Rule of Cool, and Negotiating with Players 

"Can I end the session early? No, we've been playing for 20 minutes, that's too soon." Legit had me cracking up, thank you.

"Nobody talking about this is using the same definition" That holds true for nearly any subject, in any sphere.

I think in Dimension 20, Theo has the exact shield you're talking about here. It lets him move up to 30 feet and take the damage for an ally as a reaction

I really like the idea of it costing a resource, especially since telling the player the cost maintains player agency.

I like that sort of bargaining to the rule of cool, especially when your players are the ones offering up those trades. The bard’s rage-spiration sounds like a very cool moment for the game. I appreciate that it was also about cooperation, rather than the one player just wanting to look awesome (not that those moments shouldn’t happen too).

My favorite example of Rule of Cool came from a tiktok by criticalfayledm, where an unconscious player offered to take a failed death save to give another player advantage on a crucial role that she'd failed. There was some negotiation that wasn't recorded/audible but he convinced the DM how it worked, and it would take him to two failed death saves. The other player passed the roll she'd initially failed, then got a nat20 on the check to end the encounter. The DM did a victory lap on her behalf. Also fairly recently, my DM - who already loves Rule of Cool and does a lot above and beyond to make us feel like badasses - did something interesting. We were in a dream world through some magic by the resident baddie, which we found out was affected by our emotions. When we got into an encounter, the DM would have us roll wisdom checks every time we attacked, especially in the last encounter of the night against a BBEG we all had personal investment in destroying. If we passed the wisdom check, he'd add more damage to our attacks or other cool things would happen as we exerted our will on the dream. That's how, for a HDYWTDT, I fried a monster with my javelin of lightning that was embedded in its skin, even after I'd already used the lightning for the day.

Asking how do you do this? Aka, letting a player describe their own actions/kills after the roll of the dice (which everyone knows because the dice have already been thrown and the outcome determined) is absolutely not rule of cool, is just not stoplight hogging as a DM

I like the idea of the bardic inspiration trade for a barbarian's rage enough that I even think it's worth considering as a persistent homebrew option for how bardic inspiration may be used. Especially if the bard and barbarian have a strong relationship between their characters, it'd be awesome to see the bard have a way to actually use a mechanic to help their buddy get pumped up for battle, as if the bard knows exactly what to say to get him pissed and ready to tear the enemy apart.

In my brother's game, Lost Mines of Phandelver, the party was heading north to the druid up in the woods north of Neverwinter, and decided to stop off at Neverwinter for some shopping. My brother had to make up the entire city of Neverwinter, including inns and stores, on the fly. He didn't have a computer handy, so no dScryb for him, but I bet he would have loved it. As it was, I was BLOWN AWAY by his creativity. My favorite was the apothecary, the "House of Bam-Boom," which changes location every few days. Quite forcefully. The owners bought about ten different plots of land, and have the resources to rebuild every time it blows up. HAHAHAHA! Potions are expensive, though, because there's a LOT of overhead. But we didn't care. We just loved that shop SO MUCH.

Highly recommend the Friday Night Quests podcast. Got me back into DnD after an absence of ~20 years. Great story, players and production values.

I made a homebrew magical item for my campaign called the Vitality Splitter. Once per day on your turn or you can use a reaction to activate it to share half the healing or damage you take with another creature. The rule of cool part is when one of my players wanted this to affect the bad guy they were fighting. So I made up on the spot the extra rule: to affect an enemy you had to make a con save equal to half the damage or a wisdom save equal to half the damage healed. If they failed the item wouldn't work, and the player would take the damage normally or the enemy would heal without issue.

I "Rule of Cool"d my way out of needing to take the Warcaster Feat to cast with a Weapon in my Off-Hand because, well, being a new player, I didn't realize the Warcaster Feat was a thing and my DM never mentioned it. She was just like, "I like your pitch. It's effing cool. I'll allow it." It wasn't until after we started the Campaign when I was doing some research that I ran across Warcaster and was like, "Oh... oops..."

I love how much you push "rule of cool" towards what you call "cinematic moments". I can think of so many people who tried RPGs because they want to do the cool stuff they see in movies, only to be put off by the limits of the system, despite the fact that the limits of the system are the DM's ability to run it. When you think about it, even having conversations during active initiative counts as rule of cool, since you're technically only allowed to say something short on each of your turns, so each side of this conversation would end up being minutes apart while they wait for their turn to say their 6 seconds of dialogue. I like to think of D&D as a video game, and the DM is the game software reacting to the player's actions. Normal video games tell you what was programmed years ago and limit you to what the game designers thought you should be able to do, but DMs can live change the software to adapt to whatever the player wants to do.

I have a nearly identical Rule of Cool story about Wild Magic. After 19 levels of Bard, I took my 20th level in Wild Magic Sorcerer before the big final battle against the BBEG. So, despite being 20th level, everyone at the table was still new to the Wild Magic rules. I got incapacitated by a spell that had such a high save DC, it was flat impossible for me to save out of it with my -1 modifier. But when I rolled my save every turn, I used Tides of Chaos to give myself advantage anyway, even though I couldn't succeed, because I thought that using Tides of Chaos would trigger a d100 Wild Magic Surge, and I was hoping the randomness of Wild Magic would save us. But that's not RAW. Once we realized it wasn't RAW, my DM let me do it anyway, because it was the epic final battle, and we were desperate, and what's more desperate and epic than your entire campaign coming down to rolling on a Wild Magic table. Rule of Cool, basically. Speaking as the player in that situation, I really appreciate my DM bending the rules there. It felt right.

You so had me at “nooo we’re only 20 minutes in” and then it turned into a commercial

The way you describe using inspiration to do cool stuff reminds me a little bit of how story points work in in the Doctor Who rpg system.

I have one rule-of-cool fudge mechanic and it's the summoning servitors ability. At dramatic moments, players can do it as a reaction even if they've used their reaction. So the last Pc is about to fall unconscious but a last ditch effort to call on a greater power is answered! The day is saved (hurrah!)

Re: inspiration, I was in a small campaign, The DM, Myself, and one or two other players. The DM would give out inspiration coins when we did something impressive, and also allowed us to have multiple and carry hem for multiple sessions. At one point he expressed frustration that we weren't using our inspiration, and the players all expressed that part of the fun of the game was dealing with low rolls (and also we were constantly worried about something else needing an inspiration). He told us we could gift our inspiration to each other, and that really got us to use them. Lots of 'That was a cool idea and I want to see it succeed' sentiments as we tossed an inspiration coin on the table.

My favorite rule of cool moment was my rogue asking if he could use his uncanny dodge as a reaction to place himself in the way of a purple worm sting to save the artificer. I allowed it cause it was an amazing cinematic moment over what uncanny dodge actually is was so rewarding as a DM

I'm trying to become a better player and at least learn to recognize and prevent bad habits. Your videos have so much fantastic advice. You have me as excited to try them out as if I'm about to have a session 0 or face the BBEG. Thank you a ton!!

I wonder if the reason Matt's "how do you want to do this" came up in this discussion is because sometimes the descriptions they go with on CR aren't actually how the spell/skill in question is supposed to work - like letting someone redirect the trajectory of someone else's spell to land the killing blow, for example (I know I've seen that one at some point) or just generally ignoring the mechanics of the weapon/spell used in favor of a more cinematic villain death? To be clear, I do think rule of cool goes beyond just this, but I can see how people would bring this up given the weird technical exceptions that happen at HDYWTDT moments. Unrelated to CR but related to the topic: I have a DM who has a points system where all the players have two points to award to a fellow player at the end of each session for great roleplay or a really cool moment. We can then trade these points in for "doing cool stuff" outside the scope of the core rules. Because these points are a valuable resource and people want them, I find it leads to deeper RP and also better note-taking (so you can remember the barbarian's ridiculous one-liner verbatim and award a point for that, for example).

On the topic of spending resources, Grim Hollow offers such a great mechanic. Basically it reworks inspiration in a way that certain player actions give the baddies inspiration. And the DM can play devil's advocate by offering up a chance in exchange for this. Sort of like the scales of fate trying to rebalance the players' action. Cannot recommend enough

I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but the ability to take damage for someone else is a Oath of Crown aura, and it works I believe off a reaction. Another way is through warding bond a 1st level cleric spell. I think I would probably create a feat, much like Cavalier ability to mark enemies, but to mark allies. And then give it a charge based on proficiency (Per short rest) Or create a combat manuavar that does something like that expanding a superiority die.

My players tried to open a locked box. Lockpicking didn't work. Smashing didn't work. Magic - didn't include the Knock spell. ALL of them tried to open that door, and none of them could. And since I WANTED them to open that lock (I had put a trap behind it, that would give them "Donkey Brains," which would mean, "That person is STOOOOPID, and under the control of one of the other players, until it wears off, which would mean that, if someone couldn't make the session, I could give them Donkey Brains, and someone else would wind up handling the player. It would come and go, randomly, by dice roll, except if someone was absent, and then it was stuck on them for the duration of the session). Since they HAD to open that lock, I let them keep trying, over and over, which normally I would not allow. Then, my niece brings out her Rope Of Climbing, and said, "I can control this to tie itself, and untie itself, and all sorts of cool stuff. Can I command it to climb itself into the lock, and position itself in the proper positions to form a key?" RULE OF COOL. HECK, YEAH! That little rope has come in SO HANDY, SO MANY TIMES. And it always gives us a good laugh, which is what the game is all about, right? FUN! Basically, if my players want to "go off the beaten path" with some weird idea, I have them explain to me how it would work. If they can give me an explanation that sounds reasonably plausible, and I have no reason not to, I will generally say, "I'll allow it." Or at least allow them to roll for it. I only allow rolls for things where I'm OK with either a success OR a failure, even if the DC is very high, or very low. Sometimes, the critical failures lead to just as much epicocity as the critical successes. Like the time my niece (It's usually my niece), wanted to try to tame the Carrion Crawlers, with chocolate. She got a Nat 1 on her Animal Handling check, so, I ruled that the CCs were allergic to chocolate, and it gave them a rash. Now, Carrion Crawlers have an Intelligence of ONE, so anything that makes them ITCH (and does 1d4 damage) is going to unsettle them. And if the adventurers start smearing chocolate on their weapons, before attacking for non-lethal damage, and smear it on the walls, and use Minor Illusion to create a "Chocolate Monster" behind the carrion crawlers, and then another Minor Illusion to make the Chocolate Monster "Make loud Chocolate sounds," well, HOW CAN I NOT?! The Chocopocalypse was one of our all-time favorite sessions, and literally changed the lore of the world. Carrion Crawlers FEAR chocolate, now, and my adventurers are working with Barthen, the General Store owner in Phandalin, to develop "Craw Away Chocolate Spray," to sell to adventurers heading into the mountains. I mean, if it works for bugs and bears, why not? They'll probably have to hire some sort of artificer to develop the delivery system, but Barthen has his own connections for that.

I enjoyed a lot of the discussion of this topic. But my favorite part was just watching the "player" Mikes sit around looking semi bored while the description was happening, especially when there were two at once. lol.

Those are some clever suggestions (starts taking notes).

Great Video. Funny timing, I was working on a Homebrew Feat that might've partially worked with what that Fighter player was trying to do. Basically for an area attack that required a Dex save, the player could voluntarily fail it as a reaction to protect another character. I have not had the chance to fully test it out yet, but I just thought the timing of me seeing the video was cool 😎. Thanks for sharing, it's always helpful!

excellent video, also excellent ad read, fitting

I always watch your videos, I don't think I would ever really want to dm but your videos are so entertaining and educating I just love watching them regardless

Great video as always

"you want to play a tank? ok your consequence is you get additional aggro" from a strictly gameplay perspective i would consider that a boon, what's more ideal than the tank aggroing all the enemies? I think that would be a great addition to someones kit.

My friends and I have just started a new campaign, our barbarian is a Grung, who wields a greatsword, the dm has ruled that basically the sword is a greatsword *for a grung* w the same damage as a greatsword in a larger creature hands bc he's a strong barbarian who has done a lot of training. The fights have so far been pretty awesome, even if we've only fought goblins and bandits so far.

Using inspirations like that is genius, definitely stealing it! Great channel dude 👏

This is a good channel. I like Mike.

I play an online game with my buddies (4 PC’s & DM) and we are all new.. my after my green Dragonborn fighter took a level in paladin he let me change the color and abilities to Blue Dragonborn after I acquired a holy relic of lightening. We lowered my AC by 2 because I “molted” in a way.. it was honestly awesome and I thought it was so cool lol

Great video!

Paladin swimming up a waterfall? Is the diety of water? "Great River Spirit, grant me the power of the Salmon!" Paladin swims up the waterfall, but has to spend the next 3 rounds spawning. LOL

I had a DM lose his shit when my goblin character started loading up the bodies of an encounter with orcs to take home for a feast for his “village” inside of a city. It seemed logical to me that a goblin “chief”, which is what a 5th level goblin is, would see the bodies of eleven orcs as the meal at a feast for his tribe. The rule of cool is important. The DM in that game could have made use of the spontaneous festival for character-building, but he didn’t. He could have used it to explain why one of the two tribes of goblins living on the fringe of the city is trusted and slightly feared while the other is treated like vermin. His campaign world could have had extra flavor added to it by a character making social changes to the goblins on the fringes. Always use the rule of cool. It makes your campaign come to life.

There's a problem when you allow something because of Rule of Cool - and then you realize there's a thing that some of your players get at higher level that allow essentially that - so you made their class less cool accidentally :/

Might be slightly off topic, but how would you rule preprep/setup for a cool action taking the place of a skill check? I was in a game where my party was heading into a cavern to meet with a dragon where we knew it would end in combat. While my party was escorted into the main chamber, I turned into a tiny spider unnoticed and crawled up the wall onto the roof of the cavern, waited until till the dragon was distracted making a big speech to my party members and attempted to lower my tiny spider self down onto the back of the dragon. Even my party members weren't aware I was doing this as I had been fairly sneaky about it. But when I finally requested to lower myself onto the dragon, my DM asked me to roll a stealth check. I think I rolled, but I remember questioning why I was making a stealth check when I had taken so many actions before hand to set this situation up. I didn't feel like it was reasonable to need to roll a stealth check when realistically I felt I shouldn't be noticeable to the Dragon in the first place. I felt I had done enough set up before the action itself that I could reasonably expect to succeed at the cool thing I wanted to do (or this part of it atleast) without having to roll stealth. Any experienced Dm's or players able to chime in on this? Was my expectation fair? Or was it a little unreasonable? This didn't end up becoming a major issue in our campaign or anything and it finished pretty well, just curious how other people would rule in a situation like that.

Halfling barbarians use heavy weapons sized for a Halfling. Reduce the die type by one stage and it’s a halfling-sized weapon. 2d8 becomes 2d6. 1d10 becomes 1d8. 1d12 becomes 1d10. That one has already been covered by earlier editions.

imo one of 5e's weaknesses as a system is that bounded accuracy applying to skill checks makes rule of cool something you _do_ need to break the rules for when you shouldn't need to. Basically, Proficiency Bonus for skill advancement does not work very well imo.

I like to use Inspiration AND hero points too. All for cool stuff.

Ok but imagine if it was a feature that a bard's vicious mockery could induce rage in a barbarian

I love rule of cool and rule of funny, i often like to say yes to my players and we have a lot of fun improvising, but the combat often gets too easy due to my leniency. I havent found a good solution for it yet, CC effects are a bit too good :^)

The fighter reminds me of the main character in the anime Bofuri:IDWGHIMOMD

One thing I try to emphasize is that one time cinematic moments are just that... one time (or at least not too many times). They might work due to the freshness of the moment but they won't become tactics that can be used over and over. I'll let people violate the rules---I think you really have to in a system that's otherwise locked into an action economy---but most of the time the rules are on. One thing I definitely don't like is "Rule of Cool" undermining another PC. If you're stealing someone's signature move or story beat, the answer will be... no.

I rule as: sounds cool, feels cool, has my players hype? Rule of Cool

Yes, but you'll take double damage because your not defending yourself. Basically in a clutch you might want to but in general using your normal protector skill would be the better option.

like in game of thrones s8 ser jorah taking the damage for the daenerys