D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[Alzrius]

There's a pretty big difference between the DM telling a player their character now has a greasy substance on their gloves, perhaps asking what if anything they do about that, and the DM saying that the character rubs their eye or picks their nose and now must make a saving throw due to contact poison. In the former case, the DM is narrating the result of the adventurer's action of touching the chest with a gloved hand. In the latter case, they are further describing what the character is doing, which is outside of the role of DM. The DM controls most of the game - do they really need to control the character, too?

Again, the presumption here is that this is all an after-the-fact method of fleshing out a roll that's already been made. The DM isn't just reaching down to pluck the player's character away from them; the PC has already elected to examine the chest (with the understanding that doing so involves tactile manipulation) with the acknowledgment that a roll is called for (as well as the further understanding that a low roll can carry negative consequences). In this case, the low roll has resulted in poison exposure; it's now just a question of fleshing out precisely how that happens, and since that involves A) the poison being contact poison, and B) the PC wearing gloves, it's therefore going to involve the PC being exposed to that poison despite having worn gloves.

There's nothing wrong with the PC describing that on their own, if they want. But I don't think the DM is inherently out of line if they narrate what that die roll constitutes from an in-game standpoint either.

 

[iserith]

Again, the presumption here is that this is all an after-the-fact method of fleshing out a roll that's already been made. The DM isn't just reaching down to pluck the player's character away from them; the PC has already elected to examine the chest (with the understanding that doing so involves tactile manipulation) with the acknowledgment that a roll is called for (as well as the further understanding that a low roll can carry negative consequences). In this case, the low roll has resulted in poison exposure; it's now just a question of fleshing out precisely how that happens, and since that involves A) the poison being contact poison, and B) the PC wearing gloves, it's therefore going to involve the PC being exposed to that poison despite having worn gloves.

There's nothing wrong with the PC describing that on their own, if they want. But I don't think the DM is inherently out of line if they narrate what that die roll constitutes from an in-game standpoint either.

The error is in the presumption then - there is no saving throw if the PC doesn't touch the contact poison with exposed skin as that is how contact poison works. It would then seem like the DM is making another error while trying to correct for the first one.

 

[Lanefan]

Fair enough; I suppose I should have directed that last part at @Swarmkeeper who mentioned never using the word "you" to refer to a PC. That strikes me as going too far, and being rather hard to do, i.e. "the orc hits you for 7 points of damage."

When I use the word "you" while DMing I'm almost exclusively referring to the character rather than the player.

And I'll narrate minor character actions as integral parts of a resolution all the time - "You fall into a pit and faceplant on the bottom" - or take what the player said ("I try to grab the edge!") and follow through to its conclusion - "You try to grab the edge of the pit, but miss it and fall painfully." It's just easier that way.

 

[Lanefan]

All I know is that I've already made my next character token:

View attachment 270779

Smell the Glove.

 

[Alzrius]

The error is in the presumption then - there is no saving throw if the PC doesn't touch the contact poison with exposed skin as that is how contact poison works. It would then seem like the DM is making another error while trying to correct for the first one.

That wasn't the scenario that was being discussed in the OP as I understood it; as was outlined initially, the character touches the chest, and the DM calls for a saving throw. The understanding is that, in the course of touching the chest, some activity on the PC's part caused them to be exposed to the contact poison. The results of their action, in other words, were adjudicated in the DM deciding that a die roll was necessary to begin with (and, of course, whether the save was made or not).

And I'll narrate minor character actions as integral parts of a resolution all the time - "You fall into a pit and faceplant on the bottom" - or take what the player said ("I try to grab the edge!") and follow through to its conclusion - "You try to grab the edge of the pit, but miss it and fall painfully." It's just easier that way.

I agree.

 

[Tonguez]

Let them have their fancy shmancy gloves, they arent waterproof are they?
the poison still sticks and soaks in - so now the have to save and wash ther gloves too

 

[Swarmkeeper]

When I use the word "you" while DMing I'm almost exclusively referring to the character rather than the player.

And I'll narrate minor character actions as integral parts of a resolution all the time - "You fall into a pit and faceplant on the bottom" - or take what the player said ("I try to grab the edge!") and follow through to its conclusion - "You try to grab the edge of the pit, but miss it and fall painfully." It's just easier that way.

I mean, these are fine. You’re describing the results of their prior actions. You are not introducing anything new that the PC is choosing to do, think, or say.

 

[Maxperson]

That's not actually describing what the PCs do. That's describing the result of a fireball. If you said, "you try to tumble out of the way of the fireball, but it still burns you," now you're describing what the PC is doing.

I'm going to disagree there. What the PC is doing is making a save. "You try to tumble out of the way of the fireball, but it still burns you." is a narration of the result of the saving throw. If the player wants to tell me how he's attempting the save, that's fine, but if he doesn't and leaves the narration of the save result to me, I'm going to make something up.

 

[Voadam]

Again, this isn't a question of "need." I think that the scenario described above (in my previous post) works just fine, even if it doesn't "need" to be that way. There's room on the player's part for understanding that, in having failed his roll, he's going to be exposed to the poison. I suppose there's room for debating who should craft the specifics of the scenario (if they care to; plenty of groups don't feel the need to spell out how everything happens from an in-character standpoint), but I don't see it as being any sort of serious abrogation of the table's social contract for the DM to describe some mishap on the PC's part which makes that happen.

And the story of Reginald the Rogue works just fine for the game-table as it does the novel. Quite frankly, while it's a little flowery, that would work just fine for any DM adjudication of what happened when a PC fails a roll. Because, as some other people have put forward, sometimes the gloves do in fact do something, so something else must happen to get the contact poison onto his skin, because that's what the dice say happened. In that regard, the DM saying it was the PC's fault strikes me as being entirely legitimate, particularly since it strains the imagination how else it could have happened.

Quite frankly, making allowances for the fact that sometimes the DM will violate a player's agency strikes me as being the basis for trust around the table. Wielding that level of authority in a manner that's fair, in accordance with what everyone thinks of as "fair," is a far higher bar to meet than simply telling them never to cross a particular line. I think that making allowances for the idea that sometimes the DM is supposed to narrate what your character does, particularly for when it's an outcome you don't want to happen but which the game's events have mandated will happen, is an important part of what the DM brings to the table.

Sure, the DM could absolutely make that call. But by that same token if they can see a way that the PC conceivably could be exposed to the poison (in a manner that everyone at the table considers plausible, rather than vindictive; for the purposes of this particular debate, we all seem to agree that's the case), then it can absolutely go the other way. If the PC is fiddling with the chest with gloves, then even leaving aside the issue of whether or not it can seep through them, there's room to understand that that alone doesn't necessarily obviate the entire issue of being poisoned.

I think if I was specifically wearing gloves that we both agreed blocked the contact poison and you had me roll anyway to see if I wiped my forehead, I would be a bit irked. Particularly if the mechanics were a big mismatch to the narration to my detriment such as a high wisdom character with weak constitution saves and I was playing my character as a careful methodical type. I enjoy skilled play triumphs and reversals, but sudden gotcha rolls no matter what undercuts that.

It could be my B/X background where saves were often deadly things that could end a character and so working carefully to cleverly avoid them entirely where possible was something I worked at.

 

[Alzrius]

I think if I was specifically wearing gloves that we both agreed blocked the contact poison and you had me roll anyway to see if I wiped my forehead, I would be a bit irked. Particularly if the mechanics were a big mismatch to the narration to my detriment such as a high wisdom character with weak constitution saves and I was playing my character as a careful methodical type. I enjoy skilled play triumphs and reversals, but sudden gotcha rolls no matter what undercuts that.

It could be my B/X background where saves were often deadly things that could end a character and so working carefully to cleverly avoid them entirely where possible was something I worked at.

If there's a mismatch between the mechanics and the narration, then I agree there's been a breakdown in the process. The entire point of the narration (to me) is to flesh out what the mechanics are telling you. I'm not sure I'd necessarily agree with a presumption that contact-poison-blocking gloves mean that you'd never need be exposed to a contact poison in an otherwise-static environment, but that would be incumbent on fleshing out a greater mechanical understanding of what the gloves did (e.g. that they granted a +4 bonus on saves involving contact poison, perhaps, or even that you're only exposed on a roll of natural 1, though that might be a bit extreme).