Yes, logically you’re right and if you have 10+ hours to think about it you can come up with a better, less harmful answer.
However in the moment, as long as it isn’t abused, you give it to them.
It they keep eating gravel, maybe they get sick, or maybe they become “PC Gravel Eater”, or maybe they accidentally eat some poison, etc
But in the moment, you let them have it. One of the best parts of D&D (or any similar RPG) is that the rules are not written in stone. Rules are a general framework, but are open to interpretation. You want to encourage new, unwritten, discussion.
But gravel? That’s rocks. Ostriches “eat” rocks. Why can’t a Dragonborn or Aarokocra? Or any battle hardened Barbarian or Fighter?
You want your player, generally speaking, to try some weird shit.
There was a conversation I read somewhere that said that the optional Flanking rules were terrible, because it basically forced everyone to just try and get Flanking. Flanking is advantage and that’s almost always the optimal move.
It prevents players from trying to jump across a table and swing on the chandelier, landing on their opponents head. Why risk an acrobatics roll when I could just move 10 ft, maybe 15 ft if you include climbing a table.
No one remembers “getting advantage on that one attack”, everyone remembers, “a backflip and cutting the BBEGs eye”.
Yes, logically you’re right and if you have 10+ hours to think about it you can come up with a better, less harmful answer.
However in the moment, as long as it isn’t abused, you give it to them.
It they keep eating gravel, maybe they get sick, or maybe they become “PC Gravel Eater”, or maybe they accidentally eat some poison, etc
But in the moment, you let them have it. One of the best parts of D&D (or any similar RPG) is that the rules are not written in stone. Rules are a general framework, but are open to interpretation. You want to encourage new, unwritten, discussion.
But gravel? That’s rocks. Ostriches “eat” rocks. Why can’t a Dragonborn or Aarokocra? Or any battle hardened Barbarian or Fighter?
You want your player, generally speaking, to try some weird shit.
There was a conversation I read somewhere that said that the optional Flanking rules were terrible, because it basically forced everyone to just try and get Flanking. Flanking is advantage and that’s almost always the optimal move.
It prevents players from trying to jump across a table and swing on the chandelier, landing on their opponents head. Why risk an acrobatics roll when I could just move 10 ft, maybe 15 ft if you include climbing a table.
No one remembers “getting advantage on that one attack”, everyone remembers, “a backflip and cutting the BBEGs eye”.