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

[robus]

Yeah I can bring it up that I don’t like that style of play. Fortunately I played alongside these guys (as a player) briefly in a Pathfinder game before jumping in to DM Tomb of Annihilation...and, based on my observations, there was lots of “metagaming” in that game as well...very much into finding rules exploits.

Perhaps you picked the wrong implementation of Tomb of Annihilation?

 

[Reynard]

Perhaps you picked the wrong implementation of Tomb of Annihilation?

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I always find it interesting when people are willing to call someone else's style of play "not roleplaying" with such abandon.

 

[robus]

I always find it interesting when people are willing to call someone else's style of play "not roleplaying" with such abandon.

Hey - it was just a joke [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] knows I'm only playing.

 

[smbakeresq]

If players are spamming bardic inspiration you might be giving out to many rests. Good gameplay is about making the right choices. If your game has so many rests that the choice to use bardic inspiration isn’t really a choice ( because it’s always available) then maybe you need to add in a few more encounters between rests.

 

[5ekyu]

It’s a tough question to answer. Both yes and no.

It really comes down to the narrative “weight” placed by the story / the players on the scene. The less important the scene, the more likely its to be resolved with a more abstracted check, while the more important the scene the more detail goes into our descriptions.

So, yes, the negotiation and treating trollblight would be handled the same. I do ask for players engaged in an “important” negotiation scene to — even if not acting in character — to describe their overall intent and approach. What do you want from the NPC? What are you offering to the NPC? And do you have a particular strategy (e.g. drawing on a shared background with NPC, using something the NPC just said to trap them into agreeing, playing a tune to pull on their heartstrings, intimidating them with threat of an approaching monster, etc). In the example I cited, the player said I “Help” without further explanation so I ruled that he could not.

With the treating trollblight...assuming it carries heavy narrative weight...maybe there’s steps involved — identifying that its trollblight, finding patient zero / infected troll, acquiring sample, researching an antidote, brewing antidote, and applying it to the victim. So I’d possibly — depending on specifics, this is all theoretical — expect a PC wanting to Help another with treating trollblight to declare where in that process they are helping, and generally how they’re assisting (soothing patients while samples are collected? managing the distillation & titration process? wrestling an infected troll?).

And no, they’re a bit different by necessity because D&D involves actual dialogue as one of the ways players have fun. Interaction, along with combat & exploration, are pillars of the game. Always have been. No special knowledge is required to do a bit of roleplaying or state your character’s intent & approach. Very possibly I wouldn’t require a roll at all if the player’s position in negotiation was strong enough. In that case there’s no a Persuasion skill, it’s just roleplaying. DM decides whether check is necessary, as per 5e rules. Whereas getting into descriptions of specific skill uses — horseback riding, or wilderness survival, or medieval / Renaissance-era medicine — is not at the heart of the game, it’s not one of the 3 pillars. Certainly, it can add a lot of flavor, and a savvy player might coax a DM into granting advantage for a vivid description, but there’s no expectation built into the game that players are going to, for example, know how to treat a wound, build a shelter, or take a wild horse.

Stating intent and to some degree approach is expected where necessary.

But to me when you get down to identifying a specifuc aegument bolstering fact that your character must provide, you have moved very much into player skill at the task being a strongly influencing factor as oppised to character skill at the task and player skill at the game.

Too much so for me.

It would favor one player (mr smooth talker irl) over another. It would discourage players playing characters outsude tgeir personal strengths if applied evenly.

Not my cup of tea - using rp hoops to deal with mechanical complaints.

 

[Shiroiken]

Interesting. In every 5e table I’ve sat at where Bardic Inspiration or Guidance was used, I saw it used at the time of the check. But you’re saying the correct way is to use them before any check is called for? So the players approach the Duke’s estate, descend to the entrance to the Tomb, or are about to study a book of arcane lore...and Bardic Inspiration or Guidance would be used in advance?

Yes, it's a spell/ability with a duration (and Concentration in the case of guidance). If you know you're going to need to do something, such as climb a wall, you can use them easily, but in the case of something suddenly coming up, the ability requires an action/bonus action, not a reaction. I might allow each character to use one ability before a lore check, but YMMV.

In the case of taking to the Duke, they might use it before being introduced, but not likely in his presence (it could be a magical attack, after all). Guidance isn't as useful here, due to it's one minute duration, but bardic inspiration probably would be at 10 minutes. A savvy lord might deliberately spend several minutes exchanging pleasantries in order to prevent such abilities from being used against him.

With group lore checks, do you have the whole party (or whomever is involved/interested) roll, irrespective of proficiency in the pertinent skill?

Yes, because everyone might some something to add to the discussion. For example, I wouldn't say I'm proficiency about cars, but I do know about the tie-rod, because I had a Ford that had to have the #$^#$^ thing fixed every 30,000 miles.

Of course, I currently do lore checks as passive checks. Before bringing up a topic that they'll make a check for, I make a roll against their passive intelligence/skill (we play on Roll20, and I have a macro to do all of them at once). That way I can just provide the information they probably already know. If there's something specific they want to discover that wasn't mentioned (usually because I didn't think of it), then I'll have them make a check for that bit of information. This setup isn't for everyone, and I don't recommend it for IRL games due to the number of rolls.

Do you mean you individually don’t allow re-checks, so the Rogue couldn’t attempt to pick the lock but the Warlock with thieves tools proficiency could try? Or do you mean you don’t allow re-checks systemically, so once the Rogue fails to pick a lock that lock is unpickable to the entire party until something major changes?

I mean for each character. If someone can't pick the lock, they can't keep trying until they succeed (i.e. the 3E "taking 20" rule). If multiple characters want to attempt something that can only be worked on one at a time, they're welcome to do so. If multiple characters can work on it though, it becomes "working together" instead.

 

[Quickleaf]

Hey - it was just a joke [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] knows I'm only playing.

Indeed I do, sir!

 

[smbakeresq]

As far as timing of actions like guidance or bardic inspiration I just assumed everyone knew you had to declare its use before any check was made. It’s the only way it would apply.

Also for help action to prevent the familiar spam remember intelligent creatures know what is going on and just would target the familiar, likely blowing it away. That’s good also, it absorbs a creatures action.

 

[Sadras]

I think [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION]'s problem is something many tables have experienced, where it so easily becomes "I make an insight check, is he lying?" or after a low roll by another player, "I will search the bookcase, (rolls d20), 18, what do I find?" Where the skill gets treated like some supernatural ability and the players are quick to call for it. It has been bred in us from past editions and it is something I've had to work towards and continue to do to retrain our table.

You can even witness this style of play in the popular podcasts.

 

[CleverNickName]

I agree with [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]. The only thing I'll add is that I'm pretty good at remembering the first dice rolled and its result, but I'm deliberately rubbish at remembering everything else when players start talking over each other or calling actions out of turn.

Player 1: I check for traps...rats, I rolled a three, for six total. I'll...
Player 2: *interrupting* I'll help you search!
Player 3: *interrupting* I give you guidance!
Player 4: *interrupting* I'll check too!
Player 3: *interrupting again* Wait, let me give you guidance too!
Player 5: *interrupting* Let me sing for inspiration first!
Me: *waits for everyone to stop throwing dice all over the place*
Me: *proceeds with the story as if all results, of all rolls, for all characters involved, no matter what or why or how, amounted to a result of six.*