D&D Court - Death Save Coin, Chill Ragers, & Heating Warforged

The rage discussion really makes me think of the same issues with Sneak Attack - common flavor should not outweigh mechanics. I've seen DMs who make playing a rogue unnecessarily difficult because they just read "sneak attack" and assume, without reading the mechanics, that you need to be sneaking to use it - when in reality all you need is some source of advantage. Rage has the same issues - it's commonly flavored with anger, but surpressing anger shouldn't inherently surpress rage. As Sneak Attack has specific mechanics that allow it to happen or disallow it from happening, so does Rage. Don't suppress a class ability because you want to ignore the mechanics of the ability and just focus on the ability's name.

Noah Goodman

Lot's of people are disagreeing with the calm emotions rule in favor of the DM, but I think they got it right, with several of their arguments. more than anything "the rule of cool goes both ways." If I had a barbarian npc attacking the players and one of the players cast that spell, it would be no fun and destroy creativity to just say, "nuh uh that doesn't work because their rage is emotionless." In the same way, the dm also gets to use those spells creatively sometimes.

Gearbox

this is so backwards, the coin is a weird an unnecessary idea but hiding death saving throws is a really common house rule to prevent meta gaming. it's completely uninteresting to know your ally is fine cause they passed 2 death saving throws and failed 0

Summer Tribe

next thing you know they'll be insisting chill touch deals cold damage if the players want

Summer Tribe

The calm emotions ruling sounds like it's based on the name of the spell and not its actual effect...

Nota Fed

Regarding hidden death saves, let me say that they are soooo much more suspenseful! Whether it's the DM rolling the d20, or the dying player rolling the d20 with only they and the DM knowng the result, it incredibly raises the stakes on the table. Try it for a session and you'll see.

I specifically wanted to call out the discussion regarding calm emotions and rage. So one of my favorite go to’s when determining whether or not a spell has an effect is to see if there’s another ability on top of the existing ability that provides the additional benefit of preventing a negative effect of a spell. See mindless rage, which makes barbarians immune to charmed or frightened, and since calm emotions requires a charisma saving throw I would call it a charm effect. Given that, there’s a strong argument to say a barbarian that doesn’t have mindless rage could be affected by any charm effect which could inadvertently cause them to end their rage by disallowing them to meet the conditions of maintaining their rage. Charm effects don’t inherently end rage, only the conditions written in the text of rage end rage (you gotta be knocked unconscious or if your turn ends and you haven’t attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then). However if said barbarian did have mindless rage, the DM was dead wrong and calm emotions should have had no effect. Open to counter arguments.

I'm not a huge fan of your guys ruling for calm emotions canceling out a rage. I think the way calm emotions is written all it does is make somebody indifferent to a specific Target. If they don't attack or get hurt that round it would cancel out the rage but they are just indifferent to that one person they are in different to all the enemies that are near them so they could easily switch targets and still be raging.

Hymntastic

I love the idea of a coin being a 1/20 coin and that the player can either take two death saves or get a Nat20 and bounce back up.

Gafyn John

infinity train is so good

Grant Klein

Yea I think the ways I've figured to do that with rules as written would be to disarm your target and then use YOUR object interaction to pick up THIER weapon before their turn comes. That way they'd have to use their action trying to grapple the weapon back from you! Though I've always wanted there to be a move that lets you disarm your enemy and throw their weapon 10 ft away so if they want to grab it they will risk an attack of opportunity

scarlet

Enjoyed Emily's ideas for a disarming strategy! I've always wanted to homewbrew the battlemaster's disarming strike so it could disarm the enemy and ALSO throw their weapon 10ft away (imagining it like that moment in a fencing match where the stronger fighter flicks their combatant's sword out of reach) so people can actually get punished for being disarmed.

scarlet

Yes I love lead pipes

Spam gaming the not so skilled gamer (thanks jake)

Casting calm emotions to end a rage seems like just metagaming, unless the eladrin was trying to stop the fight altogether.

Jacob Dewald

The dishonorable judges unfortunately failed on the action economy and warforge ruling. Jake must take over the court.

Adam Sutton

Re swapping weapons, I had a party member drop their bow and unsheath a sword to use it in one turn. Then later that fight a goliath was running across the area blind and rolled a nat 1. Had them trip on, and break the dropped bow. Was a really fun narrative moment!

dan mac

https://www.instagram.com/p/CPWmHbQDmLT/?utm_medium=copy_link Hire them to do the SVU theme song singing Dun-geon 😂😂😂

Listening to the Mamba No. 5 part now and it's giving me flashbacks to my current DM, who wrote a full campaign (our last one) leading up to a John Cena meme.

Ari Jindracek

I’m gonna have to disagree re: Auto the Warforged. If he’s saying that the armor the DM is trying to use Heat Metal on is part of his body and not being worn, then that goes against the language of Heat Metal—I.e. it works on things being held or worn.

My DM is doing the same thing with death saves except he doesn’t have a cool coin lol. He does all the death saves on his end and won’t tell us a single thing... Doesnt hint to the player how it’s going either. Veeery boring if you’re down because your turn is completely skipped. Even if you stabilize the character he doesn’t tell you if they become stable or if they’re just dead. I think he just wants to have more control but he ends up having all the fun and the players do/know nothing until we’re out of combat.

Re: rage, forget about whether you are talking about anger or animal ferocity - I would make my argument from the physiological effects of calming someone's emotions - heartbeat slows, muscles relax, the whole PNS rest-and-digest bundle of responses are activated. Which isn't compatible with any kind of high-activation, adrenaline-fuelled hyper-vigilant/focused activity. So from that POV, you could absolutely argue that Calm Emotions ends Rage, maybe?

Hannah Wilks

If a warforged wants to avoid Heat Metal he can just put on a robe. You can't target what you can't see (for heat metal anyway).

Bill Pack

Normal ass dudes for life.

Johnny_Johnster

Depending on what level/subclass the Barbarian is, I think the crit justices are wrong. Path of the Berserker for example gives you the feature at 6th level of being immune to charm effects while raging, and Calm Emotions is a charm so the saving throw doesn't matter. Also at later levels you get Persistent Rage which ends only if you choose to end it or if you fall unconscious. The situation is unique and I think it's just one of those cool ideas that don't work because that's not how the spell/the ability works, similar to when players try to use a spell or ability just outside the rules of how it works because it makes sense if you don't look at raw.

ursa

Also just to weigh in the action economy of changing weapons, my DM ruled that this would cost 5ft of movement and I think it's a cool option

Nathann Morais

I'm really happy to see Emily plug The Expanse two weeks in a row, for weeks my life has been work, play d&d and binge the Expanse

Nathann Morais

Them being manufactured is the only convincing argument I've seen so far, but I'd still not 100% there myself.

Chatoyer Huggins

This is a song called Mambo no. 5, and some of the lyrics are "a little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by side, a little bit of Rita is all I need" Mamba is a snake, and mambo is a genre of music.

Chatoyer Huggins

It’s a penny not a quarter in the Batcave.

Joe K

Agreed. They probably should have looked up the rule again, and if the armor is incorporated it shouldn't be a target.

Chatoyer Huggins

Can someone explain the mamba #5 references? Completely over my head.

Ryan Budde

No word of a lie, my friends and I had a campaign in college, and my friend Jack played a halfling monk named Mambo The Fifth.

Amanda Hellas

For the last ruling, the barbarians rage should not end because of calm emotions. The spell doesn’t cancel or calm a lot of emotions despite what the name may imply. It only cancels the charmed or frightened effects or it makes the creature unable to attack other creatures of the casters choice. The barbarian can still be angry, but not at the enemies and this could create an interesting moment where the rest of the party tries to break the casters concentration on the spell to keep the barbarians rage going or else the barbarian could hit one of their party members with an unarmed strike to keep the rage going.

Phoenix

murph is spicy this ep and I’m here for it

Marisa

my takeaway from this episode is naddpod: normal ass dude (d) pod

Dana A

(also sry if this was already mentioned in one of the above comments; on mobile atm and patreon is a ux pita on phones for me 😭)

fwiw the heat armor warforged ruling has a word of (kind of) god tweet https://twitter.com/Dan_Dillon_1/status/1219181227086774272

Infinity train is absolutely fantastic, thanks for the recommendation!

ananarama

So a lot of you are saying you can't heat metal a Warforged's Armor but you 100% can. the Warforged incorporates armor into itself. It still has armor on. It can be heated. The armor is manufactured. Warforges themselves were manufactured as well too.

Makeitsweat

Honestly they didn't even read the question lol. Seems like they totally missed the point of contention of whether or not the "armor" could be specifically targeted as an object or if it's considered a creature

Caldwell, bestie, Batman has a giant penny... Not a quarter

Brayan Martinez

This is a deep cut, but Lowly Bailiff jake going for coffee with write-in Nico brings back a deeply buried memory of a Jake and Amir sketch episode where Jake attends a blind double date at Emily/Murph's house and his potential love interest is named Nico. If I recall correctly, Emily immediately gets drunk and harasses Jake, and Murph ends up with shit all over his hands and tries to kill Jake. The sketch is punctuated by Jake screaming "Nicooooo" into the night. In other news, the free object interaction drop /or/ draw has the nice risk-reward tradeoff of being able to switch weapons without wasting an action, but leaves you unarmed while it's not your turn, so you can't take opportunity attacks with a weapon.

FiendishNoodles

In the “ DM vs Rage” rage is a biological ability Rage = “battle focus” isn’t accurate. Unless flavored, a person going into a “rage” i.e. zen fighting ability, those are monks

Armadon the only

The (dis)honorable judges are WRONG about the warforged-heat metal problem. If the armor integrates to become part of the *character* then it cannot be targeted. Magic that directly physically affects targeted characters is much higher level (eg: power word kill). Find a different route of attack on Otto.

Kieran Steeves

I'm just here for all the Heat Metal comments because none of the judges decided to read the spell 🥳

Quote of this ep for me: Rule of Cool Had to Go Both Ways. Thanks Duncle.

Elizabeth Harris

Not just any object but a “manufactured” object. War forged do not have that, it’s grown from the body that’s kinda the point.

Heat Metal says a "manufactured metal object" it cannot be used on creatures.

ThatManGareth

Honestly this show would be nothing without Jake.

SoupLightning

These are the best, I get so excited when I see the calls for cases.

FURTHERMORE: The coin actually ruins this idea because then you cant crit success/fail and you can just heal someone after 2 flips

Ganonbort

I insist on free action stow/draw weapons in combat as a DM. I like it for the cinematic stuff they were talking about in the episode, but also it means that if they stow at the end of a turn and draw a new weapon at the beginning of the next turn, if they get an opportunity attack in-between they have to just punch

Pamphleteer

With the coin case, the coin is kinda weird aesthetic, levelling out the nat 20/1 is kinda interesting because you can only ever stabalise but there will always be at least 3 throws. But hidden death saves is a new thing that’s trending (i saw it on tiktok) so players aren’t metagaming around death saves. Players play differently if someone doesnt have any fails because they can always just bring them back up after a fail. Murph is right about it having an effect on the action economy, the idea is that it’s more true to life if the characters don’t know. And the dm would still let them know if they stabalise.

Ganonbort

They're on par in length with the Short Rest and Mixed Bag episodes. Just a fun little amuse-bouche of content!

Katy Tacik

1st case: I’m now just imagining a fight where they sheath after every attack/multi attack and then draw the same weapon 😂😂

Ganonbort

Caldwell saying “a Paso Robles blend” about the wine stain made my heart sing! It’s my hometown. (Though it’s a Buffalo Bleu Cheese situation where you have to say it Robe-uhls because all the locals say it white as fuck.)

Nova

Yo we need to roast every one but Jake! These justices are out of control

Tyler

Thanks keeping me company in the long vaccination line here in Melbs! Love D&D court eps!

Talia

Hi! I submitted the question and this was the exact argument lol, but we ultimatley reached the same conclusion at the table that they did

Patrick O.

I know you passed it as a joke, but you are onto something with the "changing weapon as an action" part. You totally should make a character that specializes in disarming - or even have someone with heat metal on weaponry. If the DM says that person just picks up the sword and attacks, he should not be able to, because he switched from unarmed to sword. Better yet, if he says this doesnt count, just drop your weapon you want to switch in the beginning of combat and pick it up as free action, since that's how the world works

Flonc

Is a warforged manufactured? Heat metal reads that it has to be a manufactured metal object

Jack

Hey guys, just wondering why these episodes are shorter than the usual play through ones? Surely we can get full hour and a half ones! Absolutely love the content in any case

Yusuf Qureshi

they’ve been doing 3 eps/month this year so since it’s the last week of may no new campaign ep

Elana Kadish

"Guac in the door"

Taylor Schult

lowly???!! how dare

Rachel

I think the Heat Metal question is that the spell targets metal "objects" and the Warforged trait says "To don armor, you must incorporate it into your body", so if the armor is part of your body is it still an object that's targetable? Tbh I'm not sure but feel like I still agree with your end decision

Teo Tamashiro-Harris

This is great, but does it mean no new episode this week?

Nick Swan

Thanks Murph!

Adam da Silva

Heck yes

Matthew K

Oh hell yes

Nadja Nordstrom

Late night treat!!!!!

Will Smith

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT AND MY HEART

Those who love and give where they can