D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[Vaalingrade]

And in any event, I tend to err on the side of respecting one's elders.

I've met my elders. I've heard what they have to say.

I'm not gonna do that.

 

[Celebrim]

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.

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."

 

[Mort]

One thing that's not being addressed.

What are the ACTUAL expectations of the group?

Was equipment brought up in session 0 as something that will matter? If the DM stressed the fact that rations, crowbars etc. will come up and failure to have them will matter and the players all agreed? Then the player is simply wrong here.

Has equipment ever mattered at the table before? If this is the first time equipment has mattered (and if it hadn't been brought up in session 0 that it would), I give A LOT more credence to the player not having mentioned gloves before but thinking his character would have them. In a situation like this, where it's the first time up, I'm going to give the player the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Nothing in the original post suggests the player is lying.

Except apparently that they're a player and that... might be their job? What.

 

[Voadam]

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.

3e had the search skill which took a full round active action to search a 5x5 area. So no passive check as a default.

Also it only allows people to notice traps with a search DC of 20 or less unless they have a special ability like the rogue class to notice higher DC traps or the Dwarf stone stuff.

The default trap search DC is 20, but it can be bumped up by modifying the trap cost and possibly the CR.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

I would think there is more to support it in the sense that gloves are a perfectly common and mundane item that would be available to just about any PC.

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?"

 

[iserith]

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."

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.

 

[Reynard]

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?"

Poison caltrops! Genius!

 

[Kinematics]

The thread exploded, so I'm skipping a lot of pages, but...

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.

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).

On the other other hand, if the group is burgling a mansion in the middle of the night, wearing gloves might be believable again. However if that were the case, I'd also expect them to be wearing something other than standard traveling clothes; perhaps something like the "dark common clothes" mentioned in the Criminal background.

Overall, I'd have no problem believing the character had gloves, no matter what the outfit. The only question is whether it's believable for the character to be wearing gloves in whatever circumstances han finds hanself in. In most cases, this seems like it should be an easy call.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Please don't make me touch the poison trap in front of all my friends.