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

[Charlaquin]

I assume that if someone is smashing a vase they're using a melee attack. It would be just weird to state "I smash the vase" to mean that you're shooting it with an arrow.

Right, whereas I don’t want to have to rely on such assumptions.

Then again this is such an odd hypothetical that it's practically useless.

I don’t think a character smashing a vase, and it mattering whether they do so with a melee attack or a ranged attack (or some other means) is an odd hypothetical at all. Seems like a normal thing that I could easily imagine occurring in a pretty typical game.

 

[Charlaquin]

Clearly in someone's eyes smashing the vase is the engaging content at least in this moment, otherwise the action wouldn't have been declared in the first place.

Then again, on my narrating a vase in a room the question "Is it fragile?" would take a distant second place to "What's it worth?".

Well, appraising it would require an intelligence check. With disadvantage if you’re just looking from afar

 

[Oofta]

Right, whereas I don’t want to have to rely on such assumptions.

I don’t think a character smashing a vase, and it mattering whether they do so with a melee attack or a ranged attack (or some other means) is an odd hypothetical at all. Seems like a normal thing that I could easily imagine occurring in a pretty typical game.

In the incredibly unlikely situation where people are running around smashing vases and for some bizarre reason and the specific details of how it is smashed matters, I'll just ask for those details.

What could asking for clarification possibly hurt?

It's not like details like this matter to the flow of game. I've DMed for decades for many, many people. I can't remember this ever being an issue. We all make countless assumptions all the time. Every description is going to be incomplete.

It will always be up to the group to decide what works for them.

 

[Umbran]

One simply cannot draw a valid connection between "bad faith relationship" and anything that Charlaquin, Swarmkeeper, myself, and others have said, regardless of how many pages it has been discussed.

With respect, unilaterally assuming the role of Arbiter of Rational Thought is a good way to get discussion to stop.

I am stopping now, for example.

 

[iserith]

With respect, unilaterally assuming the role of Arbiter of Rational Thought is a good way to get discussion to stop.

I am stopping now, for example.

Okay. For anyone else, we've shown the goal and approach of goal-and-approach. Nothing in the posts of those using that method suggests a "bad faith relationship," only a desire for clear communication where the DM does not assume or establish what the character does for the player. Please feel free to show the chain of thinking that leads you from the posts of those using that method to that particular observation. I am curious how you get there rationally.

 

[Charlaquin]

In the incredibly unlikely situation where people are running around smashing vases and for some bizarre reason and the specific details of how it is smashed matters,

Not unlikely at all in my experience. I mean, I guess it might be unusual for PCs to go around smashing random vases for no reason. But, if there’s a vase in a dungeon or other adventuring location, there are many reasons PCs might want to smash it. And chances are, if there’s a vase the PCs have good reason to want to smash, it probably matters how they go about doing it.

Obviously your games may be different, but this is not at all an unusual scenario to me.

I'll just ask for those details.

What could asking for clarification possibly hurt?

The question may cause the player to second-guess their originally intended action. But more importantly to me, I find:

Player: “I smash the vase with my bare hand”
DM: “It shatters into a thousand tiny pieces, and the stone pedestal beneath it sinks down; a faint rumbling sound can be heard, and quickly begins to grow louder. What do you do?”

To be far more immersive than:

Player: “I smash the vase.”
DM: “How?”
Player: “What do you mean?”
DM: “Like, do you use your bare hand? or do you use a weapon or other tool? Do you throw it on the ground?”
Player: “Oh, I guess I just bring my bare hand straight down on it.”
DM: “It shatters into a thousand tiny pieces, and the stone pedestal beneath it sinks down; a faint rumbling sound can be heard, and quickly begins to grow louder. What do you do?”

That break from the narrative may be brief, but if they happen frequently (which in my experience, they always do at first with players who aren’t used to this style), it gets tiring quickly. I prefer to keep in the fiction as much as possible and minimize meta-game discussion.

It's not like details like this matter to the flow of game. I've DMed for decades for many, many people. I can't remember this ever being an issue.

That’s nice that it hasn’t been an issue for you, but your experience is not universal. It was often an issue for me before I started asking players to specify goal and approach when they declare their actions. Now it isn’t any more.

We all make countless assumptions all the time. Every description is going to be incomplete.

Obviously I must necessarily make some assumptions, but if I you state both what you want to happen and how you try to make that happen, the remaining assumptions are just minutiae. If you only state what you want to happen, I have to assume the whole action you take to make it happen, which I don’t want to do (and certainly wouldn’t want a DM to do for my own character’s action!)

It will always be up to the group to decide what works for them.

Of course.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But obviously this does make a difference in some circumstances - if it's the vase of exploding and doing 5d6 damage to everyone within 5' when smashed, for instance.

In which case the DM asks for the required information. The PC cannot be automatically expected to supply it, since they do not know what information is important. Maybe the vase only explodes if it is turned upside down?

And some vases are just scenery, which the player may want to smash in order to express their emotional state, or as part of an Intimidation attempt.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don’t know about you, but I would have an extremely difficult time functioning in a game where the shared imaginary space was so vague and abstract. How does one imagine a character existing and interacting with an environment none of its features are specified?

The whole of the world is not so abstract, but there is always more detail the DM or players could add, if they don't mind the game dragging. Did the vendor have a big nose? Where how tall where they? Generally, the amount of detail tells the players how significant something is (also a trope in CRPGs). Go back and ask your players about something that happened earlier in the game, and they will all give you different versions and different details. The lesson of Rashomon is there is no true version of events. It's all perception, and everyone's perception is different.

But vagueness can be used by the DM to avoid narrating the player. Especially in the situation where it is unimportant, like interacting with the scenery.

And it may be that the vase was created by the player.

DM: "You enter the princess's chamber, it is luxuriously furnished."
Player: "Are there any vases in the room?"
DM [making something up]: "yes, there is a vase of flowers on the desk."
Player: "I walk over, smash the vase, and yell angrily at the princess."

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Then again, on my narrating a vase in a room the question "Is it fragile?" would take a distant second place to "What's it worth?".

But you need to examine the cross-section in order to tell if it's a fake.

 

[Maxperson]

But unless the PC states that they're using a ranged attack to smash the vase, it still doesn't matter.

But as it's possible for them to use a ranged attack to smash the vase, specificity in the approach is warranted. Without it I have to guess at what the player wanted to do when I narrate the result, and guessing while narrating is far from optimal DMing.