D&D 5E Players: Why Do You Want to Roll a d20?

[5ekyu]

Oh, now that's a bit different isn't it? Insight is supposed to tell me whether someone is being deceitful or not. I mean, it's right there in the description of the skill. "Searching out a lie" isn't something I'm making up.

Now, since folks here have been pretty adamant about following the rules of 5e with this whole approach/goal thing, I'm getting a bit of a mixed message here. @iserith has repeated ad nauseum that he wants his method to hew as close to the rules of 5e as possible and anyone doing anything else is setting up a situation where the game will not deliver it's promised results. That's been established multiple times.

So, you can see where my confusion lies. I'm trying to use the 5e rules but, now I'm being told that the 5e rules only apply sometimes? Otherwise, I'm just gaming the DM - I have to watch you, and your performance, to see if I think that the NPC is lying. The fact that I'm playing Sherlock Holmes with feats and stats to boost my Insight into the stratosphere apparently don't matter, since, it's impossible in your game to leverage the mechanics in this way.

Which, IMO, just leads to players eschewing the skill system altogether in favor of using spells. Why bother with insight when we can just use Zone of Truth or Detect Thoughts? 100% guaranteed to work, and I don't have to play guess the mechanics.

I gotta say- if a GM told me the only thing a skill roll could give me is avoiding the bad stuff on failure and that the gains of the skill ( in the book) are on me as a player to devine myself from their acting and narration, I gotta say that's z huge impetus to choose character who get their stuff done by mechanics outside skills too.

I prefer skills having a more active role - not just a defensive one - keeping bad stuff away.

I have seen this before in other ways. The most obvious were GMs where pretty much social situations were all roleplay with no consideration of mechanics or stats. Became obvious it was better to sink points and choices into other areas.

But, on a broader scale, there have always been players who style was to find ways to go around the rules, to bypass the mechanics and drive as many solution and resolutions toward "ad hoc" or "fiat" calls on the GM. For combat, these tend to run towards finding more and more ways to get around hit points and convincing the GM to just declare the other guy dead now. Most common would be "dagger to thtoat" or "dropping heavy stuff" - or anything that creates or finds a crack in the tules to argue "but hit points here makes no sense."

On social, its presenting plsyer to GM a wonderfully layered argument and social exchange regardless of the character having droppedcp socials to min. Long as he saw he could get success by player without the character and mechanics often enough - great. When that failed, that's when the points he sunk elsewhere would come in.

Similar cases were players who always fought to come up with ways their character " knew that too" or just flat out ran with out of character knowledge.

Al in all, it all sorta boils down to - it seemed over time- trying to "win" what it seemed they saw as the " player-GM" contest being for them " the game".

Obviously, not all of this matches everyone, or anyone, it just seems that there are significant similarities.

 

[iserith]

My DMing approach submitted without further comment (DMG, pages 236-237):

"By balancing the use of dice against deciding on success, you can encourage your players to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in its world.

"Remember that dice don't run your game - you do. Dice are like rules. They're tools to help keep the action moving. At any time, you can decide that a player's action is automatically successful. You can also grant the player advantage on any ability check, reducing the chance of a bad die roll foiling the character's plans. By the same token, a bad plan or unfortunate circumstances can transform the easiest task into an impossibility, or at least impose disadvantage."

 

[Agamon]

I gotta say- if a GM told me the only thing a skill roll could give me is avoiding the bad stuff on failure and that the gains of the skill ( in the book) are on me as a player to devine myself from their acting and narration, I gotta say that's z huge impetus to choose character who get their stuff done by mechanics outside skills too.

I prefer skills having a more active role - not just a defensive one - keeping bad stuff away.

I have seen this before in other ways. The most obvious were GMs where pretty much social situations were all roleplay with no consideration of mechanics or stats. Became obvious it was better to sink points and choices into other areas.

It's not about ignoring your trained skills, it's about assuming a level of competence from those that are trained in the skills.

 

[Charlaquin]

And, since you folks insist on being just as dismissive, I'd point out that not having the ability to make ability checks on demand means that I am 100% at the mercy of the DM who is juggling the needs of five other people at the table, distractions, possible crankiness, and a million other things. But, apparently, the DM is so in tune with everything in the game world that his or her descriptions will always be 100% transparent to the players, never, ever missing details. Oh, and a DM who is almost guaranteed to be wrong about the math since very, very few of us are actually good at calculating risk/reward on the fly with any degree of accuracy.

I used to have a lot of anxiety about this too. Turned out, most DMs aren’t out to ruin your day, and in fact are doing their best to give you a challenging but fair and hopefully rewarding experience. I would much rather my success and failure be determined by that person’s best judgment of the actions I describe my character taking than at the mercy of a slightly weighted random number generator. And anecdotally, since deciding to embrace the DM’s Judgment rather than hide from it behind the impartial but fickle d20, I’ve found that my characters succeed much more reliably.

Oh, and apparently that same DM is completely obtuse and cannot possibly discern the motivations of a player's actions unless the player describes in pretty clear detail, exactly what he or she is doing (since we're not actually allowed to reference any skills when describing actions).

Some DMs are comfortable interpreting a motivation and method from just the name of a skill and the context leading up to it. Even with such DMs, I find that more specificity in action declaration tends to lead to a lesser number of checks called for, and therefore a greater rate of success. Personally, I don’t like to make any assumptions about what a player’s character does when I’m DMing. Even if it seems obvious to me what a player is hoping to accomplish and how, I would rather hear it from them than assume my intuition is correct and risk adjudicating an action that they didn’t want to take.

I'm still waiting to see how I'm supposed to narrate a purely mental action like remembering details about a monster or an NPC reference (I got a 17 on a history check, do I know anything about this NPC?).

Personally, I don’t expect my players to narrate mental actions. I give them information that I think is pertinent if they have a relevant proficiency, and if they want to know something specific, they are free to ask (e.g. “do I know trolls are weak to fire?” “Sure.”) But generally if you want to learn something you don’t know, you’ll have to take action steps to uncover that information (e.g. “I wave my torch in the troll’s face to see if it reacts with fear!”) Different DMs handle these sorts of things differently. At Iserith’s table, for example, I expect you would be asked to rephrase “do I know if trolls are weak to fire” in the form of an active attempt to recall that information, (e.g. “I think back to my training as a soldier to try and remember any weaknesses they might have.”)

Hey, you folks can play however you like. It's not that we don't understand what you're doing. We do understand. We just don't want to do it that way.

And if you left it at that, there would be no argument. But for some reason people who “understand but don’t want to do it that way” ask an awful lot of questions about the way we do it.

I mean, @iserith, you've gone on at considerable length about how you are just following the rules. But, when @Charlaquin is obviously deviating from the rules, you don't seem to have any problems with that. Why is that? You keep telling all and sundry that we should be following the rules in order to get the results from the game that the game expects. Yet, when someone on your side of the fence ventures off into homebrew territory, it's perfectly fine.

Not that it really matters, but my interpretation of the rules is very consistent with Iserith’s. He even agreed with me on the point that you took as a house rule. That’s another reason it seems like you don’t understand the way we do it as well as you claim to - when I said that a Wisdom (Insight) check won’t allow you to figure out if an NPC is being deceitful, I wasn’t saying that under my house rules the Insight skill can’t be utilized in attempts to uncover NPC deceit. I was saying that under my (and Iserith’s, for whatever that’s worth) interpretation of the rules as written, checks don’t do anything on their own. They are tools the DM uses to resolve actions that have a chance of failing and consequences for failing.

 

[5ekyu]

It's not about ignoring your trained skills, it's about assuming a level of competence from those that are trained in the skills.

Sorry but, how?

If the key to insight and figuring out if the guy is being deceptive is me the player figuring it out * myself* from what the character says and how the GM says it - that's not my character being good as that's on me and the GM.

Now, of course, passive scores and auto-success levels apply.

In my game, if your characters got a proficiency and the DC is 10 or less without disad, you get success, no roll. So, during or after the exchange I would just say "it's obvious to you they are..." even if I tried to make it obvious. Similar if its a situation where passive skill applies, I wont SK for a roll, just give you the results as statement at the right time for the scene.

Competence of the character comes out of their capabilities and them getting into play, not the player-gm sparring. It's to me about the character vs the NPC, not me vs the gm, even if I got a better chance in the latter fight.

 

[Agamon]

Sorry but, how?

If the key to insight and figuring out if the guy is being deceptive is me the player figuring it out * myself* from what the character says and how the GM says it - that's not my character being good as that's on me and the GM.

Now, of course, passive scores and auto-success levels apply.

In my game, if your characters got a proficiency and the DC is 10 or less without disad, you get success, no roll. So, during or after the exchange I would just say "it's obvious to you they are..." even if I tried to make it obvious. Similar if its a situation where passive skill applies, I wont SK for a roll, just give you the results as statement at the right time for the scene.

Competence of the character comes out of their capabilities and them getting into play, not the player-gm sparring. It's to me about the character vs the NPC, not me vs the gm, even if I got a better chance in the latter fight.

I'm not sure how my post implies GM/player sparring or player competence, just competence of the PC trained in the skill.

If the NPC is a schmuck and the PC is good at spotting cues, I'm going to describe those cues when they try to pull a fast one. If the PC isn't, they don't get those cues. No rolls necessary, training is important.

If the NPC is a skilled negotiator, that's when I'll ask for a roll to see if they can glean anything past what the NPC is outright saying.

If I let PCs ask to roll Insight whenever they want, the narrative gets interrupted every interaction, because the player is going to want to check if they're lying, just in case. That's not the style of game I enjoy running, though one's millage may vary.

 

[robus]

And, since you folks insist on being just as dismissive, I'd point out that not having the ability to make ability checks on demand means that I am 100% at the mercy of the DM who is juggling the needs of five other people at the table, distractions, possible crankiness, and a million other things.

If the DM is not in a position to adjudicate actions, one of their primary functions, then you’ve got bigger fish to fry than just ability checks!

 

[5ekyu]

I'm not sure how my post implies GM/player sparring or player competence, just competence of the PC trained in the skill.

If the NPC is a schmuck and the PC is good at spotting cues, I'm going to describe those cues when they try to pull a fast one. If the PC isn't, they don't get those cues. No rolls necessary, training is important.

If the NPC is a skilled negotiator, that's when I'll ask for a roll to see if they can glean anything past what the NPC is outright saying.

If I let PCs ask to roll Insight whenever they want, the narrative gets interrupted every interaction, because the player is going to want to check if they're lying, just in case. That's not the style of game I enjoy running, though one's millage may vary.

"I am not sure how my post..."

I think you came in, partially quoted a response and then went into a tangent while telling me what "it was not about"

As I just described above, if the skills and specs are such no roll is needed I tell the player the results. They get "he is lying" or "he is scared" etc.

It's not on the player to divine from my dialog that he was lying. It's not on the player whose character had the skill to listen to the GM's portrayal and they, themselves, the player pick up on signs of deceit. That is describing a player vs GM game resolution, not a character vs NPC.

That's the " insight" equivalent of the GM saying "ok, your character can sneak up on the npc if you can sneak up on me. "


That was what was being discussed, what I was responding to, when you quoted me and told me what was not.

 

[Agamon]

It's not on the player to divine from my dialog that he was lying. It's not on the player whose character had the skill to listen to the GM's portrayal and they, themselves, the player pick up on signs of deceit. That is describing a player vs GM game resolution, not a character vs NPC.

I see we agree here. I may have misread your post I originally quoted. I just read it as, "if the player can't roll, then he has to try and read the GM's mind," which I don't agree with. But if that's not the case, my bad, carry on.

 

[iserith]

This is really easy:

Just like a DM may telegraph the presence of traps and secret doors while describing the environment so that the players can act to have their players find them, in a social interaction, the "traps" are lies and the "secret doors" are the NPC's ideal, bond, flaw, and agenda.

So as DM you just telegraph those lies, ideals, bonds, flaws, and agendas while describing the interaction. From there, the player may have a sense that the NPC is lying or what those ideals, bonds, flaws, or agendas are. To verify those assumptions, the player then says something like, "I'm hearing what she's saying and I get the sense she's not really trying to help the king here... I'm going to try and read that from her body language, speech habits, and change in mannerisms to see if I'm right."

At that point, the player has described what he or she wants to do in a reasonably specific way that allows the DM to adjudicate the action. If there's an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure, the DM calls for an ability check, in this case, probably a Wisdom (Insight) check. The uncertain outcome might be because the NPC is trying to hide her true intentions. The meaningful consequence for failure might be that the NPC realizes the PCs may be onto her and thus break off the interaction or become guarded, making all subsequent attempts to figure her out harder.

If the PC is successful, the NPC's agenda is revealed and now the player might have the character use that knowledge in an advantageous way to influence the NPC, granting advantage to any subsequent related Charisma check.

This isn't about reading the DM's mind. It's just adequately describing the environment as a DM, paying attention as a player and describing what you want to do, and then the DM following the standard procedure for play as laid out in the rules. And to bring it around to the original topic, as a player here, I'm NOT asking to make an Insight check. Because if I've paid attention and made a good case for why I think the NPC's agenda is something other than what she has stated, the DM might just tell me I succeed with no roll and no chance of incurring the cost of failure.