D&D 5E Average damage or rolled damage?

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I think in both these points it comes down to intent that can only be read - but is sometimes pretty obvious - at the individual table at the time: whether an experienced player is doing action X (e.g. avoiding the gaze of a Basilisk on meeting one for the very first time) only because she-as-player already knows it's the right thing to do when the character has no in-game reason to know to do this?

Lan-"sometimes the best monsters to meet are those the DM has invented herself"-efan

It is true that intent can only be read at the table, but changing whether an action is allowed or not based on how the player describes their intent seems incredibly inconsistent and unfair to me - especially when the end result is saying "that action would be fine for your character to do, if you weren't so daft as to actually tell me the reason you picked it was because you are trying to get your character to pass this challenge successfully."

As for your basilisk example... your assumption that the character doesn't have an in-game reason isn't a fair assumption. The character might have no idea that lizard is or isn't actually a basilisk, but has simply heard tell of cave-dwelling reptiles that turn people that look at them to stone and is playing it safe. The character might also not be adventuring in Gotcha Land, so there has likely been some evidence suggesting petrification of people leading up to the actual encounter... or it could just be that the character sees a very large lizard with too many legs to be natural covered in wicked looking spines and with it's eyes literally glowing (seriously, look at the art for a basilisk) and has decided that if anything in the whole world could turn him to stone if he looks at it, this horrific thing can.

Or to say that much more briefly: a basilisk is a very bad example to use for a variety of reasons.

 

[Dausuul]

If a player dies because his character did not know that a Beholder has a deathray, then how is that in any way good for the campaign?

If a beholder's death ray can kill the player, you've got bigger problems than metagaming.

 

[Lanefan]

Do challenges in your campaigns really have to rely on gotchas to pose a challenge?

Gotchas, as you call them, are part of the game. Not everything is predictable or known in advance, and nor should it be.

If a player dies because his character did not know that a Beholder has a deathray, then how is that in any way good for the campaign?

Flip side: how is it bad?

Characters die; it's another part of the game. They can also be revived, in most games, if such is desired. And once a group has fought a Beholder and (maybe) seen what it can do, then they can plan around it.

I'd rather have my players know what a Beholder can do in advance, and plan around it. That does not negate the challenge of fighting a Beholder.

Well, it mitigates the challenge to some extent the first few times the party meets one; as in reality a party might have no way of knowing just what that hideous thing is or what it can do.

None of this has to undermine the story telling or role playing one bit. What player is still excited to have their character learn that a troll is weak to fire? I'd rather engage my players with an intriguing plot, and well designed dungeons and encounters, rather than those classic D&D gotcha moments. I'm beyond that.

I assume, then, your dungeons never have traps or ambushes; both of which are decidedly "gotchas" if the party don't notice them.

And while a player might not be excited to learn (again) a troll is vulnerable to fire, he can still play the character as if this is important information - which it is, to the character.

Story and plot are great, but sometimes they have to take a back seat to simple here-and-now survival when Dromedius has just gone down a spiked pit trap and 15 unseen Orcs have leaped out of the shadows to whale on the rest of you...

Lan-"I've fought against and DMed any number of Beholders and I still can't remember everything they can do"-efan

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I assume, then, your dungeons never have traps or ambushes; both of which are decidedly "gotchas" if the party don't notice them.

Traps and ambushes are not inherently "gotchas".

I, and other DMs that frequent this site (Iserith especially) don't use gotchas, but we do use traps and ambushes - the key is to provide clues that give the players something to interact with outside of the random number generator (that some DMs even hide from their players, making traps and ambushes even more "gotcha" feeling).

 

[Maxperson]

Semantics - I know you know what I meant, as we've been through this all before and you clearly remember it since you even know what example I liked to use (the troll and the fire).

And further, your still insisting that experienced players must act differently than new players because of their out of character knowledge - since you won't let me have my character guess that fire will hurt and scare the unknown creature, because fire hurts and scares most things, and use something besides the same-old stuff I always do because I feel like doing something new.

Since as you say, we've been through this before, you know very well that the above statement is false. I've said and given examples of how an experienced player can have his character use fire against a troll without knowing that it has fire weakness.

Actually, the things you bring up are my point - you can't just declare that I'm metagaming because I used knowledge my character doesn't have because there are countless reasons the character actually could have that knowledge, and it's up to me as a player to choose if one or more of them are the case.

And they will have been written down in your character background at the beginning of the game or come out through prior game play in order for it not to be metagaming. You don't get to invent useful background whenever you wish.

The only way to actually define what I'm doing in the scenario as meta-gaming is to police my thoughts by removing my ability to determine my character's background, and by removing my ability to role-play the character as guessing because of what I know (which is using my knowledge that the character doesn't have to determine the character's thoughts/actions, which you claim to want to avoid but force me to do by your removal of the ability to guess).

You don't get to unilaterally determine character background. Nor do you get to determine it out of the blue when it's convenient for your PC to know something. A background is written prior to game play starting.

Nonsense. Bringing what I know as a player into the game, rather than only focusing on what the character can know or guess at, is trying to police thoughts.

I couldn't care less what your thoughts are. I'm looking at actions and whether the PC could have known to take that action, or if it is reasonable for the PC to take that action even without knowing to take it. Your thoughts are irrelevant to that.

You can call it absurd, but I have clearly demonstrated (perhaps not in this thread, but to you on another forum when we previously had the same conversation) that your attempts to separate character and player knowledge beyond a player doing so for themself by deciding what a character does or doesn't know, force player knowledge to cause actions that are different from the ones that the same character played by a completely unknowledgeable player would be allowed to take.

You certainly made that claim, but even if the player does do that, it's not metagaming. The character is not taking an action based on knowledge that it does not have.

 

[Maxperson]

In fact, I'd have had my character act the same way in that situation for no reason other than that what the Malkavian was telling me makes no sense to me.

In all fairness, do Malkavians make sense to anybody?

 

[Imaculata]

Exactly. Gotchas are not an inherent part of D&D any longer. The amount of gotchas has slowly decreased with each edition, and good riddens. They are a crutch that really undermines fun. Having your character be killed because of something he couldn't possibly know, isn't a fair challenge, and it isn't fun in my opinion. Besides, depending on what edition you are playing, death also comes with severe penalties, and is quite expensive to undo.

 

[Maxperson]

I think the real mistake here is to intervene because you believe someone else's character has no reason to do his particular action. A player should be able to have her character do what they want him/her to do, regardless of what the player knows.

The only time the player should be able to do that is in your game or other games where metagaming is allowed. In my game where metagaming is flat out cheating, a player should never be able to do that.

Maybe I want to attack the troll with fire, because I (the player) know it is weak to fire. Maybe I want to attack it, simply because it is covered in fur, and there's a campfire right there. Maybe I want to use fire, because most animals are afraid of fire. What does it matter, and why would the DM get involved in the first place? Save yourself all these headaches, and don't play thought-police.

It matters because the bolded is cheating if the PC doesn't know about it. The bolded part is no different than buying weighted dice to only roll 20's or buying the module so that you know where the good stuff is and how to avoid the traps.

Does your encounter rely purely on the gotcha that the players don't know about the regeneration of trolls, or that you need a wooden stake against vampires, or silver against werewolves? I don't build my encounters like that, and thus do not worry about what I think my players' characters do or do not know.

It has nothing to do with gotchas or troll regeneration and never has. The troll example just illustrates the idea behind what metagaming is, not because regeneration is required.

 

[Sunseeker]

Traps and ambushes are not inherently "gotchas".

I, and other DMs that frequent this site (Iserith especially) don't use gotchas, but we do use traps and ambushes - the key is to provide clues that give the players something to interact with outside of the random number generator (that some DMs even hide from their players, making traps and ambushes even more "gotcha" feeling).

Traps are only gotcha's if your players don't think ahead, and don't search the room carefully. Now there's no guarantee they'll find everything, but they tried. Not knowing is half the fun. Figuring out how to solve the problems you know about is the other half.

Gotcha traps happen when players are prepared, plan ahead, play carefully and the DM decides to trip them up because "reasons". Usually it's over incredibly finite minutea, like oh you searched that brick but not that other brick. Or because they said "I search the north wall" and then the DM hits them with a trap because they didn't phrase their words in exactly the manner the DM wanted them to. These things are NOT FUN.

There is a difference between knowing there's danger, not knowing there's danger, and knowing there isn't danger. Traps in the first two cases are fine. Traps in the 3rd are gotchas.

 

[delericho]

It matters because the bolded is cheating if the PC doesn't know about it. The bolded part is no different than buying weighted dice to only roll 20's or buying the module so that you know where the good stuff is and how to avoid the traps.

Exactly. Would people be happy with a player who, after the first session, went out and bought the book to use all the information therein?

Hell, why stop there? These days it's trivial for a player to have a complete library of the gamebooks on his phone. So, would people be happy if the player immediately looked up every monster encountered, or followed along on the adventure on his phone, and then used the information he'd just checked?

(Which, incidentally, is a notion so outlandish that Star Trek used it in an episode.)