D&D 5E Players Self-Assigning Rolls

[Tinker]

Agree to that last post. On the visible roll but secret DCs, that breaks down somewhat when the roll is extremely bad or good, and/or the players have a fair idea that the DC for that task should be.

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[5ekyu]

Agree to that last post. On the visible roll but secret DCs, that breaks down somewhat when the roll is extremely bad or good, and/or the players have a fair idea that the DC for that task should be.

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Actually, extremely high or low roll and fair idea of what the DC "should be" are the cases the viewed roll but hidden DC shines at and is intended for.

Rogue sits in tavern.

looks around. Assesses "most of the open area and room latches are simple, cheap, shaddoy at best. Locks on the innkeep's door are better, typical for them to spend to protect their stuff. odds are lockbox would be tougher and hidden in the room."

just assessed easy, medium/moderate and hard cases - EXPECTED cases.

Character gets to a latch and gets a bad roll " well, i blew that when the pick snapped." and thinks the failure is due to his obvious fumbling.

Character gets to a latch and "gets a good roll" then in character "yep, that went fine and..." if that "latch" does no unhook the character **should** have the opportunity to go "wait a minute. that should have worked."

A high or low result does not need to be and IMO detracts from the scene if it is ruled "some mystery beyond our ken" as opposed to "how well you performed."

A singer sings a song in a tavern. Uses perform to keep their attention or sway the mood.

low roll - she hits off key several times, flubs the words of the song, a cat screeches the beginning of a mating call from the window ledge outside just as she begins the mid riff... likely as not the crowd reacts a bit during the performance... but she knows this was not her best work (but not whether or not it succeeded per se)

Now if this succeeds because of low DC - maybe it became funny and/or painful enough it was a distraction after all or the crowd loves her perseverance through the ordeal and will respect her afterwards for "gutting through it."

High roll - On the other hand, rhythms go right, tone is great, plays off the crowd well, and even uses the cat as something to be worked into the act turning crisis into opportunity - sees she did a good job... may or may not succeed but feels good with the effort.

Just like say a GM may choose to narrate the attack roll of 2 (fail) as "you miss the mark by a mile" versus narrating the result of an attack roll of 16 (fail) as it glances off the armor, coming close to finding purchase" or "at the last second, they were shifted by a needed parry against the barbarian and your arrow just barely missed" instead of "you missed and your character should not know why".

a GM can certainly elect to move all rolls to mysteries or some types to mysteries and so on...

me, i really prefer a consistent view of "your roll is how well you think and your character thinks their effort was..." whether it applies to an attack, a save, a theft or a song. I prefer letting a rogue "figure out" this lock was tougher than usual and i should change my approach to this problem" from a "rolled 19 and failed" just like a warrior can when his bow shot of "19" misses and the same for the low rolls.

"It should have worked but did not work" or "well that was not going to work at all" should be a clue not forbidden fruit that is viewed as "poisoning" the well of decisions - borrowing some people's framing.

IMO of course.



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[Charlaquin]

And here the failure is obvious and should thusly be narrated to all - including you.

However, if your failure in the same situation is due to your concealment simply not being as good as you think it is, or your shadow giving your position away, or some other similar thing, then you've every reason to believe you've succeeded until the Orcs' actions inform you otherwise.

Perhaps...but this is an example where the results of your attempt (and thus, the roll) are going to be rather quickly obvious to all.

But what about situations where the results - or the reasons for such - are not obvious? Consider the difference between how a player (and, let's face it, most players) would react to:

Player: "I carefully search the south wall for secret doors. <DM nods, and player rolls a d20> I roll a 20."
DM: "Your search turns up nothing."

vs.

Player: "I carefully search the south wall for secret doors. <DM nods, and player rolls a d20> I roll a 3."
DM: "Your search turns up nothing."

Yet from the character's point of view (and by extension, the player's)there is not and should not be any difference whatsoever. The character has no idea why she failed, only that she did her best searching and found nothing; and as player knowledge should equal character knowledge where possible, this is one where the DM ought to be secretly rolling instead of the player.

Lanefan

If the player turns up nothing on a 20, there shouldn’t have been a roll.

EDIT: Oh, you probably meant a total of 20, not a natural 20. Nevermind.

 

[5ekyu]

So some people believe... well for some rolls at least.

But without time travel... the decision on whether to roll or not is made before the roll of 20 is made.

Whether or not there is "something to be found" and "whether or not the character can succed on a roll of 20" and "whether or not the character can fail even on a 1 " do not eliminate that world of story that lies between those extremes.

The "certainty" the Gm has does not have to convey to the player or character or be taken away from them.

As i said earlier i use the quality of the roll to represent the quality of their effort or their percieved confidence in that effort. "Did you do well? Were the conditions such that you feel good or bad about your findings? etc."

Rolled a 20 and found nothing - pretty confident - likely responds differently than rolled a 2 and found nothing and "for good reason."

I can go to my storage unit to look for an old book and come away going "i did not find it but... lighting was dim, some books had fallen behind a dresser i could not get to, and frankly i was starving and not in a mood and i am kinda sure its not there but..." or i can come away sure because i got to every nook and cranny and so on.

Those will produce different reactions and results in terms of how things proceed and they are irrespective of whether or not the book was there.

As in my example of bad roll - leave caltrops in case vs good roll move on we are good.

As i have stated, to me in my games the "roll" is not some evil thing, not some bad thing getting in the way that should be forced into the shadows and certainly not some inexplicable mystery cthuloid "thing man was not meant to know" for "dont know why you failed" for any type of "task" be that an ability check, a save or an ability check.

 

[5ekyu]

If the player turns up nothing on a 20, there shouldn’t have been a roll.

EDIT: Oh, you probably meant a total of 20, not a natural 20. Nevermind.

let me ask a question...

your game

room where notes say "no secret door"

Player gives narrative request to look around there for secret doors.

you see there are no secret doors in the room.

**i will assume you do not treat the desire to search for secret doors as a chance to inflict some new negative state - after all they did not demand a roll.**

narrative narrative you do not call for a roll and tell them they dont find them in whatever way you need.

Player asks "how confident is my character in that?"

how do you arrive at that answer? GM fiat or some mechanical determination/resolution?

 

[Sunseeker]

If the player turns up nothing on a 20, there shouldn’t have been a roll.

EDIT: Oh, you probably meant a total of 20, not a natural 20. Nevermind.

If you subscribe to the idea that a 20 is always an automatic success I suppose.

Or the idea that players are allowed to make rolls for checks regardless of if they're necessary.

I'm fine with either idea really. If Joe really wants to check for secret doors and wants to use the mechanics of the game (ie: roll those pretty dice of his) I'm not going to tell him not to. It doesn't take any greater expenditure of time on my part or Joe's part to roll the dice and narrate the results, as opposed to simply narrating the results without rolling the dice. IMO: as a player it feels more interactive to roll the dice and be told the result, than to just be told the result. From a DM side, players rolling dice gives me some opportunities to be creative. Maybe I didn't have any secret doors there. Maybe his good roll discovered something else. Maybe his bad roll triggered something dangerous.

Something bothers me deep inside when we start talking about the game like the players can only play it when the DM allows them to. Sure, I don't want players throwing their dice on the table 24/7, it's noisy and annoying. But there's got to be some reasonable level of give-and-take between when a DM thinks a roll is necessary and when a player thinks a roll is necessary. Some players simply feel better about doing things with the dice involved, I've been with bad DMs, I understand that.

 

[5ekyu]

If you subscribe to the idea that a 20 is always an automatic success I suppose.

Or the idea that players are allowed to make rolls for checks regardless of if they're necessary.

I'm fine with either idea really. If Joe really wants to check for secret doors and wants to use the mechanics of the game (ie: roll those pretty dice of his) I'm not going to tell him not to. It doesn't take any greater expenditure of time on my part or Joe's part to roll the dice and narrate the results, as opposed to simply narrating the results without rolling the dice. IMO: as a player it feels more interactive to roll the dice and be told the result, than to just be told the result. From a DM side, players rolling dice gives me some opportunities to be creative. Maybe I didn't have any secret doors there. Maybe his good roll discovered something else. Maybe his bad roll triggered something dangerous.

Something bothers me deep inside when we start talking about the game like the players can only play it when the DM allows them to. Sure, I don't want players throwing their dice on the table 24/7, it's noisy and annoying. But there's got to be some reasonable level of give-and-take between when a DM thinks a roll is necessary and when a player thinks a roll is necessary. Some players simply feel better about doing things with the dice involved, I've been with bad DMs, I understand that.

agree.

 

[Maxperson]

maybe i am misreading you but are you suggesting that a GM who has decided a taks is an auto-success would allow a low roll to result in failure? isn't an auto-success by definition "any roll works"?

how does rolling a die turn an auto-success into a failure?
is there a definition of auto-success that i am not aware of?

In 5e a roll is only called for when the outcome is in doubt. By rolling you are placing the outcome in doubt, even if it wasn't prior to the roll.

 

[Charlaquin]

let me ask a question...

your game

room where notes say "no secret door"

Player gives narrative request to look around there for secret doors.

Well, first of all, my response then would be, “Ok, I’m hearing that your goal is to find out if there are any secret doors in the room. How do you go about trying to find that out?”

you see there are no secret doors in the room.

Ultimately, yes, this will be the result regardless of the approach they describe, although it will be conveyed in response to what they describe doing. For example, if the players approach is, “I take a handful of flour from my bag and walk along the wall, sprinkling flour as I go to see if a draft disturbs their decent pattern” then I will respond, “you make your way carefully around the room this way, thoroughly checking the length of each wall for signs of a draft, but the flour is not blown off its descent path at any point.” Or, if their approach is, “I place the edge of my dagger against the mortar between the wall and the floor and drag it all the way down the wall, looking to see if it catches on anything or slides into a seam anywhere.” My response would be, “As you drag your blade across the mortar, you don’t feel any irregularities that might indicate a secret door or catch.”

**i will assume you do not treat the desire to search for secret doors as a chance to inflict some new negative state - after all they did not demand a roll.**

Correct. And to be clear, I don’t treat rolled actions as a chance to inflict a negative state. What I do is allow players to be successful on any task where failure wouldn’t have a consequence anyway. Or to put it another way, if there’s no reason the player can’t keep trying something until they succeed, I save everyone the time it would take to roll over and over and just narrate them eventually succeeding.

narrative narrative you do not call for a roll and tell them they dont find them in whatever way you need.

Player asks "how confident is my character in that?"

How confident are they that the flour wasn’t disturbed or the dagger didn’t catch in anything? 100%.

how do you arrive at that answer? GM fiat or some mechanical determination/resolution?

I arrive at that answer by evaluating the player’s approach and its chances of achieving the desired outcome. If you drag your blade along the mortar of a wall that has no seam, there is no possibility of finding the seam of a secret door. You can be 100% confident that there is no seam in the mortar, and as confidant that there is no secret door as the knowledge that there is no seam in the mortar makes you.

 

[Charlaquin]

If you subscribe to the idea that a 20 is always an automatic success I suppose.

I don’t. A natural 20 is only an automatic success on an Attack roll. However, a natural 20 is the highest possible roll. If the DC of a task is high enough that you fail even with the maximum possible result rolled on the die, then the task doesn’t have a reasonable chance of success. I only call for dice to be rolled to resolve actions with uncertain outcomes, and in this case, the outcome is certain - the task is too difficult given your level of skill, you fail.

Or the idea that players are allowed to make rolls for checks regardless of if they're necessary.

You say that like rolling dice is a desirable goal in and of itself.

I'm fine with either idea really. If Joe really wants to check for secret doors and wants to use the mechanics of the game (ie: roll those pretty dice of his) I'm not going to tell him not to. It doesn't take any greater expenditure of time on my part or Joe's part to roll the dice and narrate the results, as opposed to simply narrating the results without rolling the dice. IMO: as a player it feels more interactive to roll the dice and be told the result, than to just be told the result. From a DM side, players rolling dice gives me some opportunities to be creative. Maybe I didn't have any secret doors there. Maybe his good roll discovered something else. Maybe his bad roll triggered something dangerous.

It doesn’t take any greater expenditure of effort to “allow” a player to roll dice just because he feels like rolling dice either. That’s not the reason I reserve ability checks for situations where the outcome of the action is uncertain. I do it because different resolution systems create different incentives. If you can just roll checks any time you want for any reason, the incentive is to treat the skill list as an action menu. Just press the “check for secret doors” button, maybe describe what that looks like, and see what happens. When the check is reserved for situations where the results can’t be determined without them, the incentive is to engage with the world through thorough description of your character’s actions.

Something bothers me deep inside when we start talking about the game like the players can only play it when the DM allows them to.

This statement makes me think we have very different ideas of what “playing the game” means. Is describing your action in terms of goal and approach and getting a result consistent with the way you would expect the world to respond to such activity not “playing the game” if there isn’t a die rolled somewhere in the process?

Sure, I don't want players throwing their dice on the table 24/7, it's noisy and annoying. But there's got to be some reasonable level of give-and-take between when a DM thinks a roll is necessary and when a player thinks a roll is necessary. Some players simply feel better about doing things with the dice involved, I've been with bad DMs, I understand that.

And yet, it’s those of us who prefer the DM to call for checks who are being accused of being motivated by lack of trust.