For reference: There is a duell in the module where a shaman tries to secretly help one NPC by continously casting Cure Wounds on him while supposedly only helping him “stand up” after he intentionally let‘s himself fall prone. To spot this, a PC has to specifically declare checking for interventions a then suceed a DC 15 perception-check despite being within earshot…
People actually pay attention to spell components? I’ve been playing D&D for 20 years and literally every campaign I’ve ever played in just ignored them.
I tend to rule that any components are “assumed to be in the materials pouch”, unless there is a significant (relative to party wealth) gold price attached, in which case they need to be bought. In practice I found that only really seems to apply to resurrection spells.
From there, the only thing that matters to me is can you reasonably perform or (roll to hide to perform) the semantic and vocal components, as well as get out the materials of your materials pouch in your current state.
In practice this means I can ignore components 85% of the time, but can still temporarily de-power my players if needed for some reason.
Some do. I know I do. It limits what casters can do at least a little.
Yes, flavoring your spellcasting while it’s mechanically just “I have a component pouch that carries everything I need” is part of the fun for many…
…ignoring components strides shoulder-to-shoulder with ignoring encumbrance in the grand march from appendix-N swords-and-sorcery to pop-anime fantasy-superheroes…
I mean, I don’t see an issue with hiding the casting of a spell from people. I do think it should probably be the other way around for players (do a slight of hand to hide the semantic/material components, and beat passive perception), but in principle I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to hide those?
msbbritain@lemmy.world The issue us that it breaks with the established systems of “reality” without explanation or cause. It’s an arbitrary deviation from the established and shared understanding of how things work, with the only available explanatiin being “because I said so, so shut up and don’t question me”.
It’s one thing if there’s the equivalent of the Conceal Spell feat and actiin from Pathfinder being leveraged here,but tbat comes with both a build tax and an action tax. If there’s no price being paid, it’s a little bit of a “fuck you” to the players.
Because it would nake suntle-spell kind of redundant and why even use components in the first place if they cannot be used to tell you are casting something.
But the shaman’s no player character so the rules don’t apply to him.
In 3e pretty much every npc was fully buildable from existing classes, in 5e they just stopped doing that. If the module says he can do sneaky cure wounds, he can do sneaky cure wounds.
They are using an official statblock which lacks this ability. The only way the shaman can have it is if the DM added it themself. And since this is a prewrittem module, it really shouldn’t have such oversights, especially since newer, inexperienced DM‘s likely aren’t familiar enough with the rules to know this, which makes it at least decently likely that they’ll just assume everyone can cast stealthily.
What do you mean official statblock? As in it’s a statblock from the dmg/mm? Then they can still just tack in things they want/need (as can you, as dm).
I agree they probably could (and should) have better specified that this diverges from the stat block, but the point of the module is to try and cater to everyone, including rewarding players that took points in perception here apparently.
I think it’s got its pros and cons, I’m very fond of seeing all the rules and following them, even as a dm, so 3e (and Pathfinder) were always more my thing, but having played 5e nowadays (and other, even more “you have a 5 damage power, flavour it however you like” like mutants & masterminds) I kind of like the dm style of “know your players, make exceptions where it would increase enjoyment and/or add an interesting challenge without breaking the future fun of the game” too.
Arguably that’s the difference between DM and GM. A DM is just running a dungeon. A GM is running the whole game, rules and all.
Yes they could. But they did not. That’s what I’m crititicising. Perception is one of the most used skills ever. It would not have hurt not to use it here. And if sou really wanted to, then give her some kind of ability that actually let’s her do that, because these kind of things can be missleading to new players/DMs and puts extra work on the DM.
And I really like less strict systems like M&M too, but if you write something in a more rigid system, you should adhere to the rules of that system. Or in this case: You shouldn’t start writing full on adventures in an unfinished system.
