D&D 5E Consequences of Failure

[5ekyu]

I'll go back to the history check. I outlined a real cost to not remembering the history of the McGuffin. I guess I'm not sure why you're being so dismissive because of the nature of the cost. No, it's not immediate but it is a cost. It's a cost of time if there's a race against the clock, it's a potential combat encounter or monetary penalty depending on Jimmy's mood.

Let's say I'm trying to remember how to get to the local tavern. I try to remember the shortest route and forget that I can just go left at the next corner and get there in 5 minutes. Instead I take the long route and it takes 25 minutes. I miss happy hour in addition to spending an additional 20 minutes walking I didn't need to. If my memory is bad enough I might end up at a healthy juice bar (possibly a fate worse than death) instead of the tavern.

So for sake of argument if I want there to be an explicit penalty for a failed knowledge check then that penalty does not have to be immediate to be significant.

Or known...

Failure to pick a good route can mean getting their a little later but also maybe picking up unwanted attention, getting into a section of town that is problematic.

I mean, how many tropes of "someone saw the wrongbthing" or someone thinks they did do we have out there?

 

[Xetheral]

You and Oofta both made an argument like, which I find puzzling. If this were, say, a forum on mountain biking, and I said, "I got bored riding on bike paths, and I'm trying to get into downhilling, but I'm having trouble with the big drops..." I would be surprised by the response, "Then why don't you just stick with bike paths?"

I like challenges, and getting better at hard things.

I think the reason you are getting responses that puzzle you may be that your opening post framed your search to find worse-than-doing-nothing consequences as a requirement of your adherence to the goal-and-approach method. I for one interpreted your original post to have the following structure:

1. You want to adhere to the goal and approach method.
2. Goal-and-approach requires imposing worse-than-doing-nothing consequences on a failed check.
3. In some situations it's challenging to intuit what worse-than-doing-nothing consequences would look like, making it difficult to adhere to the goal-and-approach method.

Under that inerpretation of your opening post, I think it makes sense that you're getting responses from other posters (including me) challenging the assumption in #2. It also explains why you're getting pushback on what the rules say: @iserith has previously described the goal-and-approach method as a (necessary?) consequence of rules in the book. So since you appeared to be assuming that goal-and-approach requires worse-than-doing-nothing consequences, and goal-and-approach is presented as following from of the rules, it makes sense that other posters are pointing out how worse-than-doing-nothing consequences do not follow from the rules in an attempt provide evidence against your assumption.

Having read your other responses in this thread, it seems like your actual intent follows this form:

1. You want to impose worse-than-doing-nothing consequences on a failed check, unrelated to your adherence to goal-and-approach.
2. You're looking for advice on how to do that in particular situations.

Accordingly, from your perspective, you're not even making the assumption that others are arguing against.

 

[iserith]

1. You want to adhere to the goal and approach method.
2. Goal-and-approach requires imposing worse-than-doing-nothing consequences on a failed check.
3. In some situations it's challenging to intuit what worse-than-doing-nothing consequences would look like, making it difficult to adhere to the goal-and-approach method.

Under that inerpretation of your opening post, I think it makes sense that you're getting responses from other posters (including me) challenging the assumption in #2.

Yes, #2 is not a necessary part of engaging in what people are calling "goal and approach." I think that recent threads have obfuscated this fact, particularly due to reinterpreting (and misinterpreting) the examples adherents have provided.

 

[Guest 6801328]

However, one approach that I tend to find coming up a lot in threads like this is that, if the player proposes to pick a long, then to make that lock picking meaningful, the GM needs to on the fly invent an evil ritual that is happening or invent a guard that might be coming along, so that you have immediate impactful stakes and a dramatic situation that makes this proposed act of picking the lock have a meaningful consequence of failure.

Ah, that may explain it. You may be taking something you picked up in other threads, that every declared action needs to have meaningful consequences, and projecting that onto me.

And thinking back to how I phrased it, you can be forgiven for that projection.

No, I'm not trying to turn every declared goal-and-approach into a dice roll with meaningful consequences. Some...lots...I just adjudicate with no dice roll. But games, not just RPGs, are about risk/reward, so to the extent that I can weave those scenarios into my games, the better.

 

[iserith]

Ah, that may explain it. You may be taking something you picked up in other threads, that every declared action needs to have meaningful consequences, and projecting that onto me.

To be fair, certain games sort of do this inherently, where mechanics must be employed for a given course of action proposed by the player that then triggers the GM to have to come up with new fiction on the fly. It's part of the way those games work, particularly games that want to minimize prep for the GM in favor of generating content during play. And plenty of people run D&D, knowingly or unknowingly, as if it's some other game. So I'm sure some people do exactly what @Celebrim is saying, even if that person wasn't you.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I'll go back to the history check. I outlined a real cost to not remembering the history of the McGuffin. I guess I'm not sure why you're being so dismissive because of the nature of the cost. No, it's not immediate but it is a cost. It's a cost of time if there's a race against the clock, it's a potential combat encounter or monetary penalty depending on Jimmy's mood.

Let's say that not knowing the information results in both a 24 hour delay, and some gold to pay off Jimmy.

If the player doesn't even try to remember the information, it's gonna take 24 hours and gold.

If the player tries and fails...it's gonna take 24 hours and gold.

Where's the cost of trying?

Boilerplate: I'm not saying the rules require such a cost. This is a discussion about how these scenarios could have such a cost.

So for sake of argument if I want there to be an explicit penalty for a failed knowledge check then that penalty does not have to be immediate to be significant.

I agree it doesn't have to be immediate, but:

1. It has to actually be a cost, in terms of something "worse" than not trying at all. (See above.)
2. The player should be aware of the potential cost when deciding whether to "go for it." I suppose a general knowledge that the DM will impose costs could, in theory, suffice, but it makes it hard to decide whether it's worth the risk. It's that decision that I find interesting and fun.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, #2 is not a necessary part of engaging in what people are calling "goal and approach."

It does not help that "goal and approach" is not the same as, but is often adjacent to, "don't pick up the dice unless there are meaningful consequences." Layer these together naively, and #2 would be a common place folks would end up.

 

[Charlaquin]

It does not help that "goal and approach" is not the same as, but is often adjacent to, "don't pick up the dice unless there are meaningful consequences." Layer these together naively, and #2 would be a common place folks would end up.

To be fair, in all the recent discussion of preferred action adjudication styles, “goal and approach” has become a bit of a shorthand for the style favored by folks on one side of the fence, which does involve both requiring a goal and approach, and not resorting to using dice unless there are meaningful consequences. That’s probably my fault for coining that particular shorthand.

 

[Celebrim]

@Xetheral: Blessed are the peace makers.

 

[iserith]

It does not help that "goal and approach" is not the same as, but is often adjacent to, "don't pick up the dice unless there are meaningful consequences." Layer these together naively, and #2 would be a common place folks would end up.

What some people are calling "goal and approach" is just "players say what they do and hope to achieve with reasonable specificity." It's nothing more than that.