D&D 5E Modeling Uncertainty

[Guest 6801328]

How does 'false negative' apply in a knowledge fest? Thinking you don't know the info when you actually do?
Wouldn't it just be a 'wrong answer?'

Oh, sorry, using 'false negative' non-canonically. What I mean is that you fail the knowledge test but get an (incorrect) answer anyway. Which I don't think can happen if you can see your own roll.

What players may tend to do is trust the guy who made the highest roll, since they all saw the rolls, which gets back to applying your system to reduce player confidence in the roll he sees. Seems to address the issue, though you're still left coming up with multiple answers to the question.

That's where I think math comes in, which I'm fine with. After all, it's how we do combat.

"Jerry only had a 1/36 chance of being wrong, but he says 'A'. Bob and Frank are both 1/8 likely to be wrong, but they both say 'B'. 1/8 * 1/8 is 1/64, so I'm going with 'B'."

 

[Guest 6801328]

What I'm looking for is both at once: I want the player to worry about choosing the right option AND I want the probability of that choice being the right one to be linked to the character's skills.

At the risk of committing a major faux pas by quoting myself, I want to point out that this is the best language I've come up with explaining the problem, and I wouldn't have gotten here without everybody's tough questions.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Oh, sorry, using 'false negative' non-canonically. What I mean is that you fail the knowledge test but get an (incorrect) answer anyway. Which I don't think can happen if you can see your own roll.

OK, that makes sense. I like to toss out a laughably incorrect answer when someone blows a roll. If they don't know the DC, you could slip in a plausible incorrect answer when they fail, but not by much. Your system would be better for that.

The quibble with that is that it makes a near miss worse than a complete failure. Not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Guest 6801328]

OK, that makes sense. I like to toss out a laughably incorrect answer when someone blows a roll. If they don't know the DC, you could slip in a plausible incorrect answer when they fail, but not by much. Your system would be better for that.

The quibble with that is that it makes a near miss worse than a complete failure. Not necessarily a bad thing.

I think you mean that a near hit is (or can be) worse than a complete failure. But yes. That's awkward, for sure, but I think worth it.

 

[Bawylie]

Well, that's not really my goal. I just want things that should be uncertain to be uncertain.

The reaction to the trap really isn't the best one. Again, I'm not talking about all or even most skill checks; I'm talking about ones where a skill is used to determine if a character "knows" something, but where in real life "know" really means "believes". And that there are consequences to being wrong.

But let's still look at the trap thing one more time. So let's say the DM says "click" and the player quickly responds, "I drop prone!"

There are, I think, exactly two possibilities here:

1) The DM has already decided how the trap works, and how the player responds will affect the subsequent die rolls. This is totally fine and fun and I probably wouldn't change this, but I'll point out that the player's choice is effectively completely random (unless he's using 'metagame' familiarity with his DM's habits) and has nothing to do with his character's skill and experience.

2) The DM has not decided what the trap is, and is waiting for the player's roll. If the roll succeeds the DM will say, "It was a scything blade and it passes over you" and the roll fails he will say "A pit trap opens before you even hit the floor. Laterz." In this case I'll point out that the player's decision doesn't actually matter; the only purpose of the mechanic is to draw out narrative. If the player understands the rules he knows that it doesn't matter what he says, just that he has to say something. Which is also perfectly fine.

Other options, such as "make a skill roll to see if it was the right thing to do, and that outcome will affect the saving throw" are really just variants of #2.

When you point out that there's more than one option, you still need to choose whether it's version #1 or #2. If it's #1 then more choices just means more chances the player will make the wrong random choice. If it's #2 then it just means the player has more options to tell a good story, and that none of it affects the outcome.

What I'm looking for is both at once: I want the player to worry about choosing the right option AND I want the probability of that choice being the right one to be linked to the character's skills. With a single die roll, whether the player makes it or the DM does, I believe it's not possible to have both at once. I believe that is only possible by combining one public and one secret roll.

I think you're mistaken in your conclusion.

The resolution isn't binary.

While the characters choice appears random, it's based on the player's judgment of their circumstances and reliance on their experiences. (It helps if the DM keeps the design on theme, so where you're in drow-town, you reasonably can expect poison arrows, etc). But we still have the possibilities for automatic success, automatic failure, and "Idk, let's roll." That 3rd option engages with the character's master-roguery. The declared action, whatever it is, determines what's next. And there is tension there prior to the roll.

Scenario 2 is one I avoid, generally. (Except in DW or AW where "DM invents a consequence" is embedded into the rule of a move). But you're right, outside of that, it's narrative-monkeying.

You want the player to worry about the right choice AND the probability of that choice tied to the character's skills. Isn't it already? That's what the ability modifier, proficiency, and expertise are designed to do - represent improvement or skill that directly impacts their odds of succeeding at something.

What about omitting DCs? Set those secretly, don't say what they are, and a player can feel confident (but not certain) of a high roll. Or set a variable DC by making all checks "opposed" rolls. Even if a character rolls very high, they still need to beat an X factor. ... which ... now I see where your secret failure roll idea comes from.

Hm.

It's not different than an opposed roll, really. It's just a sliding fail% that diminishes as you level. For simplicity, and for satisfaction, I think I would do it as an opposed roll. Mostly bc if I rolled high and you rolled higher, then I just got beat fair and square. But if I rolled high and you rolled the fail die in a way that caused me to fail, I'd feel gypped of success. And on balance, I'd prefer to be beaten fairly than robbed.


-Brad

 

[Guest 6801328]

Oh, sure. An opposed roll could work, as long as it's secret. In the case of passives ("which wire") you have to decide what the relevant skill to be applied is, but that's ok.

In fact, a secret opposed roll could possibly enable my 'false negatives'. If the player doesn't know the NPC's roll, then it's plausible that even an apparent failure is really a success, when in fact the player gets bad information instead of no information.

/fiendishcackling....

 

[Bawylie]

Oh, sure. An opposed roll could work, as long as it's secret. In the case of passives ("which wire") you have to decide what the relevant skill to be applied is, but that's ok.

In fact, a secret opposed roll could possibly enable my 'false negatives'. If the player doesn't know the NPC's roll, then it's plausible that even an apparent failure is really a success, when in fact the player gets bad information instead of no information.

/fiendishcackling....

Alrighty!

Sorry for so much thinking out loud, I just wasn't quite understanding what you were after or what you wanted your system to do.


-Brad

 

[iserith]

There's one very obvious problem with asking the player to describe how they're doing something. Sometimes the player knows more than the GM about a subject in the Real World. If their RW knowledge isn't applicable, then how can they answer the question without your input?

Let's take the poisonous mushrooms question from the OP. If I tell you I'm looking for a valvo, do you know where and what that is? What colour are the gills? Is there red on the cap or stem? There are other things I'd look for examining a mushroom, but that's two simple ones. You can certainly stop the game to look up what those things mean, or maybe you know the answer, but then there's an awful lot of subjects where it's not easy to find information on some things and you won't know the answer. How do you then determine whether the player is suggesting something reasonable and adjudicate accordingly?

Speaking for myself, what I'm looking for is an action declaration that allows me as DM to have to assume very little about what the character is actually doing. This means a reasonable amount of specificity. What you propose above is, to me, unreasonable because we're not playing a mycology minigame.

If a player wants to know if the mushrooms in front of his or her character are poisonous, I need to know what the character is doing before I can say whether the character is successful in making a determination. "Can I tell if the mushrooms are poisonous?" or "I try to see if the mushrooms are poisonous..." are insufficient on their own. How close do you get? Which senses are you applying to the task? Are you touching it? Barehanded or with a stick? Are you using an herbalism kit? Are you wearing a face mask? Because you can be sure if I say "You touch the mushrooms while examining it and..." the player might say "I didn't say I touched it!"

 

[iserith]

Oh, ok, fine. I think we agree in that case.

I thought you were suggesting that "the guard's body language reveals" is telling the player what his character thinks. Because, well, it is. But I'm ok with it in this case.

I don't agree. I'm making a statement about the NPC: The character was successful in his action and it reveals the guard's body language says he's lying. That is a fact earned by a reasonably-stated action declaration and, in this example, a sufficient result on an ability check. I'm not saying "You think he's lying." I'm saying "He's behaving as if he's lying..." or more directly, "He's lying." There will be no uncertainty with regard to this after I have narrated the result of the adventurer's action. The uncertainty (and the tension, depending on the stakes) happens after the action declaration but before the roll.

Totally agree. I just want the player to engage. I'd much rather have him say "I look to see if he's making eye contact" than "can I tell if he's lying?" And I'd much rather have him totally make up bogus electrical engineering drivel than say, "Can I tell which wire?"

But I'm not going to tie the quality of his description with his chance of success. That belongs to the dice, not my subjective assessment.

I think I attracted your resistance by the way I originally posed the problems, but I don't think whether one plays "Can I tell if he is lying?" or "I look to see if he's making eye contact" has any impact on the underlying goal of this thread.

I think quality definitely plays into the chance of success, but there are different factors that inform quality in my view. I'm not looking for anything technical, just something clearly stated (goal and approach) that is appropriate for the situation. It can't just be any old thing and we let the dice decide. That gets things backwards in my view because we are charged to first judge the plausibility of an action, decree automatic success, failure, or uncertainty, before we ever ask for a die to be picked up. To that end, there is an element of subjective assessment by design. You can limit that with asking for more ability checks; however, the DMG warns against this and, for good reason in my view if you're into "immersion," - because if players figure out that their decisions don't really matter and it's mostly up to the dice, then roleplaying can diminish.

To be clear, my resistance is to trying to create uncertainty after the ability check is resolved, not so much the format of the action declaration. Though questions DO annoy me.

 

[iserith]

Sorry chopped off the first part:

I don't think that choice is nearly as interesting as What do you do now that you know the guard is probably lying, factoring in the havoc you might cause if he's actually telling the truth?

Well, I can't tell you your preference is wrong, but for me, basically gaining no benefit for my action declaration and successful skill check would be pretty annoying. I took a risk (however big or small) to end up just as uncertain as when I started. Not a good trade in my view. Now, if I failed that check and the result was the uncertainty remained, I'd be okay with that.

Yes, decision paralysis is a risk, so the question is where is the cut-off? I mean, we don't tell the players the shortest route to the treasure room, even though they would spend less time debating which doorway to take.

In my calculus, the immersive quality of having them be unsure of their choice...the tension of being unsure of whether the guard is really lying or if they're going to get the princess killed because they didn't believe him...is worth the trade-off.

I would tell them the shortest route to the treasure (and have, recently), but only if they've done stuff to earn that information. And usually the shortest route is the most difficult, right? That's the trade-off.

Yes, but only in situations in which the realistic outcome still involves uncertainty. Humans can't actually tell with much accuracy when other humans are lying, regardless of what certain TV shows claim, so if I the player know the guard is lying, with no room for doubt, my experience is poorer than it might be.

Like others, TV reality works for me. It's also a game and to risk something and invest in resources and still not remove uncertainty seems like a huge waste to me.