D&D General Just Eat the Dang Fruit

[iserith]

My fellow characters and I are exploring a lost city buried beneath the sands of a vast desert. Shortly into our first foray, we come across a well-appointed dining chamber and its occupant, a friendly and immaculately dressed fellow who invites us to partake of refreshment. He is joined by several servants who attend to us. Hospitality is big in the culture of this region, and though it's a bit odd that this dude and his servants are in this buried city, it's the first friendly face we've seen in a while.

Bowls of fruit and wine are brought out. My character, Brickyard Lot, has a flaw that reads: "If I see fruit, I eat it." This has notably gotten him into trouble before (and the party doesn't trust him with pocket goodberries). Anyway, naturally I'm eating the fruit before the bowls can be set down. "A wave of exhaustion washes over you," says the DM. "Make a Con save." I roll the dice and succeed, belching and happily continuing to eat.

The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake. Does anyone see any issue with this refusal? If so, what are the issues and how do you resolve them. If not, why not?

Let's consider another angle as well: Say my character has the aforementioned flaw, but isn't the first to eat the fruit. I witness another character make a saving throw after eating it. I then refuse to eat the fruit or drink the wine, despite the flaw. Does this change the calculation at all as to whether this is an issue that needs to be addressed?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I would NEVER eat fruit in a game with another character with that flaw. Literally every fruit is going to be a trap or poison.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Bowls of fruit and wine are brought out. My character, Brickyard Lot, has a flaw that reads: "If I see fruit, I eat it." This has notably gotten him into trouble before (and the party doesn't trust him with pocket goodberries). Anyway, naturally I'm eating the fruit before the bowls can be set down. "A wave of exhaustion washes over you," says the DM. "Make a Con save." I roll the dice and succeed, belching and happily continuing to eat.

The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake. Does anyone see any issue with this refusal? If so, what are the issues and how do you resolve them. If not, why not?

Unless there is some discernible sign of the character having been forced to make a save, then yeah, this is using metagame knowledge. HOWEVER, the situation is already one that might ellicit distrust from some people. It's not a circumstance in which I would tend to get on peoples' case as DM. Ideally the save is something that should have been handled privately; or by the DM in secret, after having asked to see that player's character sheet.

Let's consider another angle as well: Say my character has the aforementioned flaw, but isn't the first to eat the fruit. I witness another character make a saving throw after eating it. I then refuse to eat the fruit or drink the wine, despite the flaw. Does this change the calculation at all as to whether this is an issue that needs to be addressed?

Again, depends on how you "witness" the other character making a saving throw. The saving throw itself is not something that characters will realize is going on without a concrete effect. A character being visibly weak or acting drugged first however....might possibly justify the flawed character roleplaying out struggling with their willpower against consuming the fruit. And generally speaking, drugs and poisons in the real world are rarely rapid/instantaneous when ingested.

Without a concrete, discernible effect - they should just eat it.

 

[jgsugden]

I think it all comes down to how the DM handles the situation, and your response to what the DM says.

BL ate the fruit, then rolled a saving throw and made it. What did the other PCs see? Did they see BL just plowing through the fruit without a care in the world? Did he look queasy and start to sweat? Did he barely hold down the fruit? The DM gets to decide what the PC feels like based upon their save, BL gets to decide how BL responds to that feeling, and the rest of the group should act off of that response.

 

[Deset Gled]

Anyway, naturally I'm eating the fruit before the bowls can be set down. "A wave of exhaustion washes over you," says the DM. "Make a Con save." I roll the dice and succeed, belching and happily continuing to eat.

The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake. Does anyone see any issue with this refusal? If so, what are the issues and how do you resolve them. If not, why not?

As a player, the way the DM describes this determines how I respond. If, after the roll, the DM says something like "You happily eat the fruit" with no indication of an abnormal response, I ignore the fact that a die was rolled. FWIW, my DM is the kind that will randomly call for shot checks even when nothing happens, just to keep us on our toes.

OTOH, if the DM describes it like "You look woozy for a second but then belch noisily and feel fine" then, as a player, I react to the fact that the eater had an odd reaction. I would be cautious and might not eat the fruit.

The bottom line: is up to the DM to tell the players if the save was noticable or not. This may involve the DM asking for some sort of a perception check.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I would say it is up to the players to decide how they want to play their characters. As DM, I personally don't want or need to add to my plate of duties the policing of how/why players decide what their PCs are doing in any given scene.

Furthermore, who says all the fruit is poisoned? I mean it probably is but, for the sake of argument, who really knows in a fantasy world? Could be that the fruit has variable effects based on the type of fruit chosen, or the class or lineage of the PC, or the order in which it is eaten, or whatever. Players making assumptions might have their PCs miss out on benefits. Or maybe it isn't even poisoned but is an acquired taste in that region - and the well-dressed fellow is so impressed that someone not native to the area still ate the fruit after seeing their friend look ill, he rewards them in some way. That said, if I were the player with that flaw about eating fruit and saw someone else eat the fruit first and have to make a Con Save, I'd still go for it for that sweet Inspiration -- another player might decide differently, and that's fine, too.

 

[Clint_L]

I think there are a lot of more subtle ways that the DM could have handled this situation! But yeah, definite meta-gaming, so at that point it comes down to how your group likes to play. My home groups would just stay in character and do what they think their character would naturally do, though they would probably be chuckling as they opted for the fruit.

There's not really a right or wrong here, just different preferences for how to play. As a player, I would pretend like I didn't know about the roll.

Edit: this situation plays out very differently with new players who are young! When something like this occurs in that situation, I review the concept of meta-gaming and why I don't prefer it (something we cover at session 0) but if a student is stuck on the issue, I'm not going to force it. They'll either come around or they won't, and it doesn't really matter that much.

 

[Zardnaar]

Generally PCs don't eat any food they don't supply themselves.
Makes ingested things hard in my games.

 

[Jahydin]

I'm pretty forgiving with meta-knowledge when I DM, but because of that I'm more careful in situations like these.

This could have been solved by just waiting before asking for a roll for instance.

To not ruffle feathers though, if I made the same mistake, I would tell them they did eat the fruit (unless they had a great reason why not), but could roll with Advantage.

 

[CreamCloud0]

My fellow characters and I are exploring a lost city buried beneath the sands of a vast desert. Shortly into our first foray, we come across a well-appointed dining chamber and its occupant, a friendly and immaculately dressed fellow who invites us to partake of refreshment. He is joined by several servants who attend to us. Hospitality is big in the culture of this region, and though it's a bit odd that this dude and his servants are in this buried city, it's the first friendly face we've seen in a while.

Bowls of fruit and wine are brought out. My character, Brickyard Lot, has a flaw that reads: "If I see fruit, I eat it." This has notably gotten him into trouble before (and the party doesn't trust him with pocket goodberries). Anyway, naturally I'm eating the fruit before the bowls can be set down. "A wave of exhaustion washes over you," says the DM. "Make a Con save." I roll the dice and succeed, belching and happily continuing to eat.

The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake. Does anyone see any issue with this refusal? If so, what are the issues and how do you resolve them. If not, why not?

Let's consider another angle as well: Say my character has the aforementioned flaw, but isn't the first to eat the fruit. I witness another character make a saving throw after eating it. I then refuse to eat the fruit or drink the wine, despite the flaw. Does this change the calculation at all as to whether this is an issue that needs to be addressed?

oh definitely i think this is an issue of them refusing through awareness of the check being made, i started a thread about a similar topic a while back that might interest you that eventually derailed into the classic metagame discussions but this is a situation where i think the GM should've rolled brickyard's CON save behind their screen, preferably without the players even being aware that they rolled anything in the first place, if they made the save nothing needs be mentioned, if they fail then the consquences begin occuring at a level that is visible to the other characters as brickyard becomes tired, any time a player makes a decision based on their awareness of table level actions it shouldn't be happening.

the thread if you're curious: D&D General - Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?