D&D (2024) Auto-succeed/fail on ability checks

[Lanefan]

Stat modifier =/= proficiency, even if the numbers are equal. Training matters more than natural talent.

That's one way to look at it, and is clearly your way, but does that agree with the game's way of looking at it?

I suspect the game wants you to look only at the end-result numbers without much regard for those numbers' sources.

 

[Bill Zebub]

In some ways it isn't.

That lack of information is perfectly realistic; in that if the character doesn't know what consequences they may be then neither should the player.

Except this is a game.

The character doesn't know there's a hidden letter in the drawer and will quite possibly never know - unless she a) searches the room anyway and b) succeeds on the search.

Then if the player says they are searching the room (I might ask how much time they're going to spend doing it, to get a sense of thoroughness) I'll let them find the letter. Why roll for something like that?

5e has this big and IMO utterly needless hangup on there having to be clear and obvious consequences for failure.

I mean, it's a very different game than the one you seem to enjoy (I've picked up that!). But some of us happen to think the clear and obvious consequence makes for a better game. It eliminates a lot of the board-game-like dice rolling.

 

[Lanefan]

Why can't the DM look at the information/knowledge task, decide the DC is 20 cause its "rare" info, and let the player roll?

A DM can always do this. That assigns a 5% probability of success for anyone and a higher probability for those who can boost their rolls somehow.

My problem is if a DM looks at it and wants to assign a maximum probability of success (or failure, I suppose) of higher than outright zero but lower than 4.9%, what can she do?

 

[Cadence]

This gets hard to follow going back hours later. This is in a sequence of posts about knowledge checks, and should they even be rolls since they don't have meaningful consequences. I posited I liked them as rolls. BZ didn't like them as rolls. This first three quotes by BZ below are answering: how should a DM decide on the answer to a knowledge check, should the DM just say yes all the time, and won't this encourage the players to come up with new things.

Can you think of a good answer that adds to the story?

--

Sure, why not?

--

I would hope so! I love it when players think of new ways to interact with the world that gives them advantages. I would so much rather have them do that than just ask if they can roll dice!

I guess my problem is that I don't trust myself. I think as a player if I knew the DM would just say yes to anything vaguely reasonable that I would start to try and come up with short-cuts / big-red-buttons to push / very limited wishes that would "let me win". Which is really not how I like to play. I like to imagine myself as the character and try to think of what they would try. But I think I would find myself sabotaging my own fun and stop trying to think of what my character would do. Maybe I could train myself not to do that (but I still haven't fully trained myself not to mock the non-24 hour day structure in 13th Age).

If I know I'm just trying things that may or may not work (just like in real life trying out new things doesn't always work) then I don't think I'd have this problem. ("Hmmm... wonder if there is a pizza place open all night near the conference center" doesn't always produce one).

-----

This next one is about whether a player in a game where the DM just answers knowledge checks (adding the answers to the world) might get upset if there thoughts keeps not being true, while another player at the table keeps hearing yes.

Why would they? I mean, I have trouble imagining it, but if it happened I think I'd rather talk to the player and see what their experience is, then just go back to randomly deciding things.

I think the why is just human nature. But fair enough, talking to the player seems eminently reasonable. Of course I guess my question is, should we talk to the players before moving away from the current deciding things randomly (concerns about not having consequences not withstanding)?

------

This next one is about why would someone think of changing it from rolling.

Well, there's the "pile on" mentality discussed above. And the difficulty of thinking up meaningful consequences for failure, which is supposed to be part of the 5e mechanic.

And with the new rules, fishing for 20's to get inspiration will be a thing.

I guess I'd rather make them an exception to the needing consequences. Maybe I should suggest for the new rule that you only get the inspiration 20 if failure on the roll they're trying has a significant consequence (and bring up that some rolls don't seem to have them in the usual sense).

 

[Parmandur]

I don't have the book in front of me but I don't believe the actual text focuses on "impossible" but rather just whether the DM judges that an attempt will be either automatically successful or automatically a failure. In other words, it considers the character's ability to accomplish a task, not just the absolute difficulty of the task itself.

I think that's where @Minigiant is coming from: they're thinking of the absolute difficulty of a task, without factoring in the character. But I believe that in 5e it's within RAI for the DM to ask one player to roll, and to tell another that they automatically fail.

Not just RAI, but RAW.

 

[Parmandur]

Why can't the DM look at the information/knowledge task, decide the DC is 20 cause its "rare" info, and let the player roll?

Well, sure they can...if they are comfortable barratively with everyone succeeding.

 

[Parmandur]

That's one way to look at it, and is clearly your way, but does that agree with the game's way of looking at it?

I suspect the game wants you to look only at the end-result numbers without much regard for those numbers' sources.

Proficiency gating is in the game, so...yes, that is how the game has looked it throughout 5E.

 

[Cadence]

Lanefan says "That lack of information is perfectly realistic; in that if the character doesn't know what consequences they may be then neither should the player."

Except this is a game.

A game where I like to try to get in the mindset of the character who wouldn't know all the consequences.

Should a player know how deadly a trap is before they decide to search for one or disable it?

---

Then if the player says they are searching the room (I might ask how much time they're going to spend doing it, to get a sense of thoroughness) I'll let them find the letter. Why roll for something like that?

I've become a big fan of asking folks how long they're searching or doing things like that. Want to do it really quick then make a roll to see if it works. Have time to spend, either give me the order you search things in or make a roll to see how much of that time you needed to use.

 

[Lanefan]

Except this is a game.

A game that in major part is trying to model the fictional reality in which the characters live and function; without which modelling the whole house of cards comes down.

Then if the player says they are searching the room (I might ask how much time they're going to spend doing it, to get a sense of thoroughness) I'll let them find the letter. Why roll for something like that?

Why roll? Because they still might not find it. Bad luck is bad luck.

Now if they're thorough enough to specifically tell me where-what-how they're searching then sure, the dice go out the window and I'll narrate what they find and where; then post-hoc figure out how long it all took. But that degree of thoroughness seems to be frowned upon these days.

I mean, it's a very different game than the one you seem to enjoy (I've picked up that!). But some of us happen to think the clear and obvious consequence makes for a better game. It eliminates a lot of the board-game-like dice rolling.

The better IMO way to eliminate dice-rolling is to insist on thoroughness, granularity, and specificity in action declaration. "I search the room" followed by a roll leaves a player/PC wide open to failure. "I search [here, here, here and here] within the room using [methods x,y z] and taking as much time as it needs" allows me to simply narrate the results, no dice required unless there's other factors to consider e.g. a trap.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Where it falls down - as the many examples here show - is when it comes to non-physical things such as snippets of information characters might or might not have learned, or know, or remember from their own pasts. Here there's no setting-physics to provide boundaries and thus nothing to tell a DM the limits of possibility; meaning a DM either has to say no or allow at least a 5% chance of success, neither of which might be appropriate (the DM might be thinking "it's not impossible, but odds of 1-in-1000 sound about right").

It comes down to a major lack of granularity - there's no options between impossible and 5% unless the DM goes off-RAW and calls for a d% roll or something - unless a DM is willing and able to houserule.

So I fully agree that goal-and-approach-with-consequences-of-failure doesn't seem to work well with knowledge checks. (I believe @iserith, goal-and-approach's chief evangelist, disagrees.)

But that's why I'm asking (and was asking @Cadence...who seems to have posted while I'm typing this): what is the point of all those knowledge checks? What does it really add to the game for a player to say, "Do I know X?" and then you roll some dice and maybe yes, maybe no. Why is that interesting or fun? The player hasn't actually done anything. It feels to me like resolving combat with a single roll: "The Orc is DC 13. Give me a combat roll. 15? Ok, he's dead."

And, again, I'm not asking this as if I can't believe you would ever play RPGs in such a terrible way. I've been using knowledge checks for decades. I'm just re-thinking if they contribute to the game.