D&D 5E Average damage or rolled damage?

[Lanefan]

Exactly. Gotchas are not an inherent part of D&D any longer.

Not an inherent part of your particular game, you mean.

The amount of gotchas has slowly decreased with each edition

Not sure about this. 3e certainly had its share (I think I fell victim to most of them when I was playing 3e) and 5e certainly has them in its official adventures. 4e may have had less of them, but then 4e was an odd duck in many ways...

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.

From a purely gamist point of view this may be true. But from a more realistic point of view you're an adventurer going into a very dangerous place with a bunch of other adventurers. Chances are high that not all of you are coming out. You hope you've done your homework about the place but rumours and old histories can only take you so far and may or may not even be accurate; and once you're on site there's no saying you'll see every danger before you find it the hard way. You might very well meet creatures you've never heard of that can dismantle you in ways you never imagined. You might get hit with a fireball and die without ever seeing who or what cast it (and it might come from your own party, if your wizard messes up his aim). You might step on the wrong stone and trigger a trap that doesn't leave enough of you to fill a thimble.

Or you might survive all that, do some heroic deeds, clean the place up and get stinkin' rich in the process; never mind also get better at what you do.

Besides, depending on what edition you are playing, death also comes with severe penalties, and is quite expensive to undo.

1e: lose a Con point, no cost (!) if revival is done by a party member but cost is in the thousands of g.p. if an NPC is hired. Small chance of revival failure.
2e: lose a Con point, cost is at least several thousand g.p. no matter who casts the spell. Small chance of revival failure.
3e: lose a level (or gain a negative level in 3e-speak), monetary cost isn't as harsh as 2e. Revival always succeeds.
4e: temporarily lose some abilities, monetary cost is low (but then, 4e's treasure amounts are lower also). Revival always succeeds.
5e: temporary penalty to rolls, monetary cost is very low (500-1000 g.p.). Revival always succeeds.

So yes, death has become cheaper over the years. I'm surprised, if you're running 5e, you're that concerned about killing characters; given that revival is easier and cheaper than ever.

Lan-"so roll your damage and let the dice fall where - or on who - they may"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

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.

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.

Absolutely agreed.

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.

Agreed. And there's a semantic difference - admittedly sometimes rather fuzzy - between a NOT FUN gotcha and a well-played search that simply fails, though to the characters the results probably look and feel pretty much the same.

Lanefan

 

[delericho]

3e: lose a level (or gain a negative level in 3e-speak), monetary cost isn't as harsh as 2e. Revival always succeeds.

Nitpick: in 3e losing a level is not the same as gaining a negative level. Raise dead and resurrection cause you to lose a level. (True resurrection does not, but is considerably more costly in gp terms.)

 

[Lanefan]

Nitpick: in 3e losing a level is not the same as gaining a negative level. Raise dead and resurrection cause you to lose a level. (True resurrection does not, but is considerably more costly in gp terms.)

Was it changed to gain a negative level in 3.5, then; or am I just remembering someone's house rule?

Lanefan

 

[delericho]

Was it changed to gain a negative level in 3.5, then; or am I just remembering someone's house rule?

Pathfinder, I think.

 

[Maxperson]

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.)

Yep. That episode illustrates what's wrong with metagaming.

 

[Sunseeker]

Agreed. And there's a semantic difference - admittedly sometimes rather fuzzy - between a NOT FUN gotcha and a well-played search that simply fails, though to the characters the results probably look and feel pretty much the same.

Lanefan

Right, it may not visualize differently in game, but it will feel different to the players. Characters don't have opinions, players do and those are the ones that matter.

 

[delericho]

I could agree with this (and for the record I disagree entirely with your argument as presented in this thread and others) if, and only if, there was an in character reason for this sudden change in behaviour.

In a great many cases, the player will respond to claims of metagaming by providing some sort of justification: "oh, my ranger heard about trolls and fire from his mentor", "that just sounds to fantastical to be true", or whatever. And, since the DM can't read the player's mind, there's not really any comeback to that - the DM might well know it's metagaming, and the player might know the DM knows, but are you really going to call him out as a liar and end both the game and the friendship over this?

But none of that applies here, because in the case under discussion I was the player in question and as a consequence I do, indeed, know the thought process that went into the decision. And so there's no doubt: I was going to have my PC take action because I knew the dice had come up with a botch. Had the GM rolled secretly and then presented that same answer, I would have acted differently.

There's no ambiguity here: it was metagaming.

(Incidentally, my motivation there was quite simple: I wanted to 'win'. I hadn't yet realised that the players are both actors and audience for the game, and that it's frequently more fun if the characters get themselves in trouble over things that the player knows but the character doesn't.)

That's thought policing, but here are some reasons for this "sudden change of behavior"...

Yes, it's always possible, and usually easy, to come up with some after-the-fact justification for whatever course of action you want to take, which makes it impossible to be absolutely certain metagaming is going on, since you can't know what's happening in the player's head.

Except when you are the player, of course.

You must have missed out on the conversation in which the troll scenario was brought up, which isn't surprising since it was on another forum entirely - the DM didn't name the troll, just described it, and the player didn't care whether the character knew they fighting a troll or an ogre, they just wanted to use fire because it sounded cool and was readily available in the form of the camp fire the character was sitting near when the monster attacked.

And the DM (Maxperson in the debate) said that it was meta-gaming to use fire instead of the sword that was also nearby, citing that the player (me in the debate) knew it was a troll from the description given.

Yep, I can understand why you would have an issue with that one.

But where I take issue is when you generalise from "that event wasn't metagaming" to "there's no such thing as metagaming".

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

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.

This is in contradiction with your disallowance of me having my character guess something that you would let a player without my knowledge have their character guess.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

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.)

This is were my classifications of knowledge come into play.

If what the player is learning is information that his character could possibly have or guess at, then I'm not only fine with them learning it if they want to, I'm happy they are interested enough in the game to toss some cash toward the producers.

If what the player is learning is information that his character can not possibly have or guess at, then I'm fine with the player knowing it, but they'll never be able to use it because that's not playing in good faith, and I don't allow that at my table.

And since none of the challenges I present are actually made less challenging by the players knowing what they are up against, player knowledge is never an inconvenience.