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

[iserith]

Slight tangent, but I do use Inspiration, and I use your “players claim Inspiration” rule, but I haven’t had as much success as it sounds like you have in getting players to actually make use of it. Mostly, my players seem to forget it exists, and never claim or use it. Maybe it will get used once in a blue moon, especially on death saves, but otherwise it just gets ignored.

Hard to say what's going on there. Not only do my players engage with this, by the time the session is done, they've almost always each hit their limit of 4 per session earned and expended. I was thinking maybe it's the amount of content in one session (and thus more opportunities to earn and spend it), but it sounds like from other posts you're moving along at a pretty good clip. It could be the mechanism by which the Inspiration is claimed. For us, it's the click of a button and, usually, a hilarious gif accompanying it. At a table, particularly if space is tight, it might just get overlooked and forgotten.

 

[Charlaquin]

That is pixelhunting, but no, we're not all guilty of it.

Wait, are you saying that if I was playing in your game and I said I tried to kill a goblin by sticking my tongue out at it, you would ask me to make an attack roll? If not, I think you may have misread my post.

 

[Charlaquin]

Hard to say what's going on there. Not only do my players engage with this, by the time the session is done, they've almost always each hit their limit of 4 per session earned and expended. I was thinking maybe it's the amount of content in one session (and thus more opportunities to earn and spend it), but it sounds like from other posts you're moving along at a pretty good clip. It could be the mechanism by which the Inspiration is claimed. For us, it's the click of a button and, usually, a hilarious gif accompanying it. At a table, particularly if space is tight, it might just get overlooked and forgotten.

Ah, yeah, maybe that’s it then.

There are other players I’ve run for who use it more often too, so it could be particular to my regular players.

 

[Lanefan]

The approach of doing the funky chicken dance would obviously result in no progress in trying to kill a goblin....

Well it might, if the Goblin laughed itself to death...

Or, more seriously, if your dancing distracts the Goblin such that it doesn't notice your ally sneaking up behind it to run a swrod through its back then yes, your dancing did result in some progress toward that goal.

Pixel-hunting is a phenomenon in some point and click adventure games where you have to click on exactly the right place to make progress, and anything else will result in no progress.

Yep, and while some computer games take it to a crazy-stupid extreme (Pool of Radiance, step forward please), sometimes a bit of pixel-hunting in an RPG is in my eyes perfectly OK. What I specifically don't want is to be expected to sacrifice depth and detail on the altar of speed.

And sometimes you just ain't gonna find that needle in the haystack no matter how long you look for it.

 

[Lanefan]

These are ways that might indicate which pixel to click on, analogous to the telegraphs I use to indicate the presence of a trap, or whatever. But the implication of the term pixel hunting is that you have to click on exactly the right pixel, analogous to describing exactly the right approach, which is not the case in my games, therefore the analogy doesn’t hold up.

I think I might see the disconnect here. There's two steps involved:

1 - find the pixel / find the trap
2 - click on the pixel / enact the solution

@Maxperson is trying to say, I think, that there's almost always multiple ways to do (1) above. You're saying there's only one way to do (2) above. You're both right, except in a few unusual corner-cases.

 

[Maxperson]

Really? You wouldn’t need to know what weapon I was using?

Nope. 1) as DM I know what weapons my players have and use, 2) you're going to give me the damage and it's going to be one of the weapons on your sheet, why do I need to know which one it is before you attack? You aren't going to pull out the dagger and then switch it for the longsword, yelling gotcha to me. You're going to just use the longsword.

 

[Lanefan]

I fail to see how "I bribe the guards" doesn't have both a goal and an approach.

It has both of those, yes; but nowhere near enough detail beyond that to be of any use.

--- what are you offering them; and if money, how much?
--- are you trying to bribe all the guards or just the bored-looking one on the left?
--- are you doing this in the open or trying to pull one or more guards into the shadows in order to talk discreetly?
--- is your approach one of charm, intimidation, business, or ... ?
--- [most important!] what are you actually saying to them?

It doesn't state the goal, but that would presumably be contextually obvious (they're guards, you probably want them to let you past) and bribing is an approach (I'm going to offer them money).

Now you may want more detail, but there isn't a set of criteria you can just apply here.

The details will be different for each situation, of course; and that alone is reason enough to dig into them a bit rather than just let "I bribe the guards" carry the load and go straight to rolling dice.

 

[Lanefan]

If you need more information then you ask for it. If you're tracking money, then of course how much money you spend matters. But if you've reached the point when all the PCs have 10s of thousands of gold pieces then maybe you don't care any more. It's all circumstantial.

The PCs might have kaboodles of gold pieces but odds are high that the guards don't, and the amount offered will have a lot of impact on how the guards respond.

And of course if the guards can't be brided then "No. You can't bribe the guards".

I still want more detail, though. How persistent are you being in your bribe attempts? Did you fail due to the guards' intrangisence (sp.?) or your own inability to persuade them? Did you offer them so much that they start thinking they should arrest you for theft?

 

[Mordhau]

It has both of those, yes; but nowhere near enough detail beyond that to be of any use.

--- what are you offering them; and if money, how much?
--- are you trying to bribe all the guards or just the bored-looking one on the left?
--- are you doing this in the open or trying to pull one or more guards into the shadows in order to talk discreetly?
--- is your approach one of charm, intimidation, business, or ... ?
--- [most important!] what are you actually saying to them?

The details will be different for each situation, of course; and that alone is reason enough to dig into them a bit rather than just let "I bribe the guards" carry the load and go straight to rolling dice.

But think of all the information that's missing when you go to the shop to buy potions. Which roads do you walk down? Do you stop to chat with the beggar on the corner? What other encounters do you have on the way to the shops?

The question is whether the missing information is important or not.

And that depends entirely on context.

 

[Mordhau]

The PCs might have kaboodles of gold pieces but odds are high that the guards don't, and the amount offered will have a lot of impact on how the guards respond.

I still want more detail, though. How persistent are you being in your bribe attempts? Did you fail due to the guards' intrangisence (sp.?) or your own inability to persuade them? Did you offer them so much that they start thinking they should arrest you for theft?

All of that could be covered by a skill roll.

The question is how much focus do you want to put on this encounter?

An encounter that is resolved by a straightforward die roll is not a particularly good encounter. But sometimes it might be, for various reasons, a necessary one.