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

[iserith]

Recalling lore is explicitly an ability check in 5e.

No. Recalling lore is a task. A task may or may not call for an ability check.

A player simply deciding that he know she is a Lich(success at the intelligence check) is the same as a player simply deciding that his PC jumps 5 feet farther than his strength score(success at the strength check).

No. The player says the character thinks the NPC is a lich. The player has not established that the character is trying to recall lore. There is nothing here for the DM to adjudicate.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Recalling lore is explicitly an ability check in 5e. Players cannot decide to just succeed at ability checks. What a player can do is try to present things in a way to minimize the DM's likelihood of calling for a roll or saying no, but it's not up to the player to say yes to the ability check. The DM is the one who gets to say if the outcome is in doubt or not.

A player simply deciding that he know she is a Lich(success at the intelligence check) is the same as a player simply deciding that his PC jumps 5 feet farther than his strength score(success at the strength check).

Yep, exactly. It is really as simple as that and it seems absurd to me that there is a massive debate about such a basic thing.

 

[iserith]

Yep, exactly. It is really as simple as that and it seems absurd to me that there is a massive debate about such a basic thing.

There is no debate.

What we have are some people trying to use the rules to justify a power grab by the DM which is kind of gross in my opinion.

The group's stance on "metagaming" is a table rule. You cannot use the rules of the game to justify your position on this.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There is no debate.

What we have are some people trying to use the rules to justify a power grab by the DM which is kind of gross in my opinion.

The group's stance on "metagaming" is a table rule. You cannot use the rules of the game to justify your position on this.

To me what you're doing seems like an awkward attempt at rules-lawyering to bypass the clear purpose of the rules. The thinking/knowing dichotomy is just pure sophistry.

 

[Catulle]

Frankly, this is blatantly absurd. You have just granted stupid characters a magical power to alter the world by declaring random facts while being an idiot!

But just imagine the japes when two of them cite the same "fact" but one passes and the other fails The PM both is/is not!

 

[iserith]

To me what you're doing seems like an awkward attempt at rules-lawyering to bypass the clear purpose of the rules. The thinking/knowing dichotomy is just pure sophistry.

What evidence would you (and @Maxperson) accept that would show that the game considers your position on "metagaming" to be a table rule?

 

[Ovinomancer]

No, it is not about secrets alone as any good secret is an actual secret to the players as well. It is simply adjudication what is common knowledge, what is not and what might perhaps require knowledge roll and the players attempting to portray believable characters in the setting. This is really not hard.

But it only matters when a secret is involved. No one cries "metagaming" if a player declares a random NPC a lich. It's only when it is a lich, and the GM cares about that remaining secret, that "metagaming" is a problem. This is true even in a case where the player is convinced that the non-lich NPC is a lich because of something the player read.

In other words, "metagaming" is only ever checked for if a secret is being revealed. Even if that secret is that trolls regenerate or devils are immune to fire.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think for me, another relevant question is "What is gained by not allowing the PC to know this?"

The answer would seem to be to maintain some kind of verisimilitude....but is that really it? We can craft all kinds of backstory related ways for a PC to have found out this bit of information. No, it's not verisimilitude because ultimately what it seems to be about is getting permission from the DM either explicitly or via a check.

And hey....if that's how you want to play, that's fine. My question is.....in the situation presented in the OP and similar cases (not the examples of people secretly reading the adventure and so on) what is lost by letting a PC know Valindra's a lich? What's gained by keeping it a secret?

Something I learned only after GMing for a long time is that it's far, far more fun to reveal secrets than it is to keep them. Let them know and then move on to the interesting bit....what they do with the knowledge.

Seriously.....I'm struggling to see how any version of the encounter with Valindra where the players and/or PCs don't know anything about her true nature or her motives is all that engaging in any way.

What's gained?

 

[Charlaquin]

Sorry to bring up a post from a few pages back. Catching up and I had something I wanted to respond to. There will probably be a few more of these retro-posts as I get up to speed.

Nope. They didn't alter the world. They were incorrect in their assumptions about the world.

(This does again raise the point that one difference between the two camps is probably in how we view "truth" in the game world. The anti-metagamers in general seem to have a p.o.v. where there is some kind of objective truth to the world that the characters are then experiencing, whereas the other camp seem to have an approach where nothing really exists until it is experienced. An example is how Max allows or even encourages extensive world-building up to the point the campaign starts, and then it is fixed.)

I don’t know that I agree with this. I think consistency is important, and I keep facts about the world fixed. I might change things about a setting, adventure, or monster as compared to the published version, but I do that in advance; I wouldn’t change something on the fly to thwart a player’s assumptions, and I don’t think doing so is at all necessary to run without table rules against taking action without making a check to establish character knowledge.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Like let's examine this think/know divide with another lovely practical example.

The module says "On a successful DC 20 history check a character can identify the carving above the entrance of the dungeon as the seal of King Tharguz and recall that said king ruled the are three centuries ago and was killed in an uprising that started by the rumours of the king dealing with the devils."

Would it be acceptable if after failing at the roll the player picked up the module book, looked at the page and declared that their character thinks that the thing above the door is a seal of King Tharguz who was rumoured to be dealing with devils? Do you really think that the makers of the game intended this to be a valid way to handle this?