D&D 5E Consequences of Failure

[Oofta]

You certainly don’t seem to, but a few others have called the idea that all actions have a goal into question.​

While I can't speak for everyone, I think what a lot people have an issue with is that the goal has to be explicitly stated when the implied goal is obvious. Approach (in my games) can be referenced by game terms such as using a specific skill.

Interesting. I think you and I have different interpretations of that segment.

I think it's pretty clear.

Rolling with It​

Some DMs rely on die rolls for almost everything. When a character attempts a task, the DM calls for a check and picks a DC. As a DM using this style, you can’t rely on the characters succeeding or failing on any one check to move the action in a specific direction. You must be ready to improvise and react to a changing situation.​

...​

Ignoring the Dice​

One approach is to use dice as rarely as possible. Some DMs use them only during combat, and determine success or failure as they like in other situations.​

...​

The Middle Path​

Many DMs find that using a combination of the two approaches works best. By balancing the use of dice against deciding on success, you can encourage your players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world.​

...​

I don't give a lot of examples where I ignore the dice but I do on a pretty regular basis. From you posts, it seems like you are in the "Ignoring the Dice" category.

Neither category, nor a mix of the two is wrong.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think it's pretty clear.

Rolling with It​

Some DMs rely on die rolls for almost everything. When a character attempts a task, the DM calls for a check and picks a DC. As a DM using this style, you can’t rely on the characters succeeding or failing on any one check to move the action in a specific direction. You must be ready to improvise and react to a changing situation.​

...​

Ignoring the Dice​

One approach is to use dice as rarely as possible. Some DMs use them only during combat, and determine success or failure as they like in other situations.​

...​

The Middle Path​

Many DMs find that using a combination of the two approaches works best. By balancing the use of dice against deciding on success, you can encourage your players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world.​

...​

I don't give a lot of examples where I ignore the dice but I do on a pretty regular basis. From you posts, it seems like you are in the "Ignoring the Dice" category.

Neither category, nor a mix of the two is wrong.

I absolutely fall under the middle path. “Only using dice during combat, and deciding success and failure as I like in other situations” is not a remotely accurate description of what I do. I fall pretty solidly under the middle path. Yes, I prefer that players rely more on “paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world”
than on their bonuses, but I absolutely aim for a balance between the two.

 

[Oofta]

I absolutely fall under the middle path. “Only using dice during combat, and deciding success and failure as I like in other situations” is not a remotely accurate description of what I do. I fall pretty solidly under the middle path. Yes, I prefer that players rely more on “paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world”
than on their bonuses, but I absolutely aim for a balance between the two.

Fair enough. It's a spectrum, and exactly where I fall from day to day may depend on the zodiac for all I know. Some games we almost never touch the die, others I use the die to help drive the story and for inspiration.

 

[Charlaquin]

Fair enough. It's a spectrum, and exactly where I fall from day to day may depend on the zodiac for all I know. Some games we almost never touch the die, others I use the die to help drive the story and for inspiration.

This might sound odd to some, coming from me, but I’m not a big fan of those games where the dice are almost never touched. I’ll take them over a game where the dice are used for every little thing, but neither is ideal. To my mind, the dice are an essential part of the game, and while I believe they have their proper place should be reserved for it, I also think a session where the dice are hardly touched is either not using them at times they should be, or is not presenting enough challenges for the PCs to overcome.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If you count a super atomic nova wedgie that has absolutely no long or short term ramifications other than a story to tell ... well then anything a PC does could be considered as having ramifications.

It's also true I didn't tell the player exactly what would happen. If their PC doesn't know, they don't know. I don't see why that would be an issue instead of simply being a different style.

You know what? Don't want to play this way? Don't. I've gotten a lot of praise for my DMing style and the games I've run over the years, I'm just relaying what works for me to people that might be interested.

Whoa, easy there, tiger. Nothing I said called your play into question. I was just pointing out that if the consequence of a failure is something the character wouldn't like narrated at them absent a roll, then there's definitely something at stake in the action. The action was being discussed as a no-stakes action, so I was pointing out that stakes had been added to the discussion.

The second bit was more observation about how declaring actions tends to force the DM to add ad hoc consequences to failures, or just ignore the roll. There's no negative to this, it's just how it appears to work -- you ask for a roll without previously determined stakes and the roll then pushes on the DM to narrate a consequence on a failure because the dice indicate such. This seems to be exactly what you're arguing, and it's not intended to be negative, just a summation in different words.

 

[FrogReaver]

Ok, so dice are a kind of scaffold for improvisation. That's valid. Doesn't mean it's better with dice, just that some DMs don't want to have to improvise, which is fine.

That's 100% not what was said. The DM still has to improvise to narrate the success of failure. There's just as much improvisation going on in that method as yours. Actually there's probably more of it.

But you could have narrated that whole thing without the dice rolling, but with the same outcomes. Since, as we all agree, there is NOTHING at stake, it shouldn't matter.

Sure, we could even play the whole game without rolling at all. The DM could decide every instance of success or failure. Just because something can be done, that doesn't mean it should be done.

I think I now see the issue. We are arguing for rolling when it's fun or could be fun. You are arguing that the only time it's fun is when there's a meaningful consequence of failure (whatever that ambiguous term means). The issue is, we view rolling as fun in a number of situations you would deem had no meaningful consequence of failure.

 

[FrogReaver]

I just don’t see a persuasive argument articulated for why these scenes couldn’t happen without dice.

The most persuasive argument that they can't happen stems from you as the DM dealing the player a failure "just because". Unless you are okay with attributing outright failure to a player when the player is targeting essentially a random individual then your method cannot support the scene.

It's not that you can't narrate anything you want. You can. The holdup comes your desire to just let the player succeed unless their are meaningful stakes. As such, assigning failure to the player would be against your playstyle, and even if you did without having a good justification for it then that leads to the player feeling targeted. Much better to let the dice be the fair arbitrator in that scenario.

 

[FrogReaver]

Whoa, easy there, tiger. Nothing I said called your play into question. I was just pointing out that if the consequence of a failure is something the character wouldn't like narrated at them absent a roll, then there's definitely something at stake in the action. The action was being discussed as a no-stakes action, so I was pointing out that stakes had been added to the discussion.

I love how ya'll change what are appropriate stakes with every example we go through. If you are arguing against my playstyle those kinds of stakes aren't good enough. When I'm arguing against yours they suddenly are...

 

[Oofta]

Whoa, easy there, tiger. Nothing I said called your play into question. I was just pointing out that if the consequence of a failure is something the character wouldn't like narrated at them absent a roll, then there's definitely something at stake in the action. The action was being discussed as a no-stakes action, so I was pointing out that stakes had been added to the discussion.

The second bit was more observation about how declaring actions tends to force the DM to add ad hoc consequences to failures, or just ignore the roll. There's no negative to this, it's just how it appears to work -- you ask for a roll without previously determined stakes and the roll then pushes on the DM to narrate a consequence on a failure because the dice indicate such. This seems to be exactly what you're arguing, and it's not intended to be negative, just a summation in different words.

Aren't most consequences ad-hoc if it's an unplanned encounter when it's not combat? Whether or not it was pre-determined is a bit artificial. I know what's going to happen before anyone rolls a D20, even if I only made that decisions moments or weeks before. Just because I know doesn't mean the PC (or the player) is going to know.

 

[FrogReaver]

You certainly don’t seem to, but a few others have called the idea that all actions have a goal into question.

If all actions have goals then this whole discussion just devolves into, do you need to clearly state those goals or not. Surely that's not what we've spent 600+ posts discussing?