D&D General If you had to choose between quality of story or combat

[Maxperson]

I said that you decided you get to narrate what happens in other people's games, in response to you narrating what happens in another person's game. The second quote about is quite clearly you declaring what did and didn't happen in a game you're not involved in, and the third quote is the specific wording I used in direct reply to it.

You do realize that you were responding in the thread and claiming that level 20 means X, Y and Z as statements about how the game is run. Those are statements about RAW. In that context your druid example was about RAW as it was given in support of your prior statements. I disagreed with that and provided the RAW for how hit points are run by default in 5e.

If you weren't trying to argue that 20th level PCs don't worry about mundane things, survive boulders and arrows, etc. as the default way 5e was run, you should have been clearer in your posts and said, "In my game we do it X, Y and Z."

Anyway, stop putting words in my mouth.

 

[AlViking]

Well, if you fail your perception check, the DM can tell you that you find a pulse!

You obviously don't know what you're talking about. That would be a medicine check!

Which on a side note can happen if you use your thumb to take a pulse because your thumb has it's own strong pulse - https://wellbx.com/can-you-use-your-thumb-for-pulse-why-its-a-mistake-for-accurate-readings. Now you know and knowing is half the battle!

 

[Coroc]

You obviously don't know what you're talking about. That would be a medicine check!

Which on a side note can happen if you use your thumb to take a pulse because your thumb has it's own strong pulse - https://wellbx.com/can-you-use-your-thumb-for-pulse-why-its-a-mistake-for-accurate-readings. Now you know and knowing is half the battle!

You need to be a dwarf for that if it is an earth elemental. Stone cunning, ya know?

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not misreading you; this idea that a character has to establish an SOP and the player has to be ready to justify any deviation from it is exhausting. The idea thta "This ornate, highly decorated door obviously has more risk than the others, so I'll spread out to open it" is not good enough, nor is "the three previous doors that I didn't stand back on all had traps that hurt us, maybe I should be more cautious going forward", the player will need to either be sure to show caution at doors their character was not that suspicious of to establish an SOP or argue about why they're playing their character the way they are.

If they don't see their rolls I can be confident they're doing it in character, so no problem - carry on. The players can have the same confidence, that they can proceed as they wish without having to silo player knowledge from character knowledge. Easier for all.

I guess if the player declares "I am doing this only because I saw the roll" you could have that situation, but frankly that seems more like someone reacting passive aggressively to an atmosphere of metagaming accusations than something a player enjoying the game would do. If they don't make that declaration, they could be doing it because the character has taken the cautious approach five times before and is bored of it, the character is overconfident after having succeeded a bunch earlier, or a host of other in-character things.

Sure, though the suspicion remains - why this time when they rolled high rather than last time when they rolled low? Hide the rolls and this whole problem goes away; and further, I don't need to worry about tracking SOP anywhere near as closely.

I also can't be bothered with a whole bunch of SOP tracking and motivation arguments if a player really is being silly and cocky in one instance on a door through metagaming, especially when they're metagaming for disadvantage.

They're not, though. They're metagaming for advantage: the high roll tells them in the metagame that for sure there's no trap, meaning they don't have to spend the in-character time and resources here that they otherwise might.

 

[Coroc]

If they don't see their rolls I can be confident they're doing it in character, so no problem - carry on. The players can have the same confidence, that they can proceed as they wish without having to silo player knowledge from character knowledge. Easier for all.

Sure, though the suspicion remains - why this time when they rolled high rather than last time when they rolled low? Hide the rolls and this whole problem goes away; and further, I don't need to worry about tracking SOP anywhere near as closely.

They're not, though. They're metagaming for advantage: the high roll tells them in the metagame that for sure there's no trap, meaning they don't have to spend the in-character time and resources here that they otherwise might.

mature players can absolutely decide between character knowledge and player knowledge though. at least in my group it is the gold standard amd we try best to rp accordingly

 

[Dessert Nomad]

I am no native English speaker but take pride in being able to communicate quite well in that language and even can think in English. At first i thought that by mistake, i used some so called loaded language because i seemed to constantly insult you with my very abstract posts.

I think you're reading a post that disagrees with you as me saying I 'feel insulted' by whatever I disagree with. In general, I don't. The specific post you're responding to was a reply to someone who was addressing me personally. I'm also not really sure why you're posting this as a reply to the post that you are.

Buddy, please try to understand, no one is trying to devalue your preferences of the game, or accusing you of anything, or narrating things out of your experiences at the table in another way than they really happened.

I literally quoted Maxperson doing just that in the post you're replying to. I'm not sure why you're denying something that's there in black and white (or whatever screen colors you use).

 

[Dessert Nomad]

If they don't see their rolls I can be confident they're doing it in character, so no problem - carry on. The players can have the same confidence, that they can proceed as they wish without having to silo player knowledge from character knowledge. Easier for all.

No, hidden rolls are massively more work. If I call for a roll, the player makes the roll and adds their own bonuses and any current modifiers. If I make a secret roll, I have to ask for their bonuses (because I'm not mentally tracking dozens of skill modifiers in my head) and whether they have any conditions that affect it, and also ask whether they're using any special abilities. It's just a crazy amount of extra work to possibly prevent something that I don't even care about.

Sure, though the suspicion remains - why this time when they rolled high rather than last time when they rolled low? Hide the rolls and this whole problem goes away; and further, I don't need to worry about tracking SOP anywhere near as closely.

By not worrying about it, I have no suspicion in the first place, I don't have to worry about tracking SOP at all, and I never have to argue about it. This just seems like an immense time and effort to put in to avoid PCs possibly spending one round less on opening a door than they would otherwise.

They're not, though. They're metagaming for advantage: the high roll tells them in the metagame that for sure there's no trap, meaning they don't have to spend the in-character time and resources here that they otherwise might.

How does 'spread out and open the door using no limited use abilities' actually use time and resources that 'stand close and open the door using no limited use abilities' doesn't? At most one or the other option will require most of the party to use one round to get to a particular position. Using a cantrip to try to open the door doesn't use up a spell slot or ammunition or anything else. It seems like either option is no resources and either no time or a single out of combat round at most.

That's part of what I don't get about all of the hand-wringing over possible metagame cheating, you're talking about two choices that probably take the same time, and if not are within a round of each other (depending on exactly where PCs were in the room), neither of which use up any limited use resources. The idea of worrying that PCs might spend 1 round more or less on non-combat activity just doesn't occur to me since I don't track time out of initiative that tightly under normal circumstances. If I was worried about six seconds out of combat time, I'd put the exploration in initiative order and actually run it round by round.

 

[Lanefan]

mature players can absolutely decide between character knowledge and player knowledge though. at least in my group it is the gold standard amd we try best to rp accordingly

Just because they can do it (and I'm less certain than you that they consistently can) doesn't mean IMO they should have to do it.

 

[Lanefan]

No, hidden rolls are massively more work. If I call for a roll, the player makes the roll and adds their own bonuses and any current modifiers. If I make a secret roll, I have to ask for their bonuses (because I'm not mentally tracking dozens of skill modifiers in my head) and whether they have any conditions that affect it, and also ask whether they're using any special abilities. It's just a crazy amount of extra work to possibly prevent something that I don't even care about.

That sounds like a system problem from here; it just shouldn't be that complicated. I know, close enough, the find-traps odds for the trap-finders in my game, and any modifiers to the roll are almost certain to be DM-side anyway to account for player-unknown variables in the specific situation.

How does 'spread out and open the door using no limited use abilities' actually use time and resources that 'stand close and open the door using no limited use abilities' doesn't? At most one or the other option will require most of the party to use one round to get to a particular position. Using a cantrip to try to open the door doesn't use up a spell slot or ammunition or anything else. It seems like either option is no resources and either no time or a single out of combat round at most.

Different systems. If they want to use magic to open the door in my game, that's a spell they won't be using for something else today. If they're really paranoid about the door they'll start using divinations, burning up more spells and more time (most divination spells in my game take 5 or 10 minutes to cast). If they want to use boots or feet to open it, that takes a bit of time and generates a lot of noise (and maybe hurts a bit if things go really wrong). If they want to get fancy and try taking the door off its hinges (if possible), that also takes time and may make some noise.

If the players meta-know it's not trapped by having seen that the find-nothing roll was 19, however, they can skip all this and save the in-character time and-or resources. I mean, doing so is clearly to their advantage, so why wouldn't they?

 

[Azzy]

You literally keep your old creature type. That indicates that the change is mostly just appearance.

No, it seems you're trying to generate a narrative meaning from a bit of abstracted game mechanics that exist for simplicity's sake where no such narrative meaning actually exists.