D&D 5E Rolling Without a Chance of Failure (I love it)

[Charlaquin]

Yu are. Iserith is. You're basing avoidance of traps on players description rather than character's skills.

I’m basing it on their decisions, not their descriptions.

 

[Lanefan]

You’re not accounting for telegraphing. If you need to check the sides/bottom/whatever, there will be an environmental clue that indicates as much.

Which, once the players learn how to pick up on your clues, just holds their hands and guides them straight to the prize.

I'd rather the players come up with these ideas on their own, or at the very least develop an SOP, and am happy to let them fail if they don't.

 

[Charlaquin]

You're simply looking this at extremely zoomed (IMHO unnecessarily so) granularity. This is what I see going on mechanically: There is trap which has certain DC to detect and a rider that failed examination attempt triggers it. Rest is fluff.

Not the way I run things. DCs are something checks have, and checks don’t exist independently of the actions they’re being made to resolve. The trap doesn’t have a certain DC to detect, the player’s attempt to detect the trap may or may not have a certain DC to succeed, depending on their approach.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That a player might not know that a shiny chest may indicate something is dangerous is simply a learning opportunity for the player.

But if their character is a master rogue with expert knowledge of traps, why wouldn't they know that?

 

[Mordhau]

Ideally dice systems would be robust enough that they don't break down when rolls that aren't necessary are asked for.

 

[iserith]

You're simply looking this at extremely zoomed (IMHO unnecessarily so) granularity. This is what I see going on mechanically: There is trap which has certain DC to detect and a rider that failed examination attempt triggers it. Rest is fluff.

There's a bit more to traps though. See the traps in DMG and XtGE. There are plenty of ways to deal with them that don't involve making checks. Why would I want to make a check if I can avoid it? As a player I will strive to do that so I can obviate your DC and your rider. That's going to push me to creative solutions rather than trying to throw dice at the problem.

So if the player says they touch your contact poison chest, then they get to roll investigation and on success they don't?

I should think that if they touch an ungloved hand to a chest with a contact poison on it, we'd be making a Constitution saving throw, not an Intelligence (Investigation) check. If the action declaration was then to deduce based on the clue of the character's poisoning that the chest has a contact poison on it, that sounds like automatic success to me - no Intelligence (Investigation) check needed!

 

[iserith]

But if their character is a master rogue with expert knowledge of traps, why wouldn't they know that?

The player is welcome to have the character attempt to recall lore about such things and we'll adjudicate accordingly. It's not on me to play the character for them.

 

[Charlaquin]

Which, once the players learn how to pick up on your clues, just holds their hands and guides them straight to the prize.

Good for them! They paid attention to the environment, noticed details about it, used those observations to inform their decision-making process, and came up with a solution that resulted in success. In my opinion, they earned that success. And they definitely won’t do so every single time. Players fail to pick up on cues all the time.

 

[iserith]

Which, once the players learn how to pick up on your clues, just holds their hands and guides them straight to the prize.

I'd rather the players come up with these ideas on their own, or at the very least develop an SOP, and am happy to let them fail if they don't.

Forgetting for the moment that players don't make perfect decisions all the time even when the answer is staring them straight in the face, even if they do think the chest is trapped just by hearing the description, so what? What do you do about it now?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Not the way I run things. DCs are something checks have, and checks don’t exist independently of the actions they’re being made to resolve. The trap doesn’t have a certain DC to detect, the player’s attempt to detect the trap may or may not have a certain DC to succeed, depending on their approach.

Technically true, but still semantics. The DC of of the check to examine that chest for traps. As I accept 'I examine the chest for traps' to be a valid declaration, it is the DC for that.