D&D 5E Power Gamers and Balance - How to handle

[FrogReaver]

What does it add? How about the players think that their characters have succeeded, follow through with whatever plan they had in mind, and are surprised to find out that things have gone sideways and the characters are in trouble which the need to get out of it...now? Isn't things going sideways t how a lot of adventure fiction works for the characters involved?

You can do that without ever having them roll.

 

[Greg K]

You can do that without ever having them roll.

I can, however, use the roll and result to further determine just how bad things are going to get.

 

[Lanefan]

Cool.

I was just telling you how I'd react if I found myself failing checks after rolling 20+. I'd be thinking I need to up my powergame.

Your players might be thinking the same thing.

This runs hard into the issue of player knowledge vs. character knowledge.

The character has no way of knowing why her attempt succeeded or failed, or whether it was simply a bad try (low roll) against normal odds or really good try (high roll) against something impossible...and thus neither should the player. The fact that your powered-up persuader just failed to persuade someone could (and maybe should) raise some in-character suspicion, but to reflect the character's knowledge the player shouldn't ever know that a roll of 20 just failed.

Which means that if such mechanics are to be used the DM should be making the rolls in secret, and (honestly, one hopes!) narrating the results. Nothing wrong with the character (via its player asking for an open roll) then trying a perception check to determine a reason for the failure...

Lan-"did I persuade you yet?"-efan

 

[Lehrbuch]

So I wouldn't have to pull the snake tongue out right? I'm not required to do anything with my hands or make any gestures.

So, you kept your snake tongue in your trouser pocket while casting? I'm glad to hear that.

However, the rules do note (Basic PHB, page 79) that for Material components the caster "must have a hand free to access these components", so I think that there is an implication you are at least required to have your hand in your pocket. Even if you aren't waving your snake tongue around.

Anyway, the main point still stands, even if the victim of Suggestion spell doesn't think they were affected by magic, they will still be aware that they were recently a bloody idiot about something. Depending on circumstances, the NPC is quite likely to take some sort of action / investigation / reporting to rectify their mistake, which will generally include identifying in some way who benefited from the mistake.

 

[Iry]

There is no amount of character power that can threaten the DM.
It's only a problem if the player is making other people feel bad.
And that is something to be discussed OOC.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Persuasion checks are not spells. Sounds to me like some DMs let a success at Persuade have too great of an effect.

Back on the topic of min/maxing and powergaming...

Min/maxing simply means that you focus completely on one things, at the expense of everything else. So you're awesome at hitting things with your great sword, and not much good at anything else. So all the DM has to do (assuming he wants to keep things balanced for the rest of the group) is make sure there are lots of situations where hitting things with swords is not the answer. And some things where hitting things with swords is the answer, so that one character has fun.

Then there's exploitation of poor game design through specific builds. Shouldn't that be solvable through simply talking to players at the beginning of the campaign: "Ok, look guys, I know GWM/Polearm Master does tons of damage, but we've seen that character a bunch of times already. Can we try something else? I'll tell you upfront that there are no magic polearms in this campaign..."

 

[Satyrn]

Lan-"did I persuade you yet?"-efan

No, you haven't budged me at all. I'm not playing 1e.

 

[Lanefan]

No, you haven't budged me at all. I'm not playing 1e.

Hmmmm...time to steal a bad idea from 3e and Take 20, methinks.

 

[Maxperson]

Sorry, persuading someone to do something and being successful at it doesn't result in an immediate attempt on your life. Might be a good option for failure in that situation though. BBEG is going to make the secret passage but tries to kill you.

I think you are getting success and failure that results in progression with a setback mixed up.

I have to disagree here. The check was not to persuade him not to kill them, so the attempt on their lives is not part of failure or success of the persuasion attempt at all. The check was to build the passage, which he did. That's a success. The attempt is the bad guy doing what he does and protecting himself in bad ways, moving the story further along. That's a good thing.

 

[Satyrn]

Hmmmm...time to steal a bad idea from 3e and Take 20, methinks.

Sorry, the DM's already ruled it's impossible.