D&D 5E Players Self-Assigning Rolls

[iserith]

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.

Your comment appears to suggest that making choices to overcome challenges and telling a fun and memorable tale in the doing isn't the game and dice-rolling is. Since that is not the case, you shouldn't be bothered deep inside in my view.

As for players wanting to roll dice, I just don't see how that's a good strategy. For one, it is the player saying the result of what he or she wants to do is uncertain, which isn't his or her role in the game. And if you can potentially achieve success without rolling by removing that uncertainty, why would you ever want to go to the dice first? Provided succeeding more often than not is a goal of the player, which I think is reasonable to assume in most cases.

 

[5ekyu]

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?”


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.”


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.


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


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.

Thanks for all the narrative flourishes for where i simply put "narrative narrative" and thanks for the final answer... 100%

See you describe a perfect scene and actually you did not answer the question to the player at all - you provided a different answer - yes they succeeded at doing the physical actions and they saw stuff... but now its up to them to decide if they think that means there are any secret doors or not.

Huh?

You answered what his confidence in his test result was, not anything at all with how confident his character is that make means anything about a secret door.

Right? those are two different things.

You get that right?

It would seem the CHARACTER has no clue whether or not there is a secret door, but is pretty sure there are no seams but hey whether or not those two have anything to do with each other is "mysteryland" and GMs property.

Do you also do that in combat? They say they swing their axe blah blah and you describe whether or not they succeded and they are then left to themselves to determine if they actually hit or scored "damage" or "wore down the enemy"?

Are the NPCs also left in the dark as to whether or not the seam-knife-mortar trick is reliable or not?



Of course, lets point to an actual facet of old style constructions... practically speaking... many if not most if not all of them are drafty and many if not most tho not all are with cracking mortar here and there which is why "found no drafts" and "no seams" not so likely to produce quite so absolute a result.

leaving the PLAYER to determine the test to be done AND interpret the test results after the GM delivers the info and having the ability-proficiency only cover "did you run the test right" is a very, to me, minimal empowerment of the value of the ability and the skill.

So, how would you deal with a player who responds "so, i myself don't know squat about masonry and secret door construction but my character is supposed to be good at this stuff by the background we agreed on and stats we agreed on so... so... so, what does this mean to my character?"





Unless the PLAYER is a mason or someone familiar with secret door construction in real life, how do they know what the odds that "lack of a seam showing with a knife edge" and derive that to reach a conclusion?

 

[5ekyu]

Your comment appears to suggest that making choices to overcome challenges and telling a fun and memorable tale in the doing isn't the game and dice-rolling is. Since that is not the case, you shouldn't be bothered deep inside in my view.

As for players wanting to roll dice, I just don't see how that's a good strategy. For one, it is the player saying the result of what he or she wants to do is uncertain, which isn't his or her role in the game. And if you can potentially achieve success without rolling by removing that uncertainty, why would you ever want to go to the dice first? Provided succeeding more often than not is a goal of the player, which I think is reasonable to assume in most cases.

Actually, i took his meaning to be that "deciding what playing the game is" is to them much more of a joint decision, not a GM fiat ALLOW/NOT-ALLOW one-sided thing. If the players at the table like to roll more checks etc... maybe they should not be told NOT ALLOWED as much as maybe the GM should consider a more flexible approach, for instance.

As i have said, for me "the game" is a mix of the narrative, the mechanics and the choices all playing hand in hand in glove to form a fun experience. My players and i together form a balancing act between each individual's preferences, not just what the Gm allows.

As for the final part... there is i think a fairly profound core disagreement on that point of your "strategy".

I think very few players think if you roll, i will give you a failure chance whether there was one or not before you decided to roll is an actual part of DND 5e rules.

Matter of fact, i am pretty sure it isn't but i will gladly welcome a correction.

There is a gigantic difference between "if there is no chance of failure, no role is needed" and "if a roll is made that in and of itself forces a chance of failure TO EXIST."

One needs to know the difference between necessary and sufficient in terms of statements and logic to understand that but it seems in this thread there are more than a few cases where that logic is applied.

Now, of course, in earlier posts you clarified that in your games this does not happen and you are referring to games where GMs do apparently alter the possible outcomes if a roll is asked for.

So this "if a roll is made sufficient case for failure chance" is not a thing you ascribe to yourself, if i remember your clarification from earlier.

 

[Sunseeker]

Your comment appears to suggest that making choices to overcome challenges and telling a fun and memorable tale in the doing isn't the game and dice-rolling is. Since that is not the case, you shouldn't be bothered deep inside in my view.

Your comment appears to suggest that making choices to overcome challenges and telling a fun and memorable tale in the doing is the game and dice-rolling isn't. Since that is not the case, you shouldn't be bothered deep inside in my view.

See what I did there?

But since what I said was nothing of the sort, and whatever you read was all in your head, I'm just putting it back on you.

Whether or not you like it rolling the dice is part of the game. Some people enjoy rolling the dice. I wouldn't have the collection of dice that I do if I didn't, and most of my friends feel the same. Anecdotal I know but there seems to be a rather large market for these dice thingies, so I'd imagine people playing with them like to use them.

As for players wanting to roll dice, I just don't see how that's a good strategy. For one, it is the player saying the result of what he or she wants to do is uncertain, which isn't his or her role in the game. And if you can potentially achieve success without rolling by removing that uncertainty, why would you ever want to go to the dice first? Provided succeeding more often than not is a goal of the player, which I think is reasonable to assume in most cases.

What they are expressing is their in-character feeling of uncertainty about a subject. What they are also expressing is their player sense of security in the truthfulness and necessity of the dice. We could play without the dice completely, cooperatively narrating the results as we go but frankly the game wouldn't have been designed with dice if we weren't intended to use them.

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.

Yes I understand that.

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

Some people, myself included, believe this to be true. We're no more right or wrong than you are, we just play differently, which was really all I was pointing out.

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.

There's a point I expressed above that I believe you are missing. Which is, I still want players to wait for me to say "Okay, make your roll." but that they may not always be rolling against anything other than their imagination. I find that it adds to the game to allow people to look for things that may not actually be that, representing how their character is currently handling the situation. Some characters (and players) can develop quite the sense of paranoia of threats lurking around the corner. I indulge that because I find it produces good roleplay.

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?

Now now, I didn't say any of that. It's a cooperative game, regardless of if there's one God Emperor DM or not. The DM can't run a game if the players don't want to play, and as such the game is a give-and-take by necessity. If we set things up so that it isn't, so that the players can only participate when the DM decides they can, then it isn't a give-and-take and then yes I question if we're actually playing the game or not.

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.

I don't know anything about those accusations and I wasn't leveling them at you or anyone else with that line, I was simply pointing out that there's a certainty and reliability that comes with dice. And that some players really like that, and that I understand that, which leads to how I DM.

 

[5ekyu]

I don't know anything about those accusations and I wasn't leveling them at you or anyone else with that line, I was simply pointing out that there's a certainty and reliability that comes with dice. And that some players really like that, and that I understand that, which leads to how I DM.

Well, in all fairness, you may also see in the original referenced blog and other comments made here insinuations or accusations that players making their own checks are meta-gaming, gaming the system or trying to pull a fast one by getting skills that dont apply to give them answers... but some on that GM ALLOWS side seem to be very sensitive to some folks suggesting there may be issues of GM-player trust involved... as if those came out of the clear blue sky - poof like rainbow pegusus dropping and blue ice.

For me, i dont think dice are evil. I dont think dice are "in the way". Like i said they are in my games an active element of the narrative - they are "how well did your effort go" not in "result' but as in "your execution".

There are "statement of action/attempt/methodology", "execution of that", "determine results from that" with plenty of narrative along the way and the die roll covers that middle piece of the puzzle - quality of execution.

 

[5ekyu]

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.

Ok so this is an explicit statement about 5e rules, so can you show me that rule in the RAW, please?

I see the rules which say "if there is no chance of failure, a roll is not needed" etc... but i am kind of missing in the 5e ruleset the rule which says "if a roll is made, a chance of failure is applied."

Are you familiar with the difference between the words necessary and sufficient and how they apply to logical statements?

How about an example:

"If its a hot summer day, having an ice cream break would be appropriate."

Does that mean if you are having an ice cream break it must be a hot summer day?

 

[5ekyu]

BTW... another aside...

I think most every Gm should run a diceless game sometime. There are several different approaches those systems use for choice-driven-unpredictability some of which work well.

As with anything, its not for everyone.

But what it did for me (and where i think they shine) was to help my scene building techniques.

one of the anchors of diceless games (some - of course not all) is that to construct a dynamics scene you need to think about "what can be used and by whom" because you want to empower choices to hold even more sway. So the GM "effort" is less about say CR and stats as it is about a scene where there are plenty of "guns on the mantlepiece" so to speak that characters of the different types can exploit.

As i said, in (some of) those systems, there are solid mechanics that yield "unknown outcomes for conflicts" without the scenery being as rich a part, but they also tend to spotlight and highlight the encounter building side to focus on the point of view of "what choices are you enabling to the characters for this encounter." so that the players have even more to work with.

A lot fewer "10' wide corridors" to be sure.

A lot more emphasis on the player side for scenery interaction too.

 

[iserith]

Your comment appears to suggest that making choices to overcome challenges and telling a fun and memorable tale in the doing is the game and dice-rolling isn't. Since that is not the case, you shouldn't be bothered deep inside in my view.

See what I did there?

But since what I said was nothing of the sort, and whatever you read was all in your head, I'm just putting it back on you.

Your comment was plain to me and others, I'm sure. You could just say that this is not what you meant and explain yourself. Instead, you chose the response above. How effective do you think that is for us trying to understand each other's position?

Whether or not you like it rolling the dice is part of the game. Some people enjoy rolling the dice. I wouldn't have the collection of dice that I do if I didn't, and most of my friends feel the same. Anecdotal I know but there seems to be a rather large market for these dice thingies, so I'd imagine people playing with them like to use them.

To be clear, I have not stated dice aren't part of the game nor stated a preference as to whether I like them being part of the game. What I am saying is that by taking the "Middle Path" method in the DMG, where the DM balances out granting automatic success with calling for ability checks, the DM isn't disallowing the players to play the game, as you asserted when you described the bad feeling it gives you.

What they are expressing is their in-character feeling of uncertainty about a subject. What they are also expressing is their player sense of security in the truthfulness and necessity of the dice. We could play without the dice completely, cooperatively narrating the results as we go but frankly the game wouldn't have been designed with dice if we weren't intended to use them.

Dice aren't necessary to express an in-character feeling of uncertainty in my view. It's cool if you like that though.

And again, I don't advocate playing without dice. We roll plenty in our games. But it's the DM who makes the call.

 

[Charlaquin]

Thanks for all the narrative flourishes for where i simply put "narrative narrative" and thanks for the final answer... 100%

Those weren’t “narrative flourishes,” they were essential components to evaluating the action and resolving its outcome. Without a description of exactly how the character is “searching for secret doors,” the only answer I can give is, “not enough information,” so I filled in the missing information with a couple of examples to try and give you a more satisfying answer. I think there is a fundamental disconnect in the way you and I approach the game if you can substitute specific details about the character’s approach and what they learn from it with “narrative, narrative”. For my DMing style, narrative is as important to the core resolution mechanic as the results of dice rolls, if not more so.

See you describe a perfect scene and actually you did not answer the question to the player at all - you provided a different answer - yes they succeeded at doing the physical actions and they saw stuff... but now its up to them to decide if they think that means there are any secret doors or not.

Huh?

You answered what his confidence in his test result was, not anything at all with how confident his character is that make means anything about a secret door.

Right? those are two different things.

You get that right?

It would seem the CHARACTER has no clue whether or not there is a secret door, but is pretty sure there are no seams but hey whether or not those two have anything to do with each other is "mysteryland" and GMs property.

Almost like the character exists in an internally consistent world and have to interact with it as such. Imagine that.

Do you also do that in combat? They say they swing their axe blah blah and you describe whether or not they succeded and they are then left to themselves to determine if they actually hit or scored "damage" or "wore down the enemy"?

No, because that action has an uncertain outcome and therefore must be resolved with dice. For the action you described, the goal is “I want to kill the orc,” and the approach is “by swinging my axe at him.” This approach has a reasonable chance of achieving the desired outcome (you could hit him in the face and kill him) a reasonable chance of failing to achieve the desired outcome (you could miss or fail to land a hit with enough impact to kill), and consequences for failure (the orc is still alive and probably none too happy about your axe having been swung at him). So, I rely on the standard means of resolving this uncertain outcome, which in 5th edition means an attack roll to see if the attack hits and a damage roll to see if it does enough damage to kill. Whether or not you succeeded in achieving your goal, and how well you did should be plainly obvious, so there’s no reason to conceal the results of the dice rolls. And in fact, I would be hard pressed to come up with a situation where the outcome was uncertain and the results wouldn’t be obvious enough for it to be appropriate for the players to see the roll results.

Are the NPCs also left in the dark as to whether or not the seam-knife-mortar trick is reliable or not?

You mean as to whether the lack of seam in the mortar indicates the lack of a secret door? Yes. What they know is that no seam can be found. They must form their own conclusions based on that information.

Of course, lets point to an actual facet of old style constructions... practically speaking... many if not most if not all of them are drafty and many if not most tho not all are with cracking mortar here and there which is why "found no drafts" and "no seams" not so likely to produce quite so absolute a result.

Ok, but this is a world made by me, a person who is invested in the players’ enjoyment. I don’t really care what’s historically accurate, I care what gives the players the opportunity to interact in meaningful ways with the world I’ve created, which means giving them the appropriate cues to form meaningful conclusions and make meaningful decisions. If there is a secret door, I’m going to give them some kind of information to tip them off about it, even if it’s not true to how they “realistically” would have been constructed or whatever. Heck, if there’s a secret door, I’m going to frame the scene in a way that tips the players off that there’s something to be found here before anyone even starts looking.

leaving the PLAYER to determine the test to be done AND interpret the test results after the GM delivers the info and having the ability-proficiency only cover "did you run the test right" is a very, to me, minimal empowerment of the value of the ability and the skill.

So, how would you deal with a player who responds "so, i myself don't know squat about masonry and secret door construction but my character is supposed to be good at this stuff by the background we agreed on and stats we agreed on so... so... so, what does this mean to my character?"

Unless the PLAYER is a mason or someone familiar with secret door construction in real life, how do they know what the odds that "lack of a seam showing with a knife edge" and derive that to reach a conclusion?

[/quote]
“I’m no expert of masonry either, we’re just playing make-believe here. Try something and if there’s something to be found I’ll do my best to make sure you have enough information to draw your own conclusions. Worst comes to worst, if you’re not sure how to interpret the information available to you, I’ll give you a likely interpretation with a successful Intelligence Investigation check.” That is, by the way, why I run the Perception/Investigation split the way I do. Passive Perception will let you notice there’s something to be found (as you walk into the room, you feel an odd draft.) Active Perception will let you find hidden sensory information you might have missed with the passive check (It seems to be coming from a spot on the wall where the natural stone appears slightly recessed.) Investigation to interpret that information. (The draft is most likely coming from a seam in a hidden door.”

 

[iserith]

Actually, i took his meaning to be that "deciding what playing the game is" is to them much more of a joint decision, not a GM fiat ALLOW/NOT-ALLOW one-sided thing. If the players at the table like to roll more checks etc... maybe they should not be told NOT ALLOWED as much as maybe the GM should consider a more flexible approach, for instance.

If the players at my table would like to roll more checks, all they need do is to choose to perform tasks with an uncertain outcome more often. They could try to be less effective in pursuing automatic success by not making good use of their resources and paying less attention to the environment. That's up to them, not me. I'm not allowing or disallowing their choices. But ultimately I still make the call on when there's a roll because that's the DM's role in D&D 5e.

As i have said, for me "the game" is a mix of the narrative, the mechanics and the choices all playing hand in hand in glove to form a fun experience. My players and i together form a balancing act between each individual's preferences, not just what the Gm allows.

Me too.

As for the final part... there is i think a fairly profound core disagreement on that point of your "strategy".

I think very few players think if you roll, i will give you a failure chance whether there was one or not before you decided to roll is an actual part of DND 5e rules.

Matter of fact, i am pretty sure it isn't but i will gladly welcome a correction.

There is a gigantic difference between "if there is no chance of failure, no role is needed" and "if a roll is made that in and of itself forces a chance of failure TO EXIST."

One needs to know the difference between necessary and sufficient in terms of statements and logic to understand that but it seems in this thread there are more than a few cases where that logic is applied.

Now, of course, in earlier posts you clarified that in your games this does not happen and you are referring to games where GMs do apparently alter the possible outcomes if a roll is asked for.

So this "if a roll is made sufficient case for failure chance" is not a thing you ascribe to yourself, if i remember your clarification from earlier.

I play in a lot of games, mainly because I like to see how other DMs do things and it's how I select players for my own one-shots and campaigns. I have seen in practice many times DMs who will always take the result of a die that players roll. I've seen a lot of that on actual play podcasts or vodcasts as well. I dare say it's pretty common so far as I can tell. I don't assert that this is any scientific standard, only my experience which informs my preferences.

When I'm in such games and do not make unprompted rolls, this is when the DM grants auto-successes. My characters are always more successful than the players who make unprompted rolls. And that makes sense, right, since the d20 will screw you over as soon as look at you. I therefore conclude it's a good strategy in these types of games. As a general rule, unless there's some rule at the table that requires players to make rolls unprompted, it also fits in with any other table's groove. There's really no downside unless you just really need to roll those dice. In which case, as above, you can just go do riskier things more frequently.