D&D 5E How do you define “mother may I” in relation to D&D 5E?

[James Gasik]

But you need to understand this is very subjective. I personally found the skills overly engineered in 3rd edition for example. And much prefer something like above where the GM is able to go by what feels right or what the group feels is right. Often those listed DCs became straight jackets in my opinion (and often the book DCs felt much too high and much too rigid). Again I can't speak to how 5E specifically addresses this, but when I was talking about how refreshing it was going to white box and seeing a one paragraph entry for a spell without clearly defined parameters, that is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Now it isn't for everyone. And even for me, it isn't for every campaign (some campaigns I want a system with things like more engineered DCs). But I do see why they may have reversed course on the complexity of these things if they did so

Having the freedom to decide how you want to rule on the game can be a good thing, sure. But even if we had 3.5 era tables for set DC's for tasks, the DM can always houserule them if they feel something is too easy/hard, or want more granularity. 3.5 espoused a "DM secret rule" allowing you to modify rolls by +/- 2, for example, if you needed that extra granularity. 5e allows you to apply advantage or disadvantage.

Removing guidelines for setting DC's is only good if you're an experienced DM who understands probabilities and has some sense of how difficult a task could be.

Billy who got the Starter set for his birthday isn't going to know that.

It's all well and good that Joe, who just wants to run a fun game for his friends, and Dave "the Destroyer", old school player-killer DM extraordinaire, have the freedom to alter the odds to fit their playstyles- but it's not like they couldn't do that anyways.

5e doesn't give you any more freedom than you ever had as a DM. It just means players have no expectation of what they can expect beforehand.

 

[Campbell]

While that is certainly an issue for many tables, how is that Mother May I? Handing out a victory or softballing consequences isn't a matter of Q&A at all as far as I can tell.

The connective tissue here is the GM making rulings and/or making character/setting/scenario design decisions based on a desired outcome rather than on a set of consistent principles that align with shared expectations. Basically the entire idea that a GM is actively saying yes or no instead of applying a consistent set of standards and principles.

 

[Malmuria]

Player has a 17 Strength, but needs to jump a 20' wide chasm. Rules say you can jump farther by making an Athletics check, but gives no DC's.

DM A says: "you can make the jump with a DC 5 Athletics check."

DM B says: "....DC 15 Athletics check."

DM C says: "....DC 25 Athletics check."

DM D says: "It's impossible, you're wearing full plate armor and have 100 lbs. of gear."

None of these DM's are wrong, by the rules. Each of these rulings is equally supported.

The fact that a person's experience with 5e has so much table variance never felt like a good thing to me, since it means if you play under multiple DM's, you can never really know what to expect.

Oddly, 2e had some very specific rules for some situations. Like, are you a dwarf with the mountaineering proficiency wearing banded armor trying to climb a slightly slippery rough-but-with-ledges wall? Here, determine your chances and rate down to the %. Yet, 2e also featured apparently-traumatizing levels of MMI.

Conversely, while the 5e DM has the authority to make any ruling, the most popular play advice goes something like this:


And players have enough powers at their disposal to mitigate that jump in any number of ways. The combined result is that MMI resulting in power disempowerment is not a consistent feature of play. If anyone is calling for more detail in the rules along these lines (suggested DCs etc), it seems to be DMs.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sounds like you are trying to say what I’ve been saying the whole thread, there are certain grounds where the DM should go against the rules and certain grounds where they shouldn’t. You provided 1 good example in your post above. IMO.

Yes and no. The kinds of games I prefer are mechanically detailed enough and at least dip a toe in simulationist concerns that its going to be essentially impossible to cover all the ground entirely interior to the rules at hand.

That said, it seems entirely possible for some games to do so; they just have to be somewhat more schematic and, from lack of a better term, be closed processes such that there should never be a need to do that as long as they're being used within the intended framework involved. From best of my understanding, the PbtA derived games generally land here (which is also why I'm usually uninterested in them from where I sit, but that does not say they do not avoid the problem at hand, just, from my POV, by throwing some other things on the bonfire that I value).

I doubt we all will agree on what precisely those grounds are, but no one is arguing the DM should on a whim ignore the rules. There should be a good reason, often based on the fiction not aligning to genre/setting expectations due to the game mechanics producing fiction against those expectations in this situation. But possibly also around game expectations - 3 of my 5 players are getting bored due to their being no combat this session, should the dm here do anything to help combat occur, after all it is his players happiness he’s interested in?

Perhaps no one in this thread is making that argument, but I've seen heavy "rulings not rules" proponents who, if not phrasing it that way, seemed to consider rules something you pay attention to when they're convenient but nothing more.

As to your question, the question that actually arises here is if the group consists of a majority of players who want/expect combat every session, why isn't it occurring? Did the GM not account for that earlier in process? Are the other two players pulling events away from one where that will happen? Are all of them doing so (you can absolutely have players who have the perverse tendency to push the game in directions they don't really want it to go for reasons that could probably use its own thread)?

Without looking for the causes of the situation, its hard to answer what the appropriate response to the situation is.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Similarly to "It's what my character would do," it can be a decent explanation, but usually makes a bad defense.

Honestly, both of those are really, at best, thoughtless reasons that show tunnel-vision on the part of the person using them.

 

[Xamnam]

Oh. Eh. I disagree. Or maybe I'm thinking of different contexts than you are.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Oddly, 2e had some very specific rules for some situations. Like, are you a dwarf with the mountaineering proficiency wearing banded armor trying to climb a slightly slippery rough-but-with-ledges wall? Here, determine your chances and rate down to the %. Yet, 2e also featured apparently-traumatizing levels of MMI.

Conversely, while the 5e DM has the authority to make any ruling, the most popular play advice goes something like this:


And players have enough powers at their disposal to mitigate that jump in any number of ways. The combined result is that MMI resulting in power disempowerment is not a consistent feature of play. If anyone is calling for more detail in the rules along these lines (suggested DCs etc), it seems to be DMs.

The actual entry for climbing is rather odd as well because it is in the Time and Movement chapter and is basically an elaboration of the thieves climbing ability (but this is where you find in the book many of the thieves skills are applied to other characters as well, just at a lower rate). But it is an unusually big entry. There are also rules in there for swimming and holding your breath. Second edition was involved in some areas. But a lot of 2E was optional as well. So weapon proficiencies and non-weapon proficiencies were entirely optional (and that is basically an entire chapter of the book). But it was rooted in the older school play. The other odd thing about 2E was the DMG was a little incomplete and you kind of needed the Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide to get a complete sense of DMing (at least that is my memory).

In practice I found 2E varied tremendously from table to table because the gaming culture at the time (at least where I played) was very much about the group or the GM being able to house rule however they wanted, and so in additional to many of the optional rules being ignored or replaced with other things, sometimes entire sections of the book were cast aside or replaced. For example, as deep as those climb rules were, I don't think I ever really saw them get much through use beyond the basics. And encumbrance is something that I don't think anyone I gamed with used (beyond eyeballing whether the character was carrying too much).

Also there were differences between the 1989 edition and the revised edition in the mid-90s and I can't remember how much of the climb material was in the original 89 version (I preferred that version of the PHB, but its hard to get that one now as the revised is the one they have up on drive thru).

Personally I like 2E because its the edition I really learned to run the game on (I had experience with 1E and with basic but didn't run them). I think the bigger issue during the 2E era was railroading in service of story. I am presently running some second edition adventure material and there are points in it where it basically says 'no matter what preparations the players take, X happens during the night'.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh. Eh. I disagree. Or maybe I'm thinking of different contexts than you are.

Basically, both are usually "I'm focusing on my personal interest in how the game events run and either telling myself stories about how other people will benefit from this decision or not thinking about them at all."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Player has a 17 Strength, but needs to jump a 20' wide chasm. Rules say you can jump farther by making an Athletics check, but gives no DC's.

DM A says: "you can make the jump with a DC 5 Athletics check."

DM B says: "....DC 15 Athletics check."

DM C says: "....DC 25 Athletics check."

DM D says: "It's impossible, you're wearing full plate armor and have 100 lbs. of gear."

None of these DM's are wrong, by the rules. Each of these rulings is equally supported.

The fact that a person's experience with 5e has so much table variance never felt like a good thing to me, since it means if you play under multiple DM's, you can never really know what to expect.

Yeah, this is exactly the sort of thing DMG should just flat out say. Now, no one wants seven thousand pages of charts for every eventuality (OK, someone would, apparently some people like Rolemaster,) but common adventuring situations like this should be covered. Especially as it already mentions that it can be done via a skill! Would it really have been too much to also tell how?

Now different people running things differently is not a huge issue. That will always be the case. As long as the GM is consistent, things start to seem predictable to the players. But of course having some example benchmarks in the DMG would be a massive help for being consistent. This exact situation actually happened in my game several sessions ago, and I now try to remember what I set the DC to... Pretty sure it was 10...
(The character failed and fell into a pit. )

 

[James Gasik]

I don't know if people running something wildly differently is good for the game; I don't believe that it is, but I can't really put into words why, other than it's rather confusing for a player to have no idea how something is going to work from one table to the next- granted, this is nothing new, every table has house rules, but this feels like something a player should be able to learn from a rulebook, not have to ask each DM they meet.

For me, another facet of the problem is that I discuss games I play on the internet, and not having a consistent set of rules makes it very difficult to have discussions about the game.

At least in 3e and 4e, we had RAW as a starting point, but a lot of 5e discussions seem to have a problem of deciding what, exactly, RAW is...