I think I may not have made myself clear. I’m not saying a passive check is fundamentally the same as a rolled check. I’m saying that complaining because the DM ruled that your action should be resolved with a passive check instead of a rolled one is fundamentally the same as complaining because your DM rules that your action should be resolved with a Dex save instead of a Dex (Acrobatics) check. It is the DM’s role to determine how to resolve actions, and yes, that decision will necessarily mean that some of your character’s features won’t be applicable (and others will), depending on the mechanic.
But the DM doesn't get to rule when Dex saves happen. The Game Rules say that. If the DM suddenly said "The orc swings his axe, make a dexterity saving throw!" I'd be more than a little confused, because the rules for an attack say that the orc should be targeting my AC.
Honestly, I've never heard of any situation where a player's action was resolved with a dex save, because dex saves represent dodging and you can't take an action that allows you to dodge an attack via a Dex Save. So, I don't see the correlation at all. And if a DM said "Okay, make a dexterity saving throw to swing on the chandelier" I very much would say, "Um... do you mean an Acrobatics check? Because Dex Saves don't work that way" and if the DM insisted that they get to decide how to resolve actions, so they decided it was a dex save, I would in fact be more than a little miffed at them.
Well they can’t exactly know if there’s something notable in the room without searching, at least not for sure. Though, with proper use of telegraphing, they should at least be able to make a reasonable educated guess. Sometimes they’ll be wrong and end up missing something noteworthy, or end up spending time searching for something that isn’t there. That’s how it goes sometimes. Time pressure, such as from regular rolls for complications, help keep the latter to a minimum.
Okay, so previously you said you have no idea if there is anything notable or important in the room. You zeroed in on clues thinking I was stating you set up a mystery. Now you are flipping back, the players are going to search because they don't know.
So, back to the question I asked. If there is nothing noteworthy in the room, why aren't you telling your players there is nothing noteworthy, instead of having them waste their time searching? Especially since you have a time pressure and if they knew there was nothing in here, they wouldn't bother.
Second question. If there is something noteworthy in the room, then you should know it exists, correct? So why is it you can't know what they may want to find, since you know what is worth finding in the room? And if you are about to type "I don't know" then why do you not know? Because frankly, I do not understand this style of gaming where the DM has no knowledge of anything going on.
That’s very strange to me. If you can find someone just by surveying the area they’re in with your eyes, they aren’t exactly very well hidden, are they? Like, I have to imagine you’ve played hide and seek at some point in your life, right? Even children playing games generally catch on that to hide successfully, you need to conceal yourself within or behind things, so that anyone looking for them will have to go to some manner of effort to find them. At least changing their position at an absolute minimum.
And yet, I have found people by looking around the room, noticing what has been changed or moved, or seeing a shadow move, without having to start moving anything.
Literally the only thing I’ve been saying I don’t know is whether or not something is important. I know all kinds of information about what’s in the space. I don’t know which bits of that information will end up being important and which ones won’t. I just set up the parameters, it’s the players’ job to make what they will of them.
How can you not know what is important? To me, it is sounding like the players are telling you what is going in the scene, not the other way around. Can you explain this because all I can imagine is the players looking at an item they found off a random chart, explaining the story they just made up about why that item is important, and then you writing it down and making that the truth of the situation. But I have to be wrong about that, right?
Their plan was to try and find the goblin by looking for it with their eyeballs, right? They did get to try that. I ruled that it would be resolved with a passive Wisdom (Perception) check.
Would you tell the bard not to bother giving the fighter inspiration for the roll, since there would be no roll?
Then it doesn’t seem to me like a monster-infested dungeon or treacherous wilderness is a place you would want to spend much time in.
Not every monster-infested dungeon or treacherous wilderness tries to kill you every 10 minutes on the dot, to force you to continue moving from the safe zone you just created.
They absolutely get a chance to make an ability check. First of all, they get to make a special kind of ability check (called a passive ability check), which doesn’t involve any dice rolls. Additionally, depending on their actions, they have a chance to find the trap without even needing to make an ability check, or they might have to make an ability check to determine if they find it or not. Or, they might fail to find it and end up triggering it, though that’s relatively unlikely unless they fail to pick up on the trap’s telegraph. And even in that case, I would first narrate what they observe in the moment they trigger the trap, and depending on their actions, they might avoid any negative effects of the trap without having to make a saving throw. Or, in the absolute worst case scenario, they’ll at least get to make a save to try and avoid it. They really have every opportunity to avoid being harmed by the trap; it all comes down to their decisions, and maybe some dice rolls as necessary to resolve any outstanding uncertainty.
They have plenty of opportunity to find and avoid it, as illuminated above. Yes, it is possible for them to fall into it, but only after passing several layers of contingency designed to produce outcomes that feel fair, even in the cases where they are undesirable.
Okay, this directly contradicts what you said before. If when they declare they are moving to the center of the room to look for traps, you allow them to roll a wisdom check to try and find the trap in the center of the room before triggering it, then there is no issue. Previously, you said that it would trigger.
Now, if instead you are saying that they had the chance to take a DIFFERENT action that would have given them the chance to find the trap, but moving to the center of the room triggers it regardless, then you are ignoring my point.
Searching an entire room is not what I would consider reasonably specific. A whole room is rather more complex than a single wardrobe, so I’m going to need a bit more specificity to form an accurate mental picture of the action. I mean, take that hypothetical room with a trap that activates if you stand in the center of it. If I’m to assume you thoroughly search (by way of what you would call investigation) the entire room, I have to figure you would most likely move to the center of the room at some point in that process, right? But just imagine if I were to resolve the action accordingly:
“While searching the room, at some point you step on the trap in the center, and…”
“Wait! I didn’t say I stand in the center of the room, I just said I search it!”
And you know what? That would be a perfectly reasonable protest! Because “search the room” is not reasonably specific. I can’t really make a good estimation of whether or not you would step on the trap. So, I need the player to tell me what they are doing so I can make a good estimation of the outcome.
See, this makes me think that with the above, you really were saying that they could take a different action.
Searching a single room is more complex than searching a single container, but it is still reasonably specific. I can easily picture someone searching an entire room. In fact, I bet I could send you multiple videos of it happening, it is rather trivial.
But, that isn't the uncertainty you have. The uncertainty you have is whether or not the trap was activated before they find it. So, if there were no traps in the room, is searching the entire room a reasonable action? You don't need to worry about whether or not they trigger the trap after all.
And, since there is uncertainty in the outcome of the action... doesn't this just mean the dice get rolled? If they roll low, they stepped on the trap first, if they rolled high they found the trap first. That seems perfectly within how the rules of the game are supposed to work. If you are worried about the player complaining, then all you have to do is say "I'll let you roll, but if you roll low you will be exposed to any hazards in the room, as a consequence of not spotting them before dealing with them." And if the player still agrees to roll, then they can't turn around and complain, because you told them that would happen.
They don’t have to guess. If they have already established a part of their backstory that seems relevant, they can lean on that. If not, or if they want to establish a new element of their backstory, they can make one up. Those are perfectly valid options.
They don't have to guess AS LONG AS YOU REMEMBERED to tell them the symbol is from their backstory.
And if they are making it up, they can't make it up based on it being from Tyr, unless they know it is from Tyr.
I would tell them it reminds them of something they saw in Tyr. That enables them to be the one to say “Thinking back to my time in Tyr, I try to remember where I recognize it from and what it is.” It’s like the the knowledge check equivalent of a telegraph.
I would probably say something along the lines of “it sounds like you want to rely on your memory from Tyr to try and identify the sigil, and you want to add your Arcana proficiency if a check is necessary. Do I have that right?” Assuming they responded in the affirmative, I would either give them the rest of the information or call for an Intelligence check, noting that they are welcome to add that Arcana proficiency. Which option I would go with is hard to say confidently from the available context. Depends on what has already been established about their backstory and how likely they would have been to have come across the sigil based on those established details. I suppose, since it was mentioned before that mentioning having lived in Tyr would have been an auto-success, I’ll stand by that and say yes, they would succeed without a roll.
And this I think gets back to the point.
If a player says "I think back to my Arcane Studies" they will likely get a roll. But if they say "I think back to my Arcane Studies in Tyr" they may auto-succeed... but then they may fail other checks, because being from Tyr there are things they would never see. So the best move would be to be as vague as possible, because that allows you to roll, while never locking you out of succeeding.
Or, you get the other method, where they say "I think back to my Arcane Studies in Tyr" then later say "While in Tyr, there was an adjunct professor from Evermeet" and then even later "While in Tyr, while in the class with the adjunct professor from Evermeet, I met a student who had come from Silverymoon." Followed by "While in Tyr, while in the class with the adjunct professor from Evermeet, with the student who had come from Silverymoon, we had a rival who specialized in Diabolic studies."
And at the end of the day, you have this convoluted set of circumstances that basically boils down to the same general thing the other player said "I think back to my Arcane Studies".
Frankly? I got annoyed with players who constantly made up new random things, because they did so seeking advantage on the check, and it was also specific to this situation, but still general enough that they could make up something new for the next situation. I don't ban people from making up those details, but we mostly do it after the roll if we need to, or just go with the backstory they created before we started.
Ehh… nah, that’s not really my intent. I aim to enable on-the-fly character development, not to force characters’ backstories into a box.
Which is basically what I assumed.
