D&D 5E Consequences of Failure

FrogReaver said:

I guess if all else fails, there's always the option of defining the rather ambiguous phrase "meaningful consequence of failure" to mean whetever the heck we want it to mean.

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Elfcrusher said:

Sure, we can all argue about how meaningful it has to be.

But I'll insist that being in the same non-optimal state you were in before you rolled the dice is, pretty much by definition, not a "consequence". (Not sure if you specifically are making that argument here, but some have been.)

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iserith said:

One issue is that "goal and approach" is conflated with needing a "meaningful consequence for failure." It does, of course, but not because I or others say so.

"Goal and approach" just means that the player is explicit with what he or she wants to achieve (goal) and how the character goes about that (approach) with reasonable specificity. This is as opposed to, say, the player asking to make an ability check and leaving us to guess or infer what the character is doing or forcing the DM to establish that in the narration phase of the play loop, effectively playing the character for the player.

The player saying what the character is doing and hoping to achieve makes it easier for the DM to determine whether there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure, the two rules-mandated criteria for whether there is an ability check. It also makes it easy to set a DC and choose which ability score applies to the ability check, plus which skill proficiency, if those criteria are met.

That's it. That's all it is. If people want to argue against players being more explicit about what their characters are doing and thereby making a larger contribution to the play experience, uhh, okay I guess? If they want to argue against meaningful consequence for failure being one of the prerequisites for ability checks, then they can just scream impotently at the rules books for a while. I didn't write the things. And of course they don't have to use those rules if they don't want to.

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Monayuris said:

Personally, this is not my style. When I create a dungeon or lair or adventuring environment... I intend it to be a challenge. Its something the players have to overcome.

Metagaming changes in resistance or vulnerability in either direction, to me, subverts this. If I put a monster that is resistant to non magical damage in a dungeon, I expect that the players will figure that out at some point and take effort to bring alternate means of attacking. I don't allow for a player to change the creatures resistances based on an ability check. My world isn't fungible vis-a-vis character ability checks.

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FrogReaver said:

But you aren't in the same state anymore. If you were you could retry the lore check. I'm presuming that's disallowed. So then, your state now has one fewer option for you than it previously did. It's not a big failure but it is a meaningful consequence (no longer having a chance to get the lore you desire... or having to take the long route to get it)

I'm not saying that's the best interpretation of "meaningful consequence of failure", just that it's a valid one.

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Monayuris said:

I'm not arguing anything of that sort. I just think goal and approach is a tool that is best used with active player action in a known DM location.

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Monayuris said:

Sometimes, ability checks can be used to establish a baseline.

For example, if a party wishes to move stealthily through an area. The act of moving stealthily pretty much warrants an ability check (if you are running a dungeon with wandering encounters, you can't always know if there is a creature to roll against). I guess the goal is to not be detected and the approach is to do that by moving very quietly. But in a situation where you have wandering monsters, even the DM doesn't know if there will be creatures to oppose such action.

I see two uses for ability (skill) checks. A baseline that is applied to situations outside of player control (which should be triggered by player choice to begin with) and the potential result of a 'goal and approach' interaction.

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Elfcrusher said:

Oh, that's sneaky.

However, if you hadn't made the roll, the only option you would otherwise have is to...make the roll. So it's kind of a self-referential consequence, and therefore kind of meaningless.

Put another way, is there any reason the player wouldn't want to make the roll?

I suppose if the player knows, like Eminem, that he has just one shot, and the DC fluctuates up and down, but he can't be sure how far it will go up and down, there's an interesting gamble involved. "Will the DC go any lower than it is right now? Or will it never get this low again?" Now we've got a consequence.

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