D&D 5E What actions by a PC Don't need to be stated?

[outsider]

They would need to check a locked chest, and the door to the next room separately though.

The thing that made me develop this technique was when I succeeded on my find traps roll on a door, then sprung a trap when I went to pick it. "You didn't say you searched the lock". After about an hour of bogging the game down by searching literally everything the DM mentioned for traps, I encountered a crazed gnome that was humming a song to himself. I told the DM that I was searching the gnome for traps. DM was getting annoyed. Then I told him I was searching the song for traps. I wasn't welcome back next session, lol.

 

[ccs]

He is not a 1st edition veteran, but then again neither am I. That being said we have had discussions/arguments about this before (I believe the first time it came up was related to an whether or not he had an Alarm spell but I may be wrong).

P.S. to clarify we have been playing together for years and at one point we got into very large argument that was sparked off because of something related.

So he KNOWS how you DM.... Why are you still having this type of discussion with him after YEARS of playing together?

 

[steeldragons]

Your calls are correct. Morath is wrong.

I also would not have granted advantage for holding your breath. There's nothing saying you have to "breathe" the cloudkill for it to work. I kind of view it as corrosive. I mean, sure breathing it is bad...and you CAN assume to be holding your breath. That's just common sense. But that's not going to keep you from dying. It's still going up your nose, getting in your eyes, touching your skin...cloud...kill. Magic.

 

[Patrick Johnston]

It's not usually a discussion. At this point I will typically tell him "you would've needed to state that before hand" and then move on and he grumbles and grouses. I just wanted to bring it up with some people outside my group and see if my assessment/style seems fair.

 

[ccs]

The last couple of editions have been better about this(passive perception yay!), but the big one for me is:

"I search this specific thing for traps".

Back in the day, DMs would try to gotcha me with "Well, you didn't say you searched X for traps". I developed a routine to fight it. The moment a DM uttered those words to me, I would write down every noun they said in describing a room for the rest of the session. Then I would go through every single one of them saying "I search the X for traps. I search the Y for traps. I search the Z for traps.", usually being about 10-15 times per room, even on stuff I knew wouldn't be trapped. We just killed a kobold? I search the corpse for traps. He's wearing a belt? I search both the belt and the buckle for traps. When I found a trap, I'd drop the bomb on them. "I search the trap for traps, to make sure the trap isn't trapped with another trap that will go off when I disarm the trap". Most of them got the point.

You wouldn't have liked the results of that if I were your DM. A few times? It'd be treated as a joke. After that? Since finding traps is obviously very important to you, I'd give you what you want. So yes, you'd find traps. And more traps. And the DC for finding/disarming them would be really high. Eventually even consistently 1 more than whatever you just rolled. And the results would be 1e Save or Die. Some of them would be area effects as well - so as to kill your fellow players characters.
If you want there to be traps everywhere....

And this would happen until you realized WHY specific things are trapped. It's not to play gotcha. It's because this is a game of words, words we're using to tell stories.
"I search, I roll a __" is not sufficient to tell a story. Add the details, paint the scene for the rest of us. If you don't want to do that? Go play a video game where you can just push a search button.

 

[outsider]

On a more relevant note, I would consider 1 to be a fair ruling, and 2 to be borderline fair/unfair. 1 is simply the player making a poor decision and trying to talk his way out of it. 2 is okay in a vacuum, but if the DM frequently gotchas me on things that seem like reasonable common sense, the end result is me bogging down the game by describing in excruciating detail each step of everything I do in the game. Alot of the time things like "I pull the rope up after me" aren't actually forgotten, they just go unstated because to mention every single thing will slow the game down. When I DM(rarely), and the player doesn't mention a step I think would be relevant(ie pulling up the rope), I simply -ask them whether or not they are doing it- when it happens. It leads to faster play and less arguments.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

My question to you playground is what do you think it is reasonable to just assume a PC is doing even if they don't state it? in a dungeon are they closing doors behind them? Are they collecting rope used in exploring? If they sleep in a dungeon is it assumed the door is barricaded? If they sleep in an inn is it assumed the door is locked? Where do you draw the line?

P.S. if curious my answer to the above is no, no, no, and yes.

When stuff like this comes up I just ask them. "So, you're at the top of the cliff... is the rope still hanging down the cliff, or have you untied it?" "Are you closing the door behind you?" "Do you ever take your armor off to bathe?"

If you do it with the right intonation you can make players equally afraid to say "Yes" or "No".

RE: whether you make players explicitly check every single object in every room for traps, I'm fine with cutting to the chase: "Fine, I get it, you check every square inch of everything for traps before you move anywhere. It will take you ten minutes per hundred square feet of surface area in a room to do so--for the size of the rooms you're seeing right now in this dungeon, that means you'll cover one room every hour, but you'll have the best possible chance of detecting any traps. Okay?" If they're not okay with that they can cut some corners, and we'll work out an acceptable solution.

 

[outsider]

You wouldn't have liked the results of that if I were your DM.

When I was doing that, I -already- didn't like the way my DM was handling traps, so it's all good.

 

[Staccat0]

I always assume players recover arrows and rope and stuff I don't want to listen to them talk about. I also let them "have" actions that are common sense if only becuase it's not worth it to have a whole discussion that ends with the game becoming more tedious and with me taking agency from the PC.

Stuff that is borderline common sense, or maybe the product of genuine forgetfulness? In a previous thread I suggested using an INT save for this. Since then I have been doing that and the players like it, because it still feels like RP if they fail.

"My character woulda locked that door."
"Would they have? You didn't say they did."
"It just seems like common sense. I assume she always locks doors. She is cautious."
"Maybe she would have, but let's roll an INT Save to see if it slipped her mind"
*rolls poorly*
"Ah crap! I was so busy griping at Skeeter for killing that hostage I musta forgot!"

 

[outsider]

I always assume players recover arrows and rope and stuff I don't want to listen to them talk about. I also let them "have" actions that are common sense if only becuase it's not worth it to have a whole discussion that ends with the game becoming more tedious and with me taking agency from the PC.

Exactly. I am fully capable of succesffully playing in a "DM assumes you did the wrong thing unless you explicitly said you're doing the right thing" game. I just find the playstyle to be EXTREMELY tedious.