Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1057038How so?

I'll never get over how the DM is supposed to pick what you summon, except for the higher level single monster, that is when the player picks.

It was a ruling meant to patch over how conjure woodland beings could be used to summon pixies to turn everyone in the party into Giant Apes that would proceed to rofl-stomp over everything.

Mearls and Crawford pretended that they meant DM picks (for low level spells) because that's how some older editions worked *flashes street cred* [we cool developers playing it OG style]
But player still picks for higher level summons *eye wink* as intended. They then printed new summon demon spells that solidified that interpretation.

Great ruling for everyone playing that way, but any table that wanted competent summoners that picked what they got, or any table where the DM didn't want to pick summons, or for any player that now felt like picking their summons was cheating/munchkin play even if the DM let them, this ruling was garbage and broke summoning.

And it's that last bit that causes problems. A munchkin can get DM permission to cheat. In fact badgering the DM for special privileges is the hallmark of a munchkin. Sage Advice starts creating official rulings for 5e so any good non-munchkin player needs to keep up with Sage Advice so they do not accidentally ask the DM to rule in their favor for something that the devs deemed "unfair/wrong".

And then there are all the other Sage Advice that is just wrong or telling tables they were doing it wrong, which undermines whatever 5e was trying to do.

Wait what? When did they say that? That is pretty weird.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1057059Wait what? When did they say that? That is pretty weird.

Unless you are Jeremy Crawford, I did not say you said anything.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1057059Wait what? When did they say that? That is pretty weird.

If make an official ruling, then every other ruling becomes officially wrong.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1057059Wait what? When did they say that? That is pretty weird.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/sageadvice_july2015

"When you cast a spell like conjure woodland beings, does the spellcaster or the DM choose the creatures that are conjured? A number of spells in the game let you summon creatures. Conjure animals, conjure celestial, conjure minor elementals, and conjure woodland beings are just a few examples.

Some spells of this sort specify that the spellcaster chooses the creature conjured. For example, find familiar gives the caster a list of animals to choose from.

Other spells of this sort let the spellcaster choose from among several broad options. For example, conjure minor elementals offers four options. Here are the first two:

One elemental of challenge rating 2 or lower
Two elementals of challenge rating 1 or lower
The design intent for options like these is that the spellcaster chooses one of them, and then the DM decides what creatures appear that fit the chosen option. For example, if you pick the second option, the DM chooses the two elementals that have a challenge rating of 1 or lower.

A spellcaster can certainly express a preference for what creatures shows up, but it's up to the DM to determine if they do. The DM will often choose creatures that are appropriate for the campaign and that will be fun to introduce in a scene."

For their intent made clear check:

http://dnd5e.wikia.com/wiki/Summon_Lesser_Demons

"The DM chooses the demons and you choose where they appear from spaces you can see."

and

http://dnd5e.wikia.com/wiki/Summon_Greater_Demon

"You summon a demon from the Abyss. You choose the demon. It must be of challenge rating 5 or lower. It appears in an empty space you can see, and it disappears when it drops to 0 hit points."

At least for me 5ed plays like a streamlined 3.5ed. In some ways that results in more rules and less rulings since 3.5ed was so clunky that we ignored a lot of the rules (i.e. pretty much everything in the DMG) and made shit up a lot while in 5ed we actually follow the rules a lot more

5ed is fine for me since after 3.5ed I can handle the level of complication just fine, it's just that inevitably in every group there's one or two people who can't and it drags the game down. Also it gets aggravating having to figure out things like "ability check includes skills but not saves or attacks" not just for my character but for another few people's characters who don't really understand how their own character's mechanics work and need help and coaching from me in the rules that I don't even know that well myself. The same as in storygames even if I like the game there's always one or two people who just can't wrap their heads around the metagame mechanics and get tripped up.

So in practice the kind of games which would be fun with a group of Daztur clones and the kind of games that are fun with the actual people I play with end up being pretty different. For playing with actual people I like games where the players don't have to know any rules and they can just tell the DM what they're doing and the DM tells them what to roll. Because there's always that one guy who never learns any rules and he's often good at RPing, fun to play with and good at thinking in terms of in-world logic and I want him to have fun too.

Quote from: Daztur;1057119Because there's always that one guy who never learns any rules and he's often good at RPing.

One day I'll meet this mythical kind of person. As of yet, those who do not care about the rules tend to be terrible roleplayers too at my tables.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1057010To be fair, 5e was a lot better right after release before sage advice and new books solidified some bad rulings as canon. Mearls and Crawford have been terrible stewards.

Have they?  They're leaving it in DM's hands.  Isn't this what we want?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1057147Have they?  They're leaving it in DM's hands.  Isn't this what we want?

I would not call "official rulings" leaving it in the DM's hands.

I am not complaining about the lack of "support". 5e really didn't need new books, things like the DM's guild and Unearthed Arcana were more than enough.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1057050Great ruling for everyone playing that way, but any table that wanted competent summoners that picked what they got, or any table where the DM didn't want to pick summons, or for any player that now felt like picking their summons was cheating/munchkin play even if the DM let them, this ruling was garbage and broke summoning.

The RAW druid animal summoning spell was broken. It was evident to us the first time someone ran a druid in our most recent campaign. With their hordes of summoned beasts blocking monster movement and soaking up attacks, the party was curb-stomping most encounters they ran into. It was no fun. Even the player running the druid admitted it. I was ready to outright ban the spell when I came across the official correction. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Better than having to double the number of monster in every encounter in my campaign to account for a massively overpowered spell.

Quote from: Haffrung;1057264The RAW druid animal summoning spell was broken. It was evident to us the first time someone ran a druid in our most recent campaign. With their hordes of summoned beasts blocking monster movement and soaking up attacks, the party was curb-stomping most encounters they ran into. It was no fun. Even the player running the druid admitted it. I was ready to outright ban the spell when I came across the official correction. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Better than having to double the number of monster in every encounter in my campaign to account for a massively overpowered spell.

Do people still use the spell? If not, you effectively banned it by using the "official ruling".

But really 5e itself is full of seems that if you start pulling, everything falls apart. Yeah summoning is OP. They wrote the spell completely wrong. DM picks summons isn't an answer though. It's bad retrospective game design.

Quote from: Haffrung;1057264The RAW druid animal summoning spell was broken. It was evident to us the first time someone ran a druid in our most recent campaign. With their hordes of summoned beasts blocking monster movement and soaking up attacks, the party was curb-stomping most encounters they ran into. It was no fun. Even the player running the druid admitted it. I was ready to outright ban the spell when I came across the official correction. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Better than having to double the number of monster in every encounter in my campaign to account for a massively overpowered spell.

Do people still use the spell? If not, you effectively banned it by using the "official ruling".

But really 5e itself is full of seams that if you start pulling, everything falls apart. Yeah summoning is OP. They wrote the spell completely wrong. DM picks summons isn't an answer though. It's bad retrospective game design.

The "official ruling" becomes a rules and very much flips the idea of rulings over rules (which I personally think is just kind of a tosh game design theory. Consistent rulings are just rules you made up yourself rather than a professional spending dozens of hours trying to make up that rule for you)

Quote from: Haffrung;1057264The RAW druid animal summoning spell was broken. It was evident to us the first time someone ran a druid in our most recent campaign. With their hordes of summoned beasts blocking monster movement and soaking up attacks, the party was curb-stomping most encounters they ran into. It was no fun. Even the player running the druid admitted it. I was ready to outright ban the spell when I came across the official correction. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Better than having to double the number of monster in every encounter in my campaign to account for a massively overpowered spell.

Do people still use the spell? If not, you effectively banned it by using the "official ruling".

But really 5e itself is full of seams that if you start pulling, everything falls apart. Yeah summoning is OP. They wrote the spell completely wrong. DM picks summons isn't an answer though. It's bad retrospective game design.

The "official ruling" becomes a rule and very much flips the idea of rulings over rules (which I personally think is just kind of a tosh game design theory. Consistent rulings are just rules you made up yourself rather than a professional spending dozens of hours trying to make up that rule for you)

Quote from: Rhedyn;1057270DM picks summons isn't an answer though. It's bad retrospective game design.

I think it's actually a clever fix. The DM can adjudicate which particular monsters are nearby or available, which may or not be what would be optimal in combat. Another option would be to roll randomly, which I'd be fine with too. But 5E is trying to cut down on lots of rolls and referring to tables during combating.

Quote from: Haffrung;1057271I think it's actually a clever fix. The DM can adjudicate which particular monsters are nearby or available, which may or not be what would be optimal in combat. Another option would be to roll randomly, which I'd be fine with too. But 5E is trying to cut down on lots of rolls and referring to tables during combating.

You did not answer my question if players still use that spell in your game.

Did you effectively ban the spell?