D&D 5E Does RAW have a place in 5e?

[KarinsDad]

I'm with Hussar here; this is not a rules issue. I don't understand; did other players enjoy this? Why did you think this would be fun? I mean, the DM can always create an unbeatable villain to defeat the players, and you didn't even give them the farce of a roll.

It's a rules issue in the sense that the player thought that he was entitled to a dice roll in that situation. He's not. That's a DM adjudication. "When the rule is used" is a DM ruling issue, just like "how the rule is used".

Bad stuff happens in games. A game would not be challenging at all if nothing bad ever happened. The other players did not get a chance to continue to enjoy the game at that point because he walked out mid-game.

And no, I don't give rolls just because a player thinks he is entitled to one. I have given rolls in the past when I know that the roll does not matter (most DMs do this on occasion), but I do not always do so.

Thinking that they are entitled to rolls happens a lot with some players with regard to Persuasion or similar skills. Roleplay your PC. If I think that what you are saying to try to convince the NPC seems reasonable, then the NPC just reacts positively and we move on. If I think that the NPC is on the fence, then I have the player make a dice roll. Players are not entitled to dice rolls in every circumstance.

And the villain was not unbeatable. The villain was just super smart, able to anticipate obvious ways for the heroes to figure out his game, and was able to avoid mistakes. That does not mean that he was unbeatable. Earlier in the adventure, the villain had attacked the PCs with two supervillains each while they were separated during down time, all as a distraction so that his henchmen could go in and steal the heroes' artificial intelligent computer (the villain had done this to dozens of super hero groups all over the country, and the PCs were the only ones who avoided getting captured). So although there were no clues to who stole their AI, there were clues all over the place for a lot of other things (which the players had their PCs follow). Some paths that a player wants to explore are dead ends. Some things that a player wants to succeed on are going to fail. And some things are just plain impossible to do.

The guy got ticked and walked out of the game mid-game. The following session, it was his PC that flew outside the ship (they were in low earth orbit where it was the optimal location for them to burn up coming back in, followed by crashing), pushed his Flight power, and kept the ship in orbit long enough for the other PCs to do something.

His PC was the one most likely to save the day. It was his moment to shine. Instead he threw a tantrum. But the reason he threw a tantrum was because he did not like the fact that I did not give him a roll. I did not know this about the player ahead of time. I found out. This wasn't the only tantrum this guy threw, but it was the strongest. The other players did not ever act like he did.


I also think that some player's problems with DMs lie in play style differences and not so much in actual adjudications.

 

[Hussar]

His PC was the one most likely to save the day. It was his moment to shine. Instead he threw a tantrum. But the reason he threw a tantrum was because he did not like the fact that I did not give him a roll. I did not know this about the player ahead of time. I found out. This wasn't the only tantrum this guy threw, but it was the strongest. The other players did not ever act like he did.


Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?365146-Does-RAW-have-a-place-in-5e/page20#ixzz3Ezb4UnLy

Look, I don't know the situation, because all I have to go on is what you've written here. But, going solely from what you've said, and nothing else, because I have no idea what else was going on, it looks like you prepared a fairly railroad situation - an unavoidable event that the players could not possibly counter with the idea that you were going to shine a spotlight on a specific player. This can work great and it can blow up in your face.
[MENTION=9037]Elf Witch[/MENTION] - the thing is, we really shouldn't focus on specific instances but on general behaviour. Yes, in any single instance, the group mind might be wrong, but, over the long term, if you find yourself at odds with your group frequently (and not at odds with simply one specific player) it really might not be them. If it's a problem with one player, then it's probably that player and not the DM. Could be simply a play style issue or it could be something larger, but, if the rest of the group isn't bitching, then likely it's simply a conflict between the DM and that one player.

 

[prosfilaes]

The guy got ticked and walked out of the game mid-game.

Many of us have had bad experiences with subpar DMs, but the simple solution to that is to move on.

That is the cost of arguing for voting with your feet.

 

[KarinsDad]

Look, I don't know the situation, because all I have to go on is what you've written here. But, going solely from what you've said, and nothing else, because I have no idea what else was going on, it looks like you prepared a fairly railroad situation - an unavoidable event that the players could not possibly counter with the idea that you were going to shine a spotlight on a specific player. This can work great and it can blow up in your face.

Yup. Anything can work great or blow up in a DM's face. The point was that a more mature player would have not blown a gasket over a ruling. Was it a railroad? Yes, that tiny part was a bit of a railroad. There were literally dozens of different options throughout the story arc and dozens of places to go and things to do. This was an obvious one (get on spaceship to rescue NPCs at space station) that the villain prepared for.

There were two PCs in the group that could directly counter this event if they had thought to do so. He was not one of them. The event was also not totally unavoidable, just unlikely to be avoided. Any of the PCs could have gone to check security camera footage of the area around the spaceship before the launch and had a chance of spotting the bad guy. They didn't think to do so. This happens in games. The players do not think of all of their possible options. Did I make a mistake by not letting him roll the dice? In hindsight, yes. If I had played with the group for a long time, I might have known.

But the point is that there are portions of adventures that are a bit of railroads once the PCs get to a certain point. Once the PCs fall into the pit trap, they take the damage. It's too late at that point to say "Well, we would have roped ourselves together." or "Well, we would have searched the area for traps.". The bomb example is like a PC trying to Detect Magic when he does not have the spell. Sure, the DM could fudge the adventure and say "you see a feint glow" around the object because the PC made a Perception check, but if there is no feint glow around the object in the DM's mind, then there is no feint glow. The Perception skill does not detect magic and the DM is totally reasonable in ruling that the player does not even get to roll because he knows that the player will not find anything.

 

[KarinsDad]

That is the cost of arguing for voting with your feet.

Yup. People can do that. It does depend on why you are voting that way. The rest of the table was as dumbfounded as I was to how strongly he reacted. It wasn't until we hashed it out a bit that someone suggested that he was ticked because he never got to roll the dice (which later on turned out to be the case).

 

[Hussar]

Yup. Anything can work great or blow up in a DM's face. The point was that a more mature player would have not blown a gasket over a ruling. Was it a railroad? Yes, that tiny part was a bit of a railroad. There were literally dozens of different options throughout the story arc and dozens of places to go and things to do. This was an obvious one (get on spaceship to rescue NPCs at space station) that the villain prepared for.

There were two PCs in the group that could directly counter this event if they had thought to do so. He was not one of them. The event was also not totally unavoidable, just unlikely to be avoided. Any of the PCs could have gone to check security camera footage of the area around the spaceship before the launch and had a chance of spotting the bad guy. They didn't think to do so. This happens in games. The players do not think of all of their possible options. Did I make a mistake by not letting him roll the dice? In hindsight, yes. If I had played with the group for a long time, I might have known.

But the point is that there are portions of adventures that are a bit of railroads once the PCs get to a certain point. Once the PCs fall into the pit trap, they take the damage. It's too late at that point to say "Well, we would have roped ourselves together." or "Well, we would have searched the area for traps.". The bomb example is like a PC trying to Detect Magic when he does not have the spell. Sure, the DM could fudge the adventure and say "you see a feint glow" around the object because the PC made a Perception check, but if there is no feint glow around the object in the DM's mind, then there is no feint glow. The Perception skill does not detect magic and the DM is totally reasonable in ruling that the player does not even get to roll because he knows that the player will not find anything.

Let me ask you this then. Did the NPC make any checks to plant the bomb? Did the NPC have to make any checks whatsoever to initiate and execute this plan? I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that no, no checks were made.

Now, if the situation was reversed, and it was a PC planting the bomb on an NPC ship, would you have called for checks? Would you have allowed the NPC to make perception (or whatever the system check is) check to notice something out of place? Or perhaps given the NPC an automatic check to look at the security footage? Now maybe the PC would have still succeeded, but, I'm thinking that it's extremely unlikely that you would allow the player to have an automatically succeeding plan to kill an NPC. The player would be making checks all the way along and so would the NPC.

That's what would annoy me. That there is a pretty clear double standard here. I didn't pixel bitch the situation (check the security cameras? Had that ever been done before? Was there any reason to check? And wouldn't checking the security footage come under the umbrella of "checking the ship before takeoff"?) so now my character is dead. Yeah, I'm thinking that this isn't a case of an immature player as much as some serious failings on both sides of the screen. The player made it clear that he wanted to make sure that the ship was safe to fly. Sure, he didn't say the magic words of "Is there a bomb on the ship" but the intent was pretty clearly there. I gotta say, I'm not very sympathetic to your position here. Killing a PC in an unavoidable explosion is hardly a "tiny part" of a railroad. That's a pretty major campaign event right there.

 

[KarinsDad]

That's what would annoy me. That there is a pretty clear double standard here. I didn't pixel bitch the situation (check the security cameras? Had that ever been done before? Was there any reason to check? And wouldn't checking the security footage come under the umbrella of "checking the ship before takeoff"?) so now my character is dead. Yeah, I'm thinking that this isn't a case of an immature player as much as some serious failings on both sides of the screen. The player made it clear that he wanted to make sure that the ship was safe to fly. Sure, he didn't say the magic words of "Is there a bomb on the ship" but the intent was pretty clearly there. I gotta say, I'm not very sympathetic to your position here. Killing a PC in an unavoidable explosion is hardly a "tiny part" of a railroad. That's a pretty major campaign event right there.

Do you roll a die to see how good of a trap the Kobolds make?

No. As DM, you set the DC for the trap and move on.

You seem to have serious anti-DM issues.

PS. None of the PCs died. The ship got damaged and with their mega-super smart science guys, they hotwired a solution to get the engines partially working. The flying guy kept the ship from falling through the atmosphere long enough for those guys to get that done. They then went on to rescue the crew at the Space Station. This is Champions we are talking about. Reed Richards can cobble together an anti-villain gun in 3 rounds.

PSS. He purposely checked the interior of the ship once they were on it. No solution there. I do not just let entitled players get away with stuff just because they want to do so. His intent was fine, his implementation was totally flawed. Oh well. If a player would have said "Is there another way to check?", I would have give me an Int roll.

 

[prosfilaes]

Yup. People can do that. It does depend on why you are voting that way.

Actually it doesn't. If you think someone is a subpar DM, leave, and he thought you were a subpar DM. One can handle it better, but complaining about his assessment is self-serving.

The rest of the table was as dumbfounded as I was to how strongly he reacted. It wasn't until we hashed it out a bit that someone suggested that he was ticked because he never got to roll the dice (which later on turned out to be the case).

Or one could phrase it as he tried to take an action in game, and instead of saying "yes, but" or "roll the dice", you decided he wasn't one of the people who could solve the problem. Phrasing about rolling the dice instead of about agency seems trivializing.

I can imagine doing the roll in secret, ignoring the result and offering him something suspicious but not concrete at takeoff, 15 (real-time) seconds to V1 (no abort velocity). Give him a hard choice to abort (and not go to space today) based on suspicion or continue, and the decision needs to be made in 10, 9, 8... Because that would be agency.

 

[SkidAce]

Do you roll a die to see how good of a trap the Kobolds make?

No. As DM, you set the DC for the trap and move on.

I have done it both ways. Rolled when the kobold was in a hurry. Set DC for long term traps in the lair.

 

[KarinsDad]

Or one could phrase it as he tried to take an action in game, and instead of saying "yes, but" or "roll the dice", you decided he wasn't one of the people who could solve the problem. Phrasing about rolling the dice instead of about agency seems trivializing.

I can imagine doing the roll in secret, ignoring the result and offering him something suspicious but not concrete at takeoff, 15 (real-time) seconds to V1 (no abort velocity). Give him a hard choice to abort (and not go to space today) based on suspicion or continue, and the decision needs to be made in 10, 9, 8... Because that would be agency.

Yup. Hindsight is so helpful.