Player skill vs character skill?

[Greg K]

Here is how I do it for finding secret doors and hidden objects. Traps would work similarly with some variation for being a trap

• Searching the wrong part of room will find the character nothing.
• Searching the area with the secret door will reveal the door a clue to the presence of the secret door with a successful roll depending upon the situation, but not necessarily how to open the door
• Searching the area with the mechanism to open the door will reveal a clue to the mechanism with a successful roll.
• Searching the specific mechanism will roll with Advantage to notice a clue to its use
• The player having the character engage with the actual mechanism to open the secret door and describing the correct manner to activate it will open the door even if it is a random action by character without discovering the mechanism through clues.

Searching the bed with a map hidden in the bedpost

• Searching the wrong area of the room reveals nothing
• Searching the bed in general will discover a clue with a successful roll
• Searching the bedpost with the map will roll with Advantage to find a clue to remove the bed knob/ filial
• Removing the bed knob/filial and looking inside will find the map. There is no roll required even if the player randomly did without noticing the clues.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Most of the time when I see "player skill" highlighted its in terms of "use your knowledge of tropes and conventions and procedures to achieve success" with the idea that this in part stands in for what a skilled adventurer would know operating in a world built on this sort of assumptions.

I'm glad you highlighted that, because there are multiple meanings of "players skill" and sometimes people debating it are using different definitions.

FWIW, usually when I refer to player skill I don't mean their ability to sway the GM with their eloquent first person acting, or their own experience learning how to pick locks from YouTube videos. I mean their ability to think up novel solutions to challenges, without looking at their character sheet.

"Let's grab rocks from the caved-in entrance and throw them down the trapped hallway to use as stepping stones to get past the pressure traps!"

"Let's put a sleeping potion into a bottle of wine and then Bernice can dress up like an altar boy and offer it to the priest!"

"I don't know if I believe that sign that says Pull Lever to Open Treasure Room. It's written in kobold."

 

[Bill Zebub]

Searching the bed with a map hidden in the bedpost

• Searching the wrong area of the room reveals nothing
• Searching the bed in general will discover a clue with a successful roll

Do you require a roll if the wrong part of the room is being searched? What happens on a really high roll?

In general I find asking the players to roll to see if they discover secrets is problematic, because merely asking them to roll conveys information. (Which could, I suppose, make it a meta-tell.)

 

[GMMichael]

So why are some gaps considered best left to the dice but others are strictly for the players?

What about when the game steps in to cover for player lack of skill? (Maybe the answer to the OP is, "what the designers say is strictly for the players.")

I.e. D&D increases wizard hit dice and allows them to spontaneously choose spells. Opportunity attacks are the designer's way of saying "you should have readied an action." Even critical hits are a designer training wheel, saying "if you're not designing your character/actions for optimal damage output, we'll throw you a bone every once in a while."

Well, we also don't try to resolve combat with a single roll. "Give me a DC 18 Combat check. If you win the dragon dies, if you fail you die."

I do this, actually. Most fights aren't worth full combat rules. Maybe one fight each session should use full combat rules, so we can zoom in on the One Cool Move that decided the battle. It's, "roll your combat check. Roll high, tell me how you hit the dragon's weak spot. Roll low, tell me what misfortune happened before it flew away/breathed fire on you."

 

[Greg K]

Do you require a roll if the wrong part of the room is being searched? What happens on a really high roll?

I might have them roll. A high roll will do nothing, because nothing is there (edit: or maybe, they realize sooner nothing is there). However, if they roll really bad, I might increase the time they spent searching, have them do something that can alert an enemy nearby (if appropriate. Think Pippin at Helm's Deep), etc.

 

[Bill Zebub]

However, if they roll really bad, I might increase the time they spent searching, have them do something that can alert an enemy nearby (if appropriate), etc.

In general I grant a lot of autosuccesses, and only ask for rolls if it's especially challenging and there is a serious consequence for failure. So rogues/thieves will usually succeed at picking locks. But I will ask for a roll if there's a real consequence for failing the roll, which might not mean they fail to open the lock. E.g., similar to your example, if they are trying to do it without alerting anybody on the other side. On a failure they still open the lock, but not as silently as they hoped.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In general I grant a lot of autosuccesses, and only ask for rolls if it's especially challenging and there is a serious consequence for failure. So rogues/thieves will usually succeed at picking locks. But I will ask for a roll if there's a real consequence for failing the roll, which might not mean they fail to open the lock. E.g., similar to your example, if they are trying to do it without alerting anybody on the other side. On a failure they still open the lock, but not as silently as they hoped.

I have to ask: when you have your players roll for stuff like this, do they know that success for the actual action they're taking is guaranteed regardless of the result, and the roll is for how their action affects the narrative?

 

[Koloth]

Another aspect of player skill vs character skill is what about new players? Expecting a 1st time player to know about D&D tropes on traps, seducing the barmaid, etc is probably going to create an ex-D&D player frustrated by the group's expectations. It is almost a certainty that the first time player's character is far more experienced at <D&D activity> then the player.

If the character has some type of innate trap finding ability, then that should work even if the player is stubbornly stating, "My character keeps moving down the hallway." At some point, the GM should interrupt with "That trap finding ability your character has just went off...." If after that, the player keeps moving the character down the hallway, well that is how players learn. OTOH, if the character has zero trap skill and a base perception type ability of negative, no amount of the player stating "My character is carefully checking for traps." should allow that character to find a well hidden trap.

Character build choices have consequences. If the player built a Hulk Smash type character, that player shouldn't expect Hulk to be a subtle trap finder no matter how skilled the player is at RPGs. Nor should a IRL charismatic player expect a character with charisma as a dump stat to have much luck with the seduce barmaid try.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I have to ask: when you have your players roll for stuff like this, do they know that success for the actual action they're taking is guaranteed regardless of the result, and the roll is for how their action affects the narrative?

Yes. If the players declare an action that may have a negative consequence, I tell them what the deal is. They can change their mind if they don't like the deal. (The deal may or may not include success at the task itself.)

EDIT: Re-reading what you wrote, the phrase "how their action affects the narrative" strikes me as off. Or, at least, their action doesn't "affect the narrative" any more or less than more traditional adjudications. It's not "I'm going to attempt pick the lock...and let me know if I do it quietly." It's "I'm going to attempt to pick the lock quietly." Failure means you fail to accomplish that objective.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Another aspect of player skill vs character skill is what about new players? Expecting a 1st time player to know about D&D tropes on traps, seducing the barmaid, etc is probably going to create an ex-D&D player frustrated by the group's expectations. It is almost a certainty that the first time player's character is far more experienced at <D&D activity> then the player.

If the character has some type of innate trap finding ability, then that should work even if the player is stubbornly stating, "My character keeps moving down the hallway." At some point, the GM should interrupt with "That trap finding ability your character has just went off...." If after that, the player keeps moving the character down the hallway, well that is how players learn. OTOH, if the character has zero trap skill and a base perception type ability of negative, no amount of the player stating "My character is carefully checking for traps." should allow that character to find a well hidden trap.

My experience is the opposite. New players can't always make sense of a character sheet, but they know how to engage with the fiction. If I compare years of teaching new players D&D, versus more recently using Shadowdark, when playing Shadowdark with it's sparse character sheets they are more likely to come up with creative plans. If they are looking at their character sheet it's probably at their equipment. With D&D they keep looking at their character sheet and tentatively asking, "Can I....?"

Character build choices have consequences. If the player built a Hulk Smash type character, that player shouldn't expect Hulk to be a subtle trap finder no matter how skilled the player is at RPGs. Nor should a IRL charismatic player expect a character with charisma as a dump stat to have much luck with the seduce barmaid try.

Yeah I think part of the problem is systems that focus too much on "character build".

EDIT: The "consequence" of putting a 6 in a stat is that (in some systems) you get a 10% penalty to rolls that rely on that stat. That's it; that's all it means. If somebody wants to choose to roleplay that stat as being more meaningful than a 10% penalty, that's entirely up to them. But I find attempts to arbitrarily impose additional constraints, "...and you are especially bad at X, Y, and Z...." to be, in effect, dictating to people how they should roleplay being 10% worse than average at something, and I don't agree with that.