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

[Oofta]

Well, there's a lot of times I need to know whether the weapon in use is enchanted or not; or sometimes which enchanted weapon you're using. Often this will come out when you're telling me your to-hit modifiers, but if the roll is 13 + 3 (Str) + 2 (magic) and all you say is "18 to hit!" I'll be asking "And how does that 18 get there?"

I guess I just trust my players to do the math right unless it's really out in left field. If the group don't all have magic weapons or occasionally use nonmagical ones I may clarify. That's where my 1% of the time I care comes from.

 

[billd91]

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.

That’s not even remotely the same thing. It is, at best, a straw man and a useless example.
What I don‘t do is tell someone their attempt fails because they described an honest attempt in a way I didn’t think was right for the situation I had in mind. I let their character’s skill and the die roll do the talking in these situations and assume the PC knows what they’re doing better than I do. If they describe their attempt, that’s gravy. It‘s a nice addition, but not strictly necessary - in combat or in specialist situations like trap-finding.

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

This is only distracting from the point I was making - in pixel-hunting, there is only one pixel, and you can’t make progress unless you find it. In my games, there is not only one “correct” approach that you can’t make progress unless you guess. Therefore pixel-hunting is not an accurate analogy for how I run my games.

If folks don’t like that there are approaches you can take that will fail without a check, fine. That is a thing that’s true of my games, so if you don’t like it, you probably won’t like my games. But calling it pixel hunting is inaccurate and insulting. Please stop doing that.

 

[Charlaquin]

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?

So you can accurately visualize what’s occurring in the fiction? So you can take it into account for your narration? In case the monster has weaknesses or resistances that are relevant? Any number of reasons.

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.

I could do. That would be my prerogative as a player.

 

[Charlaquin]

Point of order:

"I bribe the guards" is not a skill check. It is the route chosen when a) you failed an real skill check, like persuade or intimidate, or b) you are forgoing any attempts at a skill check because you either lack confidence in your abilities, just don't want to risk failing the attempt, or you just want to fast forward the plot. It has more to do with knowing the motives of the guards, unless you just want the dice to make that call for you. Which is also ok, I guess.

Any action can require a skill check to succeed, if the DM determines the outcome is uncertain. What you describe is one reasonable way to rule on various attempts to get NPCs to do what you want, but it is not the only valid way.

 

[Charlaquin]

I would say that 99% of the time I do not. I know my player's PC's primary weapon it's unusual if they switch to something else. Even then, I honestly don't care. If a creature is vulnerable to bludgeoning, I may clarify but other than that it's not my job to police character choices.

Why do you care? Honest question, I don't know why it would matter the vast majority of times.

Because I don’t want to make assumptions about what action a player intends to take when they can just tell me.

 

[Fenris-77]

Woah fellas. Lets not start telling players we know what they want or what they're doing before they do it. That way lies madness.

 

[Charlaquin]

That’s not even remotely the same thing. It is, at best, a straw man and a useless example.

It’s exactly the same thing - judging that the approach has no reasonable chance of succeeding at the goal and accordingly ruling that it fails without a roll.

What I don‘t do is tell someone their attempt fails because they described an honest attempt in a way I didn’t think was right for the situation I had in mind.

The description isn’t at issue. The approach is.

I let their character’s skill and the die roll do the talking in these situations and assume the PC knows what they’re doing better than I do. If they describe their attempt, that’s gravy. It‘s a nice addition, but not strictly necessary - in combat or in specialist situations like trap-finding.

And that’s fine, you can run your game any way you want. My point is simply that ruling an action can’t succeed based on the approach not matching the goal is not pixel hunting.

 

[Mordhau]

It seems there are always going to be situations in which the players might reasonably expect to succeed, when in fact they can't, but revealing that upfront in itself provides too much information.

In effect they might get this information anyway, for example if they roll really well (especially a natural 20), and still fail. In practice, there's no reason not to reveal this in character, you feel you did as well as you reasonable could but you still didn't succeed.

So in effect rolling a success on a roll that had no chance to succeed is not necessarily pointless. It can at least reveal the players have made a flaw in their underlying approach to a situation.

It also has a pychological impact, that often gets ignored. If they just ask a lot of questions and the GM gives straight answers because there is no possibility of success ("Can I look for a secret door? You look there is no secret door." ) then it can lead to frustration, but if they're rolling the dice and actually ruling something out, it can at least feel like progress.

 

[Charlaquin]

It seems there are always going to be situations in which the players might reasonably expect to succeed, when in fact they can't, but revealing that upfront in itself provides too much information.

Too much information for what?

In effect they might get this information anyway, for example if they roll really well (especially a natural 20), and still fail. In practice, there's no reason not to reveal this in character, you feel you did as well as you reasonable could but you still didn't succeed.

Why are you trying to hide this information in the first place?

So in effect rolling a success on a roll that had no chance to succeed is not necessarily pointless. It can at least reveal the players have made a flaw in their underlying approach to a situation.

Not asking for a roll at all could also reveal that to the players.