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

[smbakeresq]

I mostly gm. Have been that way since the 80s. In my experience, players who are GMs wanting to help are often problematic or received not very well at all.

It is a fine line between helping and challenging or diminishing authority.

That line starts with a GM asking you for advice, not you spontaneously granting it - especially at the table.

That line tends to end with any out of session talk between you and the other players especially if that conversation turns to "how I would have..."

When I play, as I do now, I tell the gm privately at the start I have gmed a lot BUT I am thrilled to be just a player in this game. I tell them if there is anything I can do to help, just let me know. Then, i turn off my gm self until they ask - if ever - no matter hard that may be.

In my mind, without that request first, it sets up a very dangerous dynamicc..

This is completely true. You cant interfere at the table, that undercuts them. Simple things like "remember you get to attack with advantage there" are just clarifying things and helping out. But otherwise yes, you have to work together off the table.

 

[iserith]

Found some time thanks in no small part to [MENTION=1207]Ristamar[/MENTION]. Which I'm happy about because I didn't want you to think I was just ignoring the effort you put into this post.

@iserith: Well, at least I think I understand where you are coming from now. I had totally misunderstood the thrust of your argument, hence your confusion over why I was talking about rail roading. I had thought you were standing on the principle of player agency. In fact it seems more the case now that you explain yourself is that you are standing on the principle of the rules are the rules, and ought to be followed strictly as written. So all my discussion about process loops, player agency, and railroading was only tangential to the point you were trying to make.

Ok, I get that. And for the record were I to try to run 5e, I would certainly endeavor to play it by the rules at least until I understood what the rules were trying to accomplish, and what they were really good at and what they were not so good at.

Good policy.

It certainly is the case that writer's of 5e try to go out of there way to frame ability checks as occurring as the result of some task resolution. However, I think that while this works most of the time, there are some cases that even the writer's of 5e strain credibility to call an action. Before I get into that, let me talk about the tiny differences between 3e and 5e in its approach to ability checks.

The first thing is that there is no such thing as a skill saving throw in 5e. This is probably by design, and I know what they are going for here... and frankly I disagree. By there being no such thing as a skill saving throw in 5e, the skill proficiency bonus never applies to resisting anything (other than potentially, opposed checks). Rather the saving throw proficiency bonus is always meant to apply to resistance. So if you are proficient in dexterity saves, you always resist with that proficiency bonus applying and never on the basis of skill. The intended purpose is obviously to keep all the classes on a level playing field. The upshot though is that there is less refinement in what you can challenge a player with or what a player can be good at. For example, in 3e if you were falling, you could make a tumble 'saving throw' to reduce falling distance, and it really didn't matter who brought up the relevant skill.

The second thing to notice is that you never roll the dice on a passive skill check, and instead always assume the player "takes 10". So these passive skill checks in fact happen, and presumably can happen in secret, but the fortune is fixed even if the outcome is unknown (unknown in theory at least). Now, there is one good thing I like about this approach, and that is that it solves once and for all the "roll with it" problem of how often you should roll a passive check. With no need to roll the dice, there is no need to decide on the interval at which a passive check is made, and no need to make complex and hard to apply guidelines about how long to "roll with it". But the drawback of this approach is more than enough at least for me to discard the entire system, and that is that it becomes impossible for a scenario designer not to metagame. By making the fortune of a doubtful proposition fixed rather than variable, the scenario designer is placed in the unenviable (and to me intolerable) position of knowing ahead of time exactly the outcome. Much like with a lock in 3e using the 'take 20' rules, when the scenario designer places a challenge that will be interacted with passively (most likely) he is basically forced to decide and choose the outcome. To me that is beyond the pale, and it would probably be one of the first things I'd house rule out of the game (replacing it with a "roll with it" rule of one roll to determine the fortune).

I'm not here to defend the design of D&D 5e. It works and it's fun enough in my opinion.

That said, in practice your theory to me still seems unworkable. For example, no amount of linguistic straining is going to convince me that recalling facts or making a deduction is an action, much less that it can be meaningfully and repeatedly phrased over the course of the campaign as a "goal" and an "approach". The whole point of knowledge checks is generally the player does not know what his character knows, so how can he state an approach to recall what he himself does not know that he does not know? And in any event, your quibble with this use of the intelligence ability directly contradicts the Basic Rules example of play, which reads:

I think it's helpful to get rid of the idea of "knowledge checks" when thinking about D&D 5e. They don't exist like they did in other editions. Intelligence checks are not tests to see what a character knows. It's a test to see what he or she can recall or deduce from what he or she already knows. It's therefore on the player and to some extent the DM to establish what the character knows to justify recalling the lore or deducing something useful from available clues. (That's the goal and approach.) The system doesn't do this for them.

I would say the example of play that you posted isn't ideal, but I do agree with your later statement that the player did effectively state a goal and approach. I would have asked the player to be a little more clear with statements of action and not to rely on questions, but there's enough information there for the DM to adjudicate in my view when taken in context.

And this brings us to my biggest objection to being hidebound about this, and that is that you are "pixel bitching". (I don't know if I can use that term here, but it is the technical one.) By that I mean that you are waiting for your players to say the magical words or phrases that unlock the content, and until they say the right things you aren't going to let them use their abilities. You are saying things like, "While you're traveling the city, what sort of ongoing activity will you be engaged in?", "A wise PC chooses to Keep Watch unless some other activity would be of more benefit than losing a few coins to a pickpocket.", "Passive checks are for when the character is doing something repeatedly, such as keeping watch or searching for secret doors while traveling the dungeon." The upshot of that though is that you are playing in some sort of Kraag Wurld where the players must always know to say the special things that you are wanting them to say before they even get so much as a passive ability check to their credit. Where as, I don't expect players to have to say while they are in a dangerous environment that they are alert to danger and doing their best to avoid it, much less that they have to specify a particular danger to avoid and approach to do so, much less that I will then assume that they are on watch that they are now passive to danger and haven't even earned an ability check. I don't expect the players to hunt through the environment for the right combination of skills to apply to the right sort of things in order to learn things that might be apparent to highly knowledgeable in world characters at first glance. I don't expect players to have to know that 'Lilies of Living Death' are a thing in the world, and that they ought to call out the lilies as a potential hazard before interacting with them. If someone has the appropriate knowledge, I'm just going to roll for them or let them roll themselves (depending on my mood), to give them a chance of recognizing the lilies for what they are in the same way that facts typically demand your attention quite unbidden. A very little bit of this insistence on stating everything in the form of an action would start to try my patience if in fact you are as hidebound about it as you claim, though to your credit you do seems to have this idea that you need to telegraph everything in order to compensate - for example, always first showing an act of larceny before springing pick pockets upon the PCs. Apparently, if they are then always actively stating that they are on the look out for pick pockets, they don't even get to passively resist being pick pocketed?

I suspect that I would have to tell you that my character, as an ongoing matter, would like to be recalling what he knows about the things that he is seeing so as to not be walking around with the assumption that he's a mindless imbecile not paying attention to anything going on around him.

And for that I'd probably get a string of difficulties higher than what I could pass with a passive check. So maybe I'd have to say, "I try to recall the historical, arcane, or religious significance of the thing that I'm seeing, and if I can't I try to have some revelatory insight.", every time I saw something about everything that I saw. I'll do this as an ongoing action and I'll do it whenever I'm not actually stating I'm concentrating on something else."

[MENTION=1207]Ristamar[/MENTION] covers this well in his response to you (q.v.).

 

[Nagol]

If the DM is so stymied by a simple phrase that it takes his brain that many steps to interpret a sentence then the DM has some medical issues that should probably be poked into. Looked into. Poking the brain is probably bad.

Not stymied. No medical issues. Just how I parse verbal communication.

 

[iserith]

When he said it would take 3 hours to walk down the beach to our destination... and it did.

What... what happened?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The problem for me comes only in when the DM interprets a rule incorrectly and doesn't listen to me when I try to correct him or when he intentionally changes a rule just because he thinks it's not balanced or something.

Okay, as long as you remember that 5E isn't written so tightly that only one interpretation can be correct. The whole Life domain + goodberry thing is a good example of something that isn't clear in the rules, where reasonable people may come to different interpretations, all of which are equally correct under the rules. Likewise with hiding in combat.

Hoping that any given DM would follow your exact interpretation for every unclear rule in 5E is probably an unrealistic goal.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Okay, as long as you remember that 5E isn't written so tightly that only one interpretation can be correct. The whole Life domain + goodberry thing is a good example of something that isn't clear in the rules, where reasonable people may come to different interpretations, all of which are equally correct under the rules. Likewise with hiding in combat.

Hoping that any given DM would follow your exact interpretation for every unclear rule in 5E is probably an unrealistic goal.

That's why I'd like to agree on using whatever Sage Advice decided. Then it's neither my subjective nor the DM's subjective opinion on it but an objective thing everyone can rely on.

Of course if the rule is unclear and there's no Sage Advice on it, then there needs to be a ruling by the DM (though I still prefer if he asked the players first before making one).

 

[Sadras]

I have a few house rules, but they were all made prior to the beginning of a game. I might houserule something that no player has actually taken yet, once I poll the group on their opinions of it, but once a player takes it, even if its OP as , they get to keep it for the campaign (I'm looking at you, Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master).

I don't like house rules in general, but if a DM announces his house rules ahead of time I immediately know it's not for me and don't apply, so that's definitely better than wasting time and effort only to realize you're not having fun.

Yeah it is not so clear cut guys, some campaigns outlast editions and a whole new system comes into play which neither the DM nor players have had the opportunity to play-test it for themselves. Furthermore if everything was so clear cut in the core rulebooks, you wouldn't have have issues/queries arising continuously asking the designers years later. You just cannot be so prepared for EVERYTHING, before a campaign starts.

You also have to ask yourself the question, if the player is able to ask the DM if they can change this or change for a specific class, background, spell, class feature, feat...etc why can the DM not make changes?

I'm not saying all changes are good but unilateral opinions by players that DM's cannot make changes once play has begun are IMO, rubbish.

How the change is being done and is the DM being fair is a different story. I think you need to take it on a case by case basis.

The biggest problem is really just the DM overruling something in the ruleset (that was agreed on to play). I gave two examples earlier: A DM deciding that Life Domain does not work with Goodberry and a DM deciding that hiding ends if you come out of cover but are not seen clearly. Both these things are things even on this forum lead to heated discussions nobody can ever agree on, but Jeremy Crawford gave a clear answer to both and I'd really like to see the DM (or everyone, really) accepting these because that allows me to trust in the ruleset and create my PC accordingly.

Well Crawford ain't a god, his recent ruling/clarification on Shield Mastery saw him lose quite a number of fans. If I had to follow him on that clarification I'd be doing my players in, just like you feel your DM did you in. Potato potato and all that.

For some house rules made I might consult the table and get their buy-in, other times I might see something on Enworld that I like and would like to incorporate it. Having such a harsh mindset that DM's cannot change anything once play has begun doesn't seem all that helpful.

 

[5ekyu]

I quit a campaign because of the over-reliance on dice and skill checks. I was a ranger trying to cross a 10 foot river that was 3 feet deep and had no current. Just to be on the safe side I took off my clothes so I couldn't be weighted down, tied a 50 foot rope around my waste, tied it to a tree, gave it to the Barbarian in the party to hang on, and I waded in. I described it all in excruciating detail my plans, and then the DM said "make a dex roll".

I said "why?" and I realized that role playing, or careful character playing isn't needed in 5e, it is just how you rig your stats for this never-ending assault of skill checks. I didn't have to do anything and could have blundered in carrying 5000 lbs of gp since nobody does encumbrance, and rolled the same silly dice. I wasn't needed for this character, just my sheet was. I decided that that DM wasn't for me.

Not enough info given to lead to that conclusion, imo. Of course you had more to go on than you put here.

But, the key is, I can see calling for a DeX roll there. The character can still slip. That gets them more wet than expected and may require a swimming check if part of the crossing is deeper than expected. No matter what tho the rope is the failsafe.

This sounds like something my 8 str halfling would do, rope, clothes etc.

But sometimes the results are more than did you get across or not.

Maybe you slipping once and getting pulled back for second try matters to someone watching.

Normally, if we spend any screen time on a crossing, it's because there is a point to it.

 

[5ekyu]

I stand corrected. I'll admit, I just timed myself reading the same sentence and it came in at a shade over 7 seconds.

I still stand by my comment of waiting until my player speaks before committing to any judgement. In fact, the more my players speak, the more time I have to think about my response. I've come to learn that unless I say "The monster charges forward, roll for initiative!" I have no clue what they might do next... and I love it!

Edit: Also, I understand what you are getting at. I play in an online game and we have one player who rambles incessantly when trying to describe his actions. As a player I find it frustrating - I can only guess what our DM is thinking.

A game I play in is at a FLGS. The noise level in the background is barely at my tolerance level and due to having older ears than my group I have a lot of trouble hearing. It's not uncommon for me to have to ask for repeats - especially when sitting next to one certain player.

So I appreciate brevity and conciseness in GM to PLAYER communications. If a player wants to inform the GM of action etc, it's best imo to stick to the basics especially among larger groups, newer players and crowded settings.

Now if it is CHARACTER side statements, that's another issue. There, what your character says out loud can be informative to others. Obviously an internal monolog should stay internal to avoid giving players more and more info they would have to ignore since it's not in character knowledge.

So where I try to draw the line is there - brevity in GM to PLAYER communication (out of character) and full length in CHARACTER to CHARACTER communication (in character).

I find that puts more table time in character than spending a lot of extra posturing in the **out of character not on screen** time.

If I want to "reveal" some insight to my troupe, why bury it in out of character GM to Player talk? Let that fun be seen in character, right?

 

[machineelf]

I realized that role playing, or careful character playing isn't needed in 5e, it is just how you rig your stats for this never-ending assault of skill checks.

That's a problem with that DM, not the 5th edition system. The rules say that if you are attempting to do something with no chance of failure, then there is no need for a roll. You just succeed.