D&D General Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?

[Bill Zebub]

If the character is impatient and you-as-player want to play it as impatient, don't tell me up-front you're waiting for an hour. Tell me up-front you're waiting for 15 minutes, or however long you think your character can last without doing something rash.

Because yes, once you declare your action you're committed to seeing it through barring external interruption. For example, in the scout situation I might get the party to tell me how long they're waiting (let's say an hour) then go and play out the scouting. Let's say the scouting goes well and the scout would return in 45 minutes. Before the scout's player comes back, I return to the main group and see if anything has interrupted their waiting. Look, a wandering monster or patrol came by at the half-hour point, what would you do? And I play that out. Now that I know what happened there, I can go back to the scout player and tell her what she sees on returning to the party.

And none of your players have ever learned to tell you what they are doing in 1-minute increments?

"I think I'll spend another minute deciding if I want to follow the rogue."


I jest.

More seriously, instead of deciding what players are and are not allowed to do, why not add complications to make their decision harder? "Sure, you can follow the rogue. If you go carefully I will give you advantage on a stealth check, but it will take you 3 minutes to get there. Or you can sprint down the main hall and get there in 3 rounds, but you'll almost definitely be spotted. What do you want to do?"

 

[overgeeked]

Honestly, it's not realistic to assume they could be a fighter. A 5E fighter, for example, has the following class ability: "You adopt a particular style of fighting as your specialty". So how do you realistically reconcile a "18-year-old fresh off the farm with their grandfather's dented sword" with "has a particular style of fighting as their specialty" -- not only have they studied, the rules state they have specialized WITHIN their study. Of course, we'd all hand-wave the way the rules require characters to have training, because it's fun! But it's not realistic by any means -- the only reason a fighter is a fighter is because of training!

I take it you haven't met many 18-year-old farmboys, then.

First, we are not talking about "people" in general. I am 100% happy for commoners or other non-adventurers to know very little about monsters. We are talking about adventurers -- people whose job it is to deal with monsters on a regular basis. So your basis for comparison is way, way off. Your actual question should be "how many people in the real world whose job it is to combat serial killers are incredibly well-versed in serial killers?" The answer to that would be ... Most of them, of course!

Again you wildly overestimate real people. Just because it’s your job does not give you perfect knowledge of anything and everything related to your job. That’s not realistic.

Second, I see you are slipping in the modifier "incredibly" into my position. If you want to misrepresent me, why not go all the way to "omnisciently" or the like?

You’re arguing that an adventurer, merely because it’s their job, would have perfect knowledge of all monsters. You are saying they’re omniscient.

 

[overgeeked]

You can thank Hollywood for that "common knowledge." If you dig deeper than Hollywood and go into real world vampire myths, there are many from around the world and with different reputed abilities. That knowledge is not so common as you might think.

Same with werewolves. There are a variety of myths and abilities/weaknesses. Hollywood's version is just one of them, maybe.

Or they’re like the in-game Volo’s, more wrong than right.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I take it you haven't met many 18-year-old farmboys, then.

Are you seriously arguing that your typical 18-year-old farmboy has combat training?

I live in ranching country, and while a lot ranch kids ride and hunt, that's a LOT different from combat training.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So a player best have a very complete backstory lest they leave out details that could cause conflict of player vs PC knowledge during gameplay? Seems like a high expectation for players, in that case.

Luckily, most of the obvious stuff is covered by background choice, skill proficiencies, etc. Something I failed to mention before is often if something is in doubt I have the player roll an Intelligence (or whatever) check to determine if a random piece of information is available to the PC. Honestly, this sort of thing rarely comes up...

The larger issues which seems to have been washed over is the metagaming issue when player knowledge deals with things that the PC is not involved in or aware of, etc.

So, in your games, the DM knows the PC better than the player?

In some ways, yes. The reason is mostly concerning INT scores. But that is another can of worms that is probably also left for another thread entirely...

Another reason is I know my game world better than the players because I made it. They are part of it, yes. And FWIW, there are many times when I do the exact opposite and clue my players into something their PC would know but that they, as a player, are not aware of.

It works in both directions, something people also don't seem to realize (mostly because they want to jump on the "that is not fun" bandwagon...).

Some might argue that you cannot reasonably separate player knowledge from PC knowledge 100%. But I think that is fodder for another thread entirely.

Well, if I am not hitting 100%, I sure as hell try my hardest! I'll admit it is hard, but it can be done.

That's just the thing that many DMs here have given up on: policing how the PC thinks, talks, and acts. According to the 5e rules (or, if one prefers, guidelines), deciding how the PC thinks/talks/acts is the player's duty, not mine as DM. If I ever ask for clarification about WHY a PC is saying/thinking/trying to do something, it would be out of simple curiosity of wondering what they are hoping to accomplish and to possibly hear something from the player that might add to the fun, memorable story. It is never to tell the player: "Sorry, that's not how your character would act/talk/think." A fictional reason is readily available for any of these - and I, as DM, don't want that extra duty so I leave it to the players. Sometimes the players choices are optimal, sometimes they are suboptimal, sometimes (either way) they can earn Inspiration.

Policing is only necessary in very certain situations, and honestly pretty rare, and 90% of the time due to unknowingly metagaming.

If other DMs want to allow players to use player knowledge their PCs would not (likely) have, use roll results and knowing outcomes of success/failure and other instance to metagame, that is their prerogative, certainly, but not something I would do.

And I think several people here think this "challenge" from the DM is one that gets in the way of smooth game flow. I know from past experience of having run this way. Once I dropped worrying about player motivations behind PC actions, our 5e game became much, much more enjoyable for the players at our table and, especially, for me as DM. Clearly, YMMV.

My enjoyment is also part of the equation since I play the game as well as my players. Obviously I have no idea how disruptive you found such things in your experience in the past--but I don't find it disruptive at all and as I said in an earlier post, when it does come up and I have to adjudicate it, the response is nearly always, "Oh, ok, I'll do ___________ instead."

Also, I would like to express my appreciation for your post and your non-judgmental manner. Thank you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You don’t actually know that though is the thing. Theoretically, had you separated the two groups so that they didn’t know what was going on with the other, it’s entirely possible that the players in the second group might coincidentally decide to rejoin the first group at the exact moment they get themselves into danger. They also might not. You can’t know what actually “would have happened” if the players didn’t know what was going on with the other group. As you observed, making any decision at all in that moment is making a metagame decision.

I'm sorry, man, but unless the time frames are extremely small, that just doesn't pass the sniff test. The way to show it is to ask the following question when the players say they're going to look for the others or go to the specific area they know the others are in "When are you going?" If the group tries to respond "Now," ask "Now as in when?" Unless the events are in precise tactical sync (which most likely means the groups are in communication and make the matter moot) the first group doesn't even know when the second is in trouble; at best they know when they're done doing whatever they're doing, and those can be vastly different times (and if at all possible the GM plays out the group liable to finish their task first, then asks them what they're doing), or they're simply waiting, in which case they have no idea what point they need to go (and if they were waiting, presumably had a reason to do so).

So in practice, there's no way for them to do so without referencing events the other group is involved with, because otherwise they have no idea what point to show up in any concrete way. (This assuming that there wasn't already an arrangement like "If you're not back in an hour, we'll go off to see what's wrong" in which case its again, moot.

There's essentially no meaningful way for the first group to do this without clearly showing its a decision using information they don't really have.

Sure, but likewise, if you know the monster’s weaknesses, you can’t know what you would do if you didn’t know the monster’s weaknesses. You can use your player knowledge to exploit the weaknesses, or you can choose not to exploit those weaknesses, but either way you’re making a metagame choice.

Or you can just firewall it and make the decision you think you'd make anyway. I don't think that's a decision that can meaningfully be called metagaming unless every decision you make for a character is.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What beggars belief is the idea that an 18-year-old fresh off the farm with their grandfather's dented sword would have years of formal training.

People might set it that way, but D&D fighters are not 18 year olds fresh off the farm unless their uncle has been training them to be a warrior since they were 10. Fighters are explicitly treated as better than green troops in every edition since OD&D.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I offered several examples of why, upon seeing a dragon, someone might say to disperse aside from the breath weapon.

You might draw the conclusion I didn't agree with most of those reasons. You'd be right. There's a sharply limited reason to open up lines, and all of them have to do with mobility until area effects come along.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

You might draw the conclusion I didn't agree with most of those reasons. You'd be right. There's a sharply limited reason to open up lines, and all of them have to do with mobility until area effects come along.

Of course, adventuring parties are not your typical military unit. And “soldier” is just one possible background.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Exactly, and this points to another glaring hole in 5e's rules - there's simply too big of a mechanical gap between commoner and 1st-level character.

Now in fairness it's an improvement over 4e, which took this problem to eleven, but it's still a problem.

Only if you want starting characters to approximate everymen. D&D has never really wanted that, the fact they've gotten more formal about it over time just means it doesn't serve that need, not that its a "problem" in any generic sense.