D&D 5E Do you let PC's just *break* objects?

[Oofta]

No one is trying to emulate the play of people from 40-50 years ago. They are trying to emulate what their character would do in an unfamiliar situation. The reality is that all of us bring knowledge of the world and varying degrees of knowledge about the game, so we are always navigating the question "what makes sense for this character to do in this situation?" Acting, in other words. What I ask of my players is to try to immerse themselves in the story, to see it through the eyes of this person that they have created.

I know the rules of this game inside and out (I mean, there are folks on this forum who put my knowledge to shame, but compared to the median, I'm pretty expert). So if I play, I pretty much have to put a ton of that knowledge on hold if I am going to act in character, which for my taste in TTRPGs is a priority - it's how I have fun. So, for example, having my character do the wrong thing because it makes sense for them is a feature, not a flaw, and if it means failure, well, good stories need failure and challenge.

Iserith, above, has the obvious solution to combat challenges, which is to create new creatures as needed. But this can be a lot of extra work that not everyone wants to do, and might not be necessary, depending on what the players know (most of my current players are not interested in the rules at all; my spouse has been playing for years and still couldn't tell you that fire can stop a troll from regenerating, though they are smart and would probably figure it out quickly enough). And I can't know how much each player knows from other campaigns, reading on the internet, etc. So I don't think it is hard for players who do happen to have some out of character knowledge to put a pin in it for the sake of story logic, if that is the type of game we have agreed to.

Complete aside: the 10' pole thing tradition always bugged me, even back in the day. Have you ever tried walking around with a 10' pole? I have, more or less, while doing construction, and it's super inconvenient. The idea of a bold adventuring party cautiously moving through the dungeon with their 10' pole is the least heroic thing I can imagine.

Edit: in writing class, a question I always come back to with students is "what makes sense for this character in this situation?" That's my basic premise for my TTRPG characters, as well.

I run into knowing things my PC may or may not know all the time. So I just ask the DM "Does my PC know anything about this?" and then go from there. In my home game I'm pretty lenient, trolls are common enough that everyone knows what they are for example. I will also sometimes let people know things that the player doesn't know with an appropriate check. I'm typically pretty generous with PC knowledge, everyone knows you need fire to kill a troll and silvered or magical weapons to hurt a lycanthrope.

Again, this seems to come back to player skills and knowledge versus PC skills and knowledge. PC skill matters to me and in my game and I want to reflect that. Just because someone sitting at the table knows how to make gunpowder, it doesn't mean their PC can suddenly make bombs. Along the same line if someone is at the table and knows the MM inside and out I don't want them spouting out lore to everyone at the table. It's funny. I'm okay with players discussing a bit of strategy now and then at the table during combat because I assume that the group works this kind of stuff out during their downtime. Especially with newer players, as long as the person at the table verifies that they want the advice, I'm okay with people giving pointers. It's only an issue if someone telling another person what to do.

I played in a game that had a player that would literally pull out the MM during the game and start telling people relevant details. Not just the creature name but vulnerabilities, resistance, HP, AC, the whole 9 yards. When the DM didn't shut it down right away, the group (DM included) discussed it when the player went to the bathroom and told him to cut it out. It was disruptive of the flow of play but also took us all out of the moment.

We all have different preferences. I have plenty of puzzles and mysteries if I want them, that's not why I want players to RP their PCs. It's not that I'm expecting people to be surprised by the fact that it requires fire to kill a troll, it's that I want people to interact with the world around them as if they lived in that world.

 

[Clint_L]

I agree - no one is looking for perfection and roleplaying versus gaming is not a hard line - context matters, and maybe we're eating a snack and discussing what to do next, and so on. But our aspirational goal is to prioritize story and character.

That is not to judge folks who have different tastes! Which includes me, in different contexts - there are times when figuring out optimal strategies is super engaging. There is no one way.

 

[Charlaquin]

No one is trying to emulate the play of people from 40-50 years ago. They are trying to emulate what their character would do in an unfamiliar situation.

I think what @pemerton is getting at is that playing in situations that the players are familiar with seems like a strange way to go about trying to accomplish this goal. Obviously a lot of people do seem to enjoy doing so, so that’s cool! But I don’t think it should be controversial to point out that the approach seems to be an odd fit for the goal.

 

[iserith]

No one is trying to emulate the play of people from 40-50 years ago. They are trying to emulate what their character would do in an unfamiliar situation. The reality is that all of us bring knowledge of the world and varying degrees of knowledge about the game, so we are always navigating the question "what makes sense for this character to do in this situation?" Acting, in other words. What I ask of my players is to try to immerse themselves in the story, to see it through the eyes of this person that they have created.

I know the rules of this game inside and out (I mean, there are folks on this forum who put my knowledge to shame, but compared to the median, I'm pretty expert). So if I play, I pretty much have to put a ton of that knowledge on hold if I am going to act in character, which for my taste in TTRPGs is a priority - it's how I have fun. So, for example, having my character do the wrong thing because it makes sense for them is a feature, not a flaw, and if it means failure, well, good stories need failure and challenge.

Iserith, above, has the obvious solution to combat challenges, which is to create new creatures as needed. But this can be a lot of extra work that not everyone wants to do, and might not be necessary, depending on what the players know (most of my current players are not interested in the rules at all; my spouse has been playing for years and still couldn't tell you that fire can stop a troll from regenerating, though they are smart and would probably figure it out quickly enough). And I can't know how much each player knows from other campaigns, reading on the internet, etc. So I don't think it is hard for players who do happen to have some out of character knowledge to put a pin in it for the sake of story logic, if that is the type of game we have agreed to.

Complete aside: the 10' pole thing tradition always bugged me, even back in the day. Have you ever tried walking around with a 10' pole? I have, more or less, while doing construction, and it's super inconvenient. The idea of a bold adventuring party cautiously moving through the dungeon with their 10' pole is the least heroic thing I can imagine.

Edit: in writing class, a question I always come back to with students is "what makes sense for this character in this situation?" That's my basic premise for my TTRPG characters, as well.

Imagine there being less potential conflict between what you know and what your character knows so that the "acting" is more natural. Also imagine there is no concern about breaking a table rule about portraying your character as knowing something that the DM doesn't approve of, and no need to stop to hash that out to be sure (e.g. "Does my character know about trolls?" followed by discussion and possibly rolls) before acting freely according to what you think your character might do. Imagine as DM or player not needing to care about whether a fellow player is acting in character or not because it's all in character, no matter what they decide to do. Imagine how freeing that is for everyone. Concerns about "metagaming" just evaporate.

And all you need to do as DM is sometimes change a monster or a published adventure a little bit to create that uncertainty. Now add to that empowering players to say what they want to do and how they do it so that the DM doesn't have to assume or establish what they are doing, thereby avoiding potential conflict and the need to resolve it. Imagine all this combined creating a smoothly flowing game that stays "in the fiction" most of the time, which it does, making it easier on DMs to adjudicate and narrate and players to make decisions and act with agency in character, and you'll have an idea of what Charlaquin, Swarmkeeper, and I are talking about.

 

[Oofta]

I think what @pemerton is getting at is that playing in situations that the players are familiar with seems like a strange way to go about trying to accomplish this goal. Obviously a lot of people do seem to enjoy doing so, so that’s cool! But I don’t think it should be controversial to point out that the approach seems to be an odd fit for the goal.

Depends on what the goal is. If assert a false goal then obviously it's not going to accomplish anything.

The only goal I have is to encourage people to engage in the world as if they were their PC for the sake of immersion.

 

[Charlaquin]

Depends on what the goal is.

@Clint_L said what the goal is. It’s:

to emulate what their character would do in an unfamiliar situation.

Again, I don’t think it should be the least bit controversial to say that playing in situations that are familiar to the players seems to run counter to that goal. That doesn’t mean people who have that goal can’t or shouldn’t play in situations that are familiar to the players - by all means, follow your bliss! But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to point out that playing in situations that are unfamiliar to the players might better suit that stated goal.

 

[Lanefan]

In a recent game of mine where the PCs were making their way out of the Abyss, they came across what looked at first to be a normal beholder in a bone tower. Only this was actually two beholders fleshwarped by a sibriex to be a single creature. So sure, on one side it projected the antimagic cone. But if it turned around or you got behind it, you found yourself looking at its second face and steeped in a wild magic cone. It had a higher CR, more hit points, higher DCs, etc. When it reached half HP or fewer it would tear apart and now have double its regular eye ray attacks.

Heh heh heh - I don't run Beholders very often, but next time I do.......yoink! Paeticularly the wild-magic eye variant - love it!

(if at some point down the road some people show up on your front lawn with pitchforks, that'll probably be my players.....)

 

[Lanefan]

Complete aside: the 10' pole thing tradition always bugged me, even back in the day. Have you ever tried walking around with a 10' pole? I have, more or less, while doing construction, and it's super inconvenient. The idea of a bold adventuring party cautiously moving through the dungeon with their 10' pole is the least heroic thing I can imagine.

Smart characters quickly commission folding or telescoping poles that are 10' long at full extension but most of the time are much shorter, for ease of packing.

Even smarter characters put something sharp on one end of the pole, allowing it to do double duty as a makeshift reach weapon when not in use as a trap-finder.

 

[pemerton]

Characters immersed in the worlds of D&D may be very familiar with things like level jumps, acquisition of hit points, and the trading of hit dice over a short rest. These are the things that they live with and with which they may have become very familiar.

Speaking purely personally, I would find this intolerably silly. Likewise if I was expected to imagine that, because combat in 5e D&D is resolved in a "stop motion" fashion (turn by turn rounds), that is how people in the fiction actually perform their movements and actions.

 

[greg kaye]

Speaking purely personally, I would find this intolerably silly. Likewise if I was expected to imagine that, because combat in 5e D&D is resolved in a "stop motion" fashion (turn by turn rounds), that is how people in the fiction actually perform their movements and actions.

Fair enough. I'm sure 5e characters could find our lives to be mechanically pretty daft.