D&D General Just Eat the Dang Fruit

[DrunkonDuty]

Ah yes! The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. A much more interesting take.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So, start from you would eat the fruit. A save gets called for. Is it okay to act on the meta-knowledge of a save being asked for, or not?

Yes. Because it is a game and also because it is gently correcting the DM out of picking the low hanging fruit.

If one plans to use the trite 'you are betrayed via being offered food and drink so the players will learn to never trust anyone and thus ruin any roleplaying opportunities for the rest of the campaign' card with a character already designated to always blunder into eating fruit... put the poison in the cheese.

 

[ilgatto]

My fellow characters and I are exploring a lost city buried beneath the sands of a vast desert. Shortly into our first foray, we come across a well-appointed dining chamber and its occupant, a friendly and immaculately dressed fellow who invites us to partake of refreshment. He is joined by several servants who attend to us. Hospitality is big in the culture of this region, and though it's a bit odd that this dude and his servants are in this buried city, it's the first friendly face we've seen in a while.

Bowls of fruit and wine are brought out. My character, Brickyard Lot, has a flaw that reads: "If I see fruit, I eat it." This has notably gotten him into trouble before (and the party doesn't trust him with pocket goodberries). Anyway, naturally I'm eating the fruit before the bowls can be set down. "A wave of exhaustion washes over you," says the DM. "Make a Con save." I roll the dice and succeed, belching and happily continuing to eat.

The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake. Does anyone see any issue with this refusal? If so, what are the issues and how do you resolve them. If not, why not?

Let's consider another angle as well: Say my character has the aforementioned flaw, but isn't the first to eat the fruit. I witness another character make a saving throw after eating it. I then refuse to eat the fruit or drink the wine, despite the flaw. Does this change the calculation at all as to whether this is an issue that needs to be addressed?

This is exactly why I tell my players to roll d20 six times before the start of a session. I write down the results and can then use them (by covertly rolling d6 myself or picking one - oops, I said that out loud didn't I) in situations were rolling saving throws would alert the players. Fortunately, I rarely have to use them and I never use them in life-or-death situations.

 

[Charlaquin]

So my character sees someone eat fruit, be fine, and continue to eat fruit, and decide not to eat it? Because of out-of-character knowledge that a saving through was made?

This is why I don't like metagaming. Your character doesn't have that knowledge, why would you react like that?

Not hungry, don’t like fruit, generally suspicious of food they didn’t watch being prepared, just to name a few entirely plausible reasons. I see people eat fruit and don’t eat any myself all the time, for reasons entirely unrelated to suspecting it might be poisoned.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes. Because it is a game and also because it is gently correcting the DM out of picking the low hanging fruit.

I see what you did there

 

[MarkB]

The OP said: "The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake."

So, starting from the assumption that the single reason not to partake was having seen the need to roll a save. Let's take the OP at face value and move on from there so we can be discussing the same thing.

The OP also said that it was being offered by a stranger in the middle of a lost city, and that the DM had described a wave of exhaustion hitting their character, which sounds like something that would be perceptible to others, so if we take the OP at face value there are still warning signs.

So, start from you would eat the fruit. A save gets called for. Is it okay to act on the meta-knowledge of a save being asked for, or not?

Is it possible to not act upon it, if you were undecided up until that point? How do you ignore that when you were making a purely subjective decision in any case? Dismissing that information doesn't necessarily dismiss your suspicions, how do you try to judge how great a weight to place on those suspicions when you now know objectively that they are well-founded?

 

[Blue]

The OP also said that it was being offered by a stranger in the middle of a lost city, and that the DM had described a wave of exhaustion hitting their character, which sounds like something that would be perceptible to others, so if we take the OP at face value there are still warning signs.

Is it possible to not act upon it, if you were undecided up until that point? How do you ignore that when you were making a purely subjective decision in any case? Dismissing that information doesn't necessarily dismiss your suspicions, how do you try to judge how great a weight to place on those suspicions when you now know objectively that they are well-founded?

Stop dancing around the question. We can all say how clever you are, but at the end of the day the question under discussion in this thread is: is it okay for the player to change what their character would do because of something the character wouldn't know about.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Stop dancing around the question. We can all say how clever you are, but at the end of the day the question under discussion in this thread is: is it okay for the player to change what their character would do because of something the character wouldn't know about.

But who decides what the character does and does not know (or, rather, thinks they know)?

 

[MarkB]

Stop dancing around the question. We can all say how clever you are, but at the end of the day the question under discussion in this thread is: is it okay for the player to change what their character would do because of something the character wouldn't know about.

How about you also answer my question: If you hadn't already firmly decided what your character would do, how is it possible to completely discount that information when making your decision?

If it's a straightforward situation where there's absolutely no reason for suspicion, and someone my character trusts is handing out fruit, sure my character will take some even if it means ignoring that out-of-character knowledge. Heck, the last session I played in involved willingly dining with a character that we knew OOC and strongly suspected IC to be a vampire. But it's not metagaming to have your character be suspicious of a situation that is inherently suspect.

 

[iserith]

How about you also answer my question: If you hadn't already firmly decided what your character would do, how is it possible to completely discount that information when making your decision?

If it's a straightforward situation where there's absolutely no reason for suspicion, and someone my character trusts is handing out fruit, sure my character will take some even if it means ignoring that out-of-character knowledge. Heck, the last session I played in involved willingly dining with a character that we knew OOC and strongly suspected IC to be a vampire. But it's not metagaming to have your character be suspicious of a situation that is inherently suspect.

Did the host ask you to wash your neck before dinner?

 

[Charlaquin]

Stop dancing around the question. We can all say how clever you are, but at the end of the day the question under discussion in this thread is: is it okay for the player to change what their character would do because of something the character wouldn't know about.

Where in the opening post does it say the players changed what their characters would do? That sounds like an assumption you’re bringing to the table.

 

[MarkB]

Did the host ask you to wash your neck before dinner?

No, but it was all rich, hearty food.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My fellow characters and I are exploring a lost city buried beneath the sands of a vast desert. Shortly into our first foray, we come across a well-appointed dining chamber and its occupant, a friendly and immaculately dressed fellow who invites us to partake of refreshment. He is joined by several servants who attend to us. Hospitality is big in the culture of this region, and though it's a bit odd that this dude and his servants are in this buried city, it's the first friendly face we've seen in a while.

Bowls of fruit and wine are brought out. My character, Brickyard Lot, has a flaw that reads: "If I see fruit, I eat it." This has notably gotten him into trouble before (and the party doesn't trust him with pocket goodberries). Anyway, naturally I'm eating the fruit before the bowls can be set down. "A wave of exhaustion washes over you," says the DM. "Make a Con save." I roll the dice and succeed, belching and happily continuing to eat.

The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake. Does anyone see any issue with this refusal? If so, what are the issues and how do you resolve them. If not, why not?

Let's consider another angle as well: Say my character has the aforementioned flaw, but isn't the first to eat the fruit. I witness another character make a saving throw after eating it. I then refuse to eat the fruit or drink the wine, despite the flaw. Does this change the calculation at all as to whether this is an issue that needs to be addressed?

I think if the DM wants to be that trigger-happy, then he's dug his own grave and needs to lie in it. If he really wanted to get everyone, he should have had a poison which took a few minutes to kick in. There's an old saying involving a young bull and an old bull, which I think applies here but is perhaps not Eric's Grandma-proof.

So it's a learning experience for him.

It's not like the players had all said "I'm eating the fruit" then changed to "Uh nope". It's a just a trigger-happy DM getting what's coming to him.

 

[aco175]

Every time I want to get the players going I place a rug on the table with the minis. Then, when the fight starts, I do not have monsters cross the rug at first and ask the players questions like, "When you charge, do you cross the rug.", or "Show me how you move to the monster." Nobody now goes need the tile of a bearskin rug since it has a pit on the other side.

 

[Jahydin]

And I would never take control of the characters away from the players and tell them they did something. I would talk to the players about not acting on meta like we discussed back in Session 0, but never override what a player said the character was doing (absent charm magic or the like).

So in this situation:

PC: "I finish the troll off with fire."
DM: "Now, now, be aware of using meta knowledge"
PC: "Okay.... so I light my torch."

Would you still allow them to use fire?

If you say yes, you allow meta.
If you say no, then that's pretty much the same thing I said, right? "You're doing this unless you have a good reason not to."

 

[Jahydin]

The more I think about it, the more I realize what a great setup this situation is.

1. The PC roleplayed his fault perfectly; good for him!
2. The reward for that is tipping off the other players something's wrong with the food. Cool way to get some lemonade form the lemon.
3. Players were engaged enough to notice the roll and cared enough to react to it.

Just seems like an absolute downer, after that great exchange, to be like, "You will eat the poison and you will like it!"

 

[jmartkdr2]

So in this situation:

PC: "I finish the troll off with fire."
DM: "Now, now, be aware of using meta knowledge"
PC: "Okay.... so I light my torch."

Would you still allow them to use fire?

If you say yes, you allow meta.
If you say no, then that's pretty much the same thing I said, right? "You're doing this unless you have a good reason not to."

Honestly I hate this example because trolls, as written, are stupidly designed. There’s no clue about how they work other than fire being a classic anti-regen source because it’s ongoing damage.

 

[Blue]

Where in the opening post does it say the players changed what their characters would do? That sounds like an assumption you’re bringing to the table.

I quoted it directly in the post you are responding to. "but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake."

This is not an equivocal statement. Because of X, they Y. The OP is directly stating a cause and effect.

Even if he was wrong, it's still the point he wants to discuss in this post. So treat it as true and discuss it, not jump through hoops trying to avoid answering a simple question.

OP: "The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake. Does anyone see any issue with this refusal? If so, what are the issues and how do you resolve them. If not, why not?"

 

[Blue]

But who decides what the character does and does not know (or, rather, thinks they know)?

Just to make sure, you are now claiming that one character knows the DM called for another character to make a save?

I think we all know that the character doesn't know that. So the answer to your question in this particular case is EVERYONE INCLUDING YOU.

Why are you trying so hard to avoid answering the OP's question? He put out a scenario where he says because of the roll, the others didn't partake. Not anything about they were unsure, or already suspicious. He's pretty clear in his writing. That's what they created the thread to discuss. At best you are saying "I think you misread your table so I won't give an answer" - how is that adding to the discussion?

Why not just assume in good faith the OP knows better than you what happened at his own table, and answer the question they are asking instead of trying to dodge it?

 

[Clint_L]

I quoted it directly in the post you are responding to. "but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake."

This is not an equivocal statement. Because of X, they Y. The OP is directly stating a cause and effect.

Even if he was wrong, it's still the point he wants to discuss in this post. So treat it as true and discuss it, not jump through hoops trying to avoid answering a simple question.

OP: "The food and drink is offered to my comrades, of course, but having seen me need to roll a save, nobody wants to partake. Does anyone see any issue with this refusal? If so, what are the issues and how do you resolve them. If not, why not?"

Thinking about this more, my real issue would be that I was potentially playing with a lame group. Why don't they want to follow story logic? Because something bad might happen to their character? It's a story. Something bad happening to your character adds drama and tension. It creates an interesting situation. Cheating to avoid it just seems lame.

I guarantee you that every player in my two home groups wouldn't think twice about this situation. They would laugh and then try to have their character do what they would naturally do, and see what happened next.