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

[Swarmkeeper]

Not really analogous - attempting the same goal with a different approach is a sensible thing to try.

Attempting the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is not sensible.

Wait, are you arguing FOR @iserith’s play style now?

For serious, it’s all about the adjudication, right? In your example, the DM will simply say that the PC did not learn that piece of lore ever from grandfather or anywhere else. See? We’re done adjudicating. In my example, the first roll would be adjudicated as the PC never having learned the lore from anywhere. Same endpoint. The joy in the journey of getting there will vary, I suppose, depending on your preferred play style and if the table uses that play style.

 

[FrogReaver]

Wait, are you arguing FOR @iserith’s play style now?

For serious, it’s all about the adjudication, right? In your example, the DM will simply say that the PC did not learn that piece of lore ever from grandfather or anywhere else. See? We’re done adjudicating. In my example, the first roll would be adjudicated as the PC never having learned the lore from anywhere. Same endpoint. The joy in the journey of getting there will vary, I suppose, depending on your preferred play style and if the table uses that play style.

But there is a presupposition to that style (or at least I thought there was). That, it was about the fiction and so you have a goal and a fictional approach and the outcome to that is what the DM determines. If you didn't have a goal and approach of your grandmothers lore then that outcomes wasn't determined.

 

[Oofta]

I think here you're mixing two (or maybe even three) play styles that don't mix well. If you want to "know if you know about their regen" then I think you're asking a metagaming question. It sounds like you DO know about their regen, and you want to know if it's ok to let your character know it. And that's totally up to you how you want to play it.

But if you're encountering a new creature...a Gru, let's say...and you know nothing about it, and you state, "I'm going to wrack my brains for anything my Patron might have told me during our late night telepathic bull sessions", and the DM says, "Ha. But I like that...give me a nature check" and you roll well, how much of the Gru's special abilities is simply up to your DM. There's no deterministic rule for how well, or how often, you need to roll.

Which is basically what I do without requiring any fluff. If you want to provide fluff and don't get carried away, great. Some people are good at making up stuff like that on the spot and some are not. If they're not good at making up new stuff on the spot they'll just figure out a standard phrase and repeat it.

I don't want to penalize people for not being spontaneous and not being able to come up with detailed background info.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

But there is a presupposition to that style (or at least I thought there was). That, it was about the fiction and so you have a goal and a fictional approach and the outcome to that is what the DM determines. If you didn't have a goal and approach of your grandmothers lore then that outcomes wasn't determined.

The presupposition to both styles is that if a task is impossible, no approach or number of invoked mechanics is going to change that.

 

[Oofta]

I think the “not everyone plays the same” part is playing a huge part in the lack of direct answers that you’re experiencing. Like, the more specific we’re getting into how to handle a player wanting to know about certain monsters or whatever, the more the small differences in our DMing styles are muddling the issue. We seem to be treating the way Iserith handles... I’ll call them “recall actions” ...as representative of the “middle path” DMing style, but a lot of people who aren’t Iserith are weighing in on how they would do it, and I’m sitting here like... This line of questioning no longer bears any resemblance to what actually happens in my games.

Fair enough. Doesn't help that iserith ignores me; he seems to be the biggest proponent of doing everything in a very structured manner. That was probably my biggest beef with him: he'd make statements but then could never give examples.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The internet and forums distort people's actual play style. I would assume most people are on a spectrum. I don't resolve every challenge with the roll of a die, you don't skip telling people about Stabby the Clown because they were only looking for rats.

But some people do seem to be resistant to "tell me what I know about grus" and will not tell you they automatically eat you if the lights go out if you asked if they had any weaknesses.

 

[5ekyu]

But there is a presupposition to that style (or at least I thought there was). That, it was about the fiction and so you have a goal and a fictional approach and the outcome to that is what the DM determines. If you didn't have a goal and approach of your grandmothers lore then that outcomes wasn't determined.

Yeah, back to punching smoke as someone called it.

Let me stare something straight up, if a player in one of my games never called for a "skill check" and always stated his character's efforts by goal and approach, waiting for me to tell him when to and what to roll - that would be OK. I am sure if his "reflections on which relatives stories" for every "do I know" after 30 sessions might get a bit tedious.

But if he was just a stickler for it and kept his pace up that would be fine.

Our problem would be if he came to the table with the expectations that he should be succeeding more often because of the difference in how he described actions and the other guys who just said more skill checks things.

My issue is not with how one describes the actions - not with goal and approach - but with coming at adjudicating GNA with the pre-conception that's its gonna be more successful because of it.

Most of my issue with GNA here is the associated "adjudication baggage" that keeps getting paired with it.

 

[Campbell]

From my perspective the approach is the thing you are actually doing, not the background details that support it. Attempting to recall something from memory is attempting to recall something from memory. If you bring up something that has already been established about your character's background that was not at the top of my GM brain it could impact the DC, but bringing up some other piece of background info does not change what your character was fundamentally trying to do.

I care about what you are actually doing right here and now. For me a difference in approach would require something like consulting an in world bestiary or an active discussion with your patron or academic in the field. These would obviously take more time than a simple attempt to recall information.

Tell me everything I know about grus is not something I would accept as a goal because that could potentially be a massive info dump that I have no real way to resolve. What is this thing or what is a gru is something that is very doable.

 

[Hussar]

I used to feel this way, before I adopted goal and approach resolution. If you have to make a successful check to accomplish anything, then a d20 is far too swingy without unwieldy-large bonuses. With +5 from ability and +6 from proficiency, the highest level of skill you can achieve without being a rogue or a bard, you still have a 15% chance of failing at a medium difficulty task and a 40% chance of failing at a hard task. In my opinion, that’s way too unreliable if you need to roll every time you attempt something. I’d much rather have the consistency of a 3d6 bell curve.

On the other hand, if you only need to make a check when your action has a logical chance of and meaningful consequence for failure, then some swingyness is much more desirable. In my opinion.

Heh. Took a bit of time away to take a deep breath. This was annoying me far more than it should have.

I think this is a part of the issue that isn't being discussed actually. How much swing are we talking about? How does your DM determine DC's? For example, I know that @Maxperson (in another thread) said that it was a DC 20 to determine 2 facts about a monster and that it was possible that neither fact would be useful to the player in the context of the situation. That that it had to be, but, that it could be.

I would not do this.

To me, I look to the bounded accuracy of 5e. How many monsters have an AC over 20 for example? Not very many. Most of them are pretty legendary encounters. So, I apply that to the skill system as well. Any DC of 20 or higher is something of legend - this is something that even a highly trained expert will fail most of the time, so, it's pretty darn hard and it's something you'll likely only see a couple of times in a given adventure. Over 20? Couple of times in a campaign. The vast majority of checks, in my view, are between DC 5 and 15.

Which means that now, asking for checks,isn't anywhere near as swingy as it might be supposed. For an unskilled character, an easy check succeeds about 2 out of 3 times. For a skilled character, that becomes a Moderate (15) skill check.

So, to answer the original question of the thread, "Why do you want to roll a d20?" Well, I know that if I roll, barring unforseen complications, I'm going to succeed about twice as often as I fail and I can spend character resources to improve those odds even more. So, why shouldn't I roll? I'm losing out on those character resources if I don't roll and rolling will get me what I want most of the time.

 

[Charlaquin]

Fair enough. Doesn't help that iserith ignores me; he seems to be the biggest proponent of doing everything in a very structured manner. That was probably my biggest beef with him: he'd make statements but then could never give examples.

He’s pretty transparent about not liking to give specific examples because in his experience they are too lacking in context to effectively illustrate his point, and only serve to give people something to pick apart. Can’t say I blame him.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The internet and forums distort people's actual play style. I would assume most people are on a spectrum. I don't resolve every challenge with the roll of a die, you don't skip telling people about Stabby the Clown because they were only looking for rats.

But some people do seem to be resistant to "tell me what I know about grus" and will not tell you they automatically eat you if the lights go out if you asked if they had any weaknesses.

I think for many of us who use the “middle path” style, “tell me what I know about” anything feels wrong, because we generally don’t consider it within the DM’s role to decide what a PC does or doesn’t know. The instinct is either to say “I don’t know, you tell me,” or “what do you want to know about them?”

 

[Charlaquin]

Heh. Took a bit of time away to take a deep breath. This was annoying me far more than it should have.

I think this is a part of the issue that isn't being discussed actually. How much swing are we talking about? How does your DM determine DC's? For example, I know that @Maxperson (in another thread) said that it was a DC 20 to determine 2 facts about a monster and that it was possible that neither fact would be useful to the player in the context of the situation. That that it had to be, but, that it could be.

I would not do this.

To me, I look to the bounded accuracy of 5e. How many monsters have an AC over 20 for example? Not very many. Most of them are pretty legendary encounters. So, I apply that to the skill system as well. Any DC of 20 or higher is something of legend - this is something that even a highly trained expert will fail most of the time, so, it's pretty darn hard and it's something you'll likely only see a couple of times in a given adventure. Over 20? Couple of times in a campaign. The vast majority of checks, in my view, are between DC 5 and 15.

Which means that now, asking for checks,isn't anywhere near as swingy as it might be supposed. For an unskilled character, an easy check succeeds about 2 out of 3 times. For a skilled character, that becomes a Moderate (15) skill check.

So, to answer the original question of the thread, "Why do you want to roll a d20?" Well, I know that if I roll, barring unforseen complications, I'm going to succeed about twice as often as I fail and I can spend character resources to improve those odds even more. So, why shouldn't I roll? I'm losing out on those character resources if I don't roll and rolling will get me what I want most of the time.

Well, I know you’re not fond of us folks who use the “middle path” quoting the books to explain our reasons for things, but... the rules do define DC 5 as “very easy”, DC 10 as “easy,” DC 15 as “hard”, and DC 20 as “very hard.” Personally, I almost never call for “very easy” checks because it’s pretty rare that a task that could be reasonably defined as “very easy” meets my standards for requiring a check at all. Most of my DCs fall in the 10-15 range as well, though I wouldn’t call DC 20 “legendary” in difficulty.