D&D 5E player knowlege vs character knowlege (spoiler)

[MikalC]

You didn’t answer the question though. How much “trial and error” do the players have to engage in before it’s appropriate for them to “try” using fire or acid? How do you make that determination? What if fire or acid just happens to be the first thing they “try”?

Simple- if there’s no evidence in game or knowledge your pc would have to help come to a decision on this, roll a 1d4. On a 1 or less you come upon fire and acid as a possible solution. Every round you make the 1d4 attempt and fail, the roll gets a cumulative -1 to the result (hence “on a 1 or less”)

if you have lucky you can burn a use to reroll. If you have portent you can divide the portent result by 5 and use that in place of a roll.

easy, doesn’t force the pc to have to choose when he gets lucky, and goes from there.

1d4 as there are five energy types but two of them are effective. Technically speaking the die size can be made larger- after all you don’t know that energy is what does it, maybe you actually need silver, or mithril or admantine. Maybe it gets hurt by healing magic.

that literally took me 3 minutes to do.If a dm can’t devote that much time to their game they’re honestly not that much of a dm.

 

[MikalC]

How do you reconcile the goal of "staying in character" with the approach of players stopping to ask the DM what their characters know about trolls?

by... realizing that this is a game and stuff needs to be adjudicated by the DM? I mean if you’re incapable of realizing doing that helps keep in chara character more than “pc mystically knows all the player does about anything”, wow. Just...wow.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Simple- if there’s no evidence in game or knowledge your pc would have to help come to a decision on this, roll a 1d4. On a 1 or less you come upon fire and acid as a possible solution. Every round you make the 1d4 attempt and fail, the roll gets a cumulative -1 to the result (hence “on a 1 or less”)

if you have lucky you can burn a use to reroll. If you have portent you can divide the portent result by 5 and use that in place of a roll.

easy, doesn’t force the pc to have to choose when he gets lucky, and goes from there.

1d4 as there are five energy types but two of them are effective. Technically speaking the die size can be made larger- after all you don’t know that energy is what does it, maybe you actually need silver, or mithril or admantine. Maybe it gets hurt by healing magic.

that literally took me 3 minutes to do.If a dm can’t devote that much time to their game they’re honestly not that much of a dm.

Sweet! I'll write a little app that does that for me, and will go get pizza while the app tells you what my character does. That way we get to play D&D and eat pizza! It's a win-win.

EDIT: I just realized that @MikalC must be reading their way through the thread, replying to posts as they read them, and is still several pages behind so hasn't seen any of my responses.

 

[R_J_K75]

if only there was some sort of skill that helps with this sort of thing. Maybe something that provides insight into someone’s intentions. Hmm

Hard to tell if you were being serious or not. I'd say wisdom is probably the closet thing before perception.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Hard to tell if you were being serious or not. I'd say wisdom is probably the closet thing before perception.

Pretty sure they meant Insight:

Maybe something that provides insight into someone’s intentions. Hmm

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Bizarrely, there have been posters here who claim that they can happily re-run the same module, with the same group of people, and have a lot of fun. Apparently because they're "so good at roleplaying" that they can easily separate player/character knowledge.

Well, yes. People play D&D in different ways, and have fun doing so.
It is possible to accept that without feeling the need to mock them.

Are you suggesting that letting the dice tell you how to roleplay is "meaningful"? I would argue it's purely mechanical and entirely devoid of meaning. I mean, sure, it works functionally. It's just not meaningful.

I believe he was talking about Insight as a character ability, which would provide further information regarding the environment that their character was in in order to enable better roleplaying of their character.

I'm not quite sure where you got the "dice tell you how to roleplay". Do you mean like roleplaying your character having different responses if they had just been defeated in a combat compared to if they had won it? Do you regard that as purely mechanical and utterly devoid of meaning?

 

[MikalC]

"It's what my character would do."

hey look-one of the single most used sentences said by players to defend their jerkish and disruptive behaviors.

I have a special table I roll when players think that lets them get away with stuff like metagaming, pvp, and other things that break the social contract we agreed to at the start of the campaign.

Are you suggesting that letting the dice tell you how to roleplay is "meaningful"? I would argue it's purely mechanical and entirely devoid of meaning. I mean, sure, it works functionally. It's just not meaningful.

it’s more meaningful then “I just finished reading the monster manual on my dndbeyond app and trolls totally don’t regenerate from fire and acid”

 

[R_J_K75]

Pretty sure they meant Insight:

Honestly with the list of skills having changed substantially between 3E and 5E I cant really remember them off the top of head without a list in front of me.

 

[Charlaquin]

Simple- if there’s no evidence in game or knowledge your pc would have to help come to a decision on this, roll a 1d4. On a 1 or less you come upon fire and acid as a possible solution. Every round you make the 1d4 attempt and fail, the roll gets a cumulative -1 to the result (hence “on a 1 or less”)

if you have lucky you can burn a use to reroll. If you have portent you can divide the portent result by 5 and use that in place of a roll.

easy, doesn’t force the pc to have to choose when he gets lucky, and goes from there.

1d4 as there are five energy types but two of them are effective. Technically speaking the die size can be made larger- after all you don’t know that energy is what does it, maybe you actually need silver, or mithril or admantine. Maybe it gets hurt by healing magic.

that literally took me 3 minutes to do.If a dm can’t devote that much time to their game they’re honestly not that much of a dm.

I guess that’s at least a clear and consistent rule. It certainly doesn’t look like a rule I would enjoy playing under. In fact it looks like exactly the kind of thing I decided to stop worrying about metagaming in order to avoid.

 

[R_J_K75]

hey look-one of the single most used sentences said by players to defend their jerkish and disruptive behaviors.

I have a special table I roll when players think that lets them get away with stuff like metagaming, pvp, and other things that break the social contract we agreed to at the start of the campaign.

Is one of the list, "I dont like playing with player "x" anymore, theres the door, dont come back"?