D&D General "I make a perception check."

[Maxperson]

Easy, right? Now all that's left is to determine if the process by which the DM is managing these things is coherent and predictable by the players (so they can make informed decisions), which appears to be what is being discussed more or less. The examples, however, aren't helping.

Can you give an example of how the examples aren't helping? I think I'm a bit confused.

 

[tetrasodium]

Depends on what table you are picturing. Which was @iserith's point about examples.

I think I might have declared the table an autofail (dunno). I might do so because I'm not picturing an ogre's kitchen to be the kind of thing with a fancy table cloth to hide the blindingly out of place heavily armed & armored creature hiding beneath the table from casual view. If I did though I also described how a PC could likely autosucceed & maybe even gather some info by hiding under the cloak of an expected normal mundane event. I can't run stealth like I do and run it for adam west batman level shenanigans while still resulting in some level of verisimilitude & cohesion in the world.

 

[Maxperson]

So "other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"

Determining what is an autofail and what is an autosuccess is itself pretty hard to do.

I have had 2 people in this thread tell me that hiding under a table is an autofail on stealth. Where I think that a person skilled in stealth should be able to do it, or at least have a shot at it.

It really depends on the table and the room. I've seen tables that are really thin on top with 4 really thin legs and nothing blocking the view of it. I don't care if you are +400, you aren't hiding under that table successfully. I've also seen tables with thick legs and with table cloths that drop down halfway to the floor or even all the way to the floor. You can hide there no problem with a successful roll. Lighting also matters.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Way back on like page 16 you told me your process of play:

okay and I am going to (slightly) try to make this short

And I said that we had the exact same process of play except that you left out a step. The step you left out was "Determine advantage/disadvantage based on the circumstances".

yeah becuse my game more runs as an ongoing conversation not as a strick give an take and sometimes players themselves are doing thing were I am little more then a passive observer until something comes up I am needed for it is hard for me to break down an exact 'process' for my play so yes I did miss that sometimes (lighting, weather, you pissed off the god of luck*, what ever) there is need for advantage disadvantage

* if I had a nickel for every time my party some how found away to anger a god I would have a few dollars... and that doesn't sound like much but you would think it wouldn't even in 30 years come up that often

There are two things we disagree about, but only by degree.

99% of this thread is about where we (not me and you but all of us) draw lines... I allow short table jargon and skill names others don't but rare (if any) require a full 100% break down of how they do things.

First, I am more likely to grant advantage or disadvantage than you are although keep in mind my preferred system is 3e so in 3e I have a lot more levers to pull to represent small bonuses or penalties.

yeah i said up thread the longer the edition goes on the stingier I get with adv/disav

Second, we disagree on how much the character can make choices on behalf of the player.

I think I know what you mean, but I am not sure I would use those words... but okay.

Your logic is built around, "The character is smart and skilled and they would know better than to do that." I don't disagree completely in that I do agree that the character often knows more about certain things than the player, I just don't believe you can have the character making the choices to the degree you seem to prefer without big tradeoffs in player agency and story reification that I personally feel harm the game more than stretching the idea of "testing character rather than player" as far as you do help.

I am yet to find an example where player agency is impacted... I very rarely don't allow someone to try something (see wall of force) but I do ever so often need to make sure both of us understand the scene and what they are declairing... now in the thread I normally default to making sure they didn't misunderstand me but as often I am making sure I didn't misunderstand them (like when I thought the guy wanted to seduce the door)

For example, you are really concerned about "automatic pass" or "automatic fail" based on adjudication of declared actions. And that happens in my game probably less than many of the games you are happy to play.

since I am pretty big on auto pass auto fail I would NOT be suprised if I used it more then you do... we some times go more then 1 session with 0 dice rolled.

For example, you mention that you play in a game were the house rule is "If you touch the lava you die." So in that game, all action declarations that result in you touching the lava are automatic fails. No one regardless of circumstances can run across the surface of a lava lake. So you are actually OK with "automatic fails" you just have quirks of when you are OK with them.

I again have no issue... my issue is the "wait what do you mean I died I am immune to fire" surprise (and no I can't do justice to the house rule because it is not mine nor do I fully agree to it but that DM does have his stated reasons)

I'm really not OK with them at all. One of the goals of my house rules is to remove all absolute statements from the rules and replace them with quantities. So a Fire Giant isn't immune to fire damage, they just reduce damage by 50. It's actually possible to burn a Fire Elemental in my game if you are a good enough pyromancer because my game doesn't have automatic fails, just actions which are impossibly hard for ordinary people but not for heroes with that schtick. With enough diplomacy you can talk an NPC into just about anything, it's just really really hard.

sounds fine to me...

And I think if you think about it, there are some diplomacy proposition that normally should be so hard that most people that attempt them couldn't succeed.

yes, and I 100% am even... you know what lets wait it comes up later but for now yes I agree

It's quite possible in my game to walk up to the BBEG at the end of the adventure, chastise him for his flaws and convince him to commit suicide.

well I have never done a 'suicide' I have had players get them to surrender without a fight.

I will allow that attempt and give it a chance of success. It's just that the difficulty of that is so high that most characters will fail on even a natural 20, because most people aren't suicidal and don't want to die. Now you say that you don't like the idea of "automatic fails", but I'd guess that if a PC in your party started saying, "I'm go up to the NPC and convince them to commit suicide" you'd make the difficulty that plan higher than normal.

no... again I am fine with "The probability isn't hard its a no" as an answer... I don't know why people think I am not.
my thing is that if it is possible, then you can roll.
no search of an empty room even a 5,000 investigation check just shows...it's still empty.

(and yes that hallway did dead end after 30ft)

And I think with experience with the proposition you'd start coming around to my way of thinking that it's really hard in the general case. You can't walk up to Tiamat as merely a 10th level face and get even a 5% chance on rolling a Nat 20 of making her feel so much remorse that she commits suicide. Yet, it's not an automatic fail in my game.

any attempt to talk any (not already suicidal) god into jsut committing suicide would be an auto fail in my games. even for a 40th level face

Are we on the same page? That is do we agree that some plans are more difficult than others?

yup... I can even tell you sometimes my players seem to go out of there way to MAKE plans harder then they have to be...

"Just to be clear, you are going to use 3 spell slots, and 6 hours of labor, you are going to tunnel up to the surface then back down into the room infront of you... the one you hear nothing in, have no reason to suspect has anything in... instead of opening the door" "Yes" "Okay, so 6 hours later..." (not real but not something out of character that could happen)

Is it harder to climb a wall of ice than a rough natural wall of stone with many good handholds? Is it harder to climb a wall of ice than a ladder? If we agree about that, then I suggest that social encounters are no different. Some plans and some outcomes are easier than others.

nothing I said ever implied (or at least meant to) that all DCs are the same... convincing the cook to let you by is WAY easier then convincing the captain of the guard.

So first of all, I'm not sure you are using "immersion" correctly there. I feel more like you mean "suspension of disbelief" and not immersion. Yes, breaking a player's suspension of disbelief will also break their immersion and take them out of the game, but the two concepts are different.

i will agree... it breaks my suspension of disbelief and that breaking will break my immersion. I just skiped to the point that said immersion is broken.

Secondly, I don't have those three options at all. In my game the proposition, "I jump over the Atlantic Ocean" is going to fail for most characters, but they will still roll a check.

same...

Most characters will only get a few dozen feet into the Atlantic Ocean and will miss success by a million feet or so, but you do understand that even though they had no chance of success that's not the same as failure by DM fiat.

yup right with you

They are just trying to do something that the rules say is really really hard and their character sheet doesn't say, "You can jump better than most gods" because they aren't wearing "700 hundred league boots" or something.

yeah I don't even know what sort of bonus I would have to give to make it even in range of possibility

In my game there is only "Roll a Check" and my job as the DM is to assign a difficulty to that check that doesn't break suspension of disbelief and creates a coherent universe where things work basically how you'd imagine they work.

100% agree

If I assign a difficulty to "I jump over the Atlantic Ocean" that gives characters like a 10% chance of doing that, it will break suspension of disbelief.

again I can't imagine it even with the most broken magic items.

So I regret this example, not because it isn't a valid example but because my intention with this example is to communicate something I though most reasonable people would agree is an unreasonable plan. And you've actually leaned in and suggested that you consider this plan perfectly reasonable. But OK fine, without validating the reasonableness of this as a plan, let's consider the situation:

I think you misunderstand. I am perfectly fine with "slapping the queen wont work" I am not okay with AFTER you force the player to say SOMETHING you say what they said was dumb and makes the situation worse...

now if someone (skipping the not knowing what to say and just wanting to roll to consul her entirely) out of the blue declared it I would ask questions. I would allow the action, but I would make sure that the whole table was on the same page as to the most likely outcome...

on the other hand "I want to use a cha skill to get her to calm down" is a perfectly fine declaration as well to me

a) It's possible that the setting is highly sexist and slapping sense into women is something that has a societal expectation around it that is very different than the modern day.
b) On the other hand, it's a Queen we are talking about here that you are potentially publicly embarrassing and who probably has never had a person lay hands on her in her life and who probably has a law that makes it high treason to do so. She maybe had some designated person to hit in the event someone felt she needed punishment.
c) Whatever happens, this is going to big time change the relationship between the PC and the queen. This is for lack of a better word, a very personal moment. The Queen has to decide whether she's going to say, "Off with his head", in a way that consoling her in a much less dramatic fashion wouldn't. She may have to give a special dispensation or even lie on behalf of the character to keep him alive. And she's risking her reputation, her vanity, and even her authority by letting a character get away with this. Not to mention it may hurt and make her angry.

yup... and I would make sure before the action went through the player understood that (unless for some reason he was playing an idiot that always did dumb things like this... if it was apattern after a bit I would just go with 'are you sure' and after that for a bit just except he is playing it that way)

Doesn't that make sense? Doesn't that seem reasonable?

mostly... and as I said the problem is when it starts with "I don't know what to do or say" leads to being told just say something... then the something is wrong, auto fail or makes the situation worse...

and again as you point out not only did it work in the movie but I am sure some game it might have too.

Now I know there is a lot here we haven't addressed. There is too much going on here to address everything. I can imagine a lot of your objections. Yes, especially with a new player, I'm going to first explain to them the rules I am going to use to adjudicate the action and if the action is especially risky and the player doesn't seem to realize that I may decide to try to pass them some information that I think a character in their position would reasonably know in an attempt to not ever have a "gotcha" moment. But if the player is going to play his character those times need to be kept to a minimum, because sooner or later that ends up just with the GM telling the player how to play.

I (almost**) never tell someone how to play. I do make sure we are all on the same page though from time to time.

((** there are things not allowed at my games, and as such things I will tell you NO! your character cann not take that action even if it is physically possible)))

 

[GMforPowergamers]

tf, dude?

Max asked "Is there any reason a 1st level wizard shouldn't be able to think to look behind a bookshelf?"

I opined that thinking a 1st level wizard shouldn't be able to think to look behind a bookshelf, or that gating that idea behind a roll, comes off as the style of game play where we require players to try to handicap their own thinking by some arbitrary amount, pretending to be ignorant. And that this doesn't work well.

Where do you get this "PRETEND TO BE DUMB!!!" nonsense?

becuse as I keep saying... "You look behind the book case what is your (insert proper skill for edition)" is not tell them they can not look behind the book case.

now if the answer is -1... and I say "okay roll that" and they roll a 3 for a moddified 2 and I say "You don't see anything" and later another player looks I ask the same and they say +7 and I say "oh your prof you auto pass a DC 8, amnd find the door" I didn't take agency from a player or tell them how to play

 

[Maxperson]

becuse as I keep saying... "You look behind the book case what is your (insert proper skill for edition)" is not tell them they can not look behind the book case.

Why do I need a skill, though? I'm pulling the book case out so that I can clearly see the wall and the door behind it. What is the roll for?

 

[Mort]

It really depends on the table and the room. I've seen tables that are really thin on top with 4 really thin legs and nothing blocking the view of it. I don't care if you are +400, you aren't hiding under that table successfully. I've also seen tables with thick legs and with table cloths that drop down halfway to the floor or even all the way to the floor. You can hide there no problem with a successful roll. Lighting also matters.

Sure,

But my point is - the table is just a fixture - it's something that happens to be in the room. The player of the high stealth character should be told (because his character is trained in stealth) IF hiding under it is an autofail - not have to find out the hard way.

Which is why, IMO, the player saying "I hide in the room - using the best means available.." is fine.

Yet I've been told (in this very thread) that that's not specific enough, the player must declare something like "I hide under the table..." or "I hide behind the door..." or whatever. Now if the DM takes either of those statements and just goes with it (the actual statement doesn't matter just that the player made it) then great.

But I've also been told, that some DMs would consider one or both of those statements an autofail regardless of the character's stealth skill. And I have a problem with that - unless the DM makes the fictional positioning SO clear that there are no misunderstandings and the player actually has a good option they can take (or at the very least is 100% aware that there are no good stealth options and tries something else).

 

[Maxperson]

But my point is - the table is just a fixture - it's something that happens to be in the room. The player of the high stealth character should be told (because his character is trained in stealth) IF hiding under it is an autofail - not have to find out the hard way.

Well, yeah. Assuming you didn't have an int of 6 or lower(and I'd give you a roll if you did), I'd just tell you that you know it won't work.

Which is why, IMO, the player saying "I hide in the room - using the best means available.." is fine.

I have described the room and assuming the players were paying attention, the know there's a couch, a closet and the door. They probably won't suggest the table, but if they do I will let them know that it won't work and they will just give me the next option

Yet I've been told (in this very thread) that that's not specific enough, the player must declare something like "I hide under the table..." or "I hide behind the door..." or whatever. Now if the DM takes either of those statements and just goes with it (the actual statement doesn't matter just that the player made it) then great.

But I've also been told, that some DMs would consider one or both of those statements an autofail regardless of the character's stealth skill. And I have a problem with that - unless the DM makes the fictional positioning SO clear that there are no misunderstandings and the player actually has a good option they can take (or at the very least is 100% aware that there are no good stealth options and tries something else).

If after I said it won't work, the player tells me he hides under the table anyway, it will autofail regardless of stealth skill. As for the door, the player will get a roll, but if someone walks into the room he's probably automatically going to be seen. You can't hide while in plain view of someone. If on the other hand the NPC just peeks his head into the room and scans, there's a good chance that the one behind the door will get away with it.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I think, yet again, people are getting hung up on examples where everyone is reading their own context into it. We don't need examples to discuss this stuff. It simply makes things more confusing.

okay but I don't think this is going to end this... lets try

• Some actions are automatically successful - they are trivially easy with no chance of failure.
• Some actions automatically fail - they are perhaps impossible.
• Other actions have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. In this case, we roll.
• If we roll, we must set a DC and decide whether there is advantage or disadvantage or neither.

Those are the rules.

100% agree

In order to arrive at a DC and determine whether there is advantage or disadvantage, we must have some sense of the character's approach to their goal.

hard disagree. that information can (especially in some circumstances) be helpful but it is not an always needed thing...

traps by default have DCs, stealth goes against passive perception (most times) active perception goes against stealth (most times) and lots of times we can set DCs based 100% on environment and situation.

Some are fine with assuming what the character is doing.

I mean as long as it is somewhat clear... it's not like I assume I know how the PC investigates the blank void before I describe the setting, or how the PC seduces the door...

A subset of those folks are also okay with the DM describing what the character does for the player. Others, like me, minimize that as much as possible because describing what the character does is the player's role, again, per the rules.

and again where I am sure some DMs describe what the characters do (and they seem to love streaming and that is why o don't watch much steaming cause I want to yell you can't tell the player what there character does) but the crux (for me at least) is still the how you declare not can the DM puppet the PC

Easy, right? Now all that's left is to determine if the process by which the DM is managing these things is coherent and predictable by the players (so they can make informed decisions), which appears to be what is being discussed more or less. The examples, however, aren't helping.

I'm not sure what can help... no matter how many times I tell you I don't take control or agency from players (unless magic mind cotrol) you don't believe me.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

It's easy to determine in the context of an actual game. It's not easy to determine on the forums, particularly as the point of an example is usually to prove the other person wrong, not to illustrate someone's position.

right on this I 100% agree the context of teh table matters