My rule as DM is that players can freely expend their normally limited resources if it’s done for role playing or fun and doesn’t affect the story, combat, etc.
Druid wants to spend all evening as an owl in the rafters of the barn? Cool. Wizard wants to create a pocket dimension in which he can then use Wish to create the universe’s best ganja and smoke it in peace? Awesome.
Artificer wants to … wait, he wants to do WHAT with his pants? Okay fine, but we’re cutting to black for the evening. And there may be assassins in the morning now.
I assume this prevents some consumption of rations?
One of my favorite wizard characters was worried about rations, so I wrote into her backstory that she actually made an original 1st level spell for graduation of Wizard’s School.
That went over like a Lead Zeppelin. The spell used a tiny touch of wild magic to “randomly multiply” the ingredients you had available. Just a single berry? You’re getting a day’s worth of berries. A carrot, a celery stalk, and an onion? Well you’re getting all the fixins for a delicious vegetable stew.
The spell created magical food that couldn’t be used as the material component for a further cast, and consumed the material components given. It then produced 1 day worth of vegetables, fruit, and berries, per caster level up to 5.
The headmaster and two other professors watched my character demonstrate her spell, at which point the headmaster immediately mind wiped the other two professors, and explained that I could only keep that spell if I swore to NEVER allow anyone else to see me cast it. Apparently it strayed too close to Clerical magic, and could have reignited the Wizard/Cleric War, that never actually happened, and actually turn it into a shooting war this time.
That particular character gave up on creating new spells till she was above 16th level.
I was wondering why the DM would even need to make a call, but I guess that would be relevant.
Any DM that said no without a reason for a lack of ants would be a bad DM.
Maybe an ant hunt mini adventure or some minor consequence to this action.
Or just reward their creativity…
The best DMs will allow it as an immediate reward and remember it for minor consequences later to progress the campaign in some way. “Druid knocked unconscious and taken while eating ants” type stuff
“Sure you can.” Later on the druid fails a diplomacy check because they’ve got an ant stuck between their teeth.
Druids shouldn’t be engaging in diplomacy anyway. Most of the druids I’ve known, thought that diplomacy = “destroy all cities and allow the forest to grow you humanoid bastards!”
"okay so i have a great deal for you, you stop expanding your logging business and i don’t turn into a tiger and eat your face, sound good?
I kind of like the idea of "of course you can! … Rolls die
You have angered Ancephole, goddess queen of the ants!"
And then you get this cool side adventure where the party has been shrunk down and must escape a hive of sentient ants
Pretty sure ants are already sentient, but I like it.
Edit: apparently ant sentience is somewhat hotly debated, and the current understanding of ant consciousness and metacognition is murky.
Honestly, people getting sentient/sapient messed up in fiction is one of my pet peeves, and here I go doing it myself.
Sapient ants. A colony of sapient ants
I love that you came back and added that edit, that’s some commitment to keeping us up to date on the latest scientific breakthroughs about ant brains (I mean, I’d they have one?) and I appreciate it.
Edit: ants do in fact have (tiny) brains.
Those ants were a druid colony and now you’ve eaten Neveah…
Honestly, this would be a lot of fun as a campaign. Starts off a normal group, druid played by the dm as a PC. Druid shifts, hijinks ensue, druid dies, and now the rest of the party has to battle their way across an unforgiven, sapient bug populated map, to reach the wizard’s house to turn them back. It’s only a mile away, but to them at their size, it might as well be the other side of the planet
Or ‘ants are enough energy for an anteater, but not a druid doing other stuff. Buff melee attacks/perception while in anteater shape, but nerf them in some way if they change or try to use magic in human form’
It also might not be enough calories for any kind of sustenance. It could just be the Druid’s kink
Expend a use of Wild Shape to use one ration less?
I mean sure, go ahead.
If you can’t even fly around as an owl and eat voles in your free time, what is even the point?
Ok so how much exp do I get for killing a hundred ants?
Each ant only gives you 0.0000000001 XP so multiply that by 100.
Jokes aside
- They’d be 0 XP creatures
- XP should be awarded for progressing the story, the XP from CR is a helpful guideline for how much XP progressive encounters should award but killing random peasants or forest animals without progressing the story shouldn’t award anything.
If creatures were to award xp, then all mages’ colleges wouldn’t be about learning / books / spells. Intro to magic 101 would be “alright class let’s slaughter us a bunch of goblins”.
that’s how goes in like every mmo i’ve ever played
Ye, that’s the difference between pen and paper and a game. Unless it’s a singleplayer experience, gating stuff behind story progress doesn’t bode well with players and ends up generating less repeatable gameplay. But for pen and paper, you have a DM that can adjust on the fly. They can give out a level for a daring escape, they can give inspiration based on player behavior, they can have a talk with players and hear their expectations on how their character should perform at this stage (i.e. “we have slain a dragon, and my dude is a paladin that isn’t strong enough to wear a damned shield!”). They can give magic items that introduce novel ways to play a character. A game isn’t advanced enough to do that yet.
“Roll on it.”
rolls a 1
“You successfully transform Into an anteater, but it’s that blue Hanna-Barbera one who can’t catch a single ant to save its life.”
Guys, DM has allowed cartoon rules!
Well it does hurt the ants tho
They deserve it for their crimes.
They probably taste better in that form.
Those are the best moments, tbh
Vampiric shapeshifter who only consumes while not human; it’s more accepted that way
So, Jackie Daytona who wildshapes into VAMPIRE BAT!
It also brings back some HP (at least in 3.5)
Better an anteater than an aunt eater.
Depends
If Depends are part of the equation I’ll stick to insects, thanks.
You’re not into accidental golden showers?
Golden is negotiable. Chocolate is a nonstarter.
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