AnotherGuy
Hero
This could be handled a number of ways in 5e as I see it.Let's take a step back and take a look at a scenario with no magic, imagine the following:
The PCs have left a dungeon with barely any resources and are limping back to town. On the way home suddenly an owlbear jumps out at them and attacks! RAWR! The players panic, they're in no shape for another fight, but then one player looks over their character sheet carefully and see that they have a jar of honey that they'd looted from a giant bee hive earlier. The player throws the jar of honey at the ground in front of the owlbear and hopes that owlbears like honey. Then the whole party flees in terror and hopes that the owl bear likes honey.
Now does that owlbear like honey? Will it stop to eat the honey on the ground or will it ignore the honey in favor of chasing after the fleeing PCs. It's all up to the DM, there no rules to decide the effects of honey on owlbears. The DM has to make a decision one way or another. What will the DM decide?
Do you have a problem with how the players acted in the honey scenario? How would you rule that one? I don't know, but I'd like to hear your reasoning.
* Instead of using a "luck roll" to see if the owlbear likes honey and if that the tactic works, this world-building element and if the tactic was a success could be resolved via a Handle Animal check. All you need to do is determine the difficulty.
(Dice determines Yes or No)
* DM determines if honey is part of the diet of the owlbear, since he is Master of the World - per the DMG and if (a) Yes, then a Handle Animal check or another appropriate check is used to determine if the tactic works.
The check may resolve a number of items (jar was thrown aggressively, did the jar break allowing the owlbear to identify the honey...etc). Perhaps there is an Advantage that is granted.
And if (b) No, then perhaps the sound of the jar smashing scares off the beast, or the honey reminds it of a bad encounter with wasp's nest when it was young, or it makes the owlbear more aggressive...etc
(Say Yes, with dice to determine degree of success, or Say No, but...)
* DM decides the idea was creative enough and that the PC used up an appropriate resource for the challenge thus circumventing the risk of rolling dice.
(Say Yes, no dice)
* Then there is the obviously outright No by the DM, but that is harder to justify in this scenario with such limited facts, IMO.
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