so I am running a campaign with my friends and last time a debate broke out. one of my players literally tried pic related. long story short, after some natural 20s the discussion arose how in a medieval fantasy setting divorce law is regulated. I argued, since in the medieval times there was no splitting of goods so to speak, our bard should be happy his dragon waifu doesn't kill him or becomes a reoccurring bad guy. they argued that if not specified otherwise (and beforehand) the law should be as close to our existing one as possible
who's in the wrong here? shouldn't the DM have the last say in world building, period? what if the party crosses borders? do I have to have a system of laws on hand for every country my party may encounter in their travels?
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dragons are not subject to any laws or the authority of any kingdom ( and no kingdom would have laws like this, introduced in our world only ~70 years ago). dragon waifu would say 'lol, laws?' then eat you.
>fantasy setting
>divorce law
Unless the dragon is specifically the type to follow the law, they aren't going to give a frick about this anyways. But as says they probably aren't subject to the laws of any given country, as they likely aren't citizens anyways.
>our bard should be happy his dragon waifu doesn't kill him or becomes a reoccurring bad guy.
Pretty much. Were I the DM he would be lucky to get away at all. Dragons on the whole are possessive c**ts, and if he thinks he's not a part of the hoard now he's got another thing coming. Dragons aren't humans and expecting them to behave as such is moronic.
>they argued that if not specified otherwise (and beforehand) the law should be as close to our existing one as possible
Well they're moronic.
>shouldn't the DM have the last say in world building, period?
Yes.
>introduced in our world only ~70 years ago
Equitable divorce laws are in the Code of Hammurabi, sport.
On the other hand "gimme half your shit because we were married and I got bored" is indeed pretty recent.
You are in the wrong for allowing this moronation to happen in the first place, and having the dragon do anything other than immediately kill the player for being so unbelievably stupid.
Only in DnD 5e, I fricking swear...
>Only in DnD 5e
Nothing about 5e has anything to do with this. You can dislike an edition all you want, but please use actual things about it to criticize it. Otherwise your whole complaint looks hollow.
As a reminder to fricking everybody, rolling 20 does not automatically succeed or "crit" skill checks. Not in 3.X, 4, or 5e. Do not just allow your players to take a 5% chance to do literally anything
Your player making decisions on their own to try to cheese having tons of treasure without consulting you is bad behavior. Good communication and shared expectations make for a good gaming experience, and they should have consulted you before going in that deep. You are not reasonably expected to know all of the laws for everywhere and whether or not they differentiate with the real world's offhand, but when asked, you should be able to arbitrate and answer the question. And you should also be able to point out obvious situations that may be counterintuitive to warn players before they step into very serious legal problems. You're not in the wrong here, but you're going to need to talk to your players about things to make sure everyone's on the same page about what's cool and what's not cool to do. Your player is not necessarily being a jerk here, but a lot of people are just not good at seeing how this game is a cooperative effort, so talk to your players about how making powerplays like this isn't conducive to the kind of game you want to run.
On the other hand, you could always like, propose alternatives too. That's usually pretty good. Offer a compromise of "you can keep the dragon as your wife, but you can't have her hoard. She is willing to lend you some things for it, but only if you keep proving that you can bring back even more treasure for it." Boom, you now have an interesting relationship dynamic to tack onto this character that still gives them some kind of advantage for having done something so wild and difficult.
If a 20 doesn't provide a solution to a certain problem then you shouldn't even let the player roll in the first place. By allowing them to roll you're giving consent to them doing whatever the frick they want.
I mean yeah. That's in addition to what I said though. My point being that this entire problem is partly stemming from an extremely common misunderstanding about the game's rules. If you (correctly) assume players always have a 5% chance to possibly succeed by rolling a 20 on the die, then no task is impossible enough to be disallowed in the first place.
(correctly)
I meant incorrectly, frick. You get what I mean. If you don't know the rules, then assumptions you make about playing the game can compound. If you don't assume you can always have a chance, then you won't say no unless you hate the consequences for failing even more. And if you have nothing to lose, you'd have no reason to try.
So again, as a reminder to people, a natural 20 isn't applicable to skill checks and saves. Stop perpetuating this potentially game-breaking problem. And talk to your players so they know what shit is reasonable to try.
>Nothing about 5e has anything to do with this.
Wrong, the mindset displayed is unique to the new gen of 5e critters who think reddit memes are an instruction manual on how to play.
>You are in the wrong for allowing this moronation to happen in the first place, and having the dragon do anything other than immediately kill the player for being so unbelievably stupid.
>Only in DnD 5e, I fricking swear...
This. Bards rolling nat20s to seduce dragons wasn't a meme until 5e.
Yes it was
Every post on Ganker is made with sincerety.
It was
But it was also only that, a meme.
There weren't hordes of morons who's entry into the game was livestreams, YouTube videos and Reddit memes who unironically thought that that was how the game is meant to be played
>who unironically thought that that was how the game is meant to be played
In the early 90s one of the reoccurring jokes of D&D was that lonely dudes wanted to bang all the chicks.
It's all the same it has never changed
I definitely remember it being a topic an my local story back when I started playing VtM in 2005.
>I definitely remember it being a topic an my local story back when I started playing VtM in 2005.
I remember when an obviously satirical post wouldn't be mistaken for genuine.
Are you satiring in the room with us right now?
not to be pedantic, but to be more accurate, this only happens to at tables of DMs with the cognitive moronation that OP displays
It's up to the players to ask about minor things like that, the DM shouldn't be expected to write up an entire legal code for their setting
natural 20 does not mean a total success. it means that you get the best result possible given the circumstances. you set yourself up for this.
Get on with the times, grandpa. Nat 20 when visiting a king's court will make him abdicate on the spot and hand the crown to you.
That isn't currently true, and it hasn't been true for so many years you sound like a fool for saying it even ironically.
It doesn't work this way in 5e. Or 4e. Or even 3e. The editions most people here cut their teeth on don't include this interaction, and they're just running on not understanding the rules they were supposed to read or hearing things wrong from other people.
Every group who isn't a bunch of neckbearded 40 year old autists has an unspoken houserule like that. Simply for the rule of cool, which autistic neckbeards are incapable of being.
No
Rule of cool is one thing, but accidentally misunderstanding the rules is not the same as having house rules.
Your scenario never happened and if, for some absurd coincidence, it has and you seriously decided to tackle in that argument with a straight face i only have a suggestion for you: stop playing with ttrpgs.
>who's in the wrong here?
player, dumbass only needed to ask what divorce laws were, but that's to much to ask irl in all honesty
>what if the party crosses borders?
they find out what's on the other side, next roll
>do I have to have a system of laws on hand for every country my party may encounter in their travels?
should be easily enough to come with on the spot if you know your own world
>shouldn’t the DM have last say
Yes but this didn’t happen. Tell me about the wedding planning and ceremony, where was it hosted and what did they serve? Also was this a no-fault divorce? If not and the homosexual bard was unfaithful, just kill the character yo
>What was his name? What was he wearing? What color were his eyes?!
Yes this unironically. Notice how OP did not respond to me or anyone else asking for detail. How many syllables were in the name of your last player character?
>natural 20
so you called for a roll.
They are in the wrong, what the frick. By that logic there should exist rules about radiowave rights in a world without radios.
And why the frick did you let one of your PCs marry a dragon??
And honestly, Im not even sure If I believe you, because I want to believe youre a smart guy that would not let this happen
Laws of any kind only matter if they can be enforced, and enforcement only works if there's either violence or a threat of violence backing it.
So basically good fricking luck trying to get divorce laws enforced against a fricking dragon. If the party was capable of enforcing it themselves they would have just killed the dragon to take its hoard in the first place.
The DM is at fault for allowing this to even start, and for apparently being dogshit at playing dragons.
DnD 5E kind of issues
You're both wrong. The player for pulling this dumb shit, and you for letting him.
why would the dragon not just eat the character and be done with it? seriously if this man went and woo'd them just to divorce them, I don't imagine a dragon would like that.
You don’t understand. He rolled a 20. If he faces negative consequences in the relationship that would not be heckin affirming and would in fact be railroading storyshitting troony discord grooming.
Never ever start a sentence with "so" unless you want everyone to think you're reddit.
What a worthless post, you should have a nice day
Divirce law in medieval society was trial by combat. good luck beating the dragon one on one. lol.
you are in the wrong for making a dogshit thread about bullshit that didn't happen so you can read out the replies on your horseshit israelitetube channel
Obviously the dragon has lawyered up and the bard ends up owing her money instead.
Why you allowed it, and what was the DC? What was the quest? What was the character? What was the setting? Why the plot? How the wedding was legal?
(we know the answer)
hoard*
That wasn't a typo, it's about child custody debate.
>divorce law in a medieval fantasy setting
depends on the culture, on the cults, etc.
If you mean say a marriage under Catholic rites, your bard needs to become King of England, split off the national church from the catholic church, become its supreme head (he did put levels in Cleric, right?), change the laws, and then, yes, he could annul his marriage.
Oh sorry, that happened in modern times, not in medieval times. Too bad for the bard.
A dragon is under no obligation to give anything regardless of what the law may or may not be. It's a fricking dragon.
Yes except unlike you, Dragons usually have the power to just say no
>natural 20s
Have you tried actually playing D&D? Or are you playing the cargo cult version 'Natty 20s'?
Only call for a roll if the outcome is in doubt, this stupid fricking situation should have never happened to begin with.
You're both moronic. PCs shouldn't be able to seduce a dragon 99% of the time. For the few dragons that could change shape like, Gold or Silver, causing a being to fall in love enough for marriage wouldn't be a series of persuasion checks
>D&D
Everyone involved is in the wrong.
I swear, half of these reddit style TTRPG "AITA" posts could be solved if the GM had some fricking nuts and said "Naw that's not going to happen" versus letting their players walk all over them with their wombo combo 1000000 ranks of Diplomacy bullshit.
Seriously if a character is just trying to break the game say no and if he argues tell him it ain't happening. Autism and it's consequences have a disaster for the TTRPG race where telling someone "No" gets moronic shit fits.
>reddit spacing
I guess you would know.
Tryhard newbie redditor desperately trying to fit in, many such cases. Sad!
Ask the party who exactly they expect to enforce the divorce money split? The dragon has no reason to give up her her hoard and I doubt the party is capable of taking her out if they had to resort to a goofy scheme like this to try to get her hoard.
GM makes the setting, GM makes the laws of that setting. Players shut the frick up and cope.
>they argued that if not specified otherwise (and beforehand) the law should be as close to our existing one as possible
unbelievably moronic, a medieval fantasy world being just the IRL west but with magic and no tech is boring as frick. that said it sounds like it might be an issue of the player having expected the game to be less serious if they really thought this plan would work.
in any case, unless the dragon waifu is really really dedicated to respecting the law at all times then yeah, she wouldn't allow this and would probably try to eat him. it's also weird that the law even applies to a dragon but I guess it's not completely implausible that a dragon might become a subject of a human kingdom since they can take human form. but I think even a dragon that wanted to work with the kingdom and cooperate for whatever reason might refuse citizenship or not be granted the same status as a typical subject.
>Can I roll to seduce the dragon?
>No.
It's that simple.
Or let the player roll and have him fail even with a natural 20 because there's no critical successes on skill checks.
Natural 20 and natural 1 are only auto-success and auto-fail in combat.
Bestiality is illegal, character is jailed, roll a new one.
bring this up for the bard
in quite a few medieval codes, failure to satisfy marital needs was a reason for not just divorce, but annulment
Have his dragon waifu admit, under oath and magic compulsion, that the bard failed to both satisfy AND produce offspring
That should shut him up pretty good
OP, I seriously have to ask how stupid your party is for thinking that a stick figure of a bard can just divorce a dragon and demand half their horde without being immediately incinerated for such a grievous insult
>long story short, after some natural 20s
If you're going to make shit up at least put some effort in. Give us the full story. And how would natural 20's guarantee success outside of combat? That's not how skill rolls work in D&D. What are you playing exactly?
>who's in the wrong here?
You are. For being a homosexual.
>they argued that if not specified otherwise (and beforehand) the law should be as close to our existing one as possible
So put him on trial for bestiality. And the entire party for all the extrajudicial killings they no doubt committed. If they want to be this moronic, that's what should happen. Or they could accept they tried moronic meme shit and be happy the DM played along for as long as he did.
If this is real, your players sound terrible.
>they argued that if not specified otherwise (and beforehand) the law should be as close to our existing one as possible
God no. That's moronic. Why should a fantasy world follow modern laws and norms? That just sounds like a good way to sap the actual fantasy from the setting, turning it into something bland and generic.
>who's in the wrong here? shouldn't the DM have the last say in world building, period?
Of course.
That said, my group tends to engage in some collaborative worldbuilding in session 0. For example, our current campaign is set in a world both the regular GM's have used a few times before but because one of the players wanted to play a sha'ir we've added in a vaguely Mughal/Middle-Eastern nation of across the sea for her character to come from. Another player had a very clear image of how they wanted to play their druid so we agreed to change the divine cosmology of the world to facilitate that.
Can't imagine arguing with the GM about world-building elements midway through a campaign though. How fricking egotistical.
>what if the party crosses borders? do I have to have a system of laws on hand for every country my party may encounter in their travels?
I mean, you should have some idea of any differences that might be relevant. Anything surprising that comes up you can wing.
Well what laws does dragon court have?
Dragon Law
>they argued that if not specified otherwise (and beforehand) the law should be as close to our existing one as possible
Did you ever specify that bestiality is legal? If not, the bard will be in a lot of trouble.
Chances are, same goes for the entire party if you never specified that murder is legal.
You, for not just killing the character and ending the debate instantly.
>they argued that if not specified otherwise (and beforehand) the law should be as close to our existing one as possible
That's an incredibly moronic stance for them to take tbh.
Have the players ever paid any taxes on their loot?
Do they even have reasonable grounds for alimony? There's no way a dragon doesn't already have the setting's greatest lawyers on retainer.
Make the bard deal with his jealous ex at the most inopportune times.
>50% of their horde
>horde
of kobolds?
>what if the party crosses borders? do I have to have a system of laws on hand for every country my party may encounter in their travels?
What if the dragon just eats the bard?