D&D 5E Cutting Words and game flow

[drjones]

So my parties bard leveled up and got his level 3 Cutting Words ability.

Normally, I do most of my rolling in private, mostly to occasionally fudge things so that the game flows well and to avoid being questioned/annoyed by players who ask why when the attack bonus on this goblin is +3 when the last one was +4 and other such pointless rules lawyering.

But once he got this ability the bards player asked if I would now be announcing the value of every roll so he can decide if he wants to nuke that roll BEFORE adding any modifiers and determining if it is a success. This seems like throwing a large blob of tar into every encounter and reversing some of 5es advances in playspeed. I ruled at the time that he'd just have to decide to use the ability without knowing what the roll was. It still seems quite powerful, there are plenty of tells that a particular roll is important and if you absolutely HAVE to get bang from every use of the ability just apply it to damage.

I'm still comfortable with that, just wondering if anyone has seen a clarification of the intent of the ability or play it differently.

 

[Jer]

Interesting. I would probably play it as you are. There's nothing in the rule text that makes it sound like the power assumes that the rolls are known before deciding to use the ability. In fact the rule states that the bard has to decide before the DM announces success or failure, which kind of implies to me that the PC is supposed to be making the decision blind.

I'm probably too generous on things like this, but in my game I'd probably tell the bard "save it" if the monster had already failed the roll. Which would have the effect of eliminating most of the reasons he'd want to know the value of the roll. But I'm a soft touch when it comes to seeing PCs waste abilities on undramatic whiffs.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Wouldn't slow down anything at my table. All combat rolls are rolled in front of the players. If they all die, they die fairly, if they win, then they know that their victory was legit.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The fact that Cutting Words can be used for attack rolls, ability check rolls and damage rolls means that the PC has many opportunities to use his dice. To remove one section of that ability-- the attack roll without having heard the number first... I wouldn't suspect to be that much of a hindrance. He's still get to use it on ability checks (where there shouldn't be any time reasons why you couldn't tell him what you rolled when an enemy was making an Insight check or a Stealth check against you)... and especially on damage checks.

The one place where I think that you should allow him to use it in exchange for taking it away from him during regular attack rolls (even if the rules might not specifically say this was allowed) was on you rolling 20s for critical hits. When you roll a 20, I presume you state outright for people to hear something along the lines of "and that's a critical". On those rolls, that's where I'd give him the ability to use Cutting Words to reduce that roll from a 20 to whatever. Now it still might result in a hit... but it at least would no longer be a critical hit. And that shouldn't change any time on your side, since you'll be announcing the crit (and thus stating you rolled a 20) anyway.

 

[Bumamgar]

In fact the rule states that the bard has to decide before the DM announces success or failure, which kind of implies to me that the PC is supposed to be making the decision blind.

Actually, to quote the PHB:

You can choose to use this feature after the creature makes its roll, but before the DM determines whether the attack roll or ability check succeeds or fails, or before the creature deals its damage.

In other words, it is supposed to be based on either the raw d20 result, or used before damage is rolled. Of course, I've never been so slow at math that there was really any delay between 'making the roll' and 'determining success'. In fact, I generally don't even do the math post-roll (rather, I know the target AC and the attack bonus, so I know that the monster hits on a die roll of X or higher before the dice are even rolled), so the letter of the rule doesn't really apply anyway.

Additionally, I roll in secret when playing face-to-face and when playing via Fantasy Grounds the combat tracker calculates success/failure the instant the dice are rolled, so I went ahead and ruled that the player can use it retro-actively. Especially since it burns up Bardic Inspiration, which is already a fairly limited use power, so I don't mind the player deciding to burn it after I've already announced the result. Half the time it ends up being wasted anyway because the random reduction from Cutting Words wasn't enough to change the hit to a miss anyway

On the topic of Bardic Inspiration:

So far, although the bard tries to give it out all the time, it never has actually been used. Maybe its because the players are fairly low level still, but in my campaign that has a bard character, players tend to either roll so low that the extra boost from inspiration would still miss, or they roll high enough that they succeed even before adding in prof/attribute modifiers. Very rarely are attacks or skill checks 'borderline' such that an extra d6 would actually make a difference. I intellectually know that shouldn't be the case, but in actual play, the bard has handed out inspiration dice three or four times, only to have them expire before the character had any reason to use them.

 

[Juriel]

I don't get hiding your rolls from the players.

 

[Dastion]

It's a bit of a hard ability to play with if your DM hides his rolls. By RAW the player SHOULD be able to ask your die result, but that gets tiresome. The way we've been playing it the DM usually announces his total and the player has to declare he uses it (same goes for shield) before the DM declares that a hit/success/etc has occurre or before damage is recorded.

bound accuracy means that hiding modifiers doesn't do much since players can generally guess to within a few points, and it allows the DM to hide his rolls and for the Bard to use his ability in clever ways. Usually it's still a gamble whether or not the die will help.

 

[Thaumaturge]

I don't get hiding your rolls from the players.

Cool.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Umbran]

Wouldn't slow down anything at my table. All combat rolls are rolled in front of the players. If they all die, they die fairly, if they win, then they know that their victory was legit.

The first two sentences are fine. The last was unnecessary commentary.

How about we *avoid* turning this into a pro/anti fudging discussion?

 

[ExploderWizard]

I don't get hiding your rolls from the players.

There are rolls that I still hide. Reaction and morale rolls for example. The players shouldn't know the disposition of an npc by looking at the die.

Same with wandering monster rolls. There is still plenty to hide from players apart from combat rolls.