D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[iserith]

Let it ride is simply meant to deal with the 'death by a 1000 cuts' issue. If I am sneaking into the Orc camp, and I need to role another Bluff check every single time I encounter an Orc to see if my disguise holds, then there's a virtually 0% chance it will stand up. Now, you could instead say "Well, it is only relevant when there's a serious challenge to it." That might imply something too, and it leans in the direction of making the GM's opinion about what is important to be a channel for 'guided resolution', AKA force, though honestly I think its hard to consider that to be a very strong objection in a game that seems to actually WANT force, and definitely eschews principles and practices that would really fence it out.

Luckily DM decides in D&D 5e when a roll needs to be made. I'll ignore the Forge waffle as to "GM force" because I think it's silly and divisive.

 

[Oofta]

Well, it seems we've been through one and a third cycles of the play loop by my estimation.

1st go through:
1. The DM has described the warehouse and reasons had previously been given for something important inside and that no one should kill any guards.
2. The players described how they were casing the place to obtain info about getting in
3. The DM adjudicated (maybe there were rolls, maybe not) - appears to be a success of some sort

Yes, I skipped "previously on".

2nd go through:

1. The DM describes the warehouse, specifically focusing on the newly revealed details that might help the party gain entry. "What do you do next?" the DM would say to the players.

Yep, this is pretty much where the scenario starts.

Now we arrive at:
2. The players decide on a course of action (or split up to try multiple techniques or one thing at a time until success or... disaster!) Do you want to give us some sense of the party composition or should we make that up in order to complete this step? Or do you want to complete this step for us and we can offer how we'd handle the DM adjudication and narration of outcomes?

3. The DM awaits the players to complete step 2...

And ... this is where I'm curious about details. Because there's a lot of discussion but it's at such high level that it feels like things get misconstrued or lost.

At this moment we have the option of one of the PCs just walking up to the guard to see if they can persuade the guard to let them in. I don't think it's very likely that it would be successful but this is the kind of thing a DM needs to be able to respond to.

Someone mentioned the idea of knock and silence which is cool if the group has them prepared. Good idea, no checks are required just mark off the spell slot(s) used.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've bolded a part of your earlier post that seems relevant.

How likely the King is to do <whatever> seems to depend, at least in part, on who asks him.

Likewise, what is possible using a "Herbalist Kit" seems likely to vary based on who is using it.

The who can, in turn, be thought of in different ways.

We could think about character skill: Wormtongue is skilled at getting kings to do things; Radagast is skilled at doing things with Herbalist Kits.

We could think about narrative role: Kirk is skilled at getting kings to do things; Scotty can get the Enterprise to warp speed with nothing but the sweat of his brow and a Herbalist Kit.

It's not clear how exactly how you approach makes room for either of these ways.

Right, I don't think that we can support the notion that 5e, as designed, didn't intend skills and other proficiencies to somehow represent "things are good at and preferentially try." In this sense I don't see that they are THAT different from 4e skills (there are some differences, granted). A character with Stealth proficiency in EITHER SYSTEM is one who's player presumably envisaged their character sneaking around! The player will almost sure solve problems BY SNEAKING. The mechanics reinforce this, at least in an ideal case, by making this approach 'fruitful', that is it will have a high probability of success.

Now, we could also posit other uses for this kind of attribute, as merely a marker of some personality trait of the character, for instance. It could be merely a signal to the GM or system that the player 'likes situations that involve Stealth', but even in those cases it would be illogical to assume that said skill isn't meant to somehow translate into "it will be a good tactical option for you to use this instead of something you don't have proficiency with."

In my own game I call what 4e called skills 'knacks' and this is exactly their role, to inform you of what it is that are your preferred problem solving techniques. Each knack corresponds to an aspect of a situation, and thus represents an approach to achieving your goal. Players propose actions, GMs consider what aspect of the situation is being interacted with, and a check can be made, but the players also get a chance first to alter their approach at least somewhat. You could say "I climb the cliff in order to escape the slime." The GM might say, OK, that's an athletic solution to the problem, you can use Athletics, and you might say "Well, wait a minute, as a wizard I'd rather use this Fly power I've got and make an Arcana check instead." Or maybe another PC says "Hey, I'm a great climber, we'll do it together." etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agreed on the technicalities - DM decides if there is a check. I'm saying for us, DM can decide there is a check in a case where a player asked for a check. DM still decides. They could have declined the check. Or called for one even where player didn't want one.

I agree that this is the common pattern for most games. Interestingly Dungeon World seems to really not like that as a concept. It drums into the heads of readers that the names of moves are never spoken, and that everything starts and ends with the fiction, and should always be described from an in-character perspective. This goes as far as admonishing the GM to only refer to the characters, and not the players. If you do this religiously enough, you can probably break that pattern. As to if you WANT to, that I cannot say

 

[HammerMan]

Including yourself, right? And, just to be clear, this is in the context of setting a DC for an attempted action.



Or did you not mean what you said?

um the response was to this: I’m talking about D&D 5e, specifically the point where the DM considers the character performing the action and all the surrounding circumstances when considering how to resolve it.

I already said no one trained ever rolls for a DC less then 11 in my games (taking character into account) and that if a 1 makes it you can not roll (again character matters)

I also said that if someone came up with a 'creative solution' I might give a bonus but I care more about in game then out of game skill

 

[HammerMan]

One of the issues I have with these conversations is that we can never seem to just discuss specifics. We go from "how does describing how you climb a wall mean automatic success where rolling a dice means possible failure" to <poof> there's a rickety latter that can be climbed that was never mentioned previously.

yup and it feels like we go round and round.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I saw that. The fact different characters will have different thresholds for autosuccess seems to imply different characters might have different DCs, but A) that's a different question B) it's harder to run around the table and C) I'm not sure it's correct or more realistic. I think "harder to run around the table" is reason enough not to do it.

Yeah, I would rather use other tools, like Inspiration, instead for that. The DC generally tells us how likely success is, so it is hard to see a lot of logic in saying "Oh, well, this time Joe is vastly more likely to succeed at this Athletics check than Mike, but yesterday they had the same odds on a somewhat similar check." If there are SPECIFIC REASONS to give different odds, then those must translate to some factor or other that can be explicated, right? Is it proficiency, difference in ability scores, level, some sort of special ability, whatever it is, I'd think it would be better to surface that vs just dictating each character has different DCs.

Now, that being said, if there really IS a reason within the fiction that amounts to something like "This 20th level guy clearly cannot fail, but this 10th level guy just isn't FICTIONALLY at a point to attempt this" there is at least some support for that. I think @pemerton has stated that is his position WRT 4e and whether a situation is fictionally 'Heroic', 'Paragon', or 'Epic'. It is quite possible, in 4e and 5e both, for characters to MATHEMATICALLY have some chance, maybe a substantial one in some cases, to pass a check that probably should be FICTIONALLY beyond them. I think Pemerton mentioned 'sealing the Abyss' (something that happened in his 4e campaign) as an example of a clearly 'Epic' sort of action. However, I will note that this was a pretty climactic situation in the fiction of that game. Beyond that, how often do radically different power levels of PC compare against the same challenge? In realistic play I don't think varying the DC makes a lot of sense. I'd grant a big situational bonus, or explicate why auto success happened, vs doing that.

 

[Oofta]

yup and it feels like we go round and round.

Even when I propose specific scenarios and have a simple "how would you handle this".

Kind of hard to have a discussion when some people post "why would you roll if it means that it could fail" and then insist ... actually I'm not sure any more. Other than if I say that if describing what they do means automatic success then rolling should also be an automatic success is for some reason not true. Unless it is. Because you have info on the king's daughter or there's suddenly a ladder you can climb instead of the wall.

If anyone wants to come up with a reasonable example scenario that can be discussed to actually iron out different approaches I'm all ears.

 

[Maxperson]

This is the equivalent of a pole barn so no windows, just the cupola on the roof for ventilation.

Fair enough. We send the wizard around to the back door and have him cast Knock. When the guard runs around back to check it out, the rest of us walk in the now unattended front door. The wizard runs as soon as the guard turns the corner, leading him on a merry chase, casting invisibility to get away if necessary.

 

[HammerMan]

Even when I propose specific scenarios and have a simple "how would you handle this".

Kind of hard to have a discussion when some people post "why would you roll if it means that it could fail" and then insist ... actually I'm not sure any more. Other than if I say that if describing what they do means automatic success then rolling should also be an automatic success is for some reason not true. Unless it is. Because you have info on the king's daughter or there's suddenly a ladder you can climb instead of the wall.

If anyone wants to come up with a reasonable example scenario that can be discussed to actually iron out different approaches I'm all ears.

I think the issue is (player)out of game ability compared to (character) in game ability is such a vast argument that there is no way to just break it down no matter how many examples we give.