D&D 5E Rolling Without a Chance of Failure (I love it)

[soviet]

So I try to lift something that's too heavy for me to lift and I didn't attempt to lift it? Just because I was not successful and after I made the attempt realized it was impossible does not mean I didn't try. The attempt happened. Conversely if I go to pick up a big box and it's full of styrofoam and it's surprisingly light and I didn't need to be careful in how I picked it up I still positioned myself correctly and tensed my muscles with the assumption that it was heavy.

Sometimes the attempt itself is the only result.

The questions you ask are answered by the text you quoted.

 

[Charlaquin]

To quote one of the best episodes of The X-Files; Sure. Fine. Whatever. If we’re done picking nits, the point is that succinct is not better than not succinct. Things that don’t advance the plot don’t need to be cut, every scene in a story does not need to matter, Steinbeck is not a better storyteller than Dickens. Efficiency needs to serve a purpose just as much as anything else.

With regard to how this relates to the thread topic, the scene at the end of Avengers where they eat shawarma has no impact on literally any other element of the MCU franchise. It has no effect on the plot, it’s just a moment that someone had an idea for, and it felt good to include it. That’s all it needs to be. If the DND campaign equivalent of the similar scene has some element with multiple plausible outcomes that might be the result of how well someone does soemthing, then it’s fine to use dice to resolve that. For some people, it’s preferable to do so. Getting lost in the weeds about what counts as a consequence or as superfluous doesn’t get us any further in an examination of the questions raised by the OP.

I never said every scene needs to advance the plot, I said every scene needs to have a specific and necessary purpose, and I specifically called out a break from the action, learning something about the characters, and comic relief as examples of purposes a scene might fill that aren’t directly plot relevant.

Bringing this back to D&D, there are plenty of opportunities for such scenes to occur without calling for checks that have no actual gameplay impact. If you still want to call for such checks, that’s obviously your prerogative, do whatever is fun for you and your group. I’m just explaining what I prefer and why.

 

[Lyxen]

So I try to lift something that's too heavy for me to lift and I didn't attempt to lift it? Just because I was not successful and after I made the attempt realized it was impossible does not mean I didn't try. The attempt happened. Conversely if I go to pick up a big box and it's full of styrofoam and it's surprisingly light and I didn't need to be careful in how I picked it up I still positioned myself correctly and tensed my muscles with the assumption that it was heavy.

Sometimes the attempt itself is the only result.

As a reminder, the player should not rollplay the fame, he should describe what he is doing. If he thinks that the box is too heavy and does not attempt it, he does not describe the action, then the DM certainly should not grant him any roll.

 

[Charlaquin]

It isn’t absurd. The player is telling you how they prefer to play the game. Insisting on the “in-fiction action declaration, DM review of consequences and uncertainty, DM determines result or asks for a check, in that order” format just because it’s the advice in the DMG isn’t better than ignoring that advice and trusting the basic model of play a group prefers.

I have found it to work much better for me, and I recommend every DM try it, because the ways it can affect the game, which I found to be improvements, are not immediately obvious if you haven’t actually played/run the game that way before. But, of course, you are free to do what you like.

 

[Charlaquin]

Except in D&D those "superfluous elements" are otherwise known as colour, or flavour, and serve to make the setting and-or its inhabitants (appear) richer, deeper, and more fleshed-out.

That’ll happen plenty on its own without me needing to call for unnecessary rolls to facilitate it.

 

[loverdrive]

So I try to lift something that's too heavy for me to lift and I didn't attempt to lift it? Just because I was not successful and after I made the attempt realized it was impossible does not mean I didn't try. The attempt happened. Conversely if I go to pick up a big box and it's full of styrofoam and it's surprisingly light and I didn't need to be careful in how I picked it up I still positioned myself correctly and tensed my muscles with the assumption that it was heavy.

Sometimes the attempt itself is the only result.

Yeah, in real life, "nothing happens" is a very common outcome. Sometimes, you can't lift a box, sometimes, you start writing a book and never actually finish it, sometimes you go on a second date and then realize you don't wanna third. Yeah, this stuff happens. It's still boring, though. Ain't we playing to see exciting #### unfold?

 

[Charlaquin]

This is just foreign to me. Players asking to make checks are simply asking to interact with the fiction in a way that feels meaningful to them.

But they don’t need to make a check to do that. They could simply describe what their character is doing, which unlike making a check, does not by its very definition have a chance of failing.

If they ask to check for traps at the door, that declaration doesn't suddenly change the state of the door trap. It was either trapped or it wasn't.

Saying they check the door for traps is not the same thing as asking to make a perception check. It’s a bit vague as action declarations go; it tells me what the player wants to accomplish (find out if the door is trapped or not), but it doesn’t tell me what the character is doing to try and find out, so I would ask for a bit more specificity here. But this isn’t what I would call an example of a player asking for a chance to fail. It’s a player declaring a goal without a clear approach.

Sometimes when the player asks to check a door for traps, the door is not trapped and never has been. The roll is not necessary but it would break the fiction of the world and tension of the moment if I say "Don't bother, it's not trapped".

I wouldn’t say “don’t bother, it’s not trapped.” I would say what the player finds based on the approach they described. Which in this case would be nothing. I don’t need to call for a roll to know they find nothing if there’s nothing to be found, I can just narrate the results of their actions

The roll reflects an action taken by the PC, even if it was not necessary.

This is not how I treat rolls. In my games, the player states the action taken by the PC, so there’s no need for a check to reflect the action. A check merely resolves uncertainty in the outcome of the action the players declared.

Sometimes the door was trapped and opening it without checking, so it will soon be followed by a "make a ___ save".

Will it? I don’t know without knowing what the character did to check for traps. If they’re prodding at it with a 10-foot poll, they might not need to make a save to avoid the trap. Or maybe they will, depends on the trap. But the point is, I need to know not just what the player wants to accomplish, but also what the character is doing to try and accomplish it in order to know what the results will be.

But making up a penalty because they asked for a check? That's just weird to me and seems like the DM using a cudgel to enforce a "correct" way of playing.

No one is suggesting making up a penalty because the player asked for a check. I literally say as much in the very post you’re quoting. The point of the adage “a player asking to make a check is asking for a chance to fail” is not meant to suggest you should invent a chance to fail that wouldn’t have otherwise existed if a player asks for a check. It’s just to illustrate the absurdity of asking to make a check (which has a chance to fail) instead of describing an action (which might or might not have a chance to fail).

If someone is wasting time checking for traps every 5 feet, it's time to have a discussion about pacing and not making repetitive checks. We discuss pacing and how we can just use passive checks but it will slow movement to a crawl; we discuss it openly as an approach to the game instead of punishing people for playing "wrong".

I don’t punish people for being “wrong” either. I also don’t need to have the pacing discussion because I use level design and telegraphing to give players clues of when and where they might want to check for traps.

 

[iserith]

Yeah, in real life, "nothing happens" is a very common outcome. Sometimes, you can't lift a box, sometimes, you start writing a book and never actually finish it, sometimes you go on a second date and then realize you don't wanna third. Yeah, this stuff happens. It's still boring, though. Ain't we playing to see exciting #### unfold?

No, we're playing to pretend we're eating shawarma. (The bread has too many carbs for me to eat it in real life.)

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I don't recall ever using the phrase "bad advice" or telling anyone they're playing wrong.

Perhaps. But you defended the use of it, though. And that is plenty.

I just disagree; there's a difference. All I did was use exactly the same phrase that you did, but somehow that makes my post insulting.

You did more than disagree. Reread your responses from the perspective of someone else receiving your language.

Then when I make sure to clarify that every DM and group should do what works for them, that's somehow wrong as well.

So you claim that something we both agree upon is deemed "wrong" by me when you say it? Clearly I did not express myself well enough to show that we are in agreement with everything before the comma here.

So to clarify: I don't care how you run your game.

Likewise.

I think the advice in the DMG is explicitly talking about mundane activities and is not broad overall advice on when and how to ask for checks. In other words if someone asks if they can tell if a chest is trapped, I'll call for a check no matter whether or not there's a penalty for failure.

Leading with this would perhaps have lead to a more fruitful discussion.

So I don't see the point or understand what you're trying to say when you state the following unless you're saying that it's "strange" that I would ask for an investigation to check for traps on that chest while also implying that I'm somehow playing the game wrong. All I'm saying is that there's no one true way.

...

The DMG is just advice, and like many texts throughout history people have taken a sentence here and there out of context to mean things that are not intended. This is one of those cases. IMHO.

Again, lead with this one. Although, it seems to me that you hold contradictory viewpoints here. On the one hand you insist people are taking the rule "out of context to mean things that are not intended." Yet you also claim "the DMG is just advice". If it is just advice, then what does intent have to do with it? If one can ignore or interpret said advice any way they want, then what harm is it for someone to expound on how this interpretation of the rule has positively affected gameplay at their table?

 

[Charlaquin]

Not to further muddy the waters here, but I think there is also an element of people who want D&D to emulate "a story" and those of us who don't think of D&D as a story-telling game. It might be a story-making game, but that story isn't known until afterwards.

I actually also see D&D as an emergent story creation engine; it was just an analogy.

Thus the pacing and inclusion of color that I might be concerned with when writing a fantasy novel are not the ones I am concerned with at the table - and even if you are emulating stories you might prefer picaresque fantasy (as I do) over action-packed high octane scene to high octane scene - so how long we sit outside the door to the Mines of Moria in the growing gloom while Gandalf tries to figure out the password (making various rolls/attempts) could just as easily be "that's one of my favorite parts" as it could be "that was boring, either know the password or not so we can get to the next stage of the adventure." In other words, what is "superfluous" varies.

That scene serves a specific and necessary purpose in the story, and I did explicitly say that giving the story breathing room, revealing something about the characters, comic relief, etc. are all non-plot-advancing purposes a scene might serve.

To get back to the subject of rolling checks:
I can understand the desire to cut the fat a little bit or to get things moving when they feel like they are lagging - but I also, even as DM, don't always know what is going to be important in the short or long term. To use the above example, the history of dwarves and elves having once been friends and allies may not seem that important in the moment - but it could be important, esp. if we (both players and DM) spend some time engaging with something that calls on that history, but maybe without a roll we wouldn't know.

Exploring the history of dwarves and elves is a meaningful purpose a scene might serve. I don’t see how failing a history check serves that purpose.