D&D 5E 5e consequence-resolution

[GMforPowergamers]

Saying after 10 minutes you eventually open the door or safe is usually not the way i do it.

I normally always ask for Dexetrity (Thieves' Tools) check to open a locked door or safe. It must be an old habbit, but if there is something that should be an obstacle to overcome, i don't give it away for free automatically, regardless of what's inside or past it. This goes all the way back to when i played AD&D with thieves needing to roll % to open lock.

yeah there is also the fact that we all gauge 'consequence' diffrently.

"If you take ten minutes or you take 6, or 24 seconds" seems to me to be a consequence in and of itself.

 

[iserith]

I pulled this out of another thread and tidied it up as it captures something I've been mulling over. 5e is often thought of as task-resolution. With dead-ends and flat fails. Task-resolution is often contrasted with conflict-resolution, where the focus isn't on resolving the task, but on the reason the task matters. I think maybe 5e ability checks can be better explained as consequence-resolution like this, using the example of opening a safe

1. It may seem counter-intuitive, but in 5e, you don't really roll to open a safe
2. Per DMG 237, what you are really rolling for are consequences
3. Taken together with PHB 174, the results can be
   1. you open the safe (the consequence you want)
   2. you open the safe but with additional consequences
   3. you become engaged with some consequences

For emphasis,

• Per RAW, outcomes of ability checks in 5e - pass or fail - are ordinarily not inert. I'm not saying a dead-end couldn't ever come up in an interesting way, but that isn't the default.
• If a task is uncertain, but there are no meaningful consequences, the DMG rule is that they succeed in ten times the time.
• Following the procedure in RAW, consequences are known going in. They'll be those that are due to player choices and big picture elements: players and DM all get their say. That doesn't rule out unexpected twists, but those can still be principled - constrained by your situation, what's been described, and the game system.

Some might still see that as not really about resolving what matters. The missing piece isn't found in the rules: it's in the player orientation to their game. Why have my players chosen to open that particular safe? We're here now, why? Unless I picture my party going about opening random safes, their desired consequence - find what they are looking for in the safe - is what is resolved. Beyond the events kicking off play in session 1, DM does not have sole authorship over the situation: that's up to the group. DM doesn't choose stakes, they're chosen by the group. DM has their side of the picture, players have theirs. The two sides are asymmetrical, but they can (and in my view should) be equal.

I might wonder - couldn't that safe just be empty? The answer to that depends on my decisions about the kind of play I am interested in. Were I solely focused on immersion, perhaps I would like to imagine empty safes? 5e is a non-comittal game: it leaves decisions like that up to the group. I believe 5e is overwhelmingly DM-curated, so I would put it like this - where it's reasonable to say system matters, in 5e system + DM matters.

In understanding ability checks for 5e, folk normally start with examples like the one in the Basic rules primer. Later, they might read the PHB 174 and see they should take uncertainty into account and can narrate complications on failure. Eventually, they'll get familiar with DMG 237 and see what's possible. Stopping short at primer or PHB leaves the picture incomplete. Because in D&D system + DM matters, even the whole picture won't guarantee that any two groups will play it the same way.

Finally, a hat tip to @iserith who helped me really grasp all this. With any luck they are still around and will link their thoughts (their guide) in this direction.

This aligns with my thoughts on how things work in D&D 5e. If a proposed action has both an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure, then some kind of roll if appropriate. If it lacks at least one of these conditions, then there's no roll. Reasonable people can disagree on what is meaningful in context, particularly in the abstract. (They're probably more able to agree at an actual table during play.) Without employing the flourishes on DMG 242, we can resolve the action into success, failure, or progress combined with a setback. With DMG 242, we have more options if we want.

Calling for an ability check when it vaguely smells like it could align with a skill is a hard habit to break in my experience. DMs can see a benefit to stopping for a moment to consider whether the outcome is truly uncertain and whether there's a meaningful consequence for failure before calling for a check. They may find that they start calling for fewer checks than before, balancing out automatic success with ability checks in a way the Middle Path method in the DMG lays out. Players can also make this easier on the DM (and themselves) by being reasonably specific and clear about what they're doing and hope to accomplish with an eye toward succeeding without a check at all, if they can. This can have the side effect of enriching the conversation of the game and making the setting seem like a real place.

Finally, a simple trick to making actions have meaningful consequences by default: Make Time Matter. This is already built into combat, if you think about it. If I fail to hit with my attack roll (a boring binary result of hit/miss), then it could be that the monster who is trying to kill me gets another turn to attack. In an exploration or some social interaction challenges, time could be ticking down toward an unwanted outcome or there could be wandering monster checks or random encounter checks at specific intervals. In these cases, "you fail to pick the lock" goes from a boring binary result to "We're one step closer to the prince being sacrificed to demons at midnight" or "Now there's a chance we might get eaten by a grue." Those are meaningful consequences that are easy to implement and understand and creates opportunities for the players to make meaningful decisions and trade-offs. In my experience, the more meaningful decisions the players can make per unit of game time, the more engaged in the game they become.

 

[Laurefindel]

This statement would seem to be contradicted by the express instructions of DMG 237, where it says, "An ability check is a test to see whether a character succeeds at a task that he or she has decided to attempt." It would be very strange if what they meant was, "An ability check is a test to see what the consequences are of a task that a character has decided to attempt."

Now, DMG 242 provides optional possibilities for DMs who wish to make ability checks more complicated. Allowing near-miss (or forcing barely-made) checks to succeed with cost is augmenting the roll's answer to the original question ("did you succeed?") with the answer to a different question, "what did it cost?" This is factoring in consequences, yes. But it is not required. If it were, it would be on page 237, not several pages later, and certainly not placed after unrelated rules elements like Inspiration, Proficiency, and Ad/Dis, which do factor into checks, but would surely be less important than critical components of what all checks are supposed to be.

I'd say that in some situations 'you fail and nothing happens' is a meaningful consequence...

True. Not only that, but it’s a good opportunity to fail forward, hinting at the unexpected quality or resilience of the lock or chest (or whatever), and maybe expect more as the PC go on and adjust their strategy.

 

[Bill Zebub]

yeah there is also the fact that we all gauge 'consequence' diffrently.

"If you take ten minutes or you take 6, or 24 seconds" seems to me to be a consequence in and of itself.

If time is of the essence...meaning that they feel time pressure...then yes. So if they are being pursued, or pursuing, or rushing to save the princess, and the difference between 10 seconds and 10 minutes will make a meaningful difference, then the roll leads to a meaningful consequence.

But if it's the general sense than 10 minutes is more than 10 seconds, and they have lots of torches and rations (or goodberries and light cantrips) then the extra 10 minutes might technically be a consequence, but not a meaningful one.

At least, that's how I play it. YMMV.

 

[clearstream]

Calling for an ability check when it vaguely smells like it could align with a skill is a hard habit to break in my experience. DMs can see a benefit to stopping for a moment to consider whether the outcome is truly uncertain and whether there's a meaningful consequence for failure before calling for a check. They may find that they start calling for fewer checks than before, balancing out automatic success with ability checks in a way the Middle Path method in the DMG lays out. Players can also make this easier on the DM (and themselves) by being reasonably specific and clear about what they're doing and hope to accomplish with an eye toward succeeding without a check at all, if they can. This can have the side effect of enriching the conversation of the game and making the setting seem like a real place.

That is one of my chief findings, also: I call for far fewer rolls than before.

One reservation I have in advocating this interpretation is its potential for extra load on DM. It's reasonably quick to rule something uncertain and identify the right DC. It does take more effort to identify the meaningful consequences.

A pragmatic motive for fewer rolls is to accomodate that extra effort, and I optimistically believe groups will find each of those fewer rolls to matter more to their play. As @iserith also rightly calls out, player descriptions become crucial. They make the task much easier by explaining and constraining what those meaningful consequences can be.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'd say that in some situations 'you fail and nothing happens' is a meaningful consequence, if there is not option to just keep trying until you succeed. It means that path/method is blocked, and you need to try something else. And I don't think this is necessarily even narratively dull. It is pretty common in fiction for the hero to try to overcome a problem but fail, and they need to come up with an another angle to approach the matter.

Somebody else quoted and agreed with the bold part, but edited out the rest, which I think substantively changes your point.

I think I agree with you, but it depends on why they can't try again. Although for years and years I have played with the rule, "Well, because you already tried," but I don't really find that very satisfying. (Nor it's corollary, "Why can't I try, too?" "Because your friend already tried.")

If the reason they can't try again is that they jammed the lock, or now they are out of time, or they consumed their action for this turn of combat, etc., then I definitely agree with you. (In the case of the jammed lock, I would provide a warning first: "Ok, you can try, but this lock is extremely delicate, and if you fail it will be permanently jammed." And maybe the 'consequence' here is that leaving no trace of the intrusion is an important goal.)

So if there are no other constraints...that is, if there is no time pressure and the game state stays the same after an attempt...then I would be inclined to simply grant success if I thought it was possible. (Caveat: decades of habit mean that in the moment I might ask for a roll. My stake in the ground here is partly aspirational.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

One reservation I have in advocating this interpretation is its potential for extra load on DM. It's reasonably quick to rule something uncertain and identify the right DC. It does take more effort to identify the meaningful consequences.

So true.

As I said in my last post, the opinions I express here are partly aspirational. I carry a lot of baggage from an older playstyle.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Somebody else quoted and agreed with the bold part, but edited out the rest, which I think substantively changes your point.

I think I agree with you, but it depends on why they can't try again. Although for years and years I have played with the rule, "Well, because you already tried," but I don't really find that very satisfying. (Nor it's corollary, "Why can't I try, too?" "Because your friend already tried.")

If the reason they can't try again is that they jammed the lock, or now they are out of time, or they consumed their action for this turn of combat, etc., then I definitely agree with you. (In the case of the jammed lock, I would provide a warning first: "Ok, you can try, but this lock is extremely delicate, and if you fail it will be permanently jammed." And maybe the 'consequence' here is that leaving no trace of the intrusion is an important goal.)

So if there are no other constraints...that is, if there is no time pressure and the game state stays the same after an attempt...then I would be inclined to simply grant success if I thought it was possible. (Caveat: decades of habit mean that in the moment I might ask for a roll. My stake in the ground here is partly aspirational.)

It kinda depends on what you construe the roll to mean. Perhaps it simply is the best you can do regarding this matter? Consider knowledge rolls. Do you let people keep rerolling those. "I'll think about it again, I'm sure I remember it eventually." And I get where you are coming from, but given the bounded accuracy it has weird results. Any completely unskilled schmuck will auto-succeed at hard task if they're not under time pressure and it is the sort that will not backfire. This doesn't seem right to me.

But this actually is a weird and muddy area in the rules, and I hope it was addressed more clearly.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It kinda depends on what you construe the roll to mean. Perhaps it simply is the best you can do regarding this matter? Consider knowledge rolls. Do you let people keep rerolling those. "I'll think about it again, I'm sure I remember it eventually." And I get where you are coming from, but given the bounded accuracy it has weird results. Any completely unskilled schmuck will auto-succeed at hard task if they're not under time pressure and it is the sort that will not backfire. This doesn't seem right to me.

But this actually is a weird and muddy area in the rules, and I hope it was addressed more clearly.

If the task is beyond the ability of the unskilled schmuck then the DM simply rules that it is an automatic failure. No roll needed. On the other hand, if it's within their ability, however slim, the DM rules it an automatic success, perhaps providing some additional narration, "It takes you a LOT longer than usual, but eventually you get it."

I recognize that traditional players who are used to getting to roll on everything, "...because there's always a chance!...", won't like this. But I think it's simple and elegant.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If the task is beyond the ability of the unskilled schmuck then the DM simply rules that it is an automatic failure. No roll needed. On the other hand, if it's within their ability, however slim, the DM rules it an automatic success, perhaps providing some additional narration, "It takes you a LOT longer than usual, but eventually you get it."

Right. But by definition hard task (DC20) is within the ability of unskilled schmuck (relevant bonus +0.) So it means any commoner would autosucceed at any hard task without catastrophic fail conditions and when under no time pressure. And this doesn't seem right to me.

And you didn't answer my question about knowledge skills. There often is no time pressure with those, so do you just let players to autosucceed in any with a DC that their skill+20 can beat?