Today’s post is brought to you by the letters c-o-o-l and r-u-l-e-s. Oops, there is a bit of overlap there with that letter “l”…wait, maybe that’s part of the point. Hopefully, we’ll get around to that by the end of the post. Hopefully. So 5e is a system with a set of general rules that are superseded by specific rules. For example, as a general rule, you can move up to your speed in a round and take an action. That action can be Dash which lets you move up to your speed again. Rogues and monks have specific rules that supersede this that allows them to move their speed again as a bonus action and still do something else with their action.
Cool is, well, doing awesome things, right? One of the fun things about an RPG like D&D is to have your character to do stuff that is totally awesome. There’s even the “rule of cool” that is all about letting players bend the rules when they do cool stuff. So how do these two things, rules and cool, interact in 5e and specifically how they are handled in a FRG game. More below the break.
First off, let me state that there is a LOT of coolness baked right into the rules of 5e, right? A raging barbarian simply shrugging off blow after blow that would kill a creature of lesser fortitude. A fighter striking a foe perfectly on the wrist forcing them to drop their weapon. A rogue striking from the shadows, killing the foe before they even know what struck them. All of these things are baked right into the rules in various class abilities. Because they are “mechanized” in the rules, we often overlook just how cool these kinds of things already are. We, as D&D players, often lose sight of the narrative coolness of these things because we tend to focus on the mechanics of them instead. By shifting our perspective a bit, we can let the baked in coolness come to the narrative foreground a bit. Oh good, I’m already getting to that “l” overlap of cool and rule. đŸ˜€
The general rules of 5e also have some coolness baked in. The can be leveraged in different ways to reflect doing cool things. Advantage is an example of this. A player can describe the cool things that they are doing and may gain advantage on the task at hand as a result. The Help action can be taken to give someone else advantage or maybe some other small benefit. Readying an action can be used to work in cooperation with your allies to emulate cool things like a “fastball special” (a la Wolverine and Colossus). Colossus readies an action to toss Wolverine when he runs forward. Maybe Wolverine even gets advantage on the attack or some extra damage.
And this is where the “rule of cool” comes in.
When a player comes up with something “cool” that is outside of the multitude of cool things already available to characters, the DM needs to adjudicate how it works WITHIN the rules of 5e. The rule of cool does not give players carte blanche to BREAK the rules, only bend them at best…at least in an FRG game. It is, of course, important to establish the expectations and limitations of the rule of cool at any given table (virtual or not) so the players understand those expectations and limitations. You know…get everyone on the same page for how outside the rules cool stuff works at a table.
So cool (for me) is just a short-hand for doing something not already explicitly covered by the rules (even if it isn’t cool looking). Here are the guidelines for how the rule of cool interacts with the 5e rules in an FRG game:
- The Environment and Context of the Game: When attempting to do something cool, the environment and context of the game are your best fried. Using the things in the environment around you or in-game information you have garnered through play will definitely make it more likely that the rules can be bent in your favor.
- Explain What You Are Doing: When you want to do something that is outside of the general and even specific rules, describe what you are doing. Describe it in full. I cannot make a ruling or even determine what you may or may not need to roll if you do not communicate what you are trying to do.
- The Dice: A cool move is not a guarantee of success. If your move still has a real chance of failure, the dice are still rolled just like for any other action in the game. It is still a game. You may want to swing across that chandelier to land behind the big bad evil guy to gain an advantage, but there is no guarantee of success.
- Action Economy: There is an inherent limit to what a character can do each round built into the rules of 5e. A player who wants to, for example, swing across a 50-foot wide room on a chandelier, tossing daggers as they go, then land next to big bad guy on the throne and stab them is doing something that looks very cool and cinematic. However, it is definitely breaking the rules regarding the limits to how much a character can do in a single round. The rule of cool is limited by how much it breaks the inherent action economy of 5e.
- Niche Protection: Beyond the general rules of 5e, various class or race abilities, monster abilities, feats, and other things allow a character to bend the general rules and/or do specific things. While it might be really cool for a fighter to attack the big bad guy and stun them with the blow to the head, it generally is not a feature of a fighter but is of a monk (i.e., stunning strike). The rule of cool should not be used to stray into the features of another class or generally crossing into the niche of another character.
- Trade-Off: Want to leap off of that thirty-foot tower and land on the bad guy sword first. Sure. If you hit, you’ll do extra damage from the fall. You’ll take maybe half of the falling damage. Depending on the circumstances, you might get advantage on the attack or maybe you’ll need to make an Athletics or Acrobatics check or land prone. It all depends on the situation and what you’ve described as your action. Some sort of trade-off where you gain more of the upper hand at a smaller potential cost is a great use of the rule of cool (in my opinion). Why? Because you need to make a decision…one that hopefully tells all of use a little bit more about the character of your character. Do you take the risk to look cool and/or gain a small benefit or do you play it safe?
- Leveraging the Core Rules: As much as possible, I’ll leverage the existing rules to translate what you are saying your character is doing into game mechanics. I may suggest, for example, that you ready an action to do what you are describing or the help action or that you’ll gain advantage or similar. There are a LOT of 5e general rules that can be leveraged when determining the benefit (or cost) of doing something cool.
- Sparingly Used: The rule of cool is not intended to replace the rules of 5e. Players are not expected to try and bend and break the rules via cool on a regular basis. Save it for really cool moments. Why? Because otherwise there is a good chance that it will not only bog down the game but also lead to you hogging the spotlight from other players. Neither of those are good things.
It is great if players want to periodically come up with out of the box solutions or use the environment to their advantage in fun and creative ways. However, there are limits to this because while we are obviously making up stories, we are also playing a game…5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons to be specific. A game that has a core of general rules with numerous specific rules that can break those general rules or grant a character extra abilities. Anything “cool” that you come up with that falls outside of these rules is up to the DM to adjudicate, as fairly and objectively as possible and I’ll do so per the guidelines above.
