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Guest 6801328
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My group seems to lean too much on Help, Guidance, Bardic Inspiration, and “a roll? oh, well I’ll just roll too!” Its exasperating, and I’m searching for how I can nip it in the bud.
Examples from our game:
The Bard/Sorcerer player says “oh I’ll help my friend engaging in persuading the Flaming Fist commander that we’ve held up our bargain.” So I ask “ok, what are you saying to support his argument?” Player responds “Um...I play a song? Hah, well...I can’t actually think of anything...but it was my understanding I could still take the Help Action?”
Both the pure Bard and the Bard/Sorcerer player routinely tossing out Bardic Inspiration without offering any role playing or explanation of what *their* Bardic Inspiration looks like.
The Rogue player with “Guidance” (magic initiate) giving Guidance on an Arcana check and other checks in which he is untrained without roleplaying what that looks like or how it makes sense.
And I’ve had to police the whole group regarding pile-on skill checks, especially the Bard player. I’ve repeatedly mentioned that if a bunch of people want to make a check then it’s probably a group check - otherwise everyone rolling one after another is just an exercise in throwing dice at a challenge waiting to see who succeeds. I’ve noticed this come up most often with lore/knowledge checks & Perception/Insight checks. Last time I had to shut it down and put my authoritative DM voice on and reiterate the problem.
Thankfully, it’s not just me who has noticed this. Another player in the group said “Guys, we have a serious problem with metagaming. It’s coming up almost every session.”
So I wanted to ask the great minds of ENWorld: What are the most effective ways to deal with a group that has this particular challenge?
I agree that I don't like the effect at the table, but I think trying to control mechanics with roleplaying requirements is not the right solution. Some players won't use the mechanics unless they have the storytelling to support it, which is great. Other players just want to use the mechanics, and if you force them to justify it with RP they're going to start using bad/repetitive RP, which in my book is worse than no RP at all.
I think it needs to be a mechanical solution, but I admit I say that without knowing what the mechanical solution is. In general there should be a cost to making attempts at things (e.g. precious time, consequences of failure, etc. Or using up a resource...which Bardic Inspiration is, of course.) But sometimes there simply is no cost, in which case you might want to ask, "Why are we rolling dice?"
For example, let's say the party is looking for a book in the library, and there is no time pressure on them. Instead of everybody rolling Investigation, or somebody using Help to support somebody else, just let them find the damned book!
But let's say it's an ancient library with rickety shelves, and searching for books runs the risk of causing a catastrophic collapse. Now you can sit back and say, "Ok! Who wants to do some searching?"
And/or there's [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s solution.