Vaalingrade
Legend
I've met my elders. I've heard what they have to say.And in any event, I tend to err on the side of respecting one's elders.
I'm not gonna do that.
I've met my elders. I've heard what they have to say.And in any event, I tend to err on the side of respecting one's elders.
It looks like you fundamentally distrust the player here then. I would see "I have gloves on" as no different than "I cast shield" when the orc hits you.
3e had the search skill which took a full round active action to search a 5x5 area. So no passive check as a default.I mean, presumably there'd be some prior check to, for instance, notice that the chest was trapped before the issue of touching the poison came into play. I seem to recall 3E had that also, requiring a skill check to detect a trap first before any issue of exposure/disarming it was raised.
Had the player mentioned the gloves before the roll not knowing if they would help protect or hinder in feeling something I'd agree, but they brought up the gloves after they failed and learned what they failed to detect. it's a retcon with nothing to support it other than a demand of telepathic omniescent GM.
What we're discussing though is whether the player is stepping outside of the role of player as outlined by the rules. The player believes they have a resource that will obviate the saving throw, just like shield would obviate the attack roll (or the damage roll, at least). That's fully within the player's role. Now it's a matter of figuring out if the player actually has this resource.I feel like that analogy is flawed. I wouldn't mind a class power or ability that let you put on gloves or otherwise perform a simple action as an interrupt ability that prevents something from happening, but in general players cannot reflexively to do any action (put gloves on or not) in response to something that has already happened in order to negate it from happening. Again, great class ability or high-level divination spell that would allow you to do that, but not as a general rule how things are normally done. Otherwise, you wouldn't need the shield spell, you could just say, "I saw that attack coming and blocked it with my shield/weapon/a nearby chair". And at that point, we're back to:
Kid #1: "I shot you."
Kid #2: "No you didn't, you missed."
Poison caltrops! Genius!What if we flipped the situation a bit... what if instead of contact poison, the trap was caltrops? Would anyone ask "do you have boots written on your character sheet?"
This changes my view of the initial question a bit. If it had been a contact poison on a chest in a dungeon, I would absolutely believe the character should have been wearing gloves. However a hatbox suggests an indoor setting, perhaps in a bedroom. In that case, I would not believe the character was wearing gloves if they were present in normal circumstances (perhaps at a party, and they're sneaking around the house).To be fair, I was thinking of what was in the rules when I imagined the scenario. What happened was I was reading an old Dungeon Magazine adventure and it had a hatbox secured closed with string. The string was soaked in contact poison. I was thinking about how that could play out at the table under D&D 5e rules, so I looked up gloves and whatnot and found that they just weren't mentioned outside of magical ones. But at the same time, I think it would be reasonable for a player to imagine their character wears gloves. So at the end of the day it is a question of DMing philosophy, but rules can certainly be something to consider here.