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

[Oofta]

You call it pixelbitching, I call it pre-emptive argument prevention.

I've had enough "I didn't do that!" "Yes you did!" arguments in my time to tell me I really don't want any more.

So, unless you want to put your character's fate entirely in my hands (because if you leave it open for me to make assumptions, my word becomes law), bloody well give me some specific details as to what you're doing!

In this example, all of that could be concatenated down to the player saying "I try everything I can with this knob short of ripping it right off the drawer." Problem solved.

I think the easiest solution is to not be a gotcha DM. There are times when I'll let people know something is risky, if they fail it could be hazardous to their health.

But what I won't do is force them to play pin the tail on the DM's expected correct course of action.

 

[iserith]

And that kinda means you have to say specific stuff. You need to say the stuff GM thinks will work. Which of course is in certain sense how anything works, but more specific technical stuff we get, more problematic this comes. At some point it just becomes guessing how GM thinks made up nonsense would work. Not saying that your approach necessarily is that, but that' the danger.

It's definitely not that and I would say the degenerate form is what you later go on to say to Lanefan in your next post about the DM saying "No" to anything but the specific solution they have in mind. I don't create solutions to challenges at all and I really don't like puzzles as a DM or a player (since those are usually challenges with a single solution). In the trap I posted, for example, I created the lore for it. I know how it was used by the people who made it. I know what happens if you smash it (not good). But other than that, I have no preconceived notion as to how the chest must be gotten out from the giant skeletal hand. That's not my job.

When I say an approach to a goal can't work that has to be obvious to all. You can't shoot an arrow into the moon from the ground. You can't intimidate the grass. You can't jump over the mountain. (Here I'm ruling out, for the purposes of this example, the PCs can't actually do this!) This could extend into the realm of the technical, but only to the extent the technical aspects of the situation are evident to everyone. A trap works a particular way as already established in the environment, for example, so an approach that effectively attempts to ignore or negate what was already established cannot work. Psychic damage doesn't hurt objects, so it's not going to hurt this door you're frustrated by either! There are barriers that shut out some choices. But anything else is fair game.

Well... These things are not unrelated... The GM creates the environment.

The environment is what is being read though.

No. And I get what you're saying. But it is an balancing act, and I really want the characters' capabilities to matter too.

The DMG says the same. It's called the Middle Path (pages 236-237). That's what people like @Charlaquin, @Swarmkeeper, and I are doing. Balancing ruling automatic success based on the player's decisions and characterizations against asking for rolls, which incentivizes the players to pay attention and engage more with the environment rather than only rely upon standard operating procedures and their character sheets. They can leverage their characters to succeed when they have to roll, but the best way to go is to try to avoid the roll wherever possible.

 

[Maxperson]

Says you (and Crimson). I don't see why certain traps couldn't be detected visually with no physical interaction. That seems like a thing that could exist, particularly given how many of them can be noticed by keeping watch while moving about the adventure locations (perhaps resolved with passive Perception). Therefore, when it comes to checking for traps, I'm going to ask players whether they're visually or physically inspecting the item. Perhaps for some traps a physical inspection is required to have a chance at noticing the trap. But not all traps, certainly.

I think a really crude trap would able to be seen by looking at something, but any halfway decent trap is going to be designed not to be seen.

 

[Maxperson]

In this example, all of that could be concatenated down to the player saying "I try everything I can with this knob short of ripping it right off the drawer." Problem solved.

I don't really want to know what you're doing to that poor cat.

 

[Charlaquin]

It's the same. If I need the player attempt to push the nob on the drawer, pull the nob, twist the nob, tap the nob in the middle, slide the nob up, slide the nob sideways, slide it down in order to convey to me how he's trying to find the trap, that's pixelbitching.

Which is why I keep telling you that what you’re calling “pixelbitching” is not what I’m doing. Because I do not require the player to do any such nonsense as what you’re describing here.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes it does. You can always demand more granularity. If you said to an actual fencing expert 'I attack with sword' that wouldn't tell them much. Like duh, you're in melee combat, obviously you're gonna attack with a sword, but is it a lunge, remise, passata sotto or perhaps something else? And that's still just broad strokes categories.

It wouldn’t tell them much, but it would tell them all they need to know to assess what D&D rules to apply to resolve the action.

Checks the chest for traps.

That’s not anything. I can’t visualize what is actually happening in the fiction based on that.

They check for traps, then they roll investigation. And the DMG even literally tells you the DC, so no need to even ponder that.

This is pointless.

Talked with my SO about this. They said contact poison would never occur to them as it seems absurd and implausible that it would last any reasonable amount of time. Which is true. This is not a trap that anyone ever would use in real life. But in D&D it can still be thing. And if player is playing a character who knows this sort of things, they shouldn't be penalised for understanding more about poisons than the GM who invented the trap.

They’re not being penalized for anything. They made a decision based on out of character knowledge. That’s something I allow, but caution players is risky to do without taking steps to confirm that knowledge is accurate in the game world first.

Yes. And they need to guess which approach you think would work. Note, not what actually would work, what you think would work!

No, they just need to try something. Worst case scenario, they might have to roll one of those investigation checks you’re so insistent that I call for.

 

[Maxperson]

Which is why I keep telling you that what you’re calling “pixelbitching” is not what I’m doing. Because I do not require the player to do any such nonsense as what you’re describing here.

"I check the drawer for traps" and "I check the knob for traps" are functionally the same, except the latter is more gotcha, because you won't find the trap on the rest of the drawer.

 

[Charlaquin]

But this is them being on different pages and can happen in other direction too. I can easily imagine players getting annoyed by GM demanding what to them feels overtly specific declarations and then hitting them with bad stuff because they said wrong specific stuff. "Make con save!" "But I searched for traps!" "Sure, you searched traps with a pokey stick, but this trap required you to use magnifying class!"

This bears no resemblance whatsoever to an interaction that would or could ever happen in my game.

I’ll give you an example of a time I actually had a player who wasn’t expecting to be asked to give more specific detail than “I check for traps.” She said she checked for traps and I said, as I do in these situations, “I’m hearing that you want to figure out if the door is trapped or not. What does your character do to try and find that out?” She stared blankly for a moment, then said “something my character who’s trained in Investigation would think of that I can’t,” to which I responded, “I’m not looking for anything overly specific, I just need to understand what’s occurring in the fiction so I can determine what happens next, and I don’t want to assume your character is doing something you wouldn’t want them to do. For example, are you just looking at the door from a distance? Are you touching it at all? Are you using some kind of tool? I know you’re not an engineer, and neither am I, so no need to worry about the precise mechanisms or whatever, just something you imagine might help you figure out what you want to know, and I’ll do my best to interpret it in good faith.” Then she said, “oh, ok. I just want to look it over closely and thoroughly, I don’t want to touch it or anything.”

For the record, there was a simple bell on a lever that would ring when the door opened. I said she saw a scuffed section at the top of the door where it looked like it might have worn from repeatedly hitting something when opened.

 

[Charlaquin]

I really want the characters' capabilities to matter too.

they do, as insurance against failure, on the (very frequent) occasions where an approach could accomplish its goal, could fail to accomplish it, and failing to accomplish it would be meaningful.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think people's opinions on this are coloured by their past bad experiences. Because I don't remember that ever being problem. What I remember being a problem several times is GM having some specific solution to a problem in mind and players being frustrated when they didn't get it and failed to poke the right things!

Interestingly, I had such an experience once, except that the specific thing the DM apparently wanted us to say was “I make an Investigation check.” We spent like 10 minutes banging our heads against the wall trying to interact with a door that had a bunch of pipes and valves and steam and stuff, describing how we were looking at the pipes to see if we could identify a pattern, or follow their lines to see what valves might do what, feeling the pipes to see if they were hot or cold, listening for the sound of water flow, anything we could think of to try and figure this stupid puzzle out, and getting absolutely nothing, until finally the DM, equally frustrated with the situation, said “you could try investigating it.” To which I responded that I thought that was what we’d been doing the whole time, but sure, I investigate it. Fortunately passed the check, I don’t know what the hell would have happened if we failed. I didn’t stay in that game for much longer.