D&D General Should a low level character know to burn a troll?

[akr71]

To me, if a monster is common enough, such a thing SHOULD be known. Perhaps it’s not known everywhere - if, say, trolls are not common in Icewind Dale, it shouldn’t be widely known. Down on the edges of the Trollmoors, the person who DOESN’T know to use fire is probably not long for this world.

This is why the old Pathfinder 1/ 3e knowledge skill checks were useful - even using passive skill checks, a DM could figure out in seconds if such knowledge were at the characters’ recall.

Now, if it’s an obvious correlation - magical cold spells don’t hurt ice elementals or white dragons - I’d allow it without even a knowledge check, as long as the CREATURE were identifiable.

Yes. If the player gives me a reasonable explanation on why they might know that fire works on trolls - or any monster lore - I'll go with it. Even if it is a quasi-reasonable explanation, I'll likely give them a role to see if they remember it in the heat of battle. The player is attempting to roll play and that's good enough for me.

I tend to use a History skill check or just a general Intelligence check for recalling knowledge.

In my games, the average new character knows very little of the savage wilderness except that it is dangerous and filled with horrible monsters. I mean orcs and goblinoids are common enough and everybody has likely heard of giants and dragons. A commoner probably doesn't know the difference between an ogre and a troll - and the bards that sung that tale probably thought one sounded better than the other in the song.

 

[robus]

This whole thing seems very silly. It assumes that all tables are equal in player expectation when we know that every table is unique.

The DMs role is to create a fun adventure that the players enjoy. If the players are not enjoying the “challenge” of pretending their characters don’t know certain basic D&D tropes (trolls or anything else) then the DM has failed at their #1 function.

“Should” be damned.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Yes. If the player gives me a reasonable explanation on why they might know that fire works on trolls - or any monster lore - I'll go with it. Even if it is a quasi-reasonable explanation, I'll likely give them a role to see if they remember it in the heat of battle. The player is attempting to roll play and that's good enough for me.

I tend to use a History skill check or just a general Intelligence check for recalling knowledge.

Pretty sure you swapped "role" and "roll" there, but that aside...

How does this unfold at the table? Let's assume we're still talking about default trolls and there's already been a round of combat in which the players have witnessed the troll regenerating. One of the players says, "Do I know about trolls and fire?" You call for a History check, and the player rolls really low.

What happens then? Do you expect the player to repeat the attack they just made? Is it ok for them to try something different as long as it's not fire (e.g. a cold spell, or maybe switching from slashing to piercing)?

 

[akr71]

Pretty sure you swapped "role" and "roll" there, but that aside...

How does this unfold at the table? Let's assume we're still talking about default trolls and there's already been a round of combat in which the players have witnessed the troll regenerating. One of the players says, "Do I know about trolls and fire?" You call for a History check, and the player rolls really low.

What happens then? Do you expect the player to repeat the attack they just made? Is it ok for them to try something different as long as it's not fire (e.g. a cold spell, or maybe switching from slashing to piercing)?

Yes, its OK for them to try something different - I did tell them than the monster they are battling seems to be healing, even though they are definitely wounding it. I have given them the clue that what they are doing is insufficient and whether they know about trolls, burning something to injure it and make sure it stays dead does seem obvious. I'm not going to penalize the players, and by extension their low level characters, because I chose to throw a troll at them.

I want more than "Do I know about trolls and fire? I rolled an 8 for History" out of my players. How about
Player: "I was a soldier before adventuring. I used to spend a lot of time with the old veterans listening to their stories - its what made me turn to a life of adventuring. Do I know anything about these monsters and how to prevent them from healing?"
DM: "You sure do - you think that these might be trolls and if you remember correctly fire or acid stops their regeneration." No roll necessary

 

[Guest 6801328]

Yes, its OK for them to try something different - I did tell them than the monster they are battling seems to be healing, even though they are definitely wounding it. I have given them the clue that what they are doing is insufficient and whether they know about trolls, burning something to injure it and make sure it stays dead does seem obvious. I'm not going to penalize the players, and by extension their low level characters, because I chose to throw a troll at them.

I want more than "Do I know about trolls and fire? I rolled an 8 for History" out of my players. How about
Player: "I was a soldier before adventuring. I used to spend a lot of time with the old veterans listening to their stories - its what made me turn to a life of adventuring. Do I know anything about these monsters and how to prevent them from healing?"
DM: "You sure do - you think that these might be trolls and if you remember correctly fire or acid stops their regeneration." No roll necessary

And to be clear, these are all players with experience, who already know about trolls and fire, right?

 

[akr71]

@Elfcrusher yes, but again I don't aim to punish experienced players at the table, but ask them to justify why their character would know certain things.

When we start new campaigns and roll up new characters, part of the enjoyment of the game is having the characters discover the world all over again and make their own conclusions. If it wasn't we'd probably just always start at 5th level.

 

[Guest 6801328]

@Elfcrusher yes, but again I don't aim to punish experienced players at the table, but ask them to justify why their character would know certain things.

When we start new campaigns and roll up new characters, part of the enjoyment of the game is having the characters discover the world all over again and make their own conclusions. If it wasn't we'd probably just always start at 5th level.

Ok.

EDIT: Actually, I started to write something longer, then thought "what's the point?" so changed it, but I really find this fascinating so I do want to ask the question:

If your players are genuinely enjoying this process of "re-discovering" the world, or at least of pretending that they are by roleplaying their characters that way, why do you (the DM) need to adjudicate that? Why not just let the players decide what their characters do or do not know? In the example you gave, it sounds like your player both wanted his character to know, and had a good justification for it. Why do you need to make a ruling on whether or not that reason is good enough, and call for a dice roll?

And let me be clear that I don't think you are "doing it wrong." It's just that I personally wouldn't find this approach particularly fun, and I'm genuinely curious why others (because, based on some of the posts here, you're hardly alone in this) do think it's fun.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Ovinomancer]

To the extent that this is an interesting question (and it is), and to the extent that it keeps popping up in threads (and it does, as an analogy), I think it helpfully illuminates three different styles of play.*

In the beginning, there was the idea of "skilled play." If you look back, you see that while players inhabited a role (proto-roleplaying), players were also assumed to have some skill at the game itself. That is why early modules featured puzzles and traps and riddles and so on that were meant to be solved by the players, not the PCs. And the different abilities of monsters were known (or not) by the players, not the PCs. This was so well-known that one of the earliest Dragon Magazines (before the Monster Manual!) mocks the problem and has a way for DMs to create random monsters!!!

Then we can discuss the concept of "role playing." People that were more interested in role playing became focused on the divide between the player and the PC. The player might know that a troll could be stopped by fire (having encountered one in the last campaign), but the PC might not. So the player would have to determine if the PC had that knowledge- did their history, background, intelligence, and so on, mean that they would know this? Would a noble-born Cleric know it? How about a peasant fighter recently released from the army?

Finally, there is the concept of "dice play." With the advent of later parts of 2e, and especially 3e on, their was an increased emphasis on the use of dice to resolve non-combat situations.** Here, instead of looking solely at skilled play (what the player knew) or the role play (what the PC knew), the player would determine if the PC knew that information the same way that the player would determine if the PC hit an opponent; by rolling. This made it worthwhile to invest in an applicable skill to know, um, stuff.

So we have three different outlooks on the game, and the question- SP, RP, DP. Let me start by saying that very few tables or people purely approach the game using one perspective, and freely intermingle. But looking at the question from these perspectives, we get the following answers:

SP: No. Of course not. If the player knows, fine, otherwise ....
RP: No. Again, if the player already knows, then the player can determine if the PC knows.
DP: Maybe. The player would choose an applicable skill and roll against it to determine if the player knows.

This doesn't really fully explicate the issues, however, because when people are talking about TROLLS, they are really discussing the use of "metagaming," and what that means to them. Again, I think it is helpful to look at how the three approaches, broadly defined, view metagaming (and for now, we will set aside examples of metagaming such as reading the Adventure Path ahead of time!).

SP: Metagaming that is not cheating is allowed, and part of the game.
RP: Metagaming is anathema.
DP: Metagaming is often unavoidable, but the only way to access that knowledge is through a mediated roll.

So, those are basic thoughts. Feel free to savage them!


*NO. NOT THOSE.

**I am simplifying, of course. Using dice to resolve non-combat situations has always been part of D&D. Codifying how to do it, and making it more common, was more recent, for definitions of recent that occurred over three decades ago.

This is well presented, but it has at the heart of it the assumption that the DM should keep the information about the monster secret as a matter of course. I'm not sure that's entirely warranted, although it is, largely, how the game has been played for quite some time. I'm going to challenge that idea, though.

A quality encounter is one where the players are engaged in the action and make choices that have heft -- that matter and change the fiction. This doesn't happen very well if the DM's running gotchas on the monsters because the players are playing guessing games to figure out the secret or asking for rolls to know things. To me, this represents a failure on the part of the DM to present a complete situation where the characters can act. The DM should have been foreshadowing the threat, and the nature of the threat, in the scene framing or in previous scenes. So long as the DM provides strong avenues to discover the secrets of the encounter, then it becomes a meaningful player choice if they fail to follow up. It's in the keeping of the secret, or gating behind random chance, that this is lost.

So, to make the case for Yes, the DM should endeavor to provide the secret in play such that the players can make decisions with heft. Doing otherwise is just playing gotcha.

I've been doing this for a few years now -- providing lots of info, often for free. There were some growing pains where I felt that I was making encounters too easy, but that passed quickly for two reasons -- one, I stopped building encounters based on the gotcha so that wasn't a problem and b) I found out that I could give my players my notes straight out and they'll still find ways to screw it all up by the numbers.

 

[Guest 6801328]

To the extent that this is an interesting question (and it is), and to the extent that it keeps popping up in threads (and it does, as an analogy), I think it helpfully illuminates three different styles of play.*

In the beginning, there was the idea of "skilled play." If you look back, you see that while players inhabited a role (proto-roleplaying), players were also assumed to have some skill at the game itself. That is why early modules featured puzzles and traps and riddles and so on that were meant to be solved by the players, not the PCs. And the different abilities of monsters were known (or not) by the players, not the PCs. This was so well-known that one of the earliest Dragon Magazines (before the Monster Manual!) mocks the problem and has a way for DMs to create random monsters!!!

Then we can discuss the concept of "role playing." People that were more interested in role playing became focused on the divide between the player and the PC. The player might know that a troll could be stopped by fire (having encountered one in the last campaign), but the PC might not. So the player would have to determine if the PC had that knowledge- did their history, background, intelligence, and so on, mean that they would know this? Would a noble-born Cleric know it? How about a peasant fighter recently released from the army?

Finally, there is the concept of "dice play." With the advent of later parts of 2e, and especially 3e on, their was an increased emphasis on the use of dice to resolve non-combat situations.** Here, instead of looking solely at skilled play (what the player knew) or the role play (what the PC knew), the player would determine if the PC knew that information the same way that the player would determine if the PC hit an opponent; by rolling. This made it worthwhile to invest in an applicable skill to know, um, stuff.

So we have three different outlooks on the game, and the question- SP, RP, DP. Let me start by saying that very few tables or people purely approach the game using one perspective, and freely intermingle. But looking at the question from these perspectives, we get the following answers:

SP: No. Of course not. If the player knows, fine, otherwise ....
RP: No. Again, if the player already knows, then the player can determine if the PC knows.
DP: Maybe. The player would choose an applicable skill and roll against it to determine if the player knows.

This doesn't really fully explicate the issues, however, because when people are talking about TROLLS, they are really discussing the use of "metagaming," and what that means to them. Again, I think it is helpful to look at how the three approaches, broadly defined, view metagaming (and for now, we will set aside examples of metagaming such as reading the Adventure Path ahead of time!).

SP: Metagaming that is not cheating is allowed, and part of the game.
RP: Metagaming is anathema.
DP: Metagaming is often unavoidable, but the only way to access that knowledge is through a mediated roll.

So, those are basic thoughts. Feel free to savage them!


*NO. NOT THOSE.

**I am simplifying, of course. Using dice to resolve non-combat situations has always been part of D&D. Codifying how to do it, and making it more common, was more recent, for definitions of recent that occurred over three decades ago.

I think you're overlooking an entire outlook/playstyle.