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D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

Reynard

Legend
Supporter
Sure, but that makes them no less germane to what we're talking about. There are times when it's both right and expected for the GM to override a player's control regarding their character, which to my mind is necessarily an aspect of violating their agency, and that's understood as being part of the central premise of the game. Slicing that between "consequences" and some other distinction (which I think you're making with regard to "wrongful" violations in that regard) strikes me as being artificial in nature.
So what would be a justifiable consequence that would also be a violation of agency (and let's leave the alignment argument out of it, since it is even fuzzier than anything else we have discussed in this thread).
 

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The rules do support it. If you read the traps section it notes that some part(not all parts) of a trap will usually(not always) be visible. So you might see tiny holes in the wall that let gas into the room, but you wouldn't necessarily be able see the trigger for the trap or other trap components.
None of that supports "I find traps with my naked fingers!!!" which just sounds like some suicidal lunatic nonsense lol it really does. Good god. I can imagine a much more reckless approach.
 


Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
Why would traveling gear not come with gloves? That’s incredibly standard outdoor equipment.
It's not cold weather clothing, foraging clothing, riding clothing, etc. Those things would specifically come with gloves. Clothing that you put on to walk to the next town or city wouldn't need it.
 

Alzrius

The EN World kitten
So what would be a justifiable consequence that would also be a violation of agency (and let's leave the alignment argument out of it, since it is even fuzzier than anything else we have discussed in this thread).
Well, if we hold that basic issues of how they're dressed are an area of a player's agency over their character, there's the example of a PC saying "but my character was wearing gloves when they touched the chest, so the contact poison shouldn't affect them!" and the DM says "your character sheet doesn't say you're wearing gloves, and the description for your outfit doesn't say it comes with gloves, so no, you weren't wearing gloves and the poison affects you."
 

I don't. I ask, "What does your character sheet say you are wearing?", and if I can't find some definite evidence of gloves then they aren't wearing gloves. Simple as that.

Because your objection is really pathetic, because if I can't tell the player that their PC is not wearing gloves then I also can't tell the player that they are not wearing gloves, in which case we are reduced to a Schrodinger's fiction where the PC is or is not wearing gloves only after they find out whether or not it would be useful to be wearing gloves.



You won't be able to sustain that with evidence either from manuscripts or paintings. As a matter of actual evidence, the medieval didn't paint themselves ubiquitously wearing gloves. You are now well into the rules lawyering stage.



So now you are at the rules lawyering stage where you are arguing since the rules don't support you, the evidence on your character sheet doesn't support you, and the evidence of history doesn't support you, that the rules are wrong and you are appealing to "common sense". Only, if the consequences of wearing the gloves were negative and it was the DM arguing that his common sense told you that you were wearing glove, you'd be vigorously siting how the absence of gloves on your character sheet, the absence of gloves in the rules, and the fact the medieval painted peasants working in the fields without gloves to be evidence your character wasn't wearing gloves.



I'm not even going to count the logical fallacies in that, it's such an absurd argument.



Basically we just have a player here that is waiting for you to disclose metagame information before they decide what they are wearing. As has been previously discussed, there are processes of play you as a DM can use to get around a player doing that, but fundamentally the issue is that even if the DM hasn't been clever and this issue has taken them by surprised, at the point that they imagine the scene with the player not wearing gloves the player must have some positive evidence of the gloves before they can demand as drastic of an action as a retcon.



The <insert profanity of your choice here> they do. The player typically if they have a specific vision of what their character is doing expresses it. Much more typically, the player begins by offering a rules proposition like, "I check for traps" or "I search the room", with absolutely nothing like a concrete idea what that looks like because they are engaging with the rules and not with the fiction. And most of the time that's often sufficient to adjudicate the scene which is why DMs let it pass and why players get in the habit of not concretely imagining things like what they are holding in their hands (leading to the ubiquitous problem of all PCs having five arms), or what they are doing with their hands. It's really rare that you have any player who imagines things like, "Well, since I have a sword in one hand and a lantern in the other, I sheath my sword before walking over to the desk and opening the top left drawer, holding the lantern up so as to get good light." It's only when prompted by something that they start trying to reify the situation.



None of which has a thing to do with what is on your character sheet, nor am I going to listen to an argument that requires me to count the number of fictional portrayals of characters with or without gloves. Again, in this situation the character is wearing a suit of normal clothing that does not explicitly mention gloves. Therefore, the GM is perfectly valid in thinking that gloves are not present or that if gloves are present they are knitted or fingerless or otherwise not intended to provide physical protection. If you thought gloves were so important, you'd have written "kid skin gloves (worn)" or "heavy leather work gloves (worn)" on your character sheet. There is nothing gotcha about adjudicating the situation using the most concrete information that the DM has available. And a gotcha GM wouldn't design the trap this way. A gotcha GM would have a curse that went off if you touched the chest while wearing gloves and/or boots, because the chest was a sacred reliquary that required the clergy to open it unshod and with bare hands.
This is a fundamentally unreasonable position, as highlighted by:
The <insert profanity of your choice here> they do.
Wow is all I can really say to that. You seem like you're suggesting an incredibly aggressive oppositional form of DMing, which I kind of doubt you actually practice. The fact that you're treating my points as if I was a player annoying you instead of another DM is pretty telling too.
 


Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
None of that supports "I find traps with my naked fingers!!!" which just sounds like some suicidal lunatic nonsense lol it really does. Good god. I can imagine a much more reckless approach.
Touch is one of the senses used to find things that you can't see and which would be vital to finding and/or disarming a trap. Go ahead, put on gloves, but those will in fact negatively impact your abilities. For some traps it might not make a difference. For many it will. It really depends on the trap.
 


tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
Epic
(As a total aside, long-lasting contact poison is just a really dumb and implausible idea generally. Virtually every kind of slimy medium which could hold a poison is going to either dry up, slide off, evaporate, or all of the above, within like, hours to days. And if you want the trap to be magic, just say it's magic, don't try and sell me on a non-magical goo that does none of those things! I basically never use it because it's so implausible. I don't like traps that make no sense at all, and that couldn't last. Any trap that's finicky or fancy like this would need maintenance. There'd probably need to be a kobold round every 24 hours to re-paint the poison on it, and there'd be signs of that and so on. I always think every part of a trap's lifecycle through.)
Anti climb paint would like a word
 

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