D&D 5E Modeling Uncertainty

[ClearlyTough69]

I've yet to see an explanation/mechanic for how that can be done, in a way that correlates to the ability scores of the character, solely through secret rolls and DM narration. Or through a single roll. I'd love to see a simpler, more elegant solution than the one I proposed.

I really liked the idea behind your post and it got me thinking...

I don't know if this is either simpler or more elegant, but it might spur more ideas.
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Assessment and confidence

When you attempt to affect the world around you, you might not know immediately how successful your attempt was. The DM will use this mechanic to determine your own assessment of your success, and how much confidence you have in your assessment. The mechanic uses the term degree of success/ failure. This is the difference between your check result and the DC or the contesting check result; it measures how well you succeeded or how badly you failed in the check, and it can't be negative.

Your assessment of your attempt
The DM will determine your assessment score as follows:
• If you succeeded on the original skill check, your assessment score is d20 + your degree of success.
• If you failed, your assessment score is d20 - your degree of success.

If your assessment score is at least 10, you have made a correct assessment of your attempt; otherwise you get it wrong.

[Analysis: the greater the margin by which your check succeeds, the more likely you are to make an accurate assessment of how well you have done. Conversely, the greater the margin by which your check fails, the more likely you are to make an inaccurate assessment, and think you succeeded when in fact you failed.]

Your confidence in your assessment
The DM may also choose to tell you how confident your are in your assessment. He determines your confidence as follows:
• Your confidence score is d20 + your degree of success or failure (remember that if you failed, this is still a positive number)

The DM will compare your confidence score to the following table to determine how confident you are in your assessment.

Score Confidence
<10 No confidence
10 Have a hunch
13 Fairly sure
16 Very sure
19 Absolutely certain

[Analysis: the greater your margin of success or failure, the more certain you will be of your assessment. If you succeeded well, you will certain that you succeeded; if you failed horribly, you are quite likely to think that you succeeded admirably. This has the pleasing side effect that players whose characters have low skill modifiers are less likely to jump on the bandwagon of saying, 'me too!' when their peers do not succeed (conclusively) on their skill checks]

Your DM will use these scores to tell you if you think you succeeded or failed, and how sure you are about this.

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I have also played around with applying judgement modifiers that allow characters with high Intelligence or Wisdom to be better able at judging their success and being more realistic in their confidence, but have kept this out for the time being.

In my next post, I'll work through your example of using Insight to determine whether someone is lying.

 

[ClearlyTough69]

Before I have a crack at an example, I wanted to address one point in your post:

in a way that correlates to the ability scores of the character

In the proposed mechanic, the ability score of the character (and his proficiency for that matter) is modelled by the degree of success or failure. Characters with high modifiers are more likely to have high degrees of success, and these affect both the assessment and the level of confidence.

 

[ClearlyTough69]

In my next post, I'll work through your example of using Insight to determine whether someone is lying.

The example I was talking about was this:

I'll start: I've got a character with +5 in Insight, and I'm talking to a guard, and I say to you, "I want to see if I can tell if he's lying."

What do you, the DM, do?

The guard is indeed lying, so it's a contest between the character's Insight and the guard's Deception.

The character's check result is 20 (natural 15, +5 Insight); the guard's check result is 7 (natural 7, 0 Deception modifier). On the face of it, the character detects that the guard is lying; her degree of success is 13 (20-7).

Assessment = d20 + degree of success OR - degree of failure
In this case = natural 4 +13 = 17.
This meets the threshold of 10, so the character makes an accurate assessment of the outcome of the check: she believes the guard is lying.

Confidence = d20 + degree of success/ failure
In this case = natural 12 +13 = 25.
This exceeds the threshold for absolute certainty, so the DM reports that the character is absolutely certain that the guard is lying.
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Now I'll swap the dice rolls for the initial skill contest:

The character's check result is 12 (natural 7, +5 Insight); the guard's check result is 15 (natural 15, 0 Deception modifier). On the face of it, the character has failed the contest and does not detect that the guard is lying; her degree of failure is 3 (15-12).

Assessment = d20 + degree of success OR - degree of failure
In this case = natural 4 -3 = 1.
This does not meet the threshold of 10, so the character makes an erroneous assessment of the outcome of the check: she believes the guard is not lying.

Confidence = d20 + degree of success/ failure
In this case = natural 12 +3 = 15.
This exceeds the threshold for being fairly sure, so the DM reports that the character is fairly sure that the guard is being truthful.
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Note how the difference in the character's and the guard's skill modifiers resulted in a significant difference in the degree of success/ failure of 16 (13 - -3). This answer's /u/Elfcrusher 's requirement for these modifiers to tell in this kind of mechanic.

 

[Lanefan]

Look, I can't disagree with most of what you are saying, but then what is the purpose of the Insight skill?

Exactly. Its (and most other interaction "skills") previous iterations in 3e-4e were dumb ideas, that remains true in 5e. Get rid of 'em.

But, if you really want to keep them, I urge you not to let the mechanics replace or trump the roleplay.

I know you all mean well, but my original question was about mechanics and probability. Some of the advice here sounds a lot like "You don't need mechanics, you just need to DM better." But I do not think it is good DMing, or good playing, to resolve deception/persuasion (and other) events through the improv abilities of the participants. I want the character, animated by the informed decisions of the player, to determine the outcomes. The DM should remain a neutral arbiter.

I also want the character - as played by its player - to determine the outcomes. Mechanics - even seat-of-the-pants ones dreamed up on the fly - can be a useful fallback when all else fails, but give all else a chance to fail first.

Further, I'm a big proponent of player knowledge should = character knowledge. The character knows it just failed to find a trap...but doesn't know whether that's due to a blown roll or to there being no trap present; and nor should the player.

There's still lots of room for narration and roleplaying. But it's done to interpret the fall of the dice, not to determine modifiers to the dice, or to replace them.

Perhaps we just play the game differently.

I'll say. Dice-first for anything that could otherwise be role-play first...yeah, that's not how we do it in our crew.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

The example I was talking about was this:

<...>

The guard is indeed lying, so it's a contest between the character's Insight and the guard's Deception.

Credit for a well-thought-out proposal. In a mechanics-based game (such as Elfcrusher's seems to be) this could work very well.

However, one question: what if the guard is in fact telling the truth. How does your idea handle this? Does it still use the guard's Deception as the opposed element even though the guard isn't trying to deceive anyone? More broadly, how does your idea allow for a false-positive result where the PC thinks the guard's lying when he isn't?

Lan-"still wondering just what thing in particular this poor guard is supposedly lying about"-efan

 

[Tony Vargas]

Exactly. Its (and most other interaction "skills") previous iterations in 3e-4e were dumb ideas, that remains true in 5e. Get rid of 'em.

But, if you really want to keep them, I urge you not to let the mechanics replace or trump the roleplay.

Whether you roll a die or not, where there's a resolution, there's a de-facto game mechanic. So if you "RP through it," to determine if a PC things a guard is lying or vice-versa, without touching dice, you haven't eschewed mechanics, you've just used the player-DM interaction as a resolution mechanic. Which is fine - if they're each playing themselves transplanted into a fantasy universe. But, if they're playing characters who are in any way different from themselves, maybe not so fine. Possibly you'd want to model the fiction of the PC & NPC in question with something other than the reality of the player and DM in question.

However, one question: what if the guard is in fact telling the truth. How does your idea handle this? Does it still use the guard's Deception as the opposed element even though the guard isn't trying to deceive anyone?

Heh. That came up more than once when I was playing 3e. My poor, honest, low-CHA fighter. 4e was a little more explicit about it: bluff to deceive, diplomacy when dealing honestly. Not that his diplomacy would have been any better.

Anyway, 5e I'd still go with diplomacy for being convincingly honest. Maybe not as an opposed check, though...

 

[Guest 6801328]

Exactly. Its (and most other interaction "skills") previous iterations in 3e-4e were dumb ideas, that remains true in 5e. Get rid of 'em.

But, if you really want to keep them, I urge you not to let the mechanics replace or trump the roleplay.

I also want the character - as played by its player - to determine the outcomes. Mechanics - even seat-of-the-pants ones dreamed up on the fly - can be a useful fallback when all else fails, but give all else a chance to fail first.

Further, I'm a big proponent of player knowledge should = character knowledge. The character knows it just failed to find a trap...but doesn't know whether that's due to a blown roll or to there being no trap present; and nor should the player.

I'll say. Dice-first for anything that could otherwise be role-play first...yeah, that's not how we do it in our crew.

Lanefan

How is roleplaying out the result of a dice roll not roleplaying?

Sure, carefully detailing your character's background and motivations and values, then using that to determine what he/she does is one facet of roleplaying.

But so is taking the result of a dice roll and narrating what your character did that resulted in that success or failure. (In general it's more fun to narrate the failures than the successes, but it's all a question of how creative you want to be.)

In both cases you are trying to add to a story in an interesting way within the imposed constraints, whether those constraints are backstory or dice rolls.

It never ceases to amaze me how narrowly posters on this forum seem to define "roleplaying", and assume that anything else is "roll-playing".

 

[Harzel]

The example I was talking about was this:



The guard is indeed lying, so it's a contest between the character's Insight and the guard's Deception.

The character's check result is 20 (natural 15, +5 Insight); the guard's check result is 7 (natural 7, 0 Deception modifier). On the face of it, the character detects that the guard is lying; her degree of success is 13 (20-7).

Assessment = d20 + degree of success OR - degree of failure
In this case = natural 4 +13 = 17.
This meets the threshold of 10, so the character makes an accurate assessment of the outcome of the check: she believes the guard is lying.

Confidence = d20 + degree of success/ failure
In this case = natural 12 +13 = 25.
This exceeds the threshold for absolute certainty, so the DM reports that the character is absolutely certain that the guard is lying.
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Now I'll swap the dice rolls for the initial skill contest:

The character's check result is 12 (natural 7, +5 Insight); the guard's check result is 15 (natural 15, 0 Deception modifier). On the face of it, the character has failed the contest and does not detect that the guard is lying; her degree of failure is 3 (15-12).

Assessment = d20 + degree of success OR - degree of failure
In this case = natural 4 -3 = 1.
This does not meet the threshold of 10, so the character makes an erroneous assessment of the outcome of the check: she believes the guard is not lying.

Confidence = d20 + degree of success/ failure
In this case = natural 12 +3 = 15.
This exceeds the threshold for being fairly sure, so the DM reports that the character is fairly sure that the guard is being truthful.
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Note how the difference in the character's and the guard's skill modifiers resulted in a significant difference in the degree of success/ failure of 16 (13 - -3). This answer's /u/Elfcrusher 's requirement for these modifiers to tell in this kind of mechanic.

I like the general tenor of the idea, but the particulars seem to be able to lead to some conditions that I don't understand at the assessment stage. My areas of confusion are marked with '(?)'. (Possibly I have just misunderstood; if so, apologies in advance.)

Here's the same situation, but with different dice rolls:

The guard is indeed lying, so it's a contest between the character's Insight and the guard's Deception.

The character's check result is 15 (natural 10, +5 Insight); the guard's check result is 14 (natural 14, 0 Deception modifier). On the face of it, the character detects that the guard is lying; her degree of success is 1 (15-14).

Assessment = d20 + degree of success OR - degree of failure
In this case = natural 4 +1 = 5.
This does not meet the threshold of 10, so the character makes an erroneous assessment of the outcome of the check: she (?) believes the guard is telling the truth even though she won the contest to 'detect' that he was lying (?).

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Example of the PC losing the contest:

The character's check result is 12 (natural 7, +5 Insight); the guard's check result is 15 (natural 15, 0 Deception modifier). On the face of it, the character has failed the contest and does not detect that the guard is lying; her degree of failure is 3 (15-12).

Assessment = d20 + degree of success OR - degree of failure
In this case = natural 14 -3 = 11.
This does meet the threshold of 10, so the character makes an correct assessment of the outcome of the check: she (?) believes the guard is lying even though she lost the contest to detect he was lying (?).

EDIT: Ok, after thinking about it a bit more, I think that the oddity is coming from the fact that the original task (lie detection) itself concerns belief. If the task were instead solving a puzzle, then things make more sense. One might

1. Solve the puzzle and believe that the solution is correct; or
2. Solve the puzzle and believe that the solution is incorrect (this case is still a little wonky); or
3. Not solve the puzzle and believe that it is not solved (no solution); or
4. Not solve the puzzle, but believe that you have solved it (incorrect solution).

 

[ClearlyTough69]

However, one question: what if the guard is in fact telling the truth. How does your idea handle this? Does it still use the guard's Deception as the opposed element even though the guard isn't trying to deceive anyone?

I agree with [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] that the Persuasion (ex Diplomacy) skill now plays a part. But it's a special kind of Persuasion, because it's not a normal skill contest. The guard isn't trying to deceive or persuade, so he's not truly contesting the character's Insight. Instead we need a measure of how generally trustworthy the guard seems. I think this can be represented by the inverse of his Diplomacy modifier. If he is highly Diplomatic, his modifier might be +5; the inverse is -5.

This means that the character's Insight will easily detect that he is not lying, and the degree of success will be large. Using my mechanic, that makes it easier for the character to correctly assess that the guard is telling the truth, and easier for him to be be very confident or certain in his assessment.

In my next post, I'll test this out with a very diplomatic guard, and a very undiplomatic guard.

See you there.

[This is top-of-the head stuff so I might fail badly!]

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

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Put an @ before the first letter of a screen name with no space between, and so long as you spell the screen name correctly the forum will make the mention for you.