D&D 5E DMs, what are the most baffling and/or pointless questions your players ask?

Ganymede81 said:

My players will sometimes test me with improve-style questions about the environment they're exploring.

I might describe a fully stocked bookcase, and one of them will be like, "I pull a book from the shelf, what is its title?"

I'll have to come up with something like "The wood-worker's guide to level and bevel."

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I am that player.

Whole adventures have been derailed, even a whole campaign once, because of such tendencies.

We met some Travelers in a Star Wars game, we got curious, and just kept digging deeper and deeper, and one thing lead to another and next thing you know the whole campaign was out the rag tag group of people we had gathered around us, the core of which were said Travelers and a group of Wookiees we rescued from Imperials, and helping the Travelers find a new place in the sector, and rebuild their lives.

at one point my character spent a Destiny point to turn a crit against their "prince", for lack of remembering his title, into a regular hit, and a "steal from the imperials" job turned into a session about the consequences of taking responsibility of others lives into your own hands, and my character questioning if he had the right to accept the leadership role he had been unconsciously growing into. One of the best RP sessions we've ever had, actually.

Anyway, point is, asking, in character, pointed questions we knew the GM would have to improv answers to about these people changed the course of the entire campaign. It was grand!

jrowland said:

"What are we doing here (in the dungeon, in town, in the woods, on a ship, etc)?"

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jrowland said:

I actually want to run "To Slay a Dragon" from ENPublishing just to point to the title every time that question is asked.

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i assume they are asking bc they don't remember from last session or something?

Or are you starting them in a place with no set up, and they are asking why they are there?

Does no one take notes?

I always have a "last time" segment at the start of a session, to refresh everyone's memory. Since I do so by asking where we left off and what had happened, rather than telling, I also learn things about what they players are paying attention to, what they think about things, how they view NPCs, places, events, etc

transtemporal said:

Ha ha, you also reminded me. We were on a galleon.

Halfling PC asks the DM "Will I die if I jump down from the crows nest?"
DM says "You'll take 1d10 damage per 10ft fallen, so 3d10 damage"
Player says "OK, I jump down"
DM rolls damage "You take 23 points of damage"
Player says "WHAT?! I only have 11hp! You said I wouldn't die!"
DM: "No, I said you'd take 3d10 damage"

Classic. I have a feeling that player wasn't good at listening, or math. Or both.

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Only possible defense is the player might have misheard and thought you'd said 3 to 10 damage rather than 3d10.

doctorbadwolf said:

i assume they are asking bc they don't remember from last session or something?

Or are you starting them in a place with no set up, and they are asking why they are there?

Does no one take notes?

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The "why are we here" moments usually come:

- deep into an adventure when we've lost half the party, got diverted and distracted about 6 times, and have long since lost sight and-or memory of what the mission was in the first place
- or we've come to realize the mission just isn't worth it
- or the character whose mission it was (and who'd had to work to persuade us to go along) has died and we're left to finish
- or we're breaking expensive gear faster than we're finding treasure
- or ...

Lan-"why am I here"-efan

Lanefan said:

Only possible defense is the player might have misheard and thought you'd said 3 to 10 damage rather than 3d10.

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Possibly, I wasn't DM. I was too busy rolling around on the ground laughing.

Was kinda short-lived though. If I remember correctly, just after this encounter we went ashore and experienced our first ever TPK. A single ogre attacked during the night and fluked a bunch of rolls, killed all of us. lol

nswanson27 said:

I wasn't the DM, but I was at a con where the assassin asked if he had surprise at the beginning of every single fight - never stealthed once.

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I had a player do this in Princes of the Apocalypse, a module where there is definitely a lot of room for a clever Rogue to move ahead and set up ambushes. However, this Assassin character simply walked along with the group, then asked "do I get to do my assassin abilities this fight", I'd reply, "They only work when you surprise the enemies, and they are not surprised since you are walking behind the Cleric", and he'd look disappointed. Every time. It drove me mad; it's like playing a Wizard but refusing to carry your spellbook with you.

I once had a player ask if we could stop making puns.

At a table with TWO incorrigible punsters.

It worked for over an hour, then one player forgot, the other joined in, and he had a fit. That was the last time he played with us...

Charles Rampant said:

I had a player do this in Princes of the Apocalypse, a module where there is definitely a lot of room for a clever Rogue to move ahead and set up ambushes. However, this Assassin character simply walked along with the group, then asked "do I get to do my assassin abilities this fight", I'd reply, "They only work when you surprise the enemies, and they are not surprised since you are walking behind the Cleric", and he'd look disappointed. Every time. It drove me mad; it's like playing a Wizard but refusing to carry your spellbook with you.

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Some people are just not meant to play rogues. I think it was Gygax that once said that you didn't need to "bribe" players with powerful abilities to play a thief - the "right" players would just be drawn to the class. This is not that player.

doctorbadwolf said:

Does no one take notes?

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In my experience, no, no one ever takes notes. I finally have a single player in one of my games who accepted being a dedicated note taker and it is a god-send.

Other times I've had players ask me how much those gems they've been carrying around for 5 sessions are worth. They remember they were accurately appraised at the time, but not how many they have left, what they were worth, or really anything else.

For all those who do not do so yet, please, if you have a shred of human decency within you, Take Notes please, I'm begging you.

discosoc said:

"How big is the room?" literally seconds after I just described it. It's like some people just zone out during the descriptions and can't imagine anything beyond a set number of squares. It's gotten so bad that I now have to figure out ways of describing things without stating measurements. So instead of saying the room is 20 feet wide and twice as long, I have to do something like "it's about as big as this room, but twice as long."

It's amazing because a lot of these guys come from Warhammer type games, but apparently they can't measure beyond inches.

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As DM you are literally the entirety of sensational input to your players. What is obvious in black and white to you because it's probably right there in black in white in front of you, is less so to your players who need to interpret their surroundings by your words. Some people handle that input less completely than others.

I love using real-life examples. Your example is very good. At a recent con I based all area (forest clearings, cave chambers, etc) in context to the hall we were playing in. I could just point to places in the room and say, "That's where the treasure chest is." It was an interesting experience and very effective.

Charles Rampant said:

I had a player do this in Princes of the Apocalypse, a module where there is definitely a lot of room for a clever Rogue to move ahead and set up ambushes. However, this Assassin character simply walked along with the group, then asked "do I get to do my assassin abilities this fight", I'd reply, "They only work when you surprise the enemies, and they are not surprised since you are walking behind the Cleric", and he'd look disappointed. Every time. It drove me mad; it's like playing a Wizard but refusing to carry your spellbook with you.

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I had the opposite problem.

Rogue: "I'm going to sneak up to the window of that castle" (rolls high stealth)
Cleric/Paladin: "Yeah, we go, too." (both roll low stealth, because they're at disadvantage)
DM: "Guards appear on the battlements. Roll initiative."
Rogue: Face Palm.

I try to be generous with the group stealth rules to avoid that issue, simply because it kills me inside to see one character in heavy armour (which they will naturally refuse to take off, ever) prevent the nimble characters from doing interesting stealth stuff. I'm a really big fan of that rule, actually; it's a very easy way to ensure that we get the party sneaking into Mordor as a whole, but still ensure that the difference between 'stealthy' and 'loud' characters can be drawn when entering Ungoliant's lair.