D&D 5E How do you handle insight?

[pming]

Hiya!

How would this specific scenario play out in your game? If you have a strict "only the DM calls for a roll" what would Bob have to do or say to indicate that they are suspicious in order for you to call for an insight check? What would Susan have to do or say to indicate her PC believes whatever the merchant says?

*If Bob is asking for an insight check with every NPC they interact with, or if he tries to resolve every situation with a simple roll of the die, that's a separate issue and we'll discuss play style.

I'm of the "I ask for rolls, Players don't 90% of the time" side of the fence. I'd call for their Insight bonuses...THEY WOULD NOT ROLL...and make the check when what they are saying and doing in-game makes it seem like they are ACTUALLY suspicious and the REASON for that suspicion.

For example, "But you live above your shop? You heard nothing?" ... "Nope. I'm a sound sleeper"... "Really? So how did you hear us knock at the door last night when you were sleeping? We didn't knock too loudly..." ... "Well, uh, I'm used to that knocking. Part of my business and all" ... "So I could get in a life and death fight with a thug who sneaked into my room at night and you'd just sleep away? Sounds awfully dangerous. Maybe we should get our month's money back and find somewhere else"... Ok. NOW give me your Insight adjustments. There was a lot more questioning and it was definitely the 'feeling' of Ned trying to 'cover' for his lack of attentiveness (if he wasn't guilty)...or his attempt to keep dodging realistic expectations for an innkeeper (if he was guilty).

I would also make the roll for EVERYONE there...not just Bob's PC. Whomever got the highest result I would address and fill them in on what 'vibe' they were getting (or whatever).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Campbell]

Generally when a player is trying to get an Insight check I would assume they are trying to access their character's intuition about the current situation and get a read on the NPC's current intentions. I think this is entirely reasonable. In most cases this can probably be resolved by clarifying what is going on in the fiction. Holding everything to your chest as a GM seldom makes for interesting play.

In some cases an Insight check could provide more information about an NPC's intentions. I would ask a PC to clarify how they go about it. What does that look like?

 

[5ekyu]

To me, this seems like a rather big leap. Insight has a much broader application that just whether an NPC is telling the truth.



The obvious answer seems to be that he could just articulate them. It also seems like you certainly would have thought of this answer. Trying to understand what is behind this - if Bob said, "Brog is suspicious that Ned is not telling the truth." and you thought that it was uncertain whether Brog could tell, would you not call for an insight check? (Admittedly, that statement by Bob is still not as clear about Brog engaging in an intentional process as some would insist on, but it's probably good enough for me most of the time even though I would prefer a clearer statement of intent and method.)



I don't understand the connection between thinking that it is reasonable for the PCs to suspect the merchant is lying (a matter of the fiction) and how you handle the conversation between the DM and the players (a matter of game play). It is perfectly possible for the DM to think that it is reasonable for the PCs to suspect the merchant of lying, but want the players to declare actions, not ask for checks.



Neither do I, but again I don't understand the connection between that and how you handle the DM-player conversation.



How would it play out? Well, I think no matter whose table it is, the party will end up killing Ned and/or destroying his shop because players. I mean, it could be an accident as in, "we just summoned the balgura to intimidate him into telling us the truth, and things got out of hand," but really when the PCs come knocking the only safe thing for an NPC is to just not be home and, preferably, not on the same plane of existence. Buuut maybe that is not what you meant by "play out"...

At my table, I would treat Bob's query as more or less equivalent to the assertion, "Brog is trying to figure something out." So I would ask questions to find out what Brog is actually trying to do. I understand that in constructing your example you already had in mind what Brog would actually be trying to do, but I don't think that there is actually enough information in Bob's utterance to tell. As noted, Insight has much broader application than just whether an NPC is telling the truth. To me, it seems just as reasonable that Brog might want to ascertain whether Ned is hostile toward the party, or whether Ned seems afraid.



Um, having said that you don't want to debate philosophy, you have asked a question predicated on, and questioning, a play style, which seems pretty close to philosophy. Maybe I misunderstand what you meant. Anyway, first, I don't have strict policies for stuff like this, but I do have general BKMs, one of which is that generally the players say what they're trying to accomplish and how, and the DM calls for rolls when needed. There are a few common situations, weapon and spell attacks in combat being the most common, in which some of this can be shortcut, but that is because the rules and our practices at the table are such that in the same situation, the same game mechanics are employed the same way in the overwhelming majority of instances.

This question seems to assume that getting the DM to call for an insight check is a reasonable goal. If I take that literally, it makes no sense - making checks is not a goal of game play. It also seems to assume that how a PC feels is cause for a response from the DM; that seems off also. So I'll assume that Bob's actual goal is to get the DM to narrate the result of Brog trying to determine whether Ned is telling the truth. Put that way, the answer seems pretty straightforward: Bob should say that Brog is trying to determine whether Ned is telling the truth.

The only objection that I can see to this is that some might feel this forces Bob to be too specific, so that maybe, "Can I make an Insight check?" is sort of a stand-in for, "Brog attempts to discern anything that might be covered by the Insight skill." Is that the effect that you are after?

In more general terms, asking for a check just seems like a suboptimal choice since it forces the DM to infer the player's intention. I don't see how it improves the game to be indirect about communicating what your PC is doing.



Again, she could just articulate that, but I don't see how that leads to anything that requires a response from the DM and how it is germane to the issue being discussed



Certainly.

"As noted, Insight has much broader application than just whether an NPC is telling the truth. To me, it seems just as reasonable that Brog might want to ascertain whether Ned is hostile toward the party, or whether Ned seems afraid."

So, do you require different and discrete phrasings from the player for their charscter for observing the "insert text ftom insight skill" depending on whether its vs say lies vs hostility vs fear?

So, here is the thing, if each of those things is discernable by an insight check, each of those redolvable by some measure of insight vs deception, each of those in game world achieved by looking at, listening to and observing the "insert line of text from the insight skill write- up" - why foes the player need to specify his "intent" or which is being looked for?

You and the player knew the observer, you knew the observed target and you knew the skills bring used - so why as GM would you need to know he was looking specifically for hostility vs fear vs lies?

I mean, if the gm describes a sound from down an alley and the character looks down the alley, do they have to run some 20 question "I look down the alley for orcs" then "I look down the alley for rats" then... until the manage to ask not just to be looking but guess the right thing?

Seems to me, and it plays this way in my game, that if the merchant is intent on deception and/or hostile and/or afraid and/or exceptionally aroused cuz he was just interrupted mid-adult-fun-time as GM I would just give those as answers depending on the results of the one check.

I mean, you are correct that insight does more than just reveal or dust out lies but I myself dont get where one gains benefit in play by not giving out whatever the skill can determine without making the player guess what they will "find out" in their query. The NPC is showing signs of ABC etc whether the player happened to figure that into their query just like the alley would have a cave troll whether or not the character looked for an orc or a cat.

In my guy if a character examines a painting "with an arcans skill" I give them whatever info thst skill might provide, which would be different from say an investigation skill or an history check. Course that answer might be "there is nothing about runes or magical significance."

Edit to expand a point.

But, I guess yo me the reason it seems (back to the OP) this gets a lot more traction here on message boards rather than FTF is that in real games played at tables there is almost always z context. I cannot think of a time when someone said "I make an insight check" and it wasnt obvious from the immediate proceedings what the "intent was" in any way that impacted the resolution and narration of those results. White room throrycrafting and message boards often seem to mostly bypass the context of the scene, the actual dialog and tone and timing that in actual play exist already.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Bizarrely, the player characters seem to mostly use Insight on each other.

 

[Oofta]

While this would be very in-character of Angry to say, it is definitely not what the article in question said. Just, for the record.

The line I was quoting from the blog post:

a player who asks the GM “can I make an Insight check” is not playing the game properly.​

So, to answer this question directly, I would say something along the lines of, “I’m hearing that you are hoping to glean some information about Ned’s intentions or emotional state, but I’m not sure what you hope to learn or how. Can you tell me what you are hoping to accomplish and what your character is doing to try to accomplish it?”


Bob is free to be suspicious of Ned or not, as he sees fit. If he wants to express that suspension, he is welcome to do so verbally, though that might have a negative impact on Ned’s opinion of him and by extension the group. Or, he could act out or describe some kind of nonverbal cue, or simply say, “my character is visibly suspicious of him,” which Ned might or might not be able to pick up on (likely resolved with a Wisdom check on Ned’s part). Or I suppose he could say out of character, “my character doesn’t trust him,” or something to that effect. I personally don’t love out of character expressions of in-character internal thoughts and feelings, but I wouldn’t stop a player from doing so.

There's no reason for Brog to be "visibly suspicious". Being suspicious is an internal mental state. Depending on the circumstances I might ask for Bob to make an opposed deception check.

Bob needs to communicate somehow that he's actively suspicious of Ned. The simplest (but certainly not only way) to do that is to ask if they can make an insight check.

Ok. That’s Susan’s perogative.

So how would I know to give Brog an insight check but not Suiza?

The fact that neither I nor my players have to worry about how many insight checks is “too many” is, in my opinion, one of the advantages of the way I prefer to resolve these situations.

It's never been an issue in any game I've ever DMed either. Some people keep bringing it up as a potential issue.

It’s absolutely reasonable, but suspicion per se does not constitute an action, and does not require a dice roll to be expressed in the game.

Which is where we fundamentally disagree. The PCs are the ones directly interacting with the world. If someone puts resources into being able to read people, I'm going to reward it.

If Ned was lying, I would roll deception for him against the highest Wisdom (Insight) DC of the group. If he failed the roll, I would narrate a telegraph, such as Ned sweating, or his eyes darting about nervously, or stammering, or something. Most often, that is sufficient for the players to make up their minds about whether or not their characters trust Ned, but if they wish to follow up on that tell in some way, they are welcome to tell me what they hope to learn and what their character does to try to glean that information (perhaps “watch carefully for other signs of nervousness,” or “press him further on the subject that made him nervous” or something) and I will resolve that action as I do all actions - by narrating the result if it has no reasonable chance of success or failure, or no consequence for failure, and calling for an appropriate ability check otherwise.

So you always rely on passive values? That's fine, I just want people to have a more active role in social situations.

 

[Oofta]

I’ll try to explain what I see as the difference. One is a player describing what their character does in the fiction. The other is a player describing what they themselves want to do at the table, i.e. roll a die.



“I attack” is a description of what a character is doing in the fiction and describes the same fictitious action that the first sentence does, just with less detail. An equivalent to your Insight example would be, “I make an Attack roll.”

This seems to me to just be a matter of style, a case of poe-tae-toe poe-tah-toe. In the case of insight (and a couple other skills) all the action is internal, there is no "action" per se (at least no visible action) which is why I don't care. In the case of insight checks, it's just shorthand, the same way I don't expect people to tell me every round what weapon they're attacking with unless they switch. I assume they have a default weapon that they use and if they switch from ranged to melee or vice versa they tell me. The only time I care is if they're using GWM or SS.

On a related note, it is funny that a side argument of rolling all the dice at the same time popped up. I prefer if people roll attack and damage at the same time. I even encourage them to use color-coded die so they can make multiple attacks as long as they are consistent (red is always the first attack, green the second for example) it saves time and keeps the action flowing.

Different people have different approaches to getting to the same result, I don't have a problem with that. I do have a bit of an issue with "only the DM calls for rolls in all circumstances" because I want some things to fade into the background so we can focus on story.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I'll echo some advice I've heard before here on ENWorld: Why would a player ask to make a specific ability check in 5e? Given that the 5e DMG points out that the DM should "Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure", a player requesting to make a specific ability check is asking for a chance to fail and thus harm the party in some way. Wouldn't the better play be for the player to describe what their character is doing and what they hope to accomplish - perhaps invoking a trait or a resource or a past experience that makes them particular good at the task they describe - in order to suggest to the DM that they should auto-succeed at the given task? Or at the very least have the DM grant them advantage or lower the DC because of their described approach? Just seems like a smart play. That's not to say you can't have fun in a game where the players call for rolls - its literally just not how the 5e gameplay was designed to run. So yeah, Angry is not wrong (except - and this is a big except for Angry - in his schticky, blatant under- and overtones of "badwrongfun", which only serves to turns people off to what is often very sound advice):

The line I was quoting from the blog post:
a player who asks the GM “can I make an Insight check” is not playing the game properly.

Context is kinda key to that quote, especially the first sentence:

Finally, the Core Mechanic very explicitly spells out that the rules for action resolution are TOOLS used by the GM to determine the outcome of ACTIONS chosen by the players. It may not seem like a big deal – because we all know that’s how it’s supposed to be anyway – but that wording is very useful to new GMs and new players. And some experienced players and GMs need to hear that too. Under these rules, a player who asks the GM “can I make an Insight check” is not playing the game properly. They are playing against the rules.​

Again, everyone should feel free to use the rules however you like as DM. But when that causes some issue or awkwardness at the table (like the cascade of player-invoked rolls to accomplish the same task mentioned previously, for example), just refer back to p6 of the PHB for the intended general flow of 5e play and to p237 of the DMG for the 5e designers' intent for how ability scores are to be used in play.

 

[5ekyu]

The line I was quoting from the blog post:

a player who asks the GM “can I make an Insight check” is not playing the game properly.​

There's no reason for Brog to be "visibly suspicious". Being suspicious is an internal mental state. Depending on the circumstances I might ask for Bob to make an opposed deception check.

Bob needs to communicate somehow that he's actively suspicious of Ned. The simplest (but certainly not only way) to do that is to ask if they can make an insight check.




So how would I know to give Brog an insight check but not Suiza?



It's never been an issue in any game I've ever DMed either. Some people keep bringing it up as a potential issue.



Which is where we fundamentally disagree. The PCs are the ones directly interacting with the world. If someone puts resources into being able to read people, I'm going to reward it.




So you always rely on passive values? That's fine, I just want people to have a more active role in social situations.

"-So you always rely on passive values? That's fine, I just want people to have a more active role in social situations."

Agreed. In my games - batting public one-offs for strangers - players are always the active.

 

[5ekyu]

I'll echo some advice I've heard before here on ENWorld: Why would a player ask to make a specific ability check in 5e? Given that the 5e DMG points out that the DM should "Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure", a player requesting to make a specific ability check is asking for a chance to fail and thus harm the party in some way. Wouldn't the better play be for the player to describe what their character is doing and what they hope to accomplish - perhaps invoking a trait or a resource or a past experience that makes them particular good at the task they describe - in order to suggest to the DM that they should auto-succeed at the given task? Or at the very least have the DM grant them advantage or lower the DC because of their described approach? Just seems like a smart play. That's not to say you can't have fun in a game where the players call for rolls - its literally just not how the 5e gameplay was designed to run. So yeah, Angry is not wrong (except - and this is a big except for Angry - in his schticky, blatant under- and overtones of "badwrongfun", which only serves to turns people off to what is often very sound advice):


Context is kinda key to that quote, especially the first sentence:

Finally, the Core Mechanic very explicitly spells out that the rules for action resolution are TOOLS used by the GM to determine the outcome of ACTIONS chosen by the players. It may not seem like a big deal – because we all know that’s how it’s supposed to be anyway – but that wording is very useful to new GMs and new players. And some experienced players and GMs need to hear that too. Under these rules, a player who asks the GM “can I make an Insight check” is not playing the game properly. They are playing against the rules.​

Again, everyone should feel free to use the rules however you like as DM. But when that causes some issue or awkwardness at the table (like the cascade of player-invoked rolls to accomplish the same task mentioned previously, for example), just refer back to p6 of the PHB for the intended general flow of 5e play and to p237 of the DMG for the 5e designers' intent for how ability scores are to be used in play.

"I'll echo some advice I've heard before here on ENWorld: Why would a player ask to make a specific ability check in 5e? Given that the 5e DMG points out that the DM should "Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure", a player requesting to make a specific ability check is asking for a chance to fail and thus harm the party in some way. "

That is where we fundamentally disagree and I believe there is a major difference in what we both see the rules saying.

If I as GM see a task as auto-success for a character, I will not ask the player to make a check barring some degree of success aspect at play.

That's just like your quite.

But, that quote does not say, nor will you find in the rules "if a player asks for a check, the hm must add a meaningful consequence of failure even if one did not exist before."

Do, nope the DMG does not say

"a player requesting to make a specific ability check is asking for a chance to fail and thus harm the party in some way. ""

It does not say that a player asking for a check means the GM has to make a consequence for failure.

Some GMs believe that is how it should be done, but that is just AFAIK just their own choice, not the rules in the DMG.

To me, this very notion of punish the player for asking for a check and advocating for the "tactic" of waiting etc is one of the big turn offs to that position. It comes across as a lot more adversarial GM posture than I myself enjoy on either side of the table.

To me its sort of a logic flaw - like elephants are mammals but mammals are not necessarily elephants.

So, nope, at my table the player asking for a check is not "asking to fail". The difficulty snd consequences of the outcome are the same, regardless of who asks.

Moreover, they do not know the DCs in some cases, so it's more than possible that they should not know that its automatic either way.

 

[DND_Reborn]

On a related note, it is funny that a side argument of rolling all the dice at the same time popped up. I prefer if people roll attack and damage at the same time. I even encourage them to use color-coded die so they can make multiple attacks as long as they are consistent (red is always the first attack, green the second for example) it saves time and keeps the action flowing.

I wouldn't call it an "argument" against rolling all the dice at once, just a preference. We tried it, and didn't find it really sped things up much. By switching to average damage instead, that worked better for us. The color-coded dice for multiple attacks might help and maybe we will give it a try.