I had to look up how much a 15 ft diameter snowball weighs because I was using Animate objects to drop a huge ball of snow on an enemy... then we also had to look up damage rules for dropping heavy objects on someone's head.
About five years back I was in a group and we were fighting some giants. The fight was not going well - for us. The wizard wanted to use the spell Creation to generate a 5 foot cube of something right above the boss giant's head that would then fall and crush him. That started a debate and a bunch of google searches to decide whether to create a 5 foot cube of granite, iron, or lead. And of course all the sources we found were all in metric measurements, so we then had to figure out how to convert all that weird stuff into Standard Freedom Units that we could understand.
For the record, a five foot cube of granite weighs 21,500 pounds. The iron was 61,437.5 pounds. And the lead was 88,344 pounds. We went with the lead. We won.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
For me it was looking into how you would get/make some of the spell components using the real world. Its amazing how much work is actually required to create things like sulfur/brimstone, harvest fur from various animal and create the various little sundry compononets. I started including that knowledge into the merchants so any time the party went haggling for items or spells I could go into descriptions of what was actually involved with obtaining it. Although no real world comparison is really possible I still find the need to harvest a red dragon scale for the Aganazzars Scorcher spell to be the most complicated and dangerous to get hold of and Fire Ball is likely one of the most disgusting as you are holding bat poo and sulfur for the casting.
For me it was looking into how you would get/make some of the spell components using the real world. Its amazing how much work is actually required to create things like sulfur/brimstone, harvest fur from various animal and create the various little sundry compononets. I started including that knowledge into the merchants so any time the party went haggling for items or spells I could go into descriptions of what was actually involved with obtaining it. Although no real world comparison is really possible I still find the need to harvest a red dragon scale for the Aganazzars Scorcher spell to be the most complicated and dangerous to get hold of and Fire Ball is likely one of the most disgusting as you are holding bat poo and sulfur for the casting.
It’s a tiny ball of poo mixed with sulfur. Check out Mythbusters and you’ll find it is actually possible to polish a poo. So I always imagine that the caster is holding a little tiny poo ball bearing so it isn’t squishy. 🤢
Creation takes a minute to cast. I have to ask - How exactly did you expect the Giant(s) to stand still for a whole minute?
I am assuming you did not realize that it was either an improvised weapon (penalties to your required attack), or the equivalent of a collapsing roof trap (DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking 22 (4d10) bludgeoning damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. 5th level spell doing less damage than a 3rd level fireball)
I needed to look up what happens to a Gelatinous Cube if it's dropped off a dock into sea water. The call I made at the time was that it sank, but further research indicates it would float.
For me it was looking into how you would get/make some of the spell components using the real world. Its amazing how much work is actually required to create things like sulfur/brimstone, harvest fur from various animal and create the various little sundry compononets. I started including that knowledge into the merchants so any time the party went haggling for items or spells I could go into descriptions of what was actually involved with obtaining it. Although no real world comparison is really possible I still find the need to harvest a red dragon scale for the Aganazzars Scorcher spell to be the most complicated and dangerous to get hold of and Fire Ball is likely one of the most disgusting as you are holding bat poo and sulfur for the casting.
It’s a tiny ball of poo mixed with sulfur. Check out Mythbusters and you’ll find it is actually possible to polish a poo. So I always imagine that the caster is holding a little tiny poo ball bearing so it isn’t squishy. 🤢
Lion poop has the best shine.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
They mean “American Standard,” so pounds, US gallons, inches/feet, and miles.
All their research was in metric because even US scientists work in the metric system because it’s easier, more accurate, and globally understood by the scientific comunity. So all of their research yielded results in kilograms/cubic meter. But your average American does not understand metric at all, so they had to convert cubic meters into cubic feet, and they had to convert kilograms to pounds.
And some Americans aren’t just Americans, they’re ‘Muricans (**** Yeah!), and since “‘Murica is so much better than everywhere else,” (🙄) they feel the need to throw “freedom” on ‘Murican stuff just to prove it to themselves. ‘Cause ‘Murica, **** YEAH!! 🤷♂️
My group once had to do some weird math as well. I was running Curse of Strahd, and for a trap that appears in the module, there was a description of how it worked. One thing that stuck out to us as being odd, is it described a counterweight that weighted "thousands of tons" which was definitely overkill weight wise for the function of the trap. What makes it even weirder was that the whole thing was a 10ft x 10ft cube, so obviously we had to figure out the absurd density of this thing as well. Distracted us from the encounter for a good half an hour while we calculated and talked about how strange it was.
My players still fear that counterweight to this day
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews!Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I’m a new DM so my experience isn’t the most vast, but I had to look up how jade was formed and basically the Geological history of it and where it was likely to originate and different shades etc. damn! I learned A LOT about jade.
What's the wildest thing you've had to google/research/look up for your DND group?
I had to look up how much a 15 ft diameter snowball weighs because I was using Animate objects to drop a huge ball of snow on an enemy... then we also had to look up damage rules for dropping heavy objects on someone's head.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
This: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus
Check out the History section.
It's a good thing we don't have to do that in D&D. 🤢🤮
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
About five years back I was in a group and we were fighting some giants. The fight was not going well - for us. The wizard wanted to use the spell Creation to generate a 5 foot cube of something right above the boss giant's head that would then fall and crush him. That started a debate and a bunch of google searches to decide whether to create a 5 foot cube of granite, iron, or lead. And of course all the sources we found were all in metric measurements, so we then had to figure out how to convert all that weird stuff into Standard Freedom Units that we could understand.
For the record, a five foot cube of granite weighs 21,500 pounds. The iron was 61,437.5 pounds. And the lead was 88,344 pounds. We went with the lead. We won.
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Anzio Faro. Lvl 5 Prot. Aasimar Light Cleric.
For me it was looking into how you would get/make some of the spell components using the real world. Its amazing how much work is actually required to create things like sulfur/brimstone, harvest fur from various animal and create the various little sundry compononets. I started including that knowledge into the merchants so any time the party went haggling for items or spells I could go into descriptions of what was actually involved with obtaining it. Although no real world comparison is really possible I still find the need to harvest a red dragon scale for the Aganazzars Scorcher spell to be the most complicated and dangerous to get hold of and Fire Ball is likely one of the most disgusting as you are holding bat poo and sulfur for the casting.
It’s a tiny ball of poo mixed with sulfur. Check out Mythbusters and you’ll find it is actually possible to polish a poo. So I always imagine that the caster is holding a little tiny poo ball bearing so it isn’t squishy. 🤢
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Creation takes a minute to cast. I have to ask - How exactly did you expect the Giant(s) to stand still for a whole minute?
I am assuming you did not realize that it was either an improvised weapon (penalties to your required attack), or the equivalent of a collapsing roof trap (DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking 22 (4d10) bludgeoning damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. 5th level spell doing less damage than a 3rd level fireball)
I needed to look up what happens to a Gelatinous Cube if it's dropped off a dock into sea water. The call I made at the time was that it sank, but further research indicates it would float.
Lion poop has the best shine.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
What in the world are "Standard Freedom Units"?
We don't like them Commie units here in 'murica *spits*
They mean “American Standard,” so pounds, US gallons, inches/feet, and miles.
All their research was in metric because even US scientists work in the metric system because it’s easier, more accurate, and globally understood by the scientific comunity. So all of their research yielded results in kilograms/cubic meter. But your average American does not understand metric at all, so they had to convert cubic meters into cubic feet, and they had to convert kilograms to pounds.
And some Americans aren’t just Americans, they’re ‘Muricans (**** Yeah!), and since “‘Murica is so much better than everywhere else,” (🙄) they feel the need to throw “freedom” on ‘Murican stuff just to prove it to themselves. ‘Cause ‘Murica, **** YEAH!! 🤷♂️
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
My group once had to do some weird math as well. I was running Curse of Strahd, and for a trap that appears in the module, there was a description of how it worked. One thing that stuck out to us as being odd, is it described a counterweight that weighted "thousands of tons" which was definitely overkill weight wise for the function of the trap. What makes it even weirder was that the whole thing was a 10ft x 10ft cube, so obviously we had to figure out the absurd density of this thing as well. Distracted us from the encounter for a good half an hour while we calculated and talked about how strange it was.
My players still fear that counterweight to this day
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I’m a new DM so my experience isn’t the most vast, but I had to look up how jade was formed and basically the Geological history of it and where it was likely to originate and different shades etc. damn! I learned A LOT about jade.
DM - And In The Darkness, Rot: The Sunless Citadel
DM - Our Little Lives Kept In Equipoise: Curse of Strahd
DM - Misprize Thou Not These Shadows That Belong: The Lost Mines of Phandelver
PC - Azzure - Tyranny of Dragons