D&D 5E What DM flaw has caused you to actually leave a game?

Hussar said:

Ok, now. The player says, "I search the room", what do you do? Ask more questions? "Where do you search? How do you search"? Now we're into Mother May I territory with the player pixel bitching the correct question (I search the desk is good enough? Or do you have to specify further?).

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If a player tells me that his character searches the room, I will assume that the entire room is searched, including the drawers and anything else in it. I will also roll to see if the PC is discovered by anything or anyone wandering by during the hour or so it takes to properly search the room. Most of the time the players don't want to take that much time to search rooms, so they just specify to me what they search. Similarly, if I am told that the PC searches the dresser, I will assume that they look inside of all the clothing, search for false bottoms, etc. and account for the time it takes.

Now, we're an experienced group, that's been playing for a number of years and our characters are, say, about 8th level - not the highest level characters around, but, hardly noobies either. Why not just assume that that's what they do? It's a pretty safe assumption. Sure, you can faff around trying to wait for the right question, or, you can dramatically up the pacing of your game and just presume that these highly experienced adventurers, who've likely searched a hundred rooms before this, is also searching this one as well. So, passive perception it is. Poof. Easy peasy and let's get on with the adventure instead of wanking about trying to read the DM's mind and pick just the right question.

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First, I'm not going to assume that they take the time and risk to search every inch of every room. That would be wrong of me to do. If they want to take that time and risk, they need to tell me. It's my job to place dangers for them to encounter, not play their PCs for them and walk those PCs into dangerous situations like taking the time to search a room in a dangerous area. Second, I've been taking lunch with me to work for years, yet I still sometimes forget to take it with me. Same with bringing the lunch bag home. Just because you do something a lot, doesn't mean that you won't forget sometimes.

Hussar said:

Ok, now. The player says, "I search the room", what do you do? Ask more questions? "Where do you search? How do you search"? Now we're into Mother May I territory with the player pixel bitching the correct question (I search the desk is good enough? Or do you have to specify further?).

Now, we're an experienced group, that's been playing for a number of years and our characters are, say, about 8th level - not the highest level characters around, but, hardly noobies either. Why not just assume that that's what they do? It's a pretty safe assumption. Sure, you can faff around trying to wait for the right question, or, you can dramatically up the pacing of your game and just presume that these highly experienced adventurers, who've likely searched a hundred rooms before this, is also searching this one as well. So, passive perception it is. Poof. Easy peasy and let's get on with the adventure instead of wanking about trying to read the DM's mind and pick just the right question.

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The rules set forth a standard of reasonable specificity. From the rules for Finding a Hidden Object:

"In most cases, you need to describe where you are looking in order for the DM to determine your chance of success. For example, a key is hidden beneath a set of folded clothes in the top drawer of a bureau. If you tell the DM that you pace around the room, looking at the walls and furniture for clues, you have no chance of finding the key, regardless of your Wisdom (Perception) check result. You would have to specify that you were opening the drawers or searching the bureau in order to have any chance of success."

So that's the standard that I ask for, which is just stating a clear goal and approach when a player describes what he or she wants to do. "I search the room looking for loot or useful items, including tossing that bureau..." might do just fine. Typically, I'm employing a particular procedure here as DM when the PCs are engaging in an exploration challenge. A task to methodically search the chamber for loot or useful items might take about 10 minutes of time in-game. I will ask the other PCs what they do in the meantime. Someone might scour the walls, floors, and ceiling for secret doors. Another might try to pick up the tracks of other creatures to figure out what passes through this chamber. The rest might just keep watch for any approaching dangers to avoid being surprised by wandering monsters.

At this point I resolve anything that's in question, narrate the results, then make a wandering monster check. Then we're back to describing the environment and asking the players what they want to do. If they're done here, they move on. If they want to continue exploring, that's likely another 10 minutes of tasks and another wandering monster check.

As for pacing, each "exploration turn" resolves in under 5 minutes. And as upthread, I will put the pacing of my game up against anyone's based on what I've seen, even when we're using a standard of reasonable specificity and they are not. We move fast and cover a lot of content in 4 hours. So asking players to be reasonably specific isn't really a concern of mine with regard to pacing.

Maxperson said:

Where does it say that passive checks like perception are optional rules? Yes, I know that technically all rules are optional, but 5e has several that are labelled as optional.

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It doesn't. Here's the rub, the DM is the only person that can initiate a passive check by rule. So in application it's optional even if it's not on the official optional list.

Every game I've run in the last 10 years has needed house rule clarification around the use of perception to avoid running into the perception hamster wheel. So it's never been well written even if it's RAW,.

Thanks,
KB

5ekyu said:

@Lanefan
"Typical SOP situations: making camp (who is in which tent, is there a campfire, etc.); keeping overnight watch; searching a mundane-looking room; checking over a door (search for traps, listen, check if locked, etc.); many things around treasury division, and so on."

Just a call out to see someone else finally reference the kinds of door procedures etc i have mentioned several times as "ye olde procedures" we used to work up.

I was starting from some responses to thibk maybe some or all viewed them as mythical as unicorns in a bordello.

Its the logical outcome of seeing play thrus etc and either having the assumption of competence or actual written steps.

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We had SOPs back in the day, but they were usually SOPs for the players not the characters. They were used as short-hand "against" DMs that required the utterance of magic words. When we got tired of pixel bitching we'd just say, "SOP". Where SOP = "we carefully search, examine, open, study, recall lore about, and ponder over everything you (the DM) just described to us. If you said a noun, it gets the treatment." Sure it was passive-aggressive, but having to openly state every single action or mental function, no matter how obvious, was just annoying.

5ekyu said:

". If there's something or someone I want them to spot in a crowd, I just straight up tell them. If there's a statue I want them to recognize, I straight up tell them about the statue, or provide enough clues to draw their attention to it."

Ok so here is my question...

Do the same "if i want it, it just happens..." apply to lock picking attempts, stealthing past guards, jump checks for greater than normal distances, climbing attempts, crossing narrow ledges, telling someone is lying etc?

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Depends entirely on whether the outcome is in doubt. If the guards are drunk, then stealthing past them may require no check at all. In other words, an auto-success. If the lock is very simple, and the one picking it very experienced at picking locks, then asking for a roll may be a waste of everyone's time.

5ekyu said:

Do you basically gate all "ability checks behind "only if the gm doesnt want it to happen" just like you do (apparemtly) to,perception?

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No. But I think it is a little bit silly to have the players roll perception checks to spot their friend in a crowd, when narratively it may be in the best interest of the story for them to meet up. This is of course assuming a situation where neither person is trying to deliberately hide from the other. Sometimes rolls can get in the way of the flow of the game. In such cases I lean more towards no-roll.

5ekyu said:

Now, for knowledge, it seems you may or may not decide to take the character ability into account (passive score) which is pretty much a split - the former being like others are suggesting with auto-success based on the character ability but the former being back to the unspecified gimmie.

So it sounds like you are not in the camp of critical info is just given for perc, inv, know and other such potential "checks" leaving the actual character ability to the "nice to knows" only. Would that be correct to say - that its not true that cases in your game would put critical info behind "only if the player says..." gates without which the characters abilities would not provide a chance (re knowledge or perception) to have a chance?

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You phrase it in a perhaps overly complicated way, so allow me to try and rephrase it a bit more clearly for anyone else reading this.

Whether a character 'knows' some bit of knowledge is determined by a few factors in my campaigns:

-Is it common knowledge?
-Would the player's character be likely to possess the knowledge, given his class and backstory?
-The stated approach of the player.

If I am in any doubt whether the player knows the information given the above rules, I may ask for a roll AFTER the player has stated an action. If the resolution is not in doubt however, I may hand the information to my players immediately, with no roll required.

This means that any player would recognize the statue of the king, but the cleric may be the only one who recognizes a statue of a saint. Since it would be in doubt whether the other party members recognize the saint, they would need to make a check after asking me (their DM) if they know the saint. This of course also goes for any other rephrasing of the same question. Basically, if they decide to investigate, or ask me for information, that is when I decide if the outcome is unclear.

A stated approach could be: "Does the statue have a plaque? If so, I read the name underneath the statue." If the name is on a plaque underneath the statue, then there is no chance for failure, and no roll is needed. There is no need for me to hide the info behind a die roll if this is the case.

I believe this is better than having everyone who enters the room immediately make a perception or knowledge check to identify the statue. Because what would be the outcome of failure here? One or two people fail their checks and their characters don't know who the statue is? But if someone succeeded at their check, then basically everyone at the table now knows the outcome, regardless of what their characters know, and you've basically forced half the table to roll for no good reason. If you instead wait for someone to take an action to investigate the statue, you cut a lot of time wasted on meaningless rolls, and focus instead on what the players choose to have their characters do. A lot of DM's seem to use this auto-roll style as a sort of clumpsy trick for getting 'someone' in the party to obtain some bit of expository information. But if that is the case, just hand your players the information right away. Why beat around the bush?

All I can say, after reading many of these responses, is that people have been through some scarring campaigns!

Kobold Boots said:

The definition of passive is "not necessarily paying direct attention".
The definition of active is "looking for something"

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Please let me know if you find that in the rules.

Kobold Boots said:

If a player has a high passive perception, he or she is very observant. If I have a DC of 11 for something noticeable, and I have a player with a passive perception of 12, I'm going to give them what they'd notice.

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I would, too, if the player has established that the character is, say, remaining alert to danger and not performing a task at least as distracting as navigating, tracking, foraging, or drawing a map.

Kobold Boots said:

In that same scenario if I have the same player roll active perception and he rolls at 6, I'm giving him the benefit of his passive score because it makes sense to do so. If he or she rolls a 19, there might be something more, there may not. However, there is no point of having passive perception in the game if you're forcing a hard check to notice something lower than its floor.

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There's no such thing as an "active perception" roll. You won't find that in the rules for ability checks.

But that aside, what you're saying here would be true in combat (because the rules establish that most creatures in combat are alert to danger) and if the character is engaged in a task repeatedly over time where passive Perception is the mechanic to resolve uncertainty as to the outcome such as keeping alert to danger when traveling. If the character is engaged in any other task, passive Perception may not apply.

As an example, a character is engaged in a fight with a goblin. The goblin attacks, then moves into some heavy concealment and hides as a bonus action. Its Dexterity (Stealth) check of 18 beats the PC's passive Perception of, say, 15. The player then describes the character as taking a Search action on his or her turn to find the goblin. The DM calls for a Wisdom (Perception) check. The player rolls a 6. Here, however, the passive Perception of 15 is effectively a floor, so the result is really 15 - which still isn't enough to pinpoint the goblin's position.

iserith said:

Please let me know if you find that in the rules.

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Examples in the book itself pretty much lend themselves to the definition I paraphrase. If you're on guard duty you're using passive perception. Feel free to actually read the books through and you'll find it. When I'm home if you don't find it before then, I'll look for it.

Point is, the character always has some ability to passively perceive something. When they're distracted, apply disadvantage, when it's obvious (stark white room, black raven) apply advantage if you bother with perception at all in the context of the description of the space.

There's no such thing as an "active perception" roll. You won't find that in the rules for ability checks.

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If there's a need to define something as "passive" there's clearly an active alternative. That's the way English works if not the exact term in the rules. I appreciate the attempt though.

The rest of your post is consistent with how I would use the rules in the exact situations you're defining.

Kobold Boots said:

Examples in the book itself pretty much lend themselves to the definition I paraphrase. If you're on guard duty you're using passive perception. Feel free to actually read the books through and you'll find it. When I'm home if you don't find it before then, I'll look for it.

Point is, the character always has some ability to passively perceive something. When they're distracted, apply disadvantage, when it's obvious (stark white room, black raven) apply advantage if you bother with perception at all in the context of the description of the space.

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If a character is on guard duty and remaining alert to dangers, passive Perception can be used to resolve whether he or she notices threats. If he or she does anything at least as distracting as foraging, tracking, drawing a map, or navigating, then the character is no longer alert to dangers and passive Perception score does not apply - the character just fails to notice the threat. The exception is a ranger in favored terrain traveling for 1 hour or more because he or she can both remain alert to danger and perform another task.

In combat, most creatures are alert to danger while the fight unfolds and so passive Perception applies here, too, when resolving if the character notices a hidden threat.

Kobold Boots said:

If there's a need to define something as "passive" there's clearly an active alternative. That's the way English works if not the exact term in the rules. I appreciate the attempt though.

The rest of your post is consistent with how I would use the rules in the exact situations you're defining.

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"Passive" in "passive check" refers to there being no roll, not that the character is not actively doing something. They are. In the case of passive Perception, the character is actively remaining alert to danger over time. If he or she does some other task as mentioned above, then he or she isn't and passive Perception does not apply.

Kobold Boots said:

If there's a need to define something as "passive" there's clearly an active alternative. That's the way English works if not the exact term in the rules. I appreciate the attempt though.

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I think the worst decision WotC made in the 5e ruleset is choosing to name "repetitive actions requiring no rolls", "passive".

The passivity is with the players not the characters. The character is actively pursuing their action as the player sits back and lets them get on with it. In other words the character is always taking actions (unless they're sleeping ).

I once found a better term, which now eludes me, but it was something like "constant", or "continuous" or something like that. "Rolling" would also work but that would just open up another massive can of worms!

What were they thinking with "passive"? It's been a major source of ongoing confusion!