D&D 5E Cutting Words and game flow

[miniaturehoarder]

Can someone please post what the tweet says?

I can't see the link at work.

here...

 

[steppedonad4]

Neither Mearls nor CS should ever be used as a reference for a ruling. They are both notorious for getting things wrong.

Jeremy Crawford on the other hand is notorious for being the word of law: https://twitter.com/LeonardoNocchi/status/672285761899753474

 

[Sunseeker]

I think all that is necessary is to add a pause. Knowing or not knowing the roll is missing the point. The player is supposed to make the choice of "do I risk this ability on a possible miss, or do I only use it on a confirmed hit?" I find the wording of the spell a bit silly even if understand the intent.

Solution: make it clear to the player that you will not change how you are running things and that it is 100% up to him to say "no I'm going to my power before you confirm the hit" or "no I'm going to use my power before you roll the damage." In my games, players are responsible for running everything their characters are capable of, I will not run anything for them.

 

[Coredump]

Neither Mearls nor CS should ever be used as a reference for a ruling. They are both notorious for getting things wrong.

Jeremy Crawford on the other hand is notorious for being the word of law: https://twitter.com/LeonardoNocchi/status/672285761899753474

But note, he never says you need to reveal the die roll, just that using it 'can' negate a Nat 20.

 

[Celtavian]

Cutting words can negate a natural 20. That's wild.

 

[Blue]

Cutting words never empowered the bard to see the roll.

Cutting words never /clarifies/ if the bard needs to see the roll or not, but the sentence doesn't make sense if the bard doesn't know the roll. In other words, while you are correct it doesn't explicitly say that the bard gets to see the roll, the sentence contains a whole lot of extra material that only makes sense in the situation where the roll is made.

So I don't buy it. If you assume the bard sees the roll, the rule makes sense. If you assume the bard doesn't see the roll there's extraneous garbage. How your DM interprets it is up to them, I know what I do at my table.

 

[Uchawi]

So my parties bard leveled up and got his level 3 Cutting Words ability.

Normally, I do most of my rolling in private, mostly to occasionally fudge things so that the game flows well and to avoid being questioned/annoyed by players who ask why when the attack bonus on this goblin is +3 when the last one was +4 and other such pointless rules lawyering.

But once he got this ability the bards player asked if I would now be announcing the value of every roll so he can decide if he wants to nuke that roll BEFORE adding any modifiers and determining if it is a success. This seems like throwing a large blob of tar into every encounter and reversing some of 5es advances in playspeed. I ruled at the time that he'd just have to decide to use the ability without knowing what the roll was. It still seems quite powerful, there are plenty of tells that a particular roll is important and if you absolutely HAVE to get bang from every use of the ability just apply it to damage.

I'm still comfortable with that, just wondering if anyone has seen a clarification of the intent of the ability or play it differently.

I read the ability and nothing states the player should see the roll, but I would also add you should never fudge the roll if the bard uses the ability. The underlying issue is trust.

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

If you're going to hide rolls, then to avoid basically removing the best part of the iconic ability of your player's chosen subclass (seriously, Cutting Words is THE reason to do Lore Bard), you really should just let the bard use it after you've said if a roll is a hit or a miss. That keeps flow and keeps the ability good, while the fact that the bard doesn't know by how much the hit was landed will keep it from being always successful.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

If you're going to hide rolls, then to avoid basically removing the best part of the iconic ability of your player's chosen subclass (seriously, Cutting Words is THE reason to do Lore Bard), you really should just let the bard use it after you've said if a roll is a hit or a miss. That keeps flow and keeps the ability good, while the fact that the bard doesn't know by how much the hit was landed will keep it from being always successful.

That's exactly what I do. My rolls are hidden by default, since we're playing online and it's a lot faster and easier for me to roll for NPCs with physical dice than the dice roller. Otherwise I'd just roll attack rolls where the players could see them.

The biggest draw for Lore bard for me and the other bard fan I know is actually the Extra Magical Secrets. And the proficiencies. Well, actually pretty much everything. With greenflame blade they can almost keep up in melee damage with a Valor bard that isn't using a two-handed weapon (and as a bard, I'd rather go longsword than greatsword thematically). That being said, sometimes the Valor bard is more appealing, but I'd say they're a pretty well balanced set.

 

[dmnqwk]

If you're not looking to give a player a fair chance to use Cutting Words proactively, consider improving the effect of the damage negation when used reactively.

So instead of allowing it to reduce the attack roll, let them roll a number of Inspiration dice equal to their proficiency modifier instead. The reason I suggest an increased number is because as you progress, the level of damage per strike increases to the point normal rules could stop a 50 point swing from a nasty Vampire or something, whereas at the same level you would now roll a Cutting Words of 4d10 to reduce the damage. Even at 6d12 it's not really overpowered, when it could originally be used to negate a hit entirely.