D&D 5E Mitigating players spamming Help, Guidance, Bardic Inspiration, and oh I’ll roll too?

[Quickleaf]

Mitigating players spamming Help, Guidance, Bardic Inspiration, and oh I’ll roll too?

My group seems to lean too much on Help, Guidance, Bardic Inspiration, and “a roll? oh, well I’ll just roll too!” Its exasperating, and I’m searching for how I can nip it in the bud.

Examples from our game:

The Bard/Sorcerer player says “oh I’ll help my friend engaging in persuading the Flaming Fist commander that we’ve held up our bargain.” So I ask “ok, what are you saying to support his argument?” Player responds “Um...I play a song? Hah, well...I can’t actually think of anything...but it was my understanding I could still take the Help Action?”

Both the pure Bard and the Bard/Sorcerer player routinely tossing out Bardic Inspiration without offering any role playing or explanation of what *their* Bardic Inspiration looks like.

The Rogue player with “Guidance” (magic initiate) giving Guidance on an Arcana check and other checks in which he is untrained without roleplaying what that looks like or how it makes sense.

And I’ve had to police the whole group regarding pile-on skill checks, especially the Bard player. I’ve repeatedly mentioned that if a bunch of people want to make a check then it’s probably a group check - otherwise everyone rolling one after another is just an exercise in throwing dice at a challenge waiting to see who succeeds. I’ve noticed this come up most often with lore/knowledge checks & Perception/Insight checks. Last time I had to shut it down and put my authoritative DM voice on and reiterate the problem.

Thankfully, it’s not just me who has noticed this. Another player in the group said “Guys, we have a serious problem with metagaming. It’s coming up almost every session.”

So I wanted to ask the great minds of ENWorld: What are the most effective ways to deal with a group that has this particular challenge?

 

[Apostol Apostolov]

In my games, I use the following two simple house rules to mitigate this issue.

Skill Check Retries

When another player attempts a Skill check roll to gain new information (Perception, History, Arcana, etc.) from the DM and fails, you may attempt the same check only if you have a higher Skill modifier than theirs.

Helping Others

When you use the Help action to aid another character in a task, you must have proficiency in that Skill.

 

[pukunui]

I frequently specify that only characters proficient in a particular knowledge skill can roll to see what they know.

Other times, if multiple people want to have a go at unlocking a door or whatever, I’ll tell them they can help each other and then only one person gets to roll (albeit with advantage).

I’ll be interested to see what else people suggest, as I too sometimes struggle with this issue.

 

[Sadras]

I think @Apostol Apostolov's house rules are pretty good with regards to skill retries and the Help action. Guidance and Bardic Inspiration are a little more complex.

Limitations on Guidance:
Requires a willing creature - maybe the recipient might follow a deity in opposition the caster's deity (bonus becomes penalty).
Duration is a minute - Conversation might flow longer than a minute
Guidance is Verbal and Somatic - perhaps cannot be easily cast without being noticed by others (i.e. in the middle of a Social challenge). If noticed, this could result in a Disadvantage being applied or outright failure of the skill check.
Concentration mechanic - so only one affected at a time.

Skill Challenges:
Multiple skill checks reduce the effectiveness of Guidance or Bardic Inspiration.
Guidance may perhaps assist only one skill check in an active short-based Social/Exploration skill challenge.

Resource:
Bardic Inspiration has a limited number of uses, so it is an actual expended resource.

Immediate versus Prepared:
When someone is busy performing an immediate check (recalling some lore, active perception), I personally would not allow the use of Guidance or Bardic Inspiration, unless the spell/ability was already in effect.
So generally Guidance and Bardic Inspiration require forethought - before attempting to Stealth, Pick a Lock or Climb...etc

Skill check representing extended Time Period:
If the Exploration challenge was over a course of days/weeks - I would not even consider giving the character a bonus as the skill challenge represents a degree of effort/concentration/thought over a longer period of time than just 1 or 10 minutes.
At most 1 check out of x would gain the benefit to reflect (a) the daily divine benefit from Guidance or (b) the continued reinvigorated spirits provided by the bard during the streneous journey.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Help - Only works if the help is reasonably explained. Someone not knowing anything about picklocking cannot help picklocking a lock.
I often allow it, because the DC is often expecting it to be used. For example if we consider a DC10 = Easy as per definition, that would mean an average human would fail an easy task 45% of the time. Also most of the time succeeding is more fun than failing (and I'm personally not a big fan of "Always succeed but with a drawback" - like always succeeding to picklock, but enemies appear on a fail).

Guidance - That's a spell bonus that works with everything. It's a cantrip so it doesn't cost any resources other than an action. There are still drawbacks. For example you need to touch the target, so helping during a dangerous jump or when climbing seems rather difficult. Also it requires concentration, so you couldn't just apply it to everyone at once (e.g. if everyone tries to be stealthy or everyone looks around for enemies). You could apply it one-after-the-other in some situations, but it will take more time, which might come with various other drawbacks (enemies appearing, buffs expiring, the hostage being killed, the evil wizard managing to finish his ritual before the PCs arrive, etc.).
Honestly if there were situations where my player ALWAYS says "I use guidance", I'd eventually just say "Let's just assume that in these cases guidance always applies". But so far that didn't happen. My players only really use it on really important checks and for those I'd actually prefer them to be successful most of the time anyway.

Reroll / "I roll too" - I only allow each check to be done once. Once it failed and my players try it again, I won't even ask them to roll again I just say that it failed. Exception is when they have a new approach which is more likely to succeed than the previous one.

 

[sim-h]

In my games, I use the following two simple house rules to mitigate this issue.

Skill Check Retries

When another player attempts a Skill check roll to gain new information (Perception, History, Arcana, etc.) from the DM and fails, you may attempt the same check only if you have a higher Skill modifier than theirs.

Helping Others

When you use the Help action to aid another character in a task, you must have proficiency in that Skill.

A problem with that skill check retry method is that it encourages players to start with the player with the LOWEST chance of success. Completely immersion-breaking in my view.

I allow a retest by the same or a different player after some time has passed. Thus, in non-time-critical situations they will succeed sooner or later. However during that time you could also have a bad failure cause a problem - e.g. a lock breaks, an NPC is insulted, etc. I think I've also upped the DC if the same player tries something again - think of it as their growing frustration.

On helping - I flat out allow that if it's legal as per the rules (i.e. the other player could also carry out the action alone)

On guidance - I allow it, it's magic. Luckily my players try to RP it at least a little bit, most times. Same for Bardic Inspiration.

 

[5ekyu]

Fir bandic inspiration and guidance - I do not require any rp justification for how they make sense. Nor do I insist clerics justify the cure sprlls healing folks. They are magical class abilities. Justify thru RP magic missle.

Help action - bard working with someone in a negotiation. High Chavmeans skilled and good at CHA stuff. The **character** is the acting party. The character is the smooth talker. Not the player.

I do not throw house rules on any of these.

That said, two things I do...

Trio tasks - any non-immediate task is resolved with race-to-three skill checks like death saves but with modifiers. Often these may be different skills.

Me too - more than one means roll with advantage if the helper could do it as well and circumstances allow cooperation.

The rest work themselves out.

 

[Apostol Apostolov]

I completely agree with the immersion-breaking when players rely that this rule is in effect all the time and they always try the weakest skill check first. However, as actions take time, too often they are pressured or additional effects complicate retries. So they can't afford to rely on ordering checks all the time. It is huge risk for them to make a roll with lowest chance of success, to find out they can't retry.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I honestly wouldn't even call not allowing unlimited rerolls or everyone rolling a house rule. That's pretty much RAW - the DM decides if the attempt is successful, failed or is uncertain (in which case he calls for a roll).

 

[iserith]

My group seems to lean too much on Help, Guidance, Bardic Inspiration, and “a roll? oh, well I’ll just roll too!” Its exasperating, and I’m searching for how I can nip it in the bud.

Examples from our game:

The Bard/Sorcerer player says “oh I’ll help my friend engaging in persuading the Flaming Fist commander that we’ve held up our bargain.” So I ask “ok, what are you saying to support his argument?” Player responds “Um...I play a song? Hah, well...I can’t actually think of anything...but it was my understanding I could still take the Help Action?”

Nope. Help is for combat; Working Together is for all other situations. Working Together requires that the action described would actually be of help in the unfolding situation and that the person assisting could otherwise perform the action on his or her own. So without an action declaration that the DM actually thinks will help, then no advantage is granted.

Both the pure Bard and the Bard/Sorcerer player routinely tossing out Bardic Inspiration without offering any role playing or explanation of what *their* Bardic Inspiration looks like.

The Rogue player with “Guidance” (magic initiate) giving Guidance on an Arcana check and other checks in which he is untrained without roleplaying what that looks like or how it makes sense.

That's a little less egregious in my view since these are resources the players can spend. I would probably ask what those actions looked like and try to get them into the habit of offering more description. With the Guidance spell, as long as there is nothing preventing the rogue from casting it, then it's fair; however, there are situations where it might not be feasible or sometimes risky. For example, in an exploration challenge in which the PCs are trying to sneak, a guidance spells (and its Verbal component) might give them away. In a social interaction challenge, an NPC's attitude might worsen if he or she notices the rogue casting spells.

And I’ve had to police the whole group regarding pile-on skill checks, especially the Bard player. I’ve repeatedly mentioned that if a bunch of people want to make a check then it’s probably a group check - otherwise everyone rolling one after another is just an exercise in throwing dice at a challenge waiting to see who succeeds. I’ve noticed this come up most often with lore/knowledge checks & Perception/Insight checks. Last time I had to shut it down and put my authoritative DM voice on and reiterate the problem.

Thankfully, it’s not just me who has noticed this. Another player in the group said “Guys, we have a serious problem with metagaming. It’s coming up almost every session.”

So I wanted to ask the great minds of ENWorld: What are the most effective ways to deal with a group that has this particular challenge?

Players don't get to decide that they are making ability checks! All they can do is describe what they want to do by offering an approach to a goal. YOU decide if an ability check is called for based on what they offer. They might succeed outright, fail outright, or you may ask for a roll. If someone fails a check and the next player says he or she wants to perform the same approach to the goal as the person who failed, then it's reasonable in some cases my view to just say they also fail, no roll - after all, that approach has already been shown to be ineffective. The player needs to come up with something else to achieve the goal.

On ability checks used to resolve the outcome of an attempt to recall lore, I suggest doing it this way: On a success, the character recalls something useful. On a failure, the character recalls something interesting. So, either way, the player is going to get some kind of result other than "You dunno." This tends to take the edge off the desire for others to perform the same action again. As well, a player should in my view offer a justification for being able to recall lore. This might be due to race, background, class, or any number of things that reasonably explain why the character might have been exposed at some point in the past to the desired information. There's no need to be a hardass about it, but this is an opportunity for the player to shoot for auto-success anyway and also helps flesh out the character just a little bit more every time such an attempt is made.