D&D 5E Does the caster know if a spell target makes their save?

[The Crimson Binome]

No not really - in the case of observing a fireball, you will see all (except maybe for creatures with damage immunity=fire, who may just stand and laugh at you) creatures in the AOE fall, dive, roll, hold up shields, etc. (whatever the narrative flavour of 'roll a saving throw' is for them) but you would not necessarily know how successful those saving throws have been, or whether some had also benefitted from evasion, or fire resistance or whatnot. Your 6 seconds of observation would be, whoosh, bang, lots of scrabbling and burning, some are still on their feet, others aren't getting up. You may be able to see that someone has been totally unaffected [evasion success, immunity] but that's about it.

Does your DM not narrate taking 60 damage differently from taking 30 damage? (Is there no difference between being hit by an ogre's club, or a titan's maul?) Whatever the in-game reality is which corresponds to the saving throw, it seems like there's a pretty big difference between success and failure, or else it wouldn't have such vastly different consequences.

I mean, when the DM is describing the effects of the spell, I can't imagine them describing it in such a way that it isn't obvious as to which ones saved and which ones failed. Of course, the description of damage is something which is expected to vary between tables, so maybe your DM just does that differently.

I don't see how it adds to the bookkeeping though, the saves get rolled, damaged is applied, the narration is 'boom' [or whatever], next action.

If you wanted to say that only creatures looking in the direction of the explosion, and paying a certain amount of attention, could possibly determine whether any particular target was able to save from a spell; then you would need some way of tracking which creatures were able to do so. If you instead say that everyone notices, or that nobody could possibly notice, then you wouldn't need any mechanic to track that sort of thing.

It's kind of like the rules for hiding in combat, which state that you can't hide if anyone can possibly see you, because everyone is constantly looking in every direction when they're in combat -- because otherwise we would have to track facing for every combatant during every round, and that would be too annoying.

 

[Lehrbuch]

Does your DM not narrate taking 60 damage differently from taking 30 damage? ... Whatever the in-game reality is which corresponds to the saving throw, it seems like there's a pretty big difference between success and failure, or else it wouldn't have such vastly different consequences.

But the consequences depend not (only) on the amount of damage but on how many hit points the target has relative to the damage. If the target has 20 hit points and makes the saving throw, 30 damage is still a fatal problem for the target. If a target has 150 hit points, and fails the saving throw, 60 damage is not such a problem.

Yes, as DM, of course, I narrate the effects of a Fireball.

"Your fireball erupts in the midst of the lizardmen warband, illuminating the twilight swamp with a searing flash. The survivors dive under the murky waters, leaving three charred and steaming, floating corpses. The swamp smelled bad before, now there is also the stench of barbecued lizard to contend with."​

So, of course, sensible players might infer that the three dead lizards failed their save and the others made it. And maybe they'd be right. But that's not definitely the case. Maybe the dead ones made their save but were already injured. Or one of the survivors failed his save, but simply was a tougher kind of lizardman who simply had more hit points. Or maybe one of the survivors failed their save, but had resistance to fire damage. Without more information, which the players may or may not know, the players don't definitely know which lizardmen made or failed their save. Sometimes it is obvious. Sometimes it is not.

 

[Zippee]

Does your DM not narrate taking 60 damage differently from taking 30 damage? (Is there no difference between being hit by an ogre's club, or a titan's maul?) Whatever the in-game reality is which corresponds to the saving throw, it seems like there's a pretty big difference between success and failure, or else it wouldn't have such vastly different consequences.

Well I am my DM most of the time. And yes I narrate but no I do not differentiate HP damage in those ways. The vast majority of HP damage is not physical damage and I find descriptions of cuts and wounds silly with creatures dying from a thousand cuts. The final handful of points or the blow that kills, that gets described as actual damage - the rest is just near misses and glancing blows, narrow dodges and what ifs, nothing physical to identify. I think of HP loss being your experience and luck being eroded.

Players already know if their character hits and the damage inflicted - they also know that the damage from a fireball will be full, half or none (and the actual values involved). As I said above the narration will include those who stand and laugh (immune) those who emerge undamaged (successful evasion), those who survived and those who didn't. In 6 seconds I think that is plenty of information to process.

I mean, when the DM is describing the effects of the spell, I can't imagine them describing it in such a way that it isn't obvious as to which ones saved and which ones failed. Of course, the description of damage is something which is expected to vary between tables, so maybe your DM just does that differently.
If you wanted to say that only creatures looking in the direction of the explosion, and paying a certain amount of attention, could possibly determine whether any particular target was able to save from a spell; then you would need some way of tracking which creatures were able to do so. If you instead say that everyone notices, or that nobody could possibly notice, then you wouldn't need any mechanic to track that sort of thing.

Fair enough but to me the description is between those that survived and those that didn't - the survivors are all charred and smoking [caveat for immune. etc.]. To me a saving throw result is part of the mechanics not part of the story.

It's not about direction, facing, or attention - I'd assume that usually everyone is paying attention in combat. Its that the actions you would see for most creatures would be pretty much the same in the majority of cases and the outcome of importance is still active or dead not 60 v 30 damage which is mechanics again.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But the consequences depend not (only) on the amount of damage but on how many hit points the target has relative to the damage. If the target has 20 hit points and makes the saving throw, 30 damage is still a fatal problem for the target. If a target has 150 hit points, and fails the saving throw, 60 damage is not such a problem.

Like I said, different DMs describe the effects of damage differently. If you describe 20 damage from a target with 60hp in the same way as 50 damage from a target with 150hp, then that's on you, and there's no way the game mechanics could know to take that into account. (Specifically, in this case, the mechanic which says whether or not anyone knows when someone succeeds or fails on a saving throw.)

Well I am my DM most of the time. And yes I narrate but no I do not differentiate HP damage in those ways. The vast majority of HP damage is not physical damage and I find descriptions of cuts and wounds silly with creatures dying from a thousand cuts. The final handful of points or the blow that kills, that gets described as actual damage - the rest is just near misses and glancing blows, narrow dodges and what ifs, nothing physical to identify. I think of HP loss being your experience and luck being eroded.

I don't know that this is the right place to have that discussion, but does your description make it obvious to the players whether an arrow hits and does damage or misses entirely? Because near misses and narrow dodges sound a lot like the attack missed due to their Dexterity bonus.

To me a saving throw result is part of the mechanics not part of the story.

If you differentiate between the two, then that can cause a lot of problems with players not knowing what's going on. To me, all mechanics are part of the story, or else the players are forced to role-play under false pretenses about how the world actually works.

Going back to the previous point, if you describe a hit from an arrow as though they narrowly dodged, then the character has no reason to think that their attack had any effect whatsoever. Why would they even continue firing, if the first twenty arrows were all dodged? Going back to the advice in the DMG, ask your players, "What does your character think?" Because I can't imagine the character thinking that the first twenty dodges were just a fluke, and that the reasonable response is to keep firing arrows.

 

[Kurotowa]

Going back to the previous point, if you describe a hit from an arrow as though they narrowly dodged, then the character has no reason to think that their attack had any effect whatsoever. Why would they even continue firing, if the first twenty arrows were all dodged? Going back to the advice in the DMG, ask your players, "What does your character think?" Because I can't imagine the character thinking that the first twenty dodges were just a fluke, and that the reasonable response is to keep firing arrows.

And now we're looping back to the age old debate, "HP: Meat Points or Luck Points?"

Now, my personal preference is more towards Luck Points, but with a clear narrative signal that the lost HP is having a negative impact. "The ogre's club deflects off your armor, causing you to stagger back a few steps and bruising your ribs. Your breath is shorter and more painful now." "The necromancer barely steps back in time to avoid your arrow, which only clips his leg. He's off balance and limping slightly."

To steal some terminology from another field, the DM is the one who books the fight and it's on them to sell the effects of hits and weave the fight into a narrative. One hit knocks the orc off balance, the second knocks his helmet askew and sends a trickle of blood into his left eye, and the third takes advantage of that blind spot to slide a sword point between his ribs. Otherwise it's just "The orc takes 5 damage, the orc takes 12 damage, the orc takes 7 damage and dies."

Of course, that means the DM has to keep track of what they've previously narrated and put some effort into fight choreography. In most games I play the DM quickly falls back into Meat Points, which is easier and faster to narrative. It's a bit frustrating but I don't entirely blame them.

 

[5ekyu]

Kurotowa. In your "otherwise" comment, that is where i feelyou miss a best. Its not a binary choice. You can do both.

A GM can provide THE PLAYER the mechanical info they need for decision making and assessment. They can also provide DESCRIPTIVE info that the character experiences.

It happens all the time out of combat where search rolls, perception rolls , traps rolls, persuasion rolls etc etc are made but still plenty of description and narrative occurs both before and after the roll.

If a GM replaces the mechanical parts of his combat description with a consistent lexicon, he really has not stepped away from HP calling, just changed the language and muddied the waters to some degree.

As i have stated before, since this game at many levels hinges on major differences in just a few points and the players have to spend significant time crunching numbers in chargen and the build system intends to reward those who "put work into their build" to me deciding to yank that precision from their in combat decisions is not a mive i would support.

Quite a few games i have seen take a middle approach. They dont try and make every swing a narrative exposition. The basic "you hit and score tyical damage" in the mid combat stages are mostly just the stats rather than an exercise in thesaurus-fu.

Early hits and misses where info is being gained - more narrative added with mechanics results.

Later hits and misses where we are hitting the stuff can hapoen - more narrative added with mechanics results.

Critical hits and some special combos - more narrative added with mechanics results.

I think a significant aspect of mystery results is it makes the adversaries no more mysterious. The player already does not know how many HP the adversary has. So not knowing how much of a mystery resource is lost does not help make ot more unknown.

What it does do when the PCs dont know how much damage they have taken is to reduce their ability to "know" their character. Maybe you think your narratiob skills are enough to convey in a sentence or two as much about the character's health as the experienced combat character knows... But i know i dont. My own exoerience in trying to convey accrate meaningful descriptions of medical situations has shown me that.

However any group chooses to play is for them... But its not often accurate to describe things in as binary a choice as you seem to see.

I have played plenty of fluffy narrative system games but they did not require, enforce and hinge major results on crunchy bits. So to me, removing knowledge of the crnchy bits when it matters is not a route i choose when running such a system.

Sent from my VS995 using EN World mobile app

 

[Lehrbuch]

Like I said, different DMs describe the effects of damage differently. If you describe 20 damage from a target with 60hp in the same way as 50 damage from a target with 150hp, then that's on you...

It seems a bit problematic to describe the effect of 20 damage on a 60hp creature significantly different to the effect of 50 damage to a 150hp creature?

What you want the players to know in both cases is that the damage was about 1/3 of the creature's hit points, so that the players can make informed decisions about how the encounter is going, how tough the creature appears to be compared to the damage inflicted, etc. The players do (usually) know the damage roll (at least prior to any modification due to saves, resistances, vulnerabilities, etc.).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It seems a bit problematic to describe the effect of 20 damage on a 60hp creature significantly different to the effect of 50 damage to a 150hp creature?

Why? The 50 damage is objectively worse than the 20 damage. It takes 2.5 times as much magic to heal. The amount of force and/or precision behind the attack was significantly greater.

As you say, the players do usually know the damage roll, which means the difference between 20 damage and 50 damage must be observable to their characters, or else they wouldn't be able to account for that information without illegally meta-gaming.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And now we're looping back to the age old debate, "HP: Meat Points or Luck Points?"

Now, my personal preference is more towards Luck Points, but with a clear narrative signal that the lost HP is having a negative impact. "The ogre's club deflects off your armor, causing you to stagger back a few steps and bruising your ribs. Your breath is shorter and more painful now." "The necromancer barely steps back in time to avoid your arrow, which only clips his leg. He's off balance and limping slightly."

I don't think this is necessarily the right place to have this discussion. Without worrying about the details of how you quantify luck, though, the question goes back to one of narration: If the PC shoots that necromancer with an arrow for 30 damage, do you narrate that differently than if they shoot the necromancer with an arrow for 15 damage? Or are both of them just equally glancing blows? Is the difference in damage observable within the game world?

I would wager that at most tables, and certainly within the design intent, the players are expected to be given the numbers whenever they give or take damage. And since this edition actually does include rules that condemn meta-gaming, that means their characters can probably also observe the difference. (You could argue that the players should be told the numbers, but should then ignore them when making decisions, but I don't think that's feasible or intended.)

If the difference between 15 damage and 30 damage is observable - if you would narrate them in different ways, such as to convey the difference in their severity to the players - then they can tell whether or not someone made their save against a fireball. And if they can tell when someone makes their save against fireball, then that sets some sort of precedent about whether or not saving against a spell is generally observable.

 

[Kurotowa]

If the difference between 15 damage and 30 damage is observable - if you would narrate them in different ways, such as to convey the difference in their severity to the players - then they can tell whether or not someone made their save against a fireball. And if they can tell when someone makes their save against fireball, then that sets some sort of precedent about whether or not saving against a spell is generally observable.

Right, exactly. There's always a tension between long form narration and short hand game mechanics. The long form narration is more vivid and immersive, but being long form it takes greater constant effect from everyone (especially the DM). Game mechanics are a short hand that's quick, easy, and accurate but can make you feel like you're just hitting a punching bag until you reach the target number.

But, and I guess this is the point I'm trying to get across, I feel like the two should have full portability. If a fact would be easily deduced from the long form narration, like damage resistance or the result of saving throws, it's not fair to conceal the game mechanic from the players.