D&D 5E Players Self-Assigning Rolls

[redrick]

I would hate for instance, for the low search related skill character played by the detail focused descriptive player to be allowed to outshine the player who has a character with better search skills often enough for it to show as "good strategy" just because I as GM put in and setup enough challenges that made the character skill second best.

Since we dont have easy descriptive analogs for "i talk my way into an auto- success" for a lot of the skills I never thought it fair to so devalue or under represent points spent in those that do.

This is a legitimate concern. It would suck for a player to say, "We're always searching for traps, so I'm going to take proficiency in Investigation, because that's something I'd like to be good at," and then find that every time a trap was encountered, it was entirely a series of carefully presented auto-success actions, followed by a roll on Thieve's Tools.

Personally, I think the best way to handle this is just to make sure you are presenting your PCs with complex enough challenges that a roll on the old Investigate is required. I am not interested in "I search the room" checks. What's the point of describing a room if the players just walk in and say, "I search the room .. um, 17." What I would aspire to do, is to provide situations where just looking under the bed or going through the dresser isn't good enough. "There's a trip-line on the dresser drawer, but the mechanism looks complex. It's not obvious that cutting the line will disarm it." (A character who continues along this path is likely to encounter an Investigation check.) Most of the stuff our players are capable of describing in its entirety is probably not going to clock over a DC 10, unless the player happens to be a locksmith.

And again, my goal is generally not to present head-scratchers to the players. It's just to keep the focus on the fiction and the details.

Not saying I always do the above, but, if I were planning ahead, it's what I would try to do. It's like the conversation about Reliable Talent. PCs auto-succeed at everything? Give them something harder to do!

Our dialog encounters definitely have auto-success equivalents to looking under the bed or behind the painting. If the interaction can be framed in an obvious fashion and the NPC would be inclined to comply, no roll is needed. "I ask the guard for directions." Etc.

 

[iserith]

My group are all of a sort who engage with each other and the game as the norm with lits of humor.

I try to mix mechanics, character and players along with the story on relatively even footing.

I find its always easy to find one skill/action/setup to make any approach spotlight as fine but as a GM i know that when i allow narration to trump mechanics **for some elements** it leads to those elements being undervalued.

Whether that is the player goid at social clues or the player who wants to detail to the minutiae every finger of his search scene, unless it can be applied to all the skills i tend to not let it outstrip the mechanics so far it is an autosuccess "strategy."

I would hate for instance, for the low search related skill character played by the detail focused descriptive player to be allowed to outshine the player who has a character with better search skills often enough for it to show as "good strategy" just because I as GM put in and setup enough challenges that made the character skill second best.

Since we dont have easy descriptive analogs for "i talk my way into an auto- success" for a lot of the skills I never thought it fair to so devalue or under represent points spent in those that do.

Not sure off the top of my head what an auto success worth pick pocket or arcana check description would be. But i am sure better GMs do.

But, fortunately the game supports many different style of gaming and games where you figure out the best "strategy" for "playing the GM" for auto success and games like mine can all be fun for thier respective crowds

When it comes to actions the players take, sometimes they just succeed. When they don't, but also don't fail outright, it's good to have the right proficiencies or class features to help them succeed on the roll. So the proper orientation as I see it is to aim for automatic success and fall back on your mechanics when you come up short. At the same time, try to do things that your character is good at in case you have to roll. Leave stuff you're not good at to other characters whenever possible. If everyone is operating with the same thought process, which they tend to do in my experience, then nothing is devalued as you suggest.

I don't know what you mean by "descriptive analogs." Would you clarify?

Also, "Playing the GM" seems rather derogatory when characterizing someone else's approach and is especially out of place in a sentence where you rightly suggest that different approaches appeal to different players.

 

[Charlaquin]

Redrick you missed the point. Player 1 tries to say something nice. But from his mouth comes a crude proposition. Due to lack of social skills, off his meds, bad blood sugar, and etc.

Jasper you missed the point. If Player 1 wants his character to say something nice, all he need say is his goal and approach. “I want to woo the princess by saying something nice” is sufficient. That’s why your comment about good flavor text versus bad flavor text comes across as not relevant to the discussion at hand. We aren’t talking about waiting for the DM to call for a roll because you might earn a bonus for “good roleplaying” (*hurk*). We’re talking about declaring actions in the form of a goal and an approach and letting the DM decide how best to adjudicate the results, as opposed to saying what roll you want to make and then potentially describing an action that you think justifies the roll. The level of detail in the description of either style is not what’s in question; either can be described “well” or “poorly” and in neither case should the “quality” of the description lead to bonuses or penalties on the roll.

 

[Sunseeker]

In the age of smart phones and other distractions, it seems particularly wise in my view to incentivize paying attention.

Provided that it's actually demonstrated paying attention. My wife, among other people I've talked to in nerdy gaming circles find they pay attention better when they have something else to do. As odd as it seems, I've seen it work in action. If the DM is rewarding players for remembering information and applying it to the game, that's great. If a DM is punishing their players because they're not making eye-contact the entire session, that's bad.

 

[Sunseeker]

Jasper you missed the point. If Player 1 wants his character to say something nice, all he need say is his goal and approach. “I want to woo the princess by saying something nice” is sufficient. That’s why your comment about good flavor text versus bad flavor text comes across as not relevant to the discussion at hand. We aren’t talking about waiting for the DM to call for a roll because you might earn a bonus for “good roleplaying” (*hurk*). We’re talking about declaring actions in the form of a goal and an approach and letting the DM decide how best to adjudicate the results, as opposed to saying what roll you want to make and then potentially describing an action that you think justifies the roll. The level of detail in the description of either style is not what’s in question; either can be described “well” or “poorly” and in neither case should the “quality” of the description lead to bonuses or penalties on the roll.

I want to add, I REALLY hate it when a player says something like "I ask the Princess if we could have some horses for our quest." and then rolls poorly and the DM decides that what they really said was something like "Hey baby, ever met me? I'm Hugh, Hugh Mungus." It's like when BioWare got the bright idea that what it says on the dialog wheel should be totally different from what your character actually says. Ranging from mildly insulting to violent to disgustingly sexist.

If Joe wants to ask the Princess for horses, and rolls poorly then the outcome should be A: he simply didn't come across as convincing in his request or B: the princess was not moved by the request.

Not something totally different coming out of their mouth.

 

[Bawylie]

Something going a little bit overlooked here.

If you play via an online table top with VOIP, you lose some of the visual context that you’d have with an in-person group in the same place. Facial expressions, gestures, etc add context to a player’s speech.

If you can’t see your players, a lot of context can be missable. So getting the phrasing and adjudication to be consistent and unambiguous is a great benefit, IMO. It can really cut down on the potential for miscommunication.


-Brad

 

[guachi]

One thing I've noticed is that in many games, the player is very light on description when describing what he or she wants to do. "I want to make a Perception check on the door..." for example or "I search for traps." Rather than encourage the player to be a little more specific, the DM goes straight to the adjudication and narration. What this tends to do as far as I can tell is prompt the DM to fill in the blanks the player left, assuming and establishing what the character does. This can sometimes lead to the player saying, "Uh, no, that's not what I did." Now the DM and player have to fix it.

Even if this never, ever happened. Even if the DM could read minds and knew exactly what the player meant I'd still rather have the players describe more. DMs talk too much as it is. It's collaborative storytelling and I'm not really keen as a DM to do the narrating myself. I've already got all the NPCs to narrate; I don't need to take the duties of the PCs as well.

So I more than agree with you. I agree with you not only from the bare mechanical standpoint but from the narrative aspect as well.

 

[iserith]

Even if this never, ever happened. Even if the DM could read minds and knew exactly what the player meant I'd still rather have the players describe more. DMs talk too much as it is. It's collaborative storytelling and I'm not really keen as a DM to do the narrating myself. I've already got all the NPCs to narrate; I don't need to take the duties of the PCs as well.

So I more than agree with you. I agree with you not only from the bare mechanical standpoint but from the narrative aspect as well.

I agree. The DM's already got two-thirds of the game to describe and narrate. I don't want to intrude upon the player's one-third. I talk so much during games, I have to constantly drink Jameson just to stay hydrated. Imagine my weekly burden.

 

[Maxperson]

Redrick you missed the point. Player 1 tries to say something nice. But from his mouth comes a crude proposition. Due to lack of social skills, off his meds, bad blood sugar, and etc.

Maybe if he rolled a 3 -1 = 2 he might do that, but even someone with a lack of social skills, off his meds, low blood suger, etc. will still sometimes say something appropriate. That 19 -1 = 18 is one of those times where it wasn't a crude proposition.

 

[5ekyu]

When it comes to actions the players take, sometimes they just succeed. When they don't, but also don't fail outright, it's good to have the right proficiencies or class features to help them succeed on the roll. So the proper orientation as I see it is to aim for automatic success and fall back on your mechanics when you come up short. At the same time, try to do things that your character is good at in case you have to roll. Leave stuff you're not good at to other characters whenever possible. If everyone is operating with the same thought process, which they tend to do in my experience, then nothing is devalued as you suggest.

I don't know what you mean by "descriptive analogs." Would you clarify?

Also, "Playing the GM" seems rather derogatory when characterizing someone else's approach and is especially out of place in a sentence where you rightly suggest that different approaches appeal to different players.

you yourself describe using the narration to get more auto-success an fewewr random chances as a "strategy" as a better strategic choice which to me seems to make it a fair statement to describe it as "playing the GM" by giving him more of the bells and whisteles the Gm requires for auto-successes (and fewer failure chances) instead of "playing the game" and relying on your character to have the skill to overcome the challenges.

You can take that as derogatory but i do not see it as any different from how you have described it - yourself multiple times - as you describing it as a winning strategy to get more successes.

As for narrative analogs there are things which we can draw easy mechanical descriptions to for tieing action to result - such as "i pull out all the drawers, looking thru the contents of each and under each and... [insert every successful search technique that can apply hoping one hits the GM auto-success trigger this time]" etc. Similarly, we can all draw some obvious guiesses as to what would be more successful or such for certain conversational "tasks" for things we are

But we do not have just as clear descriptive declarations that would make tasks without such a obvious physical component or which apply to magical or less realistic approaches.

What would be the auto-success description for using arcana or religion or others to RECALL info? "i think really hard and check each drawer in my mind without fail?"

What would be the auto-success description for diagnosing a disease in a world of pre-modern medicine and magical afflictions? "I use hot onyx stones applied to the stomach to drive the toad that is growing in his stomach out, placing them precisely."

What would be the auto-success description for pick pocket, tightrope walking, etc?

basically, it seems this approach **could** create two classes of skills or abilities:
those where auto-success narratives are rare if not at all ever encountered (skill score is VERY important)
those where auto-success narratives are somewhat frequent or even just uncommon but **exist enough that it would be described by those familiar with it as a clearly better strategy to work at getting** (where skill score is much less critical.)

if, you, a significant proponent of the approach repeatedly refer to it as such a strong strategic choice over just relying on the character's skill and the mechanics, then it seems that unless you have such a degree of auto-success setup for all skills then you have created these two tiers of skills and scores *or* you must have narrative analogs for all skills.

May not be a worry in your games but i have certainly seen games where players have espoused just such a "good strategy" type reference for shortcutting the character stats on elements where they though their own PLAYER skills at talking and describing would cover that weakness just fine.

Not a worry everybody would have but since i make all players go through a whole bunch of point decisions at chargen and level by level i want to be able to show them in play they all play out equally.