D&D General Poll: As a player, I am always justified in pursuing every advantage I find, no matter what.

[tetrasodium]

I feel like the wording on this poll is somewhere between poorly worded & finely minced words to generate a specific result. Whatever the goal is the poll leaves too much undefined and draws an extreme line as a secondary qualifier.

"pursuing every advantage I find" could be interacting with the world, it could be punpun & peasant railgun style rules lawyering, it could be social engineering things like the already mentioned pizza, it could be minor charop, it could be extreme charop, it could be using bonkers design choices, it could be looking for loopholes to abuse gm largesse intended to build buyin, it could be looking for ways to abuse houserules in ways the gm will almost certainly need to revise, it could even be outright catch me if you can cheating... This statement is just too vague to provide two or more people answering the poll enough information to be answering the same question in their mind

"no matter what" Alice could be cool with most of those things but draw the line at cheating, Bob could be cool with cheating but think a couple of the things Alice is cool with are too extreme to be acceptable in polite company, Cindy ,might be cool with doing all of those things but draw the line if you do it, Dave might be cool with some of those things but draw the line if a player with a wizard PC does it, Edith might be the sane as Dave except swap wizard for fighter. Frank might be cool with a bunch in a one shot but consider them beyond the pale in what is expected to be an ongoing campaign, Gary might consider a the same bunch as Frank to be fine in an ongoing campaign but a one shot is a holy sanctum not to be smeared by them... All of those hypothetical players are answering a wildly different question that considers most of the others unacceptable players but all answer no.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Not in DnD. Definitely in Monopoly.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

However, I have been known to go out of my way to "bust" house rules. I always bring them up to the DM first, but if they ignore me, I have no problem shrugging and exploiting them. Maybe that's wrong of me, but something about knowing about an unintended exploit bothers me.

When my buddy wanted to run a '1's always crit fail... and on attacks you deal damage to yourself and drop your weapon' I tried to explain how this penelized melee combatants... when he didn't listen I made a hafling for his game.

• Lucky. When you roll a 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll the die. You must use the new result, even if it is a 1.

it took 5 sessions before he asked why I never crit failed like everyone else... by then I had hit 4th level and told him I was taking lucky and he almost flipped the table.

 

[Umbran]

I mean in the real world if I was a minmaxer I would eat much healthier and work out more and spend at least half the time I do on D&D on trying to get face time with people that could help my career... the fact that not only I don't but MOST of us don't tells me that we shouldn't be always taking the best paths in game

Alternatively, it should lead us to question what "best" means.

 

[James Gasik]

If you are going to patch the game to fix a problem, it shouldn't create a new bigger problem. Trading a big problem for a small one is okay.

I'll agree to this.

 

[TwoSix]

"Always" and "no matter what" are way too strong for me to vote "Yes" on any question that includes them.

 

[Medic]

I don't have much to add to this discussion, but I am reminded of a funny anecdote where a DM hit one of the player characters in our party with a curse that had all sorts of narrative consequences, but we just shrugged them off and used it to steamroll everything. It most definitely wasn't his intention, but I don't think we should have had to justify capitalizing on it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

When you use charged words like 'no matter what', or 'always' it should skew towards no- I hope. You do take away the squishy middle ground of a lot of people choosing 'it depends' or 'sometimes' and make things all or nothing.

This was, in fact, the point. My curiosity was piqued by a sentiment expressed in another thread, which some folks either agreed with, or said that their players agree with even though they personally do not.

I wanted it to be as clear and unambiguous as possible--much like the other polls we've gotten recently. If shades of grey and nuance were my aim, I wouldn't have made a poll in the first place.

"Always" and "no matter what" are way too strong for me to vote "Yes" on any question that includes them.

You won't hear disagreement from me. But that wasn't the point. I was curious how common such opinions are. I didn't expect "yes" to be more popular than "no."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I feel like the wording on this poll is somewhere between poorly worded & finely minced words to generate a specific result. Whatever the goal is the poll leaves too much undefined and draws an extreme line as a secondary qualifier.

"pursuing every advantage I find" could be interacting with the world, it could be punpun & peasant railgun style rules lawyering, it could be social engineering things like the already mentioned pizza, it could be minor charop, it could be extreme charop, it could be using bonkers design choices, it could be looking for loopholes to abuse gm largesse intended to build buyin, it could be looking for ways to abuse houserules in ways the gm will almost certainly need to revise, it could even be outright catch me if you can cheating... This statement is just too vague to provide two or more people answering the poll enough information to be answering the same question in their mind

"no matter what" Alice could be cool with most of those things but draw the line at cheating, Bob could be cool with cheating but think a couple of the things Alice is cool with are too extreme to be acceptable in polite company, Cindy ,might be cool with doing all of those things but draw the line if you do it, Dave might be cool with some of those things but draw the line if a player with a wizard PC does it, Edith might be the sane as Dave except swap wizard for fighter. Frank might be cool with a bunch in a one shot but consider them beyond the pale in what is expected to be an ongoing campaign, Gary might consider a the same bunch as Frank to be fine in an ongoing campaign but a one shot is a holy sanctum not to be smeared by them... All of those hypothetical players are answering a wildly different question that considers most of the others unacceptable players but all answer no.

As stated above: My goal was never to parade around and say "look, everyone agrees with me!" Because that's not only pointless preening, it's doubly pointless because a self-selected online poll where people are allowed to change their votes is a poll with near-zero merit.

My whole purpose was to determine how common such sentiments are, among ENWorld folks who visit the D&D subforum. I chose the expression I did because it reflects an actual opinion stated to me recently by a user here, which some others either agreed with, or disagreed with but said that their players agree with. Hence, I was curious exactly how common such opinions are. I cannot conduct a true survey, so the data is merely for my own "amusement," after a fashion. But I was still curious.

Should a debate about the merits of exploiting advantages crop up in the thread, all the better, so long as it remains civil.

Edit: And yes, I intentionally phrased it so that it could include purely in-character behaviors, purely out-of-game behaviors like social engineering pizza (...that's a phrase I'm going to have to hold onto), or purely mechanical behaviors, whether they be merely curious rule interactions, outright broken rules loopholes, or logical consequences of (house)rules used without concern for side-effects (e.g. disregarding genre conventions.)

The only thing I personally would exclude from the above is outright cheating, e.g. falsely reporting the results of your rolls or "misremembering" how much gold you have etc.

 

[Oofta]

It's a team game. I'm not going to push the envelope, or even come close if I think it's making the game less fun for the group. That includes making the game less fun for the DM.