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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 8095663" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>This is a good one. Here's another...</p><p></p><p>Every RPG rules system can be abused. I think an important player's responsibility is to <strong>play along with the spirit of the game</strong> and therefore not to try to abuse the system. Strive to connect with the RAI more than serving the RAW. If you find a loophole that can be exploited, seriously consider whether exploiting it would serve your game and make it better, or destroy your fun, and in case of the latter, just don't exploit it. Complaining about loopholes, blaming designers... we have forums for that! Just don't destroy your own game only to "prove" you are smarter than the authors because you figured out they made a mistake.</p><p></p><p>---</p><p></p><p>Concrete example (pet peeve of mine): skill checks retries.</p><p></p><p>The rules don't say you can't just keep trying a skill check you have failed. There are plenty of example where it seems "it makes sense": searching for something, force open a stuck door, recall a piece of knowledge... If you roll a low number, you may be convinced you could have in fact found something, and want to try again. The rules usually make it so that these tasks take only a little time, so if you can afford to take more time, why not retrying when your previous dice roll(s) clearly showed you were way below your possibility of success?</p><p></p><p>What many players do not realize, is that this is not within the spirit of the original skill check. If the DM decides or knows that you should succeed at a task, they won't call for a skill check in the first place, they'll just say "you find this" or "you force the door open", period. The DM calls for a dice roll <em>when they doesn't want to decide</em>. The rules help the DM set the probabilities at least roughly (that's why we have sample DCs for tasks, and the whole framework of ability modifiers and proficiency bonuses).</p><p></p><p>If you simply allow retries, you break all the probabilities. Even ONE retry makes success significantly more probably. Unlimited retries makes success certain, unless the task is impossible in which case it was DM's mistake to grant a check in the first place (although an exception might be if the DM doesn't want to let the players know that the task was impossible, and called for a check to hide such fact).</p><p></p><p>If a player insists that "it makes sense" to retry, or that the RAW doesn't say they can't, they are failing their responsibility to play along with the original spirit of skill checks, which is simply to "toss a coin" to determine if the game goes right or left at a plot point. What is the consequence? The DM is usually compelled to come up with house rules that either frustrate the players even more (player will think the DM is making it more difficult than RAW because DM doesn't want us to win, or because the DM doesn't like that I am so smart I figured out how to win the game) or simply complicate the game more than necessary. Yes, I am sure in YOUR game they all love your house rule about progressively increasing how long it takes at every retry or suffering drawbacks and so on, but not everyone really likes to make the game more complex, and the point is that it would not need to be made more complex if everyone just played along since the start. </p><p></p><p>See for example how the Critical Role players are in fact playing along with this sort of spirit. I haven't watched that much of it, but it seemed to me that they just move forward with the game and don't question how they can use the RAW or the RANW ("rules as non-written") to make sure everything in the game goes the way they want it to.</p><p></p><p>This really boils down to the core idea that D&D is a game based on frequent randomness, it has always been, from nearly everything in combat rules to random encounters to treasure... A stuck door or a hidden trap is either supposed to be random or non-random: the DM decides whether there is a roll or not. The spirit of the game is that to increase your chances on a random point you can either use resources (possibly limited ones i.e. pay a price) or use your brains to find another solution (stuck door? find another way! non-disarmable trap? throw the halfling!). If you just don't like randomness, ask your DM to play the game without ever asking for checks.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 8095663, member: 1465"] This is a good one. Here's another... Every RPG rules system can be abused. I think an important player's responsibility is to [B]play along with the spirit of the game[/B] and therefore not to try to abuse the system. Strive to connect with the RAI more than serving the RAW. If you find a loophole that can be exploited, seriously consider whether exploiting it would serve your game and make it better, or destroy your fun, and in case of the latter, just don't exploit it. Complaining about loopholes, blaming designers... we have forums for that! Just don't destroy your own game only to "prove" you are smarter than the authors because you figured out they made a mistake. --- Concrete example (pet peeve of mine): skill checks retries. The rules don't say you can't just keep trying a skill check you have failed. There are plenty of example where it seems "it makes sense": searching for something, force open a stuck door, recall a piece of knowledge... If you roll a low number, you may be convinced you could have in fact found something, and want to try again. The rules usually make it so that these tasks take only a little time, so if you can afford to take more time, why not retrying when your previous dice roll(s) clearly showed you were way below your possibility of success? What many players do not realize, is that this is not within the spirit of the original skill check. If the DM decides or knows that you should succeed at a task, they won't call for a skill check in the first place, they'll just say "you find this" or "you force the door open", period. The DM calls for a dice roll [I]when they doesn't want to decide[/I]. The rules help the DM set the probabilities at least roughly (that's why we have sample DCs for tasks, and the whole framework of ability modifiers and proficiency bonuses). If you simply allow retries, you break all the probabilities. Even ONE retry makes success significantly more probably. Unlimited retries makes success certain, unless the task is impossible in which case it was DM's mistake to grant a check in the first place (although an exception might be if the DM doesn't want to let the players know that the task was impossible, and called for a check to hide such fact). If a player insists that "it makes sense" to retry, or that the RAW doesn't say they can't, they are failing their responsibility to play along with the original spirit of skill checks, which is simply to "toss a coin" to determine if the game goes right or left at a plot point. What is the consequence? The DM is usually compelled to come up with house rules that either frustrate the players even more (player will think the DM is making it more difficult than RAW because DM doesn't want us to win, or because the DM doesn't like that I am so smart I figured out how to win the game) or simply complicate the game more than necessary. Yes, I am sure in YOUR game they all love your house rule about progressively increasing how long it takes at every retry or suffering drawbacks and so on, but not everyone really likes to make the game more complex, and the point is that it would not need to be made more complex if everyone just played along since the start. See for example how the Critical Role players are in fact playing along with this sort of spirit. I haven't watched that much of it, but it seemed to me that they just move forward with the game and don't question how they can use the RAW or the RANW ("rules as non-written") to make sure everything in the game goes the way they want it to. This really boils down to the core idea that D&D is a game based on frequent randomness, it has always been, from nearly everything in combat rules to random encounters to treasure... A stuck door or a hidden trap is either supposed to be random or non-random: the DM decides whether there is a roll or not. The spirit of the game is that to increase your chances on a random point you can either use resources (possibly limited ones i.e. pay a price) or use your brains to find another solution (stuck door? find another way! non-disarmable trap? throw the halfling!). If you just don't like randomness, ask your DM to play the game without ever asking for checks. [/QUOTE]
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