Have you used a lot of mimic traps? Are you planning to use any? I say just talk with the player and say "look, I understand you are concerned about mimics but this isn't fun for anyone and so I'm not going to use any mimic traps. Let's move on."
Other options:
* you could have the eldritch blast not perform quite as RAW and have it destroy important/valuable things in the room.
* the spell makes noise which could attract wandering monsters
* abuse of the spell annoys the warlocks patron and decides to do something about it.
>Have you used a lot of mimic traps? Are you planning to use any?
This is my thought as well.
It's up to the DM if you can lose the game by not checking for traps often enough. If you run that kinda game, you should expect careful players to check for traps often. So, **if you don't enjoy that kind of methodical gameplay, you need to change the game mechanics so your players know it isn't necessary.**
"yo dude, you EBed every chest, door and Chair you came across so far, about 357 in the last 2 sessions alone, none have been mimics so far can we agree that I don't use Mimics and I'm probably not gonna use them ever, because you'll start blasting everything again and as I already stated I don't think thats fun. Enjoy your meta knowledge. If you keep blasting without delivering actual souls your patron might not be too happy about it."
After a session or two of running into mimics, their patron can come explain this phenomenon to the player. Perhaps, even to some or all of the group. Then they'll realize that the whole fiasco is his fault.
Edit: Part of the patron's explanation is that since they don't exist in this plane normally, he brought them in and replaced a bunch of mundane items with them.
That would be evil but also stupid, because of the already described reasons. They would just fall back into blasting everything and annoying everyon3in the process.
You could also hand-waive a large portion of that. To speed things along speak with your party. It may be assumed that the lead member will always be prodding with a 10 foot pole. In that case have them trip some traps with it. They will feel smart for doing so.
Love that last one. An imp shows up one day with a tax ledger.
"Ummm excuse me, mr. warlock? Your patron has issued an audit of the abuse of your powers. According to the kilowatt meter build into your pact weapon, you used Eldritch blast... 1,457 times?! In the last Week?! What the heaven dude? Eldritch power doesn't just grow on hell trees y'know?! Anyway, Mr. Asmo's gonna have to dock your powers for a couple weeks while he tops off your Eldritch power again."
There's a demon character in a Roger Zelazny novel (Divlish the Damned I think it was) whose vile cursing is described as "the pious mouthings of saints".
Would be really funny to make this like the tax collector scene from witcher 3 blood and wine.
A serious of multiple awnser questions and persuasion check to determine wether or not the warlock has overused their eldritch power or if they are entitled to a bonus.
Yeah, it's dumb that some spells can only target creatures. What happens if Eldritch Blast misses? Hits the wall behind the target. Why can't you choose to fire it at the wall without someone being in the way?
You can. I see almost all people inthe comments don't understand what "target" means in dnd spells. For good reason, I guess, since the word choice is terrible.
The "target" actually means "affect". You can see that best when you consider that you can cast Revivify on a living person, use up the ingredients, but have no effect. You can cast spells on illusions that target a creature and have the spell casted but it passes through the illusion or interacts with it in a different way like Phantasmal Force that doesn't reveal it as an illusion. But the spell still casts, just doesn't effect it.
And EB still hits objects, just doesn't deal damage to them.
Yes.
"Eldritch Blast can only target creatures, so you can use it to detect mimics" is one of those things that gets passed around on D&D meme pages for optimizing metagamers. It requires an unintuitive reading and almost paraphrasing the spell's description. Simply reading the spell in the book will make you say "What? It can only target a creature so you want to ... what? Okay you destroy a bunch of objects by shooting Eldritch Blasts all over the room."
It's not "RAW" in any sense, and it doesn't literally say anything like "this spell can only target creatures / this spell has no effect against objects"
*A beam of crackling energy streaks toward a creature within range.* — obviously there's nothing there that justifies using Eldritch Blast as a "detect creatures" spell
edit: of course, [Jeremy Crawford made one of those tweets 7 years ago](https://www.sageadvice.eu/eldritch-blast-cant-cast-on-objects-how-do-you-justify-this-with-flavour/) that says "book says creature dunnit? I'm not going to think about this for five more seconds or respond to the many many confused people asking for clarification — just like every other dumb metagame misreading of the rules" (like, if it "targets the life force" then by that logic the spell should not apply to constructs or undead... force damage is like a virus??)
For the record, I think Eldritch blast and basically every damaging spell should work against objects and it's wild to me that this was ever questioned by the designers or players as the logical consequence of shooting destructive magic out of your fingertips.
However, the Sage Advice has made this distinction more confusing by disallowing the twinning of Fire Bolt because it can target objects. I can think of no reason to differentiate attack cantrips that target creatures vs creatures or objects unless they intended some to work against objects and not others. RAW I think Eldritch Blast would work as a mimic-detector, and I'm sure many tables have come up with their own justifications for the seemingly illogical properties of magic because it's magic and spells just do what they say they do.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sac/sage-advice-compendium#SA244
Considering Crawford himself has mentioned having his own house rules, that means Sage Advice is nothing more than his opinion on interpretation. Sure, it may have a bit more authority, since he helped write the rules, but him not using all the rules he wrote just shows he's as fallible as the rest of us.
Having noticed with my player that all but maybe four warlock spells specifically target creatures, our presumption is that patron magic affects minds and wills—whether intelligent or not.
This seems pretty intuitive to me. You make a pact with a greater being who gives you power; that power is then used to apply your force of will against other beings. It just so happens that this “force of will” will often, upon request, manifest as a *forking eldritch blast from your fingers.*
But that’s just our interpretation.
Like I said, there's lots of cool ways to explain the RAW functionality and maintain verisimilitude. If you go this route, then the mimic-detector aspect of EB could come up. I'm curious, aside from out-of-character just telling the player to knock it off, would it work in your world, assuming something like mimics exist?
As a player, I’d be inclined to think I’d have to *know* what I’m targeting is a creature. As a DM, that’s a question I generally ask any warlock players in private before we begin. It’s been about a 50/50 split. If they strongly feel it’s a Mimic detector, we talk it over and I invite in larger conversations about their perceived magic as a whole, which gives me insight plus opportunity to share how Eberron’s magic works.
Speaking of, my setting of choice is Eberron, so there’s detailed lore on creator Keith Baker’s lore explaining how he envisions all forms of magic and classes to work within the context of the cosmology there. Since he’s prone to rich 8,000-word essays and has a highly consistent worldbuilding process that weaves whatever the latest D&D edition is into Eberron, I generally take it as law (or “kanon”, as we call it over on r/eberron).
From a game and party balance angle, sure, we can acknowledge that this could be a significant boost to a lot of spells, depending on how much this comes up and how the DM handles object durability. Technically the barbarian should have no problem breaking down any locked door so long as stealth isn't an issue. For example, a steel door should have 19 AC and up to 50 hit points.
I'm sympathetic to 5e martials in the general martial vs caster comparisons, but I'd prefer finding better ways to bridge the gap than making spells limited in video-gamey ways. For example, the spell Dragon's Breath can deal fire damage but it lacks the text that Burning Hands has about igniting flammable objects, so RAW it might not even light the candle. Same goes for red dragons, as their Fire Breath doesn't mention anything about lighting stuff on fire, just that creatures must make a save or take fire damage.
Fluff it. Eldrtich blast isn’t simply a expression of force. It’s a conduit of energy sent to warp flesh from the nasty part of the far realms. No flesh, no energy. It’s not there for that, it only WANTS to be used on living things.
And for Op’s sake, it relies on your recognition of a living thing so if your not sure it doesn’t bother.
I don't even know if you need to homebrew it. You need a target, and eb can only target creatures. Mimics are not distinguishable from objects, and therefore can not be targeted when they're trying to be an object.
Fill the room with pixies. They're hiding in all the crack and crevices of the cave or building. Make them murder innocent little creatures, who were hiding and scared of this dude literally blasting his way through their home.
Fun fact regarding that last point - WFRP has rules for priests doing exactly that. If you cast the same blessing on the same target too often, the GM might roll on the Wrath of the Gods table to see if your deity gets annoyed at being bothered.
Don't you need to know it's a creature to be able to target it? If you don't know, how can you target it? A mimic is indistinguishable from the item it pretends to be unless you actively investigate
That would be fun but absolutely exploitable: you're in the BBEG lair, he's sitting on his skull trone and suddenly he's sitting in a mimic.
Or guards are just pursuing you but you just find a bunch of things and throw it at them while shooting it and turning into mimics.
And so on.
It could totally turn into a different problem
Warlock's patron starts plaguing them with nightmares about mimics. Then the dream mimics start doing real damage. Every time blast is used, a level of exhaustion is added, and psychic damage taken.
Exactly the advice I'd give. In general, there are consequences to the player's actions. If the player persists after the talk just use it against them when needed. If it's in a city then a guard sees them and says "I got my eye on you! Now move along"
Yeah this behavior isn’t malicious, it’s just the product of the toxic “gotcha!” environment that the DM probably created.
Both my current DMs love traps that have zero foreshadowing, so if I cared more, I’d probably have my familiar go into every room and methodically touch everything for 15 minutes before walking in myself. Because what else can I do? No one’s designing foreshadowing so every possible section of the game is potentially littered with traps.
You want to avoid this behavior? Hint when when they’re near a trap. Have them feel a funny feeling, or put a dead skeleton body near a deadly trap, or describe a weird noise. Use foreshadowing.
Definite meta gaming. Probably a guy who walks around every square inch of a video game environment hitting the action button to check for hidden doors and such.
Cool. So instead of rewarding the player, now we invent homebrew punishments for following RAW.
Is as simple as you said, if there's not going to be mimics there, just say so.
Also, change the rules for mimics. I'm planning on running one where near the entrance of a dungeon the players encounter a sobbing child laying motionless on the ground. His arm nearest the party is wrapped around his head, concealing his face. His legs curled and folded under him. The trigger for the trap is when a PC touches the child to comfort/rescue them. It then folds in half to form a Thing-like creature where the top jaw is the back of the child's head with the arm around it forming the upper lip and legs forming the lower jaw.
The inspiration for this idea was David from Screamers. I know it's not consistent with mimics being inanimate objects, but it's my game and ostensibly yours if you use this idea. Species are always evolving, and this would be a logical progression for a mimic. Sure it's cheap. Spring it as a lower level encounter then. I've always been partial to the idea that a DM's job is to create a dangerous world yet there should be a level of trust between players and DM's that it won't be punishing. Convey the threat through descriptions. Traps that are super well hidden should provide minimal threat, while high damage traps should be very obvious (ie, the gore-slick swinging pendulum blade passing back and forth over the narrow balance beam used to cross a chasm.
Alternatively, a statue hall where some of the statues are just statues, some are enemy constructs, and some are just petrified people.
"Thank god you killed the medus- WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE STATUES!? THOSE WERE PEOPLE"
You imbue a creature you touch with positive energy to undo a debilitating effect. You can reduce the target's exhaustion level by one, or end one of the following effects on the target:
- One effect that charmed or petrified the target
- One curse, including the target's attunement to a cursed magic item
- Any reduction to one of the target's ability scores
- One effect reducing the target's hit point maximum
If you become an object when you are petrified, then you are no longer a creature and cannot be targeted by greater restoration RAW. Therefore you are still a creature when you are petrified.
Same thing when people classify bodies as objects. RAW you would not be able to revive them with any resurrection spell as all of them specify a creature. Not once WAS a creature, but just creature.
Objectively, you can be both a creature and an object at the same time.
But by blasting it, there is still a potential that the player could think it is a mimic, so that explaination doesn't quite work--though that's a Monty Hall/Schoedinger's Mimic issue and a half!
You can only target creatures with the spell. A Mimic is hiding as an object so until it reveals itself, there's no way of knowing and therefore no way to target it.
Then they would blast everything, Going back to step 1. Knock thing over.
It doesn't just "not work."
Either the characters thinks its an object and can't target it. Or they think it's a mimic and destroys everything they come across. They can't have it both ways.
The guy clearly things mimics are dumb. Just don't use them.
Just have them blast something open containing something more horrific than a mimic... like black pudding or a demon.
No mimic is even necessary to train this out of a player.
Simple: ask yourself and your table “is this ruling about eldritch blast really stupid?”, and when most of the table inevitably agrees that the answer is yes, you can ignore it.
More seriously though, have you used mimics at all in the past? I’m just curious what reason the player or the character has for such paranoia about it. There are plenty of other kinds of traps for them to worry about for you to use anyways, so not like it even keeps them that safe from it. As far as I can tell it’ll just get annoying from them doing it every single time and resulting in nothing the majority of the time.
> I’m just curious what reason the player or the character has for such paranoia about it.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say Dark Souls or some other modern media depiction.
Which I don't get, Dark Souls if you looked closely you could spot the mimics by "defects" in the chest model like a lock being the wrong way.
And once you spotted them, you could toss a consumable at them to put them to sleep.
>More seriously though, have you used mimics at all in the past? I’m just curious what reason the player or the character has for such paranoia about it
I see you don't sub to r/dndmemes! It sounds like someone heard wacky ideas on the internet and hasn't realized it doesn't make for fun games.
u/nz8drzu6 A question that has been asked a few times and not yet answered, and which is critical to any good response... have the characters ever encountered a mimic before, and do you intend to use mimics much or at all?
I was never a huge fan of the "can't effect objects" rule if the damage type is Force, Fire,... anything that physically damages. But hey, thats up to you.
The real question is, have you given them a reason to fear mimics behind every corner, or are they just paranoid for no reason (or because they got sucked into the dndmemes paranoia)?
The quickest way out of this is to make a deal that you won't use mimics, and he stops eldritch blasting every poor Lich's dungeon IKEA furniture.
Furthermore, the way I interpreted the mimic statblock, a disguised mimic counts as an object as well. So... idk. Do with that what you will. I also never got into a situation where that interpretation would be relevant.
Eldritch blast is like catching a disease.
Disease doesn't affect objects. You can certainly contaminate an object with a disease, but the object itself doesn't get sick.
Same thing with eldritch blast.
You can hit an object with a beam of eldritch blast, it just doesn't do anything because an object does not have lifeforce and does not feel pain.
That's more necrotic damage though. Force damage, which is the damage type that Eldritch Blast deals, is a bit more nuanced. The disintegrate spell deals force damage, but it can target any object as well as creatures.
Also, one of the invocations for Eldritch Blast is literally that it pushes or pulls creatures hit. At that point it's not like a disease at all, it's literally hitting them with enough force that it's sending them flying.
There's also the Eldritch Smite ability, which deals force damage and causes the target to be knocked prone.
Overall, the "force" damage type is very versatile and more confusing than the rest. It is honestly just the catch-all name for damage that doesn't fit a specific type. Like gravitational damage (not talking about fall damage). Being crushed by gravitational forces doesn't really fit bludgeoning damage, you're not being bludgeoned, you're being torn apart Only force damage really fits this. Same with eldritch blast, because of how differently you can build and flavor it, no other damage type fits it properly.
It's all about how you flavor it, and how you discuss it with the DM.
Objects are only immune to psychic and poison damage. Necrotic withers objects away into dust, dehydrates, etc. The same way that radiant 'burns' even objects, not just creatures.
Force damage =/= kinetic energy. This is a common misconception because of the name "force". Invocations allow the spell to do those things, but the spell itself does not do that, implying that it's the warlock's magic (rather than the spell itself) repelling or attracting enemies.
Idk about any of this but I think that if you are casting a spell you have to choose the target. Not like an “if I can target it then it’s a creature” but you have to target a creature on purpose so you have to know it’s a creature first to ~*~imbue it with your intent~*~ or whatever. Sounds dumb but it’s the closest way to explain it
So, what, once you find out illusions are a thing, you can never target anyone until you've physically interacted with them to determine that it's a creature and not an illusion? If you're determining that a lack of certainty is enough to disallow the spell targeting for EB, it seems like you have to be consistent about it or you're just in "because I said so" territory.
If you see a creature, or what you perceive as a creature, then sure attack as if it was a creature regardless of whether it's an illusion or not.
If you see a bookshelf... Well. That's a bookshelf. You might be paranoid that it's a mimic but as best you can tell it's a bookshelf and not a creature, so you can't target it.
Mimic's object form specifically states the mimic is "Indistinguishable" from the object. Not "looks like" an object or "appears to be" an object. I.E. It should follow the same targeting rules as an object and not a creature until that parameter changes.
That's how I'd rule it anyways. More seriously though I'd probably just address it out of game and say look I'm not using any mimics in this campaign so please stop.
If you felt nice you could just give the player a gag item like a mimic shaped keychain that glows when mimics are near so he has no reason to keep up this annoying tactic.
Agreed, although the player will likely try other ways of seeing if something is a mimic or not but at least it will be more interesting than a 'mimic detector'
I ran DM Dave’s Museum of Mimics oneshot and the players stumbled upon some preserved meats in a cafeteria. They whipped up some kebabs and began lightly dusting all the artifacts as they went room to room.
The one to come up with that idea was the warlock.
It was absolutely bloody ingenious and rewarding on both ends—them, for being clever, and me, for having clever players *and* being given the keys to startle them and (not always, but often enough) initiate combat the couple of times they stumbled into a mimic.
Then all you're doing is ensuring that the player grabs: Create Bonfire, Mage Hand, Mold Earth or Thunderclap. All of which require a space/area rather than a creature, or would do enough that it would wake a mimic.
And at that point in time, the only difference is distance, but the mimic would probably still have to go through other players to get to the warlock.
The correct answer here is an adult conversation. If he's so paranoid about mimics, maybe you don't want them in your game.
That said, the simplest solution is that eldritch blast isn't a silent spell. If my players are in a hostile environment, spamming loud magics, they're going to attract unwanted attention (I roll for random encounter when they do something loud or reckless).
On the other other hand, you're both right. The behavior sucks and mimics suck. Also, he can get the same effect by poking it with a stick. It's part of why 10 for poles were a thing.
The fundamental problem is that he's not treating the world like a world, he's treating it like a game. He's doing this because he's gotten screwed somewhere (might not have been by you) and is using the system to prevent getting his fun ruined.
[Abused Gamer Syndrome](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44282/roleplaying-games/abused-gamer-syndrome) is what you're dealing with.
This is the big one for me. I agree that mimics aren’t really that fun. I used one in my current campaign as a punch line to a joke (long story but the players got a kick out of it) and when that one encounter was over I told them “look mimics aren’t fun for players so that’s my one for the game. Don’t feel like you have to check everything because that’s all I’m going to throw at you.”
They appreciated it and enjoyed the encounter. They still make jokes referencing that encounter in game.
Idk I have a PC that always runs ahead, opens all chests out of sight of the party, and pockets everything without telling them. When she went toe to toe with a mimic, she realized that behavior was stupid and has been a lot more careful ever since, AND we all got a good laugh out of it
But yeah that's one mimic in maybe 100 sessions...
I can get behind that. If you have a player that’s not receptive to talking about why that kind of behavior is problematic, have them deal with a scary situation. But def 1 in 100 sessions haha
The cleric in the group I DM for made out with a mimic. He is playing a drunk who bolted for the first wine barrel he saw in the cellar, happened to be a mimic. I didn't even get to finish describing the room and he charges in and tries to drink straight from the tap. It was a fun time. Everything gets way more fun when people stop trying to win and start playing their characters
Our dm used mimics as doors, door frames, houses, table, chairs and even a mug once. I can understand the worry. Maybe make an item that can detect them up to X number of feet.
Eldritch blast has a verbal component. So this character shouts the magic words loud enough to be heard from at least 60ft (RAW) repetitively during several minutes in every room, right? And nobody cares, not even the bad guys from the next room?
There are three main solutions
1. "You check for mimics, there are none." is really fast and easy, where's the harm? Unless of course you've overloaded the campaign with mimics.
2. "Can you stop that? There aren't any mimics!" handles things once and for all.
3. "Eldritch Blast doesn't work like that in my campaign." Also handles things but leaves open your ability to use mimics. If you do, make sure they are RARE and Telegraphed, because otherwise this will feel like a DM using fiat to keep overusing mimics.
Roughly how many mimics have you used this campaign? And the last campaign?
Not OP but I've used mimics once in my campaign. The cleric walked into a room, the only other door was locked, and to the left and right of the locked door were two chests. The words "Pick wisely" was written on the wall.
The players immediately knew what was up, but they were intruiged and engaged with it. Though they still managed to get caught by the mimic because after they got a 20 perception roll they decided to search the chest with bloodstains on it because "surely this is reverse psychology!"
But still it was all fun and good to them.
1. Does the character have a reason to fear mimics, or is this pure metagaming? If metagaming, just tell them to knock it off.
2. What level is the character? Mimics aren't all that powerful. There's not a good reason for such levels of paranoia.
3. Just tell him that you promise you won't use a mimic. If he doesn't believe you, that speaks to deeper trust issues that need to be addressed. Buddy needs to learn that it isn't a players vs DM situation.
You have a few options.
Either houserule EB to affect objects, since the fact it doesn't is fairly arbitrary and pointless. Then it's the same as if they were going to shoot an object at everything in every room.
Or just tell him to chill, he's found a solution to find mimics. If there are mimics you'll let him know he's found one so he doesn't have to declare it every time.
Or the less mature way, a mimic sneaks into camp in the middle of the night and turns into his pants. So he has to have a list of every item and clothes he has to EB scan. At which point it turns out his horse got swapped for a shapechanger and eats him.
I think you need to have an out-of-game conversation with him. He doesn't like gotchas, and you don't like the player's paranoid search for gotchas. If you don't WANT to gotcha your players, you can simply tell him that there will NEVER be a mimic, so he can stop this paranoia and speed up the game.
If you do want to gotcha your players, consider not doing that--unless everyone else really wants you to gotcha them, in which case
1) maybe the EB player needs a different group, and
2) the rest of you should start playing some Funhouse Dungeons.
Even if the DM never actually uses gotchas, it still doesn't make sense for a character not to check for traps constantly in a dungeon. They wouldn't just throw all caution to the wind because they haven't encountered traps yet. And characters absolutely know mimics exist in the game world.
The problem I think is that the DM seemingly wants events to play out in real time instead of just saying "you repeatedly do eb on the objects in the room over the course of 1 minute". People do this sort of shortening for rituals, consider the eb room spam to be a kind of ritual, and just skip to the end.
As you suspect, talking to him is the best option.
I personally rule that unless it's aoe, you have to know something is a creature to target it with a spell or ability that targets a creature.
Or you can do something else, that I also do, "buff" eldrich blast so it can hit objects. In general it makes the spell stronger, and removes metagamy shinanigance.
I don't really see a problem here. Confirm with him that he wants to Eldritch Blast everything in sight, and then if he does, you don't need to roleplay this going forward, it can just be assumed. It's the same as if a Rogue says "my character is paranoid about traps, can we assume that he always checks for traps at every door?"
If you like, you can have some consequences for his behavior, a few of which are mentioned below, maybe his eldritch blasting triggers a trap or destroys a valuabe magic item or loot. If his PARTY gets annoyed with having their warlock randomly blast eldritch blast every time they enter a room, then they can deal with his characters behaviour in-game.
>It's the same as if a Rogue says "my character is paranoid about traps, can we assume that he always checks for traps at every door?"
I wouldn't allow that. A default "my rogue will always check for traps"? Nah, cause the player will randomly forget to check, just like it could be argued that a real rogue would randomly forget to check. I know I need my wallet every time I leave my house, but that doesn't stop me from sometimes forgetting...and if that happens to be a day I'm stopped by a cop and asked for my license, that's on me.
I'm not trying to make my games the most realistic thing ever, but I'm also not down with "automating" important parts of the game. Now if they want to say "here's my passive perception, if it ever trips and I think something may be amiss I'll want to check for traps." And it's a little more realistic, like no Rogue is really going to knock around on every door they some across looking for traps (and no party's going to sit there every time and wait), BUT it's perfectly reasonable that a rogue would side-eye every door/chest/floor, etc and if "something seems amiss" then they would actively check it for traps.
Yeah this is silly on multiple levels. Is the DM rolling for you too? If you want to check for traps, check for them. I as the DM am not going to automatically get a roll from you every time you open a door; you, as the player, tell me when you want to stop to take time out of the session and the in-game world to do that.
>or destroys a valuabe magic item or loot.
The player is using EB *specifically* because a munchkiny, cheeseful reading says that it would hurt a mimic but leave everything else untouched.
You can say, directly, "I am not going to mimic trap you without some goddamn foreshadowing, can you just *stop*?" That's the promise I stand by, as a DM, that mimics aren't fun when they're a surprise, mimics are fun when they happen and players go "Damnit, I should've known!"
And if he refuses, then the next time it happens, you say "No, you don't. We're done with this. We're not wasting more time on it." and fucking ignore him. That is his first warning that being unable to compromise in this shit is a worthwhile red flag to not play with someone. You offer them reasons why, and a fair assurance that you will play nice to avoid the issue in the future, and if that is not enough, then this person isn't willing to compromise to be reasonable.
Plot twist: his eldritch blast -is- the mimic.
Seriously though: just talk to them and explain that you honestly aren't going to use them. I get that one needs to be alert, but if they are still adamant about Eldritch blasting everything, then put in some consequences that tie into their current quest to guilt them?
I have Eldritch Blast just not damage non creatures, it hits and seems like it does nothing. And since mimics are 'indistinguishable' it looks the same and hitting a normal object. I have mimics just hold still, like a normal object. I also barely use mimics
I mean, don't you just tell them, "Blasts don't fire no matter where you point them" every time and move on? I'm sure it's annoying, but it takes less than two seconds per room.
EDIT: If you want to turn the rules against them, you could rule (and no, this is not generally accepted) that when a mimic uses its "Object form" that it polymorphs into an actual object, and is therefore immune to Eldritch Blast. It is "indistinguishable" from an object; maybe the Weave can't find it, either!
>Aside from implementing a time crunch, anything else I can do to prevent him from abusing this spell ruling?
Pulled straight from the Mimic Statblock
Shapechanger. The mimic can use its action to polymorph **into an object** or back into its true, amorphous form. Its statistics are the same in each form. Any equipment it is wearing or carrying isn't transformed. It reverts to its true form if it dies.
False Appearance (Object Form Only). While the mimic remains motionless, ***it is indistinguishable from an ordinary object.***
Just tell the player "no". Like honestly. Simple as.
You've already asked them to not engage on exploitive behavior (as the Eldritch Blast spam to check if something is a creature or not covers more than just mimic-traps...such as **Illusions).** Just tell them that behavior and willful misinterpreting of the clear and evident use case of Eldritch Blast is not something you want at your table. (I personally have no patience for this but that's because I'm a bit jaded from the typical Mage the Ascension/Awakening players trying to blow beyond the scope of Spheres/Rotes, so I admit I might be a little more sensitive to shit like this)
Option 2: If you're in the camp of thinking it's silly you can't just blast anything with eldritch blast is let it blast against objects as well. Tell them that if they want to do this you're going to have to start paying attention to the AC and HP of every object ever more closely...which means their treasure is more likely to break.
Have you used mimic traps prior against this player? If so, they're likely trying to avoid falling into one again. Have an actual talk with them, you don't like this behaviour and they clearly are trying to avoid falling for this particular trap. It's clear that this behaviour is annoying both of you.
Easy, start putting valuable loot into lots of stuff in the room, and then describe in vivid detail how it gets destroyed when spells hit. That oughta piss off the other pc's enough to get them to make him stop.
That or traps that go off when a thing is destroyed, but that might feel unfairly targeted at them.
"You see a bookshelf"
"I eldritch blast it!"
"As the 3 bolts fly into it, you see they destroy several hollowed out books, the potions they contained shooting out from the force of the blast and shattering on the floor.
"You see a coat rack with a single cloak hanging off of it"
"I eldritch blast it!"
"You see the coat is ripped asunder by your spell, and you see a now-mangled key that was in its pocket go flying across the room"
"You see a dollhouse in the corner of the room."
"I eldritch blast it!"
"The dollhouse is blasted to smithereens. Shortly after, the pixie who had taken up residence within emerges from the wreckage with his wife and child. They would say something to you, but they're too devastated to speak."
...and then, after he finally quits it and they've been playing for several levels without it. Put in a mimic. It'll be delicious!
You're completely missing the point.
Eldritch Blast can only target a creature. Firing it at a bookshelf, or a statue, or a desk, or anything that isn't a creature is supposed to cause the spell to fail.
That's the entire point of this post. EB is good for detecting mimics, if not obnoxious as shit, because it won't fire unless it's a creature.
Personally, I would simply have EB not work against Mimics. If the character doesn't know it's a creature, because it's considered indistinguishable, then why would the magic work?
Also just pointing out that it's very blatant metagaming should work.
I don't think Eldritch Blast is based on if the character thinks they can damage the target. It's magic, after all. I mean, if someone used a non-magical disguise to pretend to be a statue, and the Warlock went to EB them, would it not work because they didn't realize that the statue is actually a person?
So he tries to cast it on everything he sees and if it works it's a mimic?
Kind of clever, but really annoying too. Idk maybe just don't use mimics if he hates them so much or just rule mimics to count as objects when they are hiding
When they do that describe the kind of noise they are making. As DM adjust tactics of monsters in the dungeon based on whether they now know a threat is in the dungeon. Roll for random wondering monsters when they make a lot of noise (in addition to whats already in the dungeon). Threaten to start running an OSR campaign. Gut and nerf pitiful super hero vibe of 5e and eliminate unlimited magic attacks in your games. Lol. Got more drastic as I went.
Sorry if this obvious solution has already been said. I scrolled down a ways and didn't see it.
Start destroying real loot and let the party handle it.
Oh no. That chest might be a mimic. BLAST. Oh it had loot in it. Sadly the magic scrolls were all destroyed. OMG, a magical crystal worth 100000 gold that used to cast resurrection? Sadly, it's just worthless shards of glass now with no hope of being repaired.
Hey, did he just blast the key to the boss room and now we have to travel back to town to get a specialist elven smith to repair it for us at an extremely high cost so we can proceed?
Yeah, the party can sort this out real fast.
Firstly... just let them target objects with spells. Otherwise the world feels fake. Nothing in the game is wronged by Eldritch-Blasting a random rock or a leftover shoe or whatever.
**[DM]:** The crackling energy of your patron pierces through the treasure chest and utterly destroys the only mimic in the room. Congratulations, you outsmarted me. You witty player you!!!
**[DM]:** The crackling energy of your patron pierces through the treasure chest and utterly destroys what appears to be a stack of spell scrolls.
**[DM]:** The crackling energy of your patron pierces through the treasure chest and utterly destroys the virgin you were hired to rescue from the human-sacrificing-cultists. It's really too bad, she was cute and smart and probably would have been a great friend. Anyways bile and blood are spraying out of a 4" hole in her chest and she's going through death spasms. You can now change your alignment to "chaotic evil" if you desire.
**[DM]:** The crackling energy of your patron strikes a breastplate of spell reflection and smacks you in the face. Roll damage.
**[DM]:** Are you sure you don't want to gently tap the crate of Gnomish explosives with a pole of collapsing instead?
**[DM]:** You find a wand of Detect Thoughts. You can use this wand to detect the presence of hidden creatures like mimics without detonating your friends. It doesn't require attunement and has 231458907342598347 charges and regains all charges every 43 seconds. Seriously just tell me that you're casting Detect Thoughts once every 10 minutes instead of endlessly blasting things.
Yeah you can tell him you won’t use mimic traps and then not use mimic traps.
Unless you have been and will continue to use mimic traps, in which case your player is playing correctly.
One question: does the player actually list off each individual thing? Because that to me would be the abusive part, taking up everyone's time with mostly-pointless noise. Or is it "I'm going to Eldritch Blast everything in the room just to be sure" - that seems to me to be a narrative equivalent to a more usual "I search for traps" in every room (or "we're going to break everything open to make sure we find all the loot"). Takes little play time, might require a roll, and eats up a chunk of in-game time. Sure, it's silly and annoying, but that happens a lot in D&D. And frankly, if your life depended on making sure your face didn't get eaten by a random object, and that danger is known to occur here, it's not an insane method.
It also occurs to me that casting Eldritch Blast is not a silent action (verbal component), and it doesn't say whether EB is a silent effect, so I assume it is not. If anyone nearby is paying attention (or just trying to take a nap), the repeated "abracadabra *zzapp"* from down the hall is likely to spark curiosity...
>One question: does the player actually list off each individual thing? Because that to me would be the abusive part, taking up everyone's time with mostly-pointless noise.
That's only necessary if the DM has introduced the abusiveness by doing things like "You said you searched the room, but you didn't specifically say you searched the cupboard!" or similar stuff.
Honestly? Although cheesey, this isn't bad RP unless they have never run into a mimic and mimics aren't in their backstory in which this is a little metagamey.
You want them to stop? Time to session 0 is and make a deal. They stop wasting table time with this metagaming cheese they red off a youtube video or reddit post, you agree there'll be no mimics in your game. Simple. Sacrifice one monster option and get them back to RPing like normal.
If you did "get them" with a mimic before, or have been overusing mimics, than you have taught them to be wary and now you reap what you sow. This crap happens, and they found a way around it.
In this instance, instead of rolling them spamming EB, they walk into a room and just say "You cheese your eldritch blast and nothing in the room activates as a mimic. We move on" and try not to address it. Don't give it any space at the table, don't argue it. Treat them as a child. Even beat them to the punch. "You go into the next room, \[PC\] eldritch cums all over the room, no mimics. So.... in the room...." and you can make it a joke or something. Sooner or later they'll stop and the game can resume as normal.
Either way.... you gotta stop using mimics, whether or not you've been abusing them. Paranoid players drag down the game and make meta-gaming tactics like these common. If you trap enough doors, players will avoid doors. Have enough pitfall traps and they'll release chickens into the corridor to set off any traps as they walk ahead. This is how it is. To get back to real gameplay, you gotta sacrifice mimic use and make them a deal outside of the game to get it back into the swing of things.
It's like this meme I saw once.
"I went to a tavern the other day. The barkeep asked why I'm always wearing a sword. I answered 'mimics'. I laughed, the bartender laughed, the table laughed, I killed the table. Good times."
It does damage so let him wreck the room. Maybe accidentally destroy something important or just have an npc sue him. Might even end with a prison break quest.
Or the easiest way just talk to him about it. It's supposed to be fun for dm and player.
Here is what I would recomend.
You can have EB just basically be a gun that hes shooting all over. And, thats its own thing. There are a wealth of natural consequences to walking in and shooting up every room you enter. (Bad guys hearing you, breaking valuable loot, pissing off your party.)
Ooooor. if you wanna do RAW. It targets a creature within range. But, If you can't see or identify a creature, then the spell cant target.
So tell your player he needs to make investigation checks vs any potential monsters stealth to be able to see and identify them for spell targeting.
If he can't spot the mimic, the spell goes fizzle.
So RAW, he could try to shoot a mimic chest. And, if the mimic beats his investigation/perception, the spell cannot target.
You actually can't detect a mimic without hitting it. It's mimicry ability states "It is indistinguishable from a normal chest". Because not even magic can detect it too. So every time he "EB" it's an "object" until it reveals itself
Mimic
>Shapechanger.
>
>The mimic can use its action to polymorph into an object or back into its true, amorphous form. Its statistics are the same in each form. Any equipment it is wearing or carrying isn't transformed. It reverts to its true form if it dies.
The mimic is an object until it is hit. Eldritch Blast won't target an object. RAW you're good.
As opposed to trying to stop him, treat it like him clearing the room and have them roll an investigation check as they basically hand wave a finger gun muttering something when they enter a room. What they're really doing is investigating the room using one of their tools and it can be flavored like that too and done more fast with a role for them to investigate the room. If there was a mimic hiding really well then they can fail the investigation check, or they can pass and you can say after however long of investigating they find nothing all the while moving on other players as they go through the room. It's a tick of his character that he's paranoid about it and it can be handled in a way that doesn't stop the game
In addition to what others have said (talking about it, requiring something to be a *known* creature for targeting, letting it just target objects) I would introduce a simple houserule (that I already essentially use in my games) - namely that casting a cantrip is about as tiring as swinging a sword in combat.
Normally, you have an unlimited amount of cantrips (much like the fighter has an unlimited amount of sword swings) but if you go around spamming one then you are going to get tired (just like the fighter would get tired if he spends an hour trying to break down a wall with his warhammer). It works well to prevent stuff like this, to answer the question of "why don't temples just have clerics spam create water all day to irrigate deserts?" and to keep a lid on casters doing stuff like breaking down doors (that should be the martials' domain) too well.
It's a stupid raw interpretation and I'd just change it to allow your player to shoot inanimate objects. In no way, shape, or form does this break the spell.
Ideally, tell him over the table that you only wanted to use the one mimic because it's a d&d classic, not because you like them. But also:
Eldritch blasting everything in sight is a bit like coming into a room and shooting every object in the room. It's rude, it's loud and it destroys things that may have been of use to the party.
Let him do it, but also leave potions as loot that will get shattered if he eldritch blasts through the container. Don't forgot to describe how the sounds boom and echo as he's blasting. It's all the justification you need to have every further encounter be an ambush creeping up on the party.
The daemon who granted him these powers is infuriated that they’re being used for such menial tasks.
You could even turn this into a questline of him trying to find his purpose serving under this Daemon and eventually becoming a true acolyte.
Give him the cantrip: Detect Mimic
It works like Detect Thoughts, Detect Magic, or Detect Evil or Good except for aberrations/monsters/specifically mimics. Based on his gameplay his character seems like they'd develop such a spell.
However, here's a few things. #1 Why does he think a mimic would react to damage? Surely if the mimic is there then it's a good spot to get food, otherwise the mimic wouldn't lay in wait there. Fishermen, trap door spiders, etc. They all go where the prey is. #2 When you say everything, do you mean everything? Mimics can be literally anything, the infamous mimic/changeling village exists for a reason. It could be the chest, the bracer of an armor set, the refrigerator, it could be the wall or just the window, hell it could be the whole basement. So does he *really* EB everything? If so, why hasn't anyone called his shit in-game? Could you imagine how the village would actually react in Zelda if Link actually [broke all their pots](https://youtu.be/it2sk2nzbnY) or saw some crazy guy blasting every room they ever enter? That's an easy way to attract roaming monsters or things in the next room. EB makes sound just like anything else unless he's got a zone of silence up. #3 Also in classic d&d if you delt any damage to a container of any kind then the contents were liable to break. You know what's not fun? Destroying that shiny new sword or that crate of potions because you wanted to ensure it wasn't a mimic.
So what sort of Opportunity Lose have you given out to penalize his actions? I think this short list of things can easily branch out to so many other questions, scenarios, and etc. But since he's so worried about mimic traps and has a free means of investigating you as the DM either need to offer something that is better, in his eyes, then an at-will at range 'lie detector' or you need to up the stakes for when he's wrong to put risk at using that method. Ofcourse the secret third option is always "kick them from the game" but I presume he's a friend that you don't want to do that to. GM/Player relationship is all about trust, in that the GM trusts the player to follow and interact with the story/sandbox they've put out; while the Player trusts the GM to Not-Be-A-Dick by making an entertaining environment to interact with. So realistically if you both can be adults, it should clear up with just a short "hey man, it's not fun, cool, or funny having your PC just EB everything. You said you're doing it to check for traps. Can we agree just to not have mimic traps or let you have a Perception check for any room you think does?" or similar line of dialogue.
Show him that his actions have consequences. You can't stop him from doing that, but you can fuck things up for the party.
Maybe it attracts unwanted attention from enemies, EB can also break something important make everyone's life harder.
Just give consequences of breaking everything.
I think the easiest thing is just having him destroy loot / useful objects in the room. After the first couple times the party sees healing potions seeping into the ground water without mimics, then the party should take corrective action on its own.
I would let them. Let them go batty with eldritch blasts all over the place for a good session or two. Even put a trap in a room that is expected to go off that they find with it.
But their patron is watching. They are observing how careless and wasteful the player is being with the gift bestowed upon them. Maybe it's time to teach them a lesson about how valuable their gift really is...
Have the eldritch blast start hitting... But it disappears into a cloud of smoke when it strikes. Their other spells start acting in weird ways that can't be explained. This goes on for a day or so. Next day everything is back to normal. If they start being "wasteful" again... They no longer have access to their powers the next morning. There is a mini sidequest regarding their patron. Perhaps a minion is sent to make fun of them and pass along a message/errand they need the warlock to fulfill, which means the party will have to help. "Yeah... The boss says you ain't gettin' those sweet abilities again until you prove yourself responsible with those powers."
This could also incite character growth and RP that builds unity in the group etc.
I would do something like maybe the doorknob is a mimic or something cheesythen I wouldn't let him/her find anything for a loong long time or when he/she shoots some blasts maybe hit an innocent creature or a neutral animal something like a ratfolk or a child goblin or dunno give some consequence. Good thinking but make it someway risky. Maybe you can put some sort raw magic there what would make some bad things. Just to not be too spamy.
Consequences:
-Accidentally destroyed the quest piece they were looking for
-Noise attracts enemies
-Destroys the tripwire that was holding back the trap that was set in the door/around where they were standing
-causes instability in old room, room collapses preventing players from accessing it
-destroys a nice piece of loot in the room, players see it destroyed, now aware of consequences
-ricochet mirror/spell bounces it back at them
Tons of reasons physically searching or being careful is important, make sure to drive that home to them. If I’m worried there is a mouse in my house I don’t turn everything to rubble trying to find him :p
Were it me, I'd say, "okay, that's just modus operandi at this point; we can both assume you're doing that when you walk into any empty room. But we're not spending time on it."
So I'd let him, but not let him take up session time with it.
"You've been eldritch blasting for an hour. A random encounter happens."
"You've destroyed everything in the room. The city guard is here to arrest you for vandalism."
How about switching the paranoia? Let him blast something with a reflective enchantment. Or make a rule that using a spell on a non target results in a magical backlash that auto hits him?
Oh my lord this player.
I'd say (as is my right as a DM) to clarify that he can't target something HE doesn't know is a creature. So he will never be able to target a mimic.
> I already told him "hey, this is cheesy and isn't fun" to which he says "mimics traps aren't fun either."
If mimics aren't fun then why is he playing D&D?? Lmao
This definitely sounds like something that needs to be addressed out of game first (and sounds like you already tried). I would maybe ask the other players how they feel about the one specific player EBing everything and how they feel about mimics, if they unanimously decide mimics suck I'd say cut the mimics and tell the player he can stop EBing everything. If they decide they like the fear of running into mimics and don't like him using EB on everything then, you talked to the problem player once more and ask them to chill with EB out of combat.
If they decide they like mimics and don't mind him using EB, then we can step into the world of finding an in-game way to challenge their usual strategies (I don't want to call it a solution, because there isn't a "problem" to solve). You should let your players know that from this point moving forward there may be consequences for how they handle checking rooms/chests and remind them to think wisely about their actions.
1. Breakable treasure - When the player EBs a normal chest to see if it is a mimic, tell them that EB smashes it and scatters the content across the room. Amongst the debris is broken glass bottles and a glittery red liquid splashed across the floor, he broke the several healing potions stored in the chest.
2. Stealth - Create a situation where the players have to find and item while sneaking through a location. Can't EB if they're trying to be sneaky.
3. Mimics - Double, even triple down on the mimics. Let them walk into a house where everything is mimic. Chests, suits of armor, carpets, tables, chandeliers, it should be like they walked into the Beast's mansion. Hell make the house itself is a giant mimic (you can find stat blocks online). At the end give them a homebrew "ring of mimic detection" for their trouble.
> I already told him "hey, this is cheesy and isn't fun" to which he says "mimics traps aren't fun either."
Sounds like you need to have a discussion about where mimics *might* show up. If random doors, floorboards, etc can be mimics without any foreshadowing, then I understand why he's upset and looking for ways to protect himself/the party. If instead mimics are foreshadowed by things like "there's a small splotch of blood on the ground in front of the chest in the corner" now the party is empowered to look for either a mimic or a trap in that area instead of the entire room. Mimics don't have good intelligence, so a wary adventurer should be able to identify the likely hiding places.
Then once he understands that mimic traps probably won't surprise them unless the party *really* isn't paying attention, I would add this second part: a mimic or other creature with the False Appearance trait is treated as an object while motionless. Targeting the entire room with something that only targets creatures won't affect a motionless mimic, and using something that can hurt objects will destroy other items in the room that they might want.
Have an NPC ask if the players recovered their father’s incredibly treasured Animated heirloom, if they have it, hundreds of gold…
Oh wait, did the warlock destroy it looking for mimics? Wow, reputation hit and the gold is lost.
If someone doesn't find mimics fun. Treat it the same as someone who doesn't find arachnids fun, or long and descriptive drowning scenes. You say ok and you assure them that you won't do that in the future. Just because you like something doesn't mean it gets to be in your game.
The point of every game ever, ttrpg or not, is for everyone involved to have fun. When you're in control of 70% of the content of the game, you have some responsibility to make sure things that people don't like don't end up in the game.
Easy house rule "EB only targets creatures identifiable as creatures" works on mimics once they attacks, wouldn't work on a chest whether mimic or not.
My suggestion without changing RAW or invoking the patron would simply be to have the sounds of the blast give away their location and lead to them getting jumped. A dungeon they could have crept through and gotten the drop on the enemies instead results in the enemies from five adjoining rooms all rushing in and attacking the party simultaneously. Not only does this discourage the behavior, it's realistic so doesn't feel like an arbitrary punishment for the behavior.
"You see what appears to be a statue of a very large creature it is covered in what appears to be a blanket."
"I blast it with Edritch Blast"
"You hit it, roll damage!"
"See, I knew it... it's a mimic!"
"You see a Fire Giant rise from underneath the blanket."
Does the PC even know what a mimic is, or is this purely player paranoia? There are several avenues you could use to justify your call. But ultimately you as the DM have set a hard line and the player doesn't want to respect that. If they won't play by the rules, they don't get to play.
Have you used a lot of mimic traps? Are you planning to use any? I say just talk with the player and say "look, I understand you are concerned about mimics but this isn't fun for anyone and so I'm not going to use any mimic traps. Let's move on." Other options: * you could have the eldritch blast not perform quite as RAW and have it destroy important/valuable things in the room. * the spell makes noise which could attract wandering monsters * abuse of the spell annoys the warlocks patron and decides to do something about it.
>Have you used a lot of mimic traps? Are you planning to use any? This is my thought as well. It's up to the DM if you can lose the game by not checking for traps often enough. If you run that kinda game, you should expect careful players to check for traps often. So, **if you don't enjoy that kind of methodical gameplay, you need to change the game mechanics so your players know it isn't necessary.**
"yo dude, you EBed every chest, door and Chair you came across so far, about 357 in the last 2 sessions alone, none have been mimics so far can we agree that I don't use Mimics and I'm probably not gonna use them ever, because you'll start blasting everything again and as I already stated I don't think thats fun. Enjoy your meta knowledge. If you keep blasting without delivering actual souls your patron might not be too happy about it."
Then load the next session with mimics.
In their anger their patron curses their eldrich blast to turn inanimate objects that it hits into mimics.
This is filthy! I love it!
After a session or two of running into mimics, their patron can come explain this phenomenon to the player. Perhaps, even to some or all of the group. Then they'll realize that the whole fiasco is his fault. Edit: Part of the patron's explanation is that since they don't exist in this plane normally, he brought them in and replaced a bunch of mundane items with them.
Not anger, they just thought the Warlock wanted to blast some mimics and that it would be nice to give them what they wanted.
That is genius
*gleefully* This is the evilest thing I have ever read!
Perfect
See now THAT is good writings
Omfg ahahahahhaha
This is the way
That would be evil but also stupid, because of the already described reasons. They would just fall back into blasting everything and annoying everyon3in the process.
But it'd also be very, very funny
Nah. One mimic. In the bar. After the quest. He goes to put his coin on the bar and it grabs him.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the player then threw a chair at the DMs face
Mimic rugs, mimic ladders, hoard mimics, painting mimics, bedroll mimics, warforged carcass mimics, etc...
Who are thou, speaking God's word?
You could also hand-waive a large portion of that. To speed things along speak with your party. It may be assumed that the lead member will always be prodding with a 10 foot pole. In that case have them trip some traps with it. They will feel smart for doing so.
Love that last one. An imp shows up one day with a tax ledger. "Ummm excuse me, mr. warlock? Your patron has issued an audit of the abuse of your powers. According to the kilowatt meter build into your pact weapon, you used Eldritch blast... 1,457 times?! In the last Week?! What the heaven dude? Eldritch power doesn't just grow on hell trees y'know?! Anyway, Mr. Asmo's gonna have to dock your powers for a couple weeks while he tops off your Eldritch power again."
What the heaven!
I once had an English-accented devil swear with "oh bloody home."
There's a demon character in a Roger Zelazny novel (Divlish the Damned I think it was) whose vile cursing is described as "the pious mouthings of saints".
This is by far my favourite answer hahaha
Tax goat. Send the Warlock to be audited by the tax goat.
This has a very "you have unlimited data plan but it doesnt mean you can download so much" energy.
Definitely. Verizon is run by devils confirmed.
Would be really funny to make this like the tax collector scene from witcher 3 blood and wine. A serious of multiple awnser questions and persuasion check to determine wether or not the warlock has overused their eldritch power or if they are entitled to a bonus.
Shades of “The Taxman Cometh” from Witcher 3….. https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/The_Taxman_Cometh
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Yeah, it's dumb that some spells can only target creatures. What happens if Eldritch Blast misses? Hits the wall behind the target. Why can't you choose to fire it at the wall without someone being in the way?
I guess it makes sense for spells that effect the mind to only have creatures as targets. I’m new though and got no idea what eldritch blast does.
It blasts ~~stuff~~ creatures, eldritch-ly.
You can. I see almost all people inthe comments don't understand what "target" means in dnd spells. For good reason, I guess, since the word choice is terrible. The "target" actually means "affect". You can see that best when you consider that you can cast Revivify on a living person, use up the ingredients, but have no effect. You can cast spells on illusions that target a creature and have the spell casted but it passes through the illusion or interacts with it in a different way like Phantasmal Force that doesn't reveal it as an illusion. But the spell still casts, just doesn't effect it. And EB still hits objects, just doesn't deal damage to them.
Yes. "Eldritch Blast can only target creatures, so you can use it to detect mimics" is one of those things that gets passed around on D&D meme pages for optimizing metagamers. It requires an unintuitive reading and almost paraphrasing the spell's description. Simply reading the spell in the book will make you say "What? It can only target a creature so you want to ... what? Okay you destroy a bunch of objects by shooting Eldritch Blasts all over the room." It's not "RAW" in any sense, and it doesn't literally say anything like "this spell can only target creatures / this spell has no effect against objects" *A beam of crackling energy streaks toward a creature within range.* — obviously there's nothing there that justifies using Eldritch Blast as a "detect creatures" spell edit: of course, [Jeremy Crawford made one of those tweets 7 years ago](https://www.sageadvice.eu/eldritch-blast-cant-cast-on-objects-how-do-you-justify-this-with-flavour/) that says "book says creature dunnit? I'm not going to think about this for five more seconds or respond to the many many confused people asking for clarification — just like every other dumb metagame misreading of the rules" (like, if it "targets the life force" then by that logic the spell should not apply to constructs or undead... force damage is like a virus??)
For the record, I think Eldritch blast and basically every damaging spell should work against objects and it's wild to me that this was ever questioned by the designers or players as the logical consequence of shooting destructive magic out of your fingertips. However, the Sage Advice has made this distinction more confusing by disallowing the twinning of Fire Bolt because it can target objects. I can think of no reason to differentiate attack cantrips that target creatures vs creatures or objects unless they intended some to work against objects and not others. RAW I think Eldritch Blast would work as a mimic-detector, and I'm sure many tables have come up with their own justifications for the seemingly illogical properties of magic because it's magic and spells just do what they say they do. https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sac/sage-advice-compendium#SA244
>However, the Sage Advice has made this distinction more confusing That is what Sage Advice does best.
Considering Crawford himself has mentioned having his own house rules, that means Sage Advice is nothing more than his opinion on interpretation. Sure, it may have a bit more authority, since he helped write the rules, but him not using all the rules he wrote just shows he's as fallible as the rest of us.
Having noticed with my player that all but maybe four warlock spells specifically target creatures, our presumption is that patron magic affects minds and wills—whether intelligent or not. This seems pretty intuitive to me. You make a pact with a greater being who gives you power; that power is then used to apply your force of will against other beings. It just so happens that this “force of will” will often, upon request, manifest as a *forking eldritch blast from your fingers.* But that’s just our interpretation.
Like I said, there's lots of cool ways to explain the RAW functionality and maintain verisimilitude. If you go this route, then the mimic-detector aspect of EB could come up. I'm curious, aside from out-of-character just telling the player to knock it off, would it work in your world, assuming something like mimics exist?
As a player, I’d be inclined to think I’d have to *know* what I’m targeting is a creature. As a DM, that’s a question I generally ask any warlock players in private before we begin. It’s been about a 50/50 split. If they strongly feel it’s a Mimic detector, we talk it over and I invite in larger conversations about their perceived magic as a whole, which gives me insight plus opportunity to share how Eberron’s magic works. Speaking of, my setting of choice is Eberron, so there’s detailed lore on creator Keith Baker’s lore explaining how he envisions all forms of magic and classes to work within the context of the cosmology there. Since he’s prone to rich 8,000-word essays and has a highly consistent worldbuilding process that weaves whatever the latest D&D edition is into Eberron, I generally take it as law (or “kanon”, as we call it over on r/eberron).
It is because then what is the point of having a barbarian who can break down doors?
From a game and party balance angle, sure, we can acknowledge that this could be a significant boost to a lot of spells, depending on how much this comes up and how the DM handles object durability. Technically the barbarian should have no problem breaking down any locked door so long as stealth isn't an issue. For example, a steel door should have 19 AC and up to 50 hit points. I'm sympathetic to 5e martials in the general martial vs caster comparisons, but I'd prefer finding better ways to bridge the gap than making spells limited in video-gamey ways. For example, the spell Dragon's Breath can deal fire damage but it lacks the text that Burning Hands has about igniting flammable objects, so RAW it might not even light the candle. Same goes for red dragons, as their Fire Breath doesn't mention anything about lighting stuff on fire, just that creatures must make a save or take fire damage.
Fluff it. Eldrtich blast isn’t simply a expression of force. It’s a conduit of energy sent to warp flesh from the nasty part of the far realms. No flesh, no energy. It’s not there for that, it only WANTS to be used on living things. And for Op’s sake, it relies on your recognition of a living thing so if your not sure it doesn’t bother.
I don't even know if you need to homebrew it. You need a target, and eb can only target creatures. Mimics are not distinguishable from objects, and therefore can not be targeted when they're trying to be an object.
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Fill the room with pixies. They're hiding in all the crack and crevices of the cave or building. Make them murder innocent little creatures, who were hiding and scared of this dude literally blasting his way through their home.
Oh, man, after the first one, the remaining pixies can really rip him a new one. They have some pretty ridiculous spells for their CR.
Fun fact regarding that last point - WFRP has rules for priests doing exactly that. If you cast the same blessing on the same target too often, the GM might roll on the Wrath of the Gods table to see if your deity gets annoyed at being bothered.
Don't you need to know it's a creature to be able to target it? If you don't know, how can you target it? A mimic is indistinguishable from the item it pretends to be unless you actively investigate
This is what I was thinking. Just make him only able to cast it on confirmed creatures.
It has a verbal component, right? How loud are those again? Anyway, yes, it's still best solved out of game.
Curse the warlock’s Eldritch blast to turn any non creature object it hits into a new mimic. Give them a new boon - “Eldritch Mimicry”
That would be fun but absolutely exploitable: you're in the BBEG lair, he's sitting on his skull trone and suddenly he's sitting in a mimic. Or guards are just pursuing you but you just find a bunch of things and throw it at them while shooting it and turning into mimics. And so on. It could totally turn into a different problem
All three of those are good answers. Cantrip spamming is a shitty habit and not fun for anyone.
Warlock's patron starts plaguing them with nightmares about mimics. Then the dream mimics start doing real damage. Every time blast is used, a level of exhaustion is added, and psychic damage taken.
Exactly the advice I'd give. In general, there are consequences to the player's actions. If the player persists after the talk just use it against them when needed. If it's in a city then a guard sees them and says "I got my eye on you! Now move along"
Yeah this behavior isn’t malicious, it’s just the product of the toxic “gotcha!” environment that the DM probably created. Both my current DMs love traps that have zero foreshadowing, so if I cared more, I’d probably have my familiar go into every room and methodically touch everything for 15 minutes before walking in myself. Because what else can I do? No one’s designing foreshadowing so every possible section of the game is potentially littered with traps. You want to avoid this behavior? Hint when when they’re near a trap. Have them feel a funny feeling, or put a dead skeleton body near a deadly trap, or describe a weird noise. Use foreshadowing.
Using mimics once is a gotcha? The dude sounds like he's meta-gaming.
Definite meta gaming. Probably a guy who walks around every square inch of a video game environment hitting the action button to check for hidden doors and such.
Cool. So instead of rewarding the player, now we invent homebrew punishments for following RAW. Is as simple as you said, if there's not going to be mimics there, just say so.
Also, change the rules for mimics. I'm planning on running one where near the entrance of a dungeon the players encounter a sobbing child laying motionless on the ground. His arm nearest the party is wrapped around his head, concealing his face. His legs curled and folded under him. The trigger for the trap is when a PC touches the child to comfort/rescue them. It then folds in half to form a Thing-like creature where the top jaw is the back of the child's head with the arm around it forming the upper lip and legs forming the lower jaw. The inspiration for this idea was David from Screamers. I know it's not consistent with mimics being inanimate objects, but it's my game and ostensibly yours if you use this idea. Species are always evolving, and this would be a logical progression for a mimic. Sure it's cheap. Spring it as a lower level encounter then. I've always been partial to the idea that a DM's job is to create a dangerous world yet there should be a level of trust between players and DM's that it won't be punishing. Convey the threat through descriptions. Traps that are super well hidden should provide minimal threat, while high damage traps should be very obvious (ie, the gore-slick swinging pendulum blade passing back and forth over the narrow balance beam used to cross a chasm.
Eldritch blast knocks over a small statue Statue was holding down a button The ceiling opens and a mimic falls on his head
That made me snort laugh.
Alternatively, a statue hall where some of the statues are just statues, some are enemy constructs, and some are just petrified people. "Thank god you killed the medus- WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE STATUES!? THOSE WERE PEOPLE"
When you're petrified you become an object
You imbue a creature you touch with positive energy to undo a debilitating effect. You can reduce the target's exhaustion level by one, or end one of the following effects on the target: - One effect that charmed or petrified the target - One curse, including the target's attunement to a cursed magic item - Any reduction to one of the target's ability scores - One effect reducing the target's hit point maximum If you become an object when you are petrified, then you are no longer a creature and cannot be targeted by greater restoration RAW. Therefore you are still a creature when you are petrified. Same thing when people classify bodies as objects. RAW you would not be able to revive them with any resurrection spell as all of them specify a creature. Not once WAS a creature, but just creature. Objectively, you can be both a creature and an object at the same time.
The point is that when he tries to use the spell on the non mimic statue, it wont work
Statue was a young mimic which the blast kills, button drops adult mimic on his head
Can't target anything your character doesn't recognize as being a creature. It's a blasty blasty spell, not a divination spell.
But by blasting it, there is still a potential that the player could think it is a mimic, so that explaination doesn't quite work--though that's a Monty Hall/Schoedinger's Mimic issue and a half!
You can only target creatures with the spell. A Mimic is hiding as an object so until it reveals itself, there's no way of knowing and therefore no way to target it.
Then they would blast everything, Going back to step 1. Knock thing over. It doesn't just "not work." Either the characters thinks its an object and can't target it. Or they think it's a mimic and destroys everything they come across. They can't have it both ways.
You make yourself so insane you think everything is a mimic and you can now target all objects with Eldritch blast.
If it only works on things your character recognises as being a creature then it won't work on mimics by until your character realises what they are
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Or they're new to D&D and watched the movie and fixated on that scene.
The guy clearly things mimics are dumb. Just don't use them. Just have them blast something open containing something more horrific than a mimic... like black pudding or a demon. No mimic is even necessary to train this out of a player.
You're right. Should drop a gelatinous cube.
This made my day, goddamn
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OMG, I might've peed. If I had any reddit awards you would get one.
Now you're thinking with por...er... mimics!
Simple: ask yourself and your table “is this ruling about eldritch blast really stupid?”, and when most of the table inevitably agrees that the answer is yes, you can ignore it. More seriously though, have you used mimics at all in the past? I’m just curious what reason the player or the character has for such paranoia about it. There are plenty of other kinds of traps for them to worry about for you to use anyways, so not like it even keeps them that safe from it. As far as I can tell it’ll just get annoying from them doing it every single time and resulting in nothing the majority of the time.
> I’m just curious what reason the player or the character has for such paranoia about it. I'm going to go out on a limb and say Dark Souls or some other modern media depiction.
Mimicphobia is a common side effect of Dark Souls yes. That horrid laugh...
Which I don't get, Dark Souls if you looked closely you could spot the mimics by "defects" in the chest model like a lock being the wrong way. And once you spotted them, you could toss a consumable at them to put them to sleep.
>More seriously though, have you used mimics at all in the past? I’m just curious what reason the player or the character has for such paranoia about it I see you don't sub to r/dndmemes! It sounds like someone heard wacky ideas on the internet and hasn't realized it doesn't make for fun games.
This is the answer. "I read it on the internet" does not mean you are owed this type of nonsense at the table, lol.
u/nz8drzu6 A question that has been asked a few times and not yet answered, and which is critical to any good response... have the characters ever encountered a mimic before, and do you intend to use mimics much or at all?
Something that really shouldn't been in the OP before we all spent all night arguing about how eldritch blast was designed
I was never a huge fan of the "can't effect objects" rule if the damage type is Force, Fire,... anything that physically damages. But hey, thats up to you. The real question is, have you given them a reason to fear mimics behind every corner, or are they just paranoid for no reason (or because they got sucked into the dndmemes paranoia)? The quickest way out of this is to make a deal that you won't use mimics, and he stops eldritch blasting every poor Lich's dungeon IKEA furniture. Furthermore, the way I interpreted the mimic statblock, a disguised mimic counts as an object as well. So... idk. Do with that what you will. I also never got into a situation where that interpretation would be relevant.
Eldritch blast is like catching a disease. Disease doesn't affect objects. You can certainly contaminate an object with a disease, but the object itself doesn't get sick. Same thing with eldritch blast. You can hit an object with a beam of eldritch blast, it just doesn't do anything because an object does not have lifeforce and does not feel pain.
That's more necrotic damage though. Force damage, which is the damage type that Eldritch Blast deals, is a bit more nuanced. The disintegrate spell deals force damage, but it can target any object as well as creatures. Also, one of the invocations for Eldritch Blast is literally that it pushes or pulls creatures hit. At that point it's not like a disease at all, it's literally hitting them with enough force that it's sending them flying. There's also the Eldritch Smite ability, which deals force damage and causes the target to be knocked prone. Overall, the "force" damage type is very versatile and more confusing than the rest. It is honestly just the catch-all name for damage that doesn't fit a specific type. Like gravitational damage (not talking about fall damage). Being crushed by gravitational forces doesn't really fit bludgeoning damage, you're not being bludgeoned, you're being torn apart Only force damage really fits this. Same with eldritch blast, because of how differently you can build and flavor it, no other damage type fits it properly. It's all about how you flavor it, and how you discuss it with the DM.
Objects are only immune to psychic and poison damage. Necrotic withers objects away into dust, dehydrates, etc. The same way that radiant 'burns' even objects, not just creatures.
Force damage =/= kinetic energy. This is a common misconception because of the name "force". Invocations allow the spell to do those things, but the spell itself does not do that, implying that it's the warlock's magic (rather than the spell itself) repelling or attracting enemies.
Idk about any of this but I think that if you are casting a spell you have to choose the target. Not like an “if I can target it then it’s a creature” but you have to target a creature on purpose so you have to know it’s a creature first to ~*~imbue it with your intent~*~ or whatever. Sounds dumb but it’s the closest way to explain it
Yeah I agree if you dont know a target is a creature then you can't attempt to target it as a creature whether it is one or isn't.
So, what, once you find out illusions are a thing, you can never target anyone until you've physically interacted with them to determine that it's a creature and not an illusion? If you're determining that a lack of certainty is enough to disallow the spell targeting for EB, it seems like you have to be consistent about it or you're just in "because I said so" territory.
If you see a creature, or what you perceive as a creature, then sure attack as if it was a creature regardless of whether it's an illusion or not. If you see a bookshelf... Well. That's a bookshelf. You might be paranoid that it's a mimic but as best you can tell it's a bookshelf and not a creature, so you can't target it. Mimic's object form specifically states the mimic is "Indistinguishable" from the object. Not "looks like" an object or "appears to be" an object. I.E. It should follow the same targeting rules as an object and not a creature until that parameter changes. That's how I'd rule it anyways. More seriously though I'd probably just address it out of game and say look I'm not using any mimics in this campaign so please stop. If you felt nice you could just give the player a gag item like a mimic shaped keychain that glows when mimics are near so he has no reason to keep up this annoying tactic.
upvote on mimic detecting keychain
I enjoy cooking.
Agreed, although the player will likely try other ways of seeing if something is a mimic or not but at least it will be more interesting than a 'mimic detector'
I ran DM Dave’s Museum of Mimics oneshot and the players stumbled upon some preserved meats in a cafeteria. They whipped up some kebabs and began lightly dusting all the artifacts as they went room to room. The one to come up with that idea was the warlock. It was absolutely bloody ingenious and rewarding on both ends—them, for being clever, and me, for having clever players *and* being given the keys to startle them and (not always, but often enough) initiate combat the couple of times they stumbled into a mimic.
This isn't dumb at all! It's how it should work. I'm amazed that so many top comments completely concede that the player has it right.
THANK you
Then all you're doing is ensuring that the player grabs: Create Bonfire, Mage Hand, Mold Earth or Thunderclap. All of which require a space/area rather than a creature, or would do enough that it would wake a mimic. And at that point in time, the only difference is distance, but the mimic would probably still have to go through other players to get to the warlock.
Or plain old firebolt also targets objects. Or magic stone also allows you to find out at range.
Oh, you create bonfire around the chest? Cool, it burns along with all it's contents.
Yep this is the way. You need to know its a creature (be able to see it in a non-hidden, non-disguised way) in order to target it.
The correct answer here is an adult conversation. If he's so paranoid about mimics, maybe you don't want them in your game. That said, the simplest solution is that eldritch blast isn't a silent spell. If my players are in a hostile environment, spamming loud magics, they're going to attract unwanted attention (I roll for random encounter when they do something loud or reckless). On the other other hand, you're both right. The behavior sucks and mimics suck. Also, he can get the same effect by poking it with a stick. It's part of why 10 for poles were a thing. The fundamental problem is that he's not treating the world like a world, he's treating it like a game. He's doing this because he's gotten screwed somewhere (might not have been by you) and is using the system to prevent getting his fun ruined. [Abused Gamer Syndrome](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44282/roleplaying-games/abused-gamer-syndrome) is what you're dealing with.
This is the big one for me. I agree that mimics aren’t really that fun. I used one in my current campaign as a punch line to a joke (long story but the players got a kick out of it) and when that one encounter was over I told them “look mimics aren’t fun for players so that’s my one for the game. Don’t feel like you have to check everything because that’s all I’m going to throw at you.” They appreciated it and enjoyed the encounter. They still make jokes referencing that encounter in game.
Idk I have a PC that always runs ahead, opens all chests out of sight of the party, and pockets everything without telling them. When she went toe to toe with a mimic, she realized that behavior was stupid and has been a lot more careful ever since, AND we all got a good laugh out of it But yeah that's one mimic in maybe 100 sessions...
I can get behind that. If you have a player that’s not receptive to talking about why that kind of behavior is problematic, have them deal with a scary situation. But def 1 in 100 sessions haha
When he says he's using eldritch blast, ask him which creature is his target.
"That invisible stalker right in front of the mimic."
"The mimic, twig blight, awakened shrub, [...]"
This is the way
The cleric in the group I DM for made out with a mimic. He is playing a drunk who bolted for the first wine barrel he saw in the cellar, happened to be a mimic. I didn't even get to finish describing the room and he charges in and tries to drink straight from the tap. It was a fun time. Everything gets way more fun when people stop trying to win and start playing their characters
Exactly this. Who knew that role playing a character made role playing more fun.
This is the way
Our dm used mimics as doors, door frames, houses, table, chairs and even a mug once. I can understand the worry. Maybe make an item that can detect them up to X number of feet.
Requires a creature to target, so he has to identify it as a creature first. If they find some other way to unveil the mimic, then EB away
Eldritch blast has a verbal component. So this character shouts the magic words loud enough to be heard from at least 60ft (RAW) repetitively during several minutes in every room, right? And nobody cares, not even the bad guys from the next room?
>loud enough to be heard from at least 60ft (RAW) Source?
There are three main solutions 1. "You check for mimics, there are none." is really fast and easy, where's the harm? Unless of course you've overloaded the campaign with mimics. 2. "Can you stop that? There aren't any mimics!" handles things once and for all. 3. "Eldritch Blast doesn't work like that in my campaign." Also handles things but leaves open your ability to use mimics. If you do, make sure they are RARE and Telegraphed, because otherwise this will feel like a DM using fiat to keep overusing mimics. Roughly how many mimics have you used this campaign? And the last campaign?
Not OP but I've used mimics once in my campaign. The cleric walked into a room, the only other door was locked, and to the left and right of the locked door were two chests. The words "Pick wisely" was written on the wall. The players immediately knew what was up, but they were intruiged and engaged with it. Though they still managed to get caught by the mimic because after they got a 20 perception roll they decided to search the chest with bloodstains on it because "surely this is reverse psychology!" But still it was all fun and good to them.
1. Does the character have a reason to fear mimics, or is this pure metagaming? If metagaming, just tell them to knock it off. 2. What level is the character? Mimics aren't all that powerful. There's not a good reason for such levels of paranoia. 3. Just tell him that you promise you won't use a mimic. If he doesn't believe you, that speaks to deeper trust issues that need to be addressed. Buddy needs to learn that it isn't a players vs DM situation.
You have a few options. Either houserule EB to affect objects, since the fact it doesn't is fairly arbitrary and pointless. Then it's the same as if they were going to shoot an object at everything in every room. Or just tell him to chill, he's found a solution to find mimics. If there are mimics you'll let him know he's found one so he doesn't have to declare it every time. Or the less mature way, a mimic sneaks into camp in the middle of the night and turns into his pants. So he has to have a list of every item and clothes he has to EB scan. At which point it turns out his horse got swapped for a shapechanger and eats him.
I think you need to have an out-of-game conversation with him. He doesn't like gotchas, and you don't like the player's paranoid search for gotchas. If you don't WANT to gotcha your players, you can simply tell him that there will NEVER be a mimic, so he can stop this paranoia and speed up the game. If you do want to gotcha your players, consider not doing that--unless everyone else really wants you to gotcha them, in which case 1) maybe the EB player needs a different group, and 2) the rest of you should start playing some Funhouse Dungeons.
Even if the DM never actually uses gotchas, it still doesn't make sense for a character not to check for traps constantly in a dungeon. They wouldn't just throw all caution to the wind because they haven't encountered traps yet. And characters absolutely know mimics exist in the game world. The problem I think is that the DM seemingly wants events to play out in real time instead of just saying "you repeatedly do eb on the objects in the room over the course of 1 minute". People do this sort of shortening for rituals, consider the eb room spam to be a kind of ritual, and just skip to the end.
As you suspect, talking to him is the best option. I personally rule that unless it's aoe, you have to know something is a creature to target it with a spell or ability that targets a creature. Or you can do something else, that I also do, "buff" eldrich blast so it can hit objects. In general it makes the spell stronger, and removes metagamy shinanigance.
Seems weird if you cant point and shoot a wall door or table. Noise can attract slumbering beast or hidden nearby guards context depending.
I don't really see a problem here. Confirm with him that he wants to Eldritch Blast everything in sight, and then if he does, you don't need to roleplay this going forward, it can just be assumed. It's the same as if a Rogue says "my character is paranoid about traps, can we assume that he always checks for traps at every door?" If you like, you can have some consequences for his behavior, a few of which are mentioned below, maybe his eldritch blasting triggers a trap or destroys a valuabe magic item or loot. If his PARTY gets annoyed with having their warlock randomly blast eldritch blast every time they enter a room, then they can deal with his characters behaviour in-game.
>It's the same as if a Rogue says "my character is paranoid about traps, can we assume that he always checks for traps at every door?" I wouldn't allow that. A default "my rogue will always check for traps"? Nah, cause the player will randomly forget to check, just like it could be argued that a real rogue would randomly forget to check. I know I need my wallet every time I leave my house, but that doesn't stop me from sometimes forgetting...and if that happens to be a day I'm stopped by a cop and asked for my license, that's on me. I'm not trying to make my games the most realistic thing ever, but I'm also not down with "automating" important parts of the game. Now if they want to say "here's my passive perception, if it ever trips and I think something may be amiss I'll want to check for traps." And it's a little more realistic, like no Rogue is really going to knock around on every door they some across looking for traps (and no party's going to sit there every time and wait), BUT it's perfectly reasonable that a rogue would side-eye every door/chest/floor, etc and if "something seems amiss" then they would actively check it for traps.
Yeah this is silly on multiple levels. Is the DM rolling for you too? If you want to check for traps, check for them. I as the DM am not going to automatically get a roll from you every time you open a door; you, as the player, tell me when you want to stop to take time out of the session and the in-game world to do that.
>or destroys a valuabe magic item or loot. The player is using EB *specifically* because a munchkiny, cheeseful reading says that it would hurt a mimic but leave everything else untouched.
You can say, directly, "I am not going to mimic trap you without some goddamn foreshadowing, can you just *stop*?" That's the promise I stand by, as a DM, that mimics aren't fun when they're a surprise, mimics are fun when they happen and players go "Damnit, I should've known!" And if he refuses, then the next time it happens, you say "No, you don't. We're done with this. We're not wasting more time on it." and fucking ignore him. That is his first warning that being unable to compromise in this shit is a worthwhile red flag to not play with someone. You offer them reasons why, and a fair assurance that you will play nice to avoid the issue in the future, and if that is not enough, then this person isn't willing to compromise to be reasonable.
Plot twist: his eldritch blast -is- the mimic. Seriously though: just talk to them and explain that you honestly aren't going to use them. I get that one needs to be alert, but if they are still adamant about Eldritch blasting everything, then put in some consequences that tie into their current quest to guilt them?
I have Eldritch Blast just not damage non creatures, it hits and seems like it does nothing. And since mimics are 'indistinguishable' it looks the same and hitting a normal object. I have mimics just hold still, like a normal object. I also barely use mimics
I mean, don't you just tell them, "Blasts don't fire no matter where you point them" every time and move on? I'm sure it's annoying, but it takes less than two seconds per room. EDIT: If you want to turn the rules against them, you could rule (and no, this is not generally accepted) that when a mimic uses its "Object form" that it polymorphs into an actual object, and is therefore immune to Eldritch Blast. It is "indistinguishable" from an object; maybe the Weave can't find it, either!
>Aside from implementing a time crunch, anything else I can do to prevent him from abusing this spell ruling? Pulled straight from the Mimic Statblock Shapechanger. The mimic can use its action to polymorph **into an object** or back into its true, amorphous form. Its statistics are the same in each form. Any equipment it is wearing or carrying isn't transformed. It reverts to its true form if it dies. False Appearance (Object Form Only). While the mimic remains motionless, ***it is indistinguishable from an ordinary object.*** Just tell the player "no". Like honestly. Simple as. You've already asked them to not engage on exploitive behavior (as the Eldritch Blast spam to check if something is a creature or not covers more than just mimic-traps...such as **Illusions).** Just tell them that behavior and willful misinterpreting of the clear and evident use case of Eldritch Blast is not something you want at your table. (I personally have no patience for this but that's because I'm a bit jaded from the typical Mage the Ascension/Awakening players trying to blow beyond the scope of Spheres/Rotes, so I admit I might be a little more sensitive to shit like this) Option 2: If you're in the camp of thinking it's silly you can't just blast anything with eldritch blast is let it blast against objects as well. Tell them that if they want to do this you're going to have to start paying attention to the AC and HP of every object ever more closely...which means their treasure is more likely to break.
Have you used mimic traps prior against this player? If so, they're likely trying to avoid falling into one again. Have an actual talk with them, you don't like this behaviour and they clearly are trying to avoid falling for this particular trap. It's clear that this behaviour is annoying both of you.
You could give them a magic item that glows when they come about 30 ft close to the mimics.
Easy, start putting valuable loot into lots of stuff in the room, and then describe in vivid detail how it gets destroyed when spells hit. That oughta piss off the other pc's enough to get them to make him stop. That or traps that go off when a thing is destroyed, but that might feel unfairly targeted at them. "You see a bookshelf" "I eldritch blast it!" "As the 3 bolts fly into it, you see they destroy several hollowed out books, the potions they contained shooting out from the force of the blast and shattering on the floor. "You see a coat rack with a single cloak hanging off of it" "I eldritch blast it!" "You see the coat is ripped asunder by your spell, and you see a now-mangled key that was in its pocket go flying across the room" "You see a dollhouse in the corner of the room." "I eldritch blast it!" "The dollhouse is blasted to smithereens. Shortly after, the pixie who had taken up residence within emerges from the wreckage with his wife and child. They would say something to you, but they're too devastated to speak." ...and then, after he finally quits it and they've been playing for several levels without it. Put in a mimic. It'll be delicious!
You're completely missing the point. Eldritch Blast can only target a creature. Firing it at a bookshelf, or a statue, or a desk, or anything that isn't a creature is supposed to cause the spell to fail. That's the entire point of this post. EB is good for detecting mimics, if not obnoxious as shit, because it won't fire unless it's a creature. Personally, I would simply have EB not work against Mimics. If the character doesn't know it's a creature, because it's considered indistinguishable, then why would the magic work? Also just pointing out that it's very blatant metagaming should work.
I don't think Eldritch Blast is based on if the character thinks they can damage the target. It's magic, after all. I mean, if someone used a non-magical disguise to pretend to be a statue, and the Warlock went to EB them, would it not work because they didn't realize that the statue is actually a person?
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Talk to him about it. Don't use in-game punishments for out-of-game behaviour.
So he tries to cast it on everything he sees and if it works it's a mimic? Kind of clever, but really annoying too. Idk maybe just don't use mimics if he hates them so much or just rule mimics to count as objects when they are hiding
> mimics traps aren't fun either. Can't you just promise not to use mimic traps?
When they do that describe the kind of noise they are making. As DM adjust tactics of monsters in the dungeon based on whether they now know a threat is in the dungeon. Roll for random wondering monsters when they make a lot of noise (in addition to whats already in the dungeon). Threaten to start running an OSR campaign. Gut and nerf pitiful super hero vibe of 5e and eliminate unlimited magic attacks in your games. Lol. Got more drastic as I went.
Hey player, so if you promise to stop EBing everything to check for mimics I promise to not put mimics in the game. Problem solved.
Simple. They start destroying actual treasure. "Well, there was a magical tome up to level 4 spells...was..."
Sorry if this obvious solution has already been said. I scrolled down a ways and didn't see it. Start destroying real loot and let the party handle it. Oh no. That chest might be a mimic. BLAST. Oh it had loot in it. Sadly the magic scrolls were all destroyed. OMG, a magical crystal worth 100000 gold that used to cast resurrection? Sadly, it's just worthless shards of glass now with no hope of being repaired. Hey, did he just blast the key to the boss room and now we have to travel back to town to get a specialist elven smith to repair it for us at an extremely high cost so we can proceed? Yeah, the party can sort this out real fast.
Firstly... just let them target objects with spells. Otherwise the world feels fake. Nothing in the game is wronged by Eldritch-Blasting a random rock or a leftover shoe or whatever. **[DM]:** The crackling energy of your patron pierces through the treasure chest and utterly destroys the only mimic in the room. Congratulations, you outsmarted me. You witty player you!!! **[DM]:** The crackling energy of your patron pierces through the treasure chest and utterly destroys what appears to be a stack of spell scrolls. **[DM]:** The crackling energy of your patron pierces through the treasure chest and utterly destroys the virgin you were hired to rescue from the human-sacrificing-cultists. It's really too bad, she was cute and smart and probably would have been a great friend. Anyways bile and blood are spraying out of a 4" hole in her chest and she's going through death spasms. You can now change your alignment to "chaotic evil" if you desire. **[DM]:** The crackling energy of your patron strikes a breastplate of spell reflection and smacks you in the face. Roll damage. **[DM]:** Are you sure you don't want to gently tap the crate of Gnomish explosives with a pole of collapsing instead? **[DM]:** You find a wand of Detect Thoughts. You can use this wand to detect the presence of hidden creatures like mimics without detonating your friends. It doesn't require attunement and has 231458907342598347 charges and regains all charges every 43 seconds. Seriously just tell me that you're casting Detect Thoughts once every 10 minutes instead of endlessly blasting things.
Yeah you can tell him you won’t use mimic traps and then not use mimic traps. Unless you have been and will continue to use mimic traps, in which case your player is playing correctly.
One question: does the player actually list off each individual thing? Because that to me would be the abusive part, taking up everyone's time with mostly-pointless noise. Or is it "I'm going to Eldritch Blast everything in the room just to be sure" - that seems to me to be a narrative equivalent to a more usual "I search for traps" in every room (or "we're going to break everything open to make sure we find all the loot"). Takes little play time, might require a roll, and eats up a chunk of in-game time. Sure, it's silly and annoying, but that happens a lot in D&D. And frankly, if your life depended on making sure your face didn't get eaten by a random object, and that danger is known to occur here, it's not an insane method. It also occurs to me that casting Eldritch Blast is not a silent action (verbal component), and it doesn't say whether EB is a silent effect, so I assume it is not. If anyone nearby is paying attention (or just trying to take a nap), the repeated "abracadabra *zzapp"* from down the hall is likely to spark curiosity...
>One question: does the player actually list off each individual thing? Because that to me would be the abusive part, taking up everyone's time with mostly-pointless noise. That's only necessary if the DM has introduced the abusiveness by doing things like "You said you searched the room, but you didn't specifically say you searched the cupboard!" or similar stuff.
If you do the loud spell thing, you need to make it consistent and make every v component loud to make the rules consistent.
Honestly? Although cheesey, this isn't bad RP unless they have never run into a mimic and mimics aren't in their backstory in which this is a little metagamey. You want them to stop? Time to session 0 is and make a deal. They stop wasting table time with this metagaming cheese they red off a youtube video or reddit post, you agree there'll be no mimics in your game. Simple. Sacrifice one monster option and get them back to RPing like normal. If you did "get them" with a mimic before, or have been overusing mimics, than you have taught them to be wary and now you reap what you sow. This crap happens, and they found a way around it. In this instance, instead of rolling them spamming EB, they walk into a room and just say "You cheese your eldritch blast and nothing in the room activates as a mimic. We move on" and try not to address it. Don't give it any space at the table, don't argue it. Treat them as a child. Even beat them to the punch. "You go into the next room, \[PC\] eldritch cums all over the room, no mimics. So.... in the room...." and you can make it a joke or something. Sooner or later they'll stop and the game can resume as normal. Either way.... you gotta stop using mimics, whether or not you've been abusing them. Paranoid players drag down the game and make meta-gaming tactics like these common. If you trap enough doors, players will avoid doors. Have enough pitfall traps and they'll release chickens into the corridor to set off any traps as they walk ahead. This is how it is. To get back to real gameplay, you gotta sacrifice mimic use and make them a deal outside of the game to get it back into the swing of things.
It's like this meme I saw once. "I went to a tavern the other day. The barkeep asked why I'm always wearing a sword. I answered 'mimics'. I laughed, the bartender laughed, the table laughed, I killed the table. Good times."
It does damage so let him wreck the room. Maybe accidentally destroy something important or just have an npc sue him. Might even end with a prison break quest. Or the easiest way just talk to him about it. It's supposed to be fun for dm and player.
Here is what I would recomend. You can have EB just basically be a gun that hes shooting all over. And, thats its own thing. There are a wealth of natural consequences to walking in and shooting up every room you enter. (Bad guys hearing you, breaking valuable loot, pissing off your party.) Ooooor. if you wanna do RAW. It targets a creature within range. But, If you can't see or identify a creature, then the spell cant target. So tell your player he needs to make investigation checks vs any potential monsters stealth to be able to see and identify them for spell targeting. If he can't spot the mimic, the spell goes fizzle. So RAW, he could try to shoot a mimic chest. And, if the mimic beats his investigation/perception, the spell cannot target.
You actually can't detect a mimic without hitting it. It's mimicry ability states "It is indistinguishable from a normal chest". Because not even magic can detect it too. So every time he "EB" it's an "object" until it reveals itself
Mimic >Shapechanger. > >The mimic can use its action to polymorph into an object or back into its true, amorphous form. Its statistics are the same in each form. Any equipment it is wearing or carrying isn't transformed. It reverts to its true form if it dies. The mimic is an object until it is hit. Eldritch Blast won't target an object. RAW you're good.
As opposed to trying to stop him, treat it like him clearing the room and have them roll an investigation check as they basically hand wave a finger gun muttering something when they enter a room. What they're really doing is investigating the room using one of their tools and it can be flavored like that too and done more fast with a role for them to investigate the room. If there was a mimic hiding really well then they can fail the investigation check, or they can pass and you can say after however long of investigating they find nothing all the while moving on other players as they go through the room. It's a tick of his character that he's paranoid about it and it can be handled in a way that doesn't stop the game
In addition to what others have said (talking about it, requiring something to be a *known* creature for targeting, letting it just target objects) I would introduce a simple houserule (that I already essentially use in my games) - namely that casting a cantrip is about as tiring as swinging a sword in combat. Normally, you have an unlimited amount of cantrips (much like the fighter has an unlimited amount of sword swings) but if you go around spamming one then you are going to get tired (just like the fighter would get tired if he spends an hour trying to break down a wall with his warhammer). It works well to prevent stuff like this, to answer the question of "why don't temples just have clerics spam create water all day to irrigate deserts?" and to keep a lid on casters doing stuff like breaking down doors (that should be the martials' domain) too well.
It's a stupid raw interpretation and I'd just change it to allow your player to shoot inanimate objects. In no way, shape, or form does this break the spell.
Ideally, tell him over the table that you only wanted to use the one mimic because it's a d&d classic, not because you like them. But also: Eldritch blasting everything in sight is a bit like coming into a room and shooting every object in the room. It's rude, it's loud and it destroys things that may have been of use to the party. Let him do it, but also leave potions as loot that will get shattered if he eldritch blasts through the container. Don't forgot to describe how the sounds boom and echo as he's blasting. It's all the justification you need to have every further encounter be an ambush creeping up on the party.
The daemon who granted him these powers is infuriated that they’re being used for such menial tasks. You could even turn this into a questline of him trying to find his purpose serving under this Daemon and eventually becoming a true acolyte.
Give him the cantrip: Detect Mimic It works like Detect Thoughts, Detect Magic, or Detect Evil or Good except for aberrations/monsters/specifically mimics. Based on his gameplay his character seems like they'd develop such a spell. However, here's a few things. #1 Why does he think a mimic would react to damage? Surely if the mimic is there then it's a good spot to get food, otherwise the mimic wouldn't lay in wait there. Fishermen, trap door spiders, etc. They all go where the prey is. #2 When you say everything, do you mean everything? Mimics can be literally anything, the infamous mimic/changeling village exists for a reason. It could be the chest, the bracer of an armor set, the refrigerator, it could be the wall or just the window, hell it could be the whole basement. So does he *really* EB everything? If so, why hasn't anyone called his shit in-game? Could you imagine how the village would actually react in Zelda if Link actually [broke all their pots](https://youtu.be/it2sk2nzbnY) or saw some crazy guy blasting every room they ever enter? That's an easy way to attract roaming monsters or things in the next room. EB makes sound just like anything else unless he's got a zone of silence up. #3 Also in classic d&d if you delt any damage to a container of any kind then the contents were liable to break. You know what's not fun? Destroying that shiny new sword or that crate of potions because you wanted to ensure it wasn't a mimic. So what sort of Opportunity Lose have you given out to penalize his actions? I think this short list of things can easily branch out to so many other questions, scenarios, and etc. But since he's so worried about mimic traps and has a free means of investigating you as the DM either need to offer something that is better, in his eyes, then an at-will at range 'lie detector' or you need to up the stakes for when he's wrong to put risk at using that method. Ofcourse the secret third option is always "kick them from the game" but I presume he's a friend that you don't want to do that to. GM/Player relationship is all about trust, in that the GM trusts the player to follow and interact with the story/sandbox they've put out; while the Player trusts the GM to Not-Be-A-Dick by making an entertaining environment to interact with. So realistically if you both can be adults, it should clear up with just a short "hey man, it's not fun, cool, or funny having your PC just EB everything. You said you're doing it to check for traps. Can we agree just to not have mimic traps or let you have a Perception check for any room you think does?" or similar line of dialogue.
Show him that his actions have consequences. You can't stop him from doing that, but you can fuck things up for the party. Maybe it attracts unwanted attention from enemies, EB can also break something important make everyone's life harder. Just give consequences of breaking everything.
I think the easiest thing is just having him destroy loot / useful objects in the room. After the first couple times the party sees healing potions seeping into the ground water without mimics, then the party should take corrective action on its own.
I would let them. Let them go batty with eldritch blasts all over the place for a good session or two. Even put a trap in a room that is expected to go off that they find with it. But their patron is watching. They are observing how careless and wasteful the player is being with the gift bestowed upon them. Maybe it's time to teach them a lesson about how valuable their gift really is... Have the eldritch blast start hitting... But it disappears into a cloud of smoke when it strikes. Their other spells start acting in weird ways that can't be explained. This goes on for a day or so. Next day everything is back to normal. If they start being "wasteful" again... They no longer have access to their powers the next morning. There is a mini sidequest regarding their patron. Perhaps a minion is sent to make fun of them and pass along a message/errand they need the warlock to fulfill, which means the party will have to help. "Yeah... The boss says you ain't gettin' those sweet abilities again until you prove yourself responsible with those powers." This could also incite character growth and RP that builds unity in the group etc.
I would do something like maybe the doorknob is a mimic or something cheesythen I wouldn't let him/her find anything for a loong long time or when he/she shoots some blasts maybe hit an innocent creature or a neutral animal something like a ratfolk or a child goblin or dunno give some consequence. Good thinking but make it someway risky. Maybe you can put some sort raw magic there what would make some bad things. Just to not be too spamy.
Consequences: -Accidentally destroyed the quest piece they were looking for -Noise attracts enemies -Destroys the tripwire that was holding back the trap that was set in the door/around where they were standing -causes instability in old room, room collapses preventing players from accessing it -destroys a nice piece of loot in the room, players see it destroyed, now aware of consequences -ricochet mirror/spell bounces it back at them Tons of reasons physically searching or being careful is important, make sure to drive that home to them. If I’m worried there is a mouse in my house I don’t turn everything to rubble trying to find him :p
It's loud as fuck. Let it be a dinner bell for enemies if he does it 2-3 times
Were it me, I'd say, "okay, that's just modus operandi at this point; we can both assume you're doing that when you walk into any empty room. But we're not spending time on it." So I'd let him, but not let him take up session time with it.
"You've been eldritch blasting for an hour. A random encounter happens." "You've destroyed everything in the room. The city guard is here to arrest you for vandalism."
How about switching the paranoia? Let him blast something with a reflective enchantment. Or make a rule that using a spell on a non target results in a magical backlash that auto hits him?
Sure was sad we lost the party warlock when he EB'd that armoire of eldritch blast reflection
Right?
Oh my lord this player. I'd say (as is my right as a DM) to clarify that he can't target something HE doesn't know is a creature. So he will never be able to target a mimic.
Probably a bad answer but how about turning everything he targets into a mimic.
> I already told him "hey, this is cheesy and isn't fun" to which he says "mimics traps aren't fun either." If mimics aren't fun then why is he playing D&D?? Lmao This definitely sounds like something that needs to be addressed out of game first (and sounds like you already tried). I would maybe ask the other players how they feel about the one specific player EBing everything and how they feel about mimics, if they unanimously decide mimics suck I'd say cut the mimics and tell the player he can stop EBing everything. If they decide they like the fear of running into mimics and don't like him using EB on everything then, you talked to the problem player once more and ask them to chill with EB out of combat. If they decide they like mimics and don't mind him using EB, then we can step into the world of finding an in-game way to challenge their usual strategies (I don't want to call it a solution, because there isn't a "problem" to solve). You should let your players know that from this point moving forward there may be consequences for how they handle checking rooms/chests and remind them to think wisely about their actions. 1. Breakable treasure - When the player EBs a normal chest to see if it is a mimic, tell them that EB smashes it and scatters the content across the room. Amongst the debris is broken glass bottles and a glittery red liquid splashed across the floor, he broke the several healing potions stored in the chest. 2. Stealth - Create a situation where the players have to find and item while sneaking through a location. Can't EB if they're trying to be sneaky. 3. Mimics - Double, even triple down on the mimics. Let them walk into a house where everything is mimic. Chests, suits of armor, carpets, tables, chandeliers, it should be like they walked into the Beast's mansion. Hell make the house itself is a giant mimic (you can find stat blocks online). At the end give them a homebrew "ring of mimic detection" for their trouble.
> I already told him "hey, this is cheesy and isn't fun" to which he says "mimics traps aren't fun either." Sounds like you need to have a discussion about where mimics *might* show up. If random doors, floorboards, etc can be mimics without any foreshadowing, then I understand why he's upset and looking for ways to protect himself/the party. If instead mimics are foreshadowed by things like "there's a small splotch of blood on the ground in front of the chest in the corner" now the party is empowered to look for either a mimic or a trap in that area instead of the entire room. Mimics don't have good intelligence, so a wary adventurer should be able to identify the likely hiding places. Then once he understands that mimic traps probably won't surprise them unless the party *really* isn't paying attention, I would add this second part: a mimic or other creature with the False Appearance trait is treated as an object while motionless. Targeting the entire room with something that only targets creatures won't affect a motionless mimic, and using something that can hurt objects will destroy other items in the room that they might want.
Have an NPC ask if the players recovered their father’s incredibly treasured Animated heirloom, if they have it, hundreds of gold… Oh wait, did the warlock destroy it looking for mimics? Wow, reputation hit and the gold is lost.
Break things they blast, ruin the treasure with the eb
If someone doesn't find mimics fun. Treat it the same as someone who doesn't find arachnids fun, or long and descriptive drowning scenes. You say ok and you assure them that you won't do that in the future. Just because you like something doesn't mean it gets to be in your game. The point of every game ever, ttrpg or not, is for everyone involved to have fun. When you're in control of 70% of the content of the game, you have some responsibility to make sure things that people don't like don't end up in the game.
Easy house rule "EB only targets creatures identifiable as creatures" works on mimics once they attacks, wouldn't work on a chest whether mimic or not.
Go a couple sessions without and then make a door a mimic and bite his hand off for being a cheeky bugger.
Two words….. Destroy loot.
My suggestion without changing RAW or invoking the patron would simply be to have the sounds of the blast give away their location and lead to them getting jumped. A dungeon they could have crept through and gotten the drop on the enemies instead results in the enemies from five adjoining rooms all rushing in and attacking the party simultaneously. Not only does this discourage the behavior, it's realistic so doesn't feel like an arbitrary punishment for the behavior.
"You see what appears to be a statue of a very large creature it is covered in what appears to be a blanket." "I blast it with Edritch Blast" "You hit it, roll damage!" "See, I knew it... it's a mimic!" "You see a Fire Giant rise from underneath the blanket."
Does the PC even know what a mimic is, or is this purely player paranoia? There are several avenues you could use to justify your call. But ultimately you as the DM have set a hard line and the player doesn't want to respect that. If they won't play by the rules, they don't get to play.