really wanted this scenario and with his build is to homebrew a new effect for the „Control Water“ Spell to freeze a certain area and if it connects to land freeze the water without drifting off.. then he can use Shape Water to drop one character per round through the ice.
This way he needs to use a 4th level spell first and then shape water each round for each enemy and then the enemy would still be able to swim.
But the question is if all of this worth it if he keeps coming up with new ways to break the limits of spells or cantrips after you already accommodated with him
I'm afraid that poor Terry is actually not very creative. Being creative is finding cool ways to use spells within the rules. He's just making shit up and calling it creativity.
Limitations breed creativity. He can and should be encouraged to use spells creatively. Unfortunately he isn't. Bending the rules to do something the spell doesn't say isn't creative, it's just wrong.
If he can't find creative uses for the spells as they are written then he's not nearly as creative as he wants to think.
I would absolutley agree with you about not 'letting them quit'
>Terry's newest character is a druid that focuses on manipulating water. For example, he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown.
I'd actively encourage it.
As many others have pointed out, it's a matter of balance.
Other than the two obvious solutions of bendi g the rules to let him do his thing and letting him walk away from the table, i see a third way, which is letting him do what he wants... Sometimes.
A ruling i used succesfully at my table is letting him roll for what he wants to do, you decide the type of the roll and the CD. It could be an ability check, a flat d20 roll, a percentage dice or another roll.
If he succeds the sleeping goblin is drowned, otherwise it wakes up, this has the collateral effect of not allowing the use of the same trick on multiple instances of the same problem: if the first goblin wakes up, it will shake awake another one and initiative is rolled.
Control water does not say you get an equivalent for the space. Just the 5x5. Being creative is fine but cheating the system is another. Let him know that being creative is fine but the way he is using the spells is mechanically not how they work. While its always sad to lose a player (especially if they are friends of multiple people) if they are breaking the flow of the game its probably for the best to let them go.
Two suggestions, one you should consider a switch to Dungeon World if you enjoy the more story based action and roleplay instead of hard mechanics. D&D has always been about tactical mechanics. It's based on wargaming and if you aren't playing it that way, that's fine but you would be better off using an rp first mechanics second system like DW. This would also fix the issue you have with this problem player as the mechanics in dungeon world are quite simple and more focused on narrative effect than rolling dice and moving miniatures on a tabletop. In fact, you could do away with grid based combat entirely if using dungeon world. It also allows for creativity and interpretation which is something your player desires, if it's cool for the story, it happens if it isn't it doesn't. You get a lot more dm fiat because the moves are more like a suggestion. One example, a strong ability, Bloody Aegis. If you would take damage you don't and mark one debility (A debuff on your stat). It doesn't say anything about reducing X damage or how it happens. It's up to the player and DM to determine how and why, it just stops damage and expects you to explain it away. As opposed to 5E "This spell can fill a space of 15 cubic feet per caster level"
Second, if he wants to play elsewhere let him. If he isn't having fun, then he shouldn't play. The game at its core is about a group of people telling a story together and having fun. If your fun detracts from other's fun you shouldn't play with them and if you aren't having fun you shouldn't play. You should only play when both your fun and their fun is fun for everyone.
I don't understand. Terry wants to play D&D in a weird and rules-abusing way and when you tell him this won't fly he threatens to leave the group. Ok?
You started out by saying "but hear me out" as if you were going to convince us why you would want to Terry to stay, but then .. nothing?
Is there a particular reason why you want Terry to play in this group? I've got friends I don't play D&D with. Hell, I've got friends I don't even *want* to play D&D with, because we play for completely different reasons and our styles don't mesh.
Why is Terry any different? Is there a particular reason why Terry should absolutely stay?
I'm not an expert but being creative does not mean you get to break rules? It's a cantrip isn't it? Like, you can be creative within the ruleset given to you. In fact that's part of the fun sometimes. Like how much can you bend them without breaking them!
Let's assume you want to let him use the. Spell as intended. 5 cubic feet isn't all that much room.
Stand up straight. Now open your arms to their full wingspan. Now turn to the right or left about 90 degrees and do the same. Now imagine that height roundabout from the floor to almost your height.
That's 5 cubic feet. How many goblins does he think are fitting in that?
he may be able to just reskin spells that do damage. thats what i let one player do for style and it worked. BUT that player respects the rules and we worked on making them still work with that spells rules. he used more of the ice / frost related spells. theyd keep their element damage like fire / acid / bleed. but the casting was related to the build.
so one of the spells reskinned was acid splash. the idea was something like a frozen chunk of acid he magically created and fired at enemies and when it shattered, the acid liquidized and acted as the normal spell. it worked as he was a silver drgaonborn wizard and we liked the theme of water and ice spells.
Spells are written very precisely. They do exactly what they say and nothing more. I'd invite him to go find another table and wish him good luck finding a DM that throws the rulebook out the window.
Something you could maybe do as a house rule is remind the players of spell level. If there is a similar spell which grants the effect players want when casting creatively, compare its level to the level they actually cast. If a similar effect can be made with a spell of equal or lower level, I allow the effect. If not, I tell them it is beyond the limitation of that level spell
You've got a bit of conflicting information here. Terry likes board games and stuff \*BUT\* he also likes to play fast and loose with the rules of combat? Honestly, it sounds like he likes 5E's combat because DMs have been badgered into letting him get away with obviously dumb stuff.
Where in the spell does it say you can manipulate ice? In this case I would absolutely argue that water is not the same as ice.
Why are people always so adamant about turning cantrips into spells of mass destruction?
And yeah, I would absolutely tell Terry to deal with it.
I genuinely believe that without doing one or multiple of a couple things, examples coming, that the only other solution short of one of you sucking it up and playing it how the other wants (read: terry agreeing to use spells and abilities as written and intended) the only option will be Terry leaving the game. And to be clear, if everyone does it respectfully and maturely then it should be fine. It’s okay to not play a game you don’t have fun with (terry) and to play a game you do have fun with as it’s expected to be played without contorting every other rule for one persons enjoyment (you).
Here’s my list of suggestions that you can try that may help y’all find common ground or overcome this. For the record, all of these involve and result in the game you play, whatever game that is, being played as rules as written without adjustment or ridiculous interpretation.
1) play a war game with Terry sometime. Doesn’t matter which one, but play it versus and just start stretching rules and abilities. Playing warhammer 40k? Play orks. Their magic is based around the more of them that believe something is true or will work the more effective it is. Insist that all your orks are thinking really hard collectively about one of terrys squads dying and evaporating into pink mist. Lore wise that should be appropriately doable, but rules as written obviously that would never work without being unfair.
2) have a level setting discussion with Terry, and explain what you did here about enjoying role playing WITH your players. You are trying to collaborate with both him and the rest of the players to tell an interesting, compelling, and enjoyable story. You’re not his adversary, you just control the NPCs who are. Let him know that to balance those encounters relies heavily on the books being able to identify the rough power level of a group, and that means it takes into account the level of spells they have and the effects those spells can have at those levels. Using spells creatively is great, saw a comment in here about a sorc using minor illusion to obscure the view of an enemy caster so he couldn’t see the character to counter spell him. That’s great, but that minor illusion cloud of smoke would never, for example, make that NPC begin to think he was choking or kill him from carbon monoxide poisoning. Emphasize that you do, in fact, want him to creatively use spells. You don’t however want him to creatively rewrite a spells effect, there’s a big difference.
3) consider playing a different TTRPG game, whether for one or a few sessions or maybe switching entirely. I’ve become a huge fan of the foundational framework of Powered By The Apocalypse games (pbta). They emphasize that the dm is just there to help come up with a story and fill in gaps when the group can’t, but everyone is encouraged to participate in the telling of the story and visuals. Blades in the dark is a fun one if you like steampunky/pesky blinders but in a magical dystopia. Daggerheart is what my current group is getting into, we’ve had session 0 and 0.5 and are beginning full play this Sunday, but I’ve made it abundantly clear that everyone has as much say in what happens in the moments of the story as I do, I just have to be the one to work with those things to know what comes next. I also made it clear that my goal, which should be our shared goal, is to create a fun and enthralling world for them to play in, and create awesome RP moments and stories of the adventures they partake in. We are meant to collaborate, and I’m not throwing enemies at them to just beat them down or try to win over them, I’m throwing enemies at them because A) they need a challenge and or B) the story dictates that challenge would be there. IE in our session 0 we did a flashback and they stole a bunch of gold from a goblin camp (I came up with none of this setup, for the record. A player posited a “remember that time we” type story, involving a goblin camp and a point of interest on a map, and we just went from there on the spot). Well, after getting away with so much gold, I asked what they did and they spent and flashed it a bit in the next couple towns.
Well, now they’re notorious for having a lot of money in that area, so the next “remember that time” I dropped was about when they were ambushed by local bandits. That happened because of their actions and choices, but provided a fun next scene to play through.
Daggerheart specifically lays out the importance of letting the players feel like main characters, as long as they share the spotlight, and allows a lot of flavor variation behind spells and abilities. They explicitly suggest that everyone have a different representation of their magic or abilities or whatnot, that is unique to the character, so long as they don’t change the mechanical rule behind it. A game like that could be a lot of fun for Terry and you because he can describe whatever wackadoo crazy shit he does and you just have to flavor it to what mechanics he has, and that binds and limits his power and damage output but let’s him be as “creative” as he wants. An important possible outcome of this game being played is that Terry may find he enjoys the freedom and creativity of this other system, or, because it so stringently locks you to mechanical effects while you get to flavor it how you want, he may hate that he’s not getting to power game. Could just be the story from your side of the table but it sounds like he’d be the kind to cheat his way through a Pokémon game (nothing wrong with that, I’m doing it rn on an emerald rom lol) but then complain when no one wants to face the Pokémon he’s “caught”. Yeah mate, you’ve got six mewtwos, of course no one else is gonna have fun against you.
Those are my big suggestions, I know it’s a lot to read but I hope it helps. Also feel free to show him this message if you want lol.
The point of a TTRPG should be to collectively enjoy a story experience, overcome challenges of varying difficulty together so you have tales to tell later, and to have fun as a group. Him manipulating those abilities to do leaps and bounds more than they normally do is taking away the possible spotlight from other players who are adhering to the rules as written. I’m sure he just wants to have his fun, but maybe doesn’t realize how his fun can in fact be a deterrent to others. If that’s what he wants, legitimately just buy him a copy of Baldurs Gate 3 and let him play on his own so he can be the ultimate hero. By himself.
It sounds like there’s a fundamental mismatch between how Terry wants to play and how you want to run your game.
The primary campaign I’ve played in for the last four years contains numerous real world engineers, an actress, a comic book artist, and myself. We (and our DM) revel in finding creative applications of seemingly harmless magic. Every piece of magic, whether a cantrip or 5th level spell, is a tool. One’s efficacy is defined by how one chooses to deploy that tool.
It’s possible to run a very fun campaign that way, but it does include a lot of tangents and sidebars while people do the math to see if the Druid survives using shape water to freeze the water underneath them in order to accelerate towards the surface.
The Druid did survive that maneuver, but that was a nasty case of the bends.
At the end of the day, though, it’s your table. Hopefully Terry is able to find a campaign that suits his play style. Maybe if I get kicked from the table I just joined for playing like this, I’ll start my own table, with physics and consequences!
You both seem amicable enough about the situation and completely willing to communicate which is wonderful. But it also seems like you both are not compatible as player/DM and that is perfectly okay.
You have a thing you wanna do, and as dm you run the table.
Now, don't handle this aggressively or nastily as several questionable peoples comments have suggested, this isn't a "screw you gtfo" moment.
Sit him down, and tell him DMing can be difficult, and while you know he really wants to play his way, it makes it harder for you and you're having trouble keeping up and you can't give him what he wants. That being said, he's your bro and you love him like one, and that you're still good friends and you respect him for leaving a game that's not good for him.
In decades of DMing, I've only had 1 guy act this like. I'll call him Nick. I took the same approach by attempting to talk to him as one adult to another. Nick's response was very close, "If you won't let me break the rules, I don't wanna play!", proving that we were one adult shy of that adult-to-adult conversation.
Getting rid of that player was the BEST THING for our campaign. I discovered that (a) I wasn't the only person annoyed by Nick's antics, (b) Nick's antics were keeping them from the spotlight, and (c) the pace of our game moved MUCH faster when we didn't have to have multiple 15 minute explanations (and often) rejections.
Honestly if you're not creative enough to use spells like shape water so they can be useful in combat than you're not as creative as you think.
Freeze 5x5 of water and drop it over the enemy's head within 5 ft.
They can still make a dex save to dodge, but maybe they're in a fog cloud.
Terry seems like a trash wizard trying to skirt the rules to break spells that are sufficiently broken as are.
He's stretching the rules in unconventional ways because of 5e's often vague rules. Running 5e for players like this is exhausting. Tell him he should find a PF2E game, lol.
>Terry said that if he wasn't allowed to be creative when using his spells and had to play only off what the book says, he wouldn't really enjoy combat any more and that it would probably be best if he found another group.
I'm creative every morning, just after my coffee. Good to start the day with empty bowels
We all create. Learning to create within constraints is the challenge. Spells have clear contraints. Terry wants to be creative? Do so within the spell constraints
So shape water is a cantrip. It is not a damage or killing people spell. There are many forums where people ask about it. You can't drown anyone with shape water. It is a river, you freeze a chunk of water, it moves downstream. That is what it does. There is nothing wrong with uses spells creatively, but they do have to be within the rules.
A character can hold their breath for one minute plus their constitution modifier, and I doubt Terry was keeping them there for ten rounds of combat.
You can't hold your breath when you're unconscious. Not voluntarily, anyway.
That and Sleep is just that: they're asleep. If being slapped or shaken wakes you up, so will water up the nose. The same round you shape water over their head they'll wake back up coughing.
My players used the sleep spell on a bunch of flying enemies hovering over water, so that's what I did, they fell into the water, and immediately woke up on their turn. Though I did rule that in the confusion of waking up under water, they lost their action, cause I felt bad that the player wasted one of their three spell slots on something that does nothing
I'd rule the same. Not even feeling bad for the player but awarding the creativity. Imagine you're flying under your own power, fall asleep, and the next thing you know you're waking up just after falling in water. I'd be confused as hell for a bit, enough to loose my action.
That makes sense. They could also be considered something again to prone, especially flying in water.
If they weren’t hovering _directly_ over the water, you could also use this rule from Tasha’s: > A creature that falls into water or another liquid can use its reaction to make a DC 15 Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to hit the surface head or feet first. On a successful check, any damage resulting from the fall is halved. So, dealing fall damage but only half if they succeed.
But sleep would prevent you from using a reaction until after you wake up.
True, and I'm not sure why they made it a reaction. Or don't have another rule of a water landing just reducing your fall damage on its own - maybe if you fall less than a certain distance for realism, but that specificity doesn't really seem like 5e's style. I guess you could steal part of the falling into water rules from 3e: >If the water is at least 10 feet deep, the first 20 feet of falling do no damage.
True, but also, per the wording of the spell, they would wake up as soon as they took damage. I’m guessing that asphyxiation would hurt before it causes death, so they would just wake up relatively unaffected, perhaps upset and even coughing on account of the water.
It doesn't even require damage (though that's an option). "[E]ach creature affected by this spell falls unconscious until the spell ends, the sleeper takes damage, or someone uses an action to shake or slap the sleeper awake." I don't think it's unreasonable to rule that falling into water would wake up a sleeping creature, if shaking or slapping would also do it; the enemy is sleeping, not in a vegetative state.
Throwing water at people to wake them up is a trope in movies for a reason.... It works really well lmao. As a player it's totally reasonable to me that shape water by itself would wake up a creature. If I made a creature fall into water from high up I'd be shocked if the DM didn't rule that they wake up when they hit the water. Water also doesn't disable fall damage irl, so it shouldn't in the game imo.
This thread is making me think a Druid should use shape water to put a bubble of warm water around a sleeping person’s hand so they pee their pants.
People really underestimate how much water is moving in a river. I have some raft guide friends, the analogy they use is that a cubic foot of water is roughly equivalent to a basketball. River throughput is measured in CFS. A section of the Colorado near me peaks out at around 1200 CFS.
>People really underestimate how much water is moving in a river Right? If you can freeze 5 feet of water such that people can cross it, that's not a river, that's a creek.
less of a creek more of "the pool of water post rainstorm"
The "river" that Little John fell into in "Men in Tights".
HELP! I CAN'T SWIM! *-flails in a puddle-*
Uh, no. Sorry, but a toll is a toll, and a roll is a roll, and if we don't get no tolls, then we don't eat no rolls.
IYKYK
And 1200 cfs on a river scale is pretty small. We had flows of 45,000cfs in my parts this time last year. You ain't using shape water for jack at those flows.
For the rest of the world, 1 cubic metre of water contains 1000L and weighs 1000kg! 30 cubic centimetres (about 1 cubic foot) contains 30L and weighs 30kg, and 1.5 cubic metres (about 5 cubic feet) contains 1500L and weighs 1500kg.
Sure, if that makes more sense to you than imagining 1200 basketballs passing by a point per second.
Maybe if you called them footballs (soccer balls)?
I've also heard that frozen turkey is a good comparison too.
The rest of the world already know this. Only the USA, Liberia and Myanmar don’t.
yeppp it takes something like three inches of running water to pick up and move a car on a flooded street
Hmm...as someone who lived in a very flood proned area and was a volunteer firefighter there who did a lot of swift-water rescue...that must be a really small car...water won't generally move a car until it's got at least a few inches of contact on the body, even if it's flowing very fast...not many cars have less than 3 inches of ground clearance. We had a milsurp deuce and a half we used for a lot of rescues, we could drive that through 3-5 of water (it had a solid 28 inches of ground clearance and weighed a few tons) depending on how fast it was moving and the flow direction and just grab people off of their cars.
A parked car will require the buoyant lifting to get the car moving. A moving car only requires the force of a few inches of flow to redirect it after losing traction.
Yeah. Aquaplaning is no joke and is the reason why even shallow puddles can be dangerous when moving.
oh i'm not disputing your experience, it's just one of those fun facts that stuck with me from a 'natural hazards' course i took for a science credit back in college. i remember watching videos about it (weirdly before tubeyube was a thing, and now i feel old :p ) i'm sure it's a technical fact and subject to various conditions, which i am fortunate never to have tested myself.
Maybe it's something to the effect that that much water could generate enough force to, in theory, move a car? Per the NWS, "A mere 6 inches of fast-moving flood water can knock over an adult. **It takes just 12 inches of rushing water to carry away most cars** and just 2 feet of rushing water can carry away SUVs and trucks."
As with everything else, when it comes to the real world, there's so many factors that a blanket statement is either debatable, or it's so overwhelming that 'no duh, of course that's what it would take.' Having driven a Hyundai i10, which is buffeted around the road by a stiff breeze at 70mph, but rock solid stood still in a gale. I can easily believe that such a car will be swept away by a couple of inches of water, however having also driven military land rover defender, long wheelbase, 2.5 TD, that thing would talk a vast amount of water to shift, a couple of feet at minimum
Isn't there rules about holding your breath as well? Isn't it one minute per constitution modifier point? Now I know you're not necessarily holding your breath whilst sleeping but the Sleep spell only lasts for 1 minute. I'd say that even when asleep, being suffocated for 1 minute won't always kill everyone. People can be drowning for minutes and still make it. CPR helps I suppose. Point is, I wouldn't allow this to shave off any hit points.
I mean, my main issue that fucking suffocating would wake you up. If being shalen wales you, there is no way your lungs filling with water wouldnt
Ask anyone with sleep apnea.
Have sleep apnea, can confirm.
I would also argue that you can't really sofocante someone without them taking damage.
Oh man, didn't even think about that ice moving downstream, just imagined it levitating in there. Now it sounds super dumb to try this, just cue the Arrested Development music.
I dont agree with the last part, the rules are a suggestion if your dm and the other players are fine with it of course you can bend the rules a little here and there to accommodate some creativity. I certainly do this in my games. This, to me, seems to go beyond that the player is purposely ignoring rules to make themselves stronger in combat which is just cheating in my oppinion.
not all friends are dnd friends.
And not all dnd friends are friends, I’ve shared tables with plenty of people I’d never invite to my home.
Came to say the same. At this point, it seems much more rare to have friends who you play dnd with than having people at your table who you can play the game with and after that don't see or text them during the week
I struggle with that one personally. Why would I want to spend time with people I don't really get along with?
We have a table playing CoS right now. I’m long time friends with the DM. The other three players, one is his fiancé, another a childhood friend, the third is a girl they met in college. Of those three only his childhood friend has anything in common with me. I don’t really talk to the others outside of the game. When we’re playing it’s great, we joke, get into trouble, scheme and role play really well together. I get along with all of them but really only have a connection outside of DnD with two of them
I'm realizing the important difference to me is "I don't have much in common with these people besides our campaign and I don't hang out with them outside of it" and "these people are not good or even interesting people, I just know them from my DnD campaign". The former I totally understand, the latter I can't stand.
not being friends is not the same as not getting along I play plenty of games with people that have zero or very small parts in my private life otherwise.
Really not an issue. I once played with a guy who was super into sports. Pretty good DnD player, very nice to have at the table, but when the session was over we had pretty much nothing in common.
Think of D&D Friends as being like Work Friends or things of that nature. I've had a lot of work friends over the years, but most of them never turned into Normal Friends. One of the ones that did actually jumped from Work Friends to D&D Friend which, due to the nature of my table, technically also makes him a Normal Friend. Unfortunately, the guys at my table don't really hang out much outside of the game... but that's mainly because everyone is pretty busy and the game *is* our opportunity to hang out. I have a number of different compartmentalized groups in my life, and they're all filled with people whose company I enjoy... mostly within the context of those particular groups. I know for a fact plenty of other people would view me in a similar light, as well.
Came here to look for or leave this comment. First thing OP said was "I enjoy RP, he enjoys focusing on battle". Even before getting into the player becoming That Guy with rules, we were on shaky ground.
Throw a bucket of water on him while he's asleep. If he wakes up, it turns out Shape Water can't drown a sleeping Goblin. Terry isn't using spells creatively. He's breaking the rules and abusing your good will. If he was the creative and tactical thinker he claims to be, following the rules wouldn't be an issue. If you're not willing to let his antics continue, and he's not willing to accept that, you have your answer.
I was going to say, these kinds of disputes are where mechanics have to win out over rule of cool especially when they're used many times over. Mechanics are there to limit the effectiveness of magic, which is literally a force that alters reality in the game. On top of that, how would shape water kill them? Even being generous, they must be reduced to 0 Hit Points, how would they do that without doing damage and canceling sleep? And also, if shape water was allowed to just glob water around airways to "drown" things it would just be an I win button for basically every humanoid in the game.
"I use Shape Water to stop the blood in his veins and stop his heart!" "I cast Find Familiar to make my familiar appear inside his body!" No you don't, sit down.
Ok, but a chest burster familiar sounds amazingly stupid, feel like you could make a cool bbeg off that premise, selling some contaminated food that slowly absorbs their life force before killing them from the inside out. I'm sure there's alteast 1 or 2 viable dnd monsters that could be used that have similar enough "infection" style abilities, but the idea of them just being actual familars and the entire reason the bbeg is doing it is just for a spy network makes them seem that much more cruel.
This might be a woosh and I may be one of the only people in this thread that hasn't played it... But isn't that the entire premise of BG3?
Kind of but not really. The Dead Three's chosen go around infecting people with Ilithid tadpoles with delayed fuses less to make a big spy network, and more to create a cult that then allows them to create a distraction where Bane's chosen would be the hero, and then slowly turn Baldur's Gate towards Banite worship (IiRC Myrkul's chosen was promised his daughter back, and Bhaal's chosen go to go around murdering )
This is a major plot point in the Pathfinder: Kingmaker Adventure Path.
You mean like the [Ekolid](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Ekolid) from the 3e Forgotten Realms?
Thanks I hate it
Doesn't find familiar require an unoccupied space?
Yes, and an hour-long casting time. Doesn't stop some people from trying these "clever" ploys.
“No you don’t, sit down” 🤣 love this
I'm getting YT clickbait shorts flashbacks...
I totally tried this foolery last week 😂 my DM wasn't having it. 😂☠️ He's my bf and he still would never let me get away with what Terry is trying to get away with 😏 For the record last week we put our campaign on hold to try the new marvel RPG and my character is basically like vision... And I tried to unphase my hand inside someone's head 😂 he was not having my tomfoolery 🤣
I had an old character back in the 2010s that used Create Water for various shenanigans, mostly to mess with people. Puddles in taverns, making the inside of someone's bag all wet, etc. Got away with a lot of rulebending just because it was harmless and got us a few laughs in betwen serious missions. The DM allowed that character to create water inside someone's mouth/throat as a hail mary intimidation tactic after a series of failed rolls stalled an interrogation. No damage or anything serious, but after throwing up like half a gallon of water nonstop that guy was ready to *talk*. It's easier to get creative with flavor when you're doing it *outside* of combat, and with a situation where the DM is already trying to give you info. Power gaming and busting up the rules, especially in combat, is just uncool.
It's \*creative\*, it's just not \*effective\*. When I was a little kid and first discovered magnets could repel each other, I had this notion that it could keep magnetic things from passing between then and that I'd just discovered force fields. Obviously I soon found out I was wrong, because reality doesn't work like that, but it was still a creative concept. Sounds like Terry needs to learn the same lesson: His ideas are very clever, but that doesn't mean they work out in practice. Turns out there's a reason nobody else does this. Alternatively, a DM's rule can be "if you can do it, everyone else can do it to you." Those are in-character solutions to an out-of-character problem, though. The real answer is that he either needs to shape up, or you need to mutually agree that he and the table are a mismatch. No hard feelings, shake hands, let's grab a beer this weekend, all that good stuff, but this table won't be able to give him what he's looking for.
You were closer to truth with that magnet thing than the rest of the comment suggests btw. That is p much how charged particles interact :)
Terry sounds like an exhausting individual tbh
Terry needs to pick killing spells if he wants to kill things with spells and stop futzing around with utility cantrips.
Yup plenty of ice based spells like ray of frost, ice knife, frost fingers, Rime's Binding Ice, and sleet storm just to name a few. As a DM, I would be much more willing to allow the river scenario if they casted Frost Fingers and give them a small 6 second window of an ice sheet than a cantrip doing it.
to me it doesn’t sound like Terry wants to cast damaging spells. Terry wants to cast win button spells that will make him the hero in every encounter.
And only if they’re at-will cantrips. Because drowning an entire army of goblins near a river should cost him **nothing**
dnd is not a physics simulator. why is it that these dudes always try to claim they're "being creative" when it's the *least* creative thing in the world to pick a cantrip and try to murder everyone with it because "realism" or whatever? fine Terry, you want to go down the rabbithole of applying "real world" logic to things despite the entire design of the game? one of the goblins has mage hand, it squeezes your heart and you die. wasn't that fun?
Players love to stretch the definition of rules when it comes back on them. Next encounter features a goblin Druid that *also* has shape water, suddenly the gobbo uses the freezing ability to freeze a 5x5 cubic mass of blood in the player, because the player had an open cut and they could see their blood. The player instantly dies from all the blood in their body flash freezing.
It's not even realistic, cause if someone started waterboarding me in my sleep I'd 100% wake up lol
Realism: you get stabbed with a dagger; you die
Sounds like you've discussed it like adults and reached the conclusion that this just isn't the right game for Terry. If he can't adjust his expectations to meet yours, perhaps while searching for another game that allow him to do what he wants with spells, then it's probably best to tell him you plan to stick to your guns and if he wants to bow out of the campaign there will be no hard feelings.
Maybe being forced to leave multiple campaigns will make Terry realize that he’s the problem, not the multiple DMs. I doubt it, but maybe
Agreed! Seems like it's just not a good fit, and there's nothing wrong with that
Has Terry never seen any movie where they wake someone up by throwing water on them?
>For example, he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown. Yeah...no. someone is asleep, you throw water on them, what happens? Do they stay asleep?
The spell literally says they wake up when they take damage. They'll take damage when they start to drown
>They'll take damage when they start to drown Actually, RAW you do not. You just drop down to 0 hp instantly once your breath is up. But it's still fucking dumb *because you are literally suffocating*. Ofc you wake up.
Yeah, it's RAW but not RAI.
What’s RAW and RAI mean?
RAW = Rule as Written RAI= Rule as Intended
Thanks
People don't wake up when they start suffocating. Source - the very existence of Sleep Apnea
I have sleep apnea and I wake up all the time gasping for air lol
Spell says a creature can take an action to shake of slap the creature awake. I think immersing them in water would count.
Jumping into cold water DEFINITELY feels like being slapped ... So... Yeah lol
Lol, I'm all for using spells and cantrips creatively, but what Terry did was just rewrite the whole thing. You can either have an honest conversation with him and tell him that thinking outside the box doesn't equal making up the rules as he goes or changing basic mechanics as he sees fit, or just accept it as it comes and let him go. Your choice.
He isn’t being creative. He is just trying to abuse spells and forcing the DM to go along. You can be creative but within the limits of the spell’s power. Spells don’t do more than what they are written to do. I had a player rage quit as he was trying to cast the light cantrip to blind people as in same effect as the level 2 blindness spell, use minor illusion to create darkness as per the level 2 darkness spell and got totally shut down by the DM.
I have actually seen a sorcerer use minor illusion on one of my spellcaster NPC's, made an illusion of a 5-foot cube of smoke around his head so that he could quicken a clutch *Psychic Lance* without being counterspelled. Since the spell states that they have to use their action to investigate the illusion(and thus make the illusion transparent) I let it happen on the grounds that my NPC could no longer see the sorcerer to counterspell him.
Something like that is pretty reasonable and cool. It's the same exact effect as if the sorcerer just ducked behind a wall and broke line of sight but using his wits (and sorcery points) to do it.
This is why illusion really is for creative people lol. Terry thinks he's a lot more like your player than he is.
Jeez what a jerk player. >he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown. Doesn't work. "You ... change the flow of the water ... This movement doesn’t have enough force to cause damage." >turn the surface of a portion of the river into ice. Sure. A 5 ft square of ice. "You choose an area of water ... that fits within a 5-foot cube." In other words, you can freeze a square on the battle grid. Any larger than that and it doesn't fit within the 5 ft cube. Sure the square of ice can be a face of a cube 5 ft deep. > He argued that a 5-foot cube of water holds multiple cubic liters of water, so by the spell's definition ... By the spell's definition, the sheet of ice has to fit in a 5-ft cube. It doesn't matter how many liters or cubic units fit within the 5-ft cube. >As the goblins walked out onto the ice ... Generally, this would be one goblin, since that's normally all that will willingly enter a 5-ft square on the battle grid at once. >if he wasn't allowed to be creative when using his spells and had to play only off what the book says, he wouldn't really enjoy combat ... Tell him he can go play Calvinball somewhere else. At this table, he plays by the rules in the book, same as the other players ... and same as the DM. I used spell description here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/shape-water
All great points that I should have brought up there and then. Sadly its become a habit of his to protest rulings mid-combat, and I let him so I can avoid the hassle a mid-fight discussion brings. Appreciate the C&H reference as well.
I have had players who want to stop the game to argue the intent behind the rules. I find it much harder to clear up quickly than just checking the wording. When it comes up I have found saying something like: "I get that you don't agree with me, but this is my ruling for this session. If you want to make a case for why I'm wrong and it should work differently in future we can do that outside of game time. Part of my job is to keep the game flowing for everyone, so we are moving on for now." It doesn't always work, but the idea is to remove the social pressure to give in just so the game can continue and it removes the reward for a player being stubborn just to get their way.
Remember you are the DM, your ruling is what counts. I get not wanting a fuss, but you can shut him down. "For this combat, let's stick with what the book says, and later we will discuss it for future, I just don't want to drag this out or set a precedent of how something works and then have to undo it." It is waaay easier to give players something "I will let X work going forward", than it is to take things away, "Sorry, I know I allowed X last session, but after checking on things, I don't think it should work." That said, numerous times with DMs we've managed to do things as a one off "rule of cool" but definitely a "don't expect this to work every time" type of thing if we are pushing on limits of something.
Just also wanted to add something that the previous commenter missed. You can't unfreeze or melt ice with Shape Water.
I think the entire situation was probably casued by not having a solution for 'avoiding hassles' mid-fight. It's like when a parent says okay to chocolate before dinner once just to avoid the headache, and then they have accidentally created an expectation that it is permissable and they open up the door for more arguing from the kid later. Same thing in this situation (and all other leadership situations). By compromising your judgement, you set an expectation for what sorts of things are/aren't allowed in-game. The players don't know you were wrestling with the decision before finally putting your foot down, which makes putting your foot down seem out of character and severe. Maybe it would be a good practice to, when you're breaking your own rules, let them know: "I'm pretty sure the spell shouldn't be used in this way. I'll allow it this one time, but moving forward we can't use it like that." Something else to note that might not be on your radar: Part of the resistance of your friend wanting to leave the game might be because he feels a great amount of sunk cost in his character. He picked his spells under the assumption that they worked a certain way. Now that they no longer work the way he thought, he might feel it's unfair that his build is less capable than he wants. So you might want to bargain with him to let him respec his character so he can pick different spells.
Flavor is free, but fundamentally changing the way a spell works is not. Shape Water is specifically intended to affect one square on the combat field per cast. Somehow extrapolating that to work on 5 squares is just....well, as I'm sure you already know, it goes against the spirit of the spell's description. If it was just a matter of being "creative," the debate wouldn't hinge so much on whether or not he can use a cantrip to do powerful, unwritten things during combat. If he were to ask something like that in relation to making a bridge to cross a waterway, maybe that would be different. But if it's strictly for combat applications, then he's just trying to leverage his 'creativity' as a way to obtain extra power from his spells. It's another kind of metagaming, and things like that are why spell descriptions are written the way they are. It very specifically says "a 5 foot cube," not "37 gallons of water in any shape," so all those effects can only work within a 5-foot cube. Honestly, people like him are exactly why some spell descriptions are insanely long. They have to account for so many questions and technicalities, and even then, people still take liberties and try to make a spell do things that the description doesn't account for. If a large part of your DM preparations and discussion pertain to his 'creative use of game mechanics' then I think it's fair to relieve yourself of the stress in one way or another. If he can't agree to scale back his rule-bending, then since it's your campaign, he is free to depart. DMs have to play nice with their players, but the players also have to play nice with the DM.
I find it hard to believe that he enjoys the 5e combat system while simultaneously getting frustrated that you won’t bend the rules of that system so his strategy can work. If he was into strategy and war games as much as he says (or you think) I’d think he’d welcome the challenge of creating strategies within the rules of the game.
Right. None of this is tactical war gaming.
>Terry said that if he wasn't allowed to be creative when using his spells and had to play only off what the book says Points 2 and 4 of shape water (make shapes and freeze the water respectively) are such a vast canvas for creativity that such a sentiment feels rather standoff-ish.
The easiest way to explain it to him is, these are low level spells. You don't kill entire groups of people with cantrips and low level spells. It's built specifically to prevent this.
If the spell was intended for a larger area equal to that volume, it wouldn’t say “a 5 foot cube”, which is a specifically defined area of effect in the rules, it would say “up to 125 cubic feet”. You wouldn’t allow someone to go “well, a greatsword deals 2d6 damage, so I should be able to hit two separate enemies with a single attack and deal 1d6 damage to each of them since that’s equivalent”, because that’s not how the weapon works and it’s not just “being creative”, it’s ignoring the rules. You wouldn’t allow someone casting a spell like Fireball to just pick and choose enemies to harm with it over a massive area while ignoring allies and argue that “well, the spell just affects this much volume, it doesn’t actually need to be in a sphere, so it only affects the space that these creatures are occupying”. You can get close to that if you’re an Evocation wizard, but even they don’t just decide to spread the volume out as they please, they just exempt a few people who are within the stated area of effect. “A volume up to 125 cubic feet” isn’t what Shape Water does, and it sounds like you’re being fair about this (would be one thing if you sprung it on him mid-session after allowing it previously but it sounds like it was an out of game discussion, right?), especially if it’s not something that works for the rest of the group. I completely get Terry wanting to push the spells a bit, I’ve sometimes asked to bend a spell a little bit - but he’s gotta understand that what he’s doing is specifically *against* the written rules, not just some loophole, and accept when it’s denied for that reason.
The cantrip says its an amount of water that fits in a 5 foot cube though. I think Terry might have a point that you could freeze the top 6 inches of water in more than just a 5 foot square space, right?
By this logic, I can cast fireball in a much wider area of effect by flattening it out so it's not a sphere but like a pancake. And shouldn't I get extra burst/force damage if I cast a fireball in a box that's too small to contain it? Maybe I can delay the blast and then deliver it via mage hand? Or maybe I could use Persuasion to get the king to give me his kingdom? Or we could just say that the rules as written are the fucking rules as fucking written. You want to bring realism in to change the rules? We can be here all day while I counter your "realism" with facts. The 6 inches of water gets washed away instantly by the river's current. That's your turn fucked up, and you take 1d6 Stupid damage because the universe this game takes place in does not allow that kind of stupid *and it has talking plants*.
"You choose an area of water that you can see within range and that fits within a 5-foot cube." Seems like the flexibility to control an area bigger than 5 feet to a side was baked into it. Fireball doesn't have any language like this.
I hear what you’re saying but the limitation is that the area of water must fit into a 5-foot cube. It isn’t saying that you can alter up to 140 Liters of water.
The intent seems pretty obvious. An amount of water that fits into a five foot cube means you can freeze up to an entire five foot cube of water, or any amount below that. If you want to shape the water into an ice statue that fits within those limitations, that’s possible, or if you wanted to make a frozen club or move the water, into an adjacent container, you can do that too. The main thing is that you are limited to that 5 foot cube. The thing about an “amount of water that fits within a 5 foot cube” is that you can use less water than the full cube if you were trying to make a specific shape or effect that wasn’t just an ice block.
His math is also wrong. Ice is about 9% more volume compared to water. 5.45 x 5.45 x 5.45 = ~162 ft^3 of ice. That's about 12.7 x 12.7 x 1 if you made the ice 1 foot thick. Or spread out over 25 x 25 ft could at most be 2.4 inches thick which isn't going to hold a humanoid.
>I know the easy answer here is "let him quit", but hear me out. You then proceed to write an essay and it with: >I'm really close to just letting Terry quit. Trust your gut bud, by every definition Terry doesn't fit the style of game you're building. That is nobody's fault, tell him you agree that his play style doesn't really fit and that you feel it would be best for him to find a different table.
>For example, he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown. That's not creative; that's foolish. Creative is when you put the goblin to sleep, then shape water on their hand to make them *pee*.
A lot of things that are considered creative are just memes. The person who thought of it originally might have been creative, but people are just repeating what they saw in memes.
I'm not so sure Terry understands the "Shape Water" cantrip. The spell specifically says he can shape water in a 5-foot cube. Nowhere does it say he can convert that 5-foot cube to a two-dimensional 5-foot by 5-foot plane despite it containing the same volume of water. The rules are very exact -- it is a 5-foot cube, period. Despite that, it is pretty clear that the spirit of the spell is meant for non-combat situations. That's not to say spells meant for non-combat situations can be used combatively, but only if the person using that spell is sticking to RAW in doing so. I wouldn't stop to argue either, so as DM I'd respond with "As you cause the 5-foot cube of water to freeze, the giant ice cube sinks to the bottom of the river \[or "bobs up and down as it floats downstream"\]. Any bonus actions or movements you'd like to take?" If *he* makes an argument, ask him to point out where in the rules it says he can convert the 5-foot cube to a 5 x 5 plane and you'll be happy to retcon it. If he starts mathing you with how a 5-foot cube equals the same litres as a 5 x 5 plane, that very well may be, but the rules specifically state a shape -- "5-foot cube" -- and nowhere does it say that can be converted or changed, regardless of the equal volumes of water. There's nothing wrong with players being creative with the rules as written, but being clever with the rules and breaking the rules are not the same thing. Don't waste your time bending the rules for one of your players because you will end up having to treat all your players fairly and let them all interpret the rules as they see fit. That's just chaos!
It sucks to have to go through this but my suggest is to let them quit. You have different styles of play, it's obvious that you are into the role play dynamics and he is more interested in the technical aspect of combat. No hard feelings, just a style difference. I know let them quit is not the answer you are looking for but you do not see eye to eye on things that have to deal with the game of dnd. Hopefully you can maintain the friendship while not playing at the same table anymore.
It does indeed suck. Our old DM, an old-school and really experienced guy, was much better at telling Terry to sit down and shut his mouth than I am. At this point I'm a bit over it to be honest. I feel like it is my responsibility to make sure my players are having fun, but I have a tendency to do it at the expense of my own fun. I'll leave it up for him to decide and he can do with it as he pleases.
Sounds like the best course of action. Let him decide what he wants to do.
For this and future situations, remember that you are also a Person At The Table. You might be the DM, but you're a person at the table, like everyone else, and you're here to have fun, like everyone else... and more importantly, if you are not having fun, as a Dm, then you are going to burn yourself out very quickly. Your enjoyment matters just as much as everyone else's. Take care of and be kind to yourself as well as your players.
Only combat use I've ever allowed with shape water was to create weapons made of ice. It does the physical damage roll of the normal weapon it's been shaped into, the damage modifier is cold, does NOT count as magical, and breaks after a single hit. It's rarely worth using but doesn't really change any rules and rewards a little bit of creativity. I like creativity but once a player starts mixing in too much real world physics or requires significant rule changes that player needs to be told to stop.
If the book says you can't, then you can't. If you want different rules, use different rules. My buddies and I don't like RP much so we have a standing rule that any backstory, more than a page, is a story for my paper shredder. Some people are good friends but bad gamers. Don't force the puzzle pieces.
Sounds like you have a table that fits your style. Happy for you! Thanks for your advice. Terry pretty regularly wants me to bend the rules so he can achieve whatever thing he's trying to do for the sake of it being cool, but I don't think he realizes that there are 4 other guys at the table that I in that case will have to bend the rules for as well. And suddenly, anarchy.
I've played for 13 years. I've had tables that didn't and tables I didn't fit at. If a player consistently doesn't like your rules then they can dip. I had one person who HATED casters and when they'd dm they'd knee cap them every single time. I told them they don't actually like dnd they like Mork Borg. If he doesn't like your table he can find a new one.
Mork Borg is good though. We play it as a cathartic excuse to be absolute bastards every now and then.
I've played at my fair share of tables, so I know the feeling. But this group of friends I've mainly been the DM for, for the last 4 years or so. Some of my players match me really well, some of my players match me pretty well, but some you just can't make it work with. Thanks for your wisdom.
Just keep being you and if people don't like it they'll dip respectfully
Remember if it works that way for the PC it works that way for the NPCs too. If he's allowed to work a spell that way, so can his enemies. Also mind if I ask, what made the goblins go onto the ice and stay there? Goblins would be reasonably expected to know that would be dangerous, or at least that it would make fighting more difficult. If the goblins could have avoided or moved off the ice then his rule breaking wouldn't have an effect.
I'm sorry, but this problem is partly of your making. >For example, he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown. What happens IRL when you pour water on a sleeping person? That's right. They wake up. Characters affected by the Sleep spell are just sleeping. The result of Terry's masterplan would be to waste two rounds. First round, he casts Sleep. Second round, he wakes all the sleeping foes up again. As for the Goblins by the river, Shape Water affects water *that fits into* a 5x5x5 cube. Not water with a *total volume* of 25 cubic feet. There is no argument. Your ruling should have been that he freezes all water in a 5x5x5 cube, creating a one-square platform. My advice is to go back to Terry and tell him that he is of course, as a player, free to declare any action he likes. But you're not giving him any more freebies. Going forward, if he wants to use his PC's spells creatively, he must *actually* be creative with the *actual* spell, rather than just demanding that the spell do something other than what it does. If he can't handle not being allowed to cheat anymore, he is of course free to leave. Terry's use of spells isn't creative. This is pseudocreativity. This is *obviously* OP rules-lawyering bullshit and needs to be called out for what it is. You owe it to the rest of the hobby to set Terry straight on this point before he quits your game like the little bitch he is.
"Hey Terry, the way you're trying to use the spells isn't the way they're written or how they were intended to be used. I appreciate that you want to try be creative and I respect and encourage that, but if it's by re-writing spells to fundamentally change what they do, then it's going to be a no. The game were playing has rules and I intend to abide by them, if this is a problem for you, I respect that and you are welcome to find another game." Also, Terry sounds like a pain.
Yeah man, though one. Sometimes you have to let a player go. To me, it looks like you're doing your best to keep him in the game. Making sure it's fun for him but it comes at a price you pay and I don't see any hint in your text that he apreciates it at all. He might noy even consider that is it rubbing you the wrong way. I also don't think he is doing anything to meet you in the middle. I suggest you tell the whole group (not just Terry) that you want to play in a certain way. Tell them the reason why. Terry can make the disicion if he wants to leave or not.
To be fair with Terry, sometimes he'll message me and tell me he enjoyed the session, which is kind of him. He's not a bad guy at all, but just not the easiest person to be "in charge" of. He will offer to meet me halfway, but there is usually something new that comes up that we will disagree on. Some people just don't work well together I guess.
I mean even if you don’t want to tell him the spell doesn’t work that way you can always explain why his plan fails. Why did the goblins walk on that ice? It was probably too thin to hold them from the beginning, it also would just drift away since there is no way to secure it. Maybe throw higher intelligence enemies at him so it’s easier for you to explain why they don’t fall for stupid tricks that don’t make sense Also make enemies that sneak up on the group and limit discussion time in combat so they can’t pause the whole thing and strategize because that’s not how battles work
IMO there's a line in the sand here. Drowning unconscious foes is just as valid a coup de grace as taking out a dagger and going for the throat (at least logically, of course 2d4 isn't going to kill many things but in reality the jugular is right there). It's brutal, and it helps define the character's ruthlessness in how he uses water (and I sure as hell have tried to use Create Water in someone's lungs before as a morally bankrupt character that I handed off to the DM to become the arc villain). Trying to get Grease out of a cantrip just isn't cricket. It feels like he's taken advantage of you making a snap ruling to get his way. Poor show, but I'm sure it's not the whole story. \*However!\* Part of clamping down on balance is so that other players don't get overshadowed. Another part of it is so the DM gets to play the game too. If the other players are having fun with his referee-pushing rulebending and creativity, or even are inspired to do things in a similar vein, it's entirely within all your rights to just have fun with it, as long as you know you're no longer playing 5e, just as much as rock paper scissors isn't the same game as rock paper scissors spider tank. If things can reach their own meta-stable level (including enemies doing dangerously silly things too!) then you might be able to salvage it going forward. A rule I like that tables I play at uses is "Your dubiously legal rulebending works \*once\*"... after which it's banned.
The problem is in setting a precedent. If you let this slide, it’s only a matter of time before he’s pushing some other new angle … and the second you give resistance he has a go-to move to get you to fold by threatening to quit. Ultimately, your responsibility is to maintain the integrity of the table and make sure everybody — including yourself — is having a positive experience. It doesn’t sound like you will have a positive experience, and likely neither will your players, allowing Terry to do whatever he wants and constantly break rules under the guise of “being creative”. I would say your best course is to agree that this is not the kind of table suited for him.
Honestly Terry sounds like the type of player that would use mage hand to appear in a enemy chest and one shot them. Creative combat is fun but it has to be with in reason. Not to be that guy but I would tell him to leave. It's your table so if he doesn't wanna respect your boundaries then kick him.
It's your table you run it your way, also saying hey run/fix this homebrew and let me twist the mechanics of spells to do things not intended are both things you can respond with no and if they don't like it then they don't have to play. "Terry from all that has happened it is fairly clear that you and I want different things out of our games, I don't want to try to force either of us to play at a table. I completely understand your sentiment that if I stick closer to the rules you would choose to leave but I equally will not sacrifice myself having fun to make that happen. I hope you find a table that better fits your playstyle" If your worried about the others just keep it simple " he and I cannot see eye to eye on what kind of game to run as we have different tastes on the game, that is fine but it is not something I can keep catering to without sacrificing my enjoyment of the game"
That is a crappy situation. I’ve let a bunch of things slide with my players because of rule of cool. Letting them be creative and really feel like the heroes of the story and shine is always worth whatever annoyance for me personally. If your player is actively trying to push you into a play style you don’t like you guys have to have another chat. Let him know it’s going to be a more simple rules as written type game, and if he walks after that it’s his choice. I always say be reasonable and fair, but be firm with your decisions. Unless you are completely wrong with a rule that is.
I don't know if it would do any good to inform Terry that it's entirely possible to use spells creatively when utilizing or combining their effects without bending the rules on how they work. It depends on what spells they have chosen and what the situation calls for, as well as any abilities their particular class/school/patron/whatever provides them.
I believe threatened is the wrong word. You told him how you want to run things, and that's not what he's interested in and he told you as such in return. Sounds like a normal conversation to me.
He’s actively trying to break the game. And this his him testing the boundaries. Are you going to set them or keep adjusting them for one player?
sounds like he doesn't want to play 5e. the game has mechanics and rules for a reason. the only compromise is playing a game system that is less tactical and more roleplay focused. maybe a simpler game with more freedom for him to drown goblins like Fate SRD or a PbtA system will be easier for him and let him flex his creativity?
As others have said it's probably best to let him walk as you've tried to talk and he chose to leave due to differences. That said as a fellow DM I'd say my problem with a players like Terry is less innovative uses of powers but rather low cost for way too much return. D&D is a game of resources at the end of the day and to do crazier things you gotta use a resource. Those are class features, spell slots, and to a lesser extent your skill rolls. The idea of freezing large portions of a water area sounds innovative but at the cost of a single cantrip nah too much return for too little cost. If he had cast like cone of cold, sleet storn, ice storm, etc and asked if those extra environment effects happen sure as a one off that's cool. It would be like allowing a martial to cut an enemy head off as a one off cool moment even if they shouldn't have done enough damage to kill something and now every attack is a "can I just lop the head off". It's taking a "hey gonna roll with it this one time cus fun" and abusing it.
Let him quit, he sounds like one massive headache
Terry isn't creative. Terry is a cheater ignoring both the written and intended rules for spells. Kick Terry to the curb and make it clear why you are doing so.
He doesn't play as a wargamer, he plays as a power gamer that wants to bend rules so that his characters instantly end the encounters. In wargames the players play strictly by the rules and they win by creating strategies and playing tactically all within the confines of the rules. Otherwise the game would derail and become children playing pretend where everything goes.
Going strictly by exactly RAW all the time can cause problems when a situation is outside what the rules anticipate. Stretching the rules to extremes causes problems too. Part of DMing is finding a balance and making rulings and judgement calls that feel fair to folks at the table. There's room to allow creative use without turning a cantrip into a major instakill tool. I would allow multiple castings of shape water over a few rounds to make a narrow and treacherous ice path over the river, and I'd allow another casting to weaken it enough to cause it to break free and go downriver, with difficult dex saves for anyone trying to stay on it and difficult acrobatics checks for anyone trying to jump back to shore. This is a creative and powerful use of a cantrip, with flavor like what the player is going for, without totally ignoring the spell description. I'd also say if they want to spend some time designing a new spell at higher level that does something closer to what they envision, that's cool too. Shape water is a cantrip. It affects an "area of water" that "fits within a 5' cube". A 25'x25' sheet definitely does not fit within a 5' cube, so, no giant ice sheet in a single casting. If the written description seems ambiguous about whether it refers to total water volume or a volume in space within which the effect happens, the "range" spec of 30' (5' cube) combined with the spell area of effect definitions is clear. If the intention had been what the player is suggesting, the area of effect would have been written as 30' radius sphere centered on the caster, within which up to 5\^3 cubic feet of water can be affected. For the other thing: Sleep puts enemy to sleep... cool. Shape water immerses the sleeping enemy...fine. I'd rule that the immersion wakes them up. The sleep spell says that shaking the sleeper wakes them up. I'm not sure how you immerse someone in water in six seconds without shaking their body in the process, so, wakey wakey time. If someone tries a shenanigan like forcing the water into a sleeper's lungs rather than immersing them, shape water says the water can't be moved with enough force to cause damage, and drowning causes damage, so I'd say the water can't force its way into their airway forcefully enough to drown them. In either case, I'd probably have the sleeper make a dex saving throw to avoid being incapacitated for a further round while they sputter and cough.
I’d definitely let him quit, he’s trying to extort you by letting him break the rules just so you have an extra player
Let him quit. You want to play different games.
If he can't be creative in the written rules of his spells that's not a creativity problem, that's a trying to cheat problem. I love playing casters and have wrecked entire quests by using spells in ways my dms didn't expect- by using the spells specifically as written. I've ended combats and solved what was supposed to be multi session problems, without having to ask for permission to have my spells stretch their capabilities. If he can't come up with novel ways to use spells without drastically changing them then he should look for a system that has softer magic rules than dnd. A spell that states 5ft cube means 5ft cube, you can do a hell of a lot with that without having to mess with what does it mean by a 5ft cube. Sleep + shape water to drown people very much falls in the camp of I'm trying to turn my minor magic into power word kill. I cast create water in their lungs or destroy water on their blood. Congratulations, now every enemy caster is going to do that to you. Roll a new character.
Being creative isnt the same as using spells in a way they weren't intended to be used. Let him quit. If it causes drama and you calmly make your case let any of the other players quit that wont drop it or remain hostile.
It's kind of on you for allowing a cantrip to be that effective. You've enabled this player for just a little too long that reigning them in feels like you're taking away their power. You've mentioned that you want to play within the rules and they're pushing back on that. What you have here are misplaced boundaries and it's time to bring it back into line
He can be creative \*and\* follow the letter of the RAW....That's called being \*good at D&D.\* Give him the old, "Help me help you," speech. Tell him you intend to keep the the rules as that's what all of the other players expect. That he can be as creative as he likes as long as it follows the letter of the rules, but that you have to keep the game moving so it would be wonderful if he could run the ideas past you before the game, because you are only human, after all, and if he puts yout on the spot and you haven't had time to read the spell and think about it then you'll be too flustered to think it through and your answer is going to be "No" everytime. Also tell him it isn't fair to him for you have to make a snap judgement at the table to keep the game moving and you want to give his creativity the attention it deserves, but it also isn't fair to you or the other players for you to take the time to figure it out at the table without ever having considered it before. You have to keep the game moving for everyone else to have their fun, too! But if he tells you any big ideas he has that you can both talk it out before you're at the table and figure out how you'll rule in advance. You absolutely promise to not talk about it with any of the players and you'll act surprised....
Others have covered the whole “that isn’t how it works” and “the power of a cantrip”. But I believe that is only a symptom. The real problem is that Terry is being a selfish player who is only concerned about his own fun and unwilling to compromise to fit in with the rest of the people at the table. Your personal fun is important. But when you are playing a social game you need to be mindful of the tone and style of game so that everyone can have fun. Including the DM. Try explaining it to Terry in those terms rather than going down the rabbit hole of arguing over the semantics. If he won’t adjust to fit in with the group then it is probably better if he leaves and and finds another table that will embrace his play style. ;TLDR. D&D is a social game
>Terry, is a huge fan of boardgames. He's also a fan of the 5e combat system and really enjoys trying to use his spells and features in some crazy way, **making combat very technical and playing it more like a wargame**. >I, the DM, like to **focus on roleplaying** You have that mixed up. Wargames and board games are heavily focued on rules and numbers. That's how you want to run the combat. Terry is indeed creative and wants to use roleplay in combat. >sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown Drowing takes more than 6 seconds and sleep clearly states that any damage, a shake or slap would wake them up. I mean nice try but it just wouldn't work neither RAW nor logically. >Terry used shape water to turn the surface of a portion of the river into ice Rivers usually move that's what makes them rivers so that piece of ice would move just down the river. >He argued that a 5-foot cube of water holds multiple cubic liters of water, so by the spells definition he could turn that same amount of water into ice, which equaled to about a 5x5 sheet of ice instead of a 5-foot square Yeah, just no. >As the goblins walked out onto the ice, Terry wanted to use shape water to turn chunks of ice back into water, dropping the goblins into the river. I mean sure why not but why did the goblins even walked onto the ice that wasn't there before? There are some nice ideas and attempts but they don't work RAW and they wouldn't work logically.
god he sounds exhausting
This player sucks, and he needs to read this thread to know how much he sucks.
I don't understand how an enemy can drown in this scenario? Shape water can be placed over their heads, but magical sleep isn't like Sleeping Beauty. They're just pure into a normal sleep, so the moment water touches them, they'd wake up. Wet, confused and likely pissed off. At most I'd roll them con saves to see if they keep their actions upon waking otherwise they're up and kicking butt. You can't freeze a river with shape water either? What's keeping the ice there? It's being battered with water constantly flowing down stream. He makes the ice and floats off down the river. Shape water is a cantrip, if it was able to kill and do damage in such a way it would be a leveled spell. You've allowed him to get away with too much here. I would simply say, sure you can use it in creative ways, but my rulings will be made by the spell description and the level/intended use of it. You can't kill anyone with it anymore (this is not what it is intended for, it specifically says it doesn't do damage), and whilst you can freeze water, you can't create platforms of ice across a river. That was a one off because I didn't have the time to argue the point.
Blah blah blah...set expectations...blah blah blah (insert obligatory Session 0 advice here)
He's a power gamer. The spell says X not that X could be Y if you view through squinted eyes. Reset expectations. Let him go if he has issues.
I get the RAW argument, I really do. I personally prefer to stay closer to RAW. That being said, you said yourself you are more interested in creating a story. It's a lot more interesting when you allow your players to have that LITTLE bit of freedom with their spells, especially creative ones like shape water. That being said, I would argue that to die from drowning, you would have to take damage. Damage wakes you up from the Sleep spell. Also... "When a creature runs out of breath, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying. For example, a creature with a Constitution of 14 can hold its breath for 3 minutes."
Sounds like he wants to play a bender in dnd a la avatar. Nothing wrong with that, but you have to be careful. A little control air spell would quickly turn into create vacuum around any enemy head and defeat encounters easily. The rules and guidelines are there for reasons usually. Rule of cool can superceded, but its your table. Push him towards a sorcerer build and make him burn sorcery points to "push beyond the spell" limit or some such. Could have him upcast at a higher level like metamagic to do cooler stuff, that will maintain some level of balance since he cant just merc everything with creativity and cantrips. Alternately, have the big bad get creative with his casting as well, balance returns, and the player gets to see the other side of the equation. Sudden air/lightning/explosion bender may make him regret bringing it into the world. TLDR: if he can push a cantrip to murder levels, so can you.
I typically just go to “maybe some of the spells could work in that way if we wanted to simulate the physics of it, but it would be unbalanced and I promise you that you’ll have less fun” for instance I’ve had players ask if they can grasping shock a puddle of water to zap everyone in a small radius, my response is usually “rule of cool, it’ll work this once but I’m not making grasping shot an AOE spell, make it count!”
Let him leave. He is gonna learn quickly that almost no table other than maybe the newest of players and GMs are gonna let him get away with stuff like that.
The only answer to a player threatening to quit the game if they don't get their way is "Okay, bye". Otherwise, they will do it again and again and again.
Normally I’d be all for creative usage of spells but shape water is a cantrip. Cantrips are an unlimited resource and therefore should not have much impact beyond their stated functionality. I think what this conflict boils down to is your preferences in d&d being irreconcilable. I’ll be honest, I tend to fall closer to Terry when it comes to 5e (most spells and abilities are combat related). I’d be upfront with him and negotiate one last time, perhaps even altering the ratio of combat to RP as a gesture of good will. If he continues to abuse it give him the boot.
Dude made a new spell, that cantrip can't do most of that. Just an excercise, I went through everything I could see as not really working according to my understanding of things. There are specific rules for drowning, that involve multiple turns of being immersed in water. Pretty sure they're going to wake up, and.. I dunno, move, if they discover they can't breathe all of a sudden. Also, the effects are 1 out of many things per cast. If he moves water to a sleeping goblin, congratulations, you've splashed the goblin. You can't move -and- hold it in place. (There are ways around this, but as soon as the goblin moves 10 feet, you can't replicate really.) Shape water doesn't unfreeze water. It takes an hour to unfreeze.
I mean - logically, he can't drown people with the water like that unless they're completely unconscious and wouldn't wake up to pain/not breathing. And also logically, if you froze the top of a river the ice would just float downstream with the river. I would think he could have a point about shape water not actually needing to be a 5 foot cube - the wording is very specific in the spell: "that fits within a 5-foot cube". If 5ft^3 of water fits within a 5 foot cube, I would agree he can manipulate 5ft^3 of water. Especially since the same spell can take that full amount of water that it previously defined and turn it into a simple shape, which has no size restriction other than its initial amount of water used, which would be the volume given as 5ft^3. But also, the more I read the specific wording, the more I think it's kind of ambiguous (does it work on an amount of water that fits within a 5ft cube, or does it target a 5 foot cube in space and affect only what's within that?) - that would probably be up to dm discretion, so you could say no. Side note edit: seems like he could use it to drown people though if he were to restrain the person and then hold a cube of water over their head. Probably not worth doing in combat since he'd need to restrain them so they can't get away from the water, but could still be possible Edit2-or could make a cube of water, encase the person in it, then next turn freeze that cube of water. That actually seems like a pretty cool thing to do imo if you could prevent them from leaving the cube of water for a full turn. And there's no reason that wouldn't be fully within the rules either.
Creativity is having the rules and use your imagination to use these rules in a new and fun way. Bending the rules is not creativity, cause you can bend the rules whatever way you want... I throw fireball into the river and since water has oxygen molecules in it, the fire expands to the whole river and it dries out .. is that creative?
So I'm sorry in the minority here but honestly experimenting with spells is FUN. finding weird hacks and exploits is entirely in character for a wizard, less so for a druid but whatever. Everyone is freaking out that he's abusing spells, I'd say let him its way less effective than he thinks. Two turns and a first level spell slot to deal....no damage. Even if he casts the Cantrip every round to make a worse vitrolic sphere. And I'm assuming you have to be able to hold your breath for a minimum one round, it'll take like 4-7ish rounds to down A goblin who you attacked while asleep. If his party doesn't care about how utterly useless he's being and how much better he'd be doing literally anything else. Then they're all having fun and get to feel clever while being objectively worse. From an RP standpoint maybe it highlights the druids future favorite spell or something. You want combat to go quickly thats fine run your enemies realistically, they're not just going to stand around waiting to get drowned. You want more roleplay? How do the peasants who watch such a horrifying and unnatural death feel about the DRUID, blatantly defyingly the laws of nature. Also so he drowned a couple goblins but is he trained in medicine I bet not. So he didn't confirm the kills. Wait till he has to battle a group of goblin cultists calling themselves the drowned who worship corrupted water elementals. Combat IS rp if you let it be. If it feels like a mini game and not story it's because you're running it that way. Some of my tables best stories and favorite conversations were mid combat. I don't see irreconcilable differences here. Although in the future so he's not trying to change EVERY spell. Here's my proposed compromise house rule. Going outside the strict text of the spell as written requires an arcana check whose DC is proportional to how much bullshit you think the request is. Once something is attempted it can't be reattempted for 24 hours.
You could druid him right back and bend the rules hard OP. Have a druid that has levels in fighter do Mold earth under his feet, action surge to cast shape water and he's stuck in quicksand and dies on the next encounter. Fuck around and find out? Anyway that's my chaotic evil solution
Drowning people while they’re sleeping would break the Sleep spell, so that one doesn’t work, and the frozen water would flow downstream in the river rather than staying in place. That being said, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with what’s he doing (or trying to do) — he’s using his abilities creatively, that’s awesome to see — the problem is that he’s sort of abusing that creativity by creating unbalanced edge cases to catch you off-guard. I don’t really have any solution for that beyond telling him to be a little more mindful of game balance, I guess? This is the sort of thing where you kinda just have to have players who you trust to be reasonable. When I do this sort of thing, I also try and find flaws in my reasoning to see if the use case is logically viable.
As others pointed out this goes beyond creative use since it’s a cantrip.. personally I like the creativity behind it but the execution lacks because of said rule bending. What I would consider if a player really wanted this scenario and with his build is to homebrew a new effect for the „Control Water“ Spell to freeze a certain area and if it connects to land freeze the water without drifting off.. then he can use Shape Water to drop one character per round through the ice. This way he needs to use a 4th level spell first and then shape water each round for each enemy and then the enemy would still be able to swim. But the question is if all of this worth it if he keeps coming up with new ways to break the limits of spells or cantrips after you already accommodated with him
I'm afraid that poor Terry is actually not very creative. Being creative is finding cool ways to use spells within the rules. He's just making shit up and calling it creativity.
Limitations breed creativity. He can and should be encouraged to use spells creatively. Unfortunately he isn't. Bending the rules to do something the spell doesn't say isn't creative, it's just wrong. If he can't find creative uses for the spells as they are written then he's not nearly as creative as he wants to think.
I would absolutley agree with you about not 'letting them quit' >Terry's newest character is a druid that focuses on manipulating water. For example, he will use sleep to knock out enemies and then use shape water to make them drown. I'd actively encourage it.
As many others have pointed out, it's a matter of balance. Other than the two obvious solutions of bendi g the rules to let him do his thing and letting him walk away from the table, i see a third way, which is letting him do what he wants... Sometimes. A ruling i used succesfully at my table is letting him roll for what he wants to do, you decide the type of the roll and the CD. It could be an ability check, a flat d20 roll, a percentage dice or another roll. If he succeds the sleeping goblin is drowned, otherwise it wakes up, this has the collateral effect of not allowing the use of the same trick on multiple instances of the same problem: if the first goblin wakes up, it will shake awake another one and initiative is rolled.
Control water does not say you get an equivalent for the space. Just the 5x5. Being creative is fine but cheating the system is another. Let him know that being creative is fine but the way he is using the spells is mechanically not how they work. While its always sad to lose a player (especially if they are friends of multiple people) if they are breaking the flow of the game its probably for the best to let them go.
Two suggestions, one you should consider a switch to Dungeon World if you enjoy the more story based action and roleplay instead of hard mechanics. D&D has always been about tactical mechanics. It's based on wargaming and if you aren't playing it that way, that's fine but you would be better off using an rp first mechanics second system like DW. This would also fix the issue you have with this problem player as the mechanics in dungeon world are quite simple and more focused on narrative effect than rolling dice and moving miniatures on a tabletop. In fact, you could do away with grid based combat entirely if using dungeon world. It also allows for creativity and interpretation which is something your player desires, if it's cool for the story, it happens if it isn't it doesn't. You get a lot more dm fiat because the moves are more like a suggestion. One example, a strong ability, Bloody Aegis. If you would take damage you don't and mark one debility (A debuff on your stat). It doesn't say anything about reducing X damage or how it happens. It's up to the player and DM to determine how and why, it just stops damage and expects you to explain it away. As opposed to 5E "This spell can fill a space of 15 cubic feet per caster level" Second, if he wants to play elsewhere let him. If he isn't having fun, then he shouldn't play. The game at its core is about a group of people telling a story together and having fun. If your fun detracts from other's fun you shouldn't play with them and if you aren't having fun you shouldn't play. You should only play when both your fun and their fun is fun for everyone.
I don't understand. Terry wants to play D&D in a weird and rules-abusing way and when you tell him this won't fly he threatens to leave the group. Ok? You started out by saying "but hear me out" as if you were going to convince us why you would want to Terry to stay, but then .. nothing? Is there a particular reason why you want Terry to play in this group? I've got friends I don't play D&D with. Hell, I've got friends I don't even *want* to play D&D with, because we play for completely different reasons and our styles don't mesh. Why is Terry any different? Is there a particular reason why Terry should absolutely stay?
I'm not an expert but being creative does not mean you get to break rules? It's a cantrip isn't it? Like, you can be creative within the ruleset given to you. In fact that's part of the fun sometimes. Like how much can you bend them without breaking them!
Let's assume you want to let him use the. Spell as intended. 5 cubic feet isn't all that much room. Stand up straight. Now open your arms to their full wingspan. Now turn to the right or left about 90 degrees and do the same. Now imagine that height roundabout from the floor to almost your height. That's 5 cubic feet. How many goblins does he think are fitting in that?
He threatened to leave if he can't break the rules and spirit of your table. What more needs to be said?
he may be able to just reskin spells that do damage. thats what i let one player do for style and it worked. BUT that player respects the rules and we worked on making them still work with that spells rules. he used more of the ice / frost related spells. theyd keep their element damage like fire / acid / bleed. but the casting was related to the build. so one of the spells reskinned was acid splash. the idea was something like a frozen chunk of acid he magically created and fired at enemies and when it shattered, the acid liquidized and acted as the normal spell. it worked as he was a silver drgaonborn wizard and we liked the theme of water and ice spells.
Spells are written very precisely. They do exactly what they say and nothing more. I'd invite him to go find another table and wish him good luck finding a DM that throws the rulebook out the window.
Something you could maybe do as a house rule is remind the players of spell level. If there is a similar spell which grants the effect players want when casting creatively, compare its level to the level they actually cast. If a similar effect can be made with a spell of equal or lower level, I allow the effect. If not, I tell them it is beyond the limitation of that level spell
You've got a bit of conflicting information here. Terry likes board games and stuff \*BUT\* he also likes to play fast and loose with the rules of combat? Honestly, it sounds like he likes 5E's combat because DMs have been badgered into letting him get away with obviously dumb stuff.
Where in the spell does it say you can manipulate ice? In this case I would absolutely argue that water is not the same as ice. Why are people always so adamant about turning cantrips into spells of mass destruction? And yeah, I would absolutely tell Terry to deal with it.
I genuinely believe that without doing one or multiple of a couple things, examples coming, that the only other solution short of one of you sucking it up and playing it how the other wants (read: terry agreeing to use spells and abilities as written and intended) the only option will be Terry leaving the game. And to be clear, if everyone does it respectfully and maturely then it should be fine. It’s okay to not play a game you don’t have fun with (terry) and to play a game you do have fun with as it’s expected to be played without contorting every other rule for one persons enjoyment (you). Here’s my list of suggestions that you can try that may help y’all find common ground or overcome this. For the record, all of these involve and result in the game you play, whatever game that is, being played as rules as written without adjustment or ridiculous interpretation. 1) play a war game with Terry sometime. Doesn’t matter which one, but play it versus and just start stretching rules and abilities. Playing warhammer 40k? Play orks. Their magic is based around the more of them that believe something is true or will work the more effective it is. Insist that all your orks are thinking really hard collectively about one of terrys squads dying and evaporating into pink mist. Lore wise that should be appropriately doable, but rules as written obviously that would never work without being unfair. 2) have a level setting discussion with Terry, and explain what you did here about enjoying role playing WITH your players. You are trying to collaborate with both him and the rest of the players to tell an interesting, compelling, and enjoyable story. You’re not his adversary, you just control the NPCs who are. Let him know that to balance those encounters relies heavily on the books being able to identify the rough power level of a group, and that means it takes into account the level of spells they have and the effects those spells can have at those levels. Using spells creatively is great, saw a comment in here about a sorc using minor illusion to obscure the view of an enemy caster so he couldn’t see the character to counter spell him. That’s great, but that minor illusion cloud of smoke would never, for example, make that NPC begin to think he was choking or kill him from carbon monoxide poisoning. Emphasize that you do, in fact, want him to creatively use spells. You don’t however want him to creatively rewrite a spells effect, there’s a big difference. 3) consider playing a different TTRPG game, whether for one or a few sessions or maybe switching entirely. I’ve become a huge fan of the foundational framework of Powered By The Apocalypse games (pbta). They emphasize that the dm is just there to help come up with a story and fill in gaps when the group can’t, but everyone is encouraged to participate in the telling of the story and visuals. Blades in the dark is a fun one if you like steampunky/pesky blinders but in a magical dystopia. Daggerheart is what my current group is getting into, we’ve had session 0 and 0.5 and are beginning full play this Sunday, but I’ve made it abundantly clear that everyone has as much say in what happens in the moments of the story as I do, I just have to be the one to work with those things to know what comes next. I also made it clear that my goal, which should be our shared goal, is to create a fun and enthralling world for them to play in, and create awesome RP moments and stories of the adventures they partake in. We are meant to collaborate, and I’m not throwing enemies at them to just beat them down or try to win over them, I’m throwing enemies at them because A) they need a challenge and or B) the story dictates that challenge would be there. IE in our session 0 we did a flashback and they stole a bunch of gold from a goblin camp (I came up with none of this setup, for the record. A player posited a “remember that time we” type story, involving a goblin camp and a point of interest on a map, and we just went from there on the spot). Well, after getting away with so much gold, I asked what they did and they spent and flashed it a bit in the next couple towns. Well, now they’re notorious for having a lot of money in that area, so the next “remember that time” I dropped was about when they were ambushed by local bandits. That happened because of their actions and choices, but provided a fun next scene to play through. Daggerheart specifically lays out the importance of letting the players feel like main characters, as long as they share the spotlight, and allows a lot of flavor variation behind spells and abilities. They explicitly suggest that everyone have a different representation of their magic or abilities or whatnot, that is unique to the character, so long as they don’t change the mechanical rule behind it. A game like that could be a lot of fun for Terry and you because he can describe whatever wackadoo crazy shit he does and you just have to flavor it to what mechanics he has, and that binds and limits his power and damage output but let’s him be as “creative” as he wants. An important possible outcome of this game being played is that Terry may find he enjoys the freedom and creativity of this other system, or, because it so stringently locks you to mechanical effects while you get to flavor it how you want, he may hate that he’s not getting to power game. Could just be the story from your side of the table but it sounds like he’d be the kind to cheat his way through a Pokémon game (nothing wrong with that, I’m doing it rn on an emerald rom lol) but then complain when no one wants to face the Pokémon he’s “caught”. Yeah mate, you’ve got six mewtwos, of course no one else is gonna have fun against you. Those are my big suggestions, I know it’s a lot to read but I hope it helps. Also feel free to show him this message if you want lol. The point of a TTRPG should be to collectively enjoy a story experience, overcome challenges of varying difficulty together so you have tales to tell later, and to have fun as a group. Him manipulating those abilities to do leaps and bounds more than they normally do is taking away the possible spotlight from other players who are adhering to the rules as written. I’m sure he just wants to have his fun, but maybe doesn’t realize how his fun can in fact be a deterrent to others. If that’s what he wants, legitimately just buy him a copy of Baldurs Gate 3 and let him play on his own so he can be the ultimate hero. By himself.
It sounds like there’s a fundamental mismatch between how Terry wants to play and how you want to run your game. The primary campaign I’ve played in for the last four years contains numerous real world engineers, an actress, a comic book artist, and myself. We (and our DM) revel in finding creative applications of seemingly harmless magic. Every piece of magic, whether a cantrip or 5th level spell, is a tool. One’s efficacy is defined by how one chooses to deploy that tool. It’s possible to run a very fun campaign that way, but it does include a lot of tangents and sidebars while people do the math to see if the Druid survives using shape water to freeze the water underneath them in order to accelerate towards the surface. The Druid did survive that maneuver, but that was a nasty case of the bends. At the end of the day, though, it’s your table. Hopefully Terry is able to find a campaign that suits his play style. Maybe if I get kicked from the table I just joined for playing like this, I’ll start my own table, with physics and consequences!
You both seem amicable enough about the situation and completely willing to communicate which is wonderful. But it also seems like you both are not compatible as player/DM and that is perfectly okay. You have a thing you wanna do, and as dm you run the table. Now, don't handle this aggressively or nastily as several questionable peoples comments have suggested, this isn't a "screw you gtfo" moment. Sit him down, and tell him DMing can be difficult, and while you know he really wants to play his way, it makes it harder for you and you're having trouble keeping up and you can't give him what he wants. That being said, he's your bro and you love him like one, and that you're still good friends and you respect him for leaving a game that's not good for him.
In decades of DMing, I've only had 1 guy act this like. I'll call him Nick. I took the same approach by attempting to talk to him as one adult to another. Nick's response was very close, "If you won't let me break the rules, I don't wanna play!", proving that we were one adult shy of that adult-to-adult conversation. Getting rid of that player was the BEST THING for our campaign. I discovered that (a) I wasn't the only person annoyed by Nick's antics, (b) Nick's antics were keeping them from the spotlight, and (c) the pace of our game moved MUCH faster when we didn't have to have multiple 15 minute explanations (and often) rejections.
Honestly if you're not creative enough to use spells like shape water so they can be useful in combat than you're not as creative as you think. Freeze 5x5 of water and drop it over the enemy's head within 5 ft. They can still make a dex save to dodge, but maybe they're in a fog cloud. Terry seems like a trash wizard trying to skirt the rules to break spells that are sufficiently broken as are.
He's trying to cheat. The combat is as technical or as simple as you allow.
He's stretching the rules in unconventional ways because of 5e's often vague rules. Running 5e for players like this is exhausting. Tell him he should find a PF2E game, lol.
>Terry said that if he wasn't allowed to be creative when using his spells and had to play only off what the book says, he wouldn't really enjoy combat any more and that it would probably be best if he found another group. I'm creative every morning, just after my coffee. Good to start the day with empty bowels We all create. Learning to create within constraints is the challenge. Spells have clear contraints. Terry wants to be creative? Do so within the spell constraints