Hello all. I have been running a Curse of Strahd game for a few friends trying to get into the game. Last session they got to Berez and got into battle with Baba Lysaga. She got into her flying skull and started dropping spells on them business as usual. Then our rune knight fighter shoots her with an arrow using his fire rune to shackle her. Here in lies the issue. Fire rune says:
When you hit a creature with an attack using a weapon, you can invoke the rune to summon fiery shackles: the target takes an extra 2d6 fire damage, and it must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be restrained for 1 minute. While restrained by the shackles, the target takes 2d6 fire damage at the start of each of its turns. The target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, banishing the shackles on a success. Once you invoke this rune, you can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
So my players think the shackles should have bound her and the flying skull to the ground but in my mind, since baba was the target and not the skull, then she would be bound to the surface she stood on which happened to be the skull. So I gave baba (the target of the attack) the restrained condition and the additional fire rune condition and carried on. So then they further argued that since she's restrained she shouldn't have been able to control the vehicle but seeing as it is a magic flying skull that baba controls with magic and restrained doesn't say it effects magic in any way we carried on. In the end they managed to kill her anyway but they still seemed upset with my rulings. Was my ruling right or is there something I missed that made my ruling wrong? I honestly don't know and can't find much on the rules surrounded fighting in a vehicle like this.
Vehicles can get weird. Personally, I rule when someone is restrained or something similar while on a vehicle, the condition is relative to the vehicle, not the ground. Otherwise, you can end up with someone, for example, on a boat, and then the boat moves out from under them.
So in your case, I wouldn’t have let her get out of her flying skull while the chains were active, but the skull itself moving would have been fine. And I also would have let her pilot the skull. You can still make attacks and cast while restrained, doing whatever she needs to do to move the skull shouldn’t be a problem.
Hello all. I have been running a Curse of Strahd game for a few friends trying to get into the game. Last session they got to Berez and got into battle with Baba Lysaga. She got into her flying skull and started dropping spells on them business as usual. Then our rune knight fighter shoots her with an arrow using his fire rune to shackle her. Here in lies the issue. Fire rune says:
When you hit a creature with an attack using a weapon, you can invoke the rune to summon fiery shackles: the target takes an extra 2d6 fire damage, and it must succeed on a Strength saving throw or be restrained for 1 minute. While restrained by the shackles, the target takes 2d6 fire damage at the start of each of its turns. The target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, banishing the shackles on a success. Once you invoke this rune, you can't do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
So my players think the shackles should have bound her and the flying skull to the ground but in my mind, since baba was the target and not the skull, then she would be bound to the surface she stood on which happened to be the skull. So I gave baba (the target of the attack) the restrained condition and the additional fire rune condition and carried on. So then they further argued that since she's restrained she shouldn't have been able to control the vehicle but seeing as it is a magic flying skull that baba controls with magic and restrained doesn't say it effects magic in any way we carried on. In the end they managed to kill her anyway but they still seemed upset with my rulings. Was my ruling right or is there something I missed that made my ruling wrong? I honestly don't know and can't find much on the rules surrounded fighting in a vehicle like this.
Vehicles can get weird. Personally, I rule when someone is restrained or something similar while on a vehicle, the condition is relative to the vehicle, not the ground. Otherwise, you can end up with someone, for example, on a boat, and then the boat moves out from under them.
So in your case, I wouldn’t have let her get out of her flying skull while the chains were active, but the skull itself moving would have been fine. And I also would have let her pilot the skull. You can still make attacks and cast while restrained, doing whatever she needs to do to move the skull shouldn’t be a problem.
To me the restrained condition usually affect the creature and not the vehicle or mount it is occupying.
Thank you for the replies!