FA+
Shop
Pathfinder Shenanigans: Ass Pull Rules
11 years ago
General
In last night's session of Pathfinder, our DM took the party completely by surprise by making an already-difficult encounter far more deadly...by making up rules on the fly. Needless to say, I was not pleased, but I would like to hear what you guys think. TVTropes defines an ass pull as: "a moment when the writers pull something out of thin air in a less-than-graceful narrative development." Was it an ass pull? Let's find out.
Our group has been investigating some ancient ruins and basically robbing the crap out of the place. Don't worry, we got permission from the local leaders, so it's all good. So far we've encountered constructs and skeletons, pretty typical fare. Those fights went off without a hitch and we were feeling good. We go down another hallway and find a pile of corpses that appears to be quite ancient. We also see a magical amulet clutched in the hands of one of the corpses. Naturally, we want it.
Our first thought is to just reach over and get it. But no, the DM calls for a sleight of hand check because it's apparently somewhat buried in the corpses. I'm a little confused by this, as it doesn't really make visual sense and it's a very unusual use of sleight of hand. But, it is plausible, so I just let it go. Our party, not wanting to make sleight of hand checks (my character could have, exceptionally well I might add, but he was not about to reach into a pile of corpses), decides to just hack away the corpses in the way.
It takes the DM a moment to realize what this entails, and asks for a sunder check. Sounds fair, and the character makes it. Then the DM says that he needs to look up the rules on sundering magical items. We immediately clarify that we're just sundering the bodies that are in the way - clearing them out so that we don't have to do a sleight of hand check. The DM still doesn't seem to follow, and so our magus (our best mage) decides to just risk the sleight of hand check to grab it. He fails, and then is immediately asked to make a reflex save. He fails that too, and numerous rot grubs leap onto his arm and start burrowing into it. This also reveals a 10-ft by 10-ft rot grub swarm coming out of the pile of bodies, and immediately surging over our party.
Thankfully, my character was apart from them at the time and did not get hit by the swarm. However, almost none of us was prepared to deal with a swarm. Swarms are virtually immune to weapon attacks and spells that target specific things. Only area effect spells such as burning hands, fireball, cloudkill, etc. are truly effective against a swarm. And here, we had exactly one person with an area-effect spell....the magus that reached into the corpse pile. Needless to say, our party immediately starts running from the swarm, except for the magus and the oracle. The oracle starts summoning a fire mephit, and the magus prepares his fireball and does a solid 45 damage to the swarm.
It was at this point, however, that we learned of what truly made the swarm devastating - while their normal damage was minimal, each hit required a DC 19 reflex save - a fairly tall order for most of the party. Failure meant that the rot grubs would burrow into the flesh of the victim and inflict 1d4 CON damage. Further, the grubs would continue to burrow and inflict that damage every round for 1d6 rounds. Everyone in the party except my character fails their save and starts losing CON fast. What makes this especially dangerous is that CON damage is unique - if your CON is damaged enough to reach 0, you die. Further, restoration spells take several rounds to cast, making it nearly impossible for us to heal the CON damage until the swarm was dead.
At this point, the party was split into two - the oracle and magus doing their best to handle the swarm, and the rest of the group fleeing out the entrance and taking CON damage every round because they have nothing that can affect a swarm. Or, at least, they think they don't. It takes the oracle and magus a good 4 or 5 turns total to finally kill the swarm. As for the rest of us, the Paladin uses her channel energy power to heal the other team, which is basically a burst of holy energy that heals living things within 30ft of the Paladin and damages undead things. She's doing this because CON damage comes with some fairly hefty hit point loss too. She does this about two or three times.
Our Slayer comments that he's down to about 5 CON, and that it's very likely he'll die. I remind him that he's got about a 50/50 shot of survival - the CON damage effect last for only 1d6 rounds, and 4 rounds have already passed. The DM then informs him that he has 3 rounds of CON damage still to go. I tell the DM that that's impossible, it's been 4 rounds, and even if he rolled for max duration (which we don't know - we didn't see that roll if it happened at all), there are only two possible rounds left. The DM then tells us that the paladin's channel energy had been healing the rot grubs infesting their victims and adding rounds to the infestation duration.
Bullshit.
I don't say much at the time because I'm dumbfounded by this ruling, but apparently I bitched enough about it to get the GM to "compromise" down to just one additional round. Due to this additional round, our magus dies, and our slayer drops down to just 1 CON before finally stabilizing.
The rest of the session is spent healing and reincarnating our fallen ally. While I slowly try to make sense of the swarm encounter. Here's what I came up with:
First, the swarm shouldn't have existed in the first place. As stated in their flavor text: "Thankfully, rot grub swarms occur only rarely, as they require the infested carcass of a Huge or larger creature and many weeks to build up the numbers necessary to constitute a swarm." This was merely a pile of bodies of medium-sized creatures, not enough to support a swarm. It is -plausible- that they could exist in such a space, but then consider that this pile of bodies is probably hundreds of years old - there isn't anything there for grubs to feast on, let alone support a swarm. I realize that this is entirely a flavor reason, but when you demand that a campaign makes sense, it is no less valid.
Second, before the encounter even started, we should have seen the swarm from down the hallway. As described in their entry: "Generally, a handful of the grubs infest a single corpse at a time, and a DC 15 Perception check is enough to notice and avoid the grubs." This was not a handful, but an entire swarm. The DC to notice them probably would have been lower. Even if it wasn't lower, some of us have +16 or higher to our perception checks - we would have noticed them even by accident.
Third, the "Paladin's healing affects parasites" ruling. Effectively, the DM did the following:
1) Created a new mechanic (no rules ANYWHERE that mention healing spells affect infestations)
2) based entirely on an arbitrary interpretation of vague or absent flavor text (he didn't know exactly what the duration meant, so he assumed that the infestation was slowly dying off or that our bodies were rejecting them somehow.....because that's totally how the human immune system works)
3) that alters well-established and bounded mechanics (channel energy, treating infestations -as diseases-)
4) to the detriment of the players (this one is obvious)
5) without telling us (usually rule changes or new rules are announced one session in advance, or only after being discussed with the players)
6) in a way that will likely -never- be reciprocated by us (typically rulings like this are supposed to cut both ways - if the enemy gets that advantage, we get to do it too sometime. But when the hell are we ever going to unleash a swarm like that?)
7) and in a potentially lethal situation (1d4 CON damage per round)
I will admit that the "healing affects parasites" thing is -plausible- at best, but without any mechanics or precedent to back it up (I couldn't find a SINGLE instance of this for any other creature in Pathfinder), it is NOT the thing you just pull out of your ass. If you do, it is effectively just a big middle finger to your players.
I think this was complete and total bullshit, but maybe I'm overlooking something or being too overzealous. What do you guys think?
Ass Pull RulesOur group has been investigating some ancient ruins and basically robbing the crap out of the place. Don't worry, we got permission from the local leaders, so it's all good. So far we've encountered constructs and skeletons, pretty typical fare. Those fights went off without a hitch and we were feeling good. We go down another hallway and find a pile of corpses that appears to be quite ancient. We also see a magical amulet clutched in the hands of one of the corpses. Naturally, we want it.
Our first thought is to just reach over and get it. But no, the DM calls for a sleight of hand check because it's apparently somewhat buried in the corpses. I'm a little confused by this, as it doesn't really make visual sense and it's a very unusual use of sleight of hand. But, it is plausible, so I just let it go. Our party, not wanting to make sleight of hand checks (my character could have, exceptionally well I might add, but he was not about to reach into a pile of corpses), decides to just hack away the corpses in the way.
It takes the DM a moment to realize what this entails, and asks for a sunder check. Sounds fair, and the character makes it. Then the DM says that he needs to look up the rules on sundering magical items. We immediately clarify that we're just sundering the bodies that are in the way - clearing them out so that we don't have to do a sleight of hand check. The DM still doesn't seem to follow, and so our magus (our best mage) decides to just risk the sleight of hand check to grab it. He fails, and then is immediately asked to make a reflex save. He fails that too, and numerous rot grubs leap onto his arm and start burrowing into it. This also reveals a 10-ft by 10-ft rot grub swarm coming out of the pile of bodies, and immediately surging over our party.
Thankfully, my character was apart from them at the time and did not get hit by the swarm. However, almost none of us was prepared to deal with a swarm. Swarms are virtually immune to weapon attacks and spells that target specific things. Only area effect spells such as burning hands, fireball, cloudkill, etc. are truly effective against a swarm. And here, we had exactly one person with an area-effect spell....the magus that reached into the corpse pile. Needless to say, our party immediately starts running from the swarm, except for the magus and the oracle. The oracle starts summoning a fire mephit, and the magus prepares his fireball and does a solid 45 damage to the swarm.
It was at this point, however, that we learned of what truly made the swarm devastating - while their normal damage was minimal, each hit required a DC 19 reflex save - a fairly tall order for most of the party. Failure meant that the rot grubs would burrow into the flesh of the victim and inflict 1d4 CON damage. Further, the grubs would continue to burrow and inflict that damage every round for 1d6 rounds. Everyone in the party except my character fails their save and starts losing CON fast. What makes this especially dangerous is that CON damage is unique - if your CON is damaged enough to reach 0, you die. Further, restoration spells take several rounds to cast, making it nearly impossible for us to heal the CON damage until the swarm was dead.
At this point, the party was split into two - the oracle and magus doing their best to handle the swarm, and the rest of the group fleeing out the entrance and taking CON damage every round because they have nothing that can affect a swarm. Or, at least, they think they don't. It takes the oracle and magus a good 4 or 5 turns total to finally kill the swarm. As for the rest of us, the Paladin uses her channel energy power to heal the other team, which is basically a burst of holy energy that heals living things within 30ft of the Paladin and damages undead things. She's doing this because CON damage comes with some fairly hefty hit point loss too. She does this about two or three times.
Our Slayer comments that he's down to about 5 CON, and that it's very likely he'll die. I remind him that he's got about a 50/50 shot of survival - the CON damage effect last for only 1d6 rounds, and 4 rounds have already passed. The DM then informs him that he has 3 rounds of CON damage still to go. I tell the DM that that's impossible, it's been 4 rounds, and even if he rolled for max duration (which we don't know - we didn't see that roll if it happened at all), there are only two possible rounds left. The DM then tells us that the paladin's channel energy had been healing the rot grubs infesting their victims and adding rounds to the infestation duration.
Bullshit.
I don't say much at the time because I'm dumbfounded by this ruling, but apparently I bitched enough about it to get the GM to "compromise" down to just one additional round. Due to this additional round, our magus dies, and our slayer drops down to just 1 CON before finally stabilizing.
The rest of the session is spent healing and reincarnating our fallen ally. While I slowly try to make sense of the swarm encounter. Here's what I came up with:
First, the swarm shouldn't have existed in the first place. As stated in their flavor text: "Thankfully, rot grub swarms occur only rarely, as they require the infested carcass of a Huge or larger creature and many weeks to build up the numbers necessary to constitute a swarm." This was merely a pile of bodies of medium-sized creatures, not enough to support a swarm. It is -plausible- that they could exist in such a space, but then consider that this pile of bodies is probably hundreds of years old - there isn't anything there for grubs to feast on, let alone support a swarm. I realize that this is entirely a flavor reason, but when you demand that a campaign makes sense, it is no less valid.
Second, before the encounter even started, we should have seen the swarm from down the hallway. As described in their entry: "Generally, a handful of the grubs infest a single corpse at a time, and a DC 15 Perception check is enough to notice and avoid the grubs." This was not a handful, but an entire swarm. The DC to notice them probably would have been lower. Even if it wasn't lower, some of us have +16 or higher to our perception checks - we would have noticed them even by accident.
Third, the "Paladin's healing affects parasites" ruling. Effectively, the DM did the following:
1) Created a new mechanic (no rules ANYWHERE that mention healing spells affect infestations)
2) based entirely on an arbitrary interpretation of vague or absent flavor text (he didn't know exactly what the duration meant, so he assumed that the infestation was slowly dying off or that our bodies were rejecting them somehow.....because that's totally how the human immune system works)
3) that alters well-established and bounded mechanics (channel energy, treating infestations -as diseases-)
4) to the detriment of the players (this one is obvious)
5) without telling us (usually rule changes or new rules are announced one session in advance, or only after being discussed with the players)
6) in a way that will likely -never- be reciprocated by us (typically rulings like this are supposed to cut both ways - if the enemy gets that advantage, we get to do it too sometime. But when the hell are we ever going to unleash a swarm like that?)
7) and in a potentially lethal situation (1d4 CON damage per round)
I will admit that the "healing affects parasites" thing is -plausible- at best, but without any mechanics or precedent to back it up (I couldn't find a SINGLE instance of this for any other creature in Pathfinder), it is NOT the thing you just pull out of your ass. If you do, it is effectively just a big middle finger to your players.
I think this was complete and total bullshit, but maybe I'm overlooking something or being too overzealous. What do you guys think?
There is nothing in the Rot Grub description that indicates what condition the corpses have to be in to satisfy them. So a pile of sufficient mass could reasonably be treated as a large/huge creature for the purposes of feeding the grubs; in my opinion this is just a creative liberty more fitting to the setting then a single larger corpse.
I agree with you that the DM should have made secret perception checks or at least mentioned that something looked unusual to allow the opportunity for further investigation. However, depending on how zealous the group was, he may have taken your single minded focus on looting and made an ad hoc penalty on perception. (kind of a dick move in my opinion but not completely unreasonable depending on how sever the penalty.
The description of channel energy says that it heals (restores HP) living and damages (reduces HP) undead. It doesn't say anything about healing diseases and Rot Grubs Swarms are classified as vermin swarms which means they are not undead. So it is perfectly reasonable that the channel energy ability would heal the grubs if the swarm was within range, but in my opinion it would neither help nor harm the grubs that were infesting the fleeing party b/c they are cut off from the swarm and would be treated as a disease not a creature.
TL:DR
Was the DM wrong? NO not really, most of what happened based on your description can be accounted for by thing DMs have always done.
Did it go to far or were the reasons unclear? Yeah probably.
May have to adapt this encounter for later use of my own... Like you said, most parties aren't prepared for swarms.
I was going with the worst-case scenario with the perception checks. If I remember correctly, the member with the best perception roll is at a +19. Even by rolling a 1, with a -5 penalty, they would match the DC needed to see ordinary rot grubs on a corpse. Rolling on average though, he would get a 29, which would allow him to detect the swarm even if he was asleep (+10 to DC).
While the rot grub swarm itself is classified as vermin, the resulting infestation is classified as a disease. As a parasite, it bypasses disease immunity, but is still cleared instantly with the application of a remove disease spell. I agree that the channel energy would heal the swarm - we were all aware of this at the time and the paladin made sure to be out of range before using channel energy. Like you said though, HP healing should have had no effect on the infestation.
The issue resulted from the DM not knowing how to flavor the 1d6 rounds of the infestation. It's extremely vague and there's really no description other than the grubs are attempting to burrow into the victim's flesh. Does the duration refer to how many got onto the victim? How many burrowed in? How far they got before the victim somehow killed them? How long before the victim brushed them off? However, no matter which way you interpret it, healing hit point damage would have no affect. Let's assume that the infestation grubs have 1 HP each and that they die at 0 HP. No matter how much HP you heal, it's not increasing their HP at all because they're already at their cap. And HP healing doesn't bring back the dead, so if they're at 0 HP, it's not going to heal them anyway.
Nah, not really. But would have laughed if that was it.
Rules to be added to the Book of Sex: What can go wrong, and what rolls must be done, when "pulling out" of another's ass. :P