Sure. As DM, if the disruption isn't too severe, I'll move the attention onto other player characters. Then when I shift back, I'll try to contain the damage using a "Yes, and" response.
If it's really disruptive, and it's making the other players unhappy, I'll say "No you don't do that. Do something else." And that's rare. But if it's really atrocious, then I'll stop the session, and then later have a talk with that player. If it happens again, they're booted indefinitely.
Basically, if they abuse player agency, then one way or another, they lose it.
@ColinGross If I'm in a player role, then I'll either yield to the DM, or intervene if intervening won't derail things further. If there's enough time to give the ol' "Are you sure you do something wacky despite agreeing to the other players' plans?", then I will.
I'm the wrong person to talk to about stuff like this, because as DM, I assume and demand that my players will do everything within their legal, rules-enforced power to fornicate† my stuff† up at every stage of the game. I will step in though if it seems like they're fornicating† things up for other players though.
@MikeQ Hmm. I think it's a little reversed for me. I'm pretty disappointed if things actually go the way I planned them. It means I didn't give the players enough agency.
If I write a plot that goes A→B→C→D→E→F, and it ends up going A→B→C→D→E→F, then either my players aren't being creative, or I'm railroading them. And I generally assume it's the latter.
Fair, but there's a difference between "Surprise the DM with a clever or interesting response" and "Wreck everything and make the DM anxious, out of spite"
(This is also why many "Your Choices Matter!™" RPG Video Games Pontificate† me off so much, because the "Choices™" often boil down to flavor text that breaks up the highly railroaded, highly scripted "true plot" the designers came up with.)
@MikeQ I mean, if it's spiteful, then yeah, it needs to be reined in/dealt with.
@Xirema Side note, I'm unsure how to define good vs bad surprises, but in practice, there are certain surprises that are less welcome than others. Mainly, the surprises that bother me are those that disrupt the group dynamic. If the PCs' action dramatically alters the plot, then that's probably my problem to deal with.
I dunno. When I was a kid, I used to play a lot of strategy games with my brothers/cousins, and being the center of the "Older Sibling Syndrome", I used to win. A lot. Even—often *especially*—in scenarios where all the players would team up to try to take me down. So I've been Pavlov'd into expecting that my role in a game is "me vs everyone else", and all my Pride/Satisfaction is borne out of them successfully defeating me. =P
@Xirema That last point is key though and a very different viewpoint from the DMs we were referring to. Those DMs try to "win" and are unhappy if the players "beat" them.
One of my favorite gaming moments from the last year was a six player game of Settlers of Catan where I was one point away from winning, and all five of the other players did some barely legally allowed resource trading to give my uncle all the resources he needed to pull out a win. XD
Freedom of choice, or at least "freedom" of choice in video games, is a finicky thing and I'm not sure there's a game that's explored it in a way that complements the narrative (except maybe some 11 bit studios games and Spec Ops: The Line to a degree).
@Xirema One possible heuristic is whether the player is doing Shenanigans to entertain the others, versus to entertain theirself at the others' expense.
Everyone plays Orks, all of them are competing for Oog, performing incredible Orkish feats let's you acquire Oog or just killing Orks lets you acquire their Oog, and all the players also play the Gods who set difficulty and get spite when Orks succeed at things.
(The seven gods are the eponymous Great Ork Gods and by rights the Orks ought to have obtained successful dominion over everything by now — except their own gods utterly despise them and hope for or engineer their failure at every turn.)
@ColinGross Anyway, usually if a player is pulling some disruptive surprise, and they haven't talked it over with the DM or another player, then someone's going to be annoyed
@MikeQ The social contract of table top d&d. I like this. I propose adding disruptive surprises as an entire section. Maybe section 5. That way we could abbreviate it with V and then hold up a peace sign to indicate visually that you're getting close to a section 5 violation.
Hmmm... magical contracts usually have you sign in some unusual ink material such as blood. For the table top contract, what do you think would be an apropos signing ink? soda? beer? coffee? sweat?
The metric here is you're still a bunch of friends sitting down at a table to spend time together and have fun, and everyone is responsible for ensuring everyone else is having a good time. (Not just the DM, who is frequently and incorrectly given sole responsibility and authority for all social issues of the group.)
1. are you allowed to ready the action granted by haste? 2. is just the question I'm going to post, pending #1, Would it harm game balance to allow one to ready the action granted by haste
Ready is its own action, and not one of the ones allowed by haste. You can ready your 'normal' action instead, however, if haste allows the other action you wish to do.
A standard use of this is a hasted rogue, who attacks with their haste action for sneak attack, and readies their normal action for attacking off-turn for another sneak attack.
> Haste [...] and it gains an additional action on each of its turns. That action can be used only to take the Attack (one weapon attack only), Dash, Disengage, Hide, or Use an Object action.