D&D General Renamed Thread: "The Illusion of Agency"

[Lanefan]

In addition to spells, I could see a class or subclass (or Feat?) that gives players a mechanical ability to detect lies, as long as it is clearly defined how that works.

That said, I don't think it's a good idea to enable general purpose, available-to-everybody detection of lies without it having a cost (such as a spell slot, or a meaningful consequence of failure if you try it and fail).

Or if such a thing does get introduced, NPCs should be able to use it as well to detect if-when the PCs are lying.

 

[Lanefan]

My thoughts with this was to give him a retry prior to being attacked, i.e. he bought more time by threatening the eggs to give himself another shot at the gate without taking damage. IME, once battle is engaged, it usually benefits the PC to just fight. Moving away and taking attacks of opportunity just don’t measure up to fighting the monster at that point, which I think is a bit of a problem with 5e.

In a way, the party actually benefits somewhat from the portcullis. The wizard is now safe on the other side and still can cast spells free from taking harm from the owlbears.

Now I'm confused - I thought the owlbears were on the side of the portcullis the wizard just misty-stepped into.

Or maybe I missed something somewhere.

 

[TiQuinn]

The second bolded piece is the first bolded piece. The whole point of obstacles is to whittle down PC resources and-or to force resource-use decisions.

That, and IMO there's nothing at all wrong design-wise with the portcullis (and whatever's behind it) being a complete red herring.

Yeah, I don’t care for that kind of adventure design unless there’s something special about the location where the players are at least aware of this or can become aware that’s the case, like say it’s a labyrinth or haunted house scenario. It’s something to do sparingly.

There was an RPGA module called Lost Island of Castanamir that had something along these lines and it was the primary driver of the adventure.

 

[TiQuinn]

Now I'm confused - I thought the owlbears were on the side of the portcullis the wizard just misty-stepped into.

Or maybe I missed something somewhere.

The scenario switched up and the barbarian and wizard were on the run trying to get away from owlbears with eggs stolen from their nest.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The scenario switched up and the barbarian and wizard were on the run trying to get away from owlbears with eggs stolen from their nest.

Those were illusory owlbears chasing them. The real owlbears were on the other side of the portcullis.

It was all arranged by the barbarian so he could keep the eggs for himself.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, I don’t care for that kind of adventure design unless there’s something special about the location where the players are at least aware of this or can become aware that’s the case, like say it’s a labyrinth or haunted house scenario. It’s something to do sparingly.

Meh, I'm happy with red herrings. They still get whatever xp and loot they earn in chasing down said red herrings, so it's not a complete waste of time for them.

There was an RPGA module called Lost Island of Castanamir that had something along these lines and it was the primary driver of the adventure.

I ran that one a long time ago. Good premise but a real pain in the backside to run with a big party as they're constantly getting split up by the dungeon itself and everyone ends up going every which way.

 

[Starfox]

I've only read the start and end of this thread, so excuse me if this is repetitive.

I am playing Blades in the Dark right now, which shares some of the OP's view on die rolling; it is always the players who roll, and initiate actions or reactions. A problem I have with this is how to telegraph information that is not obvious. Going back to the first example of a hidden door in a large underground area, how do I prompt the PCs into looking for that door without spoiling their agency to do things wrong?

What I've done so far is to sometime do call for rolls. I have two techniques for this.

1. The obvious, have the PCs roll Survey or other appropriate skill to pick up clues.
2. As the players how they want to gather information and then lot them roll whatever strategy they come up with. Some agendas will work better than others. In this example, using Attune to find patterns in the ether is very conditional; if something supernatural is involved then it is effective, otherwise not.

 

[User51]

I just spent a couple of hours reading through this whole thread and I'm so glad I did. So many great ideas and approaches in here, it gives me a lot to think about. I may have to go back and take some notes!