D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[JiffyPopTart]

That is absolutely not true.

SRD:

Passive Checks​

A passive check is a special kind of ability check that doesn't involve any die rolls. Such a check can represent the average result for a task done repeatedly, such as searching for secret doors over and over again, or can be used when the GM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster.

I mean, we had a massive thread on this a few months ago, but in the context of the rules, "passive" DOES NOT indicate the PC isn't doing anything.

You claim a GM should never dictate a thought or action of a PC because that is the players sole job.

The rules you quote here specifically call out noticing a hidden monster as a use case for passive perception checks.

Using the passive perception allowing a player know there is a hidden monster necessitates that the character they play also noticed the hidden monster.

This is making a character take an action not specifically stated by the player (looking for hidden creatures) as well as thoughts (behind that log is a creature you identify as a goblin) which you and others are arguing a GM should never do.

So how does a GM use passive skills without stealing "player authority"?

Edit: An uncut This typo that seemed rude

 

[Alzrius]

I would love to have you outline your thoughts here.

I think that a lot of this comes down to positions which are largely intuitive for a lot of people - and so which makes it hard to properly describe - with regard to who arbitrates what areas of a shared fantasy. The obvious point of demarcation here is the interaction between the PC and the game world, where the player is in charge of the former and the DM the latter. As with so many things, where they interact brings up questions of who has "jurisdiction" (for lack of a better word).

The traditional answer, to my mind, has been that the DM is understood to be the authority in the event of a conflict, and that by sitting down to play the players tacitly agree to that. Of course, this comes with an equally tacit understanding of the social contract in that the DM is going to act in a manner that's deserving of the players' trust, not doing anything that they would expect to be upsetting (though mistakes and accidents can still happen, which is why Session 0 has been a thing since long before it was ever called "Session 0").

Having said that, if there's no disagreement that the DM isn't acting in bad faith, then I personally think that there's room for the DM to narrate the PCs reactions to events, typically in a cosmetic manner that fleshes out a die roll (i.e. describing how a proposed action plays out). I also think that it's understood that they'll need to arbitrate disputes, and that them finding that their own judgment carries more weight is not in-and-of-itself evidence of them being on a power-trip. Even if a player isn't being disruptive, and has made an understandable assumption, it's okay to tell them "no."

In a less general sense, I'm also personally leery of after-the-fact (even if it's immediately after) instances of a player introducing something which changes their interaction with a particular scenario. Even if it avoids issues of stepping into the DM's milieu (Gygax buzzword!) by restricting it to what the PC has on them, that simply opens a door that I'd rather remain firmly shut. I don't want there to be debates about a face mask providing advantage against inhaled gasses, or steel boots providing immunity to caltrops. While I won't say that's inherently an issue of a player acting in bad faith, I find that it changes the nature of the game (albeit only in a minor fashion) in a way that I don't care for.

Overall, I'd say that in the event of a conflict where both sides are being relatively reasonable, and arguing in good faith, the DM should get to make the call, everyone accepts it (regardless of what it is) and moves on. Ideally while figuring out a way to make sure that particular point of friction doesn't come up again at a later date.

 

[iserith]

You claim a GM should never dictate a thought or action of a PC because that is the players sole job.

The rules you quote here specifically call out noticing a hidden monster as a use case for passive perception checks.

Using the passive perception allowing a player know there is a hidden monster necessitates that the character they play also noticed the hidden monster.

This is making a character take an action not specifically stated by the player (looking for hidden creatures) as well as thoughts (behind that log is a creature you identify as a goblin) which you and others are arguing a GM should never do.

So how does a GM use passive skills without stealing "player authority"?

This

Staying alert for danger is an action the player is meant to declare though with the trade-off of not being able to perform other actions while traveling the adventure location. Many tables in practice consider this to be assumed, so it does look like it's the character not actively staying alert. But they are, and it's the player that should be declaring this ideally.

 

[Vaalingrade]

To be perfectly frank, I think there are several people who are ignoring this; I won't name names, but you don't have to look back through too many pages to see that.

While it's certainly reasonable for someone to assume that the gloves exist, that's an assumption. You can just as easily point to it being reasonable to say that something which isn't in the item description or on the character sheet has no justification for that assumption. Both of which are just nudging at the edges of a much deeper issue (which I don't think is a system problem, simply because I don't see how any system could solve this short of blanket declarations about who gets to decide what in the event of this sort of conflict, which most role-playing systems understandably don't seem to want to do).

The system problem isn't that the character's gloves don't exist, it's that while a reasonable person can assume their characters get gloves with a traveler's kit, gloves just straight don't exist in the game (not the game world, but the game) and they could not, in fact have had the chance to protect their exposed skin at all.

Also, that the system has an item that triggers on exposed skin and then just leaves it up in the air what that means to the point where people are able to claim that gloves wouldn't matter anyway specifically to spite the player for the grievous crime of assuming they had gloves. Hurray for 'natural language' and marble-mouthed 'rulings' based design!

 

[Celebrim]

Yes, the player is factually incorrect here and has failed to record gloves on their character sheet. The DM is well within their role of mediating between the rules and the players to tell them so and press on with the saving throw. But in terms of table harmony in the moment, is it worth doing that?

I don't know. Or at the least, I don't have enough information.

Very early on I talked about how in practice what I did would depend on the player. (And not as some have claimed, just how dangerous the poison was.) Things that I would take into account is whether the player was new to the table/game and as such, maybe being harsh here isn't a best way to ease them into the play. Likewise, I would take into account whether this player had in the past been scrupulously honest about these sorts of things, for example bringing up unconsidered factors that negatively impacted the resolution out of a sense of fairness and honesty. Such players I'm likely to give the benefit of the doubt on and give them a compromise plus a bit of a lecture on how to avoid this situation in the future as well as perhaps even an explanation of how traps are handled in my game and why so that they can understand my side of this. (Long story short, traps are almost always telegraphed in my games to signal "this is an area with traps, make sure you act accordingly".)

But if this was a player who had not been honest in the past or this is a player who has been in my game for a while and who should know that if it isn't explicitly on your sheet, you better ask about it first, then likely I'm out of sympathy by this point.

I really wonder what would happen if the resolution narration was, "You close your hand on the handle and notice a series of barely imperceptible pits in the back of the handle where your fingers close over it. Make a Decipher Script skill check." How many of the people here honestly believe the same sort of player who is frantically trying to find evidence of gloves in the case of poison is also going to be just as certain he is wearing gloves in this case and that he should automatically fail the skill check and really, the group should ignore the clue because he should have made clear he had gloves on at the time? Because I have had players that scrupulously honest, but they are also not players that ever give me grief and usually they are the ones continually unnecessarily apologizing.

 

[Alzrius]

The system problem isn't that the character's gloves don't exist, it's that while a reasonable person can assume their characters get gloves with a traveler's kit, gloves just straight don't exist in the game (not the game world, but the game) and they could not, in fact have had the chance to protect their exposed skin at all.

Also, that the system has an item that triggers on exposed skin and then just leaves it up in the air what that means to the point where people are able to claim that gloves wouldn't matter anyway specifically to spite the player for the grievous crime of assuming they had gloves. Hurray for 'natural language' and marble-mouthed 'rulings' based design!

Leaving aside the fact that I thought someone said that gloves do exist in the game (i.e. they're mentioned for the cold weather outfit in Rime of the Frostmaiden) I think that that's a very unfair way to characterize people who're saying that the gloves could conceivably make little-to-no difference; there are good faith ways to assert that, and they've been raised in this thread to date.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Leaving aside the fact that I thought someone said that gloves do exist in the game (i.e. they're mentioned for the cold weather outfit in Rime of the Frostmaiden)

1) Rime is a non-core book and we don't have any indication that said book is being used.
2) The player was making the assumption that travelers' clothes have gloves. In the actual books, there's not description at all and DDB apparently has the 3e description that doesn't include gloves.

So... system issue.

I think that that's a very unfair way to characterize people who're saying that the gloves could conceivably make little-to-no difference; there are good faith ways to assert that, and they've been raised in this thread to date.

Contact poison specifies exposed skin. To declare the poison seeps or does anything else to touch exposed skin while touching it with gloves on specifically at the point of contact is very shaky on rules grounds and the language around it being about upholding the DM's authority and smiting the player for 'making up the gloves to avoid consequence' doesn't help it on the ethical grounds IMO.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Staying alert for danger is an action the player is meant to declare though with the trade-off of not being able to perform other actions while traveling the adventure location. Many tables in practice consider this to be assumed, so it does look like it's the character not actively staying alert. But they are, and it's the player that should be declaring this ideally.

You are referring to travelling rules where staying alert is a "stance". I'm referring to staying alert in a general sense.

In combat a player can take an action to "search for danger" allowing them to make an active perception roll in lieu of a different action, but if instead they cast a fireball that doesn't mean that PC is no longer searching for danger in a narrative sense.

 

[iserith]

You are referring to travelling rules where staying alert is a "stance". I'm referring to staying alert in a general sense.

In combat a player can take an action to "search for danger" allowing them to make an active perception roll in lieu of a different action, but if instead they cast a fireball that doesn't mean that PC is no longer searching for danger in a narrative sense.

The traveling rules apply since they take into account all scales of movement from feet to miles, minutes to days. In combat, the rules say that the character is alert to danger at all times and their passive Perception would apply to noticing a hidden creature (just like if you're outside of combat and not performing some action that distracts from this). If the player wants to spend the resource of an Action, they can make a Wisdom (Perception) check to see if they can exceed their passive Perception and perhaps notice the hidden monster. None of this is the DM telling the player what their character is doing, thinking, or saying.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

The traveling rules apply since they take into account all scales of movement from feet to miles, minutes to days. In combat, the rules say that the character is alert to danger at all times and their passive Perception would apply to noticing a hidden creature (just like if you're outside of combat and not performing some action that distracts from this). If the player wants to spend the resource of an Action, they can make a Wisdom (Perception) check to see if they can exceed their passive Perception and perhaps notice the hidden monster. None of this is the DM telling the player what their character is doing, thinking, or saying.

I see .. so now you guys are using the travelling rules for every moment outside of combat rounds.

Do your players frequently choose the mapping or foraging stance when visiting the blacksmith?