D&D 5E Players: Why Do You Want to Roll a d20?

[Guest 6801328]

(Side note, there was 0 telegraphing of the fact that there might be secret doors in the basement, apart from the DM asking us to make Perception checks when we first entered through the trapdoor, and saying nothing when we all rolled low.)

Has anybody else noticed that official WotC adventures for the most part do not seem to use skills in the way they are described in the rules? It's like the people who write the adventures didn't get the memo and are still writing as if they are playing an earlier edition.

 

[iserith]

Has anybody else noticed that official WotC adventures for the most part do not seem to use skills in the way they are described in the rules. It's like the people who write the adventures didn't get the memo and are still writing as if they are playing an earlier edition.

Yes, I have definitely noticed this. Sometimes they do it according to the rules and sometimes they don't. It's pretty inconsistent. Oftentimes though they are tying a specific task to an ability check and a DC and I think that's okay. If a player declares an action that is substantially similar to the task in the text, the adjudication is done for the DM already. If the player declares some other action, the DM will have to adjudicate that on his or her own given the context.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Honestly, for us, it's simply a time saver. We've gamed together long enough, and every single one of us bar one has spent time behind the DM's screen, that we know the drill. We know when those checks are going to be asked for anyway and we're right 99% of the time. So, why bother doing the hoop jumping of state goal, wait for the DM to ask for a roll that we know is coming, roll, wait for the DM to tell us what happened?

Just state and roll. It works for us because, well, we're not a new group of players who've never gamed before and never gamed together before. I imagine that if I was put into a new group, I'd probably go more the @iserith route, but, for my established group? It would drive me to distraction if I had to ask the players to make rolls every single time I thought they should roll. Just roll the damn dice and I'll let you know if you didn't have to roll.

Again, it's mostly just a result of the familiarity we have with each other.

As I said elsewhere (I can't remember if it was this thread or one of the others floating around on this topic at the moment) the belief that it's a semantic difference, that it's "six of one or half-dozen of the other" implies a fundamental misunderstanding of what we're talking about. The response above suggests to me not just that you use different language around the table, but that you fundamentally use skills and dice rolls in a different way.

Or maybe not. Maybe what you're trying to say is that given the way you play, it doesn't add anything to make the player wait for the DM to ask for the roll. That might very well be true.

Changing tack slightly, several posters have said something to the effect that "they enjoy the randomness".

Imagine you were trying to decide whether to bash a door down, or pick the lock. The DM says, "I'll tell you right now that if you try to bash it down I'll make you roll, and if you fail you're going to wake up the sleeping ogre on the other side. But if you try to pick it you'll eventually succeed so we'll just call it autosuccess."

Would those of you who say you enjoy the randomness and chaos of dice rolling choose to break it down? Just to see what happens?

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Would those of you who say you enjoy the randomness and chaos of dice rolling choose to break it down? Just to see what happens?

Likely, I would knock politely and ask the ogre if they had heard the good word.

 

[5ekyu]

As I said elsewhere (I can't remember if it was this thread or one of the others floating around on this topic at the moment) the belief that it's a semantic difference, that it's "six of one or half-dozen of the other" implies a fundamental misunderstanding of what we're talking about. The response above suggests to me not just that you use different language around the table, but that you fundamentally use skills and dice rolls in a different way.

Or maybe not. Maybe what you're trying to say is that given the way you play, it doesn't add anything to make the player wait for the DM to ask for the roll. That might very well be true.

Changing tack slightly, several posters have said something to the effect that "they enjoy the randomness".

Imagine you were trying to decide whether to bash a door down, or pick the lock. The DM says, "I'll tell you right now that if you try to bash it down I'll make you roll, and if you fail you're going to wake up the sleeping ogre on the other side. But if you try to pick it you'll eventually succeed so we'll just call it autosuccess."

Would those of you who say you enjoy the randomness and chaos of dice rolling choose to break it down? Just to see what happens?

I use randomness and enjoy randomness a lot.

But, no, I cannot imagine any player faced with an obvious choice between a successful auto-success option and a random may-fail-with-setback would have their character choose the latter. Obviously, there may be extenuating circumstances in fiction that shifts that - time constraints, frustrated barbarian syndrome, etc.

If the point of this topic is the perception that those not using goal and Jeopardy formatting are somehow passing on obvious suto-successes and Goal and Jropardy addresses that the it's a much smaller gain for much too much work than I even thought.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Cool, but how do you set DCs? And do you communicate the DC to the players? Do you communicate what a success will look like and what a failure will look like?

Setting DCs is pretty easy. Since I use 2d10 for ability checks, my DCs are 14, 17 and 21 (for medium, difficult and hard) and I just mentally select the most appropriate one in my estimation. I usually don't give them the DCs because more often than not the checks are asking for information and thus how much info I make up and give depends on what they rolled. And they can tell how well they succeeded or failed based on how in-depth or useful my information was.

 

[iserith]

Of course. But known auto-success isn't really what I was talking about. To use your example, if the party is travelling underground, I might not have any idea what is actually there except for maybe a set encounter or two that were the point of them travelling underground in the first place. Everything else I'm just improvising-- no map, nothing set, just whatever comes to my mind.

So I improvise that the tunnel they were in opens up to a chamber and that there's a crevasse to get across. Now at this point I have not thought of any way for them to get across it. Maybe they have ways already ready to go that allow them auto-success (like your Ring of Flying example). If so, then great, they use it. But if not... they will probably start asking about different things that could get them across-- things I've not even thought of yet. They might start with obvious things that don't require a roll-- "Do we see a bridge?" I'll then either say yes or no based on what I think would be most entertaining or interesting for the group (if I can already tell if this "encounter" has intrigued them or not.) If the answer was "no, there is no bridge".. someone might then ask "Can make an Investigation check to see if there was perhaps a bridge here at one point?"

And then it is at this point that the result of the check will determine the truth. If they roll high, I might very well say "Yes, there are stone pitons hammered into the ground, which makes you think there had been a bridge here at one point." Or if they roll low... "Nope, there is no indication whatsoever that there has ever been a bridge here." And both of these results will probably change how the players react to this "encounter", and what they invariable decide to do with it. If there had been pitons, then that tells them something truthful about the chamber, as does the lack of them. And then they'll choose what do to and I'll improvise what happens next then as well.

So them rolling was going to happen regardless, because that was the method I was going to use to decide what to improvise as the truth. Could I improvise something on my own without them rolling a die? Sure. But I have found we usually end up with much more interesting encounters when all of us are offering up the truths of the situation, rather than just me alone, because my players are oftentimes much more clever than I am. LOL.

Based on my understanding of this, it approaches the "Rolling With It" method in the DMG where almost everything is rolled for. In that context, the strategy for more success than failure is not to avoid rolling - because you can't - but to create characters that have a lot of ways to increase the result of the die roll, particular as it pertains to ability checks. Help/Working together would be a go-to tactic basically all the time, if it makes sense in context. Then you'd want guidance, bardic inspiration, Inspiration, enhance ability, etc. to get the highest result possible. Mitigating the swing of the die is also true in any game, but it's really the only way to be more successful in the paradigm you offer above. Do I have that correct?

If I do, the question then is what @Ovinomancer is asking - what's the DC I'm looking for to most often get what I want? Because that would inform what character I choose.

 

[Oofta]

Has anybody else noticed that official WotC adventures for the most part do not seem to use skills in the way they are described in the rules? It's like the people who write the adventures didn't get the memo and are still writing as if they are playing an earlier edition.

Yeah. It's almost like the rules are just general guidelines and not some holy text or something.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Mitigating the swing of the die is also true in any game, but it's really the only way to be more successful in the paradigm you offer above. Do I have that correct?

If I do, the question then is what @Ovinomancer is asking - what's the DC I'm looking for to most often get what I want? Because that would inform what character I choose.

If your character selection was based not upon what you wanted to play from a personality point of view in the world we were playing in, but instead was in making sure you "won" every die roll you could... I suspect you might not enjoy playing in my games. I'm one of those "We're creating a story together" type of DMs, and failure is just as important to success when it comes to the story and drama of the game. Mitigation should be a very low priority for character design.

 

[coolAlias]

Yeah. It's almost like the rules are just general guidelines and not some holy text or something.

True, but they also set player expectations about what their characters can and cannot reasonably accomplish.

A shared understanding of the rules is important to me when playing, it allows me to better engage with the story.

If I want to climb to the rooftops and there are no extenuating circumstances, the rules say I can climb at half speed no check required. If the DM asks me for a check* out of the blue or is inconsistent in how they arbitrate climbing, it's going to detract from my enjoyment of the game.

* Unless this exception was previously discussed and agreed to