It’s artifact level - a cantrip simply doesn’t work on it. When the players ask why, you just tell them they don’t know - neither can anyone in the town/city whatever they’re in.
My GM solution: the rust is actually blood, and the crown needs a fresh coating to activate its narrative. If need be, make it belong to a certain bloodline, such as royalty.
DM: Scribbles a note “Without the rust it seems like a serviceable crown, but not too fancy.”
Note to lost heir: “You see the crown and you think as it… looks at you. This should be your crown. You wants it. They shouldn’t keep it from you. Steals it, hides it, it came here for you”.
DM: “Probably worth some gold.”
The player: GUYS! I’M A KING NOW!!! BOW TO MEEEEEEEE!!!
What metal is the crown made of?
The spell only works on iron and iron-heavy alloys. An advanced version of the spell exists but the players don’t have it yet.
Technically, rust can only occur on iron-heavy metals and alloys. Otherwise it’s just called oxidation.
The difference with “rust” is that rust will eat into the metal and change its shape, while oxydation only changes the surface color and texture.
Edit: yeah… Rust is a specific type of oxydation, it wasn’t really clear from my comment. What I wanted to say is that rust implies the material is iron-based!
This is not true. Oxidation is a broad type of chemical reaction involving the loss of electrons. Rust is a type of oxidation, much as a square is a type of rectangle. Oxidation can occur on the surface level (tarnishing of some metals, passivation of aluminum) or throughout (combustion). Rust actually only occurs on the surface as well, but the iron oxide is less dense than the metal and it increases the available area of the surface exposed to oxygen.
Yeah… Reading back my comment, it was badly written… I know rust is a type of oxydation, but that’s not what I wrote!
Lol thermite is my favorite oxidation & rust remover reaction
Ah yes, removes the rust, the object, and the table it was sitting on…
Well, not quite. Rust eats into iron because oxidised iron is larger and much more brittle than unoxidised iron, physically ripping itself out of place.
Many oxides arent that much larger that their base metals and form a nice patina protecting the metal underneath, like in aluminium.
Other oxides destroy the structural integrity of the metal and eat into it, forming corrosion. Rust is just corrosion specific to iron.
I didn’t know of other type of oxides that eat into the metal like rust does…
But it’s true that a “rusted crown” implies that it is iron-based, so the cantrip should work!
the rust scales begin to fall and as the entire party squints to see the results, ROLL FOR INITIATIVE AT DISADVANTAGE (fuck a few dragons will get me out of this shit)
The crown completely disintegrates, as it was rust all the way through
Sorry, Mario, the real crown is in another dungeon.
the real crown was the XP we collected along the way
The real mario is the rust we collected along the XP
“you feel the spell take hold, but for some reason the crown remains rusty”
Then you pivot that the rust is a powerful illusion or some kind of curse cast on the crown by someone related to that backstory to keep it hidden. Then while your players try to figure out why simply cleaning the rust didn’t work, you try to figure out how to weave in that backstory sooner than later.
If you’re really not ready for it to happen, make sure they have some other quest to do that has a pressing time limit.
you’re definitely right about the time limit. at that point you are about 5 minutes away from every spell in the party’s arsenal being cast on that crown, followed by the main quest getting derailed by the mystery of the plot armored artifact.
I’m extremely naive when it comes to tabletop RPGs
Is there any kind of “plot says no” response to magic? Something like the doors in oblivion where you need a key to unlock
Technically there could be. After all, the GM has final say. But players will want to search for a reason, because they expect consistency. Spells don’t typically fail without reason. That reason can be a low die roll if the spell description calls for it, but many spells (like Prestidigitation) don’t require a roll.
So having the spell fail “because the plot says no” is inconsistent. It would immediately throw up a giant red flag in the players’ minds, and make them think the item is much more important than they initially realized. After all, if the plot says the spell doesn’t work, then that means something in the world is preventing it from working.
It makes more sense to have the item be cursed, or haunted, or protected by a god, or any other number of things that would give the players some sort of explanation to latch onto. If you keep it vague, the players will inevitably spend a lot of time trying to figure out why it can’t be cleaned. Because they expect consistency, and will keep throwing things at it until they find a reason. So it’s better to just give them a reason (even if you just came up with it in a panic) because that at least gives them some resolution, and they can file it away in their quest list for later.
We don’t do that here. The GM provides the model of physics the players accept and expect. If the GM just says “nah” when stuff is inconvenient, players don’t know what to expect, and the world becomes inconsistent.
A big part of the GM’s fun in TTRPGs is improving off that. Players always ruin my plans, but that’s part of the game.
Yes, exactly. Consistency is important, because it builds and reinforces trust. The GM just saying “nah” is the other side of the player showing up with a homebrew bullshit build.
I get a lot of pushback from the Pathfinder 2e subreddit for promoting the idea that the system is really great for character-driven, fiction-first tables, because everyone just looks at the number of rules and goes “it’s so obviously a gameist system, why would you ever try to run it as anything else?”, and the answer is it’s a fantastic physics system. The rules provide clarity and consistency where it’s really useful or important, and are easily ignorable where it doesn’t matter.
I haven’t played Pathfinder. Next time I pick up epic fantasy, I think I’d like to give it a shot.
You’ve triggered my trap card. I’m going to do the special interest info-dump now. Apologies in advance.
It’s good. It’s written a little weird – it uses inheritance, like computer programming, which can be a little more difficult to wrap you head around than it needs to be if you’re not at least a little familiar with coding, and it’s written as if it’s doing everything possible to shut down rules lawyers, so whatever doesn’t read like API documentation reads a bit like legalese – but the actual system is nice.
It’s highly balanced, which is an awful word that its fanbase doesn’t seem to understand, but it means that it totally shuts down winning in character creation, and shifts the power game to one of tactics rather than build. The result is that much of the discussion about the game treats it as if it’s exclusively a tactical combat game (because most discussing the game are crypto-power-gamers), rather than a fantasy RPG, and the most enthusiastic players push back hard against any kind of reframing. But it has a ton of support fo roleplay focused tables, and it pares down easily for casual tables.
Plus, you know, it’s free! And it’s fairly easy to convert from 3.x/PF1, meaning that there’s a whole generation of content out there for it beyond first party offerings, for just a little more effort than standard prep.
You forgot the most important part: it isn’t owned by Hasbro! Even if it didn’t have any of the advantages it does over 5e, this alone would be huge.
Neat! I’ll have to take a look sometime. Thanks for the explainer.
I GM a fair bit, so the idea of a healthy collection of modules is compelling.
Yep, the problem with 5e is all the bullshit exceptions to the rules you have to deal with. My biggest most obvious issue every player deals with is bonus actions. They were never playtested and added really late to 5e, and it shows. It’s something like: you can use a bonus action for any action that says it can be used as a bonus action, except you can’t cast a spell with it if you’ve already cast a spell this turn… except for some spells sometimes. The P2e method of everything just costing a set amount of action points, and if you have enough you can always do it, is so much better for players and DMs. It’s just consistent and you know what to expect.
There’s still plenty of room for the DM, but the rules can always be trusted.
Really, what the DM says goes. So if you want to be boring you can just say it doesn’t work for some reason. The answer above re: pivoting to it being a powerful illusion spell or something so there is a reason the spell didn’t work is a lot more compelling and interesting imo
Retconing things to protect muh precious twists is not compelling, though, it’s just base metagaming. The unwavering plot is the GM equivalent of the 8 page main character syndrome PC backstory. If I found out my GM was doing that, they wouldn’t be my GM anymore.
That makes sense! I’ve always wanted to run a campaign (even though I’ve never really played) so I try to take guidance from stories like these
Thank you!
You could also just have it work and go with whatever follows from it though.
I believe you should have a plot prepared but you also shouldn’t be afraid to adapt it if the players do something unexpected. It’s more work, but in my experience players can usually smell when you’re just trying to block them. And they will derive fun from having found out your plans early (which is totally ok to tell them).
Ime, players are entirely willing to accept an extremely short session just so I can prep and set back up after they throw me a massive curveball. If you’re capable of doing it on the fly, that’s great, but I’m not and my players usually understand.
Had a twelve minute session once because I forgot I gave the party a foldable boat like three months ago on a whim, and they used it to skip the next ~3 sessions of content. I had an entire thing setup where they’d help a dwarfhold hunt a dragon, and had started on some city-based intrigue in the next area.
I just leveled with them that I had not even slightly expected this session to go this way and had nothing prepped so we’d stop early and pick it up next time.
“You can certainly try”
there’s two answers to this question, one is mechanical and one is social. you as the DM can tell the players no not now, and they can’t do anything about it, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to do something about it, which depending on the group could be an issue.
so in this scenario a good DM could whip up some misdirection, for example set up a traveling artificer who just passed through town a couple weeks back and who the players could track down as a lead - conveniently in the direction of the main quest objective.
this is hard to do on the spot.
IMO this is kinda one of the problems with DnD 5e, at least if you want to do certain kinds of stories.
The players just have so many tools at their disposal to do anything and everything that its hard to put them into a challenging situation that:
A) Doesn’t involve combat
and
B) Isn’t a completely artificial-feeling scenario that’s been engineered specifically to negate all of the “I don’t have to care about this” buttons that players have on their sheets.
Having your complex plot get fast forwarded because of a cantrip, priceless 😆😆😆😆😆
I once fast-forwarded a complex plot through a GM-sanctioned bit of fluff.
The party had been invited by their uncle who turned out to be recently murdered when they arrived. Of course they investigated. At one point I had my character wrote a letter to the rest of the family to inform them of what was going on. I actually produced the letter as a handout. Since I had no idea about the date I asked the GM and he told me to pick anything in summer.
The GM s happy with the handout and it was deemed canonical.
A few sessions later he noticed that I had picked something ahead the end of the summer and the bad guys’ plot was about to kick off at a specific date right after summer ends. So suddenly the adventure went from “careful slow-burn investigation” to “mad rush to the location of the finale”.
Oops.
Couldn’t they have gone the other route and made the villain’s plans a year later? But sounds like it was a lot of fun the way it was run!
The idea was to have some kind of urgency but only once the players were far enough to understand the basics of what was going on. To that end, the date was supposed to be vague so that the GM was free to say “you figured out that the ritual will happen right after summer ends – which is in less than a week”.
Then he forgot that the timeframe was vague when I wrote the letter and told me to pick a date.
Unfortunately, this cut out a side plot where our party would’ve hired another party to hunt down some artifact. That artifact retroactively got downgraded to a red herring for time reasons.
On the other hand, we got an absolutely precious scene where the one party member who wasn’t magic-affine and didn’t want to be involved with any supernatural stuff had to ride an unnaturally fast six-legged half-demon horse in order to catch up with the bad guys.
Also, it cut down on all the “three wizards and a vintner have breakfast and discuss the state of the investigation” episodes. We had a lot of those.
We once skipped an entire chapter of “Out of the abyss” by saying “nope!” and running out of the city!
The DM introduced all the factions in the city, we realized they were all conspiring against each other, and they all asked of us to collaborate with them (against the others)… Instead, we stole a ship in the night and sailed away!
Only afterwards the DM told us it means we skipped a full chapter he had worked hard to prepare!
Only afterwards the DM told us it means we skipped a full chapter he had worked hard to prepare!
The more time a DM spends preparing something, the less likely the players are to play along
Thats DnD, though. You’re not the narrator, you’re the benevolent god allowing the story to unfold.
I played recently with a newer DM who had written this complex story and kept trying to weave in obvious set pieces for us. At first, I played along, but when we started to go off track, he introduced an omnipotent NPC to help keep us on his path. I was done at that point. I’m not here to listen to a story.
If I find a clue early, I understand it might not make sense until later.
Going by your entire comment alone.
I have juuust the right youtube video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkXMxiAGUWg
If you’ve railroaded your campaign that much you’re a bad GM. It’s not your story, it’s your players story.
I hate this take a lot, I’m gonna be honest. I don’t care if his game is so on rails that it’s set on the fucking orient express. As long as the players are having fun with the game, and the GM is having fun with the game… that’s a good GM.
So a player that told you from beginning what he wants to do, which doesnt fit into your story, should they be forbiden to participate?
I never said anything even vaguely approaching that?
What do you even mean by “told me from the beginning what he wants to do”? If I’m prepping a fantasy campaign and one of my players tells me, “I’d kinda prefer we do something sci-fi” then I have no obligation to change my entire campaign because a player isn’t happy with it. I might still do it, if I felt interested in running that and the rest of the table does too, but imo I’m well within my rights to tell him no.
If you mean that he wants a plotline of his own then I’d do my best to accommodate that, assuming it doesn’t clash with the rest of the campaign horribly. If it does, then I’d just say that and offer alternatives if I can think of any. If I can’t, then of course he can still play if he’d like.
Rollercoaster are fun yet have rails.
Are you even a GM to allow yourself such snap judgment? But for you know, we GM/DMs are not your employees RPGs are a group collaboration.
How is this in any way railroading?
The DM determined that A) the players would find this crown, B) they would not clean it when they found it, and C) it would get cleaned at some point the DM decides later, whether the players wanted it to or not. Good for a book, bad for D&D.
…
A) this makes no sense to describe as railroading, apparently finding anything plot or backstory related is railroading?
B & C) Players not doing what a dm expects isn’t railroading. If the dm then turned around and said “no you don’t do that” or decides to make it impervious to prestidigitation, that might fit the definition.
Railroading is removing player agency and not giving players choices. Players just doing something unexpected that throws you for a loop? That’s called DMing.
My main point is that the DM gave them a crown but then for some reason panicks when they do something very mundane with it. It implies the DM has a rigid story set, rather than a sandbox for the players to explore.
improv intensifies
I learned that best things come from the right balance between preparation and improvisation. And that balance is approximately 20-80 respectively, at best. I figured that as a DM, I’m also playing, so I roll with my fellow table partners, as the story is unexpected for me as is for them.
Yeah. At this point I try to prepare scenes rather than plots, so hopefully I’ll be able to use my painstakingly prepared battlemap later, rather than not at all.
But it’s fun when the players throw a total curveball, and I need to come up with something on the spot.
Twist: You think this is the legendary lost crown of Foo? Some rotten trash you grabbed in a dungeon just happens to be the thing you’ve been looking for all this time? Pull the other one! It’s been so ravaged by time that none of the markings or engravings are clearly visible. Best you can hope for is that some merchant will buy it off you for scrap.
Even if the PCs think this is the lost crown of Foo, only the kingdom’s last grandmaster artificer can conduct a conclusive test. Assuming you even find them, it’s not like they take appointments from any dirty old adventurers off the street.
