D&D 5E What Rules do you see people mistake or misapply?

[Hussar]

I guess my biggest issue with this type of ruling is that it makes the DM very visible in the outcomes of the game and that's something I really trying to avoid if at all possible. You guys are effectively saying, "In my opinion, you have no chance of detecting this, therefore, you cannot detect it." And, if the player disagrees, well, there's no recourse. It's a ruling and the player has to suck it up. I hate doing that as a DM and I really don't like it when DM's do it to me.

By using the dice to determine success, a level of fairness is added to the situation. Let's be honest, 9 times out of 10, we'd all get the same results - the invisible character is undetected. The odds certainly favor that outcome. The difference, in my mind, is that 1 in 10 where the outcome isn't certain.

I actually had this come up very recently. In the module I was running, 4 shadows were hidden among statues in a cavern that the PC's were exploring. Now, according to the module (and a ruling I agree with) the shadows had a DC 16 hide score. Any passive perception of 16 or higher would spot them before they attack (or an active perception check if the players asked for one). Now, the group didn't have any passive perception that high and the shadows got the drop on them. So, had I simply ruled them undetectable, the results would have been exactly the same.

Now, there was some grumbling from the players that there was no chance to detect the shadows. I pointed out that there was a chance, it's just that no one had a passive perception high enough and no one asked for a perception check before the two PC's entered the room and approached the statues. IOW, it was the player's own fault they got ambushed. They could have avoided the ambush, they just weren't acting very cautiously. They blundered straight ahead and walked into an ambush. Fair enough. Lesson learned and hopefully they will be a bit more careful next time. Or not. That's up to them.

I just don't want to put myself in the position where it's "Well, I'm in the big daddy chair, so, what I say goes, and you have to suck it up and trust your DM". I LOATHE that style of DMing. I don't do it as a DM and I hate playing that way. And, never minding the heavy handedness of it, it also means that I, as DM, am never surprised by how a scenario rolls out. If I flat out decide that the players Shalt Not do something, then, well, they can't do it and the scenario will progress the way I have pre-determined it. I'd much rather leave a chance of things playing out differently. It's a lot more fun for me as the DM when my carefully crafted scenario goes all wahoonie shaped because the players got lucky.

 

[Caliban]

That's basically where 5e puts you, at least in regards to stealth and perception/investigate checks. It's only a problem if you are running an adversarial style of game, where the DM is actively working against the PC's within the limits of the rules. Some people really enjoy that style of game, but it's not my cup of tea. I see my role of DM as providing opportunities for the PC's to be heroes (or scoundrels) and doing my best to make sure they enjoy both their successes and failures.

 

[Glomb175]

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Players cannot call for an ability check. Ever. The DM determines when/if a roll is required.


This. This drives me mad. Only one of my players does this. He's a dick in real life so it's expected. He'll just roll a dice and say "I rolled 18 on stealth". No you didn't. You didn't say you wanted to stealth. If he does this, I make a point by saying something like "the crunchy leaves in the area prevent you from being stealthy"

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[doctorbadwolf]

If I had a player that put that much effort into perception and didn't notice stuff, I would be looking for new players.

I'd at least have to explain how in he hell the thing escaped his dare devil level senses.

Because "mundane" or not, yeah, PP that high is capable of more than real world humans.

 

[Satyrn]

I guess my biggest issue with this type of ruling is that it makes the DM very visible in the outcomes of the game and that's something I really trying to avoid if at all possible. You guys are effectively saying, "In my opinion, you have no chance of detecting this, therefore, you cannot detect it." And, if the player disagrees, well, there's no recourse. It's a ruling and the player has to suck it up. I hate doing that as a DM and I really don't like it when DM's do it to me.

Well, ideally when I rule in such a way it's meant to enhance the fun of the players.

The invisible statue example, for example, just doesn't seem like it would be fun if they wind up just spotting it as they enter the room. And since the whole point, in the fiction, to making a statue invisible is so that it isn't automatically seen, I wouldn't want to apply a rule that says "you know an invisble object is present but not its exact location" or the like since it would invalidate the fiction, and just be less fun than I think it ought to be

Now, that's also assuming that none of the players are playing a Sherlock Holmes who has declared that he's analyzing every room he enters. That's a player who wants to find the mysteries overlooked by normal people and it would be fun to roll the dice to notice signs of the hidden statue - or even skip the dice roll and describe those signs for him and give the player the fun he wants.

Every aspect of play is important to me when deciding whether to invoke a rule or invent one for the moment. There is no absolute for me. I aim for a balance of what makes sense and is fun.

And we probably all agree that getting screwed over by the DM is not fun. In every ruling I make, I try not to screw over the players. It's a guiding principle.




When it comes to an invisible stalker in a room with the pie - Well I'm gonna skip over how I'd decide to rule. Let's say that for whatever reason I chose to simply rule that the players do not detect it. What I absolutely am not going to do next is have the invisible stalker attack. That would be totally screwing over the party.

I would do is something along these lines: as the players linger in the room, I'd tell them they see the steam rising from the pie swirl in a breeze. Let them investigate it, give another clue let them continue investigating. There could be dice rolling involved, or they do something that I rule flat out works. And the players get the fun (I hope) of working out a little mystery.

Or if they fail in their investigation, or fail to even bother investigating, or whatever and I deem it's time for Mr Stalker to attack then he's going to get the jump on them, but I'd probably still let them make a Perception check to avoid surprise, because not getting that roll at some point might feel like getting screwed over.




I should add that I am regularly surprised by what unfolds during my game, because when I said "every aspect of play is important to me when deciding whether to invoke a rule or invent one for the moment," I meant it - and the biggest input, the largest source (by far) of those aspects of play are my players: What their characters are doing; what they expect the result of their actions to be; all the crazy ideas they come up with. What is likely to be fun for them.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I guess my biggest issue with this type of ruling is that it makes the DM very visible in the outcomes of the game and that's something I really trying to avoid if at all possible. You guys are effectively saying, "In my opinion, you have no chance of detecting this, therefore, you cannot detect it." And, if the player disagrees, well, there's no recourse. It's a ruling and the player has to suck it up. I hate doing that as a DM and I really don't like it when DM's do it to me.

By using the dice to determine success, a level of fairness is added to the situation. Let's be honest, 9 times out of 10, we'd all get the same results - the invisible character is undetected. The odds certainly favor that outcome. The difference, in my mind, is that 1 in 10 where the outcome isn't certain.

I actually had this come up very recently. In the module I was running, 4 shadows were hidden among statues in a cavern that the PC's were exploring. Now, according to the module (and a ruling I agree with) the shadows had a DC 16 hide score. Any passive perception of 16 or higher would spot them before they attack (or an active perception check if the players asked for one). Now, the group didn't have any passive perception that high and the shadows got the drop on them. So, had I simply ruled them undetectable, the results would have been exactly the same.

Now, there was some grumbling from the players that there was no chance to detect the shadows. I pointed out that there was a chance, it's just that no one had a passive perception high enough and no one asked for a perception check before the two PC's entered the room and approached the statues. IOW, it was the player's own fault they got ambushed. They could have avoided the ambush, they just weren't acting very cautiously. They blundered straight ahead and walked into an ambush. Fair enough. Lesson learned and hopefully they will be a bit more careful next time. Or not. That's up to them.

I just don't want to put myself in the position where it's "Well, I'm in the big daddy chair, so, what I say goes, and you have to suck it up and trust your DM". I LOATHE that style of DMing. I don't do it as a DM and I hate playing that way. And, never minding the heavy handedness of it, it also means that I, as DM, am never surprised by how a scenario rolls out. If I flat out decide that the players Shalt Not do something, then, well, they can't do it and the scenario will progress the way I have pre-determined it. I'd much rather leave a chance of things playing out differently. It's a lot more fun for me as the DM when my carefully crafted scenario goes all wahoonie shaped because the players got lucky.

IMO, you are the good kind of DM, and the ones you loathe are, at best, good in spite of DMing that way.

 

[Hussar]

Well, ideally when I rule in such a way it's meant to enhance the fun of the players.

The invisible statue example, for example, just doesn't seem like it would be fun if they wind up just spotting it as they enter the room. And since the whole point, in the fiction, to making a statue invisible is so that it isn't automatically seen, I wouldn't want to apply a rule that says "you know an invisble object is present but not its exact location" or the like since it would invalidate the fiction, and just be less fun than I think it ought to be

/snip for brevity, but, still lots of great stuff there.

Aye, but, there's the rub. "Less fun than I think it ought to be" is not a criteria I want to use. The key point in that sentence is the "I". Sure, I might think it's more fun if they don't see it, but, then again, I don't know. It might be more fun to add a sense of dread to the game - "You notice something funny about how the dust is falling over there. It seems to be disappearing after it strikes something, you think there is something concealed over there, but, you're not sure what it is." is possibly just as fun as jumping out and trying to eat the PC.

And, that's where I draw the line. I don't want to be constantly evaluating the game based on what I think ought to be fun. I just want to run the game and let the players decide what is fun and what's not. The player who jacks up his or her perception score to the point where they could detect the hidden gargoyle with passive perception has, by virtue of actually jacking up that score, told me that he or she WANTS to be a "Sherlock Holmes" type.

Which, to me, means that if I rule auto-fails, then I'm just piddling on that player's fun in favor of what I might think is more fun. Not the way I want to run a game.

To me, this is no different than the DM who rules that you absolutely cannot intimidate that prisoner or persuade that guard to help you do something or any of a host of other examples that have been trotted out over the years of DM's ruling auto-fails. It's too heavy handed for me. I don't want to be put in the position of telling the player, Thou Shalt Not just because of my own personal preferences.

 

[Satyrn]

. . told me that he or she WANTS to be a "Sherlock Holmes" type.

Which, to me, means that if I rule auto-fails, then I'm just piddling on that player's fun . . .

I thought I made it clear enough that I think it would be piddling on that player's fun, too, and wouldn't likely rule autofails for them. Anyway, that's what I meant to get across.

 

[Hussar]

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Players cannot call for an ability check. Ever. The DM determines when/if a roll is required.


This. This drives me mad. Only one of my players does this. He's a dick in real life so it's expected. He'll just roll a dice and say "I rolled 18 on stealth". No you didn't. You didn't say you wanted to stealth. If he does this, I make a point by saying something like "the crunchy leaves in the area prevent you from being stealthy"

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I'm not sure I agree with that.

"I want to see if I know anything about this monster, can I make a Dungeoneering check (or Religion or whatever)?" seems like a pretty solid "call for an ability check".

Now, I wouldn't allow a player to roll his own Stealth checks, since the player shouldn't actually know exactly how stealthy he's being. It's kinda like Investigation checks to find a trap - you shouldn't know if you just rolled low or if there really isn't a trap there. OTOH, if I tell the DM that I'm checking the desk to find hidden compartments, I'd hope that he'd throw up an investigation check at my request.

But, if the player says, "I got an 18 on my Arcana check, what do I know about this monster?" I don't think I'd have any problems with that.

 

[schnee]

But this specific instance wasn't in combat. The scenario proposed by MiraMels was "Short gargoyle with the invisibility spell cast on them and they are motionless long before the PCs arrive and there's no environmental factors to draw attention to their presence?"

MiraMels agreed that they would say it was undectable, but by RAW it would be automatically detected.

Really?

A Gargoyle 'being motionless' is a Hide attempt. Invisible lets you hide for free. Right? So, not 'automatic'. The Gargoyle is trying to Hide.

Additionally, there's a unique wrinkle with this particular monster that makes it interesting. Right in their description, Gargoyles are "...can hold themselves so still that they appear inanimate. Able to maintain this state for years, a gargoyle makes an ideal sentry." Given that, I think there's plenty of room to make a ruling on an invisible Gargoyle, in ideal circumstances, automatically succeeds unless characters somehow do something that interacts with the space occupied by the Gargoyle and introduces a chance to see it. That ruling doesn't apply to any other creature (that I can remember).

But, say another invisible, rocklike monster, a Xorn, tried the same trick. Well there's a good chance they might make a creaking noise, or shift their weight, or previously stirred up a cloud of dust that is still settling when the characters enter, or leaned against a big vase nearby that is being tipped over a bit at a slight angle without realizing it, to give themselves away. So, as per RAW, Hide check and Perception check.

Someone please correct me if I'm not interpreting the rules correctly?