counterpoint? that is the joke, lol

believe me, i’m there for it.

it would be funny if moving past your normal range of motion triggered a (low DC) dex check that could cause you to continue til you crash if failed.

‘mechanism to deploy’ sounds more like heelys than proper skates

i don’t see the issue, in theory. if players have chosen to live by the sword, the dm is meeting them on their level by allowing them to die by the sword.

and you never know, maybe it’s an op party that could make it a close match. maybe the players had warnings and brought the god’s wrath on their heads anyway.

as with all things, there are contexts where it is appropriate and contexts where it is a wild overreaction. but this is a meme comm, not a nuance factory.

the allegations 😭😭

there’s two answers to this question, one is mechanical and one is social. you as the DM can tell the players no not now, and they can’t do anything about it, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to do something about it, which depending on the group could be an issue.

so in this scenario a good DM could whip up some misdirection, for example set up a traveling artificer who just passed through town a couple weeks back and who the players could track down as a lead - conveniently in the direction of the main quest objective.

this is hard to do on the spot.

you’re definitely right about the time limit. at that point you are about 5 minutes away from every spell in the party’s arsenal being cast on that crown, followed by the main quest getting derailed by the mystery of the plot armored artifact.

seems a bit young to be on step 9

more like ‘i need to block the german communities’