D&D: Five Things You Can No Longer Do Thanks To The New Dungeon Master’s Guide
One passage in the new Dungeon Master’s Guide disarms some of the deadliest weapons in D&D. Sorry, peasants. No railgun for you.
As we’ve mentioned before, a single passage in the new Dungeon Master’s Guide tells DMs they can just say “no”. That the rules of the game aren’t the laws of physics. That it’s okay to admit that you’re playing a game, not simulating a whole alternate reality.
By and large, this is great for the game. This is a boon to beleaguered DMs and players who just wanted to go on some quests. Not to deal with someone’s bad-faith read of the rules. But. It does mean that we may be saying goodbye to some old, familiar broken readings of the rules. Which again, none of them are inherently bad for the game – they just might not be what you wanted at your table.
The Peasant Railgun
This one gets shouted out in the soon to be infamous passage. If you’re not familiar with the “Peasant Railgun” it was a way that you could accelerate things to relativistic speeds with nothing more than a bunch of readied actions and as many peasants as you can wrangle.
The Peasant Railgun relied on the reading that readied actions happen instantaneously. So your horde of peasants would move into a line, and all ready actions to hand whatever they’re handed to the person next to them. And since it happens when triggered, you could hand one peasant a stone, and within six seconds, could move it, theoretically, any distance within that six seconds, leaving the stone or whatever approaching speeds NASA dreams of.
The Old True Polymorph + Lair Scheme
This one’s a little more obscure. This may be since it typically only happens once you get access to 9th level spells, and that’s a rarity. But it theoretically worked even if But the “logic” behind it goes:
True Polymorph lets you become any creature as long as its CR is equal to or less than your level. Some monsters have a CR that goes up by one while they’re in their lair (like Aboleths or Dragons). Therefore, if you true polymorph into one of those monsters and acquire a lair, you can then technically increase your CR which then technically expands the things you can True Polymorph into. Use this trick enough and you can climb the ranks of any CR one thing with a lair at a time. Usually dragons. Again, not a good faith reading of the rules, but a reading of the rules, for sure.
Ladder + Saw = Infinite Gold
There are a number of “well this will get us INFINITE MONEY” ideas out there. But this one was always great because of how cartoonish it felt.
The “logic” would go something like this: buy a ten foot ladder and a saw. Cut the ten foot ladder in half, now you have two ten foot poles. Sharpen one end and you have two pikes, which now sell for twenty times the price. Lather, rinse, and repeat as necessary until you’re the richest arms merchant on the Sword Coast.
Barbarian With A Bag Of Rats
Barbarians become even more powerful when they Rage. But they can only maintain their rage so long as they are either attacked or being attacked. So what’s a Barbarian who has a lot of ground to cover, or who wants to save their precious uses of rage to do when the fight’s over?
Well, according to the “logic” behind this one, you’d carry a bag of rats. Or some other creature that you could pummel whenever you start feeling less angry. Or, if you were a Dhampir and had the ability to make an attack damage an area (like using the Slashing Flourish with the Bite) adding some ludicrous amount to your next ability check. Technically.
The Coffeelock
The idea behind this was that you would play a Warlock and Sorcerer multiclass who never actually slept (took a long rest). You’d take the Aspect of the Moon invocation which says you no longer need to sleep and can’t be forced to. And then, you convert your Warlock Spells into Sorcery Points, use those points to make new temporary spell slots which don’t vanish until you take a long rest.
Then you take a short rest to recharge and repeat. Spend a day (or more) powering up until you’ve got way more spell slots than you’d ever use. Worried about Exhaustion? Just get someone to cast Greater Restoration a few times. Worth it for all the spells.
What were some of your favorite “well technically the rules let you…” shenanigans?
