So, I was playing Baldur's Gate 3(I can't use a tabletop example because I've never played DnD. 5th Edition just isn't my thing) and there's this scene with a Warlock where his patron says he has to hunt an innocent person, but he argues that his contract says he can only hunt the demons, monsters, and the heartless.
The other character he's hunting has a mechanical heart, thus counts as heartless to the Patron. I was kinda disappointed that you couldn't start a legal battle about the definition but that got me thinking.
Have you ever been in a game or situation where you had to argue as your character the legality or wording of a law to get your character out of something? Say, the exact situation above where you argued the letter of your contract with a patron, or a played a Paladin who argued for the exact letter of a law to get someone out of trouble. Or maybe a Delta Green game where you argued with some eldritch beast to get humanity a few more years free from trouble. Something like that.
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I wrote and ran a one-shot one time that appeared to be a murder mystery, but the climax was a courtroom argument against an avatar of Asmodeus, who'd been fricking with this small town for kicks (and for souls, but he has more efficient ways of getting souls), to try and prove Asmodeus guilty of murder via his indirect manipulations. Ultimately, the players ended up finding a loophole that I hadn't expected, rather than following the path I had planned for, but it was very gratifying.
>I've never played any TTRPG
ftfy
only didn't play DND 5the. I've played other ones. VtM, Delta Green, the Warhammer Fantasy Flight Games. You know, good ones
>I can't use a tabletop example because I've never played DnD.
>I can't use a tabletop example
Why do you backpaddle, nogame?
>YOU HAVE TO HAVE PLAYED A GAME TO PARTICIPATE IN DISCUSSIONS!!
Why are 5e fans so obsessed with gatekeeping?
if you are upset about gatekeeping you are the one the gate was intended to keep out.
I just came out of a game where I was constantly rules lawyering the dm on spells his boss encounter was using, since he hadn't actually read what the spells do, just how much damage they did and their debuffs. He eanted us all to roll saving throws for an aoe spell that had covered over 80% of the room, despite the spell saying "creatures who end their turn in the aoe take x damage and have to roll a fortitude saving throw". Funnily enough we got out of that aoe and it made it difficult for the boss to see us and us to see it, making us all flat-footed to each other, which he also didn't realize. After the extremely unfun combat one of our players checked the statblock and he added spells and abilities to the boss which would cover the whole room, that weren't intended for the encounter. I was literally constantly correcting him on rules throughout the fight which probably saved us from a tpk.
Other than that I played curse of strahd a year ago and one of our characters was dumb enough to try to bribe an npc to follow him into a dark alley, then proceeded to try to steal something from him after the npc refused to follow. This failed as well, so he started casting hold person in the middle of town on him. Dm went with it and we had an impromptu court session trying to bail the guy out, pleading insanity. 3 hours of roleplay and a few extremely lucky persuasion crits and we were free to go, but the people whose trust we had started to win now hated our guts.
I feel like you guys are missing the point. I should have been clearer about the subject
Did you ever battle a legal case in your games?
yes, literally my second story about the court day
I played a lawyer (Ventrue) on Dark Ages, had to justify the destruction of a kindred
>Baldur's Gate 3 is bringing hordes of players into D&D 5e like Critical Role did years ago
Gatekeeper bros... it's over.....
Did you really try to gatekeep D&D? Of all things? Really?
Who and why should ever gatekeep containment game?
Gatekeeping is a fantasy
Your lillend public defender would make a two-pronged case, passionately insisting that the subject is neither metaphorically nor literally heartless, but your patron would represent himself with just a few modrond running paperwork for him, and at no point would he seem even slightly concerned with the celestial's arguments. The patron always wins.
Our dangerously low int paladin does the opposite if anything. He has a shaky (at best) grasp of ideas such as "reasonable force" when upholding justice. He means well, but people can be somewhat fragile compared to a big ol' dragonborn. If they're mostly intact he can be convinced to heal them enough to be arrested and tried
The good news is in late act 2 you have an opportunity to kill the patron (and her simp goes down with her consequently).
I've rules-lawyered plenty of times, but in my current group my DM and I have a history of arguing about magical darkness.
>YEARS ago, we were playing a campaign where there was a magical tournament going on, and I was playing a half-ogre sorcerer participating in the wizard duels.
>I get matched against this shadow-magic assassin who's gimmick was casting darkness and then sneak-attacking his victims.
>He went first and dropped the cloud of darkness on me and then ran up to start stabbing me next round
>Unfortunately for him I have nightvision just as good as the assassin does, so on my turn I cast shocking grasp, rolled a crit on the attack, and vaporized him in a single turn with a lucky damage roll.
>DM is still butthurt to this day about it because "that's not how magical darkness should work" despite the assassin's whole gimmick relies on him having night-vision.
>Years later, group is playing a new campaign with the same DM
>My new character finds a cursed torch that can't be dropped but emits a 20ft. radius cloud of ADVANCED magical darkness
>The torch has it's own writeup and description that explicitly says it blocks ALL night-vision, presumably so we don't have to argue about this later
>I use it to survive fighting against a dragon who could barely land a hit on me thanks to the 50% miss chance from not being able to see shit
>DM is upset AGAIN, this time because he was expecting the dragon to counter the darkness and kill me anyways because it has an ability called "blindsense". It turns out, to be able to avoid the 50% miss chance on creatures you can't see, you need "blindSIGHT", the improved version of blindsense.
>Before fighting the dragon I looked up the difference between blindsense and blindsight because I knew this exact argument was going to happen
That's bullshit. Warlock's power loan is non-refundable, he doesn't need to do anything for the patron.
But BG3 diverges from tabletop DnD in multitude of ways, misinterpreting how pact works isn't even the worst offender.
I can tell how fat you are
>That's bullshit. Warlock's power loan is non-refundable, he doesn't need to do anything for the patron.
A patron strong enough to grant power to a warlock is strong enough to turn that warlock into a crude human-shaped stain.
>The other character he's hunting has a mechanical heart, thus counts as heartless to the Patron.
Right there on the proverbial tin: "mechanical HEART" -- It's a heart. It belongs to him. Therefore he is not heartless.