D&D 5E Players Self-Assigning Rolls

[Ovinomancer]

I think you just fell into the trap [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] warned about just moments earlier.

Ah, but does not the canny hunter set off the trap and then wait to see who comes to check on it?

 

[Satyrn]

Ah, but does not the canny hunter set off the trap and then wait to see who comes to check on it?

Well, there's a goal and approach there. So sure, your leg's caught in the bear trap now. You hear a bear approaching from the West.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

...No it’s not?

In general, it's not. In this case, it is being used that way (even though it maybe shouldn't be). Hence the confusion.

I don’t necessarily agree that the character should know any better than the player does. If I’m doing my job as DM right, the player and the character should have the same information to work with.

I agree that you should be presenting the same information to the player and the character, even though it's an impossible task because the character actually lives in that world instead of interpreting it from second-hand description. For the sake of argument, let's assume that you're giving them all of the relevant information.

The answer that the player comes up with, based on that information, will probably be different than the answer that the character would come up with, if the relevant analytical skills of the player are different from those of the character. If you give me a description of a room and tell me to find the traps or treasure, and then give that exact same description to Batman, then Batman is likely to succeed where I would fail. Requiring the player to state an approach, rather than going straight to the dice roll, gives a huge advantage to players who are personally better at those skills.

Being proficient in persuasion shouldn’t give the character any more information about what argument might convince someone of something.

I strongly disagree on this point. Some players are absolutely clueless about what another character may be thinking, or what might motivate them, even if the character being played should not be so clueless.

Investigation doesn’t make you better at coming up with ideas for how to look for things, it makes you better and finding things when you do look for them (at least, under the most common interpretation of the Perception/Investigation split; as mentioned earlier, I do run those skills a little differently than most DMs.) If the player says “I look under the rug” and the thing they’re looking for is in the drawer, they’re not going to get a roll because there’s no chance of finding the thing that’s in the drawer by looking under the rug. This is supported by the rules of 5th Edition.

I agree that this is how 5E presents things. I'm not entirely convinced of the merit in doing so. Going back to the previous point, how would the player know to look in the drawer rather than under the rug? You're relying on the analytical skills of the player, again, rather than the character.

If I want to play some super-clever detective character who has amazing analytical powers, then even if I do everything possible to maximize the relevant mechanical aspects of the character, I still can't play that character unless I, personally am clever enough to figure out where to search. If I want to play an incredibly persuasive social character, and I do everything within my power to make them as persuasive as possible, then I still can't play that character unless I, personally am clever enough to pick the right approach to each conversation.

Even worse, if I am clever enough to pick the right approach, then the numbers on the sheet may well be irrelevant! If Batman is playing the half-orc barbarian with -1 to Investigation, and I'm playing the half-elf rogue with a minimum check result of 25, then Batman's character will automatically find the thing and my character will automatically fail. That is the significant limitation of requiring players to declare their approach, instead of just letting them roll the dice.

I don’t think the removal of Skills is the logical extension of the DM always calls for the rolls style. In that style, rolls are necessary to resolve uncertain outcomes. With no skills, the only ways to resolve uncertain outcomes would be pure random chance or DM fiat, in which case the player really would be restricted from takimg advantage of things the character should be good at.

In the case where the approach completely obviates the die roll, because the approach is the entire difference between automatic success and automatic failure, skills are irrelevant. In the extreme case, every scenario comes down to the approach, and there's no point in even having skills in the system - the ability of the player completely overwhelms the ability of the character, to the extent that there's no point in even including the latter in the model.

 

[DemoMonkey]

"So sure, your leg's caught in the bear trap now. You hear a bear approaching from the West."

>Open Trap

 

[Satyrn]

"So sure, your leg's caught in the bear trap now. You hear a bear approaching from the West."

>Open Trap

Your mundane words have no effect. Please try stating a goal and approach.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

So is the goal to remove the player from the outcome of the game they are playing as much as possible? As an example, random player Cletus is smart as a whip and sees patterns in things as soon as he looks at them. But though he knows what the solution the puzzle is he has to not share it or solve it unless he makes a check? As soon as you describe a situation to him he starts to figure it out, its what he's good at. Does he just not use that in the game he's playing?

 

[Satyrn]

Cletus is smart as a whip

Doubtful!

 

[DemoMonkey]

So sure, your leg's caught in the bear trap now. You hear a bear approaching from the West.

>Open Trap

Your mundane words have no effect. Please try stating a goal and approach.

>Use Key on Trap

 

[Charlaquin]

In general, it's not. In this case, it is being used that way (even though it maybe shouldn't be). Hence the confusion.

I don't agree that it is, at least in the cases I was referring to. Many of the counter-arguments to the DM decides the rolls approach seem to be based on the assumption that it is the flavor text, not the goal and approach, that is the determining factor in success and failure. Not all such counter-arguments, but many, and those were the ones I was addressing with my post.

I agree that you should be presenting the same information to the player and the character, even though it's an impossible task because the character actually lives in that world instead of interpreting it from second-hand description. For the sake of argument, let's assume that you're giving them all of the relevant information.

The answer that the player comes up with, based on that information, will probably be different than the answer that the character would come up with, if the relevant analytical skills of the player are different from those of the character. If you give me a description of a room and tell me to find the traps or treasure, and then give that exact same description to Batman, then Batman is likely to succeed where I would fail. Requiring the player to state an approach, rather than going straight to the dice roll, gives a huge advantage to players who are personally better at those skills.

As the person in control of the character, it is you who determines what answer your character "would come up with." I think you're also giving me way too much credit at being able to convey information with subtlety if you assume Batman is going to come to different conclusions from the information I provide than you are. I'm not the Riddler. I'm not going to come up with hints subtle enough that only Batman will catch on to them.

I strongly disagree on this point. Some players are absolutely clueless about what another character may be thinking, or what might motivate them, even if the character being played should not be so clueless.

I don't disagree that some players are bad at recognizing social cues, I just think that's the province of the Insight skill, not the Persuasion skill. Insight is explicitly about reading social cues, whereas Persuasion is about making an argument sound convincing. You could argue that it doesn't make sense to separate those social abilities as separate skills, but in 5th edition D&D, they are. If a player is bad at recognizing social cues and wants to play a character who is great at it, they should probably put some points into Wisdom and take Proficiency in Insight, because recognizing those cues is a passive task that I'm just going to give you information about based on your passive Wisdom (Insight) score.

I agree that this is how 5E presents things. I'm not entirely convinced of the merit in doing so. Going back to the previous point, how would the player know to look in the drawer rather than under the rug? You're relying on the analytical skills of the player, again, rather than the character.

Well, when there's something important to be found, I try to telegraph it, so there will likely be hints that the drawer might be a good place to look. If not, or if the players don't pick up on those hints, I imagine after looking under the rug and finding nothing with no roll, the players will recognize that there is nothing to be found under the rug and try looking elsewhere. If one roll represents your exhaustive search of the entire room, then you can completely miss the thing in the drawer with a crappy roll. On the other hand, if a roll simply resolves uncertainty in a single action, there's no reason the players can't actually exhaustively search the entire room. The difference is, that exhaustive search is conducted by actually talking to each other about what the characters are doing and describing how they interact with the world, and how the world reacts to those interactions (which is the whole reason I play D&D) instead of choosing one of 18 buttons to push and letting random number generators decide the results. If you don't think to look in the drawer, that's on you, not the dice. Now, YMMV, but I and many people I know, prefer to succeed and fail on the merit of their own choices, not on the results of random number generators.

If I want to play some super-clever detective character who has amazing analytical powers, then even if I do everything possible to maximize the relevant mechanical aspects of the character, I still can't play that character unless I, personally am clever enough to figure out where to search. If I want to play an incredibly persuasive social character, and I do everything within my power to make them as persuasive as possible, then I still can't play that character unless I, personally am clever enough to pick the right approach to each conversation.

I think you are overestimating the cleverness required to think of places to search or angles to take in attempting to persuade people.

Even worse, if I am clever enough to pick the right approach, then the numbers on the sheet may well be irrelevant! If Batman is playing the half-orc barbarian with -1 to Investigation, and I'm playing the half-elf rogue with a minimum check result of 25, then Batman's character will automatically find the thing and my character will automatically fail. That is the significant limitation of requiring players to declare their approach, instead of just letting them roll the dice.

Batman will only get automatic success if his approach doesn't have a reasonable chance of failing to accomplish his goal. For example, if the object he is looking for (let's say it's a key) is sitting in the drawer of a desk, and he says, "I search for the key by looking through all the desk drawers", then yeah, he's going to succeed. As would you if you described the same action, which doesn't take a tremendous amount of creativity to think of. However, if the key is hidden in a false bottom inside one of the drawers, then looking through all of the desk drawers has a chance of succeeding at finding the key and a chance of failing to find the key. Batman will have to make a check, and with his -1 will probably not have a great chance of finding it. However, if you describe the same action with your minimum check of 25, you're going to find it without a roll because your minimum check is higher than the DC to find it.

In the case where the approach completely obviates the die roll, because the approach is the entire difference between automatic success and automatic failure, skills are irrelevant. In the extreme case, every scenario comes down to the approach, and there's no point in even having skills in the system - the ability of the player completely overwhelms the ability of the character, to the extent that there's no point in even including the latter in the model.

Except that, as illustrated above, some approaches have both a reasonable chance of success and a reasonable chance of failure to achieve their goal, in which case the uncertainty needs to be resolved. This is where skills come in, because they allow you to weight the chances in favor of success when your character is good at a thing.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Well, when there's something important to be found, I try to telegraph it, so there will likely be hints that the drawer might be a good place to look. If not, or if the players don't pick up on those hints, I imagine after looking under the rug and finding nothing with no roll, the players will recognize that there is nothing to be found under the rug and try looking elsewhere. If one roll represents your exhaustive search of the entire room, then you can completely miss the thing in the drawer with a crappy roll. On the other hand, if a roll simply resolves uncertainty in a single action, there's no reason the players can't actually exhaustively search the entire room. The difference is, that exhaustive search is conducted by actually talking to each other about what the characters are doing and describing how they interact with the world, and how the world reacts to those interactions (which is the whole reason I play D&D) instead of choosing one of 18 buttons to push and letting random number generators decide the results. If you don't think to look in the drawer, that's on you, not the dice. Now, YMMV, but I and many people I know, prefer to succeed and fail on the merit of their own choices, not on the results of random number generators.

Excellent! I want the players to analyze what I told them when I described an area and start to think of how they need to act on the info I gave them rather than just think skill check time. Engage the world, become that rogue standing there in a room looking for that McGuffin a little bit.