"I'm no good at that" and Inspiration

Saelorn said:

I'm not a fan of players granting themselves inspiration. As the DM, I prefer to ignore that mechanic entirely, so this sort of rule would not work for me at all.

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If you don't like Inspiration, then yes, this rule isn't for you.

I'm boggled by "characters granting themselves inspiration" part. It would be picking skills at character creation, and they need to come up in a meaningful way.

If you're worried about picking a skill like stealth they can try in combat, remember making a skill check takes an action so it's always harmful to your action economy. (Two chances to succeed with max one payoff < two chances to succeed with max two payoffs and the rest of the payoffs the same.)

Saelorn said:

It just reminds me a lot of FATE, and how players are encouraged to make foolish mistakes because it causally benefits them later. Using your example, I don't want anyone to go out of their way to insult the Duke because it will causally help them fight the cult leader.

Roleplaying is supposed to be its own reward. You should insult the Duke because that's what your character would do, not because you really want advantage against Circle of Death.

But that's just me.

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And, by picking Persuasion as something you're really bad at, you ARE the type of character who would insult the duke because it's what your character would do.

Now you just have consistency - you're not suddenly golden tongued when your character wouldn't be just because the player decided that although they are a curmudgeon, the duke's help is too important so he gets shmoozy.

In other words, this enforces you playing your character like you have defined them. Seems it actually supports your goal.

Blue said:

And, by picking Persuasion as something you're really bad at, you ARE the type of character who would insult the duke because it's what your character would do.

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If you're bad at Persuasion, then you'll probably end up insulting the Duke if you try to persuade him of something. But you also know that you're bad at persuasion, and that there's a good chance that trying to persuade the Duke will not go well. Since you know that, it may well convince you to just shut up and let the Duke have his way, since you know you're out-gunned in that fight.

Blue said:

I'm boggled by "characters granting themselves inspiration" part. It would be picking skills at character creation, and they need to come up in a meaningful way.

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For another example, a lot of nerds are incompetent at climbing, because they're fat and lack upper body strength. But they also know that they're incompetent at climbing, and as such, they're unlikely to choose to climb anything.

That's what I mean by granting yourself inspiration. You know that climbing is unlikely to go well (because you are aware of your own deficiencies), but you also know that choosing to do this thing will give you inspiration (because that's how the world works). It's not something you can just trigger, whenever you want inspiration - it actually needs to come up on it own - but it's your choice about whether you want to do the thing and thereby grant yourself inspiration.

I suppose you could also find yourself in a situation where you have no alternative, but that's not super common (in my experience). If guards are chasing you and you need to climb a wall to escape, then disadvantage only matters on the die roll if failure would have been a possibility regardless, and I'm not going to blame myself for rolling poorly in a situation I have no control over.

I mean, if I need to roll a 10 to escape - which is a best-case scenario, really - then failure is a strong possibility regardless of whether or not I have disadvantage on the check. That's just the nature of d20. The disadvantage mechanic will never allow something to happen that wouldn't have already been a possibility without disadvantage.

Why would a group of adventurers who presumably prefer to overcome a given obstacle rely on their most incapable agent to handle it?

DMMike said:

It doesn't look like it rewards character growth so much as character exploration. Have you ever met someone who's good at everything? Seems to never fail? Those people suck.

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We're called Bards, thank you very much!

For me, this would not help me to get into character. Having some things that my character is particularly bad at is fine, so long as either (a) it's balanced out by being particularly good at other things, or (b) all other characters take equivalent penalties.

But to then attempt to shoe-horn in instances of my character attempting to carry out those tasks, purely in pursuit of a game-mechanical benefit that I can use elsewhere, does not feel like I'm acting in-character. It feels like I'm using a purely game-mechanical motivation to make my character take actions that he knows are counterproductive.

Nevvur said:

Why would a group of adventurers who presumably prefer to overcome a given obstacle rely on their most incapable agent to handle it?

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Exactly.

Failure in D&D, unlike in most books, movies and other stories and in some other RPGs, is only seen in the negative light of "I can't let my character fail", not in the positive light of "this puts us in an interesting situation" or "this give my character room to grow".

The goal behind this is to give players an excuse to let failure happen, because it brings an offsetting advantage. Much like the classic paladin move of going in against a superior force to save innocents, there are times when it's most interesting not to go for sure things.

Now, I'm not envisioning this as regularly "We need to convince the duke, let's let the guy who doesn't talk well take lead" -- the characters will quickly learn about each other (as they do now) and try to make sure THAT PC doesn't open his mouth. (But he might anyway, that's up to the player.) But it's other times, such as when the whole group needs to climb the trees to get out of the way of the stampede, or when a guard directly asks something of the poor liar.

Savage Worlds has a mechanic where a character can take a certain number of flaws in exchange for more points during character creation. (Used to improve skills, abilities or take another Edge.) This is cool. In my experience, everybody takes as many flaws as possible, of course.

On the other hand, tying use of a handicapped skill to advantage seems a little odd to me, but maybe it would make sense for a certain group? I have seen players who flat out will not do things if it requires using a skill in which they are not proficient. Even at low levels when the proficiency bonus is fairly minor. So maybe those players need some sort of incentive to mix things up a little bit. In general, though, I find players will do what their characters need to do, and if their character is not very good at something, "well, here goes nothing."

A few things:

5e already has inspiration. Players get it by roleplaying flaws, which cause trouble for them. Blue is just expanding the idea.

You can only have one inspiration banked, so not that big a deal.

Things like FATE points and inspiration help simulate narrative flow. I've played a lot of FATE, and the constant haggling for points does not happen, ever. It's much more subtle. Players are not going to deliberately do things to gain inspiration. When it does occur, it helps simulate the hero having a bit of good luck after getting kicked on. I have never seen these types of mechanics get abused.

Yes, you should just be having fun role playing your character, but getting a little goodie after you totally failed to climb that wall is nice. Now maybe you can manage to sweet talk yourself out of trouble, with a little boost from your recently gained inspiration.

Blue said:

Failure in D&D, unlike in most books, movies and other stories and in some other RPGs, is only seen in the negative light of "I can't let my character fail", not in the positive light of "this puts us in an interesting situation" or "this give my character room to grow".

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D&D isn't a novel, movie, or story. D&D is just pretending to be someone else, in a different world, doing different things with different (often much greater) stakes.

How often do you, in the real world, think "I can't let myself fail"? How often do you think "this puts us in an interesting situation" or "this gives me room to grow"? Being a magical elf is a lot like that, except if you fail then your best friend might die.