D&D 5E Consequences of Failure

[Guest 6801328]

No. Ability checks come into play only after the players have described what they want to do. So when the DM has described the environment, the players do stuff. The narration of the results of their actions may then be informed by ability checks and skill proficiencies if their actions have uncertain outcomes and meaningful consequences for failure. The results of those actions may then open up additional options in the environment and the loop starts all over again.

I realize that a lot of DMs keep track of what characters have which proficiencies so they can change their description of the environment accordingly. I don't see why that is necessary or even beneficial. It gets worked out when the players do stuff.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Hmm. Food for thought.

 

[Bawylie]

Yeah, yes olde days had some odd ducks, to be sure.

For my own purposes, I draw a firm line between inobvious and secret.

In obvious means it's a perception DC to spot. Whether passive or active its just a factor of being observant enough. Mentally to me it's like spotting in dim light or lightly obscured, it can happen or not, more likely for some.

Secret is different. It us more akin to heavy obscured or total darkness... it fails against direct observation unless certain circumstances are met. Even then it may be in obvious. You see this in very basic mode throughout the rules and scenes in 5e with cases like "to spot the secret door, you have to be within 5' and make a DC 15 check".

I rarely use secret doors and their ilk in ways that just allow passive checks. There may be relatively easy ways to meet the conditions but not ones that boil down to just passive checks.

Cool. Another opportunity. I think our gameplay here might look the same, albeit with different involvement of the task-resolution system.

If I had an “inobvious” thing (like a door) that wasn’t secret or hidden, just subtle then any adventurer could find it by G&A. All they have to do is say something approximating “I look around this area for X” (where X is the inobvious thing). That’s an automatic success because that approach cannot reasonably fail at that goal. Whereas a statement like “I look around the room for Y” may well need a roll. There’s no Y at all, so that will fail, but there is a chance that in looking for Y, the adventurer might come across X, or might be so focused on Y that they miss X altogether.

I take your position to be that your player might say something like “I roll spot - 17 - what do I see?” And then the rest playing out. (Permit me some rhetorical allowances here, I can’t guess what you’d say verbatim).

A secret, or deliberately hidden/concealed thingy is a different matter entirely. IMO a telegraph is warranted to signal the presence of a secret and specific actions that bypass the concealment or obscurity can find the object. General actions that have no chance at bypassing the obscurity would automatically fail (e.g. looking for an invisible object) in my game.

(Edited for spelling)

 

[Oofta]

That's great.

But I was trying to answer the objection that I was "fabricating" flaws that didn't exist. Did I address that concern sufficiently?

Well, first of all, I probably shouldn't reply to posts before I have any caffeine. Sorry.

Second, if it's not clear I agree that making or allowing people to make multiple rolls doesn't make sense. If there's no time constraint, and trying repeatedly would make sense then it probably just happens.

Maybe I should clarify "trying repeatedly would make sense". It's always from the PC's perspective. If someone is making a forgery and there is no one else that can validate the forgery, your first try represents your best effort in my game. A lot of times if there's no pressure what I'll do is give people a roll with a minimum result equal to their passive check

That doesn't necessarily mean you believe it's adequate. I could try my best to recreate a Rembrandt and even I would know it's crap.

 

[Umbran]

As I discuss here, here, here, here, and here, I don't think that players being reasonably specific about what they want to achieve and how requires telegraphing and other techniques.

Okay. You don't agree. I get that.

Do you intend that to place some sort of onus on others to not include such thoughts going forward?

 

[5ekyu]

I read your post as “we don’t play in the manner you’re describing and I don’t think anyone does.”

I clarified to say I had played that way and wasn’t saying anyone else had or does play that way.

Nothing in your comment made me think anything other than “I should take the opportunity to clarify my position.”

Thanks for that clarification.

When I said this in that original response, I meant it...
"Everyone, I believe from what I have seen, has described the games they actually play in and run as games where the player's contribution to the game in play is so far beyond "leaving my contribution to exaggerated reactions and mugging" as to make it hard for me to take such a depiction little more than an attempt at (humorous) parody."

Now that you have clarified that you have had games where your role as a player was so limited, it goes to show that one man's parody might be another man's reality.

I do find it refreshing tho that so many others here depict their actual playstyles and results to be cases that dont lead to that degree of player reduction.

 

[iserith]

Okay. You don't agree. I get that.

Do you intend that to place some sort of onus on others to not include such thoughts going forward?

It's not up to me to say who can include what thoughts in their posts. I believe that is up to the community standards and the judgment of its moderators who I look to as role models of appropriate discourse.

 

[FrogReaver]

So I guess my advice to @Elfcrusher to enhance his goal and approach system for scenarios it doesn’t traditionally work well for would be to provide sufficient detail such that the player has details to interact with.

So when a player asks if he knows/recalls something (or tries to do so) then you have the level of world details needed to reach that conclusion.

If someone wants to wedgie random guy in the bar. It’s actually not a random guy. The player has to pick someone that’s in the bar and you have to preknow who all is in the bar.

It’s a lot more work but that’s how goal and approach can handle most tricky situations.

 

[5ekyu]

Cool. Another opportunity. I think our gameplay here might look the same, albeit with different involvement of the task-resolution system.

If I had an “inobvious” thing (like a door) that wasn’t secret or hidden, just subtle then any adventurer could find it by G&A. All they have to do is say something approximating “I look around this area for X” (where X is the inobvious thing). That’s an automatic success because that approach cannot reasonably fail at that goal. Whereas a statement like “I look around the room for Y” may well need a roll. There’s no Y at all, so that will fail, but there is a chance that in looking for Y, the adventurer might come across X, or might be so focused on Y that they miss X altogether.

I take your position to be that your player might say something like “I roll spot - 17 - what do I see?” And then the rest playing out. (Permit me some rhetorical allowances here, I can’t guess what you’d say verbatim).

A secret, or deliberately hidden/concealed thingy is a different matter entirely. IMO a telegraph is warranted to signal the presence of a secret and specific actions that bypass the concealment or obscurity can find the object. General actions that have no chance at bypassing the obscurity would automatically fail (e.g. looking for an invisible object) in my game.

(Edited for spelling)

Disclaimer - I will refer to sight mostly for ease but obviously percrption investigation notice etc may include any or many senses. A technique I use often involves an unexpected sense being the feature that is picked up on that exposes a secret- like the door and passage being secret and hidden but "found" due to the rotting smell that seems stronger there because the door was not some hermetically sealed airlock.

In the case of inobvious, first there is the passive score. So, the player may not need to ask a thing. Their character may spot it right off as soon as line of sight exists.

If you move to active perception rolls that can indeed be as simple as you described - a "spot check" to use common jargon we use in differentiating between look and search or study - with us having a common understanding of what that means. The cost there is the action and time and the risk there includes setbacks. If it changes from in obvious to obvious as the scene plays out, then no check is needed. That might be just by gaining advantage by actions and circumstances and shifting your passive score.

For your secret - if I understand your use of warranted to mean you include trlegraphs - to me

GAACK!!!

Sorry for premature post. App keeps glitching on the new servers.

For your secret - if I understand your use of warranted to mean you include telegraphs - to me whether or not there are telegraphs is dependent on scene. I have zero problems with there being unteleraphed elements in a setup. I have zero problem with their being things in a setup that its entirely possible characters might miss.

I dont make those roadblocks or choke points of course.

Usually, when I use what is described as telegraphing in these parts it's for scenes ehere the hidden thing has been abandoned or is in an unusual state but would have been untelegraphed in other cases such as routine use. So, rotting masses producing smells, flooding leaving signs, long abandoned but recently disturbed etc etc etc.

But yes, general actions likely wont bypass "secret" in normal working order so barring some exceptional features of the character or interactions, it fails. Spotting an invisible object by looking fails unless there is more to it.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

So I guess my advice to @Elfcrusher to enhance his goal and approach system for scenarios it doesn’t traditionally work well for would be to provide sufficient detail such that the player has details to interact with.

So when a player asks if he knows/recalls something (or tries to do so) then you have the level of world details needed to reach that conclusion.

If someone wants to wedgie random guy in the bar. It’s actually not a random guy. The player has to pick someone that’s in the bar and you have to preknow who all is in the bar.

It’s a lot more work but that’s how goal and approach can handle most tricky situations.

Aha - the devil is in the details.

And, in this case, the devil is a 20th level monk!

 

[Bawylie]

Disclaimer - I will refer to sight mostly for ease but obviously percrption investigation notice etc may include any or many senses. A technique I use often involves an unexpected sense being the feature that is picked up on that exposes a secret- like the door and passage being secret and hidden but "found" due to the rotting smell that seems stronger there because the door was not some hermetically sealed airlock.

In the case of inobvious, first there is the passive score. So, the player may not need to ask a thing. Their character may spot it right off as soon as line of sight exists.

If you move to active perception rolls that can indeed be as simple as you described - a "spot check" to use common jargon we use in differentiating between look and search or study - with us having a common understanding of what that means. The cost there is the action and time and the risk there includes setbacks. If it changes from in obvious to obvious as the scene plays out, then no check is needed. That might be just by gaining advantage by actions and circumstances and shifting your passive score.

For your secret - if I understand your use of warranted to mean you include trlegraphs - to me

GAACK!!!

Sorry for premature post. App keeps glitching on the new servers.

For your secret - if I understand your use of warranted to mean you include telegraphs - to me whether or not there are telegraphs is dependent on scene. I have zero problems with there being unteleraphed elements in a setup. I have zero problem with their being things in a setup that its entirely possible characters might miss.

I dont make those roadblocks or choke points of course.

Usually, when I use what is described as telegraphing in these parts it's for scenes ehere the hidden thing has been abandoned or is in an unusual state but would have been untelegraphed in other cases such as routine use. So, rotting masses producing smells, flooding leaving signs, long abandoned but recently disturbed etc etc etc.

But yes, general actions likely wont bypass "secret" in normal working order so barring some exceptional features of the character or interactions, it fails. Spotting an invisible object by looking fails unless there is more to it.

That’s basically what I figured.

Your Game looks the same as My Game in terms of the fictional narrative but engages the actual game system at slightly different points and leans on slightly different applications.

For me, telegraphs are extremely important all on their own, irrespective of G&A. Every video game in recent memory has them. But it boils down to (again speaking for me) setting up the scenario such that players can make intelligent decisions about how to handle the scenario versus blindly guessing what they should do.

Dragon inhales deeply - you guess firebreath is coming and may ignore that or take reasonable precautions.

Dungeon hall is suspiciously clean and free of dust and debris - something comes through here that fills the whole area.

Wall with fresh masonry - that’s the sort of thing you want to look into.

Essentially, I want to give consistent signals so the players learn. In my game, mimics breathe, so the cleric (trained in medicine) often checks objects for signs of breathing. He’s learned what the telegraph means and can capitalize on that when adventuring. I think it’s neat to include.