D&D 5E Consequences of Failure

[Charlaquin]

If all actions have goals then this whole discussion just devolves into, do you need to clearly state those goals or not. Surely that's not what we've spent 600+ posts discussing?

I’ve been discussing it (among other things) since about this post:

After reading, I am confused. You mean to tell me that some of you have played in campaigns where someone doesn't do something without an intended goal, such as, "I walk up and slap my arm on the table. I say, 'Let's arm wrestle!'" Or you never had a rogue just steal stuff to steal stuff, or a bard just start singing to sing, or a barbarian that punches something just to punch something, or a dwarf that drinks something (even though they don't know what it is) just to drink it?

 

[Charlaquin]

One thing that seems to be missing in this conversation is the planned rolls. The ones DM's write into their adventure. I know for me, I write in all the skill checks that can alter an important scene, plot point or character arc.

For example, characters taking a rowboat to shore in rough seas. A flipped rowboat could mean the paladin has to take off his armor and leave it on the bottom of the sea. That's a serious consequence. So that roll is written in very specifically. The DC varies based off the players' judgement. Characters that grab bails, grab an extra oar, etc. things they may come up with on their own gives them a lower DC. I write that stuff in too.

Point is that many of the circumstances we are discussing, DM's plan for. Hell, I even write DC's for persuasion based on how they approach the NPC needing to be persuaded. Some people like to be sugar-talked others need to be intimidated, and still others need to have an honest forthcoming approach.

I’m not a fan of planning checks ahead of time. I find this practice contributes to the conflation of action and check. I much prefer to plan challenges ahead of time, and leave it up to the players to decide how they try to overcome them. This is also why I’ve stopped assigning minimum passive scores to my additional narration based on knowledge skills and perception.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you are so sure that rolling dice adds something, can you try to put some words around it for me?

EDIT: That sounded snarky. What I mean is, maybe your preference is just what you're used to. The exercise of trying to explain it in concrete terms may be revealing. And it's fine to simply prefer it one way or another; there doesn't need to be a reason why one way is objectively better.

Rolling the dice allows a DM to fairly have a PC fail uncertain tasks (even the non-meaningful ones)

 

[Guest 6801328]

In PVP maybe. In any case, I can't imagine anyone saying "I'm going to go try to wedgie someone but fail badly and then have them wedgie me!" being a memorable or even possible probable story.

Why is pvp different?

Your little narrative summary had the player narrating for both his own actions and for the NPC. So, yeah, it is going to sound lame.

I sometimes resolve uncertainty with a roll of a dice. I don't have to "justify" to find it more fun than never touching the dice.

Don't agree? don't do it. I'm not asking you to justify your choices, I just don't think I'd have the same sense of tension or luck. I don't see how the scenario I ran through or anything along those lines would ever happen..

That’s fine. As I keep saying, we all have our own preferences. The only part I object to is being told that creativity and surprise requires dice, without any evidence or argument why that might be true.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Rolling the dice allows a DM to fairly have a PC fail uncertain tasks (even the non-meaningful ones)

“Fair”?

Doesn’t the DM pick the DC?

 

[iserith]

I’m not a fan of planning checks ahead of time. I find this practice contributes to the conflation of action and check. I much prefer to plan challenges ahead of time, and leave it up to the players to decide how they try to overcome them. This is also why I’ve stopped assigning minimum passive scores to my additional narration based on knowledge skills and perception.

It seems likely to me this is a learned behavior that comes from adventure module design. Many DMs do their prep in a similar fashion. But there's a big difference between throwing together a situation for one's own game and trying to communicate a vision to someone else who is reading and planning to use it. In the context of the latter, including expected approaches to goals and associated DCs makes sense as it's another way to convey to the reader the framework of the challenge and its difficulty. For one's own game it makes less sense in my view and, in some ways, may be a hindrance (in terms of efficient use of one's time if nothing else).

 

[FrogReaver]

“Fair”?

Doesn’t the DM pick the DC?

Does the DM picking the DC preclude it from being a fair method of resolution?

 

[Charlaquin]

Does the DM picking the DC preclude it from being a fair method of resolution?

It precludes it from being an unbiased method of resolution, certainly. This is another thing I realized when switching to the DM side of the screen: the idea that the dice are unbiased is an illusion, because it’s still the DM who determines whether or not your check was successful. Whether or not biased and fair are mutually exclusive is a much bigger philosophical question than I think we’re equipped to answer here.

cough*they’renot*cough

 

[FrogReaver]

It precludes it from being an unbiased method of resolution, certainly. This is another thing I realized when switching to the DM side of the screen: the idea that the dice are unbiased is an illusion, because it’s still the DM who determines whether or not your check was successful. Whether or not biased and fair are mutually exclusive is a much bigger philosophical question than I think we’re equipped to answer here.

cough*they’renot*cough

But it's still safe to say that a fairly chosen DC would lead to a fair dice based outcome? right?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I love how ya'll change what are appropriate stakes with every example we go through. If you are arguing against my playstyle those kinds of stakes aren't good enough. When I'm arguing against yours they suddenly are...

Protip: when you're inventing a class of people (and it's you all, or y'all) to be your boogeymen, you might be on the wrong track.

This example was discussed as no-stakes. Then there were stakes. I have no idea why you think this is some kind of indictment of your play when it's just an observation that the example had shifted. I literally have no dog in this particular example fight as I've neither proposed it or discussed how I would run it. Instead, I've pointed out that the context of the argument had shifted, mostly to help head off the derailment of the example that always seems to occur in these discussions.