D&D 5E NPC Ability Checks and Stunting or...Ogre Smash

[Nagol]

I can certainly understand the thinking behind having NPCs and PCs using the same mechanics; there's a sense of fairness and equality to that line of thinking.

But are NPCs meant to be equal to PCs? Most folks would say "no", I would think. So then why feel the need to treat them equally?

Fundamentally so the PCs have at least the same chance to do cool stuff as NPCs.

A secondary feature is the rule of cool will typically overwhelm "just" using the rules and thus those who mug to the DM's preferences will tend to outperform others.

A tertiary problem is the rule of cool obfuscates clues presented in the game world. The ogre pushed over the tree. Is it just an ogre using the rule of cool or is it a dragon hiding under an illusion/a shrunken storm giant/something else we should suss out before engaging? Is the tree a neat-o effect or a signal we should be treating the encounter much more seriously?

To me, NPCs, especially monsters, are there to serve as some form of obstacle for the PCs. The story that the game is telling is about whether or not the PCs succeed or fail, not about the NPCs. So the rules are there to determine the PCs' success or failure.

When it comes to NPCs, I think the rules are most important when they are directly interacting with the PCs because that is directly tied to the PCs and their overall chance of success or failure. But as far as interacting with the environment, I don't know of it's as important.

But as I said above, depending on the players and their level of meta-thinking, you may have to come up with an explanation for the reasoning. It's a mix of personal preference and level of trust in the DM.

Trust doesn't have much to do with it from my perspective. I loaned some of my DMs thousands of dollars at times. I trust them. I trust them a lot. Some of them really really really like a cinematic style universe -- and I'll jump at the chance to play with them when they run a movie genre (FATE) or superheroes (MHRP) game. I will typically decline to play in their D&D, Runequest, Morrow Project, or Aftermath games. I find the style jarring and disruptive for games designed for more objective mechanics.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But are NPCs meant to be equal to PCs? Most folks would say "no", I would think. So then why feel the need to treat them equally?

I think that's the wrong way to ask the question. The relevant question is whether the difference between PCs and NPCs is something reflected within the rules or outside of the rules.

If my level 1 fighter has 16 Dexterity and the archery style, then they are at +7 to shoot a bow. An equally-inexperienced NPC might have only 14 Dexterity, and lack the style bonus, giving them only +4 to shoot a bow. My PC is better than the NPC for reasons that are covered within the rules.

The real danger is, if the rules only apply to PCs and don't apply to NPCs, then we have no idea what the rules covering NPCs actually are. If I can look at an ogre and realize that it's too dumb to apply leverage correctly in order to knock over a tree, then that's one thing. And if I watch and it turns out that this ogre is smart enough to figure that out (because this one is trained in Athletics), then that's also fine.

But if the rules for NPCs are different, then looking at that ogre tells me nothing, because I have no frame of reference. If it knocks over a tree without demonstrating trained skill, then all of the information available to me (based on my own capabilities and what I have observed among others who follow PC rules) tells me that this ogre is way stronger than my fighter. If I have Strength 20 and training and can't knock over a tree, then this ogre must have a Strength of at least 30 in order to do that, which means it should be absolutely terrifying to fight and I should probably run away. It's the logical answer based on the information available to me, but it's the wrong answer, because the real answer is that the DM is just making stuff up.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I do enjoy the ideas and discussion, but I do take umbrage with the obvious meta-gaming from a player perspective in your example.

I take umbrage at your accusations of meta-gaming. Meta-gaming means (colloquially) that the player is using information that the character doesn't have. But everything about demonstrable Strength, and training, and what those translate to within the game world are things that the character can see. My fighter can see how strong that ogre is, based on how hard it swings a club; and they can see if the ogre is trained, based on its technique.

Meta-gaming would be making decisions based on genre convention or outside sources that don't actually apply within the game world. If a fighter imagined that an ogre could knock down a tree, because the player knows what kind of books the DM has read, then that would be meta-gaming.

For example, what if the DM had decided to make a more athletic ogre, or one that has proficiency, or expertise in Strength (athletics). As for the rules in the DMG pg. 279. If you want a monster to be proficient in a skill you can give a bonus equal to its proficiency ability on checks related to that skill... You can double the proficiency to account for heightened mastery.

If this ogre is trained in knocking down trees, and knows how to apply leverage, then that should be apparent by watching. There's nothing controversial about an ogre that's actually proficient in Athletics. (At least, not within this thread; some people get upset if you so much as change the weapon a monster uses.)

Not even fighter have expertise in Athletics, though. Not even barbarians have expertise in Athletics. Wizards don't have expertise in Arcana. It's not a matter of simple skill, or any amount of intelligence. You have to be a professional skill-monkey in order to get double proficiency in anything. If the DM grants expertise to the dumbest humanoid in the book, then that's shenanigans, and you should expect players to call you out on it.

Consider reality, can you look at a professional lineman in football and know what he is able to bench, or his ability to pass block (closest corollary, I have to the strength of an ogre, no offense to any athletes). So as a DM, since I have that toolset to make the change based on rules provided, how is that being "unfair"?

Reality doesn't operate under Bounded Accuracy. In real life, a strong person can break a board with greater than 99% certainty that I could never break. Within the game world, there is no task that a strong person can achieve reliably that a weak person cannot achieve occasionally; the die is too unpredictable, and the modifiers are too small.

The game world is not our real world. If you make any decisions based on how things work in the real world, then that is meta-gaming.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Reality doesn't operate under Bounded Accuracy. In real life, a strong person can break a board with greater than 99% certainty that I could never break. Within the game world, there is no task that a strong person can achieve reliably that a weak person cannot achieve occasionally; the die is too unpredictable, and the modifiers are too small.

Yes there is.

Task: punch a bound-and-gagged adult human into unconsciousness in less than a minute.

A Str 16 guy will succeed in this task very reliably. He does 4 points of damage per hit and averages about 38 points of damage over the course of a minute, more than enough to knock a regular 6-10 HP human unconscious.

A Str 6 guy will totally fail in this task. He does 0 points of damage per hit, and will never knock out the human with unarmed strikes. (If he picks up a chair leg as an improvised weapon, he could inflict about 12 HP of damage after two minutes--but the task is specifically to punch the victim unconscious.)

If you want a non-combat task with a steeper curve than a single ability check gives you, you need to use multiple rolls. You can even sort of steal dice pools from Shadowrun: "this task requires you to succeed on at least 7 out of 10 DC 15 Athletics checks," which gives you a challenge that the hulking Str 20 9th level Lucky fighter finds quite easy (especially if he's a hobgoblin), and the Str 7 9th level gnomish wizard finds almost impossible.

 

[Manbearcat]

OK - the quest for objective DCs is not done.

What I tried to outline in my initial post is something akin to this while also conveying that the developers clearly meant for the action resolution mechanics of the Ability Check system to (a) be framed objectively around phenomena grounded in the setting and (b) bear a consistently applied and fairly recognizable (and learnable) resemblance to earth physics (the kind of system that [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] has historically advocated for in D&D and more recently [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] ).

They evidence for this is overwhelming.

1) The developers talked about and constantly reiterated (a) during the development and playtest phase.

2) Much of 5e's design is pushback against 4e. With respect to noncombat resolution, this includes pushback against (i) abstract conflict resolution, (b) subjective system machinery/procedures (DCs and "going straight to the action" - the encounter/conflict-charged scene as the exclusive locus of play) and antagonism (obstacles, NPCS) centered around the PCs current level and the genre conceits of that tier of play. Bounded accuracy and the objective system machinery and antagonism anchored in the setting (rather than being PC-centric) is the manifestation of this pushback.

3) The "natural language" interpretation (as I tried to outline in my lead post) of the rules text connotes only this. It doesn't connote a genre logic interpretation.

4) Even if we want to to attempt to interpret the text as promoting genre logic in the procedures of the Ability Check system ("the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence"), we need only look at 5e's baseline assumption of Heroic Fantasy (DMG 38) for its genre conceits. Like many components of the text, the passage isn't terribly revealing, but where it is, it is very much so:

a) Heroes come from ordinary backgrounds.
b) The genre is that of the Forgotten Realms novels.

This is sharply contrasted with the Mythic and Wuxia "Flavors of Fantasy" depicted later. The heritage/backgrounds and capabilities of heroes in those two genres break sharply with the vanilla "Heroic Fantasy" tropes. Furthermore, basic "Toril physics" are exactly that of our earth physics (while disregarding my usual complaints of incoherency between certain monsters and martial heroes...you know them well at this point). Consequently, mundane folks and martial heroes are bound by that of our own system.

The rules lose me at this point because they don't tell me how I'm meant to judge whether or not something is uncertain. Does this mean "I can think of a way it might fail?" Well, that's true for spellcasting too - the caster might sneeze while uttering the magic words, or be stung by a bee, or whatever - but we don't normally roll dice for that.

Does it mean "I, the GM, haven't decided what the outcome should be"? That's a pretty hardcore rule for a RPG!

Does it mean something else? Dunno. I don't see how it can mean "Has X% chance to fail if attempted by this character", because sometimes I'm meant to set DCs even though a PC might succeed even on a roll of 1 (eg they're already pretty good, then someone casts guidance and a bard gives them inspiration).

I tried my best to be charitable in my reading of the tea leaves, but I certainly agree that transparency in "uncertainty handling" is definitely not a strong spot (for my purposes) for 5e. Again though, I'm certain [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] (among others) will champion this as a feature, not a bug. 5e is intentional about its vagaries. It is a dead sprint away from "Skip the gate guards and get to the fun!" You will not find the clarity and tightness of play procedures (and resolution mechanics integrated with feedback systems) that you will find in Powered By the Apocalypse, Cortex+, BW/Torchbearer systems. This is by design!

Perhaps this is best seen as an infelicity of drafting.

Could very well be. Despite 4e's clarity, coherency, and transparency, it still bore some competing editorial voices and text clumsiness here and there.

Others in this thread feel that the "natural language" inclusion of the descriptor "reasonable" (which appears to connote subjectivity in handling) in the same area where the "natural language", objective qualification of tasks as "easy", "nearly impossible" (etc) isn't a clumsy introduction of opacity (or outright incoherency). Its just...natural?

If I have to have an opinion on it, I guess I would just say it doesn't make things more clear to me!

I think the number of 5e GMs who would adopt your procedure without having some exposure to Dungeon World (or maybe some comparable system) is pretty close to zero. I think it would be very hard to get that just out of the books. Which is not to say that it's bad, but if that's what the designers intended as on possible way of running the game, they could have made their intentions a bit more clear! (The 4e rulebooks sometimes had the same problem.)

EDIT: Also, the fact that a high-level warrior has a better chance of pushing over the tree than the ogre puts pressure on the coherence of the fiction more generally. If the 17th level gnome fighter is better able to push over trees than the ogre, what does that tell us about that gnome, and his/her prodigious power that is utterly belied by his/her smallness? D&D has always had issues with this sort of thing, at least on the margins (qv Gygax's discussion of the hit points of a high level fighter compared to a warhorse), but in AD&D even most high level warriors were probably not as strong as an ogre (18/00), and if they were it was because they'd used a wish or a magic tome or something else that made them, quite explicitly, enchanted beings. (Like the weirdly powered knights in Arthurian legend.) Whereas the 5e gnome can get there by dint of nothing but levelling in a non-magical class.

4e tried to tackle this through the idea of epic tier. I can't say I've got a good handle on how 5e makes sense of it.

Again, I agree. And I certainly don't think the GMs I mentioned above would use it.

Nonetheless, if I were creating a (roughly because it integrates with the very non-granular improvised action machinery of 5e) codified module for consistent (within CR) handling of improvised actions that produced dynamic play and interesting decision-points for players, that is how I would do it:

1) Ability check. Success equals no fallout and proceed to 2. Failure equals some sort of consequence that introduces one or two thematic, tactically compelling opening to a PC (or PCs) that often (but not always) comes with some sort of risk or trade-off.

2) Use the improvised Action tables of the tier for attack or saving throw.

3) Use the Improvised Action tables of the tier for the damage expression and step it back for AoE and step it back for a simple rider.

Done.

 

[Manbearcat]

As far as I care, nothing is wrong with your example. You've assigned a DC that, should the Fighter get enlarged, he too can try to hit. Pushing over a mid-size tree for you is DC 25 (which means a levelled athletic Fighter-type really doesn't have too much trouble doing that task and a higher level Bard can guarantee it).

This cuts to one of the heart of one of the issues here. It intersects entirely with the (now lost to the internet) DC 30...DC 35 thread that we participated in this summer.

If GMs use genre logic for their NPCs and rule there is no uncertainty in an NPC action and just fiats a "this happens because its cool/thematically appropriate", how does this play out when a PC who is actually mechanically equipped for the move (or even mechanically surpasses, perhaps by a fair bit, the NPC's capacity to pull off the move!) tries the same thing?

Suddenly there is uncertainty and you have to roll the dice (likely against a hefty DC)?

Or worse still, the answer is an abject "no, you can't do that because Toril physics/genre."

Again this gets back to the prospects of incoherent adjudication of uncertainty and/or the application of an incoherent (and inevitably inconsistent) mash-up of earth-physics-based process sim and genre logic (which likely also contains cognitive bias to boot). That will appear adversarial to an invested player and thus looks like a GM begging for a dysfunctional table to me.


All the time I have this evening.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Task: punch a bound-and-gagged adult human into unconsciousness in less than a minute.

Is there no minimum damage rule in this edition? Fine, then someone with below-average Strength is incapable of ever hurting anyone or anything, at all, ever, through any combination of punches or kicks. It's a stupid rule which leads to ridiculous situations, and that's apparently just how the world works.

And that same person who is incapable of ever injuring anyone - because they are so incredibly feeble - will still have a 20% chance of kicking down the DC 15 door which the world's strongest fighter will fail to kick down 45% of the time.

Edit: Another task would be to long jump across a 15-foot pit, since there's no roll involved. It's almost like the designers realized how silly their system was turning out under Bounded Accuracy, and tried to correct for it in a couple of places, but just left it in place for everything else.

 

[Lucas Yew]

They really should have put in objective, non-scaling DCs, coupled with firm adjustment rules for stuff like Size differences, etc.
It's easier to ignore a developed rule than adding one in...

 

[hawkeyefan]

I agree that the PCs and NPCs should not follow the same guidelines. I think that was done for 3.5 and you often wonky or down right terrible effects. I also like that monsters and NPC creation uses a different set of guides since the goals are not really the same. Based on the original post by Bearmancat it does seam like the PCs are interacting with the monster, since it is making an attack against them (using the tree). I agree with Satyrn more on the improvised attack since that is what really is occurring. I don't think a check would need to be made, but the ogre would have disadvantage on trying to hit one (or possibly more PCs). If it is just an ogre shoving over trees out in the woods, is a roll necessary. More importantly, does it matter if the PCs are not their to witness it? Probably not, but I could readily see a PC fighter getting angry that his character couldn't even attempt to knock over a tree, if the ogre can. It might be a high check say DC 25 or 30 (if your comparing it to what a giant can do), but shouldn't he get the chance. I was more trying to point out that using physics or mathematical modeling to set DCs is not just over thinking, it is adding unnecessary complexity (which most DMs are not doing in regards to combat, hit vs AC, with or without advantage).

Yeah, I agree with most of that. I think the ogre should have to make some sort of attack roll to hit the PC with the Tree...I just don't think I'd bother rolling a STR check to see if he could knock the tree down. I'd just say he could do it because I think it would make for a more dynamic situation than simply having him try to club them over and over.

Fundamentally so the PCs have at least the same chance to do cool stuff as NPCs.

A secondary feature is the rule of cool will typically overwhelm "just" using the rules and thus those who mug to the DM's preferences will tend to outperform others.

I don't think letting the ogre have this "cool" attack does anything to diminish the PCs. Saying a PC can't knock down a tree that an ogre can isn't limiting to the PCs. Nor do I think that such a decision lends itself to favoring a certain playstyle on the part of the player.

I mean, this example is purely for an NPC Monster. I would actually think most players would see an ogrekbocking a tree down at them as pretty exciting and not as something negative.

A tertiary problem is the rule of cool obfuscates clues presented in the game world. The ogre pushed over the tree. Is it just an ogre using the rule of cool or is it a dragon hiding under an illusion/a shrunken storm giant/something else we should suss out before engaging? Is the tree a neat-o effect or a signal we should be treating the encounter much more seriously?

I wouldn't be too concerned about that. If the ogre was actually a storm giant in magical disguise of some sort, I'm still capable of having the "ogre" display a feat of strength beyond what he should be capable of, and thereby giving the hint I wanted to. Or I can use some other method to give the hint...have him mutter a curse in another language or use a speech pattern that didn't fit with an ogre.

Trust doesn't have much to do with it from my perspective. I loaned some of my DMs thousands of dollars at times. I trust them. I trust them a lot. Some of them really really really like a cinematic style universe -- and I'll jump at the chance to play with them when they run a movie genre (FATE) or superheroes (MHRP) game. I will typically decline to play in their D&D, Runequest, Morrow Project, or Aftermath games. I find the style jarring and disruptive for games designed for more objective mechanics.

I mean trust to act as an impartial referee, not trust as a friend. In general, I feel that trust in a DM to be fair means you don't have to rely so much on the math. The DM's fair judgment is the only formula needed in such a case. I'm not saying that everything should be left up to the DM's whim...but almost any game is going to require the DM to make some judgments. So trust in those instances can be huge.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The real danger is, if the rules only apply to PCs and don't apply to NPCs, then we have no idea what the rules covering NPCs actually are.

Is that really so dangerous?

The rules can be a bit different without upending all expectations.

But if the rules for NPCs are different, then looking at that ogre tells me nothing, because I have no frame of reference. If it knocks over a tree without demonstrating trained skill, then all of the information available to me (based on my own capabilities and what I have observed among others who follow PC rules) tells me that this ogre is way stronger than my fighter. If I have Strength 20 and training and can't knock over a tree, then this ogre must have a Strength of at least 30 in order to do that, which means it should be absolutely terrifying to fight and I should probably run away. It's the logical answer based on the information available to me, but it's the wrong answer, because the real answer is that the DM is just making stuff up.

Well, looking at the ogre should tell you plenty....watching it knock down a tree and then converting that into a required STR score and then determining how that compares to a PC's STR score and then using that to determine the threat level to the PC based on character level...that's all very meta. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I don't know if I'd worry too much about ruining such meta concerns for the player.

If that decision proved to be a big deal and I felt that I had to put some kind of math in place that the player could understand, then I'd create a houserule on STR checks for creatures of Large size or more, and I would let the players know that so that they could adjust their expectations accordingly.